REVIEWS AMERICAN REPRINTS. 145 



" "We, the liberal and enterprising publishers of the Great American 

 " Nation, being able to offer sucb to our enlightened citizens as one 

 " of the fruits of our glorious Eevolution, whereby, after all its other 

 " triumphs, we have the delectable privilege of stealing the brains 

 " and picking the pockets of starving authors. N.B. — The Felicia 

 " Hemans's, Charlotte Bronte's, Margaret Oliphant's, Mary Somer- 

 "ville's, and other popular authoresses, being Britishers and aliens, 

 " we have the pleasure of informing our customers that the privileges 

 " and courtesies of womanhood do not apply to them on our side of 

 " the Atlantic ; and so we have the gratification of offering you the 

 " fruits of all their toil, also, without your having to pay a single 

 " cent for anybody's labour or profit but our own. It beats the De- 

 " ciaration of Eights hollow ; for if you do appropriate the ivorJcs of 

 " one of your colored authors of plantation cotton and sugar cane, 

 " you cannot let him starve, as may be done with those alien geniuses 

 " of ours !" 



Tet let us not blame too severely the American Publisher, for what 

 is the sin of the nation. Some of these publishers have given cred- 

 itable evidence of their desire to acquire by honorable means their 

 right to the works of British Authors ; and among such none have 

 been more liberal than Messrs. Ticknor & Fields, of Boston. Robert 

 Browning thus writes to them, from Paris, in 1855 : 



" I take advantage of the opportunity of the publication in the United States 

 of my ' Men and Women,' for printing which you have liberally remunerated me, 

 to express my earnest desire that the power of publishing in America this and 

 every subsequent work of mine may rest exclusively with your House." 



Again the authoress of " Aurora Leigh " writes from London, at 

 the date of its completion : 



"Having received what I consider to be sufficient remuneration from Mr. 

 Francis, of New York, it is my earnest desire that his right in this and future 

 editions of the same, may not be interfered with." 



Again, Mr. De Quincey thus writes to Messrs. Ticknor, Reed, and 

 Fields, transferring to them certain new papers for their collected 

 edition of his writings : 



" These I am anxious to put into the hands of your house, and, so far as regards 

 the TJ. S. of your house exclusively ; not with any view; to further emolument, 

 but as an acknowledgement of the services which you have already rendered me, 

 in having made me a participator in the pecuniary profits of 'the 

 American edition, without soUcitation or the shadow of any expectation on my 

 part, without any legal claim that T could plead, or equitable warrant in estabUsh- 



ed usage They are now tendered to the appropriation of your 



VOL. III. K 



