[Aug. 1,

KING JAMES THE FIRST.

Notwithstanding the praises which were lavished upon this British Solomon as his flatterers called him, it appears that the booksellers were far from being fond of engaging in his works. The learned Thomas Lydyat, in a letter to Mr., afterwards Archbishop, Usher (written August 22, 1611) says, "I have sent you the King's book in Latin against Vorstius, yet scant dry from the press: which Mr. Norton, who hath the matter wholly in his own hands, swore to me, he would not print, unless he might have money to print it."

LORD BACON.

This great man, of whom the world is yet to seek for a good memoir, submitted the manuscript of his Novum Organum to the perusal of his cousin Sir Thomas Bodley, who in returning it, gave him this advice: "One kind of boldness doth draw on another. insomuch, that methinks I should offend not to signify, that before the transcript of your book be fitted for the press, it will be requisite for you to cast a censor's eye upon the stile and elocution, which in the frame of your periods, and in divers words and phrases, will hardly go for current, if the copy brought to me be just the same that you would publish."

WOTTON AND GRAY.

that advice of a holy monk, who persuaded his friend to perform his customary devotions in a constant place, because in that place, we usually meet with those very thoughts which possessed us at our last being there: and "added Sir Henry" I find it thus far experimentally true, that my now being in that school, and seeing that very place where I sat when I was a boy, occasioned me to remember those very thoughts of my youth which then possessed me; sweet thoughts indeed, that promised my growing years numerous pleasures without mixtures of cares; and these to be enjoyed when time (which I therefore thought slow paced) had changed my youth into manhood; but age and experience have taught me, that these were but empty hopes; for I have always found it true as my Saviour did foretel, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Nevertheless I saw there a succession of boys using the same recreations, and questionless possessed with the same thoughts that then possessed me. "Thus one generation succeeds another, both in their lives, recreations, hopes, fears and death."

Let the whole of this beautiful sentiment be compared with Gray's Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College, and I am much mistaken if the reader will not at once see the original germ of that pathetic composition.

Ah happy hills, ah pleasing shade,

Ah fields belov'd in vain,

Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
A stranger yet to pain!
I feel the gales that from ye blow,
A momentary bliss bestow,

As waving fresh their gladsome wing,
My weary soul, they seem to sooth,
And, redolent of joy and youth,

To breathe a second spring.

But it is in the description of the sportive joys of the youthful train that the sage instructs the poet. Gay hope is theirs, by fancy led

Less pleasing when possest; The tear forgot as soon as shed,

The sunshine of the breast; Their's buxom health of rosy hue, Wild wit, invention ever new,

And lively cheer of vigour born; The thoughtless day, the easy night, The spirits pure, the slumbers light. That fly th' approach of morn.

1818.]

Alas, regardless of their doom,

The little victims play!

No sense have they of ills to come,
No care beyond to day:

Yet see how all around them wait
The ministers of human fate,

And black misfortune's baleful train!
Ah shew them where in ambush stand
To seize their prey the murderous band,
Ah! tell them they are men.

SHAKESPEARE AND SPEnser.

All the critics upon our immortal dramatist have dwelt with rapture upon his creative genius in bodying the offspring of his imagination, or in other words giving powers to airy nothings exactly adapted to the character and office for which he had occasion. Among those beings by far the most extraordinary is Caliban, the monstrous production of a dæmon and a witch, inheriting all the qualities of each parent, and uniting to the most hideous outward form a diabolical malignity and acuteness, with simplicity and ignorance. Yet this uncouth representation loses the credit of originality when the reader compares the picture with the personification of lust in the Faery Queen: It was to weet, a wild and savage man, Yet was no man, but only like in shape, And eke in stature, higher by a span, All over-grown with hair, that could awhape An hardy heart, and his wide mouth did gape

With huge great teeth like to a tusked boar, For he lived all on rapine and on rape,

Of men and beasts, and fed on fleshly gore, The sign whereof yet stain'd his lips afore.

His nether lip was not like man nor beast, But like a wide deep poke, down hanging low,

In which he wont the relics of his feast, And cruel spoil, which he had spar'd to stow;

And over it his huge great nose did grow, Full dreadfully empurpled all with blood And down both sides two wide long ears did glow.

In the play Caliban shews the contracted limits of his knowledge and his attempt at grateful feeling, by the following very natural expressions:

37.

I prithee let me bring thee where crabs grow, And I with my long nails will dig thee pig nuts,

Shew thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how

To snare the nimble marmozet. I'll bring thee

To clust'ring filberds; and sometimes I'll get thee

Young shamois from the rock.

Faery Queen, we meet with this descripOn turning to the third book of the tion of an Incubus, or at least the son of a witch, and his awkward courtship of a herself under the beldam's protection. young damsel in distress who had put

Oft from the forest wildings he did bring Whose sides empurpled were with smiling And oft young birds, which he had taught red;

to sing,

His mistress' praises, sweetly caroled; Garlands of flowers, sometimes for her fair

head

He brought to her in bands, as conquered To be her thrall

In pointing out these coincidences of apparent imitation, it is not intended to cast the slightest reflection upon the human heart, whose original powers of genius of the mighty master of the conception and magical influence over the passions must ever command the admiration of mankind, even should the language in which he wrote ever cease to be a living tongue.

