a cage ; while the author confines them in his own dominion, none but he has a right to let them fly; but the moment he allows the bird to escape from his hand, it is no violation of property in any one to make it his own. And to prove that there existed no property after publication, they found an analogy in the gathering of acorns, or in seizing on a vacant piece of ground; and thus degrading that most refined piece of art formed in the highest state of society, a literary production, they brought us back to a state of nature; and seem to have concluded that literary property was purely ideal; | a phantom which as its author could neither grasp nor confine to himself, he must entirely depend on the public benevolence for his reward.* The Ideas, that is, the work of an author, are "tangible things." "There are works," to quote the words of a near and dear relative," which require great learning, great industry, great labour, and great capital, in their preparation. They assume a palpable form. You may fill warehouses with them, and freight ships; and the tenure by which they are held is superior to that of all other property, for it is original. It is tenure which does not exist in a doubtful title; which does not spring from any adventitious circumstances ;-it is not found-it is not purchased-it is not prescriptive-it is original; so it is the most natural of all titles, oecause it is the most simple and least artificial. It is paramount and sovereign, because it is a tenure by creation t." kept the monopoly of books and copies in their hands, to the entire exclusion of all others; but more especially the printers, whom they have always held it a rule never to let become purchasers in copy." Not a word for the authors! As for them, they were doomed by both parties as the fat oblation: they indeed sent forth some meek bleatings; but what were AUTHORS, between judges, booksellers, and printers? the sacrificed among the sacrificers! All this was reasoning in a circle. LITERARY PROPERTY in our nation arose from a new state of society. These lawyers could never develop its nature by wild analogies, nor discover it in any common-law right; for our common law, composed of immemorial customs, could never have had in its contemplation an object which could not have existed in barbarous periods. Literature, in its enlarged spirit, certainly never entered into the thoughts or attention of our rude ancestors. All their views were bounded by the necessaries of life; and as yet they had no conception of the impalpable, invisible, yet sovereign dominion of the human mind-enough for our rough heroes was that of the seas! Before the reign of Henry VIII. great authors composed occasionally a book in Latin, which none but other great authors cared for, and which the people could not read. In the reign of Elizabeth, ROGER ASCHAM appeared; one of those men of genius born to create a new era in the history of their nation. The first English author who may be regarded as the founder of our prose style was Roger Ascham, the venerable parent of our native literature. At a There were indeed some more generous spirits and better philosophers fortunately found on the same bench; and the identity of a literary composition was resolved into its sentiments and lan-time when our scholars affected to contemn the guage, besides what was more obviously valuable to some persons, the print and paper. On this slight principle was issued the profound award which accorded a certain term of years to any work, however immortal. They could not diminish the immortality of a book, but only its reward. In all the litigations respecting literary property, authors were little considered-except some honourable testimonies due to genius, from the sense of WILLES, and the eloquence of MANSFIELD. Literary property was still disputed, like the rights of a parish common. An honest printer, who could not always write grammar, had the shrewd ness to make a bold effort in this scramble, and perceiving that even by this last favourable award all literary property would necessarily centre with the booksellers, now stood forward for his own body, the printers. This rough advocate observed, that "a few persons, who call themselves booksellers, about the number of twenty-five, have * Sir James Burrows' Reports on the question concerning Literary Property, 4to. London, 1773. + Mirror of Parliament, 3529. vernacular idiom, and in their Latin works were losing their better fame, that of being understood by all their countrymen, Ascham boldly avowed the design of setting an example, in his own words, TO SPEAK AS THE COMMON PEOPLE, TO THINK As WISE MEN. His pristine English is still forcible without pedantry, and still beautiful without ornament. The illustrious BACON condescended to follow this new example, in the most popular of his works. This change in our literature was like a revelation; these men taught us our language in books. We became a reading people; and then the demand for books naturally produced a new order of authors, who traded in literature. It was then, so early as in the Elizabethan age, that literary property may be said to derive its obscure origin in this nation. It was protected in an indirect manner by the licensers of the press; for although that was a mere political institution, only designed to prevent seditious and irreligious publications, yet, as no book could be printed without a licence, there was honour enough in the licensers not to allow other publishers to infringe on the privilege granted to the first claimant. In Queen Anne's time, when the office of licensers was extinguished, a more liberal genius was rising in the nation, and literary property received a more definite and a more powerful protection. A limited term was granted to every author to reap the fruits of his labours; and Lord Hardwicke pronounced this statute "a universal patent for authors." Yet subsequently, the