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pedler and imputing it to the blows of this youth, drove him by his fears to take refuge across the Atlantic. He there meets with Victor Carrington-but has first discovered his own innocence. His tale is told, the two hasten back together and arrive just in time to rescue the prisoner. Ben Bramble was one of the witnesses and resolved to hunt, with his companion, on their way to Lewisburg. His favorite hound, young Kate, much devoted to Miss Ballenger, discovers the opening to a den. Attracting the attention of her master, he peeps in and descries the long lost maiden. Foster had seized and dragged her to this den of infamy; but all his efforts to bend her to his will proved abortive. Firm as virtue she defied his arts and his threats, and his promises to save her father. Measures are taken to secure the gang of counterfeiters; but the true hearted hunter is killed in the conflict. Matilda now rescued flies to her father. He is saved. Foster hangs himself. William marries the daughter of an excellent neighbor to whom he has been long devoted. Young Kate is fondly caressed and a monument erected to the memory of her master, which is daily wept over by the blooming bride of Victor Carrington.

but he can not catch and translate the dreamy and subtle spirituality of the German, and make it speak as Schüler did. To sympathise with an author--even to feel as be does--will not enable one to translate him. That sympathy and feeling must have a similar vent and be able to assume a similar poetical garb. Merivale, without the taste and smoothness of Bulwer, has far surpassed him in the truth and nature of his translations. Every specimen of Merivale that we have seen is superior to the corresponding one of Sir Edward. But the former has only translated a part; the latter the whole.

The Life is and must be interesting; for Schiller's life was Poetry and Romance. But the one before us is written in a half novel, half biographical style, which it may have been difficult for the author to avoid; but which is by no means commendable.

For a just appreciation of Schiller's scepticism and philosophy, we would rather take Schlegel than Sir Edward, whose mode of talking about Destiny" and other matters, is by no means after the true spirit.

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The translator has placed the latter poems first, because he did not wish to give to the productions of the undeveloped The wild lands rapidly appreciate in value and they are poet the place of distinction. We wonder he didn't comenabled to enjoy all the pleasures and comforts of well-ap-mence the memoir with his Death and come on down to plied wealth.

The author is a man of great sincerity, which is displayed in his work; his style is not particularly adapted to novel writing; but it is free from affectation and pretension. For us to notice at any length the multitude of novels issuing from the press would be endless-and we can only make an exception, when something particularly claims our attention, as in the one before us. Its merits will be appreciated by the reader; its faults we will leave to the blank page upon which we noted them.

LETTERS ON THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE, the Smithsonian
Legacy, the Fine Arts, &c. By John Carroll Brent.
Washington, J. & G. S. Gideon, 1844.

The subjects of these letters are exceedingly interesting and important, and we are glad to find them taken up by one who has treated them so well. The letters first appeared in the National Intelligencer, but are now collected in a neat pamphlet, for which the author will please accept our thanks.

HARPER & BROTHERS: New-York, 1844. OBSERVATIONS IN EUROPE, principally in France and Great Britain. By JOHN P. DURBIN, D.D., President of Dickinson College-2 vols.

his boyhood and birth. Had we space we would make
extracts and compare them with Merivale's.
GIBBON'S ROME, No.'s 13 and 14.
MCCULLOCH'S GAZETTEER, No. 13.

THE PICTORIAL BIBLE, No. 5, is out with all its wonted beauty and attraction. Drinker and Morris supply these at 25 cents each.

AMY HERBERT. By a Lady. Edited by the Rev. W. Sewell, B. D. Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. No. 35, Library of select novels.

A narrative for children; written for a member of the author's household; which "exhibits a Christian tone, and temper and Christian truth, without obtruding either in a manner unsuited to a work of amusement." Drinker and Morris, 12 1-2 cents.

LEA & BLANCHARD: Philadelphia, 1844.

