The modern epoch of cheap literature may_The Old Printer and the Modern Press

however partially, in 1827, when Constable issued his 'Miscellany,' and

the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge their 'Library of

Useful Knowledge.' In a few years followed 'The Library of Entertaining

Knowledge,' Mr. Murray's 'Family Library,' and Lardner's 'Cabinet

Cyclopædia.' These books were properly published under a tentative

system. Not one of them rushed to that extreme cheapness which is

indicated by quantity alone. They each had to feel their way to a demand

proportioned to the expense of their production. That production was

necessarily expensive. The cheapness consisted in the employment of the

best writers to produce books of original merit at a price that was

essentially low, by comparison with the ordinary rate at which books for

the few were sold. Though Constable, in his grand style, talked of

millions of buyers, he charged his little volumes 3_s._ 6_d._ each. He

was right. The millions were not ready to buy such books at a shilling,

nor even at sixpence. They are not ready now. 'The Library of Useful

Knowledge' was charged at the rate of 3_d._ a sheet. Taking mere

quantity of paper and printing into account, some of the penny journals

of the present day are six times as cheap. 'The Library of Entertaining

Knowledge' was 4_s._ 6_d._ a volume. The copyright of each volume

ordinarily cost 200_l._, and the woodcuts as much, and even more. 'The

Family Library,' at 5_s._, was, no doubt, equally costly. The same

costliness applies to Lardner's 'Cyclopædia,' published at 6_s._ In

these new undertakings, conceived in a totally different spirit from

anything which had preceded them, there were large expenses which have

been surprisingly reduced by scientific discovery and extended

competition at the present day. There were about twenty woodcutters in

London in 1827, who were real artists, paid at artists' prices.

Woodcutting is now a manufacture. Paper, then, paid the high rate of

duty, and was 50 per cent. dearer. Steam-printing was not universal, and

was only applied to common works. Each of these series was offered to

the very numerous body of those who, having become better educated than

the same classes in a previous generation, were desirous of real

improvement. They had a certain success, but a variable one. Every

experiment of this sort has shown that such collections of separate and

independent works cannot rely upon a sale as a series. They come to be

bought, each work by itself, according to its attractions for individual

purchasers. Thence all those irregularities of sale, and consequent

accumulations of stock, which press heavily upon the profits of those

volumes which are successful. The republication of the 'Waverley Novels'

in 5_s._ volumes was an exception to this rule. They constituted an

integral work. Their sale was vast, although the total cost was 12_l._

Scott and his publisher saw the immense field that was before them, in

giving their books to the world at a price that would carry them into

thousands of households, instead of limiting them to the circulating

libraries. They originally appeared in seventy-four volumes, at an

aggregate cost of 34_l._ 10_s._ Had they remained in their original

form, and at their first price, those heroic efforts which lifted a

mountain of debt off the shoulders of that great man who, perhaps, more

than all men, might have claimed the motto which Burke said should be

his—"Nitor in adversum"—those labours which wore him out, would not have

been successful. Neither would the success have come so soon had the

later publication in twenty-five volumes for 5_l._ been tried in the

first instance. If the 'Waverley Novels' go through new phases of

cheapness, it will be because there is now a larger public to buy; and

because the first natural price for all works of extraordinary merit,

that of authorship, has been already paid largely and liberally. The

question of price is then mainly reduced to a question of paper and

print. But miserable would it be for a nation whose "chiefest glory is

its authors," at a time when the nature of that glory is properly

understood, if a passion for premature cheapness, to be measured by mere

quantity, were to possess the minds of the people, and to be the

expression of the "Vox populi." There was a much larger public always

ready to purchase these enchanting fictions than have been, at any time

during the last quarter of a century, ready for the purchase of books of

information, however agreeably presented. We doubt whether the Family

Libraries, and the Libraries of Entertaining Knowledge, and the Cabinet

Cyclopædias, would have sold better at the time of their publication, if

they had been produced at half the original price. The experiment was

tried, when the number of readers was largely increased, in 'Knight's

Weekly Volume'—a series published at one-third the price of Constable's

'Miscellany.' The majority of books in that series were, for the most

part, of intrinsic merit; many also carrying the recommendation of

popular names as their authors. "Why Mr. Knight did not profit largely

by the speculation is a problem yet to be solved," says the writer of a

recent paper on 'Literature for the People.' The solution is, that the

people did not sufficiently buy them. So far from twenty thousand copies

being sold of many volumes, as asserted, there were not twenty volumes,

out of the hundred and forty, that reached a sale of ten thousand, and

the average sale was scarcely five thousand. They were not cheap enough

for the humble, who looked to mere quantity. They were too cheap for the

genteel, who were _then_ taught to think that a cheap book must

necessarily be a bad book. It is impossible not to remember that, even

ten years ago, the majority of publishers, and many of their supporters

in the public journals, hated cheap books. The 'Weekly Volumes' were

welcomed very generally by those who were anxious for the enlightenment

of the people. Societies were set on foot for their circulation. But all

experience has shown that no associations for recommending books, and

forcing their sale, can be successful. The people, of every grade, will

choose for themselves. It is useless to urge an adult, whether male or

female, to buy a solid book when an exciting one is longed for. It is

worse than useless to give books of improvement away to the poor. They

always suspect the motive. Very wisely did a witness before the "Select

Committee on Newspaper Stamps," 1851, say, "There are classes which you

cannot reach, unless you go to them with something which is the nearest

thing to what they want." If they want fiction, they will not look at

science or history. At the time of the issue of 'The Weekly Volume,' the

sale of books at railway stations was unknown; and if it had been known,

they scarcely presented sufficient attractions for the travelling

readers for amusement. They were published also in too quick succession.

It was a plausible theory of the editor, that, if good books, extremely

cheap, were issued rapidly enough to form a little library, many such

libraries would be formed. Those who have to deal with 'Literature for

the People' must bear in mind that time as well as money has to be

economised by those who of necessity must labour hard either by hand or

head. What may be called furniture books may be bought by the luxurious,

to put upon their shelves, and looked at when wanted. The earnest

workers buy few books that they are not desirous to read, and to read at

once. They bought such a book in 1830, to the extent of 50,000 copies.

'The Results of Machinery,' written by the author of this volume, was

addressed to great human interests. It was not professedly amusing; but

it was the first attempt to take Political Economy out of its hard and

logical track. It is now recorded, as a wonderful instance of the

application of cheapness to a dry subject, that Mr. M'Culloch's 'Essay

on the Rate of Wages,' is republished at a shilling. It is in no spirit

of self-laudation that we presume to think that the vaunted cheapness of

1854 had some previous examples.

In this principle, that the great mass of the people will read as they

buy, lies the secret of the enormous success of the weekly sheets of

that great epoch of cheapness which began about twenty years ago. It is

the principle which is the foundation of the extensive demand, growing

year by year, for all periodical literature. It made the essayists. It

made the magazines. It made the newspapers. It caused a sale of three

hundred thousand weekly sheets in 1834. It is causing a sale of fourteen

hundred thousand weekly sheets in 1854. Before we proceed in the

examination of this remarkable epoch of popular literature, let us

glance at the influence of mechanical and scientific improvement on the

cheapening of books during the last thirty or forty years.

Those who have followed us in our notices of the early history of

printing will scarcely have failed to see how the ordinary laws of

demand and supply have regulated the progress of this art, whose

productions might, at first sight, appear to form an exception to other

productions required by the necessities of mankind. There can be little

doubt, we think, that when several ingenious men were, at the same

moment, applying their skill to the discovery or perfection of a rapid

mode of multiplying copies of books, there was a demand for books which

could not well be supplied by the existing process of writing. That

demand had doubtless been created by the anxiety to think for themselves

which had sprung up amongst the laity of Catholic Europe. There was a

very general desire amongst the wealthier classes to obtain a knowledge

of the principles of their religion from the fountain-head,—the Bible.

The desire could not be gratified except at an enormous cost. Printing

was at last discovered; and Bibles were produced without limitation of

number. The instant, therefore, that the demand for Bibles could be

supplied, the supply acted upon the demand, by increasing it in every

direction; and when it was found that not only Bibles but many other

books of real value, such as copies of the ancient classics, could be

produced with a facility equal to the wants of every purchaser, books at

once became a large branch of commerce, and the presses of the first

printers never lacked employment. The purchasers of books, however, in

the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were almost wholly confined to the

class of nobles and those of the richer citizens and scholars by

profession. It was a very long time before the influence of the press

had produced any direct effect upon the habits of the great mass of the

people. It was not till the system of periodical literature was fairly

established, and that newspapers first, and magazines and reviews

subsequently, had taken hold of the popular mind, that the productions

of the press could be said to be in demand amongst the people generally.

Up to our own times that demand has been limited to very narrow bounds;

and the circumstances by which it has been extended are as remarkable as

those which accompanied the progress of the original invention of

printing. The same principle of demand going before supply, and the same

reaction of supply upon demand, will be found to have marked the

operations of the printing-press in this country, during the last

twenty-five years, as distinctly as they marked them throughout Europe

in the latter part of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the

sixteenth. We will shortly recapitulate these circumstances.

A few years after the commencement of the present century, a system of

education, which is now known throughout Europe as that of _mutual_

_instruction_, was introduced into this country. In whatever mode this

system was called into action, its first experiments soon demonstrated

that, through it, education might be bestowed at a much cheaper rate

than had ever before been considered practicable. This success

encouraged the friends of education to exertions quite unexampled; and

the British and Foreign School Society, and the National Society, had,

in a very few years, taught some thousands of children to read and

write, who, without the new arrangements which had been brought into

practice, would in great part have remained completely untaught. A

demand for books of a new class was thus preparing on every side. The

demand would not be very sudden or very urgent; but it would still

exist, and would become stronger and stronger till a supply was in some

degree provided for it It would act, too, indirectly but surely, upon

that portion of society whose demand for knowledge had already been in

part supplied. The principle of educating the humblest in the scale of

society would necessarily give an impulse to the education of the class

immediately above them. The impulse would indeed be least felt by the

large establishments for education at the other end of the scale; and

thus, whilst the children of the peasant and the tradesman would learn

many valuable lessons through the influence of a desire for knowledge

for its own sake, and of love for their instructors, many of the boys of

our great public schools would long remain acquiring only a knowledge of

words and not of things, and influenced chiefly by a degrading fear of

brutal punishment. The demand for knowledge thus created, and daily

gathering strength amongst the bulk of the people, could not be

adequately supplied forty years ago by the mechanical inventions then

employed in the art of printing. Exactly in the same way as the demand

for knowledge which began to agitate men's minds about the middle of the

fifteenth century produced the invention of printing, so the great

extension of the demand in England, at the beginning of the nineteenth

century, produced those mechanical improvements which have created a new

æra in the typographical art. These improvements consist in the process

of stereotyping, and in the printing-machine, as distinguished from the

printing-press.

As several approaches had been made before the time of Faust to the

principle of printing books from moveable types, so the principle of

producing impressions from a cylinder, and of inking the types by a

roller, which are the great principles of the printing-machine, had been

discovered in this country as early as the year 1790. In that year Mr.

William Nicholson took out a patent for certain improvements in

printing, the specification of which clearly shows that to him belongs

the first suggestion of printing from cylinders. But this inventor, like

many other ingenious men, was led astray by a part of his project, which

was highly difficult, if not impracticable, to the neglect of that

portion of his plan which, since his time, has been brought into the

most perfect operation. Nicholson's patent was never acted upon. The

first maker of a printing-machine was Mr. Koenig, a native of Saxony;

and the first sheet of paper printed by cylinders, and by steam, was the

'Times' newspaper of the 28th November, 1814. The machine thus for the

first time brought into action was that of Mr. Koenig. It has been

superseded by machines of improved construction.

