FLORENCE VANE.
I loved thee long and dearly,
Florence Vane;
My life's bright dream, and early
Hath come again;
I renew, in my fond vision,
My heart's dear pain,
My hopes, and thy derision,
Florence Vane.
The ruin lone and hoary,
The ruin old,
Where thou didst hark my story,
At even told,——
That spot—the hues Elysian
Of sky and plain——
I treasure in my vision,
Florence Vane.
Thou wast lovelier than the roses,
In their prime;
Thy voice excelled the closes
Of sweetest rhyme;
Thy heart was as a river
Without a main;
Would I had loved thee never,
Florence Vane.
But fairest, coldest wonder!
Thy glorious clay
Lieth the green sod under——
Alas the day!
And it boots not to remember
Thy disdain——
To quicken love's pale ember,
Florence Vane.
The lilies of the valley
By young graves weep,
The pansies love to dally
Where maidens sleep;
May their bloom, in beauty vying,
Never wane
Where thine earthly part is lying,
Florence Vane!
We cannot quote others; in the lines "To my Daughter Lilly," may be discovered the tenderness and warmth of his affections; in his Ballads, the fiery and chivalrous phase of his intelligence; in "Ugolino," his pathos; in "Life in the Autumn Woods," his love of nature; and in all his writings, the thoroughly healthy character of his mind.
As a boy and as a young man, we understand, his life was always poetical—apart, original, and commanding affectionate respect. As he grew older, and married, he became practical in his views, reaching that point in the life of genius in which its beautiful ideals take the forms of duty or become the strength of wise resolves. Toward his family, including his father, mother, brothers, and sisters, he cherished a deep and unfaltering devotion. A short time before his last illness he introduced into his household morning and evening prayers. He died, as he had lived, a pure-minded gentleman and humble Christian.
Of his personal appearance a just impression is given by the portrait at the beginning of this article. His carriage was graceful and upright; his frame vigorous and elastic, trained as he was by constant hunting in the Blue Ridge; his hair was black and curling; his eye dark and bright; his expression calm and thoughtful; his manner impressed with dignity.
——"Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer."
DR. HUNTINGTON ON COPYRIGHT.
The author of Alice and Alban has written the following piquant letter on the important subject of International Copyright.
To the Editor of the Morning Chronicle.
As an American deeply interested in the subject of international copyright, and much struck by the fallacies of some of the speakers at a meeting of authors and publishers, recently reported in the London journals, may I, as the subject is fresh so long as it is undecided, beg of your courtesy a little space to point them out.
Let me begin by admitting the force of most that was said by the distinguished chairman on that occasion, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. No man living, perhaps, has a better right than he to complain of my countrymen, to whose intellectual pleasures and moral instruction he has contributed ever since I was a boy, out of the hard labor of his brains—helping to enrich our publishers and booksellers, and to stimulate all the trade connected with bookmaking, and vivifying the circulation of magazines and newspapers—for all which he has never received a penny. The same may be said of Dickens, whose works are of course as familiar to us as to you, and whose characters have become a part of our stock of ideas, more precious than the gold from our new-discovered mines. It is true that neither of these great men has benefited us so much as he might have done if we had paid for our pleasure honorably, for the influence of genius is like that of grace—the fertilizing shower falls in vain on the arid, stony places of selfish and unjust enjoyment. Charles Dickens has never received a penny from us, although we insulted our unpaid creditor when he came among us by asking him to Boz balls and dinners, given on a scale of splendor which showed how well we could have afforded to pay our debt if we had been honest enough to have admitted it. How degrading—how incongruous—for a great nation, such as we boast of being, to be thus the literary pensioners, the intellectual beggars of England, meanly enjoying what we won't pay for? An American would scorn to be fed or clothed gratis; he would "stand treat" with the world; yet he lets an Englishman (of all men!) gratuitously amuse his leisure, satisfy his thirst for knowledge, and clothe the nakedness of his mind. If Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, or Mr. Dickens, were to offer to pay for a pair of trousers for Brother Jonathan, he would knock him down; or if Miss Bell, or whatever is the name of the lady who wrote "Jane Eyre," and her sisters, pretended to make him up a dozen fine shirts as a charity, I think he would go out of his senses. He would rather go bare to the end of his days than owe such an obligation to any he or she Briton in existence; but what are such favors to those which he unblushingly accepts, year after year, from Sir Edward Bulwer and Miss Bell?
