Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847.. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ results. These were pronounced of the richest intrinsic value, and the earnest of future works in the same department of letters, yet more honourable to their author and more important to learning. But the very devotedness with which my admirable friend has pursued his one great object, has deprived him of a popular reputation. Though by birth and habits of life a gentleman, refined by intercourse with the choice society of Europe, and furnished with the best introductions, his overtures to publishers here were repulsed with a rudeness of negative, which would have shocked the sensibilities of a footman. Who cared for him, with his parcel of manuscript, when some European work, which had gone through the experiment of success, could be produced with a smaller expenditure, and without per centage to the author! Can it be wondered at that Harpy & Co. refused to treat with him, when a new treatise on the inside of the moon, for which lunatics in general were gaping, and for which twenty guineas had actually been paid to the learned Dr Snooks, of North Britain, was actually waiting its turn for immediate reproduction? Would Snatchett and Brothers cast an eye on their compatriot's scrawled and blotted quires, when they had just run the pen-knife through a new "Dombey," for which fifty compositors waited stick-in-hand, and which the million expected with insatiable greediness? The excellent person to whom I refer ran the gauntlet of such patrons with no better success than my questions imply; and if the dignified production to which I have referred shall ever see the light, I am informed that it will first issue from the English press; for should its author publish it here, at his own expense, he will be forced to put it at a price which, compared with the pirated works of British authors, will appear unreasonable, and kill it in the birth. No American is patriot enough to buy a book, simply because it is valuable, and the product of national genius: and Congress takes care that if any be found to do so, they shall be roundly taxed for their patriotism.

      I have given this instance because it has come under my immediate notice; but you will not doubt, dear Godfrey, that the country which, even in existing circumstances, has bred such writers, in their several departments, as Prescott, and Audubon, and Wheaton, and Kent, and Story, has crushed at least as many more by the pressure of her copyright laws: and, if so, America has deprived herself of intellectual sons, whose gifts, in their stimulated exercise, would have made her rich, as well as illustrious in the sure sequel of their fame. The "Calamities of Authors" are indeed proverbial, but few are the unnatural mothers who, to prevent them, destroy genius in the embryo. Yet there is an ingenuity of mischief in this government, from which every thing that can be of benefit to letters, is sure to suffer. Even the poor permission to import books duty free, which has heretofore been enjoyed by the few public libraries that are struggling into existence from private liberality, was, by the tariff of 1846, peremptorily withdrawn; whether through a niggard parsimony, or a besotted indifference to learning, more worthy of Caliph Omar than of an enlightened state, it is difficult to conjecture.

      If things continue as they are, one thing is certain – it will be long before America will have a literature. Nor am I disposed to sneer, when I think of it, at the alarm of the New York Gazette, which is afraid lest the Tories of Maga should gain a preponderating influence in the minds of educated American youth. Why is it absurd to suppose that, if given up to such teachers, the next generation of educated Americans will be less democratic? In republican countries, the studiosi novarum rerum are always the well-bred and the travelled. Wealth and foreign associations must produce, in a nation, the same effects that fortune and admission to society create in a family. A love of simplicity and of home give place to a sense of the importance of fashion, and the value of whatever is valued by the world at large. Give us a king that we may be like other nations, was not an outcry peculiar to antiquity and to the Hebrews. In like circumstances, 'tis the language of man's heart. It is an appetite to which all nations come at last. Cincinnatus and his farmer's frock may do at the beginning; but the end must be Cæsar and the purple. Republics breed in quick succession their Catilines and their Octavius. They run to seed in empire, and so fructify into kingdoms – the staple form of nations. The instinctive yearning for the first change is sure to be developed as soon as the exhilaration of conquest makes evident the importance of concentrated strength, and imperial splendour. If so, the hour that will try the stability of this republic cannot be distant. Already I have heard Americans complaining of the thanklessness of bleeding for such a government as theirs; and remarking, that under an empire, the army would return from Mexico with Field-Marshal the Earl of Buena Vista, and Generals Lord Viscount Vera-Cruz, Lord Worth of Monterey; Sir John Wool, Bart, and Sir Peter Twiggs, Knight; and that the other officers would have as many decorations on their breasts as feathers in their caps! The truth is, that for lack of such baubles, they will all take their turns as Presidents of the United States. But I cannot say that honest democrats are altogether to be laughed at, for rightly estimating the effects of a literature exclusively foreign, and generally adverse to the manners and institutions of a people whose strength is to "dwell alone, and not to be numbered among the nations."

      If you are meditating an article for Maga on American copyright, you may employ my information for the purpose; but it will not be fair to leave out of view the most efficient objections which are urged by anti-copyright politicians, two of which I have not as yet mentioned. It is said to be against American interests to grant copyright, because the American value of British copyrights will far exceed the British value of American copyrights. Whether this be true or not, the argument is worth nothing, unless it be followed by the conclusion – therefore it is expedient to steal. Yet, perhaps, if the experiment were tried, the assertion would not prove to be true. The most valuable American copyrights are those of children's schoolbooks, in which extraordinary ingenuity has been shown, and which are generally such as, with small emendations, would become very popular in England. But however it may be at present – since the present standard literature of England can never be copyrighted, who can doubt that, with a more liberal system, the land of Washington Irving would breed such popular authors, as would soon very nearly equalize the exchanges, while America would still be immensely the gainer in the increase of her celebrated men, commanding no longer a merely provincial reputation, but taking rank in the broad world, and ensuring foreign rewards, with universal renown. At all events – honesty is always policy. Rising to the great standard of right, this country would soon find her reward; if but in that wealth of self-respect which comes only with a conscience void of offence, and which no country can possess that is not nationally great and generous, or at least honest enough to pay for what it needs, and appropriates, and enjoys.

      The only remaining objection which need be mentioned has been very operative with the vulgar, for whom alone it could have been intended. It is said that England, however nearly allied, is still a foreign country; that her writers write for their own countrymen; that, so far as they are concerned, America is a mere accident; and that, consequently, right has nothing to do with the case. It is conceded that the comity of nations may furnish grounds for a fair consideration of what is policy; but it is denied that moral obligation invests the British author with any claim to literary property in America. I must let you know how handsomely the answer has been put by Americans themselves. The Boston reviewers say,7 – "It is true we are distinct nations – scarcely more so, however, than the different Italian states. We have, like them, a community of language, and although an ocean rolls between us, the improvements in navigation have brought us nearer to each other, for all practical purposes, than is the case with some of the nations of Italy. Yet such is the indifference of our government to the interests of a national literature, that our authors are still open to the depredations of foreign pirates; and what is not less disgraceful, the British author, from whose stores of wisdom and wit we are nourished, is turned over, in like manner, to the tender mercies of our gentlemen of trade, for their own exclusive benefit, and with perfect indifference to his equitable claims." The New York Review8 strongly reprobates the same outrages, "especially between two nations descended from a common stock, speaking the same language, whose political and civil institutions, though differing in form, are essentially the same in their liberal spirit and free principles – between two nations who are ONE PEOPLE." This is a sentiment which even you, my dear Tory, will not be unwilling to reciprocate; and I'll tell you when I felt its truth with peculiar force. I was walking in a quiet part of this city the other day, when I saw at a little distance СКАЧАТЬ