The Book-Hunter
what such a work ought to be. Publications of this kind have, in several
instances, caused great losses to some, while they have brought
satisfaction to no one concerned in them. A publisher has just the same
distaste as any other ordinary member of the human family to the loss of
five or ten thousand pounds in hard cash. Then, as touching the
purchasers,--no doubt the throwing of a "remnant" on the market may
sometimes bring the book into the possession of one who can put it to
good use, and would have been unable to purchase it at the original
price. But the rich deserve some consideration as well as the poor. It
will be hard to find the man so liberal and benevolent that he will
joyfully see his neighbour obtain for thirty shillings the precise
article for which he has himself paid thirty pounds; nor does there
exist the descendant of Adam who, whatever he may say or pretend, will
take such an antithesis with perfect equanimity. Even the fortunate
purchasers of portions of "the remnant," or "the broken book," as
another pleasant technicality of the trade has it, are not always
absolutely happy in their lot. They have been tempted by sheer cheapness
to admit some bulky and unwieldy articles into their abodes, and they
look askance at the commodity as being rather a sacrifice to mammon than
a monument of good taste.
It has been the object of the machinery here referred to, to limit the
impressions of such works to those who want and can pay for them--an
extremely simple object, as all great ones are. There is, however, a
minute nicety in the adjustment of the machinery, which was not obvious
until it came forth in practice--a nicety without which the whole system
falls to pieces. It was to accomplish this nicety that the principle of
the club was found to be so well adapted. A club is essentially a body
to which more people want admission than can gain it; if it do not
manage to preserve this characteristic, it falls to pieces for want of
pressure from without, like a cask divested of its hoops. To make the
books retain their value, and be an object of desire, it was necessary
that the impressions should be slightly within the natural
circulation--that there should be rather a larger number desirous of
obtaining each volume than the number that could be supplied with it.
The club effected this by its own natural action. So long as there were
candidates for vacancies and the ballot-box went round, so long were the
books printed in demand and valuable to their possessors. If there were
110 or 120 people willing to possess and pay for a certain class of
books, the secret of keeping up the pressure from without and the value
of the books, was to limit the number of members and participators to
100. There is nothing noble or disinterested in this. The arrangement
has no pretension to either of these qualities; nor, when we come to the
great forces which influence the supply and demand of human wants,
whether in the higher or the humbler departments, will we find these
qualities in force, or indeed any other motive than common selfishness.
It is a sufficient vindication of the arrangement that it produced its
effect. If there were ten or twenty disappointed candidates, the
hundred were possessed of the treasures which none could have obtained
but for the restrictive arrangements. Scott used to say that the
Bannatyne Club was the only successful joint-stock company he ever
invested in--and the remark is the key-note of the motives which kept
alive the system that has done so much good to literature.
To understand the nature and services of these valuable institutions, it
is necessary to keep in view the limits within which alone they can be
legitimately worked. They will not serve for the propagation of standard
literature--of the books of established reputation, which are always
selling. These are merchandise, and must follow the law of trade like
other commodities, whether they exist in the form of copyright
monopolies, or are open to all speculators. No kind of co-operation will
bring the volumes into existence so cheaply as the outlay of trade
capital, which is expected to replace itself with a moderate profit
after a quick sale. The perfection of this process is seen in the
production and sale of that book which is ever the surest of a
market--the Bible; and when a printer requires the certain and
instantaneous return of his outlay, that is the shape in which he is
most secure of obtaining it.
On the other hand, the clubs will not avail for ushering into the world
the books of fresh ambitious authors. That paradise of the geniuses, in
which their progeny are to be launched full sail, where they are to
encounter no risks, and draw all the profits without discount or
percentage, as yet exists only in the imagination. It would not work
very satisfactorily to have a committee decreeing the issues, and the
remuneration to be paid to each aspirant--ten thousand copies of
Poppleton's Epic, and a cheque for a thousand pounds handed over out of
the common stock, to begin with--half the issue, and half the
remuneration for the Lyrics of Astyagus, as a less robust and manful
production, but still a pleasant, murmuring, meandering, earnest little
dream-book, fresh with the solemn purpose of solitude and silence. No,
it must be confessed our authors and men of letters would make sad work
of it, if they had the bestowal of the honours and pecuniary rewards of
literature in their hands, whether these were administered by an
intellectual hierarchy or by a collective democracy. Hence the clubs
have wisely confined their operations to books which are not the works
of their members; and to keep clear of all risk of literary rivalries,
they have been almost exclusively devoted to the promulgation of the
works of authors long since dead, whether by printing from original
manuscripts or from rare printed volumes.
