rightly expressed by saying that the book will procure purchasers in the market on special account of these notes. When notes to this extent and of this value are added, I can not doubt that they attach to the edition the privilege of copyright. The principle of the law of copyright directly applies. There is involved in such annotation, and often in a very eminent degree, an exercise of intellect and an application of learning, which place the annotator in the position. and character of author, in the most proper sense of the word. The skill and labor of such an annotator have often been procured at a price which cries shame on the miserable dole which formed to the author of the text his only remuneration. In every view, the addition of such notes as I have figured, puts the stamp of copyright on the edition to which they are attached. It will still, of course, remain open to publish the text, which, ex hypothesi, is the same as in the original edition; but to take and publish the notes will be a clear infringement of copyright."

nal.

It is not necessary that the notes should be origiIf skill and labor are bestowed in their selection and application, the annotator is entitled to copyright in them.

"Of the 200 notes," said the lord president, in the case just referred to, "the defendants' counsel tells us further that fifteen only consist of original matter, and are the composition of Mr. Lockhart himself, while the remaining 185 are quotations from other books and authors. Now this seems to be considered, also, to be a sort of disparagement of the value of the notes, in which I cannot at all agree. It seems to me that notes of this kind are almost chiefly valuable in bringing together, and in combination, the thoughts of the same author in different places, or the thoughts

of other authors, or of critics, bearing upon the point that is under consideration; and nothing could better illustrate it than a number of the notes which we see in these very volumes, and which are exceedingly interesting and valuable as matter of literary and critical taste and judgment. The quotations are, in many places, most apposite, and highly illustrative of the text, and exceedingly interesting to the reader; and, certainly, the selection and application of such quotations from other books may exercise as high literary faculties as the composition of original matter. They may be the result both of skill and of labor and of great literary taste; and, therefore, I think the circumstance that the notes consist, to a great extent, of quotations, is anything but a disparagement of their value." So Lord Kinloch: "It was, perhaps, thought that to repeat quotations from well-known authors was not piracy. If so, I think a great mistake was committed. In the adaptation of the quotation to the ballad which it illustrates—the literary research which discovered it-the critical skill which applied it-there was, I think, an act of authorship performed, of which no one else was entitled to take the benefit for his own publication, and thereby to save the labor, the learning, and the expenditure, necessary even for this part of the annotation."

This question would arise more properly under the consideration of the subject of piracy, to which chapter we refer the reader for a further discussion of the question of originality.

180. An examination of the subject of originality in literary matter, drawn from the decided cases on the subject, is more or less an examination of the subject of piracy; for piracy is the name which the law gives to the wrongful appropriation of intellectual

property, in which the ownership has been asserted in accordance with its own rules, just as larceny is the wrongful appropriation of personal and tangible property: the solitary difference being that, while the latter is a criminal, the former is only a civil offense.1

Though, indeed, why this should be, there is no logical reason. And, as the recognition by the law in any form, of this species of property is still comparatively new and recent, the day may not be far distant when even this last distinction will be rejected.

Resulting from the fact that literary and intellectual matter is property in the eyes of the law, and can, therefore, be transferred from man to man, it follows that the ownership may exist in others than its author; were it not for this, the subject of originality and of piracy might well be treated concurrently. The cases not examined, therefore, in this chapter will be found treated of further on, in the chapter on Piracy.

''This is, however, not the case in all countries. In France, Holland, and other kingdoms, piracy is a misdemeanor. See synopsis of copyright in different nations in chapter on Copyright, post.

BOOK II.

OF PROPERTY IN LITERARY COMPOSITION BEFORE PUBLICATION.

CHAPTER I.

OF MANUSCRIPTS.

181. We have stated that, as soon as the author's property in ideas is put into any tangible, visible form, and the "airy nothings" have taken to themselves a "local habitation :" the law, from that instant, asserts its recognition and protection, and will, if appealed to, take measures to enforce it.

The first form which literary composition must take outside the composer's brain, is evidently the form assumed upon its being written upon a surface, and this occupied surface is called a manuscript, which, as the name implies, means something written with the hand,' as contradistinguished from a printed or published "book."

2

Lord Ellenborough seemed to think that the word "book,” as used in the statute of Anne, implied a plurality of sheets, and would not cover words printed upon a single sheet. But in Beck v. Long1 Latin :—Manuscriptum from manus, the hand, and scribere,

to write.

* Hime v. Dale, 2 Camp. 27 (note); Clementi v. Golding, Id. 25.

man,1 it was decided that musical compositions, printed upon a single sheet, might come under the definition of that word. If a different construction were put upon the act, many productions of the greatest genius, both in prose and verse, would be excluded from its benefits. The papers of the "Spectator," or "Gray's Elegy," might have been pirated as soon as published, because they were first given to the world on single sheets. The voluminous extent of a production cannot, in an enlightened country, be the sole title to the guardianship the author receives from the law. Everybody knows that mathematical. and astronomical calculations, which will confine the student during a long life, in his cabinet, are frequently reduced to the compass of a few lines. And is all profundity of mental abstraction-on which the security and happiness of the species in every part of the globe depend-to be excluded from the protection of jurisprudence? There is nothing in the word "book" to require that it shall consist of several sheets, bound in leather or stitched in a marble cover. "Book" is. evidently from the Saxon "bot;" and the latter term is from the beach-tree, the rind of which supplied the place of paper to our German ancestors. The Latin word "liber" is of a similar etymology, meaning originally only the bark of a tree. Book" may,

therefore, be applied to any writing, and it has often been so used in the English language. Sometimes the most humble and familiar illustration is the most fortunate. The horn-book, so formidable to infant years, consisted of one small page protected by an animal preparation; and in this state it has universally received the appellation of a "book." So in legal proceedings, the copy of the pleadings, after issuei ⚫ Cowp. 623.