But I think, sir, with submission, that an injury has been done to the cause of copyright by resting it on false abstract grounds, which cannot be, and never have been, carried out. If a man has a rightful monopoly in his book, merely because he has produced it, your law is unjust and piratical in fixing a term to copyright—for why should you take away a man's property after he has enjoyed it a certain number of years? On the contrary, one would suppose that the longer he has enjoyed it the more perfect his right, and the greater the wrong to deprive him of it. Time converts even what is unjustly acquired into a legitimate possession—how much more that which the owner has actually created? I would put the matter on simple, concrete grounds, which all men can appreciate. The production of books is an element of civilization, by the common consent of nations. Books cannot be produced unless in some way they procure the authors a subsistence. And whoever produces by his labor a beneficial thing, is entitled to a reasonable compensation from those who are thereby benefited. In former times, when readers were scarce, as copies were costly, the rich, or sovereigns, supported authors directly, by pensions or otherwise. It is now conceded that the best mode of rewarding them is by allowing them an exclusive copyright in their works, and all civilized nations do so. But this mode of remuneration being once established, a foreign author, coming personally, or in his work, into a country, "has as much moral right to his book as he has to his baggage," and it is as barbarous to plunder him of the one as of the other. Why, when was there a time in Europe, or even in Asia or the antique world, that princes and states did not receive and cherish, and nobly reward, foreign men of letters? Are they to be more ignobly treated now that the people have become patrons? But, if deaf to the voice of honor, hear that of justice. Those who enjoy their works are bound to remunerate them for what they have produced at a great expenditure of time, money, and soul-wearing labor. That "the laborer is worthy of his hire," is a divine sentence which sooner or later will judge all those by whom that hire is by fraud "kept back." A country which refuses a fair copyright to authors, whether native or foreign, condemns itself to barbarism. It cultivates in itself a spirit of violence, aggravated by ingratitude to benefactors. There is, too, a sort of indelicacy in this injury, which even the law of reprisal cannot excuse. The benefit which the author of genius confers is something personal. You might as well, if some savage tribe ravished your women, condemn its females, when captured, to insult and dishonor.
Moreover, to refuse copyright to any class of authors (and here, again, I agree with Sir Bulwer), is to refuse it, in part, to all. The native author is robbed of his just hire by such a law, as much as the foreigner. I am compelled by the existing law of American copyright to part with my books for a sum which is under their natural price, and which is not a remunerating price, because I am undersold by reprints for which the authors are paid nothing. Look the fact in the face, ye readers of cheap reprints, who are unwilling to abandon an unjust privilege, which affords you so much pleasure at so low a rate. I have written a book. I have spent years in writing or learning to write it. Perhaps I could do nothing else. The influence of the literary atmosphere in which all who read the English language are forced to live, acting on my special organization, has made literary production a necessary resource. It is the same as if I were a poor shirt-maker, over whose sorrows a Hood has taught you to weep and be indignant. At all events, you approve of my writing, or you would not have read my book so extensively. And yet, because you can refuse to pay foreign authors for books of the same kind, you oblige me to take a nominal price for mine—a price for which it could not be produced by any man living, and less than it would command if you honestly paid for such labor in other instances. You have beaten me down most unfairly. I consider it so; and if every one of the 10 or 12,000 buyers of the cheap edition of "Lady Alice" were to send me a "quarter" (1s.) by mail, I should regard it as a simple restitution; nor would the sum total cover my expenses while writing it.
