17 November 1894

“Neither Art Nor Part”

Wallace’s reply was a retreat that refused to present itself as one. He had not made the plagiarism charge, he insisted — merely reported it. The charge had originated in the Glasgow Herald, not with him. He had “neither art nor part” in whatever campaign Crockett was implying.

The language of the article tells a different story. Wallace took sharp offence at Crockett’s phrasing — “his Mr. William Wallace” — and demanded a retraction, calling it “a meaningless impertinence.” A critic genuinely unconcerned with the dispute might have accepted the correction and moved on. Wallace’s wounded tone suggests a man who had expected to have the last word and found he had not.

On the miracles question, he conceded Andrew Lang’s authority in principle but found a narrow escape: he accepted popular miracle claims, but doubted whether a trained theologian like the fictional Renfield would have exercised such power. It is a lawyerly distinction — the retreat of a critic who cannot find firmer ground.

What makes this article most valuable to historians is what Wallace inadvertently confirmed. By insisting that the plagiarism charge had originated in the Glasgow Herald, he acknowledged that it had been in circulation across connected periodical networks before The Academy amplified it. Whether that coordination was deliberate or the informal movement of an accusation through professional contacts, the pattern Crockett had named with his Carroll quotation was, on Wallace’s own account, real.