this involves consideration as to the class of readers for which it is intended. Say it is a school book; will it be used by masters and pupils, or by masters alone? Is it designed for secondary or for primary schools, or for technical schools? A host of other details of this kind have to be weighed and taken into account. If it be a circulating library book, the question arises: Shall I print a large edition at once, or a smaller one first, so as to test the demand, and give the author an opportunity of making corrections and improving it in a second edition? If we print 1,000, and in six months have sold only 500; the second-hand copies are then coming into the market; the new copies are therefore dead, and the book has probably not paid its expenses. Or we print 2,000 and 1,000 are sold; then there will be a small profit, but not nearly so much as if we had printed only 1,000 and sold 950. Or, having printed 1,000 originally, we order a reprint when 900 have been sold, and the sale suddenly stops short at 950. In this case the reprint is a loss.

Dennis's "History of Etruria" may be cited as one among many instances of the risk of reprinting. This was for many years the only work on the subject, a standard work and highly valued by scholars. It was out of print for a time, and second-hand copies commanded a high price. Thereupon it was revised and reprinted. The reprint was a dead failure, and the value of second-hand copies fell to that of "an old song." Few memoirs have delighted the public in recent years more than the autobiography of Sir Harry Smith: in two volumes it sold largely, but a new and cheaper edition in one volume was a complete failure, owing mainly to the competition of cheap second-hand copies of the larger work.

If authors were always content to

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await the results of the sale of a book, and participate in any profit earned, leaving to the publisher the risk of loss, there are certain books which could be sold more cheaply than they are at present; but the practice of demanding payment beforehand, on a more or less liberal scale, is growing rather than diminishing, and this payment adds enormously to the speculative risk of a book, especially now that, owing to various causes, the lives of books are much shorter than they used to be. Any publisher could point to instances in which the sale of some work has gone on apparently steadily for some weeks or months and then has stopped dead; has ceased so completely that no copy is asked for afterwards. As a rule, when a manufacturer has completed the production of an article and put it on the market, he is left to promote the sale of it undisturbed, but not so the publisher. curious idea prevails in many quarters that if a person desires to read any given book, he (or she) has the right to do so, whether he be able to purchase it or not. We are beset by appeals from indigent readers, and even more from public libraries. Many benevolent donors of public libraries stop short of supplying books. I do not know whether upholsterers, coal merchants, etc., are called upon to complete these benefactions at their own expense, but it is unquestionable that publishers are thus appealed to constantly, and probably every one of us has made free grants of hundreds of books annually for this purpose. I do not allude to the large public libraries, for they are good purchasers and rarely resort to this method of filling their shelves. I only wish to lay stress on the fact that few, if any, manufacturers are called upon to give away, and do give away, so large a proportion of their manufactures as we do, and receive so little credit for it.

All the standard literature of the world, both copyright and non-copyright, is now accessible to the public at lower prices and in a more attractive form than ever before in the world's history; educational and scientific books are more plentiful, better and cheaper than they have ever been; the only class of books to which this quality of low price does not always belong is proportionately a very small one, and the absence of this quality is mainly due, first to the lending library system, which, however, as has already been said, affords very great facilities and advantages to the reading public; and, secondly, to the not unnatural desire of authors to obtain the best price they can for their

wares.

It must not, however, be supposed that a publisher's work consists wholly or even mainly in awaiting MSS. and dealing with them as they come in. His more arduous duties comprise the originating and carrying out of new works; the finding out what standard books and books of reference are required, discovering men to write them, and searching for new markets and new wants in the United Kingdom and the Colonies. If he be an educational publisher he must keep in touch with hundreds of schools and schoolmasters, and learn from them in what respects his books are capable of improvement and what gaps there are to be filled up. This involves an endless amount of correspondence, and many expensive journeys and interviews.

The "Dictionary of National Biography" is a standing monument of the enterprise of publishers, and so is the great series of classical and Biblical dictionaries planned and carried out by my father in conjunction with Sir Willian Smith. No one will deny the value of these works. Some may imagine that they are undertaken

with the sole idea of sordid gain; but this is far from being the case; many of them have proved very profitable undertakings, but none has proved remunerative until after many years of waiting and hard work, and the expenditure of very large sums of money. For example, the "Dictionary of Christian Biography" and the "Dictionary of Hymnology," which have no rivals in any language and are everywhere regarded as the standard authorities on the subjects they deal with, and the "Classical Atlas" and the separate sheet maps, the best of their kind in the world, at present show a deficit of more thousands of pounds than I care to proclaim; but we are none the less proud of having prepared and published them. We publishers have, all of us, made endeavors from time to time to earn the credit of giving to the world books of lasting worth, with only a secondary eye to profit, which often never comes.

