the most distinguished Norwegian authors (Ibsen, Bjornson, etc.) are published in Copenhagen. Mr. Pakenham, the British Minister at Stockholm, has been so good as to furnish me with details of book production in Sweden, and Mr. Stewart MacGregor, our vice-Consul at Christiania, and Messrs. Cammermeyer, the well-known Norwegian booksellers, have provided the materials for the list for Norway.

The production of books in France is large; the list is in two volumes, published by the Cercle de la Librairie, Paris. In Portugal statistics are so

little cultivated that it excites some surprise that any should be asked for. At any rate, none could be obtained, though most diligently sought after. Much the same thing may be said for Spain, with this addition, that last year Spain had something else to think about. China seems outside the librarian's purview, there being neither statistics of book production obtainable nor any machinery in the Empire whereby these might be procured. Though Japan takes no account as yet of her contributions to the world's output of books, she will

3

902 668

....

38272

88

16

I

6

not be long behind European countries. In 1880, the year in which the Publishers' Weekly of New York began to gather statistics of books produced in the United States, the total was 2,076 books. Year by year the production has slowly increased, and in 1898 the total of 4,171 new books and 657 new editions was reached. In the ap pended table particulars are given of the production of books in Canada, but it may be useful to point out that a copy of every book registered in Canada is furnished to the British Museum.

590

1856 341

98 3 494 242

234

19 211

77

74 41

174

Commerce.

389

105

494

278

2031 2998

2 279 395 39 33

Theology, Sermons (Biblical).

548

105

653

436

476

36 1003

2091 790

Ad d for Switzerland 634 5315 735 13,268 23,9089568 164 2863 2272 5891198 9122 1000

191

1167

99

IS

77,250

* Of the works annually published in Egypt, 98 are Arabic and 66 Europe; and of 226,200 copies printed, 174,500 are Arabic and 54,700 European given in the official return and are probably pamphlets of a miscellaneous

A well-known author is exhibiting to his friends with great glee a discovery he has made in an English dictionary of some note, which professes to include what the editor terms "Americanisms.” Among these is the following: "Jag-An American term for an umorella, as will be seen by the following illustration from an Albany (N. Y.) paper: 'Mr. Blank, a prominent citizen, returned from his club in a hilarious condition, and after vainly trying to unlock the front door with his umbrella, climbed through the coal hole. He was found asleep in the bath tub fully dressed, and with his jag.''

*

First Poet--I am going to have my revenge upon the editor. Second Poet-How?

First Poet (in a hoarse whisper)

I've sent him a poem and I've poisoned the gum on the return envelope.

A SONNET TO SOMEBODY.

A young verse writer of New York has lately been telling his friends of a trying experience that he had a short time ago. For many months he had been sending his poems to publishers and had met steady rejection. This, however, did not discourage him; he believed that rejection was the fate of all poets of merit early in their careers. It happens that he is an intense admirer of Rudyard Kipling, and was very much concerned while Kipling was hanging between life and death. After he learned that his hero was sure to recover, he sat down and wrote a sonnet to the author of "The Recessional." For several days he revised it carefully; when it was finished, he felt sure it represented the best work he had ever done in his life.

"Some editor will be sure to take it," he said to himself, "not merely because it's good, but because everybody is interested in Kipling just now."

He had the poem typewritten, and he took it in person to a magazine editor who had often given him encouragement, without, however, promising to print any of his lines.

The editor examined the poem very thoughtfully. Then he said: "Very good; excllent. I like it extremely!"

The poet was delighted. "Then you'll take it?" he asked tremulously.

"There's only one objection that I have to it," the editor replied.

"What-what's that?" faltered the poet.

The editor cleared his throat. "There are too many poems about Kipling that are making their way into print just now. Besides," he concluded in a dry voice and with an insinuating smile, "I'm not what you would call one of Kipling's most ardent admirers."

"Do you mean you don't like him?" asked the poet resentfully.

The editor shrugged his shoulders. "I consider him a very much overrated writer."

The young fellow took his manuscript, folded it, and was about to put it into his pocket.

"Then you won't leave it?" said the editor. "Do you want it?" the poet asked in astonish

ment.

"Well-er-I was going to say I liked it so much that I'd take it if you'd dedicate it to some one else."

