Volume 2 — CHAPTER XII. (continued 2)

It seems evident that, while the connection with the University had been, as was so frequently the case with the earlier publishing undertakings of Europe, of very material and perhaps indispensable service in initiating the business of the House, the trade facilities offered by a great commercial centre like Amsterdam were of still greater value than the coöperation and material to be secured from the University.

No one of the Elzevirs appears to have been entitled to be described as a scholar, although Daniel, the last of the House, was evidently a man of a wide range of cultivation and of attainments. Each one, however, of the family who had responsibilities in the management of the publishing interests, evidently possessed adequate judgment as to what constituted scholarship, and they were always able to secure in the selection of their material, in the higher class of editorial work, and in supervising the printing of the more exacting classes of books, the service of some of the most learned men who were at the time resident in Holland. Not a few of these scholarly assistants and associates became, as said, near friends of their publishers or of their chiefs.

The Elzevirs did not have upon their hands the peculiar responsibilities that had to be met by the printer-publishers of the preceding generations. It was not necessary for them, as it had been for Aldus, to ransack distant convents for manuscripts, and to do the personal work of collating and preparing these manuscripts for the compositors. The Elzevirs were, in nearly every instance, in a position, for their classical publications, to give to the type dealers printed “copy,” the text of which had had the advantage of the supervision of a long series of previous editors. It was not necessary for the Elzevirs to create methods of organisation for a printing-office, or themselves to invent mechanism for the production of books. At the time their work was begun, printing was already if not a perfected at least a well developed art, the processes of which had been very fully worked out. They were able, after utilising to best advantage the experience of previous generations, so far themselves to develop and improve methods and results as to make of printing not only an art but a fine art; and even if they had never placed a publishing imprint upon a title-page, they would, through their service as typographers, have earned an honourable place in the annals of bookmaking.

In their work as publishers, they had a very great advantage in doing business in a country in which literature was practically free from the burdensome interference of censorship. When we recall the long series of contests carried on by the printers of Venice and of Florence against the ecclesiastical censorship of Rome, and the almost equally hampering obstacles placed upon the printer-publishers of Paris, first by the theologians of the Sorbonne, and, later, by the officials of the Crown, we can appreciate the value of the freedom enjoyed by the Press in Leyden and in Amsterdam, in the history of publishing in which places, there is hardly a single reference to the burdens of interference or censorship.

The successive generations of Elzevirs seem always to have been (as was certainly the case with Louis the founder) consistent Calvinists, and they were unwilling to place their imprint upon any publications assailing the doctrines of the Reformed Church. While they certainly rendered a very large service indeed to the development of book-making and of book-selling in Europe, and by this means, to the extension of the influence of literature, it would probably not be accurate to claim that they were men of exceptionally high ideals. They were traders, although traders on a great scale and with comprehensive and far reaching ideas as to the possibilities of their trade. Their business appears to have been carried on, however, with little reference to anything except their own business advantage. It could not be said of them, as it was of Aldus, that they were willing to risk their fortunes for the sake of bringing new ideas to Europe; or, as was the case with Robert Estienne, that they were prepared to sacrifice both fortune and life, if necessary, in order to maintain the freedom of the Press and the right of bringing the Scriptures to the people.

It was probably true that, however unconsciously, they were able to do an important work in helping to prepare the way for interstate copyright. They had themselves, as we have seen, no idea of the possibility of securing the protection of the law for literary productions beyond the territory that could be covered by a privilege or by a series of privileges. In extending, however, the sale of their own publications in countries far distant from the “country of origin” and in finding sale not only in their home city, but in the cities of Germany and Scandinavia, for the works of widely separated authors, they helped to develop in several communities the understanding that literary productions had nothing to do with political boundaries, that the readers of one country were of necessity dependent upon the literature of all countries, and that the boundaries of the world of literature were the boundaries of civilisation.

This is the conception that forms a necessary foundation for the idea of International Copyright. It is under such a conception that the reader comes to feel that sense of obligation to the author, which makes him more than ready to pay to such author a return for the service rendered. When such a relation has once been established between authors and their readers, it becomes practicable to secure from communities the recognition by law of the rights of authors to such returns. It may fairly be said, therefore, that in creating and in developing the business of distributing literature throughout Europe, the Elzevirs took the first step that was necessary in order to bring about the European copyright, which was finally secured, two centuries later, under the Convention of Berne.

PART III.

THE BEGINNINGS OF PROPERTY IN LITERATURE.

PART III.

THE BEGINNINGS OF PROPERTY IN LITERATURE.