Have sent us through Drinker and Morris, No.'s 4 and 5 of their very valuable "CYCLOPÆDIA OF PRACTICAL MEDICINE." Edited in England by three distinguished prysicians, Forbes, Tweedie and Conolly. The republication edited by Dr. Dunglison, who will introduce many addtions and improvements. The whole will be finished in 24 parts, at 50 cents each. Then every man can look up his Doctor in a Dictionary. Also Martin Chuzzlewit, No.'s 15, 16 and 17. By the "American notes." That's enough to recommend Mar

D. APPLETON & Co., New-York, 1844.
GEORGE S. APPLETON, Philadelphia.

THE CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTED in the ways of the Gospe
and the Church. A series of discourses delivered in St.
James' Church, Goshen, N. York, during the years 1840-42
By Rev. J. A. Spencer, A. M., late rector.

Some one has said of this work, "what's new in it is not good; and what's good is not new." Whilst we may not go thus far, and are willing to say that much entertaining reading may be found in it, yet we do greatly distrust the observations of any man, who can pursue the blind and intolerant course lately persisted in and defended by Dr. Durbin, in the General Conference of the Methodist Church. Such men see but one way, and very often through an entirely perverted medium. To show how far his prejudices and pre-conceived ideas have swayed his mind, would require an intimate acquaintance abroad and a close comparison with other travellers; but we utterly discard "the spectacles" of any traveller who makes before our eyes the exhibition that this one has done so recently. Dr. Durbin, unassisted even by a father's benediction, has educated and elevated himself to his present position. This we can appreciate and commend. But we certainly urge him to a little more Christian sense and worldly wisdom. Among the contents of the volumes are a description of the fortifi-notes. cations of Paris, with a plan; and a curious French loveletter of the Great Franklin. There are also views of Public Edifices, and other embellishments. THE POEMS AND BALLADS OF SCHILLER. Translated from the German: with a life.

tion.

BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON.

LECTURES ON THE CHURCH. I. The Church in England and America, Apostolic and Catholic. II. The Causes of the English Reformation. III. Its character and results. By John D. Ogilby, D.D. Prof. General Theological Sem inary, New York.

THE STRIFE OF BROTHERS: A Poem. In two parts, with These works are adapted to the senuments of Episcopalians, more particularly. Their neatness of style and typography recommend them to every body.

ADVICE TO MOTHERS, on the Management of their 04spring, during the periods of Infancy, Childhood and Youth by Henry Chavasse, member of the Royal College Surgeons, London. From the Third English Edition. It contains much useful advice in a very small and convenient form.

Our Public are greatly indebted to the translator and to the enterprising publishers, for this very neat and attractive volume. The obligation to Sir Edward rests principally MASONIC MELODIES, adapted to the ceremonies and fest upon the fact of making a translation. His style is not the vals of the fraternity. By Thomas Power, P. G. Ser. (7. poetical, though so rich and flowing in the general estima- L., Mass. A beautiful volume containing one hundred and How little does it suit Lyrics and Ballads! Not but fourteen melodies, suitable for every occasion. Our thanks that he can write, and has written some very pretty lines, to the author for it. and might even perpetrate a fair Lyric or Ballad; but the REPORTS of the Virginia Insane Asylums. We have fa 'nd characteristics of his style are not adapted to such compo-to acknowledge the receipt of the Reports of these insta sitions. There is a certain kind of swelling, declamatory tions. Our thanks to the donors respectively. We poetry which it suits, and there is some such in Schiller;-take occasion hereafter to compare them.

SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER.

AUGUST, 1844.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.

LETTER IV.

Views in regard to an extension of the privileges of Copyright in the United States, to the citizens of other countries, in a Letter to the Hon. Isaac E. Holmes, of South Carolina, member of Congress. By the author of "The Yemassee," "The Kinsmen," "Richard Hurdis," "Damsel of Darien," &c.

