"Lite

man-as much as of a Peer when his Order is in question-to assert his station, and stand up manfully for the rights, honors, and privileges of the Profession to which he belongs. The question is not a mere sordid one—it is not a simple inquiry in what way the emoluments of literature may be best secured to the author or proprietors of a work; on the contrary, it involves a principle of grave importance, not only to literary men, but to those who love letters, and, I will presume to say, to society at large. It has a moral as well as commercial bearing; for the Legislature will not only have to decide directly, by a formal act, whether the literary interest is worthy of a place beside the shipping interest, the landed interest, the funded interest, the manufacturing, and other public interests, but also it will have indirectly to determine whether literary men belong to the privileged class,—the higher, lower, or middle class,—the working class,—productive or unproductive class,—or, in short, to any class at all.* rary men," says Mr. Bulwer, "have not with us any fixed and settled position as men of letters." We have, like Mr. Cooper's American lady, no precedence. We are, in fact, nobodies. Our place, in turf language, is nowhere. Like certain birds and beasts of difficult classification, we go without any at all. We have no more caste than the Pariahs. We are on a par-according as we are scientific, theologic, imaginative, dramatic, poetic, historic, instructive, or amusing-with quack doctors, street-preachers, strollers, ballad-singers, hawkers of last dying speeches, Punch-and-Judies, conjorers, tumblers, and other “divarting vagabonds." We are as the Jews in the East, the Africans in the West, or the gipsies anywhere. We belong to those to whom nothing can belong. I have even misgivingsheaven help us-if an author have a parish! I have serious doubts if a work be a qualification for the workhouse! The law apparently cannot forget, or forgive, that Homer was a vagrant, Shakspeare a deer-stealer, Milton a rebel. Our very cracks tell against us in the statute; Poor Stoneblind, Bill the Poacher, and Radical Jack have been the ruin of our gang. We have neither character to lose nor property to protect. We

* At a guess, I should say we were classed, in opposition to a certain literary sect, as Inutilitarians.

are by law-outlaws, undeserving of civil rights. We may be robbed, libelled, outraged with impunity, being at the same time liable, for such offences, to all the rigor of the code. I will not adduce, as I could do, a long catalogue of the victims of this system which seems to have been drawn up by the "Lord of Misrule," and sanctioned by the "Abbot of Unreason." I will select, as Sterne took his captive, a single author. To add to the parallel, behold him in a prison! He is sentenced to remain there during the monarch's pleasure, to stand three times in the pillory, and to be amerced besides in the heavy sum of two hundred marks. The sufferer of this threefold punishment is one rather deserving of a triple crown, as a man, as an author, and as an example of that rare commercial integrity which does not feel discharged of its debts, though creditors have accepted a composition, till it has paid them in full. It is a literary offence--a libel, or presumed libel, which has incurred the severity of the law; but the same power that oppresses him, refuses or neglects to support him in the protection of his literary character and his literary rights. His just fame is depreciated by public slanderers, and his honest, honorable earnings are forestalled by pirates. Of one of his performances no less than twelve surreptitious editions are printed, and 80,000 copies are disposed of at a cheap rate in the streets of London. I am writing no fiction, though of one of fiction's greatest masters. That captive is for he can never die—that captive author is Scott's, Johnson's, Blair's, Marmontel's, Lamb's, Chalmers's, Beattie's— good witnesses to character these!—every Englishman's, Britain's, America's, Germany's, France's, Spain's, Italy's, Arabia's; all the world's DANIEL DE FOE!

Since the age of the author of Robinson Crusoe, the law has doubtless altered in complexion, but not in character, towards his race. It no longer pillories an author who writes to the distaste, or like poor Daniel, above the comprehension of the Powers that be, because it no longer pillories any one; but the imprisonment and the fines remain in force. book is, in legal phrase, the worst title there is.

