6.
then prevalent among the reviewers of the day, that is, among men who were more or less well-read and prepared to criticize each new book on Japan.
The most serious charge of all, that of plagiarism, was leveled principally by the reviewers in the British Quarterly Review, the Literary Gazette, and the London Spectator Supplement. Both the reviewers in the British Quarterly Review and in the Literary Gazette point out that the description of a wrestling match in Cornwallis is "the same in substance, and in part the same in language, as the one reported in Commodore Perry's trip a few years before,"[1] that is, in the Narrative of the United States Expedition compiled under the direction of Dr. P. L. Hawks. The reviewer in the British Quarterly Review also indicates that in the Narrative there is a picture and a description of a funeral procession at Shimoda, and virtually the same is found in Cornwallis, with this exception, that the locale has been changed to Hakodate. Furthermore, it was indicated that from the famous work on Japan by Engelbert Kaempfer, Cornwallis had adapted a visit to some Buddhist temples at Miako or present-day Kyoto, and some of the sentences, according to the reviewer, were "positively the same." The London Spectator Supplement finally found that a climbing excursion in the Lew-chew Islands as described by Cornwallis
- ↑ So The British Quarterly Review, XXIX, no.58 (Apr. 1, 1859), 506.