"What?" the poet cried in horror, hardly able. to believe that such a sacrilege could be perpetrated.

"Yes. Why not? That sort of thing has often been done."

Then the poet thought hard. If he didn't sell. the poem now he might never sell it at all. Wasn't it better to publish it with Kipling left out than never to see it in print? Besides, the editor was probably right in saying that the market was overstocked with Kipling poems.

At last he weakened.

"Whom can I dedicate it to, then?" he asked feebly.

"Oh, there are plenty of people the lines apply to," said the editor.

The poet's face brightened. "There's Keats, I'm fond of Keats."

"No. That line about 'the martial vigor of his song' would never do for Keats. He's out of the question."

"Well, how about Tennyson?"

The editor became thoughtful. "No," he replied slowly. "It doesn't quite fit Tennyson. It isn't tender or musical enough to be appropriate." By this time the poet had lost patience.

"Well, dedicate it to any one you like," he cried, making for the door.

The poem has at last appeared with the title, "To Shakespeare."

The books that Laura reads are such

As breathe of grass-grown lea and dell,
Of violets and just a touch

Of honest love that prospers well;
A pasture field, a lowing herd,
Trysts, well to suit romance's needs,
The twilight dusk, the homing bird,
In every book that Laura reads.
Such things were never to my taste;
A book of travel suits me well,
Or history; it seemed a waste

Of time to sit 'neath fiction's spell;
But late Macaulay dull has grown,

From Gibbon all my love secedes; I've come somehow to like the tone Of every book that Laura reads. She reads them first and underscores A loving passage here and there; They seem to echo love in stores-

To dream it mine I sometimes dare! And through each chapter of the tale

Opes with an amorous poet's screeds, There's something to my heart regale In every book that Laura reads.

ROY FARRELL Greene. *

An excellent little book for amateur book-binders is Zaehnsdorf's "The Binding of a Book," a pamphlet issued in 1890, and still obtainable, we think, from him at 144 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W. C. Among more exhaustive treatises are Zaehnsdorf's "The Art of Bookbinding," London, Bell & Son's 1880, 10s 6d, and Crane's "BookBinding for Amateur's" London, Upcott Gill, 1885, 2s. 6d.

SOME MEMORIES OF TENNYSON, BROWNING AND

GEORGE ELIOT.

Mr. Justin McCarthy, in the course of a lifetime spent in the British metropolis, has had particularly favorable opportunities, through his prominence as a man of letters and a politician, of studying the chief literary figures of the times. In an article contributed to the Youth's Companion of recent date, he has some interesting things to tell of four of these. He first met Tennyson at a house party in the Isle of Wight, upon the occasion of the famous visit of Garibaldi to Eng and in 1864. Mr. McCarthy thus narrates the experience:

"It was a very curious and interesting gathering. The late Lord Shaftesbury was there--the great philanthropist and devotee of orthodox religion, English church, of course-and Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, the free-thinker and Socialist, and Alexander Herzen, the then famous Russian exile, and, I think, Louis Blanc and Lord Kinnaird and Grant Duff, and many more whose names I have forgotten.

"I thought I had then never seen a more commanding figure than the poet laureate. A more stately and even magnificent presence, a man tall, erect, broad-shouldered-somewhat over six feet in height, I should think-with a splendidly outlined face and a mass of dark, wavy hair, almost black, then hardly even streaked with gray. I never knew Tennyson except in an out-side sort of way, meeting him occasionally here and there. I can not say what his manners to his intimate friends may have been, except that I know of the affectionate terms in which his intimate friends always spoke of him, but to the ordinary observer from the outside his manners seemed rather abrupt and domineering. He sometimes sat chillingly silent, as Nathaniel Hawthorne might have done; but Nathaniel Hawthorne never, so far as I know, broke out into sudden bursts of self-assertion, and Tennyson often did.

"Tennyson was curiously out of sympathy with any democratic, or even any reforming, tendencies. in the political sense on the part of the majority of his countrymen. He detested popular agitators at home, but admired them much when they were abroad. He admired Garibaldi; he did not admire John Bright. He attacked Bright fiercely in his magnificent poem, 'Maud'--attacked him in a manner which left not the remotest doubt as to the identity of the person he denounced. It was on a question of war and peace. Bright was for peace; Tennyson's voice was still for war. Bright retaliated in a sentence or two of surpassing power in a speech delivered on the platform of the famous FreeTrade Hall in Manchester. He likened Tennyson to one of the false prophets in the Scripture whose tongues were said to be 'glibbed with lies,' and contrasted him with Longfellow, whose song always pleaded for peace and freedom.

