A historian of the stage owes so much of his material to the printed copies of plays, with their title-pages, their prefatory epistles, and their stage-directions, that he can hardly be dispensed from giving some account of the process by which plays got into print. Otherwise I should have been abundantly content to have left the subject with a reference to the researches of others, and notably of that accomplished bibliographer, my friend Mr. A. W. Pollard, to whom in any event the debt of these pages must be great. The earliest attempts to control the book-trade are of the nature of commercial restrictions, and concern themselves with the regulation of alien craftsmanship.[513] But when Tudor policy had to deal with expressions of political and religious opinion, and in particular when the interlude as well as the pamphlet, not without encouragement from Cranmer and Cromwell, became an instrument of ecclesiastical controversy, it was not long before the State found itself committed to the methods of a literary censorship. We have already followed in detail the phases of the control to which the spoken play was subjected.[514] The story of the printed play was closely analogous; and in both cases the ultimate term of the evolution, so far as our period is concerned, was the establishment of the authority of the Master of the Revels. The printing and selling of plays, however, was of course only one fragment of the general business of book-production. Censorship was applied to many kinds of books, and was also in practice closely bound up with the logically distinct problem of copyright. This to the Elizabethan mind was a principle debarring one publisher from producing and selling a book in which another member of his trade had already a vested interest. The conception of a copyright vested in the author as distinct from the publisher of a book had as yet hardly emerged.
The earliest essay in censorship in fact took the form of an extension of the procedure, under which protection had for some time past been given to the copyright in individual books through the issue of a royal privilege forbidding their republication by any other than the privileged owner or printer.[515] Three proclamations of Henry VIII against heretical or seditious books, in 1529, 1530, and 1536, were followed in 1538 by a fourth, which forbade the printing of any English book except with a licence given ‘upon examination made by some of his gracis priuie counsayle, or other suche as his highnes shall appoynte’, and further directed that a book so licensed should not bear the words ‘Cum priuilegio regali’ without the addition of ‘ad imprimendum solum’, and that ‘the hole copie, or els at the least theffect of his licence and priuilege be therwith printed’.[516] The intention was apparently to distinguish between a merely regulative privilege or licence to print, and the older and fuller type of privilege which also conveyed a protection of copyright. Finally, in 1546, a fifth proclamation laid down that every ‘Englishe boke, balet or playe’ must bear the names of the printer and author and the ‘daye of the printe’, and that an advance copy must be placed in the hands of the local mayor two days before publication.[517] It is not quite clear whether these requirements were intended to replace, or merely to reinforce, that of a licence. Henry’s proclamations lost their validity upon his death in 1547, but the policy of licensing was continued by his successors. Under Edward VI we get, first a Privy Council order of 1549, directing that all English books printed or sold should be examined and allowed by ‘Mr Secretary Peter, Mr Secretary Smith and Mr Cicill, or the one of them’, and secondly a proclamation of 1551, requiring allowance ‘by his maiestie, or his priuie counsayl in writing signed with his maiesties most gratious hand or the handes of sixe of his sayd priuie counsayl’.[518] Mary in her turn, though with a different emphasis on the kind of opinion to be suppressed, issued three proclamations against heretical books in 1553, 1555, and 1558, and in the first of these limited printers to books for which they had ‘her graces speciall licence in writynge’.[519] It is noteworthy that both in 1551 and in 1553 the printing and the playing of interludes were put upon exactly the same footing.