So far, then, Sir Edward Lytton and myself (if it is not too great presumption in me to join myself with him) cordially agree. And further, it is a most nonsensical and absurd policy for a country thus to swamp its native literature, and to depress and degrade the whole class of native writers. No nation can afford to let foreigners write for it; it would be as unwise as to let them fight its battles. I may add that no nation can afford to embitter its own writers against itself by producing in their minds a sense of injustice. Strong as our feeling of nationality undoubtedly is, it will not stand this for ever. It has seemed strange to some that an American should have written such a book as "Lady Alice," the author of which appears, at first sight, to have expatriated his mind, if not his heart. His being an episcopal clergyman accounts for it in part—for the Church is essentially of Old England, and its clergy and more devoted members are morally domiciled in England, with whose institutions and social system they have a stronger sympathy than with those of their own country. Moreover, for years, he lived only among Englishmen of that class which is most intensely attached to things as they are—a part of the time in England itself. These circumstances made the thing possible. But despair of obtaining any thing like a fair copyright for an American book made it actual—led him to lay aside a projected American story, and try his hand at an English novel, with a bent less serious: at first, indeed, not without some idea of caricature, in a gay, lawless, audacious spirit, in defiance of cant of every kind: but the calm, methodical, somewhat mechanical ηθος of actual English life, when he saw it and felt its restraints, tamed down these peculiarities somewhat. The result was a book which truly excited more surprise than sympathy in England—but which, in America, proved its real nationality by bursting in a trice all the bonds of clique, and, in spite of its acknowledged faults, securing near a hundred thousand readers in a few months. If copyright had been protected as it ought, I should have been reimbursed by so large a sale; but, as it was, even this successful book paid me less than a day laborer could have earned in the time I was writing it, in any part of the States.
But now I want Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton and Mr. Colburn to tell me what good it will do English authors and publishers for you to imitate in this respect the injustice and folly of your transatlantic cousins. Because "literature is in a depressed state," which Sir Edward asserts to be a fact—and because Mr. Colburn cannot afford to give one hundred pounds for a book for which once he would have given £1000—they propose, if I understand them, to have recourse to an unlimited pirating of American literature. I should think (if your British pride will tolerate the expression of my opinion) that the true remedy would be to give a stringent copyright to American authors. Pray which injured the English book-market most—Mr. Colburn's issue of a few hundreds of "Lady Alice" at a guinea and a half, or Mr. Bohn's issue of as many thousands of Mayo's "Kaloolah" at a shilling? Or do they think, as Sir E. Bulwer Lytton seems to imply, that, except Cooper and Irving, we have no authors whose works are readable in Britain? "Typee," and "The Scarlet Letter," and "The Reveries of a Bachelor," and the two works above mentioned, tell a different story. Who can deny the genius and artistic power of Hawthorne, or the clear English simplicity of his style? And if Ik Marvel falls much behind Geoffrey Crayon, we, their countrymen, are no judges—although it is true that the former has fallen upon an affected age. I admit our deterioration. Or is it supposed that we shall cease producing if the possibility of English copyright is taken away? That would be a great mistake. Men who have a vocation for it will write, well or ill, even if they starve, as London garrets can testify. And there is no danger of our starving absolutely. Successful books pay their authors, not adequately, but enough to keep soul and body together. In light literature (so-called, perhaps, because it demands entire devotion and unceasing toil to arrive at excellence in it)—in light literature, which pays best here as well as elsewhere, there is a distinct demand for native works, which all the competition of the cheap pamphlet novels of the Harpers cannot wholly extinguish, and it is by the feeble, but real aid of this national taste that we exist. For my part, I feel a sort of Coriolanus pride in having got nothing, as I may say, for a book which had an unprecedented run; and if my countrymen object, as some of them do, to its principles, I tell them fairly that beggars cannot be choosers. I can live, thank Heaven, in many ways. I could not, indeed, keep school—as my countrymen, I believe, think every literary man should, the better to amuse them at his own expense. Two such drains on the cerebro-nervous system would soon lay me beneath the sod. But I can invest what remains of my patrimony in wild land, till it for my bread, and write a tale every winter, in defiance of the buccaneers.
