that while it is easy (after, say, three years in a pleader's chambers) to draw an indictment against a man for stealing paper, it is not easy to do so if he has only stolen the ideas and used his own paper. There are some quibbling observations in the second book of Justinian's Institutes, and a few remarks of Lord Coke's, which might lead the thoughtless to suppose that in their protection of an author's manuscripts the courts were thinking more of the paper than of the words put upon it; but that this is not so clearly appears from our law as it is administered in the Bankruptcy Division of the High Court.

Suppose a popular novelist were to become a bankrupt—a supposition which, owing to the immense sums these gentlemen are now known to make, is robbed of all painfulness by its impossibility-and his effects were found to consist of the three following items: first, his wearing apparel; second, a copy of Whitaker's Almanac for the current year; and third, the manuscript of a complete and hitherto unpublished novel, worth in the Row, let us say, one thousand pounds. These are the days of cash payments, so we must not state the author's debts at more than fifteen hundred pounds. It would have been difficult for him to owe more without incurring the charge of imprudence. Now, how will the law deal with the effects of this bankrupt? Ever averse to exposing any one to criminal proceedings, it will return to him his clothing, provided its cash value does not exceed twenty pounds, which, as authors have left off wearing bloom-colored garments, even as they have left off writing Vicars of Wakefield, it is not likely to do. This human rule disposes of item number one. As to Whitaker's Almanac, it would probably be found necessary to take the opinion of the court; since, if it be a tool of the author's trade, it will not vest in the official receiver and be divisible among the creditors, but, like the first item, will remain. the property of the bankrupt-but otherwise, if not such a tool. On a point like this the court would probably wish to hear the evidence of an expert-of some man like Mr. George Augustus Sala, who knows the literary life to the backbone.

This point disposed of, or standing over for argument, there remains the manuscript novel, which, as we have said, would, if sold in the Row, produce a sum, not only sufficient to pay the costs of the argument about the Almanac and of all parties properly appearing in the bankruptcy, but also, if judiciously handled, a small dividend to the creditors. But here our law steps in with its chivalrous, almost religious, respect for ideas, and declares that the manuscript shall not be taken from the bankrupt and published without his consent. In ordinary cases everything a bankrupt has, save the clothes for his back and the tools of his trade, is ruthlessly torn from him. Be it in possession, reversion, or remainder, it all goes. His incomes

for life, his reversionary hopes, are knocked down to the speculator. In vulgar phrase, he is "cleaned out." But the manuscripts of the bankrupt author, albeit they may be worth thousands, are not recognized as property; they are not yet dedicate to the public. The precious papers, despite all their writer's misfortunes, remain his— his to croon and to dream over, his to alter and retranscribe, his to withhold, ay, his to destroy if he should deem them, either in calm judgment or in a despairing hour, unhappy in their expression or unworthy of his name. There is something positively tender in this view. The Law may be an ass, but it is also a gentleman.

Of course, in my imaginary case, if the bankrupt were to withhold his consent to publication, his creditors, even though it were held that the Almanac was theirs, would get nothing. I can imagine them grumbling, and saying (what will not creditors say ?): "We fed this gentleman while he was writing this precious manuscript. Our joints sustained him, our bread filled him, our wine made him merry. Without our goods he must have perished. By all legal analogies we ought to have a lien upon that manuscript. We are wholly indifferent to the writer's reputation. It may be blasted for all we care. It was not as an author but as a customer that we supplied his very regular wants. It is now our turn to have wants. We want to be paid." These amusing, though familiar, cries of distress need not disturb our equanimity or interfere with our admiration for the sublime views as to the sanctity of unpublished ideas entertained by the Court of Bankruptcy.

We have thus found, so far as we have gone, the profoundest respect shown by the Law both for the dormant ideas and the manuscripts of the author. Let us now push boldly on, and inquire what happens when the author withdraws his interdict, takes the worid into his confidence, and publishes his book.

Our own Common Law was clear enough. Subject only to laws or customs about licensing and against profane books and the like, the right of publishing and selling any book belonged exclusively to the author and persons claiming through him. Book were as much the subjects of property-rights as lands in Kent or money in the bank. The term of enjoyment knew no period. Fine fantastic ideas about genius endowing the world and transcending the narrow bounds of property were not countenanced by our Common Laws. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress in the year 1680, belonged to Mr. Ponder; Paradise Lost in the year 1739 was the property of Mr. Jacob Tonson. Mr. Ponder and Mr. Tonson had acquired these works by purchase. Property rights of this description seem strange to us, even absurd. But that is one of the provoking ways of property-rights. Views vary. Perhaps this time next century it wil! seem as absurd that Ben Mac Dhui should ever

have been private property as it now does that in 1739 Mr. Tonson should have been the owner "of man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree." This is not said with any covered meaning, but is thrown out gloomily with the intention of contributing to the general depreciation of property.

If it be asked how came it about that authors and booksellers allowed themselves to be derived of valuable and well assured rights -to be in fact disinherited, without so much as an expostulatory ode or a single epigram-it must be answered, strange as it may sound, it happened accidentally and through tampering with the Common Law.

Authors are indeed a luckless race. To be deprived of your property by Act of Parliament is a familiar process, calling for no remarks save of an objurgatory character; but to petition Parliament to take away your property-to get up an agitation against yourself, to promote the passage through both Houses of the Act of Spoliation, is unusual; so unusual, indeed, that I make bold to say that none but authors would do such things. That they did these very things is certain. It is also certain that they did not mean to do them. They did not understand the effect of their own Act of Parliament. In exchange for a term of either fourteen or twenty-one years, they gave up not only for themselves, but for all before and after them, the whole of time. Oh! miserable men! No enemy did this: no hungry mob clamored for cheap books: no owner of copyrights so much as weltered in his gore. The rights were unquestioned: no one found fault with them. The authors accomplished their own ruin. Never, surely, since the well-nigh incredible folly of our first parents lost us Eden and put us to the necessity of earning our living, was so fine a property-perpetual copyright-bartered away for so paltry an equivalent.

