biographies, each of which gets its two columns of notice all to itself. We must not allow this question to rest.

The following is a somewhat remarkable question: the Society, so far, has not been able, such is the ignorance of its staff, to furnish an answer.

"Mr. A. B. presents his compliments to the Society of Authors, and would feel exceedingly obliged if they would kindly inform him what the cost of an international copyright would be, and also the price of one for Great Britain and the colonies; also how Mr. A. B. could succeed in procuring a copyright when required."

It has been brought to the notice of the Society that under the existing conditions of Registration of Copyright, the following extraordinary position can be arrived at. The instructions for Registration under the Act are, among others, as follows:-No proprietor of copyright can take any proceedings in respect to infringement unless he has previously registered his book, and, secondly, under the head of Foreign Reprints, proprietors of books first composed, or written, or printed, in the United Kingdom, desiring to prevent the importation of foreign reprints must give notice in writing to the Commissioners of Customs. If, in fact, an author has not registered his book, a foreign reprint can be made of it, and introduced into England subject to the payment of the ordinary duty, because the Custom House officials cannot take cognizance of any book that has not been registered. If the book has been registered, reprints are not admitted at all. They may be seized, but such seizure can only be made after registration has been notified at the Custom House. If, in short, the publisher forgets to enter the book at Stationers' Hall, it is possible to be undersold by the legal admission of foreign reprints. In other words, there is often nothing to prevent the ten cent. American edition actually being sold in this country beside the six shilling edition. For instance, a pirated edition of "King Solomon's Mines" would be received as such, but a kindly welcome was accorded to "Jess" at the Cape of Good Hope on account of this little formality being neglected.

A certain man-one of letters Three-has been getting money out of kindly people in the city of Philadelphia, U.S.A., by representing himself to be a brother-down on his luck-of a certain man-of letters Many-a resident in the older country. He also said that he was himself a Novelist, a Poet,

He

and an Actor. The first and the last he undoubtedly is, and he seems to make his gifts of fiction and personation pay better than some of us here at home. The man of letters Many suffered himself to feel a certain annoyance at this incident, because he has no brother in America, nor any brother who is either Novelist, Poet, or Actor. even went so far as to cable a message calling that man a Fraud, so that his little game is probably quite ruined so far as Philadelphia is concerned. When this was done, he reflected. Perhaps he had been hasty. He considered. The art of Personation has become in the States almost a Fine Art. As in Mark Twain's well-known case of Faded Greatness, the American Fraud has always hitherto been a noble Lord. That he should now become a common Novelist speaks volumes for the increased respect paid to the craft. Professionally speaking, the thing is a compliment. It is, in fact, most gratifying. Every one who lent a dollar to the Brother, Novelist, Poet, Actor, has taken off his hat and saluted the craft.

A curious instance of resemblance so close is to suggest how plagiarism is found in the correspondence of last month and this of E. Fairfax Byrrne and Ernest Rhys. There can be no doubt as to the similarity of the two plots. There can be no doubt of the entire independence of their invention. These resemblances are very strange. For myself, I prefer, when I can get them, plots depending on events that really happened. But these are hard to find. Here is another anecdote of resemblance. A few weeks ago a certain story went the round of some of the papers. It came straight from a far off country. Then the following discoveries were made:-(1) that the leading incident had been invented and used by a novelist quite recently; (2) that the leading incident was used in an American magazine ten years ago; (3) that the leading incident was used by Charles Reade fifteen years ago. Now I have not the least doubt that in each one of these cases the invention was entirely original.

It is stated by a New York paper, an American correspondent informs us, that certain English authors have entered into arrangements for publishing English books in America, and intend "either to lay down plant or to acquire control of an already established business." This is news to all the English authors with whom I have spoken on the matter. No such intention, so far as has yet been learned, exists among English authors.

The following suggestion is one which should be noted. I think we might very easily form such a branch and that we might carry it on usefully.

"There are, as I have reason to know, many persons now engaged upon archæological or historical work who are quite willing to pay for efficient help in such matters as translations, précis, verification of references, and correction of proofs. On the other hand, there are a great number of literary men to whom such work would be a godsend.

"Do you not think that a register-through which the would-be employer could state his wants, and the would-be employed his qualifications-would help to bring the two classes together?"

If such a register were to be kept at the Society's office, or published in the columns of the Author, a small charge for each advertisement (or, possibly, for those of employers only) ought to make it self-supporting.

The expenses would be only the share of a clerk and the necessity of advertising. We ought not to take money from those who seek employment, but only from those who have employment to give, and from those who through our agency receive employment. And the money so obtained could be a very modest fee.