Let us imagine a state of things in which the demand for works of large

numbers should have gone on increasing, while the mechanical means of

supplying that demand had remained stationary—had remained as they were

at the beginning of the present century. Before the invention of

stereotyping it was necessary to print off considerable impressions of

the few books in general demand, such as bibles and prayer-books, that

the cost of composition might be so far divided as to allow the book to

be sold cheap: with several school-books, also, it was not uncommon to

go to press with an edition of 10,000 copies. Two men, working eight

hours a-day each, would produce 1000 perfect impressions (impressions on

each side) of a sheet per day; and thus, if a book consisted of twenty

sheets (the size of an ordinary school-book), one press would produce

the twenty sheets in 200 days. If a printer, therefore, were engaged in

the production of such a school-book, who could only devote one press to

the operation, it would require very nearly three-quarters of a year to

complete 10,000 copies of that work. It is thus evident, that if the

work were to be published on a given day, it must begin to be printed at

least three-quarters of a year before it could be published; and that

there must be a considerable outlay of capital in paper and in printing

for a long time before any return could be expected. This advance of

capital would have a necessary influence on the price of the book, in

addition to the difference of the cost of working by hand as compared

with working by machinery; and there probably the inconvenience of the

tedious progress we have described would stop. But take a case which

would allow no time for this long preparation. Take a daily newspaper,

for instance, of which great part of the news must be collected, and

written, and printed within twenty-four hours; calling into operation

reporters at home, correspondents abroad, expresses, electric

telegraphs. Formerly, the number printed of the most popular daily paper

would be limited to five thousand; and this number could not be produced

in time without the most perfect division of labour aiding the most

intense exertion, provided that paper were printed by hand. The 'Times'

newspaper now produces forty thousand copies in less than four hours,

from one set of types.

If the difficulties that existed in producing any considerable number of

newspapers before the invention of the printing-machine were almost

insurmountable, equally striking will the advantages of that invention

appear when we consider its application to the cheap weekly sheets, of

which the 'Penny Magazine' was the type. Let us suppose that the

education of the people had gone on uninterruptedly in the schools of

mutual instruction, and that the mechanical means for supplying the

demand for knowledge thus created had sustained no improvement. If the

demand for knowledge had led to the establishment of the 'Penny

Magazine' before the improvement of printing, it is probable that the

sale of twenty thousand copies would have been considered the utmost

that could have been calculated upon. One thousand perfect copies could

only have been daily produced at one press by the labour of two men. The

machine produces sixteen thousand copies. If the demand for a penny

sheet, printed thus slowly by the press, had reached twenty thousand, it

would have required two presses to produce that twenty thousand in the

same time—namely, ten days—in which one hundred and sixty thousand are

produced by the machine; and it would have required one press to be at

work one hundred and sixty days, or sixteen presses for ten days, to

effect the same results as the machine effects in ten days. But, in

point of fact, such a sale could never have been reached under the old

system of press-work. The hand-labour, as compared with the machine,

would have added at least forty per cent. to the cost of production,

even if the sixteen presses could have been set in motion. Without

stereotyping for duplicates, no attempt would have been made to set them

in motion; for the cost of re-engraving woodcuts, and of re-composing

the types, would have put a natural commercial limit to the operation.

The invention of the paper-machine was concurrent with the invention of

the printing-machine. Without the paper-machine, the material of books,

and newspapers, and journals, could never have been supplied with any

reference to cheapness. Chemistry, too, has converted the coarsest rags,

and the dirtiest cotton-wool, into fine pulp. The material of which this

book is formed existed a few month ago, perhaps, in the shape of a

tattered frock, whose shreds, exposed for years to the sun and wind,

covered the sturdy loins of the shepherd watching his sheep on the

plains of Hungary;—or it might have formed part of the coarse blue shirt

of the Italian sailor, on board some little trading-vessel of the

Mediterranean;—or it might have pertained to the once tidy _camicia_ of

the neat straw-plaiter of Tuscany, who, on the eve of some festival,

when her head was intent upon gay things, condemned the garment to the

_stracci-vendolo_ (rag-merchant) of Leghorn;—or it might have

constituted the coarse covering of the flock-bed of the farmer of

Saxony, or once looked bright in the damask table-cloth of the burgher

of Hamburgh;—or, lastly, it might have been swept, new and unworn, out

of the vast collection of the shreds and patches, the fustian and

buckram, of a London tailor; or might have accompanied every revolution

of a fashionable coat in the shape of lining—having travelled from St.

James's to St. Giles's, from Bond Street to Monmouth Street, from Rag

Fair to the Dublin Liberty, till man disowned the vesture, and the

kennel-sweeper claimed its miserable remains. In each or all of these

forms, and in hundreds more which it would be useless to describe, this

sheet of paper a short time since might have existed. No matter, now,

what the colour of the rag—how oily the cotton—what filth it has

gathered and harboured through all its transmutation—the scientific

paper-maker can produce out of these filthy materials one of the most

beautiful productions of manufacture. But he has a difficulty in

obtaining even these coarse materials. The advance of a people in

civilisation has not only a tendency to make the supply of rags

abundant, but, at the same time, to increase the demand for rags. The

use of machinery in manufactures renders clothing cheap; the cheapness

of clothing causes its consumption to increase, not only in the

proportion of an increasing population, but by the scale of individual

expenditure; the stock of rags is therefore increasing in the same ratio

that our looms produce more linen and cotton cloth. But then the

increase of knowledge runs in a parallel line with this increase of

comforts; and the increase of knowledge requires an increase of books.

The principle of publishing books and tracts, to be read by thousands

instead of tens and hundreds, has already caused a large addition to the

demand for printing-paper. Science made paper cheap in spite of

taxation. The government has worked against science to keep books dear.

We cannot pass over the mechanical and other scientific improvements in

typography, which preceded and accompanied the great epoch of cheapness

of the last quarter of a century, without more particularly noticing the

revival, for so it may be called, of the art of woodcutting. In the

'Penny Magazine' of 1836, the editor says that no expense or labour has

been spared to attain every improvement of which the art of woodcutting

is susceptible—that the engravings of 305 numbers have cost 12,000_l._

(about 40_l._ a number)—that many difficulties have been overcome in

adapting the character of the engravings to the rapid movements of the

printing-machine—and that the art, in connexion with the cheapest form

of printing, has been carried further than at one time was thought to be

possible. This was written in 1836. Let any one look at a common book

with woodcuts, printed thirty years ago, and he will understand what

difficulties had to be overcome before 'The Penny Magazine' could

present successful copies of works of art. This 'Penny Magazine,' which

some even now affect to sneer at, produced a revolution in popular art

throughout the world. It created similar works, to which it supplied

stereotype casts, in Germany, France, Holland, Livonia (in Russian and

German), Bohemia (in Sclavonic), Italy, Ionian Islands (in Modern

Greek), Sweden, Norway, Spanish America, the Brazils, the United States.

It raised up imitators on every side, and directed the union of art and

letters into new channels. It was the forerunner of 'Punch,' and of 'The

Illustrated London News.' A great art-critic of 1836 proclaimed, with

oracular solemnity, "As there is no royal road to mathematics, so we

say, once for all, there is no Penny Magazine road to the Fine Arts—the

cultivation of the Fine Arts must be carried on by a comparatively small

and gifted few, under the patronage of men of wealth and leisure." Many

eminent designers—amongst whom are the honoured names of Harvey,

Cruikshank, Doyle, Leech, Tenniel, Anelay, Gilbert—have gone the "Penny

Magazine road," and found it quite as sure a highway to distinction, and

far more pleasant, than the old by-way of patronage, so weary to the

gifted few. It is wonderful how long and how tenaciously, both in

literature and art, men clung to that idol Patronage. They are gone—the

Chesterfields who kept Johnson seven years waiting in outward rooms,—and

the Mansfields who grudged Wilkie thirty guineas for 'The Village

Politicians:'—

"Peor and Baälim

Forsake their temples dim."

[Footnote 30: Miss Martineau's 'History of the Peace,' vol. i. p. 580.]

[Footnote 31: 'Address of the Committee,' June 1, 1843.]

CHAPTER V.

London Catalogue, 1816-1851—Annual Catalogues, 1828-1853—Classes of

Books, 1816-1861—Periodicals, 1831, 1853—Aggregate amount of Book-trade—

Collections and Libraries—International Copyright—Readers in the United

States—Irish National School-books.

'The London Catalogue of Books published in Great Britain, 1816 to

1851,' furnishes, in its alphabetical list, with "sizes, prices, and

publishers' names," that insight into the character and extent of the

literature of a generation which we cannot derive from any other source.

We have already given some of the calculations of past periods. Let us

endeavour to trace what the commerce of books has been in our own time.

Every book in this 'London Catalogue' occupies a single line. There are

72 lines in a page; there are 626 pages. It follows that the Catalogue

contains the titles of 45,072 books. In these 36 years, then, there was

an average annual publication of 1252 books. This number is more than

double the average of the period from 1800 to 1827. There is also

published, by the proprietor of 'The London Catalogue,' an Annual

Catalogue of New Books. From two of these catalogues we derive the

following comparative results for the beginning and the end of a quarter

of a century:—

1828. New publications 842

1853. " 2530

1828. Total number of volumes 1105

1853. " " 2934

1828. Total cost of one set of the new publications £668 10 0

1853. " " " 1058 17 9

1828. Average price of each new work 0 16 0

1853. " " 0 8 4½

1828. Average price per volume of the new publications 0 12 1

1853. " " " 0 7 2½

Such calculations are not arrived at without the labour of many hours;

but the labour is not ill-bestowed by us, for they afford better data

for opinion than loose talk about the number, quality, and price of

books. Hence we learn, that, in 1853, there were three times as many

books published as in 1828; that the comparative increase in the number

of volumes was not so great, showing that of the new books more single

volumes were published; that the total cost of one set of the new

publications had increased by more than one-half of the former cost;

that the average price of each new work had been reduced nearly

one-half; and that the average price per volume had fallen about 5s.

below the price of 1828. A further analysis of this Annual List shows

that, of the 2530 books published in 1853, only 287 were published at a

guinea and upwards; and that of these only 206 were books of general

information; while 28 were law-books, and 53 of the well-accustomed dear

class of guinea-and-a-half novels. Decidedly the Quarto Dynasty had died

out.

As a supplement to the 'London Catalogue, 1816-1851,' there is published

a 'Classified Index.' Through this we are enabled to estimate in round

numbers the sort of books which the people were buying, or reading, or

neglecting, in these 36 years.[32] We find that they were invited to

purchase in the following proportion of classes:—

Works on divinity 10,300

History and geography 4,900

Fiction 3,500

Foreign languages and school-books 4,000

Drama and poetry 3,400

Juvenile books 2,900

Medical 2,500

Biography 1,850

Law 1,850

Science.—Zoology 550

" Botany 700

" Chemistry 170

" Geology 280

" Mathematics 350

" Astronomy 150

" Natural philosophy 300

——— 2,450

Arts,&c.—Antiquities 350

" Architecture 500

" Fine arts 450

" Games and sports 300

" Illustrated works 500

" Music 220

" Genealogy and heraldry 140

——— 2,460

Industry.—Mechanics, &c. 500

" Agriculture 250

" Trade and commerce 600

" Political economy, statistics 700

" Military 300

Moral Sciences.—Philology, &c. 350

" Education 300

" Moral philosophy 300

" Morals 450

" Domestic economy 200

——— 1,400

Miscellaneous (so classed) 1,400

——————

45,260

But the Catalogues of New Books fall very short of affording a complete

view of the state of popular literature at any given period. We must

apply to other sources of information.

The publication of 'The Penny Magazine,' and of 'Chambers' Journal,' in

1832, was concurrent with a general increase in the demand for

periodical works. At the end of 1831 there were issued 177 monthly

publications, a single copy of which cost 17_l._ 12_s._ 6_d._ At the end

of 1833 there were 236 monthly periodicals, a single copy of which cost

23_l._ 3_s._ 6_d._ At the end of 1853 there were 362 of the same monthly

class, a single copy of which cost 14_l._ 17_s._ 6_d._ In 1831 the

average price of the monthly periodicals was 2_s._; in 1833, 1_s._

11½_d._; and in 1853, 9½_d._ Can there be any doubt of the adaptation of

periodical literature, during these years, to the wondrous extension of

readers?

It appears from 'The London Catalogue of Periodicals,' published by

Messrs. Longman and Co., from which we derive the calculations we have

now made, that there are 56 _weekly_ periodicals. There were 21 in 1833.

