New-York tribune., 1868-08-10

Der OF books pllnueu aJ IHo Oiiol 'o Va
Typography from A. d. 1900 to A. ID. lolO as
follows
Florence.. ~ SSS Strasours SaTls 4S
Milan. 90 Cologne..Hi Lohuoh''''''''' 80
MANY of these books were editions OF the
Classics including the exquisite octavos and
duodecimos of Aldus, printed at Venice, AT
Lepsic most of the publications were small
school books. AT London only one classic
(Terence) was printed At Paris 81 editions OF
the classics were printed, and one Hebrew book
Ga psalter) was sent out by Stephens i'll the
same city,
We give these figures for the purpose OF
assisting the general reader to compare the
production of books during the infancy OF the
typographical art with that of the present
time. We learn from The american Publisher
and bookseller that during the single year
1867 there were published in the United States
alone .773 bOOks-pamphlets periodicals, maps,
&c, being excluded from the computation. 1t
will be seen that from our presses in single
year there issued nearly as many works as from
the united presses of Europe in the first decade
of the sixteenth century. III we consider quail
| ty, however instead Of quantity, it is possible
that we may have no reason for cOmplaccncy.
There was a good deal of trash printed then,
and there is a good deal of trash printed now,
but the proportion of wOrthlessness to value III
the year 1900 was much less than it is in our own
time While printing remained a slow, labor
ous, aud expensive process, its ingenuity and
toll wcro seldom wasted in the production OF
| trihes 1t was because it promised speedily to
break up the monopoly of learning that it soon
became the object of mOnasic and mOnarch-
cal jealousy and interference. 1t was the
business in that age, of gentlemen and scholars,
the successors of the cOpyists in production. but
! Ear their supeIi0rs in all the elegant learning
which the revival Of letters had disseminated.
| If there were but few books, they were care
! fully read were often borrowed by those who
were too pocg to own them, and awakened
! that liberal curiosity which is perhaps the main
| stimulus of all human attainment 1t is hard
! TO draw n comparison between reading in those
! days and reading now, because the motives
| of readers, and the character and influences OF
| literature, have so wonderfully changed. 1t Is
| not probable that the number of sincere and
earnest students has at all kept pace with the
| increased production of books, although it is
perfectly certain that almost ncalculabe addi-
| tioDs have been made, particularly to the
scientific knowledge of the world. The num-
| bcr of men skilled in Greek and Latin literl-
| ture is probably less now than it was at the
close of the fifteenth century; but on the other
! hand there is a great deal of dillilsc and general
knowledge which has a constant effect in inn
proved social economy, whatever may be its
intellectual upshot. 1t is not easy to fix the
| point at which reading becomes purely re-
| A t.I IN, tbn TT,,;fn nI
! States, as above enumerated, no fewer than
! 74l were works Of fiction. Now, it is easy for
the mOralist to gcneraize concerning these,
and to put then all under the ban of indis
crmnatc censure; but when we consider the
various conditions Of mankind, and the widely
different stages of intellectual progress 1T is
clear that novel by no means calculated to
stand the test of elevated criticism may yet
exert an ameliOrating power over mind un-
accustomed to many books, and may promote
a refinement superior to that of the class to
which birth or accident attached the reader.
| The cheapest novel is written in style
superior to cOlloqual vulgarity and it must be
a poor one, indeed, if it does not at least seem
to incucatc q higher morality than that of
everyday life Its characters, to one who has
been accustomed to the masterly dcneatOns
Of Shakespeare or of Fielding may appear
disjointcd or distorted; but to taste less
severely educated, the trappcr, the hunter and
appear to be paragons of politeness, courtesy
and beneyolence. There has been much debate
about the effect of rOmance-reading upon char
acter; but we do not think that sufficient al
lowance has been made for countcracting in
fuenccs 1t must be evident to every fair mind
that if all the boys who have read "Jack
shepherd" were now highwaymen or thieves,
the police statistics, melancholy as they are
would be more mournful and discOuraging still.
Hundreds of thousands of lads who have been
fascinated by Robinson Crusoe" have never
thought of going to sea; and people would
still have been hanged or drowned if neither
of these popular books had been written.
Turning TO another branch of the subject
we find that there were printed in 1867
no fewer than 100 volumes of poetry This,
at first, will strike the gjudicous mind as
an unmitgatcd misfortune, but the poig-
nancy of regret will be alleviated by con-
sidering what large proportion of these
tuneful works have already gone to the butter
shops or back to the paper-mill We have
more than once, in these columns, tried to inn
press upon verse-makers. not the wickedness
of verslying QOr consider 1t, in itself, a
refined and harmless amuscment), but the ex-
treme folly of printing songs and sOnnets
which are neither very good nor very bad, and
which, if not stillbom, hardly make noise
enough to announce to the world their exist
ence. AS we cannot stop the metrcal mania,
we must, we suppose, make the best of it and
we really think that we are justified in point
ing out with some pride that the absurd ailcc-
talinns of the RXrnmic nnrinl hnrn nlnhnat lin