"I think we must allow that, taking into account form, rhythm, melody and all else, Tennyson was the greatest English poet of our time. My own sympathies, intellectual and personal, went rather with Browning. James Russell Lowell said.

113

to me in his Cambridge home, many years ago, that he thought Browning had started with the larger outfit, but did not know how to arrange his stock to the best advantage."

About Browning, Mr. McCarthy has a number of things to tell which show the poet's great simplicity and generosity of heart. The writer says: "I knew Browning well, and loved, as all did who knew him. He had none of the affectations of the proclaimed poet, the professional child of genius.' He was a delightful companion who never gave himself airs, a charming talker, with no appearance of taking down his audience. He was very social; one met him everywhere. People who did not like him said that he only cared for the company of great dukes and duchesses and countesses and so on. I can only say that I have met Browing scores of times at the houses of quiet literary men who had hardly then risen out of obscurity. I fancy that if Browning liked people, he liked them whether they were dukes and marchionesses or obscure young poets and poetesses just in the bud.

"He seemed to be on the outlook to do kind, encouraging things for young writers in whom he saw any merit. I have known many instances of his going out of his way to send kindly messages to young writers whom he had never seen, bidding them to be of good cheer, and telling them, that he was convinced there was sound stuff in them, and that they had only to take his word for it and to persevere. One must have been a young and obscure writer to appreciate the value of a stimulus like that."

Mr. McCarthy has more to say of George Eliot than of any other writer, and contributes not a little to our knowledge of her personal home life. He says:

"I went occasionally to her Sunday afternoon gatherings at The Priory, in the Regent's Park. Herbert Spencer was a frequent visitor there, and Professor Huxley and Professor Tyndall and many other men, mostly scientific. There is a legend that George Eliot never liked to talk about her novels. I can only say that she started the subject with me subject with me one day. It was, to be sure, about a picture some painter had sent her, representing a scene in 'Silas Marner,' and she called my attention to it, and said that, of all her novels, 'Silas Marner' was her favorite. I ventured to disagree with her, and to say that The Mill on the Floss' was my favorite. She entered into the discussion quite genially, just as if she were talking about the works of some stranger, which I think is the very perfection of the manner authors ought to adopt in talking about their books.

"I was at her house one day when she was in a perfectly childlike delight over a box of biscuits she had received from some unknown admirer in Boston. She was proud of the gift, and I was honored with a specimen biscuit. It was, so far as I could see or taste, the ordinary brown biscuit of Boston, but to her it meant ever so much more. was a tribute of sympathy-of admiration -from a country where she had never been and where she knew that she was appreciated. . . .

It

"George Eliot seemed at first, to people who did not know her, to be affected in manner. She had a languid, monotone voice, and spoke usually in a minor key. There was a sentimental tone

about her that made newcomers fancy she was purposely going in for languorous ways; but one very soon found out that it was quite her natural way of talking. She was free from affectation of languor or of anything else. She was an admir

able hostess. She did not talk much herself, but she talked enough to keep the conversation going. If any pause occurred, she easily and naturally filled it up, and quietly started something new. She always kept the conversation general, and at all events did her best to prevent it from degenerating into little back waters of talk."

Of still another writer Mr. McCarthy speaks. It requires a rather violent effort of imagination to conceive of the author of "The Buried" and "Balder Dead" familiarly addressed as 'Matt,' but we learn from Mr. McCarthy that this was his designation in the flesh, as shown in the following skit:

"Matthew Arnold I met very often in his later years. I met him first at the hospitable home of the late Dean Stanley, under the shadow of Westminster Abbey. I had written a chapter of literary history in which I had described Matthew Arnold as a 'miniature Goethe.' I thought then and I still think, that no higher praise could be given to a man of our time. I am sure Arnold, if he had ever read it perfectly understood my criticism in that sense. But dear Dean Stanley was a humorist who loved his good natured joke, and presented me to Matthew Arnold in a very unceremonious fashion:

'Look here, Matt, here is the man who says you are nothing but a miniature Goethe!