But this list, which is adapted for what is known as 'The Trade,' is far

from including all the cheap sheets that are issued weekly from the

London press. There is a very large class of such publications that are

very rarely found in the shops of regular booksellers, either in town or

country. Many of these periodicals have the taint upon them of the names

of their publishers; and some of them a few years ago were infamous. We

do not find in the 'London Catalogue of Periodicals' the names of

several works, and of one especially, which present the most remarkable

example in our times of the extent to which cheap literature is offered

to the people in marts which are comparatively unknown to the upper and

middle classes. The facilities of communication have sent an

unparalleled quantity of weekly sheets through the land, at a rate of

cheapness which defies all competition of literary quality against

weight of paper and crowding of print. In every shop of every

back-street of London and the larger towns, where a tradesman in tobacco

or lollipops or lucifer-matches formerly grew thin upon his small amount

of daily halfpence, there now rush in the schoolboy, the apprentice, the

milliner, the factory-girl, the clerk, and the small shopkeeper, for

their 'London Journal,' 'Family Herald,' 'Reynolds' Miscellany,' and

'Cassell's Paper.' We have ascertained, from sources upon which we can

rely, that of these four sheets a million copies are sold weekly. Of the

contents of these, and other cheap works, we shall have presently to

speak.

When we look back at the various periods of English publication, and

consider how amazingly the aggregate number of books published in any

one period has increased, we must also regard the size and price of the

works published to form any adequate notion of the progress of cheap

literature. With a general reduction of price during the last twenty

years—with the substitution of duodecimos for quartos—and with single

volumes beyond all former precedent—there is little doubt that the

annual returns of the publishing trade, in all its departments (we

include newspapers), are double what they were in 1833. They were

estimated then at 2,500,000_l._ We should not be wide of the mark in

considering them at present to have reached to 5,000,000_l._ As the

silk-trade is now to be estimated, not by the number of ladies of

fashion who wear brocade on court-days, but of the millions who buy a

silk dress for ordinary use; so is the book-trade to be estimated, not

by the number of the learned who once bought folios, and of the rich who

rejoiced in exclusive quartos, but of the many to whom a small volume of

a living author has become a necessity for instruction or for amusement,

and who desire to read our established literature in editions well

printed and carefully edited, though essentially cheap. This number of

readers is constantly increasing, and as constantly pressing for a

reduction of price upon modern books of high reputation. Mr. Macaulay's

'Essays' were originally published at 1_l._ 16_s._; they then appeared

in one large volume at 1_l._ 1_s._ Messrs. Longman now advertise a

"People's Edition," in 7 monthly parts at 1_s._, and in numbers at

1½_d._ They do so, they say, "on the recommendation of correspondents

who have expressed their desire to possess them, but who have found the

existing editions beyond their means."

In turning over the leaves of the London Catalogue from 1816 to 1851, we

rejoice to see how much has been done in this direction, whatever may be

the greater amount yet to be done. Of the Poets—Byron, Campbell, Crabbe,

Coleridge, Moore, Scott, Southey, Wordsworth, are obtainable at the most

reasonable prices, in collected editions. The elder Poets may be had in

the Aldine Series, and in new collections, now in course of publication.

The most popular of the recent Novelists—Scott, Dickens, D'Israeli,

Lytton, Thackeray—are in volumes whose cheapness introduces them to many

a fireside where the original editions would find no place. Wilkinson's

'Egypt,' Alison's 'History of Europe,' the works of Chalmers, and many

extensive theological books, have been reproduced at cheap rates. The

various 'Libraries' which have been published and are still

publishing—Bohn's Antiquarian, Classics, Classical, Ecclesiastical,

Illustrated, Scientific, and Standard; the Library of Entertaining

Knowledge; the Family Library; the Edinburgh Cabinet Library; Lardner's

Cyclopædia; Family Classical Library; Knight's Weekly Volumes; Jardine's

Naturalist's Library; Murray's Home and Colonial Library; Sacred

Classics; Christian Family Library; Smith's Standard Library; Tegg's

Standard Library; National Illustrated Library; Reading for the Rail;

Traveller's Library; Standard Novels; Chambers' Miscellany of Facts;

Papers for the People; Instructive Library; Weale's Rudimentary Series:

these, the more important of the various Collections that can be called

cheap, comprise no fewer than 1400 volumes. It would require an

enumeration which is the province of the future bibliographer, to show

how many separate books, in every department of knowledge, have been

issued during the last twenty years, with a distinct reference to the

means of the greatest number of readers. But the process here, as in

other cases, has necessarily been gradual. The general cheapening of

books must be gradual to be safe. The soundings of the perilous sea of

publishing must be constantly taken. There is no chart for this

navigation which exhibits all the sunken rocks and quicksands.

In addition to the Collections just enumerated, we have the new

Libraries, whether known as Cheap Series, Parlour Library, Pocket

Library, Railway Library, or Readable Books. These are, for the most

part, devoted to novels, old and new, and to American reprints. In this

form 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' rushed into a circulation which no book—with

the exception of the Bible and Prayer-Book, and perhaps some

Spelling-Book—ever before attained. Here Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton is to

reach a popularity which no novelist ever before reached; and to be paid

"the extravagant sum of 20,000_l._ for the exclusive sale of his works

for the next ten years," as we are assured in 'The Times.' We hear of

enormous profits made, and fortunes realised, by these books. They meet

the eye on every railway stall and in every stationer's window,

glittering in green and crimson. But we also sometimes hear of large

stocks of unsaleable ventures, and of consequent evil-fortune, in spite

of one or two profitable undertakings. We have great confidence in the

largest sale of the cheapest edition of an attractive book by an author

of reputation; but we have no confidence in the large individual sale of

a great number of such distinct books, each jostling the other in the

race for popularity. We believe that the sale of many such works has

been much exaggerated. We hear that the margin of profit, as commercial

men say, is very narrow, and leaves little surplus to cover risk. Of one

thing we are clear. Whatever sum may be paid for a great name, the

natural sale of books of this class can afford very little for the

payment of copyright in ordinary cases. The paper, machine-work, and

binding, we are informed, of one of the shilling volumes will cost, for

an impression of 10,000, about 220_l._, and the trade expenses and

advertising will raise that cost to 250_l._ This is 6_d._ per copy. They

are sold wholesale at 8_s._ for 13 copies, which leaves a surplus of

about 60_l._ But the setting up the types and the stereotyping will cost

about 40_l._ There is 20_l._ then left for the publisher upon 10,000_l._

If he sells 20,000_l._ there is 80_l._ Where is the fund for the payment

of authorship? Is it to be assumed that a sale of 40,000 or 50,000

copies may at present be attained for such works under ordinary

conditions? If not, is the cheapest supply of reading for these kingdoms

to be kept up by piracies from America or republications of expired

copyrights? We doubt if this trade generally is in a healthy position:

at any rate, we fear that we must scarcely look to this class of books

for making "Cheap Literature" what it might be made by judicious

management—an instrument of great public good. Piracy from American

authors has been, within these few years, chiefly confined to the

shilling Railway Volumes; and it had a great success while all the

elements that combine to produce an anti-slavery enthusiasm were in

operation. But it has lost the charm of novelty, and the fashion of

American novels is now somewhat stale. In the mean while the United

States never relax in their course. In Mr. Carey's 'Letters on

International Copyright,' published at Philadelphia in 1853, we have

some details of the advantage of the fraudulent cheapness to the

American public. He says, Mr. Dickens sells 'Bleak House' in England for

21_s._ (5 dollars); comparing the book with copyright books in America,

of which the sale is large, he would expect 3 dollars under the

international system. The number of 'Bleak House' supplied to American

readers in newspapers and magazines, as well as in the book form, is not

less than 250,000, at half a dollar, giving for the whole 125,000

dollars. Mr. Dickens would charge 750,000 dollars:—

Dollars.

Difference to the American public upon 'Bleak House' 625,000.

Reckoning in the same way, the following differences are estimated:—

Dollars.

Upon Sir E. Bulwer Lytton's last work, 166,000 copies 350,000

Upon Mr. Macaulay's History 125,000 " 400,000

Upon Sir A. Alison's History 25,000 " 500,000

Upon Jane Eyre 80,000 " 75,000

——————-

Total difference on five books 1,950,000

This is a difference of 409,500_l._ sterling. Mr. Carey deduces from

these figures this logical consequence: "Under the system of

international copyright, one of two things must be done: either the

people _must_ be taxed in the whole of this amount for the benefit of

the various persons, abroad and at home, who are now to be invested with

the monopoly power, or they _must_ largely diminish their purchases of

literary food." He would not have a healthy cheapness, produced in both

countries by an open commerce and a fair competition. He would not have

a cheapness produced by the publishers of both countries reckoning upon

an extended market, and a consequent division of the first expenses of a

book. He would have a piratical cheapness—the cheapness of the smuggler

and the illicit distiller—"for the general interests of the American

people." This ingenious gentleman has a ready defence. There is no

which the body is produced to the world. Mr. Macaulay has contributed

nothing to positive knowledge. Mr. Dickens has gone into a large garden,

and made a bouquet of the flowers, although he paid no wages to the man

who raised them. He who makes a book uses the common property of

mankind, and all he furnishes is the workmanship. Mankind has,

therefore, a right to say to the authors, whenever they seek an

extension of their privileges, "Be content, my friends; do not risk the

loss of a part of what you have, in the effort to obtain more." Mr.

Carey is further obliging enough to tell us that in England authors,

with a few brilliant exceptions, are condemned to almost hopeless

poverty, which he attributes to our system of centralization. Why do not

the wealthy people of England give a shilling a head towards paying for

the copyright of books, instead of bringing the poverty of authors

before the world, and demanding from other countries an extension of the

monopoly they have at home? The people of England, through

centralization, have become so poor and wretched that there is no demand

for books, and no power to compensate the people who make them. Authors

there are badly paid and insolently treated. Science is in no request in

England, and hence the diminution of supply. In contrast with the

limited sale of English books at home is the great extent of sale here.

_Argal_, let the authors starve at home; why should we, the great

American people, tax ourselves for their aid? We give them _fame_, and

that is enough. Let not _our_ writers, adds this candid and modest

gentleman, desire to barter our great market for literature for one in

which Hood was permitted to starve, and Tennyson and others submit to

the degradation of receiving public charity in the shape of pensions.

The wretched English authors may come and live amongst us, and

participate in our advantages. American authorship is Belgrave Square;

let it not make a treaty with the Grub Street of England, to have a

dinner from our well-furnished tables. We think Mr. Carey, "Author of

Principles of Political Economy," has done service by this astounding

effrontery. If he reflected the mind of the Government or the people, we

should be hopeless of any attempt to unite England and America in the

protection of a common literature founded upon a common language. But

Mr. Carey does not reflect this mind. He does not even speak for the

great body of American authors or publishers. He speaks for the

proprietors of the newspapers, which, all over the Union, are filled,

week by week, by the piracy of modern English Literature, and especially

of English fiction. To keep up this robbery, writers and orators will

alike prostitute themselves to defend, unblushingly, what they know to

be a disgrace.

But in one point Mr. Carey is right. He shows us, upon representations

which we cannot doubt, that the works of popular authors, citizens of

the United States, and so protected as copyright, are sold in much

larger numbers than similar works in our own country, however cheap. How

is this? The American people are much more universally readers than the

English people. They are better educated. They have a Government that

considers it a duty to educate the young without distinction, and to

afford the adult every means of intellectual improvement. The American

Government has created a reading nation. Our Government has created a

people that rush to low casinos in the towns, and to sottish beer-shops

in the country. The American Government accords all honour to them who

have laboured in the enlightenment of the masses. Our Government wholly

passes over every such claim to recognition. It is of little

consequence, in the end, what Cabinets or Parliaments do for the advance

of education, or the encouragement of men of letters. But it is somewhat

unwise, to say the least of it, to provoke, by neglect and by injury,

comparison with a nation that cultivates the same language under

different institutions, and that can proclaim, in its energetic youth,

that it has raised up an intelligent people out of the great mental

inheritance to which our rulers have been faithless.

By injury? it will be said. The British Government may ignore letters,

undervalue writers, barter away its patronage upon ignorance and

incapacity—but assuredly it cannot attempt to inflict direct injury upon

literature and learning? And yet it does all this. The sale of

school-books in the United States has reached an almost fabulous extent.