HON. I. E. HOLMES:

things their desultory modes of life-the slipshod manner in which they wore their reputation--might House of Representatives, Washington. well make us chary of any reference to the cusThe discovery of printing took the world by toms of business supposed to prevail among them. surprise and authors not less than all the rest. Its But, even these seem to me to have been very wondrous effects were not so obvious. In the much misunderstood. Let us look a little more infancy of the art it was necessarily cumbered with closely into this history. It has been frequently, imperfections. Its agents were rude, its appliances and, perhaps unnecessarily, a subject of wonder were ill-fashioned. Its performances were com- and remark with critics, that such great writers as paratively slow. Printing was expensive, and its Shakspeare, should have shown so little seeming benefits were not universal at first, for the sufficient solicitude about the proper publication of their reason that readers were still few, when compared writings. They argue from this that they were with the immense numbers who remained in a con- equally heedless of fame and money. But a nearer dition of almost primitive ignorance. The first examination shows the error of all this. The first publications were of works with which the public mistake of these persons is in confounding publicawere already partially familiar, the authors of tion with mere printing. Undoubtedly, the printing which were generally dead-Froissart for example. of a play is calculated, in the end, to give it more The living authors saw nothing in the new inven- extensive circulation, but of this the dramatist was tion to alarm, and, commonly more heedless of yet to be aware, and to this his necessities made their selfish interests than other men, might be sup-him indifferent. The only publication which he posed very naturally to have slept somewhat upon or the managers regarded was that from the stage. their securities. But, in truth, their rights were They bought his manuscripts from him for the theanot invaded for a long while after the discovery of tre, and they remained the property of the theatre printing. The printers had quite enough to do to forever after. The stage publication in that day appropriate the waste literature of preceding ages. was more thorough than that of books, and far less The ancient classics and histories-the contempo- expensive. A thousand hearers were gratified at rary productions of France and Italy, in particu- the same moment with a work, where a printed lar-gave long and constant employment to the Eng- edition of five hundred copies would perhaps linger lish press; and, in truth, the great protection of for years in its progress through the hands of the the author was found in the fact that, because of booksellers. The mode of publication, from the reasons already given, the press of the country did not so much address its labors to the great body of the people. The teachers of the multitude were properly the dramatists. Frequent reference has been made in the discussion of this subject of Copyright, to authorities drawn from the supposed practice of the dramatic writers of Great Britain. Their profligacy-their want of caution in all

VOL. X-57

stage, was the legitimate result of the primitive custom of diffusing knowledge or amusement by popular lecture or recitation. The orator was the parent of the actor. His vivid and varied declamation originated histrionic display. From the performance of one person, whose action and utterance were made to harmonize with the particular tenor of the thing spoken, the transition was equally easy

