Let us turn now, for a moment, to the producers of works of fiction.  Sir Walter Scott had carefully studied Scottish and Border history, and thus had filled his mind with facts preserved, and ideas produced, by others, which he reproduced in a different form.  He made no contribution to knowledge.  So, too, with our own very successful Washington Irving.  He drew largely upon the common stock of ideas, and dressed them up in a new, and what has proved to be a most attractive form.  So, again, with Mr. Dickens.  Read his “Bleak House” and you will find that he has been a most careful observer of men and things, and has thereby been enabled to collect a great number of facts that he has dressed up in different forms, but that is all he has done.  He is in the condition of a man who had entered a large garden and collected a variety of the most beautiful flowers growing therein, of which he had made a fine bouquet.  The owner of the garden would naturally say to him:  “The flowers are mine, but the arrangement is yours.  You cannot keep the bouquet, but you may smell it, or show it for your own profit, for an hour or two, but then it must come to me.  If you prefer it, I am willing to pay you for your services, giving you a fair compensation for your time and taste.”  This is exactly what society says to Mr. Dickens, who makes such beautiful literary bouquets.  What is right in the individual, cannot be wrong in the mass of individuals of which society is composed.  Nevertheless, the author objects to this, insisting that he is owner of the bouquet itself, although he has paid no wages to the man who raised the flowers.  Were he asked to do so, he would, as I shall show in another letter, regard it as leading to great injustice.

LETTER II.

Let us suppose, now, that you should move, in the Senate, a resolution looking to the establishment of the exclusive right of making known the facts, or ideas, that might be brought to light, and see what would be the effect.  You would, as I think, find yourself at once surrounded by the gentlemen who dress up those facts and ideas, and issue them in the form of books.  The geographer would say to you:  “My dear sir, this will never do.  Look at my book, and you will see that it is drawn altogether from the works of others, many of whom have sunk their fortunes, while others have lost their lives, in pursuit of the knowledge that I so cheaply give the world.  You will find there the essence of the works of Humboldt, and of Wilkes.  All of Franklin’s discoveries are there, and I am now waiting only for the appearance of McClure’s voyage in the Arctic regions to give a new edition of my book.  Reflect, I beseech you, upon what you are about to do.  Very few persons have leisure to read, or means to pay for the books of these travellers.  A few hundred copies are sufficient to satisfy the demand, and then their works die out.  Of mine, on the contrary, the sale