used members of creation is that forlorn animal, a street dog. Every idle hand has a stone, every idle foot has a kick for him -every driver a whip, and every carpenter a cleft stick. He has only to look at a butcher's shop-merely to point at a sheep -to be snatched up instanter. Bang! goes the chopper! and off fly a few inches of his tail. He has only to be looked at by a bevy of young blackguards, and in a jiffy away he scours, encumbered with an old kettle. Even so it fared with the author. He was ragged in his coat, bare on his ribs, and tucked up in the flank—in short, he looked a very peltable, kickable, whipable, and curtailable dog, indeed. Accordingly, no sooner had Law caught sight of him, than it caught hold of him, docked his entail at a blow, and tied Stationers' Hall to the stump. So much for the strict duties of the legislative office, to which we owe that we have only a lease of our own premises—a temporary usufruct in our own orchards-that we have been encouraged by a sequestration, and protected from retail privateering, on the condition of wholesale piracy hereafter! To be sure it has been urged, that an extended copyright (an author's monopoly instead of a bookseller's) would damage the public interest that it would enhance the price of books—at any rate, that it would prevent their re-issue at a reduced rate. But this speculation remains to be tested by experiment. The higher and wealthy classes do not compose, as formerly, the great mass of readers-the numbers have increased by millions, and our writers are quite as well aware as the trade of the superior advantage of a cheap and large circulation. They have the double temptation of popularity and profit. One can even fancy an author publishing without hope of pecuniary reward, nay, at a certain loss, provided it would insure his numbers a Bozzian diffusion; whereas it is difficult to imagine a writer setting so high a price on his own book as would necessarily confine its perusal to a very select circle. On these points I am competent to speak, having re-issued the majority of my own humble works, at a price quite in accordance with the demand for cheap literature and most certainly not enhanced by the time my copyrights had been in existence. It is true that the cost of a volume has occasionally been purposely hoisted up, for instance, : by wilfully destroying the wood-blocks and copper plates, as in the case of Dr. Dibdin's “Bibliographical Decameron," but such dog-in-the-mangery acts have been committed at or before publication for even the maddest Bibliomaniac would hardly dream of making a work “ scarce," after a sale of forty-two years. It follows, then, that the shorter the copyright the longer the price of the book! for supposing the term cut down to one year for the writer to sow, reap, and gather in his harvest, what so likely to set him Dibdinizing as the brevity of his lease? "Odds books and buyers!" says he, "only twelve months market before me, less fifty-two Sundays! As my time is so scant, I must make the most of it!" So he stirs up the coals to a bonfire, pitches into it all his costly wood-cuts, as if they were so many logs, and enhances the price of his volume to ten guineas a cópy! Apropos of cheapness, it seems never to have occurred to the sticklers for it, that an article may become unreasonably reasonable that the consumer may be benefited overmuch. For example, there have been certain staring shop announcements to be seen about London, in which the low price of the commodities was vouched for by the ruin of the manufacturer-broad proclamations that the "Great Bargains in Cotton" had shut up the mills, and that the " Wonderfully Reduced Silks" had exhausted not only the bowels of the worm but those of the weaver. But is such a consummation a favorable one, and devoutly to be wished, whatever the fabric? Is it really desirable to see our authors publicly advertised as "Unprecedented Sacrifices?" Or would anybody, except Mr. Wakley, or some useless Utilitarian, be actually gratified by reading such a placard as the following: UNEXAMPLED DISTRESS IN GRUB STREET! PROSE UNDER PRIME COST!!! POETRY FOR NOTHING!!!! It is certain, nevertheless, that new works, and especially periodical ones, have been projected and started, during the Rage for Cheap Literature, at rates so ruinously low, that they might afford brown bread and single Gloster to the Publishers or to the Writers, but certainly not for both. Thus, a few months since, I was applied to, myself, to contribute to a new journal, not exactly gratuitously, but at a very small advance upon nothing-and avowedly because the work had been planned according to that estimate. However, I accepted the terms conditionally; that is to say, provided the principle could be properly carried out. Accordingly, I wrote to my butcher, baker, and other tradesmen, informing them that it was necessary, for the sake of cheap literature and the interest of the reading public, that they should furnish me with their several commodities at a very trifling per-centage above cost price. It will be sufficient to quote the answer of the butcher:— 66 'Sir,-Respectin your note. Cheap literater be blowed. Butchers must live as well as other pepel-and if so be you or the readin publick wants to have meat at prime cost, you must buy your own beastesses, and kill yourselves. I remane, &c., John Stokes." And, truly, why not cheap anything, or