and natural to an entire group of speakers, each | the Globe, with all the glitter and glory which the taking his part, particularly when the story of the judicious use of theatrical properties could produce. poet, as in the case of the Iliad, frequently pre- The author, in selling his manuscript, contemplated sented to the spectator all the essentials of com- no other form of publication than the stage. He pact dramatic action. Unquestionably, at such would not have done so had book publication been as times, the declaimer labored to give to each par- profitable then as it has become since. In destroyticular speech, threat, entreaty, interrogation or ing theatres, bull-rings, cock-pits and all the ordireply, the appropriate tone and gesture, look and nary resources of popular taste, books have risen emphasis, which the language seemed to require, into a degree of importance, and acquired an inand this naturally suggested the division of the terest, which make it necessary that we should story into parts; and hence-the drama. The pe- inquire anew, as to what shall be the means of culiar mode of publication, therefore, was from the securing to him who makes them, some portion of boards; it is only in modern times that the absurdity the profits which they bring. The decline of the occurs of writing tragedies and comedies, not to drama in modern periods, is referrible chiefly to the be acted and the author, even after the Eliza-almost universal capacity of the people to read. bethan period, very frequently took one of the parts The excellence and superiority of the drama, in of the dramatis persone. That Shakspeare did those days, was really due to the ignorance of the so, we are told, and we have every reason to recog-people. They craved knowledge, and there was nize the truth of the assurance. The dramatic but one way in which it could be bestowed by author never printed his play if he could help it. genius and talent. They constituted the great Its chief value accrued to him only while it re-majority, and hence the willingness to teach and mained in an unprinted state. If it were damned to amuse them on the part of men of genius. by the audience, he then hurried with it to the Hence, too, the confidence, the freedom, the audaprinters, by way of making appeal to the more de- city, with which the latter spake and wrote. To liberate judgment, not of the people, but of the edu- have addressed an audience of their equals, might cated classes. Shakspeare collected and printed have chilled their enthusiasm, as certainly as it must his poems and not his plays. The value of a dedi- have disarmed their confidence, and this is the cation (which originally meant the presentation of misfortune of an age of mediocrity. The author the manuscript) as shown in his case, with refer- who knows his reader to be his equal, is always ence to these poems, may afford sufficient reasons rather less solicitous of the thing which he says why the author should not care about Copyright. than of the manner in which he says it. For this dedication, we are told, that he received The reserves of dramatists with regard to the £1000 from the Earl of Southampton. Most press, which have been argued to betray their inprobably the poet, in such a case, would deem it difference to fame and fortune, was simply due to unworthy on his part to seek for more compensa- their preference of the primitive mode of publication, and the Earl, by such a purchase, may be tion as that which was the most profitable. Indeed, assumed to have given the copy to the public. It with their hands full of foreign and ancient literawas not the policy of the dramatist to suffer his ture-the first Anglo-Saxon writers-the rhyming play to reach the hands of the printer so long as it chroniclers-the metrical romances-the contemkept its place upon the stage. In a late narrative, poraneous French and Italian legends and ficMr. Cowell gives us an amusing anecdote, within tions-the wars of Chivalry-Froissart-which his own experience, which will tend to illustrate, Lord Berners had already translated-and the wriin some measure, the correctness of this policy. tings of famous travellers, of whom Sir John MaunThere was a play to be acted in New-York, the deville may be considered a sufficient specimen-the author of which, (M. M. Noah,) determining to printers had no desire, as they had no motive, to have fair play for his play, had it printed and trespass upon the domain of the native author. distributed among the audience. The effect was When his writings became desirable, we shall see fatal to the piece and the performance. Each that, not only was the author prepared to insist upon reader became a critic, and when the curtain rose, their value, but that the publishers were not indisthe eyes of the spectators were divided between posed to admit his claims. At all events, it will the book and the stage. It was to the imminent be seen that no one at that time disputed the right peril of the actor, who, on that occasion, departed to be in himself-in him only-and it was bought, from his text. There were other reasons against as a right in perpetuity, from him by the publisher. the practice. The true reason why the writings of the draThe sale of the piece to the manager precluded matic authors have reached us in such wretched all publication by the author, and printing was of condition is that their property was no longer in little consequence to the former as long as the piece themselves. When the increasing tastes for letters, brought a house. For one purchaser of the book, on the part of the public, rendered it a profitable there were hundreds who preferred to see it in speculation that their works should be printed, the living letters, done to the life, for a sixpence, at power of revision was no longer in their hands.

