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how many columns of extracts would be considered 'fair and moderate,' and what precisely is the meaning of the words 'for the purposes of review'? Furthermore, What is a review? We are well content to leave these questions unanswered and to hurry on.

Copyright in respect of a newspaper is to apply only to such parts of the newspaper as are compositions of an original literary character, to original illustrations therein, and to such news and information as have been specially and independently obtained.

This clause seems very loosely drafted, and is sure to be hotly debated. Yet it will be found difficult to find language of precision. To give copyright for a term of years in news and information appears to us highly irrational. Twenty-four hours' protection is all it requires.

That humble individual the lecturer, whose usual complaint against the press is that it cuts him down as if he were a flower of the field, is honoured with protective provisions too elaborate to be here stated. We are not aware that lecturers are an organised body, but if they controlled fifty boroughs they could not have more attention paid to them. After all, patient merit comes by its reward.

The feelings of our self-governing colonies are respected by the provision that nothing in this Act shall prevent the passing in a British colony of any Act respecting the copyright within that possession of works first published in that possession.'

There is, however, now before the House of Lords another Bill, introduced by Lord Monkswell, on whose shoulders the mantle of Lord Herschell has fallen in this matter. A good deal of evidence of publishers, lawyers, authors, and dramatists has been taken by the Select Committee of the House of Lords, to which this Bill was referred, and Lord Thring has devoted his great abilities and long experience to the further elucidation of a difficult subject. The differences between the two Bills are not very considerable.

It would be unwise to discuss at greater length Bills which may never be introduced to the notice of Parliament, but their proposed provisions will at least serve to show the direction any future legislation is likely to take. But it may be worth while to notice that Lord Monkswell's Bill does not employ the word 'original' in the clause describing copyright; but it adopts the same proposal as to the duration of copyright-namely, the term of the author's life and thirty years afterwards. Eighteen hours' protection is given

to news of any fact or event which has happened outside the United Kingdom, which news has been obtained by any newspaper or news agency'specially and independently.'

The subject of copyright is at once both big and little. The commercial side of literature is its little side. The great books of the world were not written for money and have rarely produced any during the lifetime of their authors. The writers most interested therefore in just laws of copyright are the small writers. For example, had Mrs. Henry Wood been entitled to a share of the profits realised by the play of East Lynne,' it would have poured Pactolus into her lap. But the Legislature cannot draw distinctions between (to use Thurlow's imagery) Homers and Hawkesworths, or between Tennysons and Tuppers. The Legislature would go hopelessly wrong if it tried to do anything of the kind and would be certain by an overwhelming majority to put its money on the wrong horse.

Bad authors have a right to flourish on the bad taste of their contemporaries. The day labourer is worthy of his hire, and it is the duty of every civilised State to see to it that its municipal laws relating to the products of men's brains are just and reasonable. On the whole the law of copyright throughout the world is in a sound state, though, as we have taken the occasion to point out, improvement is still possible.

In

ART. VIII.-1. The Writings of James Russell Lowell. Prose and Poetry. In 10 vols. Boston and New York: 1897.

2. The Letters of James Russell Lowell. Edited by CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. London: 1894.

3. James Russell Lowell and his Friends. By EDWARD EVERETT HALE. London: 1899.

4. Impressions of Spain. By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. Compiled by JOSEPH B. GILDER. With an Introduction by A. A. ADEE. 1899.

THE

The

HE work, which has recently been published both in America and in England, entitled James Russell 'Lowell and his Friends,' and which we owe to Dr. Edward Everett Hale, is a fitting and interesting conclusion to the collected editions of Lowell's works, and to permanent or ephemeral biographies, of which he is the subject. Letters of Lowell, edited by Mr. Charles Eliot Norton, which were published in 1898, gave us an account of Lowell's life from his own pen. So continuous and voluminous was his correspondence, from youth almost to the day of his death, that he tells his own tale. The Letters are, in fact, a complete autobiography. 'I never wrote a letter ' which was not a sincere portrait of my mind at the time.' This is what he said in his earlier manhood, and though with advancing years there came some shrinking of the correspondence, and a less subjective tone, no man ever revealed himself in his letters more sincerely than did Lowell.

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In the more recent volume we have a picture of him by one of his earliest comrades-of Lowell among his friends, of the society and the places in which he passed the best part of his life. That life was complete to a degree not frequently seen, and a knowledge of it will assist those on this side of the Atlantic to understand the growth during the last threequarters of a century of the American people. It represents so many phases of national thought and feeling.