It has been pleaded that this machinery might have been rendered
influential for the encouragement of living authorship. It has been,
for instance, observed, with some plausibility, that he who has the
divine fervour of the author in him, will sacrifice all he has to
sacrifice--time, toil, and health--so that he can but secure a hearing
by the world; and institutions of the nature of the book clubs might
afford him this at all events, leaving him to find his way to wealth and
honours, if the sources of these are in him. No doubt the history of
book-publishing shows how small are the immediate inducements and the
well-founded hopes that will set authors in motion, and, indeed, a very
large percentage of valueless literature proves that the barriers
between the author and the world are not very formidable, or become
somehow easily removable. This, in fact, furnishes the answer to the
pleading here alluded to; and it may further be safely said, where the
book demanding an introduction professes to be a work of genius,
addressing itself to all mankind, that if it really be what it
professes, the market will get it. No production of the kind is liable
to be lost to the world.
Here it is plaintively argued by Philemon, that the rewards of genius
are very unequally distributed. Who can deny it? Nothing is distributed
with perfect balance like chemical equivalents in this world, at least
so far as mortal faculties are capable of estimating the elements of
happiness and unhappiness in the lot of our fellow-men; nor can one
imagine that a world, all balanced and squared off to perfection, would
be a very tolerable place to live in. Genius must take its chance, like
all other qualities, and, on the whole, in a civilised country it gets
on pretty well. Is it not something in itself to possess genius? and is
it seemly, or a good example to the uninspired world, that its owner
should deem it rather a misfortune than a blessing because he is not
also surrounded by plush and shoulder-knots? If all geniuses had a
prerogative right to rank and wealth, and all the pomps and vanities of
this wicked world, could we be sure that none but genuine geniuses would
claim them, and that there would be no margin for disputation with
"solemn shams"? Milton's fifteen pounds are often referred to by him who
finds how hard it is to climb, &c.; but we have no "return," as the
blue-books call it, of all the good opportunities afforded to intellects
ambitious of arising as meteors but only showing themselves as farthing
rush-lights. On the other hand, no doubt, the wide fame and the rich
rewards of the popular author are not in every instance an exact measure
of his superiority to the disappointed aspirant. His thousand pounds do
not furnish incontrovertible evidence that he is a hundred times
superior to the drudge who goes over as much work for ten pounds, and
there may possibly be some one making nothing who is superior to both.
Such aberrations are incident to all human affairs; but in those of
literature, as in many others, they are exceptional. Here, as in other
spheres of exertion, merit will in the general case get its own in some
shape. Indeed, there is a very remarkable economic phenomenon, never, as
it occurs to me, fully examined, which renders the superfluous success
of the popular author a sort of insurance fund for enabling the obscure
adventurer to enter the arena of authorship, and show what he is worth.
Political economy has taught us that those old bugbears of the statute
law called forestallers and regraters are eminent benefactors, in as far
as their mercenary instincts enable them to see scarcity from afar, and
induce them to "hold on" precisely so long as it lasts but no longer,
since, if they have stock remaining on hand when abundance returns, they
will be losers. Thus, through the regular course of trade, the surplus
of the period of abundance is distributed over the period of scarcity
with a precision which the genius of a Joseph or a Turgot could not
achieve.
The phenomenon in the publishing world to which I have alluded has some
resemblance to this, and comes to pass in manner following. The
confirmed popular author whose books are sure to sell is an object of
competition among publishers. If he is absolutely mercenary, he may
stand forth in the public market and commit his works to that one who
will take them on the best terms for the author and the worst for
himself, like the contractor who gives in the lowest estimate in answer
to an advertisement from a public department. Neither undertaking holds
out such chances of gain as independent speculation may open, and thus
there is an inducement to the enterprising publisher to risk his capital
on the doubtful progeny of some author unknown to fame, in the hope that
it may turn out "a hit." Of the number of books deserving a better fate,
as also of the still greater number deserving none better than the fate
they have got, which have thus been published at a dead loss to the
publisher, the annals of bookselling could afford a moving history.
When an author has sold his copyright for a comparative trifle, and the
book turns out a great success, it is of course matter of regret that he
cannot have the cake he has eaten. This is one side of the
balance-sheet, and on the other stands the debit account in the author
who, through a work which proved a dead loss to its publisher, has made
a reputation which has rendered his subsequent books successful, and
made himself fashionable and rich. There have been instances where
publishers who have bought for little the copyright of a successful book
have allowed the author to participate in their gains; and I am inclined
to believe that these instances are fully as numerous as those in which
an author, owing his reputation and success to a book which did not pay