Most of them were dead; their manuscripts were use, the copy was abandoned to the public, either swept by hungry printers from the desks of defunct by author or publisher, it was in consequence of managers, and, full of copy marks, alterations, in- its own diminished value in public estimation, and terpolations, stage directions and marginal improve- not because of any patriotic desire to make it comments, with all their imperfections on their heads, mon on the part of the proprietor. Such liberality were hurried to the press. When the authors them- is seldom shown where the work will pay. For selves printed, they commonly revised their writings that matter, hundreds of copyrights may be procarefully, and were quite as solicitous of the regards cured now, for which the authors expect nothing; of immortality as the merest pretender of modern but shall we argue from this against the rights of times. On this head there is a great deal of bald, those who, as their productions still command a #disjointed chat, which should go for nothing, though price in the market, prefer that the money should from the hands and under the sanction of certain of find its way into their pockets rather than into those the bigwigged gentry. Shakspeare, for example, of persons who have as few claims upon the public has shown as much anxiety for fame as Milton, as upon them? Authors who happened to be and has expressed this anxiety in language almost noblemen, or persons of great wealth, generally equally emphatic. His poems are full of those wrote as amateurs, without expecting compensayearnings, claiming and impatient to be heard, tion for their works; not unfrequently incurring which may naturally be supposed to fill the bosom even the expense of publication themselves, and, if of the great genius, conscious of his endowments, not, bestowing the entire Copyright upon the puband striving, in obedience to his destiny, to make lisher who did so. The Surry's and the Wyatt's others conscious of them also. These poems are published after this fashion. Milton and Lord e highly polished compositions, as elaborate in the Bacon have been frequently referred to. A word artifices of verse, as full of proofs of the labor lima, with regard to these writers, which will have its as any thing now issued from the press; and the application to hundreds more. Milton did sell his ordinary reader would be confounded could he see poems, though he got little for them. His emone of the original copies of the "Hamlet" as sub-phatic testimony in tavor of the right of the author mitted to the players-how inferior in all respects to his works is on record. "God forbid," he says, to that which we have-how crude in its first con- "that it should ever be questioned;" and this was ception-how wanting in that exquisite finish which said in his areopagitica, a speech expressly uttered marks, at this time, its expanded soliloquies and in behalf of the liberty of the press. It never favorite dialogues. Even when printing his pro-occurred to him that the liberty of the press could ductions, the author adhered to the practice of pre-be construed to mean the appropriation, by a bookceding times, of choosing a patron for his volume; seller, of an author's writings to his own use, and and the printed, in place of the manuscript copy, this, too, on the impudent plea of the common begraced with the name of lord or lady, secured nefit. Milton was never a professional author. If for him a gift from the individual thus honored, he derived a living from his writings, they were which probably surpassed in value the profits of the those that fell from him in a political character, as whole edition. The profits arising from the printed Secretary to Cromwell and as defender of the complays-which were not intended for the reader-monwealth. His poetry was little known and less were very small almost to the days of Dryden, valued among the Puritans. His great poem was in comparison with those which followed the suc-written late in life, and the returns from it were so cessful performance. But even these sources of pitiable that it must be evident they were not reincome were not overlooked or neglected. Copy-garded as a means of subsistence. That the trifle rights were sold at a very early period to the pub- which he received for the Paradise Lost, may have lishers, who continued to use them as a perpetual helped him in a moment of emergency, is a point property, and transmitted them to their assigns which, if it affects the question at all, supports our accordingly. It has been argued against the right view of it, since, however trifling, it was demanded of the author, that the claim to protection was and obtained. usually urged on the behalf of the bookseller, or The labors of Lord Bacon rank in the same republisher; but this has no bearing on the case, un-lation. He was a public servant. less it can be shown that the purchaser bought only were not derived from his writings in any degree. a limited right from the author. This we know They were gathered in other ways, some of which, was not the fact. The author sold his right as if unhappily, were not quite so legitimate. Nothing it were a perfect one; and if he got little for it, as can be drawn from such examples. These were in the case of Milton, this proves only that his ne- men, independent of letters, who wrote in the intercessities were great, and that the publishers, in vals of leisure from those vocations, from which those days, were not as liberal as they are said to their means of life were drawn. They could well be in ours. They took advantage of necessities, afford to bestow their writings as they pleased, and as tradesmen, which they had not the soul to sym- their doing so, without charge upon the public, pathize with as men. If, after a certain period of should not be suffered to affect the claims of those

His resources

who live only by their productions and had no | Company: which could be only by common law.” other means of subsistence. In 1640, both houses of parliament, abolishing the