WALTER BESANT.

Members of Congress could be secured. The amour propre, too, of a large body of American authors was flattered by the plea that they were kept out of wide sales and large profits in their own country by the cheap pirated editions of British books. I have myself thought much of this argument, because I have never believed in the existence of a purely mercantile competition between British and American authors, except perhaps in railway trains, or on steamboats. I have never believed that people took an English book of the same class, in preference to an American one, because it cost a little less. Other differences than difference in price have been much more powerful as a general rule in determining the reader's choice. Even novel writers, who are now the largest class of writers in this country, do not compete with each other, as butchers or grocers do, by offering the same goods for less money. Consequently the Copyright Bill, by making British books dearer, will not have the effect on the domestic product which a good many enthusiastic authors think it will have, and this, mutatis mutandis, is true of American books in England.

Moreover, if you go over the publishers' lists you will find that the actual injustice inflicted by piracy fell on a very small class in both countries. The number of authors whom it paid to pirate was after all limited, but the number of those who liked to think that the pirates were eager to get at them, or that they were themselves actually suffer

I.

By E. L. GODKIN.

(Editor of the New York "Nation.")

YOUR request that I should express an opinion

in your columns on the possibilities of influence on English and American literature, jointly and severally, of the recently passed American Copyright Bill, reminds me forcibly of the warning "not to prophecy unless you know." I think even those who know most about past relations of the publishers on each side of the water with the authors on the other, generally feel most diffident about prescribing with any particularity the effects of the Bill.

My own notion, which I offer with due modesty, is, that the necessities of the agitation in support of the Bill have led its advocates to overestimate considerably what it will do in the near future, either for American or British authors as a class desiring pay for their work. It was only by putting the grievous wrongs of American authors prominently in the foreground, that the attention of a considerable portion both of the public and of

can marauding, was large. There is a great deal of human nature in authors.

I do not mean by this to underrate the wrong and injustice done by the absence of international copyright. I think the unpunished robbery of

ten authors a year is just as great a national disgrace as the unpunished robbery of one hundred, and the more distinguished and popular an author is, the greater shame it is to rob him. I am simply pointing out that the friends of the Copyright Bill, naturally and quite justifiably, got all the help they could from every quarter, that is, from people's illusions and vanities, as well as from their sense of justice and right. They had to do so in order to succeed, and are not to be blamed. But the effect was to magnify the pecuniary importance of the Bill, that is, to use a slang phrase here, to produce the impression that there was more money in it" than there really I submit these observations as applicable both to England and America.

was.

The great value of the Bill, in my own mind, certainly on this side of the water, lies in the aid it will render in elevating literature and authorship as a profession in the eyes of the mass of the

people. Away from the Atlantic Sea Coast the great bulk of the population have never seen an author, or anybody except newspaper editors, who makes money by the sale of any species of literature, and, as a rule, they are disposed to estimate a man's intellectual and social value by his capacity for making money. There prevails, therefore, in a large measure, also pity and contempt for the thinking class, the writers, professors, and so forth, who are unable or do not care to share in the great industrial successes of the day. This prejudice was undoubtedly strengthened and deepened by the spectacle of books made cheap by theft, and by finding that very good and prominent men in and out of Congress thought it no harm to steal them. Wares, which the law did not think worth protection, could not, it seemed, be of very great account. International Copyright will undoubtedly help to elevate the popular mind into a higher appreciation of literature as a calling, by recognizing its value as property.

The Copyright Bill, too, will probably stimulate authors on each side into seeking a market on the other, and they will thus make themselves better known. That is, they will expose their wares more, and you will in this way become acquainted with more American authors in the region of light literature than you are now, and some of those who are coming forward on this side are very promising. Whether there will ever be anything in either country in the nature of real competition between English and American novelists seems to me doubtful. Readers in every country most enjoy reading about social conditions differing widely from their own. Pictures of English and continental life will always have the charm of variety for Americans. Whether in the long run pictures of American life will hold their own in Europe may be questioned. I have always thought society here either too homogeneous, or one might say monotonous, to make America a good place for a novelist to learn or follow his trade in, in competition with Europeans. There does not seem to be enough variety of motive, type, and manners here for his purpose, but I may be greatly mistaken in this. But in any case I do not think the Copyright Bill will affect the result in any way, except, as I have said, by stimulating authors to greater activity in seeking a foreign publisher. The prospect seems to me much more encouraging for American authors in the fields of philosophy, science, law, and political economy. I do not think you know in England what excellent and vigorous work is being done by the younger generation in these fields in this country, and the prospect of a safe English market is certain to increase their industry.