I am sure that most schoolmasters, and those who were schoolboys themselves in the sixties (as I was), will join me in bearing testimony to the vast improvements in the appearance, type, maps, etc., of ordinary school books, as compared with those of their younger days. They are now attractive, whereas they were then in the main repellent. The first edition of the "Public Schools Primer" came into existence just after my elementary days, so I had but little to do with. it; but I remember the hopeless appearance of the page and type. When Dr. Warre was preparing a new set of school books for Eton, he said: "I must insist that type and paper be good, so as not to injure the eyes of the boys." We spent many weeks making experiments under his direction; and, finally, after much trouble, selected a suitable form. Shortly afterwards a new edition of the "Public Schools Primer" came out,

with an almost exact reproduction of our typography; - a sincere piece of flattery.

But a publisher's life is not monopolized by disappointments and anxieties; he has the not unfrequent delight of a surprise in the opposite sense, and of the justification of his hopes and enterprises, and, above all, he has, to set against the "stings and arrows" of a small section of the outside public, the friendship of distinguished men and women. Those who know his work best by experience are almost, without exception his friends. Authors are but human; and no one can complain if here and there an author is found who claims to himself all the credit of success, and lays on his publisher all the blame of failure. The following is an incident of by no means uncommon occurrence. An author, or, shall I say, an authoress, has shown her MS. to some friends before submitting it to a publisher. The friends, not being themselves publishers or "readers" or critics, and having no purpose to serve save to prophesy smooth things, bestow upon the work the most unqualified praise. In due time the book is published, advertised and reviewed, but the friends, having forgotten all about it, pay no heed, until one day they meet the authoress again, and on being asked what they think of the great work and not knowing quite what to say, they affirm that it has not been properly advertised, that wretched publisher has been neglecting it, and so forth, and the wretched publisher is forthwith taken to task because he has failed to make the blind see, or the indifferent eager.

But the calling is not without its humors also. I have a large collection of eccentric letters and comic requests which I hope some day to make the basis of an article. I have been asked to find a wife for a man whom I never

saw, to obtain knighthoods and appointments (including the post of poet laureate), to answer all sorts of questions, and, in short, to act as a general inquiry office.2

Every publisher has had to make a pretty close study of the Copyright Law, and in common, no doubt, with most of my confrères, I have had innumerable requests from friends, from strangers, and even from lawyers to solve legal problems, some of which were elementary; some of which have puzzled the highest courts. I do not attach much value to my own opinion in this or any other matter, but I have noted that no one, not even among the lawyers, has ever offered me a fee for the assistance which I endeavored, perhaps without much success, to render. I have sadly come to the conclusion that cheapness and not wisdom was the attraction in seeking my advice. In one case one of His Majesty's judges sent a lady friend of his to consult me about some copyright trouble with another publisher in which she found herself. The answer I was compelled to give was not altogether an encouraging one, and I shrewdly suspect that this was the reason why the judge sent the case to me.

2 Since the MS. of this article went to the printer several curious requests have reached me, of which I quote two as specimens:

An ENGLAND Book-shop John Murray, Albemarle Street, London, W. Pray procure and send me a catalogue of any one englisch upholsterer's-shop. I write to you, because I do not know other englisch address in London, except your book-shop.

I XI 1906 Stary Sacz

Ksiegarnia Jakubowskiego
Stary Sacz

Galicia. Austria.

An Mr. J. Murray, book-store, London, C. Germany, Nulhausen, Els, Oct. 22nd 1906. For my information I wish to have the prescription concerning "transportable field-kitchens," as they are used in the English army, if this prescription is not secret in the army I may beg you to write me.