Mary, however, took another step of the first importance for the further history of publishing, by the grant on 4 May 1557 a charter of incorporation to the London Company of Stationers.[520] This was an old organization, traceable as far back as 1404.[521] By the sixteenth century it had come to include the printers who manufactured, as well as the stationers who sold, books; and many, although not all of its members, exercised both avocations. No doubt the issue of the charter had its origin in mixed motives. The stationers wanted the status and the powers of economic regulation within their trade which it conferred; the Government wanted the aid of the stationers in establishing a more effective control over the printed promulgation of inconvenient doctrines. This preoccupation is clearly manifested in the preamble to the charter, with its assertion that ‘seueral seditious and heretical books’ are ‘daily published’; and the objects of both parties were met by a provision that ‘no person shall practise or exercise the art or mystery of printing or stamping any book unless the same person is, or shall be, one of the society of the foresaid mystery of a stationer of the city aforesaid, or has for that purpose obtained our licence’. This practically freed the associated stationers from any danger of outside competition, and it immensely simplified the task of the heresy hunters by enlisting the help of the Company against the establishment of printing-presses by any but well-known and responsible craftsmen. Registration is always half-way towards regulation. The charter did not, however, dispense, even for the members of the Company, with the requirement of a licence; nor did it give the Company any specific functions in connexion with the issue of licences, and although Elizabeth confirmed her sister’s grant on 10 November 1559, she had already, in the course of the ecclesiastical settlement earlier in the year, taken steps to provide for the continuance of the old system, and specifically laid it down that the administration of the Company was to be subordinate thereto. The licensing authority rested ultimately upon the Act of Supremacy, by which the power of ecclesiastical jurisdiction for the ‘reformation, order, and correction’ of all ‘errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, contempts, and enormities’ was annexed to the Crown, and the Crown was authorized to exercise its jurisdiction through the agency of a commission appointed under letters patent.[522] This Act received the royal assent on 8 May 1559, together with the Act of Uniformity which established the Book of Common Prayer, and made it an offence ‘in any interludes, plays, songs, rhymes, or by other open words’ to ‘declare or speak anything in the derogation, depraving, or despising’ of that book.[523] In the course of June followed a body of Injunctions, intended as a code of ecclesiastical discipline to be promulgated at a series of diocesan visitations held by commissioners under the Act of Supremacy. One of these Injunctions is directly concerned with the abuses of printers of books.[524] It begins by forbidding any book or paper to be printed without an express written licence either from the Queen herself or from six of the Privy Council, or after perusal from two persons being either the Archbishop of Canterbury or York, the Bishop of London, the Chancellor of Oxford or Cambridge, or the Bishop or Archdeacon for the place of printing. One of the two must always be the Ordinary, and the names of the licensers are to be ‘added in the end’ of every book. This seems sufficiently to cover the ground, but the Injunction goes on to make a special reference to ‘pamphlets, plays and ballads’, from which anything ‘heretical, seditious, or unseemly for Christian ears’ ought to be excluded; and for these it prescribes a licence from ‘such her majesty’s commissioners, or three of them, as be appointed in the city of London to hear and determine divers causes ecclesiastical’. These commissioners are also to punish breaches of the Injunction, and to take and notify an order as to the prohibition or permission of ‘all other books of matters of religion or policy, or governance’. An exemption is granted for books ordinarily used in universities or schools. The Master and Wardens of the Stationers’ Company are ‘straitly’ commanded to be obedient to the Injunction. The commission here referred to was not one of those entrusted with the diocesan visitations, but a more permanent body sitting in London itself, which came to be known as the High Commission. The reference to it in the Injunction reads like an afterthought, but as the principal members of this commission were the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, there is not so much inconsistency between the two forms of procedure laid down as might at first sight appear. The High Commission was not in fact yet in existence when the Injunctions were issued, but it was constituted under a patent of 19 July 1559, and was renewed from time to time by fresh patents throughout the reign.[525] The original members, other than the two prelates, were chiefly Privy Councillors, Masters of Requests, and other lawyers. The size of the body was considerably increased by later patents, and a number of divines were added. The patent of 1559 conferred upon the commissioners a general power to exercise the royal jurisdiction in matters ecclesiastical. It does not repeat in terms the provisions for the ‘allowing’ of books contained in the Injunctions, but merely recites that ‘divers seditious books’ have been set forth, and empowers the commissioners to inquire into them.
