CANADIAN COPYEIGHT. 9 



lislier's share in the issue, sale and profits of their works. But the statement is highly- 

 satisfactory as a clear definition of tlie aspect of the question from the trader's point of 

 view. "Sir Daniel," says Mr. Lmcefield, "intimates that a book is the production of the 

 author, and is only produced after the expenditure of much time, money and labour." 

 But he adds, " perhaps it would be better to say that these remarks apply rather to the 

 manuscript than to the book itself" ; for, in his estimation, " the publisher with his wide 

 and varied connection and ready facilities for handling is frequently equally as important 

 a factor as the author, and occasionally even more so." 



We are all tolerably familiar with a class of books, urged on our attention with 

 pertinacious insistency by the itinerant book hawker, to which the latter statement will 

 very aptly apply. Books made, not to read, but only to sell ; books that no student would, 

 on any terms, admit on his library shelves, and which do for the most part owe their 

 main attractions to the experience of the publisher in catering for vulgar taste or personal 

 vanity, with the help of meretricious illustrations, showy binding, and a taking title. On 

 the other hand, the author is not unappreciative of his publisher's share in the work. 

 Publishers are not infallible, even in estimating the trading value of literary workman- 

 ship, as many a well-known incident in the history of letters shows. Nevertheless full 

 justice is done to the st'rvices rendered l>y the great publishing houses to English litera- 

 ture, and the liberality that has chara terized the transai tions between many of the most 

 eminent writers, and the l^-ading members of the guild wont of old to b^ known, from 

 their chief haunt under the sha Jow of St. Faul's, as "The Row." But when we are 

 gravely told that, in the production of literary woiks, the publisher's share not only 

 equals, but at times exceeds that of the author, the temptation is great to recall the story 

 of the dispute bi-tween the organist and his bellows-blower, and the triumphant establish- 

 ment of the hitter's claims to an equal share in the production of the music, by his taking 

 a favourable opportunity to stop the bellows and withhold the needful supply of wind. 



No doubt authors sometimes appropriate what is not their own, and frequently turn 

 to their own accoxrnt materials to which they have no exclusive right. They are, in a 

 sense, manufacturers of raw material ; at times transmuting the unwronght ore and the 

 baser materials into gold. We give printers and publishers full right to whatever use 

 they can make of the same material. The crude myths and prosaic chronicles which 

 Shakespeare turned to account in his "King Lear" and "Macbeth," his " King Juhn," 

 " Richard II.," and " Henry IV." are accessible to all. Homer is no less available as a 

 model now than when Milton earned jElO for the MS. of his "Paradise Lost," and the 

 ballads and traditions woven by Scott into his later romances, or the Arthurian legends 

 out of which Spenser gleaned for his " Faerie Queen," and from which Tennyson has 

 fashioned his " Idylls," are still as much as ever at the service of every " factor" in the 

 book-making trade whether he work with pen or type. No doubt the Spensers, Shakes- 

 peares, Miltons, au'l other stars of the first magnitude are rare in the literary firmament. 

 But the expropriators of the works of British authors for behoof of printers and publishers 

 in utter disregard of the workman's claims, have dealt with the creations of S -ott and 

 Byron, of Wordsworth, Shelly, Dickens and Thackeray ; ofMacaulay, Ru^skin, De Quincy, 

 and Carlyle, as freely and unscrupulously as with the marketable products of the meanest 

 literary hack. Since " The Declaration of Independence " freed the citizens of the United 

 States from all legal restraints in the appropriation of any literary production, they have 



Sec. II., 1S92. 2. 



