To have placed the descendants of Shakespeare and Milton in respectability and comfort—­in that sphere of life where, with a full provision for our natural wants and social enjoyments, free scope is given to the growth of our intellectual and immortal part, simple justice was all that was required, only that they should have possessed the perpetual copyright of their ancestors’ works, only that they should not have been deprived of their proper inheritance.

The decision which time pronounces upon the reputation of authors, and upon the permanent rank which they are to hold in the estimation of posterity, is unerring and final.  Restore to them that perpetuity in the property of their works, of which the law has deprived them, and the reward of literary labour will ultimately be in just proportion to its deserts.

However slight may be the hope of obtaining any speedy redress, there is some satisfaction in earnestly protesting against this injustice.  And believing as I do, that if society continues to improve, no injustice will long be permitted to continue after it has been fairly exposed, and is clearly apprehended, I cannot but believe that a time must come when the rights of literature will be acknowledged and its wrongs redressed; and that those authors hereafter who shall deserve well of posterity, will have no cause to reproach themselves for having sacrificed the interests of their children when they disregarded the pursuit of fortune for themselves.

COLLOQUY XV.—­THE CONCLUSION.

Montesinos.—­Here Sir Thomas is the opinion which I have attempted to maintain concerning the progress and tendency of society, placed in a proper position, and inexpugnably entrenched here according to the rules of art, by the ablest of all moral engineers.

Sir Thomas More.—­Who may this political Achilles be whom you have called in to your assistance?

Montesinos.—­Whom Fortune rather has sent to my aid, for my reading has never been in such authors.  I have endeavoured always to drink from the spring-head, but never ventured out to fish in deep waters.  Thor, himself, when he had hooked the Great Serpent, was unable to draw him up from the abyss.

Sir Thomas More—­The waters in which you have now been angling have been shallow enough, if the pamphlet in your hand is, as it appears to be, a magazine.

Montesinos.—­“Ego sum is,” said Scaliger, “qui ab omnibus discere volo; neque tam malum librum esse puto, ex quo non aliquem fructum colligere possum.”  I think myself repaid, in a monkish legend, for examining a mass of inane fiction, if I discover a single passage which elucidates the real history or manners of its age.  In old poets of the third and fourth order we are contented with a little ore, and a great deal of dross.  And so in publications of this kind, prejudicial as they are to taste and public feeling, and the public