The Injunctions and the Commission must be taken as embodying the official machinery for the licensing of books up to the time of the well-known Star Chamber order of 1586, although the continued anxiety of the government in the matter is shown by a series of proclamations and orders which suggest that no absolutely effective method of suppressing undesirable publications had as yet been attained.[526] Mr. Pollard, who regards the procedure contemplated by the Injunctions as ‘impossible’, believes that in practice the Stationers’ Company, in ordinary cases, itself acted as a licensing authority.[527] Certainly this is the testimony, as regards the period 1576–86, of a note of Sir John Lambe, Dean of the Arches, in 1636, which is based wholly or in part upon information derived from Felix Kingston, then Master of the Company.[528] Kingston added the detail that in the case of a divinity book of importance the opinion of theological experts was taken. Mr. Pollard expresses a doubt whether Lambe or Kingston had much evidence before them other than the registers of the Company which are still extant, and to these we are in a position to turn for confirmation or qualification of their statements.[529] Unfortunately, the ordinances or constitutions under which the master and wardens acted from the time of the incorporation have not been preserved, and any additions made to these by the Court of Assistants before the Restoration have not been printed.[530] We have some revised ordinances of 1678–82, and these help us by recording as of ‘ancient usage’ a practice of entering all publications, other than those under letters patent, in ‘the register-book of this company’.[531] It is in fact this register, incorporated from 1557 to 1571 in the annual accounts of the wardens and kept from 1576 onwards as a subsidiary book by the clerk, which furnishes our principal material. During 1557–71 the entries for each year are collected under a general heading, which takes various forms. In 1557–8 it is ‘The entrynge of all such copyes as be lycensed to be prynted by the master and wardyns of the mystery of stacioners’; in 1558–9 simply ‘Lycense for pryntinge’; in 1559–60, for which year the entries are mixed up with others, ‘Receptes for fynes, graunting of coppyes and other thynges’; in 1560–1 ‘For takynge of fynes for coppyes’. This formula lasts until 1565–6, when ‘The entrynge of coopyes’ takes its place. The wording of the individual entries also varies during the period, but generally it indicates the receipt of a money payment in return for a license.[532] In a very few cases, by no means always of divinity books, the licence is said to be ‘by’, or the licence or perhaps the book itself, to be ‘authorized’ or ‘allowed’ or ‘perused’ or ‘appointed’ by the Bishop of London; still more rarely by the Archbishop of Canterbury or by both prelates; once by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York; once by the Council.[533]
Richard Collins, on his appointment as Clerk of the Company in 1575, records that one of his duties was to enter ‘lycences for pryntinge of copies’ and one section of his register is accordingly devoted to this purpose.[534] It has no general heading, but the summary accounts of the wardens up to 1596 continue to refer to the receipts as ‘for licencinge of copies’.[535] The character of the individual entries between 1576 and 1586 is much as in the account books. The name of a stationer is given in the margin and is followed by some such formula as ‘Receyved of him for his licence to prynte’ or more briefly ‘Lycenced vnto him’, with the title of the book, any supplementary information which the clerk thought relevant, and a note of the payment made. Occasional alternatives are ‘Allowed’, ‘Admitted’, ‘Graunted’ or ‘Tolerated’ ‘vnto him’, of which the three first appear to have been regarded as especially appropriate to transfers of existing copyrights;[536] and towards the end of the period appears the more important variant ‘Allowed vnto him for his copie’.[537] References to external authorizers gradually become rather more frequent, although they are still the exception and not the rule; the function is fulfilled, not only by the bishop, the archbishop, or the Council, but also upon occasion by the Lord Chancellor or the Secretary, by individual Privy Councillors, by the Lord Mayor, the Recorder or the Remembrancer of the City, and by certain masters and doctors, who may be the ministers mentioned by Felix Kingston, and who probably held regular deputations from a proper ecclesiastical authority as ‘correctors’ to the printers.[538] It is certain that such a post was held in 1571 by one Talbot, a servant of the Archbishop of Canterbury. On the other hand the clerk, at first tentatively and then as a matter of regular practice, begins to record the part taken by the master and wardens. The first example is a very explicit entry, in which the book is said to be ‘licensed to be printed’ by the archbishop and ‘alowed’ by the master and a warden.