CANADIAN COPYEIGHT. 15 



sable than the letter press to the full expression of their ideas. The piratical publi^sher, 

 in his aim at a cheap popular reissue, often inflicts a grievous injustice on this class. To 

 no author is the external aspect of his work a matter of indifference. Long years ago 

 Messrs. Macmillan issued " The Five Gateways of Knowledge," the work of my late 

 brother, Dr. George "Wilson — a prose poem of suggestive thought and graceful play of 

 fancy — in a dainty little volume, with a beautiful frontispiece of kindred idealism from 

 the pencil of Sir Noel Paton. I have an American reprint of it on poor paper, in bad 

 type, and coarse boards. I cannot imagine any royalty accruing from the disfigured, 

 dingy reprint that would have compensated for the wrong. Yet we constantly see the 

 reissue of popular English authors in small type, double columned editions, and paper 

 covers, fit only to be glanced over, dog-eared, and thrown aside. His Canadian critic is 

 shocked at the stupidity of the British author who will not be tempted by a 10 per cent 

 royalty on the product, to " help Canadian publishing industries" by becoming a party 

 to such an issue of his works. "Well, if they are his, he has aright to say whether or not 

 they shall be published on such conditions. 



Agaiu an author — scientific investigator, philosophical speculator, political or theolo- 

 gical controversialist — may have modified or wholly renounced his earlier views like the 

 poet, Southey, who, at the outbreak of the French Revolution, in a fit of youthful enthu- 

 siasm, wrote his " Mat Tyler," an extravagant exposition of anarchical republicanism. Long 

 after he had sobered down into the orthodox champion of high-church toryism, the for- 

 gotten MS. fell into the hands of an unscrupulous opponent, and was published to the 

 world, in purposed contempt of the author's supposed wishes. The poet disarmed 

 criticism by the manly retort that he w^as no more ashamed of having been a republican, 

 than of having been a boy ! Nevertheless, an author may justly complain of the legalized 

 sanctioning of such a procedure, as a mere source of gain to some mercenary publisher. 

 Like "Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the rest of the pantisocratic enthusiasts of Bristol, he 

 may have wholly abjured the opinions of his youth, or like Newman, have exchanged 

 evangelical Protestantism for the Roman faith, and a Cardinal's hat. If he is sufficiently 

 noteworthy the transformation will be chronicled in due time ; but he surely has a right 

 to withhold long repudiated opinions from publication under his name. 



I venture then to offer the following propositions, though I can scarcely hope that 

 they will meet with the unqualified approval of the '' publishing industries " : — 



1. An author should have a right to say whether his book shall be printed or not. 



2. An author should have some control over its form of issue, and a right, if he 

 thinks fit, to object to shabby paper, doubled-columned small type, ^^ellow paper cover, 

 etc. 



3. Still more, an author should have a right to prohibit absolutely the stereotyping 

 and perpetuation of a first or other early edition, long after he has modified or materially 

 altered his work in subsequent editions. This is a grievance keenly felt by the author, 

 who finds himself cjuoted as maintaining views he has long repudiated. But while 

 the printer can make use of his name to sell the obsolete version — which it will ever be 

 the interest of the printer and publisher to do — he has no redress. 



Here the reader's and the author's interests coincide, and are in direct antagonism to 

 those of the publisher. The school books of Canada continued for years to ignore the 

 great astronomical discovery of Neptune, and in other ways to lag behind the age, just 