Families have been raised to affluence by the enormous circulation of a

Spelling-book or a Dictionary. A successful Grammar is a fortune. He who

can produce sensible and amusing Reading-Lessons is better paid than a

Secretary of State. Does the Government bestow any gratuities upon such

services? Certainly not. But it does not discourage and annihilate them.

It does not, as our Government does, interfere with competition by

attempting to regulate prices. It does not do the silly thing which M.

Louis Blanc wished to do in France for "the organization of literary

labour." It has established no manufactory of school-books, produced

cheaply, by the tax-payers helping the production. It has no Board of

Commissioners, as we have, "to supply the National Schools in Ireland,

_and the public generally_, with works in harmony with an improved

system of education, cheap in price and superior in execution."[33] We

ask, what possible right has the State to produce such books, and sell

them in the open literary markets of this country, to the injury of all

who produce similar books by the fair workings of capital and labour?

School-books were formerly too dear; but as schools multiplied, cheaper

books than the old standard works came into the market, and many took

root and flourished. Much of this property has been destroyed by the

Government operation; which is not confined to 'Reading Lessons,' but

embraces 'Biographical Sketches of Poets'—'Selections from the

Poets'—'Epitome of Geographical Knowledge'—'Grammar,' 'Arithmetic,'

'Geometry,' 'Mensuration,' 'Agriculture,' 'Maps.' The compilers of these

books and maps are salaried state-servants; the books are printed at the

lowest contract; the usual trade allowances are withheld; profit does

not enter into price. A book of 17½ sheets demy, or 420 pages, bound in

cloth, is sold for _sevenpence_, as we learn from the Commissioners'

Catalogue. This is exactly the cost price for the paper, machine-work,

and binding, in the very cheapest market. There is nothing for

trade-management, and not one fraction for copyright. Commercial

competition is impossible. We say, this is a fraudulent cheapness. All

cheapness in books is fraudulent which sets aside a payment for literary

labour. This is the cheapness of piracies, whether here or in the United

States. It is a cheapness that, if carried out, as it might be by a

Government, would degrade literature to the lowest condition,

annihilating all invention and improvement. Once concede the principle

that the State has a right to produce educational books, except for the

supply of schools paid by the State—and even then the policy is very

doubtful—and there is no individual literary enterprise that may not be

paralyzed and destroyed by this new agency. In England, the only

commercial undertaking of the State is that of the Post Office. It is

conducted with a profit; it is conducted with a precision and cheapness

which really leave few things to be amended. There are especial reasons

why the conveyance of letters through the whole civilized world should

be the work of the State. No company, no individual, could grapple with

such a gigantic task. But is there any other branch of commercial

enterprise which the State could undertake with the slightest

benefit—without most serious injury? If the end sought is to employ

labour to a profit, individual enterprise will accomplish that end far

better than the State. If the object is to employ labour that shall be

unprofitable, who is to supply the deficiency in the funds that have

called into activity the profitable labour? There would indeed be the

equality of employments, but it would be the equality of universal

poverty. The skilled and the unskilled would be reduced to the same

level. There would be no prizes in the social wheel;—the blanks would be

something worse than the mere absence of superfluities.

[Footnote 32: The 'Classified Index' contains only about 40,000

references; while the number of books in the 'Catalogue' is 45,000. The

book referred to in the Index is only once mentioned, in whatever form

it has appeared. To equalize the number, we have added 10 per cent. to

each division of the Index, in our calculation.]

[Footnote 33: These are the words of an official puff, in 16 pages,

called 'An Analysis of the Irish National School-books.' A more impudent

document was never put forth by the Curlls of a past or present age. The

manufacturers of the Irish Reading Lessons pirated a copyright belonging

to the writer of this volume (occupying 47 pages, in 10 of their

Lessons), 'The Mineral Kingdom,' which was written by Mr. Leonard

Horner. Their 'Analysis' says, that these "most interesting facts and

reasonings relating to Organised Remains are extracted from the writings

of Buckland and other celebrated Geologists."]

CHAPTER VI.

Cheap Fiction—Penny Periodicals.

The Railway Libraries—by which generic term we mean single volumes,

printed in small type on indifferent paper, and sold mostly at a

shilling—are almost wholly devoted to novels, English or American.

Whatever be the quality of the fiction so published, we may ask, without

any general depreciation of such works, if the popularity of this class

of reading has not a tendency to indispose for other reading, however

attractive be the mode in which information, historical, critical, or

scientific, be presented; and is it not a necessary consequence that

books of another character than novels should be compelled to address

themselves to a smaller class of readers, and must, therefore, of

necessity be dearer? If this be true of the railway books, it is equally

true of the weekly sheets. The demand for fiction amongst the largest

class of readers has forced upon every weekly periodical the necessity

for introducing fiction in some form or other. The writers of eminence

cannot put forth their powers in this direction without charging a

higher price for their numbers than those in which inferior writers are

employed at low salaries. The higher price necessarily induces a smaller

sale. The dealers in cheap periodicals say, "you have no chance for a

sale unless you give _as much paper_ as the others give for a penny!" In

this respect, some of the more extensively circulated of these sheets

would appear to defy all reasonable competition. They are sold for

50_s._ per thousand; their paper and machine-work cost, at the very

least, 45_s._ Out of this 5_s._ per thousand they have to pay their

publishing expenses, their writers, their woodcuts, their composition,

their stereotype casts. It is a neck-and-neck race for a very doubtful

"plate;" and what may appear a slight addition to the weight of the

"riders," in the shape of another halfpenny a pound upon their paper,

would "distance" the greater number of them. When the popular estimate

of a publication is that of the square inches which it contains of

print, it requires no critical judgment to be assured that the amount of

genius or knowledge engaged in its production is not very great. Hence,

for the most part, a deluge of stories, that, to mention the least evil

of them, abound with false representations of manners, drivelling

sentimentalities, and impossible incidents. And yet they are devoured

with an earnestness that is almost incomprehensible. The moralist may

say—

"England, the time is come when thou shouldst wean

Thy heart from this emasculating food."

How is the weaning to be set about for this babyhood of the popular

intellect?

The insuperable obstacle to a successful competition with the existing

class of penny periodicals is their pre-eminence in _external_

cheapness. They were all founded upon the principle of attraction by low

price alone. They employed the meanest "slaves of the lamp" in their

production. Sheets came out double the size of any other penny sheet,

badly printed on the thinnest paper, but nevertheless they were the

largest sheets; their roots were thus planted in the popular earth. Some

who bought them turned away from their filth and their folly; others

welcomed these qualities. Gradually the sense of the better class of

artisans operated, whilst they continued their offences, to reduce their

number of customers. They changed their style; they became decent, but

they remained stupid. The weeds were kept down, though not rooted out,

in that garden: a few gaudy flowers were planted; fruit there was

little. They have maintained their hold, by their external cheapness,

against any attempt to produce a higher literature, with better paper

and print. They have beaten almost every competitor who has sought to

address _the same class_ of buyers with something higher, intrinsically

as cheap, but not so cheap to the eye. The unequal war is still being

waged.

In June, 1846, the last number of 'The Penny Magazine' was published.

Mr. Knight, who had been its editor from the commencement, in 1832, thus

writes in his concluding 'Address to the Reader,' after stating that

there then were published 14 three-halfpenny and penny miscellanies, and

37 weekly sheets, forming separate books:—"It is from this competition

that the 'Penny Magazine' now withdraws itself. Its editor most

earnestly wishes success to those who are keeping on their course with

honesty and ability.... He rejoices that there are many in the field,

and some who have come at the eleventh hour, who deserve the wages of

zealous and faithful labourers. But there are others who are carrying

out the principle of cheap weekly sheets to the disgrace of the system,

and who appear to have got some considerable hold upon the less informed

of the working people, and especially upon the young. There are

manufactories in London whence hundreds of reams of vile paper and

printing issue weekly; where large bodies of children are employed to

arrange types, at the wages of shirt-makers, from copy furnished by the

most ignorant, at the wages of scavengers. In truth, such writers, if

they deserve the name of writers, _are_ scavengers. All the garbage that

belongs to the history of crime and misery is raked together, to diffuse

a moral miasma through the land, in the shape of the most vulgar and

brutal fiction." This is a curious and instructive record. 'The Penny

Magazine,' popular as it once was, to the extent of a sale of 200,000,

could not contend with a cheapness that was wholly regardless of

quality; and it could not hold its place amidst this dangerous

excitement. The editor had his hands fettered by the necessity of

keeping up the purely instructive character of that journal. Without a

large supply of fiction it necessarily ceased to be popular. A French

writer, who laments over the "immondices" of the literature of Paris in

1840, calls for romances "appropriés par une imagination souple et

brillante au goût des classes laborieuses;" and he suggests the

principle upon which such works should be founded, viz. "L'étude des

mœurs populaires, entreprise par un esprit pénétrant, et dirigée vers un

but philosophique."[34] The "immondices" have for the most part vanished

from our English penny literature. The host of penny Newgate novels,

whether known as 'The Convict,' 'The Feast of Blood,' 'The Murder at the

Old Jewry,' 'Claude Duval,' 'The Hangman's Daughter,' and so forth, may

continue to be sold; but, as far as we can trace, there are no novelties

in this once popular literature of the gallows. Abominations, called

'Mysteries' and 'Castles,' still lurk in dark corners; but the bulk of

single Penny Novels, and the novels which "drag their slow length along"

in penny journals, are marvellously changed. The most prudish regard to

decency presides over every sentence and syllable. William the Conqueror

has lost the brief ignoble title by which the old Saxons designated

their oppressor, through a special interdict of the proprietor of one of

these papers; and a lady of doubtful character must be mentioned by no

more rugged name than that of a _belle amie_, which may be understood or

not. But the "études des mœurs populaires," and the "but philosophique,"

have not yet entered into the minds of the conductors of these elaborate

works. Their scenes are invariably laid in the lord's palace or the

right honourable's mansion; marriages are made at St. George's, Hanover

Square, and the diamonds are bought at Storr and Mortimer's. If a young

lady, who has the slight misfortune to be connected by the filial tie

with a convicted felon, has a quarrel with her juvenile lover, she

immediately rushes to the arms of an ancient baronet, who conducts her

the next morning to the altar of his parish church. Boileau said of

Mademoiselle Scudery, that she would never let her heroine get out of a

house till she had taken an inventory of all the furniture. So, for the

bewilderment of those who read these weekly novels by the one glimmering

candle upon the deal table, their sick ladies recline in easy chairs,

"astral" lamps diffuse their rich glow upon crimson curtains, and

aromatic perfumes fill the air from pastiles burning in miniature

castles of gilded porcelain. The style of these productions is

magnificent: with golden zones on the summits of the mountains, and

roseate tints edging the canopy of heaven; plants drooping with

voluptuous languor, and shining insects skimming the air, as if borne on

the wings of ardent passion. In all this we are speaking _au pied de la

lettre_. Johnson described three sorts of unnatural style—the bombastic,

the affected, and the weak. Most of these performances unite the three

qualities, and are equally satisfactory to the "love of imbecility,"

which Johnson thought was to be found in many. We have only seen one

penny journal which places its incidents, and somewhat adapts its

language, in consonance with the habits of the classes which these works

seek to interest. In 'The Leisure Hour,' issued by the Religious Tract

Society, we have an Australian story, with 'Sydney by Gaslight.' We are

now amongst convicts, and hear drunken shouts come out from miserable

huts. The success of this publication is considerable. Perhaps those who

really understand such matters may say of the writer of these laudable

attempts to imitate the homely style, something akin to what the great

Pierce Egan said of a fashionable novelist twenty years ago—"Ah! he's

very clever, but uncommon superficial in slang." Nevertheless, it is

satisfactory to find that a mean has been sought, in the quarter where

we might least have expected it, between the representations of humble

and even of low life which are corrupting, and those pretended pictures

of society which exhibit no life at all. In the number of 'The Leisure

Hour' for February 16, 1854, there is a clever woodcut of a night

auction at Sydney, which is as suggestive of a congregation of real

vulgar sellers and bidders, with the necessary accompaniments of gin and

tobacco, as might be connected with any of the exciting scenes of 'Life

in London' at any period. The pictures of the penny sheets which the

masses now greedily buy are quite genteel. This is something to reflect

upon. Some of the members of the Tract Society may think that "Chaos is

come again." We do not. This sort of subject will be attractive to the

better portion of male readers amongst the artisans, and especially

amongst the very large number who belong to "temperance societies;" but

for the girls, who devour the novels of the other penny journals,

certainly not. Those who have been watching the workings of the penny

literature are unanimous in their conviction that very few men read

these mawkish and unnatural fictions. The readers for the most part

belong, in point of cultivation, to the same class of females, who, half

a century ago, gave up their whole leisure—if they did not neglect every

domestic duty—for the ghosts and the elopements of 'The Minerva Press.'