The

Of

The hardship supposed to lie in the clause of the Bill which calls for simultaneous publication in both countries is, I think, greatly overrated. course it would be for the English and American author's advantage to be able to wait before taking out his copyright in the foreign country, until his book had made a success in his own. He could then make a better bargain with a foreign publisher.

But this is largely one of the hardships of the imagination. An obscure author who prints simultaneously in both countries will have in each the advantage of any subsequent success of his book in the other. If his book is taken up eagerly in England, the effect will at once be felt in his American edition, and vice versa. Moreover, the search for the foreign publisher will, for him, be no more serious than the search for the home publisher. If an obscure Englishman has no friends here to offer his work to the publishers, he will find competent persons to do it, as a matter of business, for a small commission. Organizations for this special business are, I am told, already springing up, and I feel sure that a thirty days' search, conducted simultaneously in both countries, will be just as likely to succeed here as in England. The publisher who has no wish to take advantage of the foreigner's necessities can never hold the field against the publisher who is eager to get into the market with a good thing, when he thinks he has got hold of it, now when the law protects him in the possession of foreign goods.

These views are a somewhat promiscuous assort ment. The best thing I can say for them is, that they are probably as good as anybody else's can be as yet, on this topic. I repeat that I think the Copyright Bill is mainly valuable as putting a stop to the demoralizing spectacle of unrestrained, shameless cheating of foreign authors and publishers, practiced even by doctors of divinity and connived at, even encouraged, by the Government, and defended by all sorts of hypocrisy and sophistry. The demurrer in a recent suit over the piracy or the "Encyclopedia Britannica," that the plaintiffs were not entitled to protection by Courts of Equity, because they had cunningly and fraudulently interpolated small quantities of American matter in the book, so as to make it difficult for Americans to exercise their ancient and undoubted right to steal foreign books, showed to what depths of degrada tion and absurdity we were hastening.

New York, March 31st, 1891.

"I have only time, in addition to sending the enclosed text of the Copyright Bill as printed in the Tribune, to say that I hope you will use your influence to allay the silly talk of some of the English papers in regard to the Copyright Bill being a 'fraud.' How can a Bill be a fraud which gives unconditional copyright to artistic property, and which gives copyright to literary property on conditions, after all, not onerous?

"The abolition of the requirement of the consent of the author in the importation of two copies of the English edition of copyright works in each package, is a decided improvement. myself voted against that clause when the Bill was framed, believing that the friction it would produce would react against the law.

I

"I am compelled to close this letter abruptly to catch the mail, but I want to say that I believe that you and Mr. Bryce and our most intelligent English friends will not be misled by the clamour of your publishers and distributors of literary property, into forgetting the enormous moral progress, and the great material benefit to your countrymen, which this Bill effects."

Mr. Johnson's own opinion upon the Bill is thus stated by a reporter to the New York Tribune :

"Those who think that anything is to be regretted in the changes that have been made in the Copyright Bill since its passage by the House, have probably not spoken by the book, for in my opinion the friends of copyright have not only succeeded in defeating dangerous amendments. which would have taken the heart out of the Bill, but the concessions that have been made have been of such a nature as to be a source of strength to the law in its practical working hereafter. It must first be understood that the non-importation clause was a necessary corollary of the typesetting clause. It was, indeed, the mandatory part of the Bill, and it would have been of no use to assert the 'condition precedent' of manufacture in this country for the purpose of giving the market to American workmen, if the market had been immediately taken away by permitting its invasion by books of English manufacture. Therefore, those who voted for the Sherman amendment and assumed to be in favour of the typesetting

clause were in the position of the man who was in favour of the law, but 'agin' its enforcement.

"The chief point of objection on which it was necessary to make concession was in the clause which permitted the importation of only two copies of a foreign book, and required the consent of the owner of the American copyright to this importation. It is likely that had this remained in the Bill there would have been a reaction against the copyright movement, by reason of the annoyances to which the public might have considered that they were subject by having to obtain written permission to import. The substitute for this clause abolishes the requirement of the owner's permission, and the proposal of this substitute in the Conference Committee was due to a concession on the part of the typographical unions, and was done by them, although somewhat reluctantly, for the purpose of saving the Bill, a service which should not be forgotten by the friends of the cause.