MILTON AND THOMSON.

In the year 1738 the patriotic bookseller Andrew Millar printed a new edition of Milton's Areopagitica with an admirable preface written in a style of performance which it recommends. The animation equal to the unanswerable author of this preface was James Thomson, the poet, and any publisher, who should undertake to reprint the book at this time would render an acceptable service to the public.

REPORT FROM THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON

THE COPYRIGHT ACTS OF 8 ANNE, C. 19; 15 GEO. III, C. 58; 41 GEO. III, C. 107; AND 54 GEO. III, C. 116. Ordered, by the House of Commons to be

Printed, 5 June 1818.

THE earliest foundation for a claim from any public Library, to the gra

tuitous delivery of new publications, is to be found in a deed of the year 1610, by which the Company of Stationers of London, at the request of Sir Thomas Bodley, engages to deliver a copy of every book printed in the Company (not having been before printed) to the University of Oxford. This however seems

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to be confined to the publications of the Company in its corporate capacity, and could in no case extend to those which might proceed from individuals unconnected with it.

Soon after the Restoration in the year 1662, was passed the "Act for preventing Abuses in printing seditious, treasonable, and unlicensed books and pamphlets, and for regulating of printing and printing presses;" by which, for the first time, it was enacted, that every printer should reserve three copies of the best and largest paper of every book new printed, or reprinted by him with additions, and shall, before any public vending of the said book, bring them to the Master of the Company of Stationers, and deliver them to him; one whereof shall be delivered to the keeper of his Majesty's Library, and the other two to be sent to the Vice Chancellor of the two Universities respectively, to the use of the public libraries of the said Universities. This Act was originally introduced for two years, but was continued by two Acts of the same Parliament till 1679, when it expired.*

It was, however, revived in the 1st year of James II, and finally expired in 1695.

It has been stated by Mr. Gaisford, one of the curators of the Bodleian Library, "that there are several books entered in its register, as. sent from the Stationers' Company subsequent to the expiration of that Act;" but it is probable that this delivery was by no means general, as there are no traces of it at Stationers' Hall, and as Hearne, in the preface to the "Reliquiæ Bodleianæ," printed in 1703, presses for benefactions to that library as peculiarly desirable, "since the Act of Parliament for sending copies of books, printed by the London booksellers, is expired, and there are divers wanting for several years past."

During this period, the claim of authors and publishers to the perpetual Copyright of their publications, rested upon what was afterwards determined to have been the common law, by a majority of nine to three of the judges on the cases of Millar and Taylor in 1769, and Donaldson and Becket in 1774. Large estates had been vested in Copy

Upon reference to the continuing Act of 17. Ch. II. c. 4, the clauses respecting the delivery of the three copies appear to be perpetual, yet it should seem that they were not so considered, not being adverted to in the Act of Anne.

rights; these Copyrights had been assigned from hand to hand, had been the subject of family settlements, and in some instances larger prices had been given for the purchase of them (relation being had to the comparative value of money) than at any time subsequent to the Act of the 8th of Queen Anne.* By this Act, which in the last of these two cases, has since been determined to have destroyed the former perpetual Copyright, and to have substituted one for a more limited period, but protected by additional penalties on those who should infringe it, it is directed, that nine copies of each book that shall be printed or published, or reprinted and published with additions, shall, by the printer, be delivered to the warehouse-keeper of the Company of Stationers, before such publication made, for the use of the Royal Library, the libraries of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the libraries of the four Universities of Scotland, the library of Sion College in London, and the library belonging to the Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh.

From the passing of this Act until the decision of the cases of Beckford and Hood in 1798, and of the University of Cambridge and Bryer, in 1813, it was universally understood, that neither the protection of copyright, nor the obligation to deliver the eleven copies attached to the publication of any book, unless it was registered at Stationer's Hall, an act which was considered as purely optional and unnecessary, where it was intended to abandon the claim for Copyright; and in conformity to this construction, the Act of 41 Geo. III. expressly entitled the libraries of Trinity College, and the King's Inn, Dublin, to copies of such books only as should be entered at Stationers' Hall.†

In Beckford versus Hood, the Court of King's Bench decided, that the omission of the entry only prevented a prosecution for the penalties inflicted by the statutes, but it did not in any degree impede the recovery of a satisfaction for the violation of the copyright. The same Court further determined, in the case of the University of Cambridge

*Birch, in his Life of Archbishop Tillotson, states, that his widow, after his death in 1695, sold the Copyright of his unpublished sermons for 2,500 guineas.

+ The whole number of entries during the 70 years, from 1710 to 1780, does not equal that which has taken place in the last four years. See Appendix No. 1.