The intelligence of the readers is the same, however widened the

attraction.

But, with all their bad taste, there is partial merit and manifest

utility in some portions of the best of these penny journals. 'The

Family Herald' has constantly a serious article of great good sense and

shrewdness. This paper, and one or two others, have pages of "Answers to

Correspondents," which, for the most part, contain useful information

and judicious advice. Real young ladies often pour their doubts into the

ear of this "Family" oracle, about love, and courtship, and marriage;

and, as far as we can judge, receive very safe counsel. In the whole

range of these things we can detect nothing that bears a parallel with

what used to be called "the blasphemous and seditious press." Neither,

although these papers do not wholly abstain from comment upon what is

passing in the world, can they be called newspapers. We see, however,

that the new trump of war is calling up again one or two of the old

class of unstamped violators of the law. In quiet times they cannot

flourish. They may be difficult to suppress,

'Now all the youth of England are on fire.'

[Footnote 34: Frégier, 'Les Classes Dangereuses.']

CHAPTER VII.

Degrees of Readers—General Improvement—Newspaper Press—Newspaper Press

National—Agricultural Readers—General desire for Amusement—Supply of

real Knowledge.

Our readers can scarcely have failed to make for themselves the

deduction which naturally arises out of this survey of the progress of

popular literature—that there always have been, still are, and always

will be, various classes of readers and purchasers; and that the

invariable progress of knowledge and intelligence—from the learned to

the rich, from the rich to the middle classes, from the middle classes

to the multitude—has produced as invariably a corresponding change in

the number of books published, their quality, and their price. As the

rich began to gather knowledge, books ceased to be wholly adapted to the

learned or professional student; as the burgesses began to employ their

leisure in reading, books ceased to be dependent upon courtly influence;

as the multitude acquired the rudiments of instruction, books became

less conventional, and began to adapt themselves to all classes. But it

cannot, without a judicial blindness, be assumed that we are arrived at

that state in which there are no degrees of intellectual advancement. It

is said, to use the language of the most popular journal of our day,

that the masses "do not yet feel the assurance that, if they go in

thousands to the counters of the great publishing houses, as they

congregate around the more plebeian shops, they will get the exact

article they want, or what _they_ consider value for their money." Here

is the point. The masses, who are yet more imperfectly educated than

some of their own class, and most of the class above them, would not

consider, as they have never yet considered, solid and instructive

reading "value for their money." Unquestionably "books to please the

million must not only be good but attractive." The chief popular labour

of the last quarter of a century has been to convert the ponderous ores

of learning into the fine gold of knowledge. The multitude have been

reached in many directions; and the influences of "good but attractive"

books have penetrated where the books themselves have not yet had a

direct influence. But the multitude stand precisely in the same relation

to works of instruction, even the most attractive, as they do to

Mechanics' Institutes and Athenæums. In Manchester and its dependencies,

in 1851, there were 3447 members of these Institutions, and 1793 pupils

in classes.[35] But the great mass of the youth of both sexes in

Manchester were frequenting the Casinos. Here they neither drank, nor

danced, nor gambled: they listened to recitations and comic songs at a

penny an hour. They wanted mere amusement, and they found it. It is the

same with the great bulk of the readers of cheap books. "It is most

worthy of note," says the writer just mentioned, whose anxiety for cheap

literature we honour and appreciate, "that, when there has been no doubt

of the substantial value of the commodity issued from the Row or

Albemarle Street, the sale of the books has been by no means equivocal."

Certainly not. Macaulay and Layard have found large numbers of

purchasers, and will find them, in their cheap form. But are these

purchasers what are called, in the same breath, "the multitude"—"the

needy"? Not at all. Even the most successful of the periodical works

above a penny—'Chambers' Journal,' 'Household Words,'—reach only the

advanced guard of this class. Mr. Dickens collected around him at

Birmingham such an audience as never before waited upon an author. He

read his beautiful, humanizing 'Christmas Carol' to two thousand

working-men. They felt every point—they laughed, or they grew serious,

with understanding. But are we to suppose that the whole mass of the

mechanical classes—men, women, and children—throughout the kingdom,

would rush by millions to buy 'The Christmas Carol' at a penny or two—at

a price that would compensate in fame what was wanting in profit? Its

sterling merit—its nature, its simplicity, its purity, its quiet

humour—require a far higher amount of taste and cultivation to

appreciate than the immaturity of mind to which the coarseness and

imbecility of the penny journals are acceptable. An author of less

popular acceptation published a poem at a farthing, but we never heard

that he employed a steam-press in its production. The multitude have

their own weekly literature, and we have seen what it is. Are the novels

of the author of 'Pelham' to be speedily found in every cottage of the

farm-labourer, and in every garret of the Lancashire cotton-spinner? The

time may come, but it is not as yet. If a despotic government, in the

desire to disseminate knowledge, were to follow the example which our

free Government has set with regard to the 'School-books published by

authority of the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland,' they

might produce sound popular literature as cheap again as the most

adventurous of publishers. But if they left competition free to what

they considered unsound knowledge—if they permitted the lowest-priced

Fiction, however bad or indifferent, to circulate without their unequal

competition—we believe the free-traders would beat the monopolists in

point of numbers; and it would be found an easier task, even with every

commercial disadvantage of price, to "tickle and excite the palate" than

"strengthen the constitution."

Do such considerations as these make us hopeless of the steady progress

of a sound as well as cheap popular literature? Decidedly no. There is

improvement all around us. The halfpenny ballad of Seven Dials is not

yet extinct; but let the collectors look sharply about them, for that

relic of the chap-books, with the woodcuts that have served every

generation, will soon be gone. In its place has come the decent penny

book of a hundred songs. The shades of Scott, and Moore, and Campbell

will not quarrel with this new popularity. There are "flash" songs; but

they are not for the penny buyers. Thackeray has described the dens in

which these abominations are current. The whole aspect of the humbler

press has changed within these few years. Unquestionably the people have

changed. Visit, if you can, the interior of that marvellous human

machine, the General Post-Office, on a Friday evening, from half-past

five to six o'clock. Look with awe upon the tons of newspapers that are

crowding in to be distributed through the habitable globe. Think

silently how potent a power is this for good or for evil. You turn to

one of the boxes of the letter-sorters, and your guide will tell you,

"this work occupies not half the time it formerly did, for everybody

writes better." General education furnishes the solution of the

otherwise doubtful origin of the improvement, in all the more manifest

characteristics of improvement, of all popular literature.

In 1801 the annual circulation of newspapers in England and Wales was 15

millions, and in Scotland 1 million. In 1853 the annual circulation of

England and Wales was 72 millions, and of Scotland 8 millions, that of

Ireland being also about 8 millions. In September, 1836, the stamp-duty

on newspapers was reduced to one penny. Immediately previous to the

reduction the annual circulation of newspapers in Great Britain was

about 29 millions. The increase, therefore, in seventeen years, has been

51 millions. We have cast up the twenty-two folio pages of the 'Return

of the number of Newspaper Stamps, at one penny, issued in 1853,' and we

find these results, as derived from the stamps, excluding supplements,

used by 913 newspapers in England, 18 in Wales, 146 in Scotland, and 121

in Ireland, making a total number of 1198. But it must be borne in mind

that about one-half of the publications in this return, called

newspapers, are not newspapers in any sense of the word. Every

publication can be stamped as a newspaper, for which the proprietor and

printer give the necessary legal securities; and thus hundreds of

price-currents, catalogues, and circulars—and many literary journals

which are only partially stamped, and which none but political pedants,

calling for a definition, term newspapers—find their way into this

Official Return. There are, in round numbers, 600 newspapers proper in

the United Kingdom. There are in London 14 daily papers, 6 twice and

thrice a week, and 71 weekly; and about 500 provincial papers in the

United Kingdom. Of the London Daily Papers, about 24 millions are

annually circulated, of which the 'Times' has the lion's share of 14

millions. There are four weekly papers, published at the surpassingly

cheap rate of threepence, which circulate 13 millions. The 'Illustrated

London News' has a circulation of 4 millions; and eleven other leading

weekly papers issue, annually, 6 millions. There are 6 religious papers,

which have a circulation of about a million and a quarter. Thus, 36

London publications engross 48 million stamps, out of 71 millions. Of

the Provincial English Press there are 26 great towns which number 80

papers, and these 80 consume 13 millions of stamps. We have, therefore,

only 10 millions more to distribute amongst the entire newspaper press

of England. The Welsh annual circulation is under a million.

We have abstracted from the Official Return the number of stamps used

annually by papers published in great cities and towns, especially the

large marts of commerce and manufactures:—

Towns. Number of separate Aggregate annual

papers. sale.

Birmingham 3 871,000

Bristol 4 596,075

Cambridge 2 216,500

Carlisle 2 263,500

Derby 4 249,700

Doncaster 2 178,500

Exeter 3 398,315

Hereford 2 278,000

Hull 2 347,000

Leeds 3 1,107,875

Leicester 4 240,500

Liverpool 8 1,702,588

Manchester 3 1,741,300

Newcastle 4 684,542

Norwich 3 419,950

Nottingham 3 324,000

Oxford 3 252,000

Plymouth 4 309,500

Preston 3 469,500

Sheffield 3 580,950

Stamford 1 571,826

Stafford 1 384,000

Sunderland 4 191,142

Wolverhampton 3 181,500

Worcester 3 320,052

York 3 465,200

— ———————

80 13,245,015

The altered tone and ability of newspapers would open too wide a subject

to be here dwelt upon in detail. One of the weekly threepenny papers has

attained an enormous sale—a sale of 4½ millions annually—by discarding

what was offensive to public morals, under the management of a man of

letters who has a reputation to maintain. The Satirists and Paul Prys

are gone. The extension of the mental labourers for newspapers, in

proportion to the extension of the demand, has followed the same course

as that of every other production of the press, from the days of the

first printers. At the beginning of the present century the local

newspapers "had no editorial comments whatever,"[36] and scarcely an

original paragraph. The conductors of our 500 provincial journals are

now watching for every particle of news in their own districts;

reporting public meetings; waiting for electric telegraphs; pondering

upon grave questions of social economy; and, to the best of their

judgment, fairly representing the course of events. How much of this

intelligent and honourable spirit they owe to the London Newspaper Press

is not for us to decide. We believe the newspaper influence upon the

people to be for good, because the Newspaper Press is National. A

witness, giving evidence before the Select Committee on Newspaper

Stamps, 1851, said, "If the Committee were to look at 'The Weekly

Dispatch' twenty years ago, its general character was very much worse

than it is now. Then it was a so-called radical, almost a blasphemous,

scurrilous, and contemptible paper, but with an enormous circulation.

Now other papers have so much improved, that 'The Weekly Dispatch' has

been compelled, in its own defence, very materially to change its tone."