subject of literary property involved discussion; even at so late a period as in 1769, it was still to be litigated. It was then granted that originally an author had at common law a property in his work, but that the act of Anne took away all copyright after the expiration of the terms it permitted. As the matter now stands, let us address an arithmetical age-but my pen hesitates to bring down my subject to an argument fitted to "these coster-monger times." On the present principle of literary property, it results that an author disposes of a leasehold property of twenty-eight years, often for less than the price of one year's purchase! How many living authors are the sad witnesses of this fact, who, like so many Esaus, have sold their inheritance for a meal! I leave the whole school of Adam Smith to calm their calculating emotions concerning" that unprosperous race of men (sometimes this master-seer calls them " unproductive") "commonly called men of letters" who are pretty much in the situation which lawyers and physicians would be in, were these, as he tells us, in that state when "a scholar and a beggar seem to have been very nearly synonymous terms" -and this melancholy fact that man of genius discovered, without the feather of his pen brushing away a tear from his lid-without one spontaneous and indignant groan! Authors may exclaim, "we ask for justice, not charity." They would not need to require any favour, nor claim any other than that protection which an enlightened government, in its wisdom and its justice, must bestow. They would leave to the public disposition the sole appreciation of their works; their book must make its own fortune; a bad work may be cried up, and a good work may be cried down; but Faction will soon lose its voice, and Truth acquire one. The cause we are pleading is not the calamities of indifferent writers; but of those whose utility, or whose genius, long survives that limited term which has been so hardly wrenched from the penurious hand of verbal lawyers. Every lover of literature, and * A Coster-monger, or Costard-monger, is a dealer in apples, which are so called because they are shaped like a costard, i. e. a man's head. Steevens-Johnson explains the phrase eloquently: "In these times when the prevalence of trade has produced that meanness, that rates the merit of everything by money." every votary of humanity, has long felt indignant at that sordid state and all those secret sorrows to which men of the finest genius, or of sublime industry, are reduced and degraded in society. Johnson himself, who rejected that perpetuity of literary property, which some enthusiasts seemed to claim at the time the subject was undergoing the discussion of the judges, is however for extending the copyright to a century. Could authors secure this their natural right, literature would acquire a permanent and a nobler reward; for great authors would then be distinguished by the very profits they would receive, from that obscure multitude, whose common disgraces they frequently participate, notwithstanding the superiority of their own genius. Johnson himself will serve as a proof of the incompetent remuneration of literary property. He undertook and he performed an Herculean labour, which employed him so many years that the price he obtained was exhausted before the work was concluded :-the wages did not even last as long as the labour! Where then is the author to look forward, when such works are undertaken, for a provision for his family, or for his future existence? It would naturally arise from the work itself, were authors not the most ill-treated and oppressed class of the community. The daughter of MILTON need not have craved the alms of the admirers of her father, if the right of authors had been better protected; his own Paradise Lost had then been her better portion, and her most honourable inheritance. The children of BURNS would have required no subscriptions; that annual tribute which the public pay to the genius of their parent was their due, and would have been their fortune. Authors now submit to have a shorter life than their own celebrity. While the book markets of Europe are supplied with the writings of English authors, and they have a wider diffusion in America than at home, it seems a national ingratitude to limit the existence of works for their authors to a short number of years, and then to seize on their possession for ever. Hence we trace a literary calamity which the public endure in those "Authors by Profession," who, finding often too late in life that it is the worst profession, are not scrupulous to live by some means or other. "I must live," cried one of the brotherhood, shrugging his shoulders in his misery, and almost blushing for a libel he had just printed-"I do not see the necessity," was the dignified reply. Trade was certainly not the origin of authorship. Most of our great authors have written from a more impetuous impulse than that of a mechanic; urged by a loftier motive than that of humouring the popular taste, they have not lowered themselves by writing down to the public, but have raised the public to them. Untasked, they composed at propitious intervals; and feeling, not labour, was in their last, as in their first page. When we became a reading people, books were to be suited to popular tastes, and then that trade was opened that leads to the workhouse. A new race sprang up, that, like Ascham, " spoke as the common people;" but would not, like Ascham, "think as wise men." The founders of "Authors by Profession" appear as far back as in the Elizabethan age. Then there were some roguish wits, who taking advantage of the public humour, and yielding their principle to their pen, lived to write, and wrote to live; loose livers and loose writers !-like Autolycus, they ran to the fair, with baskets of hasty manufactures, fit for clowns and maidens.