But suppose that we continue to write (as we shall, depend on it), and that our impracticable Congress—from the difficulty of getting it to look at any question not bearing upon "Who is to be the next President?" or from the general apathy in regard to the injuries of authors, and want of perception as to the important interests of the heart—will not or does not pass an international copyright law, what sense or what honesty will there be in your strangling yourselves meanwhile by permitting Mr. Bohn his black-flag reprisals? Whom do you injure by this species of retaliation? First, and chiefly, your own authors and publishers, and your own literature (and, therefore, you must abandon such a policy sooner or later); and next, your friends on this side the water. For what does our government care if our native authors, even of the highest ability, earn less than common stevedores? Not a rush. Do the people enjoy our works with a less magnanimous gusto, because we have coined our brains and hearts in composing them for bread and patched elbows? Will they be less, in their own estimation, the greatest, the freest, the wisest, and the most enlightened nation upon earth? You retaliate, gentlemen, by injuring those whose sufferings (greater than yours) are already disregarded by the power you would influence; and if you ruined them, you would not ruffle one self-complacent feather of the American eagle. You but do what you can to depress and extinguish the only class of Americans who have a direct interest in getting you what you want, and who are already as eager to obtain it as men usually are to protect themselves from ruinous competition. I do not know what you expect from such a method, unless you think that our government, which has no pity on its native men of letters, will be touched by the distresses of yours.
Believe me, further, that it is the most unlikely way to succeed with the American people, to offer them an international copyright as a matter of bargain. They immediately suspect a design of obtaining an advantage for you, without any real equivalent to themselves. Show them, by granting a free and perfect copyright to all the world, on the same terms as your own subjects, that you regard such a course as the true policy of every state (which it is), and you will be much more likely to gain a hearing. I see nothing in this movement against foreigners getting a copyright, but selfishness overreaching itself.
The Americans are sometimes obtuse to appeals to their sense of justice, when they have an immediate interest in repudiating the claim. I admit it with regret, but it cannot be denied. They do not know how to relinquish the present advantages of a cheap pirated literature—forgetting that the endless reading of cheap books is a vice, and that this deluge of foreign under-priced novels and magazines, good, bad, and indifferent, is washing away every manly national taste. But on the other hand you are too grasping. It is undignified and unbecoming. Why should you so eagerly clutch at a foreign sale for your works, as to sacrifice what you can secure—freedom from injurious competition at home? For my own part (and I am sure I speak the sentiments of every American writer of respectability), give me on this side of the Atlantic, what you may have on yours at pleasure—a fair chance, without being under-bid by pirates—and I ask no more. I will cheerfully relinquish all the advantage to be drawn from an English sale. Without vanity, justly as we are charged with it, or boasting (our national infirmity—heaven knows we came honestly by it), all we want is "a fair field" at home, "and no favor," and we will write books, if not intrinsically so good as those of English authors, yet more congenial to the tastes, and better adapted to supply the intellectual wants, of our countrymen.
To conclude: although the American people appear at times obtuse, as I have said, on the question of justice, and take, as in this instance, a "mighty narrow" view of expediency, they are very open to an appeal to their generosity. Present a bill—above all, an unusual bill—to Brother Jonathan, and he may dispute it, or turn his back on you with all the coolness imaginable; but offer to contribute your sovereign for those poor devils of authors, and he is up to the gentlemanly thing—he will cover your subscription with an eagle. I should be glad to persuade him to do justice under the idea that it was a sort of charity, convinced as I am that, as soon as he had done it, he would see the true nature of the transaction, and blush to have ever stood out about so plain a thing. You Englishmen pretend, even in your national capacity, to believe the Bible (I wish it were true of either us or you). There is one passage which I commend to your consideration, as bearing directly on the practical solution of this question, and sustaining my view of it by a sentence which cannot fail: "Give and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal shall it be measured to you again." And there is another maxim more universal still, which among us is thus familiarly expressed: "Do as you would be done by." By reversing Lord Campbell's decision, you will act ungenerously, that's certain, and I think, unjustly, you will injure your own writers more than ours, and rob us of one of our strongest arguments.