But what improved the "other papers," and compelled them to seek honest

means of "an enormous circulation"? We answer—The advanced intelligence

of the people. Books had begun their own work in the career of public

enlightenment. Now, newspapers and books are working together for the

same object. It is desired by some to make newspapers supersede books,

by abolishing the stamp, and thus converting all popular literature into

news. We have no faith in the process. An American told the Committee on

Stamps that "the only knowledge which the working-classes would

appreciate is contained in newspapers; they address themselves much more

to politics than to science or literature." The witness had his own

country in his mind, where the assertion is to some extent true. But in

the American newspapers, almost universally, there is something more

than "politics." All over the Union the newspapers are filled, week by

week, by the piracy of modern English literature, especially of English

fiction. Whether the "working classes" read the politics, and neglect

the literature, maybe doubted. If politics are independent of science

and literature, the study is worth little. It is degrading. We doubt if

this disposition, carried to excess, will make a wise people, or a happy

people. The opinion of an American is worth little upon such a question

in England. There is no parallel in the condition of the people of the

United States. The geographical position, and the separate constitutions

of individual states, necessarily demand many newspapers. Thus the

newspapers of the United States, even with their large circulation, are

essentially local. The English papers, we repeat, are national. The

papers of the capital are the papers of the empire. They chiefly, with

their wonderful organization, supply the material for the twenty-seven

millions of these islands, and the other millions of our race spread

over the habitable globe in our colonies, to learn, to consider, to know

their rights, to perform their duties. Could this unequalled instrument

of knowledge be kept efficiently at work, while every petty printer of

every parish was ready to make a venture for a thousand penny

subscribers to his Argus or his Luminary, without incurring any of the

prodigious cost of a London daily morning paper? If the time should come

when the land should be filled with penny newspapers, it would be the

same with newspapers as it is now with the weekly unstamped sheets.

Quantity, not quality, would be the criterion of excellence. The lower

grade of literary labourers would be multiplied tenfold. Unscrupulous

employers would rise up on every side, who would go for the "immondices"

if decency failed; and for disorder if tranquillity were growing

unprofitable. The rich would be set against the poor, and the poor

against the rich. Those who now organise strikes by their eloquence

would work more effectually with their pen; and employers would not be

without their organs to defend harshness and oppression. Sects would

denounce each other in weekly journals, to be sold by the pew-opener;

and the Snoreum Vestry would enter upon a wordy war with their

neighbours of Muggleton. Let us "study to be quiet."

It is proposed to establish penny newspapers for the especial benefit of

the agricultural labourers. How are they to be circulated? If postage is

to be paid in addition to the price, there is little gained over the

present system; for there are published, weekly, about 300,000

newspapers at 3_d._ If they do not go by post, how are they to reach the

scattered hamlets? This is really the difficulty, with regard to all

periodical literature, in raising up agricultural labourers into a

population of readers. It is satisfactory to know that the keys to

knowledge—the power of reading and writing—are being as freely imparted

to the rural population as to those of towns. There is progress. In 1841

the proportion, to all marriages, of those who signed the

marriage-register with marks, was—men, 33 per cent.; women, 49 per cent.

In 1853 the proportion was—men, 30 per cent.; women, 45 per cent. In

1863 the effect of the education of the last ten years will be

tested upon the same principle. But it is to be noted, in the

Registrar-General's Returns for 1853, that in the Agricultural

South-Eastern Division, as well as in other agricultural districts,

there was slight difference in the proportion between males and females;

while in the North-Western Manufacturing Division the number of females

who could not write was nearly double that of the males. In the

South-Eastern Division, comprising the rural parts of Surrey and Kent,

Sussex, Hampshire, and Berkshire, in the cases of 11,537 marriages, 3457

men and 3749 women signed with marks. In the North-Western Division,

comprising Cheshire and Lancashire, in the cases of 24,877 marriages,

8729 men and 15,443 women signed with marks. There cannot be a greater

proof of the influence of a resident clergy, looking diligently to

National Schools, and perhaps stimulated by the zeal of dissent in the

same useful direction, than this fact. It makes us hopeful of the

eventual advance of the rural population to the condition of a reading

people. But the question always arises—What are they to read? What will

they read? Is the edge of the cup not only to be honeyed, but is the

whole cup to be filled with sweets? How are we to find the mean between

what is dry and what is useless—what is plain and what is childish? A

witness of well-known intelligence told the Committee on Newspaper

Stamps that in his village he tried the experiment of reading 'The

Times' to an evening-class of adult labourers, and that he could not

read twenty lines without feeling that there were twenty words in it

which none of his auditors understood. He wanted, therefore, cheap

newspapers, that would be so written as not to puzzle the hearers or

readers by such words as "operations," "channel," or " fleet." For

ourselves, we would rather endure as much book ignorance as we endured

in the first quarter of this century, than believe that knowledge might

be promoted by writing down to the intelligence of the least instructed

class; and that they could be raised up into enlightenment upon this

plan of Mr. Hickson, to have newspapers that would reach their minds

like "school-primers, containing words of one or two syllables." Such

partial enlightenment would be general degradation.

Upon looking around upon all the various phases of Cheap Literature

which now present themselves in these kingdoms, we cannot shut our eyes

to the fact that, in proportion as the number of readers has increased,

the desire of the mass of the population has been rather for passing

amusement than solid instruction. There is one very obvious reason for

this. The people of this country work harder than any other people, not

only from the absolute necessity of the competition around them, but

through the energy of their race. It cannot, therefore, in the nature of

things, be expected that much of the reading of all classes should be

other than for amusement. Further, when we consider how recent has been

the training for any reading amongst a large proportion of those who

have become readers, we can scarcely look for a great amount of serious

application in their short leisure after a hard working-day. The

entertainment which is now presented to all, whether it be in the shape

of a shilling novel or a penny journal, is not debasing; it may enfeeble

the intellect, but it does not taint it. How are we to deal with this

universal desire for amusement? Not, we think, by any direct efforts at

its counteraction, either by individuals or societies. We have before us

three volumes, just completed, of a most excellent penny weekly

publication of 'The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,' entitled

'The Home Friend.' It is cheap, even by comparison with the cheapest of

the class. It consists of twenty-four octavo pages, and is excellently

printed on superior paper. The old patronising style of such works is

given up. It deals with grave subjects in an agreeable spirit. In the

preface to the first volume, the editor rejoices that the Society is

enabled to publish a work attainable by "the tenant of the lowliest

cottage, which a century ago could only be purchased by the opulent

few." But it is not a matter of congratulation that this work, like

others professing the same aims, has not had any great success, from the

absolute want of buyers. It was thought that the members of the Society

could have commanded a great weekly circulation amongst their

neighbours. The average sale never went beyond 12,000. What, then, is to

be the course of the real friends of popular instruction? We think it

is, to let the existing cheap literature purify itself. We have got

beyond the scurrilous stage—the indecent stage—the profane stage—the

seditious stage. Let us hope that the frivolous stage, in which we are

now to some extent abiding, will in time pass on to a higher taste, and

a sounder mental discipline. "Confidence," said Chatham, "is a plant of

slow growth." So is taste; so is a love of knowledge for its own sake.

Let us make real instruction as attractive as we can; but let us have no

compromises under the pretence of gilding the pill. Study is study, and

amusement is amusement. Let the people learn, and learn they will, in

time; but let us abandon all the old, childish attempts of cheating them

into learning. The circle of those who are attaining sound knowledge is

steadily widening. Already, as the circle has widened, the means of

acquiring information have been offered to "the masses," and even to

"the needy," at a rate of cheapness quite unequalled by any previous

attempts to make sound knowledge popular. We now especially allude to

'The Penny Cyclopædia'—a work of which the literature and engravings

alone cost the publisher, as he has recorded, the large sum of

42,000_l._ Those who affect to believe that nothing has been done for

the cheapening of books, should recollect that, before the existence of

this Cyclopædia, no great work of reference of this nature could be

obtained under 40_l._ But 'The Penny Cyclopædia,' large as was its sale,

was not profitable; it involved an enormous loss. The writer, in his

'Struggles of a Book,' has stated that the paper-duty operated as a

burthen upon 'The Penny Cyclopædia' to the extent of 32,000_l._ He

adds,—"Had that sum of 32,000_l._ been actually saved to me, I should

not have been a pound richer by the publication of 'The Penny

Cyclopædia.' But with the saving I should not have been to that amount

poorer." Compared with the vast outlay, 'The Penny Cyclopædia' was set

at too low a price for the probable demand. The class of buyers for

instruction was not large enough to carry off 40,000 copies, which

would have yielded adequate profit. The very word "Penny" was then

repulsive, and implied something low, as apprehended by the rich vulgar.

Moreover, the book occupied eleven years in its issue, and its sale fell

from 50,000 at the beginning to less than 20,000 in the end. No work

that occupied more than four or five years in its completion was ever

successful in this country. In the publication of 'The English

Cyclopædia,' which is founded upon 'The Penny Cyclopædia,' a more

prudent course has been adopted. The new book is issued in four

divisions, which will form four separate Cyclopædias of Geography,

Natural History, Sciences, and Biography, each of which will be

completed in little more than two years from its commencement. Comparing

the two books—'The Penny' and 'The English'—we can readily see the vast

augmentations of knowledge during twenty years that render the complete

re-modelling of such a work absolutely necessary. In every branch of

exact knowledge this re-modelling has become indispensable; and upon

other works of instruction many earnest labourers are so engaged.

Publishers cannot now afford to let their books, especially their

educational books, remain without improvement. It is thus that, in spite

of the tendency to light reading, the supply of real knowledge is kept

up. Those who find an ally of knowledge in the purer and more ennobling

fiction, such as our literature, past and present, abundantly supplies,

are gradually brought into the extending circle of earnest readers. The

great region beyond is still little cultivated; but even there the

subsoil-plough has been at work, and there is some grain amidst the

weeds. The weeds cannot be rooted out by any sudden husbandry.

[Footnote 35: Hudson's 'Adult Education.']

[Footnote 36: 'Life of Edward Baines;' a valuable record, by his son and

successor, of an honest and able worker in building up the independence

of the provincial press.]

CHAPTER VIII.

Free Libraries—In Towns—In Rural Districts—Influences of the best Books.

It is difficult to point out a direct practical remedy for much that is

injurious in our cheapest popular literature; and especially any remedy

that could be supplied by the State. We cannot cure folly by enactments,

however we may try to repress crime. "These things will be, and must be;

but how they shall be least hurtful, how least enticing, herein consists

the grave and governing wisdom of a State. To sequester out of the world

into Atlantic and Utopian policies, which never can be drawn into use,

will not mend our condition, but to ordain wisely as in this world of

evil, in the midst whereof God hath placed us unavoidably."

This noble sentence, from Milton's 'Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed

Printing,' suggests some remarks which, however painful to utter, no one

who thinks honestly upon the subject of popular enlightenment can

disguise. There is NO "grave and governing wisdom" in the English

State—there is NO desire "to ordain wisely"—in any matter connected with

the educational advancement of the people. The greatest discouragement

in the first stage,—the most niggardly support in the second,—have been

given to the education of the young. With the exception of Schools of

Design, which, however useful, have a very limited object, the education

of the adult has been retarded by every possible legislative effort,

direct or indirect. In 1849 a Select Committee of the House of Commons,

to inquire into "the best means of extending the establishment of

libraries, freely open to the public, especially in large towns, in

Great Britain and Ireland," came to the unanimous resolution that "our

present inferior position is unworthy of the power, the liberality, and

the literature of the country." An Act had been passed in 1845, by which

Town Councils, in Municipal Boroughs having 10,000 inhabitants and

upwards, in England and Wales, were empowered to establish _Museums_ at

their own discretion. In 1850, seconding the Report of the Committee of

1849, a Bill was brought in "for enabling Town Councils to establish

_Public Libraries_ and Museums," in towns of the like large population.

The proposal was damaged by the device of requiring that a poll of the

burgesses should first have been duly taken on the question, and that a

rate of one halfpenny in the pound should be the maximum to be levied by

a majority of votes. The consequence was obvious. Those of the

rate-payers who had the low shopkeeping jealousy of extending knowledge

to those they presumed to call beneath them, rejected the proposition

for establishing Free Libraries at Birmingham and at Exeter. In the mean

time the difficulties have been surmounted in four great Lancashire

towns, Manchester, Liverpool, Salford, Bolton, where 50,000_l._ have

been raised, chiefly by voluntary subscription, for Free Libraries and

Museums; and 60,000 volumes have been purchased for the open and

unrestricted use, in the libraries and at home, of every member of the

community, from the highest to the humblest. The experiment has been

completely successful. One of the most satisfactory results has been

that, amidst the hardest worked population in the world—those who come

from their factories with the honourable stain of labour on their hands

and brows—the most exemplary care has been taken of the books borrowed.