After a few hesitations and uncertainties, Lowell fell into a career absolutely suited to his mind and temperament. There were no modifications, no drawbacks, no chafing at occupations or cares unsuited to his nature. He became at a very early age a man of letters by profession; enjoying his work, ever enlarging his knowledge and interests, as much

at home in the old as in the new world, typically American in thought and sympathy, cosmopolitan in his literary and intellectual tastes.

There is a tendency to regard Americans as absorbed in money-making, and to believe that the pursuit of wealth is their main object, but in no country has so much been done for education by private persons, and nowhere are men and women of letters held in higher estimation. In no other country have letters been regarded as a passport to the holding of the highest posts in the diplomatic service. Ticknor, Motley, and Lowell-to recall three names only-have been accredited to some of the chief European capitals, and in thus honouring letters the American nation has done honour to itself.

It is necessary to recall the main incidents of Lowell's life. Born in 1819 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, he came of a well-known New England family. It is common to consider the people of this portion of the United States as severe, hardy, and puritanical, affected by the country and the climate, in which generations of them have been reared and lived. However true this may be of some New Englanders, it is not applicable to a large and cultured class-that from whom James Russell Lowell sprang. The character of his father is clearly shown in his delicate and refined features, which corresponded with

'the sweetness and simplicity of his nature. . . . He was a lover of books, and he possessed more culture, both literary and social, than most of the clergy his contemporaries. Mrs. Lowell was of an old Orkney family, ard in her blood was a tincture of the romance of those solitary northern isles. It was from her that her son believed himself to have inherited his love of nature and his poetic temperament' (Letters,' vol. i. p. 2).

The younger Lowell was born in the house-Elmwoodwhich remained, with varying intervals of absence, his home through life. The quiet village has become the town of Cambridge, a suburb of Boston, separated only from that city by the broad waters of the River Charles. But, town though it be, Cambridge still retains not a little of the original sentiment of the place. The elm-shaded streets, the quiet houses, the plain academic buildings of Harvard, all combine to recall and to perpetuate memories of an earlier phase of American life. In Lowell's youth and early manhood civilisation had not spread westward over the continent, and the Bay State, with Boston for its intellectual focus, was more markedly than to-day the centre of the

intellectual life of America. Of this society Lowell became a sharer at a very early age, for he entered Harvard College in 1834, when only fifteen. Harvard in those days contained a singular mixture of students-lads who may be regarded rather as schoolboys than as college students and also grown men rather sporadic instances indeed, but still a good many of them,' to quote Dr. Hale's reminiscences. It was a wide collection of learners-so various indeed in age as to make systematic teaching somewhat difficult. To Lowell regular study was distasteful. In fact, in the early summer of 1838, he was rusticated' to Concord, though he took his degree in the following August. The exile from college was a blessing in disguise, for at Concord he became intimate with a remarkable group. There he met Emerson, poet, philosopher, and the mental guide of so many of his generation, and others of the transcendentalists who gathered at his house. There was Thoreau, the recluse; Margaret Fuller, whose strong personality weighed upon Lowell, if we take Miranda in the Fable for Critics' seriously; George Ripley, the friend of poets and thinkers; Theodore Parker, in whose prodigious labours for the freedom of slaves Lowell was afterwards to share, and other remarkable men and women. His taste even as a boy was somewhat too catholic for academic restraints-indeed, the early indications of that striking appreciation and love of the world's literary masterpieces which characterise him in maturer years are very remarkable. When he was but

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seventeen we find him writing to a friend

'With some stray cash I have purchased Butler, and Beattie also; these, as well as Coleridge, belong to the Aldine edition of "British Poets." Did you ever read "Hudibras"? It always was, and always will be, a great favourite of mine-an inexhaustible source of mirth from beginning to end. . . . I am reading the Life of Milton; his first taste (as well as Cowley's) for poetry was formed by reading Spenser. I am glad to have such good examples, for Spenser was always my favourite poet.'

Then he springs away to Horace and then to editions of Shakespeare, finally concluding with astonishing enthusiasm, By the by, Milton has excited my ambition to read all the Greek and Latin classics which he did.'

This extract indicates very well the general tendency of Lowell's mind and occupations for many years. He was more than a reader-a student; he lived with his authors, and with their creations; they became a part of his life. It was unlikely that such a nature would ever willingly allow

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