* "a tedious mountebank." The booksellers forged great names to recommend their works, and passed off in currency their base metal stamped with a royal head. "It was an usual thing in those days," says honest Anthony Wood, "to set a great name to a book or books, by the sharking booksellers or snivelling writers, to get bread." Such authors as these are unfortunate, before they are criminal; they often tire out their youth before they discover that "Author by Profession" is a denomination ridiculously assumed, for it is none! The first efforts of men of genius are usually honourable ones; but too often they suffer that genius to be debased. Many who would have composed history have turned voluminous party-writers; many a noble satirist has become a hungry libeller. Men who are starved in society, hold to it but loosely. They are the children of Nemesis! they avenge themselves— and with the Satan of MILTON they exclaim, "Evil, be thou my good!" Never were their feelings more vehemently echoed than by this Nash-the creature of genius, of famine, ana despair. He lived indeed in the age of Elizabeth, but writes as if he had lived in our own. He proclaimed himself to the world as Pierce Pennilesse, and on a retrospect of his literary life, observes that he had "sat up late and rose early, contended with the cold, and conversed with scarcitie;" he says, "all my labours Even then flourished the craft of authorship, and turned to losse,-I was despised and neglected, the mysteries of book-selling. Robert GREENE, my paines not regarded, or slightly rewarded, and the master-wit, wrote "The Art of Coney-catch- I myself; in prime of my best wit, laid open to ing," or Cheatery, in which he was an adept; he povertie. Whereupon I accused my fortune, railed died of a surfeit of rhenish and pickled herrings, on my patrons, bit my pen, rent my papers, and at a fatal banquet of authors;-and left as his raged."-And then comes the after-reflection, legacy among the Authors by Profession' "A which so frequently provokes the anger of genius : groatsworth of wit, bought with a million of" How many base men that wanted those parts I repentance." One died of another kind of surfeit. had, enjoyed content at will, and had wealth at Another was assassinated in a brothel. But the command! I called to mind a cobbler that was list of the calamities of all these worthies have worth five hundred pounds; an hostler that had as great variety as those of the Seven Champions. built a goodly inn; a carman in a leather pilche Nor were the stationers, or book-venders, as the that had whipt a thousand pound out of his horses publishers of books were first designated, at a tail-and have I more than these? thought I to fault in the mysteries of " coney-catching.' myself; am I better born? am I better brought Deceptive and vaunting title-pages were practised up? yea, and better favoured! and yet am I a to such excess, that TOM NASH, an "Author beggar? How am I crost, or whence is this curse? by Profession," never fastidiously modest, blushed | Even from hence, the men that should. employ at the title of his Pierce Pennilesse," which the such as I am, are enamoured of their own wits, publisher had flourished in the first edition, like though they be never so scurvie; that a scrivener is better paid than a scholar; and men of art must seek to live among cormorants, or be kept under by dunces, who count it policy to keep them bare to follow their books the better." And then, Nash thus utters the cries of up * An abundance of these amusing tracts eagerly bought in their day, but which came in the following generation to the ballad-stalls, are in the present enshrined in the cabinets of the curious. Such are the revolutions of literature! A DESPAIRING AUTHOR ! "Why is't damnation to despair and die When life is my true happiness' disease? The faulty means that might my pain appease; Ah worthless wit, to train me to this woe! And ban the air wherein I breathe a wretch! 'Mongst them that will be moved when I shall groan! England, adieu! the soil that brought me forth! Adieu, unkinde! where skill is nothing worth!" Such was the miserable cry of an "Author by Profession" in the reign of Elizabeth. Nash not only renounces his country in his despair-and hesitates on "the faulty means" which have appeased the pangs of many of his unhappy brothers, but he proves also the weakness of the moral principle among these men of genius; for he promises, if any Mæcenas will bind him by his bounty, he will do him "as much honour as any poet of my beardless years in England-but," he adds, "if he be sent away with a flea in his ear, let him look that I will rail on him soundly; not for an hour or a day, while the injury is fresh in my memory, but in some elaborate polished poem, which I will leave to the world when I am dead, to be a living image to times to come of his beggarly parsimony." Poets might imagine that CHATTERTON had written all this, about the time he struck a balance of his profit and loss by the death of Beckford the Lord Mayor, in which he concludes with "am glad he is dead by 31. 