There was a man named Angus, in Auchenbrae, in the island of Dorn, who had no courage. He was a quiet, kind man-very respectable in every way, and, moreover, there was something in his face that was good to look upon; but, as the people said, "What was that, when he had not as much as the heart of a chicken?" If a storm came on when the boats were at the herring-fishing, Angus was useless. While others were working as if they had the strength of seven, he would be lying in the bottom of the boat trembling and saying his prayers, and though the water was pouring in, he could not as much as lift a finger to bale it out. At last no crew would take him to sea with them. They said he was no man, and would bring bad luck to any boat.

In every kind of danger he was the same, and the men of Dorn, who were very courageous on sea and land, came at last to have a great contempt for him. He became a byword in the island; and children who were frightened to go to sleep up in the loft in the dark came to know his name. "Hoots-toots," their mothers would say to them, "you have no more courage than Angus Auchenbrae."

Some blamed his mother for Angus's great fault. He had been very sickly

in his youth, and she had kept him like a baby after he was a big lad-guarding him from every word as well as from every breath of wind; and when at last she saw what she had made of him, it was too late to put it right. She would not admit that there was anything wrong with him, but in her heart she was always hoping that he would become like other people. "Those that laugh at him the most," said she to herself, "have little more courage than himself if all were known."

His wife was a nice, quiet woman, and the worst that was ever said about her was that she married such a poor coward as Angus Auchenbrae, who could not even get a boat to take him to the herring-fishing. She came of a courageous family herself, and would have nothing to say to him at first, because of the name he had; but he was so overcome with grief, and was so nice in every other way, and, moreover, her heart was so much with him, that she married him at last, and there was nothing but the one thing between them, though that one thing caused her more sorrow than she ever admitted to any one. She always made a pretence in the house that Angus was as brave as other men; but she knew well that he was not, and the pretence

stabbed him to the heart. His children were nice children, and his boys would fight fiercely with other boys who said a word against their father. Still, they too knew that what was said was the truth.

If those who belonged to Angus Auchenbrae were ashamed of him at times, that was nothing to the trouble he had himself. So greatly did he feel the difference between himself and others, that he would hardly go among his neighbors, but kept almost always to himself, and went about with his eyes on the ground as if he knew what was being said of him. It seemed to him as if he was the helpless victim of a terrible affliction that poisoned everything to him; for however much he might resolve and determine to be brave and manly at the next opportunity, yet always at the first hint of danger his knees began to tremble, and he was weak and useless till it was all past. And so the years went on, and Angus was the same Angus still when his hair was turning gray.

There was one strange thing about him that for a long time no one knew of except his wife. He was a bard, and his songs were all about battle and warfare, and were so spirited and fine, and had such a breath of courage and glory in them, that they might have stirred an army. When his wife saw them first, she could hardly believe that Angus had written them, and she was so proud of them that he could hardly prevent her from telling every one about them. He had to beseech and command her to do nothing of the sort, and at last she agreed to keep the secret, though indeed she was burning to let it out; for she thought that if people only knew what songs Angus had written, they would believe that he had after all some kind of courage that proved he was not such a coward as they thought. "For," said she to herself, "if a man can make what will

stir others to courage, is not that as good as though he had it himself?"

Angus Auchenbrae's wife had a brother called Neil, who was a famous brave man in a boat; and Neil had a wife with a very sharp tongue, and Neil's wife and Angus's wife did not get on very well. They would go to see each other very often, but before long they would come upon something on which they did not agree; and Neil's wife would say something sharp, and Angus's wife would answer her, and they would go on speaking till they had begun to "cast up" to each other things that would have been better left alone.

One day things were hot between them, and Neil's wife "cast up" how Angus had no courage, and how different he was from Neil; and in her anger Angus's wife "let out" about the songs. "Songs," cried the other, and began laughing. "Poor songs! Who would go to battle singing the songs of Angus Auchenbrae?" This was so true that the other had no answer for it; but she was so foolish, poor woman, that she got up and went to her husband's big chest and took out a bundle of songs from the little wooden compartment at the side where he kept them. "Read these!" she cried, "and see if they are poor songs, and if Angus Auchenbrae is the man you think him."

Neil's wife would not wait to read them, but she was filled with curiosity and became very civil, and took them away with her, promising no harm should come to them; and no sooner was she gone than Angus's wife began to be frightened at what she had done. "Never mind," she said to herself at last, "I will go for them myself to-morrow and tell her not to say a word about them; and if it should be whispered that such things were made, people will perhaps think better of the one that made them."