A PLEA FOR PLAGIARISM.

EDITORS DAILY CRIMSON. - In the beginning of the year, the instructor in sophomore themes conceived the commendable idea of passing the themes round to the students for perusal and criticism. This was to have been kept up throughout the year, unless it proved too complicated. One set of themes was thus distributed, and no more. That was all. No word of explanation was offered in regard to the sudden change. Now, there is no doubt that most of the criticisms were absurd and severe, and probably did neither the writer nor the men of whose work it was written any good; but the ideas obtained from reading the work of others was of inestimable value. No matter how careful and thorough in his criticisms the instructor is, no matter how painstaking the student is, under the present system, he can but go on attempting to perfect himself in the peculiar style which chance or his early education may have led him to adopt. If he gets a chance to study other themes besides his own, he gets new ideas, he sees an entirely different style which has certain charms which his own does not possess, and almost unconsciously the beauty of the ideas and of the well turned sentences will react upon him, improving his writing in the course of a year almost beyond recognition. It is true that we get something of this sort by reading the college papers, more especially the Monthly and the Advocate; but here the great trouble is that they treat not of topics which the ordinary man has any occasion to handle, so that they do not have the same effect which a much less pretentious piece of work would have. This want would be entirely satisfied by the bi-weekly themes now written, if only they were accessible. Since a plan has been thought out by the instructor in question of accomplishing this end to a limited extent, it is only just to the students that they should receive an explanation of why it has been given up, and if the idea has really proved impracticable, it is to be hoped that some other scheme may be devised to attain the same end.

D., '88.