If Free Libraries are good for the greatest marts of industry, are they

not good for the smaller? Mr. Ewart, the unwearied mover in this object,

brings in a Bill in the Session of 1854, to extend the Act of 1850 to

towns of less population and to the metropolitan boroughs; and, further,

to remedy a great defect in the former Bill, that the money raised by

the halfpenny rate might be applied to purchase books as well as to

provide buildings. On the 5th of April the House of Commons throws out

this Bill, under the most frivolous pretexts; the real object being to

truckle to the prejudices of those who in all times have systematically

opposed the progress of knowledge, when there is a chance of extending

it to _the people_ universally.

"Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:

England hath need of thee."

It is in connexion with all we have said in the preceding pages, about

the character and tendency of cheap popular literature, that we have

looked forward with hope to the general establishment of Free Libraries

in town and country. Mechanics' Institutes, and Literary and Scientific

Institutions, valuable as they have been, do not embrace the class for

which they were originally intended. According to returns prepared by

Dr. Hudson, Secretary of the Manchester Athenæum, in 1851, there were

720 such institutions, with 120,000 members, and they possessed 815,000

volumes of books. But the same zealous person honestly tells us that the

majority of Literary Institutions comprise professional men, the higher

shopkeepers, and the managers of large firms; that the clerk and the

shopman will not go where they have a chance of being looked coldly on

by their employers or superiors in service, and resort to Mechanics'

Institutes, where their presence effectually drives out the fustian

jackets. To remedy this was one of the especial objects of Free

Libraries, where books should be liberally provided for _all_, whether

for reference or home reading. A large majority of the borrowers of

books from the Manchester Free Library belong to the operative class. Is

it not of some importance that the warehousemen, packers, artisans,

machinists, mill-hands male and female, assistants in shops male and

female, dressmakers,—should have access to the standard works of English

literature, and the current books of the modern press? Is there no great

beneficial effect to be produced by the 77,232 volumes that in the first

year were issued from the same Manchester Free Library, comprising—in

theology, 1130; philosophy, 845; history, 22,837; law, politics, and

commerce, 839; sciences and arts, 4319; and general literature,

including poetry, fiction, essays, and periodicals, 47,262? Is it of no

importance that, in the same period, 61,080 volumes have been used in

the reference department? How long are those who are apt to think that

"The wealthiest man among us is the best,"

to influence the better thoughts, and control the higher impulses, of

those who have no vain fears that knowledge, however widely extended,

may produce evil to society? The object of the general diffusion of

knowledge is not to render men discontented with their lot—to make the

peasant yearn to become an artisan, or the artisan dream of the honours

and riches of a profession—but to give the means of content to those

who, for the most part, must necessarily remain in that station which

requires great self-denial and great endurance; but which is capable of

becoming not only a condition of comfort, but of enjoyment, through the

exercise of these very virtues, in connexion with a desire for that

improvement of the understanding which, to a large extent, is

independent of rank and riches. It is a most fortunate circumstance, and

one which seems especially ordained by Him who wills the happiness of

his creatures, that the highest, and the purest, and the most lasting

sources of enjoyment are the most accessible to all. The great

distinction that has hitherto prevailed in the world is this,—that those

who have the command of riches and of leisure have alone been able, in

any considerable degree, to cultivate the tastes that open these common

sources of enjoyment. The first desire of every man is, no doubt, to

secure a sufficiency for the supply of the physical necessities of our

nature; but in the equal dispensations of Providence it is not any

especial portion of the condition even of the humblest among us who

labours with his hands to earn his daily bread, that his mind should be

shut out from the gratifications which belong to the exercise of our

observing and reflecting faculties. View the agricultural labourer as we

have been too long accustomed to see him—a rude untutored hind. His most

ordinary occupations place him amongst scenes highly favourable to the

cultivation of some of the purest and most peaceful thoughts. The

general introduction of agricultural machinery and agricultural

chemistry has an inevitable tendency to demand a race of skilled

labourers, instead of unintellectual serfs. But how do we deal with the

labourer and his family? We educate the boys and girls up to a certain

point; we give them the rudiments of knowledge; we are now asked to go

further, and to teach them "common things," by which we understand,

chiefly, the practical applications of science. But, once off the

school-form, the rural boy is to find his evening amusement in the

beershop, and the girl to make her way to the next town, in search of

some gaiety that ends fatally. Home has no charms for these. Books might

be some attraction, but how are they to be got? There are books which

well-meaning people will lend—but they are for the most part of an

exclusively serious character. None of the fair features of knowledge

are presented to them; no "perpetual feast of nectared sweets." They are

offered the Sunday sermon without the Sunday holiday. It is clear that

this system will not do; and the most sensible in the country have

abandoned it. We have before us a catalogue of the 'Windsor Park

Library, under the patronage of His Royal Highness the Ranger.' This

Park Library, established by Prince Albert, is for the use of all those

in the local employ of the Crown. These comprise a population of about

300, of which 100 are subscribers to this library, at sixpence a

quarter. It is self-governed, with the assistance of the curate of the

Park, who has the right of approval of the books given or purchased.

Here is an agricultural population of a mixed character—keepers,

bailiffs, woodmen, ploughmen, and field and forest lads. This

hard-working and comfortable population is not crammed with "harsh and

crabbed" knowledge. There are good books in the library—divinity,

history, biography, natural history—but there is abundance of poetry and

fiction. The result is that the library is most popular; that it has a

visible influence on the families of the subscribers; that the

population thus intellectually raised, in the power of happily employing

their small leisure, are a consented home-keeping population. There are,

no doubt, peculiar advantages in their position; but the intelligence

which is thus cultivated amongst their dependants by the highest in the

land would ultimately raise every rural population, if the obvious means

were not too commonly neglected.

We have spoken strongly about the indifference of the State to the

establishment of Free Libraries in populous towns. But even those who

have most strenuously urged this measure have said nothing about such

institutions in rural districts. We ask, why not? The necessity is as

great, perhaps greater. A ready access to instructive books, and amusing

books, is the desire which most naturally suggests itself to the young

people who have left the schools which the State recognizes, however

imperfectly. The desire cannot be gratified except through some

occasional benevolence. Thus the neglected mind first grows

listless—then corrupt. Dangerous excitement begins the career which ends

in habitual degradation. There could be nothing easier that to make the

National School a Free Library also. The room is vacant after the hours

of work; the schoolmaster is the ready librarian. It would be the truest

economy in parishes to provide such Free Libraries out of the ordinary

rates, if Parliament were to give them an enabling power. Gratuitous

vaccination, preventive measures against contagion, are cheerfully paid

for. Why not a payment of the most limited amount—a farthing on each

pound of rental—to keep the people sober, to render them domestic, to

raise them gradually but surely to the capacity of discharging those

labours with skill which have been formerly intrusted to mere animal

power? It would be well, we think, to make the experiment.

In thus advocating the general establishment of Free Libraries, we

believe that we are pointing out the only practicable course for

counteracting the tendencies of _cheap periodical literature_. The

principle which is now carried, as we have endeavoured to show, to a

dangerous and ridiculous excess, is to give the greatest possible

quantity at the lowest possible price. The principle is destructive to

the employment of the highest class of literary labour. It involves the

natural mediocrity or positive baseness of that quality which is not

visible on the surface. The counteracting principle is to make the best

_books_ accessible to all; and not to imagine that the evil is not

counteracted if those who have access to the best books prefer the

entertaining to the severe. One of the most eminent cultivators of the

highest knowledge, Sir John Herschel, has told us a great truth in this

matter, which ought never to be forgotten. Defending what he calls "the

invaluable habit of resorting to books for pleasure," as the main desire

of those who "have grown up in a want of instruction, and in a

carelessness of their own improvement," he says—"If we would generate a

taste for reading, we must, as our only chance of success, begin by

pleasing.... In the _higher and better class_ of works of fiction and

imagination, duly circulated, you possess all you require to strike your

grappling-iron into their souls, and chain them, willing followers, to

the car of advancing civilization."

We have said that cheap literature has got beyond its scurrilous,

indecent, profane, and seditious stages. Six years ago it exhibited

every one of these qualities. We think it will not return to them. But

there is an element of danger which, if not so revolting, is far more

formidable. It is that element which has for its materials the disputes

between labour and capital. There is ignorance on both sides of this

question. There is indifference on the part of the State. A period of

great and increasing commercial prosperity has softened down many of the

coarser and fiercer aspects of these disputes; but in no case have they

been reduced to an intelligible philosophy on the part of employers or

of workmen. Let the prosperity of trade be interrupted by war; let our

markets be narrowed; let profits necessarily fall, and wages with them;

and what lessons, we may ask, have been acquired of mutual dependence

and mutual interests, of conciliation and of brotherhood, in the season

which was favourable to instruction? Political economy has been too long

taught in a onesided spirit; but, nevertheless, its great truths remain

unaltered. Are the people unwilling to search them out? Practically, are

they reluctant to apply them? They know, right well, that profits and

wages are distinct matters; that one belongs to capital and the other to

labour; that if they are to have both they must become capitalists. They

try, upon the smallest, and therefore the most hazardous scale, to unite

labour and capital by cooperation. They cannot try the principle upon a

larger scale, through the evil agency of our laws of partnership. The

Legislature inquires into the matter, and there leaves it. The

Legislature complains that strikes are ruinous to all concerned, and

does nothing to bring about that union—a union of feelings as well as

interests—which would destroy strikes. The Legislature says that the

people have no economical or historical knowledge, and forbids Free

Libraries. Sixty years ago, Burke calculated that there were eighty

thousand _readers_ in this country. If Burke had lived in times when

there are fourteen hundred thousand buyers of cheap weekly sheets, whose

readers probably amount to five millions, would his great philosophical

mind have said, as modern legislation says, Do whatever you can to

prevent this reading going in a right direction; you cannot stop

reading, but you can keep the cheap literature debased, by denying the

people access to the great original thinkers who would lift them out of

their intellectual twilight into a brighter day? Would Edmund Burke have

given such counsel? Would he have shrunk from admitting the people to

the safe and enduring equality of a participation in the common property

of mind? He would have said, as he said in 1770—"All the solemn

plausibilities of the world have lost their reverence and effect." He

would now have added—Build your future authority and your respect, not

upon ignorance, but upon knowledge.

For the proper supply of such Free Libraries, we have a new class of

Books rising fast into importance—Books of established value, carefully

edited—the Poets, the Historians, the Critical and Philosophical

Writers. The great Divines will not be neglected in this good work.

There cannot be cheaper books of this class than Mr. Murray's 'British

Classics,' than Mr. Bohn's various series, than several Collections of

the Poets now in course of publication. We rejoice to see _well-printed_

books for the Library appear at half the old prices; and to know that

there is some chance of the eyes of a generation not prematurely

perishing under the inflictions of a typography inferior to the ordinary

newspaper. Free Libraries would create a large and certain demand for

such works. With the majority, the fame of our great writers is little

more than the scrolls upon their tombs. Let our glorious Literature no

longer be, for the People,

"The Monument of banish'd Minds."

THE END.

Now Ready, 2 Vols. Fcap. 8vo. 10_s._

ONCE UPON A TIME.

BY CHARLES KNIGHT.

"_The old bees die, the young possess the hive._"

SHAKSPERE.

"'Once upon a Time.' This familiar nursery phrase is employed here to

designate a collection of miscellaneous papers of various length, having

only this in common, that they all refer to the olden time, from the

wars of the Roses, down to the days of Queen Charlotte and Fanny Burney.

They relate to all manner of topics—old folks, old manners, old books;

they present us with a mass of curious facts, tricked out here and there

with pleasant and plausible fiction; and, take them all in all, they

make up as charming a pair of volumes as we have seen for many a long

day."—_Fraser's Magazine_.

"'Once upon a Time' is worth possessing."—_Examiner._

"This varied, pleasant, and, what is not always the case, informing

collection of Essays, is in part a selection from the writings of a man

who has done more to popularise literature than perhaps any other man of

the day. The volumes consist of a number of notices illustrative of

manners or archæology, arranged in chronological order."—_Spectator._

"Mr. Charles Knight's entertaining little work 'Once upon a Time' is

full of various knowledge agreeably told."—_Quarterly Review._

"This pleasant gallery of popular antiquarianism, alternately making our

heart yearn upon the good times that are gone never to return, and

causing us to wonder and to rejoice at the mighty strides the world has

made in the road of improvement."—_John Bull._

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET.

