To lay false claim

To lay false claim to an invention or discovery which has an immediate market value; to vamp up a professedly new book of reference by stealing from the pages of one already produced at the cost of much labour and material; to copy somebody else's poem and send the manuscript to a magazine, or hand it about among friends as an original “effusion;” to deliver an elegant extract from a known writer as a piece of improvised eloquence:--these are the limits within which the dishonest pretence of originality is likely to get hissed or hooted and bring more or less shame on the culprit.

(11: 11: 159-60)

Honesty

Published by the George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett, 2025. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Petlev, Em