_The natural rights and properties of AUTHORS_ not having been
sufficiently protected, they are defrauded, not indeed of their fame,
though they may not always live to witness it, but of their
_uninterrupted profits_, which might save them from their frequent
degradation in society. That act of Anne which confers on them some
right of property, acknowledges that works of learned men have been
carried on "too often to the ruin of them and their families."
Hence we trace a literary calamity which the public endure in those
"Authors by Profession," who, finding often too late in life that it
is the worst profession, are not scrupulous to live by some means or
other. "I must live," cried one of the brotherhood, shrugging his
shoulders in his misery, and almost blushing for a libel he had just
printed--"I do not see the necessity," was the dignified reply. Trade
was certainly not the origin of authorship. Most of our great authors
have written from a more impetuous impulse than that of a mechanic;
urged by a loftier motive than that of humouring the popular taste,
they have not lowered themselves by writing down to the public, but
have raised the public to them. Untasked, they composed at propitious
intervals; and feeling, not labour, was in their last, as in their
first page.
When we became a reading people, books were to be suited to popular
tastes, and then that trade was opened that leads to the workhouse. A
new race sprang up, that, like Ascham, "spoke as the common people;"
but would not, like Ascham, "think as wise men." The founders of
"Authors by Profession" appear as far back as in the Elizabethan age.
Then there were some roguish wits, who, taking advantage of the public
humour, and yielding their principle to their pen, lived to write, and
wrote to live; loose livers and loose writers!--like Autolycus, they
ran to the fair, with baskets of hasty manufactures, fit for clowns
and maidens.[17]
Even then flourished the craft of authorship, and the mysteries of
bookselling. ROBERT GREENE, the master-wit, wrote "The Art of
Coney-catching," or Cheatery, in which he was an adept; he died of a
surfeit of Rhenish and pickled herrings, at a fatal banquet of
authors;--and left as his legacy among the "Authors by Profession" "A
Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a Million of Repentance." One died of
another kind of surfeit. Another was assassinated in a brothel. But
the list of the calamities of all these worthies have as great variety
as those of the Seven Champions.[18] Nor were the _stationers_, or
_book-venders_, as the publishers of books were first designated, at a
fault in the mysteries of "coney-catching." Deceptive and vaunting
title-pages were practised to such excess, that TOM NASH, an "Author
by Profession," never fastidiously modest, blushed at the title of his
"Pierce Pennilesse," which the publisher had flourished in the first
edition, like "a tedious mountebank." The booksellers forged great
names to recommend their works, and passed off in currency their base
metal stamped with a royal head. "It was an usual thing in those
days," says honest Anthony Wood, "to set a great name to a book or
books, by the sharking booksellers or snivelling writers, to get
bread."
Such authors as these are unfortunate, before they are criminal; they
often tire out their youth before they discover that "Author by
Profession" is a denomination ridiculously assumed, for it is none!
The first efforts of men of genius are usually honourable ones; but
too often they suffer that genius to be debased. Many who would have
composed history have turned voluminous party-writers; many a noble
satirist has become a hungry libeller. Men who are starved in
society, hold to it but loosely. They are the children of Nemesis!
they avenge themselves--and with the Satan of MILTON they exclaim,
Evil, be thou my good!
Never were their feelings more vehemently echoed than by this
Nash--the creature of genius, of famine, and despair. He lived indeed
in the age of Elizabeth, but writes as if he had lived in our own. He
proclaimed himself to the world as _Pierce Pennilesse_, and on a
retrospect of his _literary life_, observes that he had "sat up late
and rose early, contended with the cold, and conversed with
scarcitie;" he says, "all my labours turned to losse,--I was despised
and neglected, my paines not regarded, or slightly rewarded, and I
myself, in prime of my best wit, laid open to povertie. Whereupon I
accused my fortune, railed on my patrons, bit my pen, rent my papers,
and raged."--And then comes the after-reflection, which so frequently
provokes the anger of genius: "How many base men that wanted those
parts I had, enjoyed content at will, and had wealth at command! I
called to mind a cobbler that was worth five hundred pounds; an
hostler that had built a goodly inn; a carman in a leather pilche that
had whipt a thousand pound out of his horse's tail--and have I more
than these? thought I to myself; am I better born? am I better brought
up? yea, and better favoured! and yet am I a beggar? How am I crost,
or whence is this curse? Even from hence, the men that should employ
such as I am, are enamoured of their own wits, though they be never so
scurvie; that a scrivener is better paid than a scholar; and men of
art must seek to live among cormorants, or be kept under by dunces,
who count it policy to keep them bare to follow their books the
better." And then, Nash thus utters the cries of--