LONDON:

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,

AND CHARING CROSS.

50, ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON.

_January, 1854._

MR. MURRAY'S

GENERAL LIST OF WORKS.

ABBOTT'S (REV. J.) Philip Musgrave; or Memoirs of a Church of England

Missionary in the North American Colonies. Post 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._

ABELL'S (MRS.) Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon during the First

Three Years of his Captivity on the Island of St. Helena. _Second

Edition._ Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._

ABERCROMBIE'S (JOHN, M.D.) Enquiries concerning the Intellectual Powers

and the Investigation of Truth. _Fourteenth Edition._ Fcap. 8vo.

6_s._6_d._

—— Philosophy of the Moral Feelings. _Ninth Edition._ Fcap. 8vo. 4_s._

—— Pathological and Practical Researches on the Diseases of the Stomach,

the Intestinal Canal, the Liver, and other Viscera of the Abdomen.

_Third Edition._ Fcap. 8vo. 6_s._

ACLAND'S (REV. CHARLES) Popular Account of the Manners and Customs of

India, Illustrated with Numerous Anecdotes. Post 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._

ADDISON'S (JOSEPH) WORKS. A New Edition, with a New Life and Notes. By

Rev. WHITWELL ELWIN. 4 Vols. 8vo. _In the Press._

ÆSCHYLUS. (The Agamemnon and Choephoræ). _A New Edition_ of the Text,

with Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and Philological, for the Use of

Students. By Rev. W. PEILE, D.D., Head Master of Repton School. _Second

Edition._ 2 Vols. 8vo. 9_s._ each.

ÆSOP'S FABLES, for Old and Young. A New Version. By Rev. THOMAS JAMES,

M.A. Illustrated with 100 Woodcuts, by JOHN TENNIEL. Post 8vo. 2_s._

6_d._

AGRICULTURAL (THE) JOURNAL. Published (half-yearly) by the Royal

Agricultural Society of England. 8vo. 10_s._

AMBER-WITCH (THE). The most interesting Trial for Witchcraft ever known.

Edited by Dr. MEINHOLD. Translated from the German by LADY DUFF GORDON.

Post 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._

ARABIAN NIGHTS. A New Translation. By E. W. LANE. With Explanatory

Notes. 600 Woodcuts. Medium 8vo. 21_s._

ARAGO'S (M.) Historical Eloge on James Watt. Translated from the French,

with Notes by J. P. MUIRHEAD. Portrait. 8vo. 8_s._ 6_d._

ARTHUR'S (LITTLE) History of England. By LADY CALLCOTT. _Seventeenth

Edition._ Woodcuts. 18mo. 2_s._ 6_d._

AUNT IDA'S Walks and Talks; a Story Book for Children. By a LADY.

Woodcuts. 16mo. 5_s._

ADMIRALTY PUBLICATIONS (THE); Issued by direction of the Lords

Commissioners of the Admiralty:—

1. A MANUAL OF SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRY, for the Use of Officers in H.M. Navy

and Travellers in General. By Various Hands. Edited by SIR J. F.

HERSCHEL, Bart. _Second Edition._ Post 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._

2. AIRY'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS MADE AT GREENWICH. 1836 to 1847.

Royal 4to. 50_s._ each.

3. —— APPENDIX TO THE ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS. 1836, 1837, 1842, 8_s._

each; and 1847, 14_s._ Royal 4to.

CONTENTS.

1836.—Bessel's Refraction Tables. Tables for converting Errors of R.A.

and N.P.D, into Errors of Longitude and Ecliptic P.D.

1837.—Logarithms of Sines and Cosines to every Ten Seconds of Time.

Table for converting Sidereal into Mean Solar Time.

1842.—Catalogue of 1439 Stars.

1847.—Twelve Years' Catalogue of Stars.

4. —— MAGNETICAL AND METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 1840 to 1847. Royal

4to. 50_s._ each.

5. —— ASTRONOMICAL, MAGNETICAL, AND METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS, 1848,

49, & 50. Royal 4to. 50_s._ each.

6. —— REDUCTION OF THE OBSERVATIONS OF PLANETS. 1750 to 1830. Royal 4to.

50_s._

7. —— LUNAR OBSERVATIONS. 1750 to 1830. 2 Vols. Royal 4to. 50_s._ each.

8. BERNOULLI'S SEXCENTENARY TABLE. _London_, 1779. 4to. 5_s._

9. BESSEL'S AUXILIARY TABLES FOR HIS METHOD OF CLEARING LUNAR DISTANCES.

8vo.

10. —— FUNDAMENTA ASTRONOMIÆ: _Regiomonti_. 1818. Folio. 60_s._

11. BIRD'S METHOD OF CONSTRUCTING MURAL QUADRANTS. _London_, 1768. 4to.

2_s._ 6_d._

12. —— METHOD OF DIVIDING ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS. _London_, 1767. 4to.

2_s._ 6_d._

13. COOK, KING, and BAYLY'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS. _London_, 1782.

4to. 21_s._

14. EDWARDS ON THE COMPOSITION OF METALS FOR REFLECTING TELESCOPES. 8vo.

2_s._ 6_d._

15. EIFFE'S ACCOUNT OF IMPROVEMENTS IN CHRONOMETERS. 4to. 2_s._

16. ENCKE'S BERLINER JAHRBUCH, for 1830. _Berlin_, 1828. 8vo. 9_s._

17. GROOMBRIDGE'S CATALOGUE OF CIRCUMPOLAR STARS. 4to. 10_s._

18. HARRISON'S PRINCIPLES OF HIS TIME-KEEPER. PLATES. 1767. 4to. 5_s._

19. HUTTON'S TABLES OF THE PRODUCTS AND POWERS OF NUMBERS. 1781. Folio.

7_s._ 6_d._

20. LAX'S TABLES FOR FINDING THE LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE. 1821. 8vo.

10_s._

21. LUNAR OBSERVATIONS at GREENWICH. 1783 to 1819. Compared with the

Tables, 1821. 4to. 7_s._ 6_d._

22. —— DISTANCES of the MOON'S CENTRE from the PLANETS. 1822, 3_s._;

1823, 4_s._ 6_d._ 1824 to 1835. 8vo. 4_s._ each.

23. MASKELYNE'S ACCOUNT OF THE GOING OF HARRISON'S WATCH. 1767. 4to.

2_s._ 6_d._

24. MAYER'S THEORIA LUNÆ JUXTA SYSTEMA NEWTONIANUM. 4to. 2_s._ 6_d._

25. —— TABULÆ MOTUUM SOLIS ET LUNÆ. 1770. 4to. 5_s._

26. —— ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS MADE AT GOTTINGEN, from 1756 to 1761.

1826. Folio. 7_s._ 6_d._

27. NAUTICAL ALMANACS, from 1767 to 1855. 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._ each.

28. —— SELECTIONS FROM THE ADDITIONS up to 1812. 8vo. 5_s._ 1834-54.

8vo. 5_s._

29. —— SUPPLEMENTS, 1828 to 1833, 1837 and 1838. 8vo. 2_s._ each.

30. —— TABLE requisite to be used with the N.A. 1766. 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._

31. —— _Second Edition, enlarged._ 1781. 8vo. 5_s._

32. —— _Third Edition, corrected._ 1802. 8vo. 5_s._

33. POND'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS. 1811 to 1835. 4to. 21_s._ each.

34. RAMSDEN'S ENGINE for DIVIDING MATHEMATICAL INSTRUMENTS. 4to. 5_s._

35. —— ENGINE for DIVIDING STRAIGHT LINES. 4to. 5_s._

36. SABINE'S PENDULUM EXPERIMENTS to DETERMINE THE FIGURE OF THE EARTH.

1825. 4to. 40_s._

37. SHEPHERD'S TABLES for CORRECTING LUNAR DISTANCES. 1772. Royal 4to.

21_s._

38. —— TABLES, GENERAL, of the MOON'S DISTANCE from the SUN, and 10

STARS. 1787. Folio. 5_s._ 6_d._

39. TAYLOR'S SEXAGESIMAL TABLE. 1780. 4to. 15_s._

40. —— TABLES OF LOGARITHMS. 4to. 3_l._

41. TIARK'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS for the LONGITUDE of MADEIRA.

1822. 4to. 5_s._

42. —— CHRONOMETRICAL OBSERVATIONS for DIFFERENCES of LONGITUDE between

DOVER, PORTSMOUTH, and FALMOUTH. 1823. 4to. 5_s._

43. VENUS and JUPITER: OBSERVATIONS of, compared with the TABLES.

_London_, 1822. 4to. 2_s._

44. WALES' AND BAYLY'S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS. 1777. 4to. 21_s._

45. WALES' REDUCTION OF ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS MADE IN THE SOUTHERN

HEMISPHERE. 1764-1771. 1788. 4to. 10_s._ 6_d._

AUSTIN'S (MRS.) Fragments from German Prose Writers. Translated with

Biographical Notes. Post 8vo. 10_s._

—— Translation of Ranke's Political and Ecclesiastical History of the

Popes of Rome. _Third Edition._ 2 Vols. 8vo. 24_s._

BABBAGE'S (CHARLES) Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. _Fourth

Edition._ Fcap. 8vo. 6_s._

—— Table of the Logarithms of the Natural Numbers from 1 to 108000.

_Fourth Edition._ Royal 8vo. 6_s._

—— Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. _Second Edition._ 8vo. 9_s._ 6_d._

—— Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on some of its

Causes. 4to. 15_s._

—— Exposition of 1851; or, Views of the Industry, the Science, and the

Government of England. _Second Edition._ 8vo. 7_s._ 6_d._

BANKES' (RIGHT HON. G.) STORY OF CORFE CASTLE, with documents relating

to the Time of the Civil Wars, &c. Woodcuts. Post 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._

BASSOMPIERRE'S Memoirs of his Embassy to the Court of England in 1626.

Translated with Notes. 8vo. 9_s._ 6_d._

BARROW'S (THE LATE SIR JOHN) Autobiographical Memoir, including

Reflections, Observations, and Reminiscences at Home and Abroad. From

Early Life to Advanced Age. Portrait. 8vo. 16_s._

—— Voyages of Discovery and Research within the Arctic Regions, from

1818 to the present time, in search of a North-West Passage: with Two

Attempts to reach the North Pole. Abridged and arranged from the

Official Narratives. 8vo. 15_s._

—— (JOHN) Naval Worthies of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, their Gallant

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British Navy. 8vo. 14_s._

—— Life and Voyages of Sir Francis Drake. With numerous Original

Letters. Post 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._

—— Tour in Austrian Lombardy, the Northern Tyrol, and Bavaria. Woodcuts.

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BEES AND FLOWERS. Two Essays reprinted from the "Quarterly Review."

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BELL'S (SIR CHARLES) Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression as connected

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BENEDICT'S (JULES) Sketch of the Life and Works of Felix Mendelssohn

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BERTHA'S Journal during a Visit to her Uncle in England. Containing a

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—— The Heiress in her Minority; or, the Progress of Character. By Author

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BIRCH'S (SAMUEL) History of Ancient Pottery: Egyptian, Asiatic, Greek,

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BIOSCOPE (THE); or, the Dial of Life explained. By GRANVILLE PENN.

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BLAINE (ROBERTON) on the Laws of Artistic Copyright and their Defects,

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BLUNT'S (REV. J. J.) Undesigned Coincidences in the Writings of the Old

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—— Principles for the proper understanding of the Mosaic Writings,

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BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. With 1000 Illustrations of Borders, Initials, and

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BORROW'S (GEORGE) Lavengro; The Scholar—Gipsy—and Priest. With Portrait.

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—— Zincali, or the Gipsies of Spain; their Manners, Customs, Religion,

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BOSWELL'S (JAMES) Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Including the Tour to the

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⁂ _The Second and Third Volumes may be had separately, 14s. each._

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The modern epoch of cheap literature may be held to have commenced,