It did not in ancient times. The right of the proceedings of the Star Chamber, expressly take author to his copy was not denied,-was entertain- for granted that Copyrights could only stand upon ed beyond dispute. The common sense of man- the Common Law. The ordinance, therefore, prokind, their sense of right, justice and common ho-hibits printing without consent of the owner; or nesty, settled the matter; and, as before printing importing, (if printed abroad) upon pain of forfeitthey recognized in the author an exclusive right to ing the same to the owner. All parties, in 1644, multiply his copy, in writing, so they recognized whether for or against unlicensed printing, conthe same right, when, by a fortunate discovery of curred in the conviction that "literary property science, he was enabled to multiply his copies by was not the effect of arbitrary power, but of law machinery, in printing, and without being subject and justice, and therefore ought to be safe." In to the former painful manipulations. The princi-1449, the Long Parliament made an ordinance ple controlling the subject remained essentially the which forbids printing any book legally granted, or same. Printing only furnished an additional facil- any book entered, without consent of the owner, ity to him for doing that which he before confess on pain of forfeiture, &c. In 1662, the licensing edly held an exclusive right to do. To yield thus act repeats the prohibition in the same terms, the much to him did not in any way impair any public penalties being forfeiture of the book and 6s. 8d. privilege. On the contrary, as it enabled the people on each copy. The act supposes ownership at to obtain his labors at more moderate expense, which Common Law, and the right itself is recognized in before were so costly as to be wholly beyond com- a clause which forbids the Chancellor and Vice mon reach, it was clearly within their policy to Chancellor of the Universities to "meddle with recognize his right, else he might have been com- any book or books, the right of printing whereof pelled to continue the old practice, and, like the doth solely and properly belong to any particular ancient orator, or the modern dramatist, prefer person or persons.' The sole property is acknow keeping his work in manuscript to be delivered by ledged in express words as a Common Law Right, himself, orally, to the people, whenever occasion "and," says Mr. Justice Willes, "the Legislature offered. The policy went with the morality and who passed that act could never have entertained propriety of the admission; and it does not appear the most distant idea that the productions of the that the right of the author was disturbed until the brain were not a subject matter of property." We reign of the first Charles. The turbulence of that are wiser, however, in our generation, than the reign, and of the dynasty which followed, might children of light. have been supposed as unfavorable to literary securities as it was to that repose of society which the arts are said to love; but this was not the case. The right of the author was maintained even in the most stormy periods of British History, insisted upon in the time of Charles I. and frankly admitted during the protectorate.

Lord Mansfield says, "From premises either expressly admitted, or which cannot, and therefore never have been denied, conclusions follow, in my apprehension, decisive upon all of the objections raised to the property of an author in the copy of his own work by the Common Law. I use the word 'copy' in the technical sense in which that name or term has been used for ages, to signify an incorporeal right to the sole printing and publishing of somewhat intellectual, communicated by letters."

The Common Law Right is asserted in the strongest language by Mr. Justice Willes and Lord Mansfield. “It is certain,” says the former, "that, down to the year 1640, (printing was introduced into England by Caxton in 1474,) copies were pro- Copyright, in short, means neither more nor less tected and secured from piracy by a much speedier than the right to make and sell copies, and thus, in and more effectual remedy than actions at law and three syllables, embodies the substance of the bills in equity. No license could be obtained "to claim more compactly, perhaps, than in almost print another man's 'copy'-not from any prohibi- any other property-definition. Mr. Justice Aston tion, but because the thing was immoral, dishonest says, "This idea of an author's property has been and unjust. And he who printed without a license so long entertained, that the copy of a book seems was liable to great penalties." From the erection to have been not familiarly only but legally used of the Stateoner's Company in 1556, copies were as a technical expression of the author's sole right entered as property and pirating punished. Some- of printing and publishing that work; and that times the license was qualified specially, as "if it be these expressions, in a variety of instruments, are found that any other has right to any of the copies not to be considered as the creators and origin of then the license, &c., shall be void." "It is re- that right or property; but as speaking the lawmarkable," says Mr. Justice Willes, "that the guage of a known and acknowledged right," &e. decree of the Star Chamber in 1637 expressly sup- The truth is, the phrase came from the earliest poses a Copyright to exist otherwise than by patent, periods, from the original practice of the author order or entry in the register of the Stateoner's of selling copies in manuscript long before printing

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