man.

COPYRIGHT.

GEORGE SAND died in 1876, and her publisher, Michel Lévy, died the year before, in 1875. In May, 1875, just after Michel Lévy's death, Madame Sand wrote a letter in which she renders a tribute of praise and gratitude to the memory of that enterprising, sagacious, and successful She describes his character, his habits, his treatment of his authors, his way of doing business, his conception of the book-trade and of its prospects. by this conception and by the line which he boldly took in pursuance of it that he was original and remarkable ; a main creator, says Madame Sand, of our new modus vivendi in literature; one whose disappearance is not the disappearance of a rich man merely, but of an intellectual

force.

It was

The industrial and literary revolution, for which Michel Lévy did so much, may be summed up in two words: cheap books. But by cheap books we are not to understand the hideous and ignoble things with which,

under this name, England and America have made us familiar. Cheap books in the revolution of Michel Lévy, were books in the format Charpentier or the format Lévy, books in duodecimo instead of octavo; and costing, in general, two-and-sixpence or three shillings a volume instead of eight shillings or nine shillings. But they were still books of such an outward form and fashion as to satisfy a decent taste, not to revolt it; books shapely, well printed, well margined; agreeable to look upon and clear to read.

Such as it was, however, the cheapening of their books threw, at first, French authors into alarm. They thought that it threatened their interests. I remember the time, not so very long ago,' says Madame Sand, 'when we replied to the publishers who were demonstrating to us what the results of the future would be: "Yes, if you succeed, it will be all very well; but if you fail, if, after an immense issue of books, you do not diffuse the taste for reading, then you are lost, and we along with you." And I urged upon Michel Lévy,' she continues, this objection among others, that frivolous or unhealthy books attracted the masses, to the exclusion of works which are useful and conscientious. He replied to me with that practical intelligence which he possessed in so eminent a degree: "Possibly, and

even probably, it may be so at first. But consider this : that the reading of bad books has inevitably one good result. It inspires a man with the curiosity to read, it gives him the habit of reading, and the habit becomes a necessity. I intend, that, before ten years are over, people shall ask for their book as impatiently as if it were a question of dinner when one is hungry. Food and books, we have to create a state of things when both shall alike be felt as needs; and you will confess then, you writers and artists, that we have solved your problem: Man does not live by bread alone."

The ten years were not ended before Michel Lévy's authors had to own, says Madame Sand, that their publisher was right. Madame Sand adds that this led her to reflect on the value of the mediocre in art and literature. Illustrious friends and fellow-authors of hers had been in despair at seeing works of the third order obtain a success far beyond any that they could expect for their own works, and they were disposed to think that with cheap books an era of literary decadence was opening. You are misled, she tells them, by the passing disturbance which important innovations always create at first. It was thought, when railways came, that we had seen the last of conveyance by horses and carriages, and that the providers of it must all be ruined; but it turns out that

railways have created a business for horses and carriages greater than there ever was before. In the same way, the abundant consumption of middling literature has stimulated the appetite for trying to know and to judge books. Second-rate, commonplace literature is what the ignorant require for catching the first desire for books, the first gleam of light; the day will presently dawn for them as it does for the child, who by degrees, as he learns to read, learns to understand also; and, in fifty years from this time, the bad and the middling in literature will be unable to find a publisher, because they will be unable to find a market.

So prophesied George Sand, and the prophecy was certainly a bold one. May we really hope, that towards the year 1930 the bad and the middling in literature will, either in Paris or in London, be unable to find a publisher because it will be unable to find a market? Let us all do our best to bring about such a consummation, without, however, too confidently counting upon it.

But that on which I at present wish to dwell, in this relation by Madame Sand of her debate with her energetic publisher and of her own reflexions on it, is the view presented of the book-trade and of its future. That view I believe to be in the main sound, and to show the course which things do naturally and properly tend to

take, in England as well as in France. I do not say that I quite adopt the theory offered by Michel Lévy, and accepted by George Sand, to explain the course which things are thus taking. I do not think it safe to say, that the consumption of the bad and middling in literature does of itself necessarily engender a taste for the good, and that out of the multiplication of secondrate books for the million the multiplication of first-rate books does as a natural consequence spring. But the facts themselves, I think, are as Michel Lévy laid them down, though one may dispute his explanation and filiation for the facts. It is a fact that there is a need for cheaper books, and that authors and publishers may comply with it and yet not be losers. It is a fact that the masses, when they first take to reading, will probably read a great deal of rubbish, and yet that the victory will be with good books in the end. In part we can see that this is the course which things are actually taking; in part we can predict, from knowing the deepest and strongest instincts which govern mankind in its development, the instinct of expansion, the instinct of selfpreservation, that it is the course which things will take in the future.

The practical mode by which Michel Lévy revolutionised the book-trade was this. He brought out in the