'If I were only anything like that!' Arnold answered, with his sweet smile.

*

THE HONORARIUM--OLD-TIME LITERARY WAGES.

Little is known of the remuneration of authors until the days of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Before this time literary men, as a rule, depended on the generosity of patrons for their means of support, and as an acknowledgment of their obligations, dedicated their works to them. The dedications were frequently made in most fulsome terms. The position of the writer was certainly a very mean one; when he had exhausted his possibilities of patronage he starved. It was Johnson-the giant in the world of letters-who broke through the objectionable custom and taught the author to look to the reading public for support. in one of his manuscripts, says that "Hamlet" was sold for £5. It appears from a publication of Robert Greene in 1592 the price of a drama was about £6 13s. 4d. Small must have been the literary pay of Spenser, Butler and Otway, for they feared to die for want of the simple necessaries of life. Milton sold "Paradise Lost" for £5 down, to be followed by £15 if a second and third large editions were required. The first edition consisted of 1,500 copies, and in two years 1,300 were sold. Gray received only £40 for the whole

Oldys,

of his poems. He presented the copyright of his famous "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" to Dodsley, feeling that it was beneath the dignity of a gentleman to make money with his pen. The lucky publisher agreed with him, and cleared £1,000 by the publication. Pope's translation of Homer yielded about £8,000. He was assisted in the work by William Broome, a scholar, who was the author of a volume in verse. Henley thus refers to the circumstance:

Pope off came with Homer; but they say, Broome went before and kindly swept the way. Gay made £1000 by his poems. He was paid £400 for the "Beggar's Opera," and for the second part, "Polly," £1,000. Rich, the theatrical manager, profited to a greater extent from the "Beggar's Opera" than Gay. The jest was that it made Gay rich and Rich Gay.

Dr. Johnson sold the copyright of Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield" for £60, and he thought that amount fairly represented the value of the work. The book publisher found in the book a gold mine. Goldsmith was paid £21 for "The Traveler." To cover the cost of his mother's funeral, Johnson wrote "Rasselas," and disposed of it for 100. He sold his "Lives of the Poets" for 200 guineas. The sum of £700 was paid to Fielding for "Tom Jones," and for "Amelia" £1,000. Very large amounts have been given for biographical works. Hayley received for his "Life of Cowper" 1,000, and Southey £1,000 for his life. of the same poet. The life of William Wilberforce was sold for £4,000, Bishop Heber's Journals for £5,000, General Gordon's Diary for £5,250, and the Life of Hannah More, for £2,000.

The income of Scott was perhaps the largest ever made by authorship, yet he said that the pursuit of literature was a good walking stick, but a bad crutch. His reputation was first made as a poet, and the following are particulars of his poetical profits: "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." published in 1805, £796 6s.; "Ballads and Lyrical Pieces," published in 1803, 100; "Marmion," published in 1808-for this Messrs. Constable offered 1,000 guineas soon after the poem was begun. It proved a very profitable speculation to its publishers. During the first month after its appearance 2,000 copies were sold, the price being 31s. 6d. the quarto volume. Next came "The Lady of the Lake" (1810), £2,100. This found greater favor with the public than its predecessors, and with it Scott's poetical fame reached its zenith. A new poet appeared on the scene; it was Byron, and he completely eclipsed Scott. Scott tried, with two more poems, to win back his lost place as the popular poet of the period, and produced "Rokeby" and "The Bridal of Triermain;" the latter was issued anonymously, but both were failures. When Scott saw that his

poetry did not attract many readers, he turned his thoughts and energy into another channel, and commenced his immortal novels. He had by him an unfinished story, the work of former years, and he completed it, giving it to the world under the title of Waverly. Constable offered £700 for the copyright-an amount deemed very large in those days for a novel to be published without the name of the author. Seven hundred sovereigns did not, however, satisfy Scott. He simply said: "It is too much if the work should prove a failure, and too little if it should be a success." It was a brilliant book, and entranced the reading world. Scott had now found his real vocation. He received for eleven novels of three volumes each, and nine volumes of Tales of My Landlord, the sum of £110,000. For one novel he was paid £10,000. Between November, 1825, and June, 1827, he earned £26,000, an amount representing £52 6s. 3d. per working day. From first to last Sir Walter Scott made by his literary labors about £300,000.

