Note 10 — CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS:

The following facts will show the value of literary property; immense profits and cheap purchases! The manuscript of “Robinson Crusoe” ran through the whole trade, and no one would print it; the bookseller who did purchase it, who, it is said, was not remarkable for his discernment, but for a speculative turn, got a thousand guineas by it. How many have the booksellers since accumulated? Burn’s “Justice” was disposed of by its author for a trifle, as well as Buchan’s “Domestic Medicine;” these works yield annual incomes. Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield” was sold in the hour of distress, with little distinction from any other work in that class of composition; and “Evelina” produced five guineas from the niggardly trader. Dr. Johnson fixed the price of his “Biography of the Poets” at two hundred guineas; and Mr. Malone observes, the booksellers in the course of twenty-five years have probably got five thousand. I could add a great number of facts of this nature which relate to living writers; the profits of their own works for two or three years would rescue them from the horrors and humiliation of pauperism. It is, perhaps, useful to record, that, while the compositions of genius are but slightly remunerated, though sometimes as productive as “the household stuff” of literature, the latter is rewarded with princely magnificence. At the sale of the Robinsons, the copyright of “Vyse’s Spelling-book” was sold at the enormous price of 2200l., with an annuity of fifty guineas to the author!