[3] Rawlinson’s Bodleian MSS., vol. ii., lett. 38.
[4] I refer the reader to “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. ii. art. “Of Suppressors and Dilapidators of Manuscripts;” he will there find that in the case of the Marquis of Halifax’ Diary, of which to secure its preservation the writer had left two copies, both were silently destroyed by two opposite partisans, the one startled at some mean deceptions of the Revolutionists of 1688, and the other at the Catholic intrigues of the court.
THE WAR AGAINST BOOKS.
The history of our literature, at the early era of printing, till the first indications appear of what is termed “copyright,” forms a chapter in the history of our civilization which has not been opened to us.
This history includes two important incidents in our literary annals; the one, an exposition of the complicate arts practised by an alarmed government to possess an absolute control over the printers, which annihilated the freedom of the press; and the other, the contests of those printers and booksellers who had grants and licenses, and other privileges of a monopoly, with the rest of the brotherhood, who maintained an equal right of publication, and contended for the freedom of the trade.
Although Caxton, our first printer, bore the title of Regius Impressor, printed books were still so rare in this country under Richard the Third, that an act of parliament in 1483 contains a proviso in favour of aliens to encourage the importation of books. During a period of forty years, books were supplied by foreign printers, some of whom appear to have accompanied their merchandise, and to have settled themselves here. It became necessary to repeal this privilege conceded to foreign presses, when under Henry the Eighth the art of printing was skilfully exercised by the King’s natural subjects, and to protect the English printers lest their art should decline from a failure of encouragement.
Our earliest printers were the vendors and the binders of their own books, and their domicile on their title-pages directed the curious to their abodes. Few in number, their limited editions, it is conjectured, did not exceed from two to four hundred copies. The first printers were generally men of competent wealth; and every book was the sole property of its single printer. The separate departments of author, bookseller, and bookbinder, were not yet required, for as yet there was no “reading public.” Some of our ancient printers combined all these characters in themselves. The commerce of literature had not yet opened in the speculative vendors of books, and that race of writers who have been designated in the modern phrase as “authors by profession.” The very nature of literary property could only originate in a more advanced and intellectual state of society, when unsettled opinions and contending principles would create a growing demand for books which no one yet contemplated, and a property, of a novel and peculiar nature, in the very thoughts and words of a writer.
The art of printing, confined within a few hands, was usually practised under the patronage of the King, or the Archbishop, or some nobleman. There existed not the remotest suspicion, that the simple machinery of the printer’s press, could ever be converted into an engine of torture to try the strength, or the truth, of the church and the state. Sedition, or any allusion to public affairs, never entered the brains of the ingenious mechanics, solely occupied in lowering the prices of the text-writers in the manuscript market, by their own novel and wondrous transcript. Their first wares had consisted of romances which were consulted as authentic histories; “dictes, or sayings,” of ancient sages which no one cared to contradict; and homilies and allegories whose voluminousness had no tediousness. Neither did the higher powers ever imagine that any control seemed needful over the printer’s press. They only lent the sanction of their names, or the shelter of their abode, at the Abbey of Westminster or the monastery of St. Albans, to encourage the manufacture of a novel curiosity, for its beautiful toy, a printed book—and the press at first was at once free and innocent.