Without seeing a line of Thomas Moore's "Lalla Rookh," the Messrs. Longmans undertook to pay £3,000 for it. This poem, of some 6,000 lines, was written in a lonely cottage in Derbyshire. Moore never tired of telling his friends that the stormy winter weather in the country helped him to imagine, by contrast, the bright and everlasting summers and glowing scenery of the East. The work was a great success. The first edition was sold in almost fourteen days, and within six months six editions had been called for. Thos. Campbell received, at the age of 21 years, £600 for his "Pleasures of Hope," a small amount for a fine poem, yet it gave him a name. Very large sums have been paid for historical works. Hume received £700 per volume; and Smollet, for a catchpenny rival work, cleared £2,000. The money made by Henry is set down at £3,300 The booksellers say Leslie Stephen made £6,000 out of Robertson's History of Scotland. paid for his Charles V. the handsome sum of £4,500. The author's profits for the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Gibbon, are put down at £10,000.

He was

The foregoing are respectable figures, but they appear small compared witth the amounts paid to Lord Macaulay. On one occasion he had handed to him a check of £20,000, on account of threefourths of the net profits of his History of England. According to a careful estimate, Charles Dickens received 10,000 a year from his works for five years, and died worth nearly 100,000. He made every penny from his writings and readings. Thackeray did not make large sums. with his books, when we consider his undoubted genius and the high place he holds among the greatest authors. It is said that he never made more than £5,000 out of any of his novels. He received large sums for his lectures.

SALE OF BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS.

The Messrs. Sotheby sold recently a part of the library of the late Mr. A. B. Hankley. The principal objects of interest were Mr. Rudyard Kipling's: "Echoes by Two Writers." Lahore, 1884, in the original wrapper, but defective, £17; "Soldiers Three," Allahabad, 1888, in original wrapper, £9 155.; "Schoolboy Lyrics," 1881, in the original light-brown wrapper, rare, £90-until the present season a copy of this booklet had not appeared in the auction room, and it was practically unknown; the first copy to occur contained a cover with a design by the author's father, and it sold for considerably over £100, the copy sold at this sale making the seventh which has changed hands during the present year; "The United Services College Chronicle," from No. 4, June 30, 1881, to Nov. 58, 1894, with thirty original. contributions from Mr. Kipling, who was co editor of "The Chronicle" from No. 4 to No. 10, inclusive, £101, and "Departmental Ditties," 1886, the rare first edition, £10 158. A valuable and important series of autograph letters addressed to Robert Lloyd, of which sixteen are written by Charles Lamb, covering twenty pages folio and twentythree pages quarto, and two letters from Thomas Manning, £160.

The R. L. Stevenson lots included three of the little Davos Platz booklets: "Not I, and Other Poems," four leaves, 1881, £18 10s.; "Moral Emblems," first series, six leaves, 11, and "Moral Emblems," second series, six leaves, £10 158. The following were also by the same author: "Father Damien," 1890, the rare edition privately printed at Sydney, £21 10s.; "The Story of a Lie," eighty pages, 1882, very rare in its separate issue, £30 10s., and "The Silverado Squatters," the edition privately printed to secure copyright, and of which, it is stated, only six copies were struck off, £20 10s. With Stevenson, as with Kipling, nearly all the principal rarities were bought by Americans. W. M. Thackeray, two pen and ink drawings on sheets of notepaper with the Garrick Club stamp, "Lady Louisa on the Balcony Awaiting the Arrival of the Muffin Man," and "A Muffin Man in White Kid Gloves," £20 5s., and a humorous drawing in water colors by the same, of two French women looking at an Egyptian obelisk, £18 5s. J. Palsgrave, "The Comedye of Acolastus," 1540, in black letter and the original calf, wants two signatures, £57; E. Hasted, "History of Kent," 1778-99, £20; an original water-color drawing on vellum by "Phiz" for the plate of "My Musical Breakfast" in "David Copperfield," 10 10s.; Hans Holbein, "Imitations of Original Drawings for the Portraits of Illustrious Persons of the Court of Henry VIII.,"1792, £15 10S.