Yet of one of this hateful tribe Dunton is able to speak well.  He declares Mr. Bradshaw to have been the best accomplished hackney author he ever met with.  He pronounces his style incomparably fine.  He had quarrelled with him, but none the less he writes:  ’If Mr. Bradshaw is yet alive, I here declare to the world and to him that I freely forgive him what he owes, both in money and books, if he will only be so kind as to make me a visit.  But I am afraid the worthy gentleman is dead, for he was wretchedly overrun with melancholy, and the very blackness of it reigned in his countenance.  He had certainly performed wonders with his pen, had not his poverty pursued him and almost laid the necessity upon him to be unjust.’

All hackney authors were not poor.  Some of the compilers and abridgers made what even now would be considered by popular novelists large sums.  Scotsmen were very good at it.  Gordon and Campbell became wealthy men.  If authors had a turn for politics, Sir Robert Walpole was an excellent paymaster.  Arnall, who was bred an attorney, is stated to have been paid L11,000 in four years by the Government for his pamphlets.

’Come, then, I’ll comply. 
Spirit of Arnall, aid me while I lie!’

It cannot have been pleasant to read this, but then Pope belonged to the opposition, and was a friend of Lord Bolingbroke, and would consequently say anything.

There is not a more interesting and artless autobiography to be read than William Hutton’s, the famous bookseller and historian of Birmingham.  Hutton has been somewhat absurdly called the English Franklin.  He is not in the least like Franklin.  He has none of Franklin’s supreme literary skill, and he was a loving, generous, and tender-hearted man, which Franklin certainly was not.  Hutton’s first visit to London was paid in 1749.  He walked up from Nottingham, spent three days in London, and then walked back to Nottingham.  The jaunt, if such an expression is applicable, cost him eleven shillings less fourpence.  Yet he paid his way.  The only money he spent to gain admission to public places was a penny to see Bedlam.

Interesting, however, as is Hutton’s book, it tells us next to nothing about book-selling, except that in his hands it was a prosperous undertaking.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT COPYRIGHT IN BOOKS

Copyright, which is the exclusive liberty reserved to an author and his assigns of printing or otherwise multiplying copies of his book during certain fixed periods of time, is a right of modern origin.

There is nothing about copyright in Justinian’s compilations.

It is a mistake to suppose that books did not circulate freely in the era of manuscripts.  St. Augustine was one of the most popular authors that ever lived.  His City of God ran over Europe after a fashion impossible to-day.  Thousands of busy hands were employed, year out and year in, making copies for sale of this famous treatise.  Yet Augustine had never heard of copyright, and never received a royalty on sales in his life.