[539] But the formula which becomes normal does not dwell on any differentiation of functions, and merely states the licence as being ‘under the hands of’ the wardens or of one of them or the master, or of these and of some one who may be presumed to be an external corrector. To the precise significance of ‘under the hands of’ I must return. Increased caution with regard to dangerous books is also borne witness to during this period by the occasional issue of a qualified licence. In 1580 Richard Jones has to sign his name in the register to a promise ‘to bring the whole impression’ of The Labyrinth of Liberty ‘into the Hall in case it be disliked when it is printed’.[540] In 1583 the same stationer undertakes ‘to print of his own perill’.[541] In 1584 it is a play which is thus brought into question, Lyly’s Sapho and Phao, and Thomas Cadman gets no more than ‘yt is graunted vnto him yat yf he gett ye commedie of Sappho laufully alowed vnto him, then none of this cumpanie shall interrupt him to enjoye yt’. Other entries direct that lawful authority must be obtained before printing, and in one case there is a specific reference to the royal Injunctions.[542] Conditions of other kinds are also sometimes found in entries; a book must be printed at a particular press, or the licence is to be voided if it prove to be another man’s copy.[543] The caution of the Stationers may have been motived by dissatisfaction on the part of the government which finally took shape in the issue of the Star Chamber order of 23 June 1586. This was a result of the firmer policy towards Puritan indiscipline initiated by Whitgift and the new High Commission which he procured on his succession to the primacy in 1583.[544] It had two main objects. One, with which we are not immediately concerned, was to limit the number of printers and their presses; the other, to concentrate the censorship of all ordinary books, including plays, in the hands of the archbishop and the bishop. It is not clear whether the prelates were to act in their ordinary capacity or as High Commissioners; anyhow they had the authority of the High Commission, itself backed by the Privy Council, behind them. The effect of the order is shown in a bustle amongst the publishers to get on to the register a number of ballads and other trifles which they had hitherto neglected to enter, and in a considerable increase in the submissions of books for approval, either to the prelates themselves, or to persons who are now clearly acting as ecclesiastical deputies.[545] On 30 June 1588 an official list of deputies was issued by the archbishop, and amongst these were several who had already authorized books before and after 1586. These deputies, and other correctors whose names appear in the register at later dates, are as a rule traceable as episcopal chaplains, prebendaries of St. Paul’s, or holders of London benefices.[546] Some of them were themselves members of the High Commission. Occasionally laymen were appointed.[547] The main work of correction now fell to these officials, but books were still sometimes allowed by the archbishop or bishop in person, or by the Privy Council or some member of that body.
The reaction of the changes of 1586–88 upon the entries in the register is on the whole one of degree rather than of kind. Occasionally the wording suggests a differentiation between the functions of the wardens and those of the ecclesiastical licensers, but more often the clerk contents himself with a mere record of what ‘hands’ each book was under.[548] Some shifting of the point of view is doubtless involved in the fact that ‘Entered vnto him for his copie’ and ‘Allowed vnto him for his copie’ now become the normal formulas, and by 1590–1 ‘Licenced vnto him’ has disappeared altogether.[549] But a great number of books, including most ballads and pamphlets and some plays, are still entered without note of any authority other than that of the wardens, and about 1593 the proportion of cases submitted to the ecclesiastical deputies sensibly begins to slacken, although the continuance of conditional entries shows that some caution was exercised. An intervention of the prelates in 1599 reversed the tendency again.[550] As regards plays in particular, the wardens received a sharp reminder, ‘that noe playes be printed except they be allowed by suche as haue authority’; and although they do not seem to have interpreted this as requiring reference to a corrector in every case, conditional entries of plays become for a time numerous.[551] They stop altogether in 1607, when the responsibility for play correction appears to have been taken over, presumably under an arrangement with the prelates, by the Master of the Revels.[552] Henceforward and to the end of Buck’s mastership, nearly all play entries are under the hands not only of the wardens, but of the Master or of a deputy acting on his behalf. Meanwhile, for books other than plays, the ecclesiastical authority succeeded more and more in establishing itself, although even up to the time of the Commonwealth the wardens never altogether ceased to enter ballads and such small deer on their own responsibility.