everything, as well as cheap literature? Cheap beef, cheap beer, cheap butter, and cheap bread? As to books, the probability is, that distant reissues would be at reduced rates; but, even supposing them to remain at their original prices, why should Mr. Thomson of 1843 have his "Waverley" any cheaper than Mr. Thomson of 1814? At any rate, the interests of both parties ought to be fairly considered. Nay, Consistency goes still farther, and hints that the literary interest should be especially favored. For, hark to Consistency! "Let the public," she says, "be cared for-let the public be well cared for,-and let the Authors be particularly well cared for, as the most public part of the public!" "But if we give an extended term to the authors,” cries Lord Brougham, "we must also give a longer day to the patentees." And why not, if they deserve and need it? But it is as easy to show cause against a patent being perpetual, as it is difficult to prove why a copyright should be limited. In the abstract, the absolute rights of both parties may be equal-but as the monopoly of a mechanical invention might be an enormous evil, Expediency, with propriety, steps in to protect the public interest when the private one has been amply gratified. In fact, the patentees of great and useful inventions have generally realized large fortunes within a few years; whereas the best and greatest of our writers have commonly made such little ones, during their whole lives, that the Next-of-Kin never heard of anything to his advantage. And the reason was ably explained by the Bishop of London. The merits of a mechanical invention can at once be tested: and are immediately recognized. The merest loggerhead can understand at a glance the advantage of a mac.ine which impels a ship without wind and a coach without horses-how beit the same dunderpate in twenty long years had never found out the use of "book larning." There is a gentleman of my acquaintance who derives a yearly sum for a patent clothes brush, the superiority of which, in brushing his master's coat, John Footman would detect ere he had whistled through "Nancy Dawson." But suppose instead of a machine of bristles, wire, and wood, my friend had composed a work, intended to brush off the dirt and dust of the human intellect, he might have been months in catching a publisher, and years upon years in getting hold of the public. But why talk of steam-engines, clothes brushes, and such utilities? There was one trifling instrument, for which, had the inventor secured a patent, the sale of the article, merely as a toy, would have certainly enriched the proprietor―for the dullest unit of humanity had but to put the tube to his or her eye to enjoy all the beautiful and varied patterns of the kaleidoscope. But suppose, instead of a tin machine with reflectors and bits of colored glass, the novelty had been a "Novum Organon," how many of those peeping thousands and millions might have looked through it and through it, by sunlight and lamplight, without discovering that it was rare food. for the mind-prime intellectual Bacon. The truth is, we so far resemble the brutes, that we understand our physical wants and comforts, much more quickly than our mental or moral ones,just as a turnspit would find out the value of a bottlejack long before that of a Bridgewater Treatise. Hence, the prompt recognition and remuneration of mechanical inventions and inventors. Nor must it be forgotten that government, as wide awake to the Physical, and as fast asleep to the Intellectual, as the loggerheaded dunce, John Footman, the kaleidoscopers, and the turnspit, it ought not to be forgotten that government has sometimes bought his invention of a patentee, but has never purchased a copyright since the invention of printing. It will be time enough, then, when Sir Robert Peel begins to bargain with us for our works, on behalf of the nation, to say that we are on the same footing as the patentees. The International Question-and Pirates Foreign and Domestic-in my next.-Yours, &c., LETTER V. TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATHENÆUM: PROBLEMATICAL as some persons may consider the benefit of an extended copyright to authors, there can be no doubt of the immediate injury they must sustain, in common with publishers, from the piratical reprinting of the works in foreign countries—to wit, France, Belgium, and the United States. I am not aware whether Germany partakes in this disgraceful traffic but there is a word for it in the language, and nothing is more favorable to Nachdruckerie than the contiguity of several petty principalities. seas. Of the character of the system, the very name that is applied to it is significant-a term which associates this over-free-trade with the buccaneering practices of the old robbers on the high The literary pirate does not, indeed, dabble in blood, but in ink; but the object is the same, and pursued by the same means- -the indiscriminate pillage of friend or foe. And here be it said, that if anything can palliate the foreign marauder, and render his offence comparatively venial, it is the example of English publishers pirating English works. It has always been reckoned unnatural for dog to eat dog, or for hawks to pick out hawks' eyes; and the Highland veteran, who stole droves of cattle without scruple, would have held it a heinous offence to lift a sucking calf belonging to any one of his own clan. PART II. 9 |