"The Ingalls amendment, which permitted free importation of newspapers and periodicals, would have simply transferred the piratical establishments from the American to the Canadian side of the border, and all sorts of American books, as well as foreign books, might thus have been freely imported in periodical form, either in the form adopted by the so-called 'cheap libraries,' or in magazine form, whole books being included in a magazine. This form of publication in copyright material is seen in Lippincott's Magazine, and there is no reason why under the Ingalls amendment as originally proposed it could not have been easily adopted for piratical works. The Ingalls amendment as modified in the present Bill, however, secures the American owner of copyright against such importations of works not authorized by the author.

"The conditions of trade will, of course, have hereafter to adjust themselves, but one of the first things in connection with the Bill that seems never to have entered the minds of people, is that now the publishers under the workings of this law can afford to advertise English books more than they have ever done before, because they can feel sure of the returns to them of the wider market."

Among other opinions is that of Mr. Gilder :"The general effect of the new law will be to improve the conditions of authorship throughout the world. Its tendency will be to increase all literary values-that is, authors will have a wider market for their wares, and by the removal of the illegitimate side of publishing, the publishing business will be strengthened and improved, and this

will also be a good thing for the producers of literature. I confess, however, that the thing which gives me greatest pleasure is the removal of the stain of literary piracy from the American flag. It is, moreover, without exaggeration, a long step forward in the march of civilization. Would to God that it had come in time to help Scott and Dickens and all the great foreign authors of our century. But the present and the future are ours, and I sincerely believe that no other single device could be so sure of giving an impulse to the literary Foreign artists and musical composers, as well as American artists and composers, will also greatly profit from this great victory."

art.

The Post of New York last evening published a telegram from Washington, in which the correspondent gives an account of an interview with Mr. Spofford, Librarian of Congress, who has charge of the Copyright Department, as to the effect of the new copyright law upon periodical publications. Mr. Spofford said: "An American periodical will not be privileged to copy a story or essay from an English magazine if the magazine has been copyrighted in the United States. An English magazine will be compelled to be reprinted in the United States in order to be copyrighted, and the same rule will be applied to a magazine as a book-in fact, for copyright purposes a magazine is a book." Asked whether it would be necessary to copyright English magazines number by number, or whether a whole year's numbers would be included in one entry, Mr. Spofford replied: "Oh, number by number. Section 11 provides that each number of a periodical shall be considered as an independent publication. That suggests at once the question whether, since the term periodical is used in the section concerning independent publications, but omitted in that relating to reprints, the point may not be raised by some English periodical publisher against an application to reprint a clause of his work. It is not improbable that such a fight will be made, though I have my own opinion as to the

result."

I

A SCHOOL FOR NOVELISTS.

S Fiction one of the Fine Arts? In the current number of the New Review I have argued, on that assumption, that it has certain laws and rules and a technique, all of which might be reduced to writing in exactly the same manner as those for the Art of Painting. I then go on to show that these things may be taught, and I try to show that if they were taught our young writers would certainly be spared a good deal of trouble, disappointment, and vexation. Also, I point out that one must have the natural aptitude, or one cannot become a novelist. Such instruction would have to be very general and on turning out a tribe of soulless imitators. broad lines only, or there would be the danger of But the

main point on which one insists is that Fiction is an Art. Now I see in a certain paper a letter, from one who says that he is a schoolmaster. He says, also, that boys learn the elements of English composition at school, and asks, "What more have they to learn?” Oh! Foolish and Ignorant person! They have to learn an Art--an Art-an Art! As well say that the drawing master's lesson The writer, however, illustrates the general belief once a week can make a Royal Academician! on the subject. Everything else, it is acknowledged, has to be learned and studied. The Art of Fiction alone is supposed to come by nature. An Art? They cannot understand how it can be has called forth two papers, one in the Saturday called an Art. This little paper of mine, however, Review and one in the Spectator, which deserve consideration.

advanced certain facts-they are facts not to be In support of these contentions of mine, I denied, viz., that young novelists do not learn anything from their critics; that the ordinary critic knows nothing about the Art of Fiction; that a great inadequate ; and that there is no reason at all why deal of so-called novel reviewing is scandalous and writers should allow their books to be sent to papers which continue to review them in this scandalous and inadequate fashion.

These facts I repeat, and am prepared to maintain, if necessary, by quotation from the journals which review novels. The Saturday Review, which takes up the subject and becomes somewhat heated over it, as if it were itself attacked, treats it personally-which is not fair fighting-and plainly intimates that I am the last person to harbour animosity towards reviewers. First, I harbour none, as I have explained, any more than one harbours animosity towards a blind man in saying that he is blind. The ordinary reviewer of novels, I say, knows nothing of the Art of Fiction. Well,