A little more may be gleaned from the ‘Fynes for breakinge of good orders’, which like the book entries were recorded by the wardens in their annual accounts up to 1571 and by the clerk in his register from 1576 to 1605.[553] But many of these were for irregularities in apprenticeship and the like, and where a particular book was concerned, the book is more often named than the precise offence committed in relation to it. The fine is for printing ‘contrary to the orders of this howse’, ‘contrary to our ordenaunces’, or merely ‘disorderly’. Trade defects, such as ‘stechyng’ of books, are sometimes in question, and sometimes the infringement of other men’s copies.[554] But the character of the books concerned suggests that some at least of the fines for printing ‘without lycense’, ‘without aucthoritie’, ‘without alowance’, ‘without entrance’, ‘before the wardyns handes were to yt’ were due to breaches of the regulations for censorship, and in a few instances the information is specific.[555] The book is a ‘lewde’ book, or ‘not tolerable’, or has already been condemned to be burnt, or the printing is contrary to ‘her maiesties prohibicon’ or ‘the decrees of the star chamber’.[556] More rarely a fine was accompanied by the sequestration of the offending books, or the breaking up of a press, or even imprisonment. In these cases the company may have been acting under stimulus from higher powers; in dealing with a culprit in 1579, they direct that ‘for his offence, so farre as it toucheth ye same house only, he shall paye a fine’.[557]
Putting together the entries and the fines, we can arrive at an approximate notion of the position occupied by the Stationers’ Company as an intermediary between the individual stationers and the higher powers in Church and State. That it is only approximate and that many points of detail remain obscure is largely due to the methods of the clerk. Richard Collins did not realize the importance, at least to the future historian, of set diplomatic formulas, and it is by no means clear to what extent the variations in the phrasing of his record correspond to variations in the facts recorded. But it is my impression that he was in substance a careful registrar, especially as regards the authority under which his entries were made, and that if he did not note the presence in any case of a corrector’s ‘hand’ to a book, it is fair evidence that such a hand was not before him. On this assumption the register confirms the inference to be drawn from the statements of Lambe and Kingston in 1636, that before 1586 the provision of the Injunctions for licensing by the High Commission for London was not ordinarily operative, and that as a rule the only actual licences issued were those of the Stationers’ Company, who used their own discretion in submitting books about which they felt doubtful to the bishop or the archbishop or to an authorized corrector.[558] That books licensed by the Company without such reference were regarded as having been technically licensed under the Injunctions, one would hesitate to say. Licence is a fairly general term, and as used in the Stationers’ Register it does not necessarily cover anything more than a permit required by the internal ordinances of the Company itself. Certainly its officials claimed to issue licences to its members for other purposes than printing.[559] What Lambe and Kingston do not tell us, and perhaps ought to have told us, is that, when the master and wardens did call in the assistance of expert referees, it was not to ‘ministers’ merely chosen by themselves that they applied, but to official correctors nominated by the High Commission, or by the archbishop or bishop on its behalf. Nor must it be supposed that no supervision of the proceedings of the company was exercised by the High Commission itself. We find that body writing to the Company to uphold a patent in 1560.[560] It was upon its motion in 1566 that the Privy Council made a Star Chamber order calling attention to irregularities which had taken place, and directing the master and wardens to search for the offenders.[561] And its authority, concurrent with that of the Privy Council itself, to license books, is confirmed by a letter of the Council to the company in 1570.[562] So much for the period before 1586. Another thing which Lambe and Kingston do not tell us, and which the register, if it can be trusted, does, is that the effective change introduced by the Star Chamber of that year was only one of degree and not of kind. It is true that an increasing number of books came, after one set-back, to be submitted to correctors; that the clerk begins to lay emphasis in his wording upon entrance rather than upon licence; that there are some hints that the direct responsibility of the wardens was for a kind of ‘allowance’ distinct from and supplementary to that of censorship. But it does not appear to be true that, then or at any later time, they wholly refused to enter any book except after taking cognizance of an authority beyond their own.
In fact the register, from the very beginning, was not purely, or perhaps even primarily, one of allowances. It had two other functions, even more important from the point of view of the internal economy of the Company. It was a fee-book, subsidiary to the annual accounts of the wardens, and showing the details of sums which they had to return in those accounts.[563] And it was a register of copyrights. A stationer brought his copy to the wardens and paid his fee, in order that he might be protected by an official acknowledgement of his interest in the book against any infringement by a trade competitor. No doubt the wardens would not, and under the ordinances of the company might not, give this acknowledgement, unless they were satisfied that the book was one which might lawfully be printed. But copyright was what the stationer wanted, for after all most books were not dangerous in the eyes even of an Elizabethan censorship, whereas there would be little profit in publishing, if any rival were at liberty to cut in and reprint for himself the result of a successful speculation. It is a clear proof of this that the entrances include, not only new books, but also those in which rights had been transferred from one stationer to another.