Laudator Temporis Acti

Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, "Brief Mention," American Journal of Philology 33.3 (1912) 358-368 (at 359-360):

We not only strip the jackdaw of his feathers and trace each feather to the part of the bird from which it is taken, but we run down the fable of the feathers itself to its ultimate source. The quest has the irresistible charm of the detective story. One becomes a Gaboriau, a Sherlock Holmes. It is so throughout the whole field of philology. Whence that interpretation? Whence that emendation? Whence that formula? The whole thing is a tradition from the days of the Alexandrian grammatici; and the fragments thereof remain in the scholia. Our modern methods are more exact, more persistent, and there are few of our leaders who dare say with Wilamowitz that like Plato they care more for the λόγος than for οἱ λέγοντες. In periods of creative activity your healthy ancient, yes, your healthy modern, troubled himself little about sources, about the charge of plagiarism. These periods over, the packs of Alexandrian scholars, of modern scholars, have busied themselves in nosing out the origin of this fancy and that fancy, this and that story. No man is supposed to have a brook of his own; everybody is supposed to have drawn from the tank of some other man, as Coleridge puts it. What would Shakespeare have cared about all the proofs of his indebtedness? Molière snapped his fingers at those who made him out to be under heavy obligations to Spain. And, to cite a very modern instance, Charles Reade was notoriously a thief of the world. 'The pedigree of honey', sings the New England Sappho, 'Does not concern the bee'. Most assuredly it did not concern the Matinian bee. It did not concern Vergil. The Roman poets rifled Greek prose as well as Greek poetry. Every fresh find of Greek lyric fragments contributes to the sources of Horace. But as has been well said: If Alkaios and the rest of the nine lyric poets were to rise from the dead, Horace would still be Horace.