This is how it happened. Before the Revolution of 1688 printing operations were looked after, first by the Court of Star Chamber, which was not always engaged, as the perusal of constitutional history might lead one to believe, in torturing the unlucky, and afterward by the Stationers' Company. Both these jurisdictions revelled in what is called summary process, which lawyers sometime described as brevi manu, and suitors as "short-shrift." They haled before them the Mr. Thomas Teggs of the period, and fined them heavily and confiscated their stolen editions. Authors and their assignees liked this. But then came Dutch William and the glorious revolution. The press was left free; and authors and their assignees were reduced to the dull level of unlettered persons; that is to say if their rights were interfered with, they were compelled to bring an action, of the kind called "trespass on the case," and to employ astute counsel to draw pleadings with a pitfall in each paragraph, and also to incur

costs; and in most cases, even when they triumphed over their enemy, it was only to find him a pauper from whom it was impossible to recover a penny. Nor had the Law power to fine the offender, or to confiscate the pirated edition; or if it had this last power, it was not accustomed to exercise it, deeming it unfamiliar and savoring of the Inquisition. Grub Street grew excited. A noise went up "most musical, most melancholy,"

"As of cats that wail in chorus."

It was the Augustan age of literature. Authors were listened to. They petitioned Parliament, and their prayer was heard. In the eighth year of good Queen Anne the first copyright statute was passed which, "for the encouragement of learned men to compose and write useful books," provided that the authors of books already printed who had not transferred their rights, and the booksellers or other persons who had purchased the copy of any books in order to print or reprint the same, should have the sole right of printing them for a term of twenty-one years from the tenth of April, 1710, and no longer; and that authors of books not then printed should have the sole right of printing for fourteen years, and no longer. Then followed, what the authors really wanted the Act for, special penalties for infringement. And there was peace in Grub Street for the space of twenty-one years. But at the expiration of this period the fateful question was stirred-what had happened to the old Common Law right in perpetuity? Did it survive this peddling Act, or had it died, ingloriously smothered by a statute? That fine old book-once on every settle-The Whole Duty of Man, first raised the point. Its date of publication was 1657, so it had had its term of twenty-one years. That term having expired, what then? The proceedings throw no light upon the vexed question of the book's authorship. Sir Joseph Jekyll was content with the evidence before him that, in 1735 at all events, The Whole Duty of Man was, or would have been but for the statute, the property of one Mr. Eyre. He granted an injunction, thus in effect deciding that the old Common Law had survived the statute. Nor did the defendant appeal but sat down under the affront, and left The Whole Duty of Man

alone for the future.

Four years later there came into Lord Hardwicke's court "silvertongued Murray," afterward Lord Mansfield, then Solicitor-General, and on behalf of Mr. Jacob Tonson moved for an injunction to restrain the publication of an edition of Paradise Lost. Tonson's case was that Paradise Lost belonged to him, just as the celebrated ewer by Benvenuto Cellini belonged to the late Mr. Beresford Hope. He proved his title, by divers mesne assignments and other acts in the law, from Mrs, Milton-the poet's third wife, who exhibited

such skill in the art of widowhood, surviving her husband as she did for fifty-three years. Lord Hardwicke granted the injunction. It looked well for the Common Law. Thomson's Seasons next took up the wondrous tale. This delightful author, now perhaps better remembered by his charming habit of eating peaches off the wall with both hands in his pockets, than by his great work, had sold the book to Andrew Millar, the bookseller whom Johnson respected because, said he, "he has raised the price of literature." If so, it must have been but low before, for he only gave Thomson a hundred guineas for "Summer," "Autumn," and "Winter," and some other pieces. The "Spring" he bought separately, along with the ill-fated tragedy, Sophonisba, for one hundred and thirty-seven pounds, ten shillings. A knave called Robert Taylor pirated Millar's Thomson's Seasons; and on the morrow of All Souls in Michaelmas, in the seventh year of King George the Third, Andrew Millar brought his plea of trespass on the case against Robert Taylor, and gave pledges of prosecution, to wit John Doe and Richard Roe. The case was recognized to be of great importance, and was argued at becoming length in the King's Bench. Lord Mansfield and Justices Willes and Aston upheld the Common Law. It was, they declared, unaffected by the statute. Mr. Justice Yates dissented, and in the course of a judgment occupying nearly three hours, gave some of his reasons. It was the first time the court had ever finally differed since Mansfield presided over it. Men felt the matter could not rest there. Nor did it. Millar died, and went to his own place. His executors put up Thomson's Poems for sale by public auction, and one Beckett bought them for five hundred and five pounds. When we remember that Millar only gave two hundred and forty-two pounds, ten shillings, for them in 1729, and had therefore enjoyed more than forty years' exclusive monopoly, we realize not only that Millar had made a good thing out of his brother Scot, but what great interests were at stake. Thomson's Seasons, erst Millar's, now became Beckett's; and when one Donaldson of Edinburgh brought out an edition of the poems, it became the duty of Beckett to take proceedings, which he did by filing a bill in the Court of Chancery.

These proceedings found their way, as all decent proceedings do, to the House of Lords-farther than which you cannot go though ever so minded. It was now high time to settle this question, and their lordships accordingly, as is their proud practice in great cases, summoned the judges of the land before their bar and put to them five carefully-worded questions, all going to the points-what was the old Common Law right and has it survived the statute? Eleven judges attended, heard the questions, bowed and retired to consider their answers. On the fifteenth of February, 1774, they re-appeared,