[564] Obviously no new allowance by a corrector would be required in such cases. And as regards copyright and licence alike, the entry in the register, although convenient to all concerned, was in itself no more than registration, the formal putting upon record of action already taken upon responsible authority. This authority did not rest with the clerk. In a few cases, indeed, he does seem to have entered an unimportant book at his own discretion.[565] But his functions were really subordinate to those of the wardens, as is shown by his practice from about 1580, of regularly citing the ‘hands’ or signed directions of those officers, as well as of the correctors, upon which he was acting. These ‘hands’ are not in the register, and there is sufficient evidence that they were ordinarily endorsed upon the manuscript or a printed copy of the book itself.[566] Exceptionally there might be an oral direction, or a separate letter or warrant of approval, which was probably preserved in a cupboard at the company’s hall.[567] Here too were kept copies of prints, although not, I think, the endorsed copies, which seem to have remained with the stationers.[568] I take it that the procedure was somewhat as follows. The stationer would bring his book to a warden together with the fee or some plausible excuse for deferring payment to a later date. The warden had to consider the questions both of property and of licence. Possibly the title of each book was published in the hall, in order that any other stationer who thought that he had an interest in it might make his claim.[569] Cases of disputed interest would go for determination to the Court of Assistants, who with the master and wardens for the year formed the ultimate governing body of the company, and had power in the last resort to revoke an authority to print already granted.[570] But if no difficulty as to ownership arose, and if the book was already endorsed as allowable by a corrector, the warden would add his own endorsement, and it was then open to the stationer to take the book to the clerk, show the ‘hands’, pay the fee if it was still outstanding, and get the formalities completed by registration.[571] If, however, the warden found no endorsement by a corrector on the copy, then there were three courses open to him. He might take the risk of passing an obviously harmless book on his own responsibility. He might refuse his ‘hand’ until the stationer had got that of the corrector. Or he might make a qualified endorsement, which the clerk would note in the register, sanctioning publication so far as copyright was concerned, but only upon condition that proper authority should first be obtained. The dates on the title-pages of plays, when compared with those of the entries, suggest that, as would indeed be natural, the procedure was completed before publication; not necessarily before printing, as the endorsements were sometimes on printed copies.[572] Several cases of re-entry after a considerable interval may indicate that copyright lapsed unless it was exercised within a reasonable time. As a rule, a play appeared within a year or so after it was entered, and was either printed or published by the stationer who had entered it, or by some other to whom he is known, or may plausibly be supposed, to have transferred his interest. Where a considerable interval exists between the date of an entry and that of the first known print, it is sometimes possible that an earlier print has been lost.[573]
I do not think that it can be assumed that the absence of an entry in the register is evidence that the book was not duly licensed, so far as the ecclesiastical authorities were concerned. If its status was subsequently questioned, the signed copy could itself be produced. Certainly, when a conditional entry had been made, requiring better authority to be obtained, the fulfilment of the condition was by no means always, although it was sometimes, recorded. Possibly the ‘better authority’ was shown to the warden rather than the clerk. On the other hand, it is certain that, under the ordinances of the Company, publication without entrance exposed the stationer to a fine, and it is therefore probable that entrance was also necessary to secure copyright.[574] Sometimes the omission was repaired on the occasion of a subsequent transfer of interest. So far as plays are concerned, there seems to have been greater laxity in this respect as time went on. Before 1586, or at any rate before 1584, there are hardly any unentered plays, if we make the reasonable assumption that certain prints of 1573 and 1575 appeared in the missing lists for 1571–5.[575] Between 1584 and 1615 the number is considerable, being over fifty, or nearly a quarter of the total number of plays printed during that period. An examination of individual cases does not disclose any obvious reason why some plays should be entered and others not. The unentered plays are spread over the whole period concerned. They come from the repertories of nearly all the theatres. They include ‘surreptitious’ plays, which may be supposed to have been printed without the consent of the authors or owners, but they also include plays to which prefaces by authors or owners are prefixed. They were issued by publishers of good standing as well as by others less reputable; and as a rule their publishers appear to have been entering or not entering, quite indifferently, at about the same date. To this generalization I find an exception, in Thomas Archer, who printed six plays without entry between 1607 and 1613 and entered none.[576] The large number of unentered plays is rather a puzzle, and I do not know the solution. In some cases, as we shall see, the publishers may have preferred not to court publicity for their enterprises by bringing them before the wardens. In others they may merely have been unbusinesslike, or may have thought that the chances of profit hardly justified the expenditure of sixpence on acquiring copyright. Yet many of the unentered plays went through more than one edition, including Mucedorus, a book of enduring popularity, and they do not appear to have been particularly subject to invasion by rival publishers. I will leave it to Mr. Pollard.