I remain, sir, very respectfully yours,
THE AUTHOR OF "LADY ALICE."
New-York, July 26.
"THE SCIENCE OF DECEPTION."
This is the title of a chapter in "The Age of Veneer," a series of papers appearing from month to month in Fraser's Magazine. At the beginning of it a certain preeminence is claimed for England which some have thought belonged to our own country, but we are not unwilling to yield the distinction:
"The science of deception has of late years attained an immense importance in this good realm of Britain. In other lands,—as, for example, in France or in America,—it is practiced with more or less of success and perfection; but the inherent superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race has asserted itself even in this sinister and questionable pursuit, so that we may fairly claim as decided a preeminence in the arts by which fools are gulled and ruled, as in those more honorable and useful ones by which we have attained a moral dominion over the opinions and tastes of mankind. There may be more finesse in the system of the French deceivers, or the American 'humbug' may, like the other indigenous productions of that remarkable land, be a very monster in the grandeur of his conceptions, and the enormous force brought to bear on their development; but for real, sound, profitable, business-like work in this peculiar line, we back the Britishers against all the world. Like every thing done in the country, their operations in the art of deception are steady, systematic and sure.
"We conceive that we have a right to speak of the 'science' of deception, for it has all the dignity, symmetry, and order of the nobler sciences. It has its mysteries, which are utterly unknown to the uninitiated; it has also its professors, who are men very often raised by the admiration of their own dupes to positions of high honor and great profit. The organization and regulation of its minor ministrants are also complete, and ere a man can hope to reach the high places and carry off the rich prizes, he must go through many grades, and master many secrets, both in theory and practice. Once initiated, he is able to effect results, by comparison with which the glory and the honors reaped by successful soldiers or great discoverers sink into insignificance.
"In a former number an attempt was made to explain some of the means resorted to for the manufacture of public opinion in England, through the journals and other agents, by which the public ear is monopolized. We showed that almost any desired 'public opinion' might be made to order; that there were great contractors, who would not only undertake the duty, but who would also fulfil their undertakings. That similar processes exist in other countries cannot admit of a doubt, but it is questionable whether the corresponding effects in France or America are not produced upon a much lower and more ignorant class of the community, and whether there are in those countries such masses of wealthy, intelligent, and educated persons willing to be cajoled, fleeced, and laughed at, as those we find in our own dearly beloved country. It might, perhaps, be proved that the arts of which we speak succeed with the superior classes of our countrymen in a much larger proportion than with similar classes elsewhere. This science of deception has, of course, for its basis, the production of particular 'opinions,' and the creation of peculiar preferences in the public mind; but although the great contractors for political opinion are, of all the practitioners, the most perfect adepts, their modus operandi is far more difficult, and the secret of their power far more occult than in the case of the general professors or the charlatans.
"Except for the lower class of Frenchmen or Americans such tactics as these are unavailing; all the rest have enough penetration to see through the whole scheme; but in England it is possible to lead by the nose persons who not only ought to know better, but who in all other transactions of life evince the utmost shrewdness and aptitude."
In this series of papers on the Age of Veneer, a general confession of national sins and weaknesses is made by John Bull, and he is shown to have as discerning an apprehension for his own character as he ever had for that of any of his neighbors. The "Age of Veneer" is a happy title, and it gives alone a better idea of English society and manners than can be derived from some hundreds of volumes on the subject that have been printed within our recollection.