perty is the lowest in the market. It is declared

The title of a

Literary proby law worth

only so many years' purchase, after which the private right be

comes common; and in the meantime, the estate being notoriously infested with poachers, is as remarkably unprotected by game laws. An author's winged thoughts, though laid, hatched, bred, and fed within his own domain, are less his property than is the bird of passage that of the lord of the manor, on whose soil it may happen to alight. An author cannot employ an armed keeper to protect his preserves; he cannot apply to a pindar to arrest the animals that trespass on his grounds;nay, he cannot even call in a common constable to protect his purse on the King's highway! I have had thoughts myself of seeking the aid of a policeman, but counsel, learned in the law, have dissuaded me from such a course; there was no way of defending myself from the petty thief but by picking my own pocket! Thus I have been compelled to see my own name attached to catchpenny works, none of mine, hawked about by placard-men in the street; I, who detest the puffing system, have apparently been guilty of the gross forwardness of walking the pavement by proxy for admirers, like the dog Bashaw! I have been made, nominally, to ply at stage-coach windows with my wares, like Isaac Jacobs with his cheap pencils, and Jacob Isaacs with his cheap pen-knives, to cut them with-and without redress, for, whether I had placed myself in the hands of the law, or taken the law in my own hands, as any bumpkin in a barn knows, there is nothing to be thrashed out of a man of straw. Now, with all humility, if my poor name be any recommendation of a book, I conceive I am entitled to reserve it for my own benefit. What says the proverb ?" When your name is up you may lie abed;" but what says the law?—at least, if the owner of the name be an author. Why, that any one may steal his bed from under him and sell it; that is to say, his reputation, and the revenue which it may bring. In the meantime, for other street frauds there is a summary process: the vender of a flash watch, or a razor made to sell, though he appropriates no maker's name, is seized without ceremony by A 1, carried before B 2, and committed to C 3, as regularly as a child goes through its alphabet and numeration. They have defrauded the public, forsooth, and the public has its prompt remedy; but for the literary

man, thus doubly robbed, of his money and his reputation, what is his redress but by injunction, or action against walking shadows, a truly homœopathic remedy, which pretends to cure by aggravating the disease. I have thus shown how an author may be robbed; for if the works thus offered at an unusually low price be genuine, they must have been dishonestly obtained-the brooms were stolen ready made; if, on the contrary, they be counterfeit, I apprehend there will be little difficulty in showing how an author may be practically libelled with equal impunity. For anything I know, the Peripatetic Philosophy ascribed to me by the above itinerants, might be heretical, damnable, libellous, vicious, or obscene; whilst, for anything they knew to the contrary, the purchasers must have held me responsible for the contents of the volumes which went abroad so very publicly under my name. I know, indeed, that parties thus deceived have expressed their regret and astonishment that I could be guilty of such prose, verse, and worse, as they had met with under my signature. I believe I may cite the well-known Mr. George Robins as a purchaser of one of the counterfeits; and if he, perhaps, eventually knocked me down as a street-preacher of infidelity, sedition, or immorality, it was neither his fault nor mine. I may here refer, en passant— for illustrations are plenty as blackberries—to a former correspondence in the Athenæum, in which I had, in common with Mr. Poole and the late Mr. Colman, to disclaim any connexion with a periodical in which I was advertised as a contributor. There was more recently, and probably still is, one Marshall, of Holborn Bars, who publicly claims me as a writer in his pay, with as much right to the imprint of my name, as a print collector has to the engravings in another man's portfolio; but against this man I have taken no rash steps, otherwise called legal, knowing that I might as well appear to Martial Law versus Marshall, as to any other. As a somewhat whimsical case, I may add the following:-Mr. Chappell, the music-seller, agreed to give me a liberal sum for the use of any ballad I might publish; and another party, well known in the same line, applied to me for a formal permission to publish a little song of mine, which a lady had done me the honor of setting to an original melody. Here

seemed to be a natural recognition of copyright, and the moral sense of justice standing instead of law; but in the meantime a foreign composer-I forget his name, but it was set in G—————, took a fancy to some of my verses, and without the semiquaver of a right, or the demisemiquaver of an apology, converted them to his own use. I remonstrated, of course; and the reply, based on the assurance of impunity, not only admitted the fact, but informed me that Monsieur, not finding my lines agree with his score, had taken the liberty of altering them at my risk. Now, I would confidently appeal to the highest poets in the land, whether they do not feel it quite responsibility. enough to be accountable for their own lays in the mother tongue; but to be answerable also for the attempts in English verse by a foreigner-and, above all, a Frenchman-is really too much of a bad thing!

Would it be too much to request of the learned Serjeant who has undertaken our cause, that he would lay these cases before Parliament ? Noble Lords and Honorable Gentlemen come down to their respective Houses, in a fever of nervous excitement, and shout of "Privilege! Breach of Privilege!" because their speeches have been erroneously reported, or their meaning garbled in perhaps a single sentence; but how would they relish to see whole speeches,-nay, pamphlets,-they had never uttered or written, paraded, with their names, styles, and titles at full length, by those placarding walkers, who, like fathers of lies, or rather mothers of them, carry one staring falsehood pickaback, and another at the bosom? How would those gentlemen like to see extempore versions of their orations done into English by a native of Paris, and published, as the pig ran, down all sorts of streets? Yet to similar nuisances are authors exposed without adequate means of abating them. It is often better, I have been told, to abandon one's rights than to defend them at law,—a sentence that will bear a particular application to literary grievances. For instance, the law would have something to say to a man who claimed his neighbor's umbrella as his own parasol, because he had cut off a bit round the rim: yet, by something of a similar process, the better part of a book may be appropriatedand this is so civil an offence, that any satisfaction at law is only