13s. 6d. *** A MENDICANT AUTHOR, AND THE PATRONS OF FORMER TIMES. Ir must be confessed, that before "Authors by Profession" had fallen into the hands of the booksellers, they endured peculiar grievances. They were pitiable retainers of some great family. The miseries of such an author, and the insolence and penuriousness of his patrons, who would not return the poetry they liked and would not pay for, may be traced in the eventful life of THOMAS CHURCHYARD, a poet of the age of Elizabeth, one of those unfortunate men who have written poetry all their days, and lived a long life, to complete the misfortune. His muse was so fertile, that his works pass all enumeration. He courted numerous patrons, who valued the poetry, while they left the poet to his own miserable contemplations. In a long catalogue of his works, which this poet has himself given, he adds a few memoranda, as he proceeds, a little ludicrous, but very melancholy. He wrote a book which he could never afterwards recover from one of his patrons, and adds, “all which book was in as good verse as ever I made; an honourable knight dwelling in the Black Friers can witness the same, because I read it unto him." Another accorded him the same remuneration-on which he adds, " An infinite number of other songs and sonnets given where they cannot be recovered, nor purchase any favour when they are craved." Still, however, he announces "twelve long tales for Christmas, dedicated to twelve honourable Lords." Well might Churchyard write his own sad life, under the title of "The tragicall Discourse of the haplesse Man's Life." It will not be easy to parallel this pathetic description of the wretched age of a poor neglected poet mourning over a youth vainly spent. • High time it is to haste my carcase hence: I look in glass, and find my cheeks so lean Well, ere my breath my body do forsake My books, my scrawls, and songs that I did make, Now, friends, shake hands, I must be gone, my boys! Yet Churchyard was no contemptible bard; he composed a national poem, "The Worthiness of Wales," which has been reprinted, and will be still dear to his "Father-land," as the Hollanders expressively denote their natal spot. He wrote, in "The Mirrour of Magistrates," the life of Wolsey, which has parts of great dignity; and the life of Jane Shore, which was much noticed in his day, for a severe critic of the times writes: "Hath not Shore's wife, although a light-skirt she, Given him a chaste, long, lasting memorie?" Churchyard and the miseries of his poetical life are alluded to by Spenser. He is old Palemon in "Colin Clout's come home again." Spenser is supposed to describe this laborious writer for half a century, whose melancholy pipe, in his old age, may make the reader "rew :" "Yet he himself may rewed be more right, That sung so long untill quite hoarse he grew." His epitaph, preserved by Camden, is extremely instructive to all poets, could epitaphs instruct them : "Poverty and poetry his tomb doth inclose; of mendicity, and lived on alms, although their lives and their fortunes had been consumed in forming national labours. The antiquary STOWE exhibits a striking example of the rewards conferred on such valued authors. Stowe had devoted his life, and exhausted his patrimony, in the study of English antiquities; he had travelled on foot throughout the kingdom, inspecting all monuments of antiquity, and rescuing what he could from the dispersed libraries of the monasteries. His stupendous collections, in his own hand-writing, still exist, to provoke the feeble industry of literary loiterers. He felt through life the enthusiasm of study; and seated in his monkish library, living with the dead more than with the living, he was still a student of taste: for Spenser the poet visited the library of Stowe; and the first good edition of Chaucer was made so chiefly by the labours of our author. Late in life, worn out with study and the cares of poverty, neglected by that proud metropolis of which he had been the historian, his good-humour did not desert him; for being afflicted with sharp pains in his aged feet, he observed that "his affliction lay in that part which formerly he had made so much use of." Many a mile had he wandered and much had he expended, for those treasures of antiquities which had exhausted his fortune, and with which he had formed works of great public utility. It was in his eightieth year that Stowe at length received a public acknowledgment of his services, which will appear to us of a very extraordinary nature. He was so reduced in his circumstances that he petitioned James I. for a licence to collect alms for himself! "as a recompense for his labour and travel of forty-five years, in setting forth the Chronicles of England, and eight years taken up in the Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster, towards his relief now in his old age; having left his former means of living, and only employing himself for the service and good of his country." Letters patent under the great seal were granted. After no penurious commendation of Stowe's labours, he is permitted "to gather the benevolence of well-disposed people within this realm of England: to ask, gather, and take the alms of all our loving subjects." These letters-patent were to be published by the clergy from their pulpit; they produced so little that they were renewed for another twelvemonth: one entire parish in the city contributed seven shillings and sixpence ! Such then was the patronage received by Stowe, to be a licensed beggar throughEven at a later period, in the reign of the lite-out the kingdom for one twelvemonth! Such was rary James, great authors were reduced to a state *Villanellas, or rather " Villanescas, are properly country rustic songs, but commonly taken for ingenious ones made in imitation of them."-PINEDA. Wherefore, good neighbours, be merry in prose." It appears also by a confession of Tom Nash, that an author would then, pressed by the res angusta domi, when "the bottom of his purse was turned upward," submit to compose pieces for gentlemen who aspired to authorship. He tells us on some occasion, that he was then in the country composing poetry for some country squire; --and says, "I am faine to let my plow stand still in the midst of a furrow, to follow these Senior Fantasticos, to whose amorous villanellas* I prostitute my pen," and this, too, "twice or thrice in a month;" and he complains that it is "poverty which alone maketh me so unconstant to my determined studies, trudging from place to place to and fro, and prosecuting the means to keep me from idlenesse." An author was then much like a vagrant. the public remuneration of a man who had been useful to his nation, but not to himself! Such was the first age of Patronage, which branched out in the last century into an age of |