Authors and their public in ancient times

by George Haven Putnam

The Beginnings of Literature.

WHEN Faust was puzzling his brain concerning the everlasting problem of the nature and origin of things, we find him questioning the utterance of the Hebrew seer: “In the beginning was the Word.” “No,” he says, “this must be wrong. We cannot place the word first in the scale of causation. The writer should have said ‘In the beginning was the Thought.’” On further reflection, this statement also seemed to him inadequate. Is it the Thought that creates and directs all things? Shall we not rather say “In the beginning was the Power?” Even this interpretation, however, fails to stand the test, and, after further wrestling, Faust presents as his solution of the problem the statement, “In the beginning was the ‘Deed.’”

I shall not undertake to consider in this monograph any questions concerning the line of evolution of the universe, and Faust’s questionings are recalled to me only because his final answer is in accord with the experience of man in what he knows of the development of himself, considered either as an individual or as a race.

Assuredly the first thing of which man was conscious was not the word, written or spoken, nor the thought behind the word, nor the power back of the thought, but the deed, which could be seen and felt and estimated. Conscious thought came much later, and the word spoken and the word written, later still. A mental conception, realized as such, and finally taking form as a production of the mind, is a development of a comparatively advanced stage of human existence, the youth of the individual or of the race, while for any definition of the nature of a mental production, and of its just relation to the individual by whom and to the community for which it was produced, we must look still further forward.

Literature—that is, mental conceptions in literary form—had been known for many centuries before the literary idea, and any individual ownership in the form in which such idea was expressed, had been thought out and defined. Literary property—that is, an ownership, on the part of the producer, in a definite expression of literary ideas—dates, nevertheless, from a comparatively early period, and, in one sense, may be said to have existed from the time in which the first “poet” (maker or creator) received his first compensation from a grateful public or an appreciative patron. In the more precise interpretation of the term, it is doubtless more correct, however, to say that literary property dates from the time when authors first received compensation, not from the state or from individual patrons, but from individual readers throughout the community, who were ready to make payment in return for the benefit received. The labor, however, of placing the literary production in the hands of the reader and of collecting from these the compensation for the authors, required an intermediary,—some one to create the machinery for distribution and collection, and usually also to assume the risk and investment required. Literary property could, therefore, come into an assured existence only after, or simultaneously with, the evolution of the publisher. This, then, is the chain of causation at which we have arrived: The deed, the thought awakened by the deed, the consciousness of the thought, the power, first of oral and then of written expression of the thought (usually the description of the deed), which marks the appearance of the poet, the “maker” or author; the consecration of this expression or literary production to a definite purpose, usually the glorification of an individual in the commemoration of his deed; the habit of receiving from such individual a tangible recognition; the widening of the purpose of the production and its dedication to the community as a whole; the giving, by the community in return, of a reward or honorarium; the evolution of the publisher who develops the system under which the amount of the honorarium secured for the author is proportioned (though somewhat roughly) to the number of persons benefited by his productions.

It is when the higher stage of civilization has been reached which is marked by the appearance of the publisher, that we have a true beginning of property in literature.

Centuries must, however, still elapse before we find record of any noteworthy attempts to arrive at precise definitions of the nature and origin of literary property, or to analyze the proper relations of the literary producer as well to the generation for which he originally worked, as to such later generations as derived benefit from his creations.

Chaldea.

—The earliest literature of which the archæologists have thus far found trustworthy evidence appears to be that of the Chaldeans. Their “books,” consisting of baked clay tablets, on which the cuneiform characters had been imprinted with a stylus, were well fitted to withstand the ravages of time, being practically imperishable by either fire or water. The important discovery of specimens of the earlier literature of Chaldea was due to Sir Henry Layard. In 1845 he was fortunate enough, while investigating the mounds at Koyunjik (ancient Nineveh) now identified with the ruins of the palaces of Sennacherib and Asshurbanipal (B.C. 650), to stumble into the chambers which had contained the royal library. Although he was not himself able to decipher the early cuneiform characters with which were covered the masses of clay tablets and fragments of tablets brought to light by his excavations, he readily recognized the importance of the discovery, and took pains to forward to the British Museum a large number of those in the best state of preservation. There they lay until 1870, when George Smith undertook the task of arranging and deciphering them. Smith had been originally employed in the Museum as an engraver, but in the course of his work in engraving cuneiform texts, he had become interested in their study, and by dint of persistent application he soon came to be one of the few acknowledged authorities on the subject.

Months of patient labor were given to the piecing together of the thousands of scattered fragments contained in Layard’s shipment. Then, owing to the enterprise of the London Daily Telegraph (which in 1876 made a novel precedent in journalism by printing from week to week, in juxtaposition with the news of the day, decipherings of the Chaldean writings of five thousand years back), Smith was enabled to go to Mesopotamia, and in three successive journeys very largely to increase the collections of tablets, which finally comprised over 10,000 specimens.