The British and Foreign Review: Or, European Quarterly Journal

Schutze des Eigenthums an Werken der Wissenschaft und Kunst gegen Nachdruck und Nachbildung: dargestellt in seinem entstehen und erläutert durch Dr. JULIUS E.

Hitzig. Berlin, 1838. THE debates which have taken place in parliament on the bills successively introduced by Serjeant Talfourd to consolidate the law, and to extend the term, of copyright, do not appear to us to have exhausted the question, or even to have placed it fairly before the public. The law which secures the rights of literary property deals with a subject matter of so subtile and intangible a nature-for ever spreading without limit through the minds of men in all countries and conditionsthat it is a difficult, if not an impracticable task, to contrive such legislative provisions as may at once encourage the productions of literary genius, and protect the fair profits of literary industry. The letter of the law can only deal with the material shape which written thought assumes. Parliament may pass an act to regulate the nature and duration of authors' pro

VOL. VIII.--No XVI.

perty in books; but whilst these rights are secured, thoughts once treasured in the poet's brain or in the student's desk, wander over the world after they have been minted by the press, to follow a higher mission than their author's will could prescribe, and to attain a higher end than their author's remuneration. They are thenceforth living elements of society: the property neither of him who uttered them, nor of him who has caught them on their way-parts of the inexhaustible inheritance of mankind, which is literally increased by the multitude of those who share and use it. Multi pertransibunt, et augebitur scientia. The passage of the many makes smooth the road over the rugged places first traced and trodden by the few. The Idea once launched from a human mind hovers over the world like some guiding spirit, fit for every task and mission, in many shapes, in a thousand different courses, gliding onwards with eternal motion. He to whom it was first given to express it in his time, knew not whence it rose within him. It lay hidden in mines of intellectual mysteries, or it sprang to light like some new star in the sky: he found it in the depths of his researches, and set the gem; he discovered it by his art, and added it to the catalogue of the stars. To the casual or mechanical means and instruments by which the original thinker is fulfilling his duty upon the earth, in obedience doubtless to the sublime law of our existence as a brotherhood of thinking creatures, we are inclined to believe that human provisions cannot be applied effectually ; or, if applied, not without injury to the thinker himself, and to the human race. Books, indeed, are

. one form in which the products of original minds may be cast; but, as Rousseau said, “ Men ought only to write what they cannot do.” There are a thousand ways of utterance, a thousand material vehicles for human conceptions, a thousand monuments of the sovereignty of man over matter-from the novel mechanism of the ingenious artisan, up to the glories of those arts which have filled the world with strong and lovely forms, not of the world—or to the active conceptions of a Columbus inspiring him to open an Atlantic

a continent to mankind. It is vain to hope, and we are persuaded that it is not to be desired, that laws of property should be attached to such achievements as these ; or that notions

of secular reward should be suggested in proportion to their moral grandeur and importance. The world has indeed not the power to repress this noble rage

“Cieco error, tempo avaro, ria fortuna,
Sorda invidia, vil rabbia, iniquo zelo,
Crudo cor, empio ingegno, strano ardire,
Non bastaranno a farmi l'aria bruna,
Non porrann' avanti gli occhi il velo,

Non faran mai, ch'il mio bel sol non mire,” as Giordano Bruno, a martyr for the mind's sake, sang. But neither has the world any material rewards fitted for the remuneration of its highest benefactors. They have been chiefly rewarded with persecution, ignominy, scorn, hunger, and death. These evils the progress of civilization may perhaps lessen ; but in spite of these evils their tasks have been honestly and heroically performed. To offer the world's wages in common dross to any such, might appear a mockery—but it is most a mockery to offer them to those whose performances are most transcendent. What they have done and what they have endured, they would never have attempted or borne for themselves. They claim no property in it; and that is precisely what distinguishes them from the class of humbler men who follow after them: the gleaners in the field gather for themselves, but the reapers are of the household of the Lord of the Harvest.

We should scarcely have been led to enter upon these considerations if an attempt had not been made by the chief movers of the Copyright Bill in parliament to enlist the sympathies of the public in favour of that measure by eloquent lamentations over the fate of genius, and oratorical elegies on the destitution of literary men. The anecdotes which every schoolboy learns in his class-book of the pittance for which the Paradise Lost was sold, and of the afflictions of Dermody, have, in our opinion, very little to do with the matter. In Milton's lifetime and in that of his immediate descendants the Paradise Lost was not a marketable article, consequently the market price given for it was extremely small. When Mr. Wordsworth's poems were published they were not marketable productions. That revered poet has lived, to use the correct and elegant expression of Serjeant Talfourd, to see

« Vorige Doorgaan »

Boeken

The British and Foreign Review: Or, European Quarterly Journal, Volume 8