Part 1 — THE REVIEW OF MR. BRYANT’S ILIAD.

The following paragraph appeared in the Independent, from which it was copied by the New York Times:

“We were slightly surprised, after reading in the June number of The Catholic World that ‘the New York Times has long rivalled Harper’s Weekly in bigotry and anti-Catholic malice,’ to find in the same number a long article on Bryant’s Iliad, which is stolen bodily from two reviews of the same work in the Times of March 14 and June 20, 1870. The arrangement of the paragraphs is slightly changed, but their contents are absolutely identical. In the same number of The Catholic World the editor pathetically inquires: ‘What is the Catholic press doing to correct these literary influences? What is it doing to cultivate the art of criticism?’ Stealing, evidently. We are informed, however, that often ‘the force of a Catholic organ consists of nobody but the editor, who writes all the fourth page, and the assistant, who makes up the rest of the forms with a paste-pot and a pair of shears.’ If Catholic monthlies are edited in the same way as Catholic weeklies, it manifestly becomes necessary to search for articles among the files of the daily papers; but we must remind the editor, to quote his own words again, that ‘newspapers go everywhere. Their readers are not confined to any one sect or any one party.’”

The simple fact of the matter is, that the author of the articles in the Times presented the review of the Iliad, which appeared in our last number, to the editor of this magazine in manuscript, and received payment for it as an original article. The proper explanation has been already made to the editor of the Times. To the Independent our only rejoinder may be found in the last four lines of the Ninth Fable of Phædrus.[133]

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XV., No. 89.—AUGUST, 1872.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.