can be obtained cheaper than by honestly buying and fairly paying for it in tliat day it will be felt and admitted tliat we have seriously injured and our country by the formation of its mind morals and manners mainly to foreign authors through the relative and consequent of their works inevitably from the denial of tight p perhaps there is no chapter in the history of literature more amusing and yet none which is essentially more melancholy than that which us with the of authors and especially of those of decided genius that shakespeare was for deer stealing � a most poetical and delicate sort of all admit � that the great bacon father of modern philosophy was disgraced and for corruption as lord the most responsible and one of the most as well as posts in the kingdom that burns was irregular in love and in drink that was a and a cheat that some have nm away with other men s wives while a good many have run away from their own � these literature as a and like deplorable facts are and over hj millions are much better acquainted v th the vices and errors of the greatly gifted than with their writings too many of us find an if not malicious pleasure in those whose intellectual stature to dwarf us at least to our own moral level we catch at the evidences of their in order to assure ourselves that we too are as they or they at least mortal as we are and their lives are necessarily so public so transparent so that the least flaw observation they seem worse than others at least as bad as they only because they are better known how many follies vices sins in the lives of the common place are hidden from public view by the friendly oblivion wliich the majority from observation in them from public interest or curiosity how many have stolen deer and been convicted and whipped or imprisoned for it and had the matter all over and forgotten within a year or two while here stands great shakespeare still in the stocks for deer stealing though he has stood there so patiently � a little yet quite � for almost three centuries it is a fearful thing for one greatly gifted to cherish vices or yield to temptations his errors cover and him like hissing whose sides and gleaming shine in the by wliich his genius has surrounded him from the towering height to which his achievements have lifted him so that the whole world sees them the good with pitying sorrow the thoughtless with levity the bad with ill concealed exultation vice is lamentable in any � is the source not merely of moral degradation but of physical suffering but of all are the most signal and enduring the of those fitted by nature to be great � the kings of the mighty realm of thought the necessities the the of s � these too have afforded the multitude an literature as a they were very poor security while yet for the bread that be eaten and the wine which would be drank by the authors while writing them so each poor for literary distinction was obliged at the outset of his undertaking to seek and find a patron wealthy and fond of doing public spirited acts or at least of the fame thence arising who would be willing to him while at his work and reward him at its close the then was the author s public and formal acknowledgment of his obligation to his patron � his that the credit of the work ought to be divided between them � just as to day the of a mechanical improvement and the who supplies the money wherewith to perfect and secure it often take out a patent but the art of and the general of knowledge and literary appetite have by the necessity which them so that there is now but one real patron the public and nearly all to particular individuals are affected and it is a very common but a very mischievous notion that the writing of a book is creditable per e on the contrary i hold it and only to be justified by proof of lofty qualities and generous aims embodied therein to write a book when you have nothing new to � nothing to say that has not been better said already � that is to inflict a real injury on mankind a new book is only to be justified by a new truth if however and commonplace has been on s bay and has travelled thence to or by a route previously unknown then he may give us a book � if he will attempt no more than to tell us as clearly as possible what he experienced and saw by the way � will have a genuine value and which the world may well thank him for and so of a man who having all his days should favor us with a on burning showing what was the relative value for that use of the various woods how long they should be on fire how much wood should be burned in one pit and how the burning should be managed every contribution however rude and humble our knowledge of nature and of the means by which her may most be made to our needs is beneficent and worthy of our regard but the of new poems or novels or essays or histories which really add nothing to our stock of facts to out fund of ideas but so far as they have any significance merely what has been more forcibly happily said already � this is a work which does less than no good � which ought to be and put down under the general police duty of i would have every writer of a book a competent and made to answer the questions 