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1818.]

Account of an Epidemic in Bengal.

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ACCOUNT OF AN EPIDEMIC IN BENGAL. MR. EDITOR,

A medical friend of mine, just returned from the East Indies, yesterday put into my hands a pamphlet lately published at Calcutta by Dr. Tytler, giving an account of the fatal Epidemic disease, which ravaged the district of Jessore in Bengal. I quote you the following passage to shew what beneficial influence may be expected from the spread of the gospel truths among the Hindoos. The passage will speak volumes on the utility of missionary labours in that quarter of the globe. In my next, I shall give you a curious translation of one of the chapters of the Sama Veda by Rammohun Roy, a Hindoo of extraordinary character and talents, who has lately renounced the Indian superstition, acknowledges but one God-has translated this chapter from the Veda to prove it, and is on his way to this country, to study the doctrines of the Christian Religion. I am, &c.

JAMES JOHNSON. 14 Princes-street, Hanover-square, July 15th, 1818. "To mitigate this fervour, and soothe the feelings of the people, by removing the idea of infection, a notion which having originally arisen now generally prevailed, the dwellings of the sick, in all quarters were personally visited by myself, and by touching and examining the patients, and administering the remedies, I endeavoured to convince their friends no general contagion was present, for if such were the truth, the judge, who had frequently seen the sick, and my self, who was hourly in contact with the worst cases, must have been infected. Reasoning of this kind was however attended with no effect, and such as visited at my house appeared with camphor in their clothes, and smelling bottles in their hands, and declaring their thorough conviction of a pestilential atmosphere, betrayed evident signs in their countenances of being in momentary expectation of sudden dissolution. Those, who from the dignity of their cast, wealth, and information, had influence over the minds of the populace, and might in great measure have averted the alarm,

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were among the first to encourage and spread the terror, and by their own example contributed much towards its continuance and effect. Truth, neglected and despised on earth, was, with astrological wisdom sought for in the skies! and the beautiful constellation of the Galaxy, shining in splendid majesty every evening over Jessore, was most ungenerously accused of showering down pestilence and destruction upon the portion of the lower world immediately beneath its influence. Some indirect sus

picions moreover existed that Jupiter, beaming gloriously from the heart of that malignant demon the Scorpion, might not altogether be without connection with his sister friends of the milky-way. One sapient person famed above others for superior sagacity and discernment, with infinite labour and difficulty accomplished the wonderful discovery of there happening to be this year fice Saturdays in the English month of August. The importance of this fact, upon being promulgated, and its authority confirmed by the printed records of the Almanack in the Calcutta directory, was immediately acknowledged; for this being a day dedicated to Sani, whose malignant potency has long been acknowledged in India, and the number FIVE being the express property of the destructive Sira, a mystical combination was hence, with unspeakable penetration detected, whose infallibility and baneful influence it would have amounted to sacrilege to question.

Artifice and knavery did not hesitate to take their usual advantage of credulity and popular perplexity. A religious devotee who had been unsuccessful in a legal contest respecting land, publicly announced' that the prevalence of the distemper was the wrath of heaven manifested in his cause, and would in consequence continue till his asserted property was restored. This impostor was seized, and after being confined dismissed from the town. In the night of the 29th a commotion, which might, but for timely precautions, have been productive of serious mischief, occurred in the villages near the station. A number of Jadoos, or magicians, were reported to have quitted' Morelly, with a human head in their possession, which they were to be directed by the presence of supernatural signs to leave in a certain and to them unknown bustee or village. The people on all sides were ready by force to arrest the progress of these nocturnal visitors; for the prophecy foretold, that wherever the head fell, the destroying angel terminating her sanguinary career would rest, and the demon of death thus satisfied refrain from further devastation in this part of the country."

A singular scene was witnessed that night by the judge and myself. While walking along the road, endeavouring to allay the agitation and quiet the apprehen

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MINUTIE LITERARI.

[Aug. 1,

OBSERVATIONS, ANECDOTES, &c. ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE. Ινα μή τι ἀπόληται.

KING JAMES THE FIRST.

Notwithstanding the praises which were lavished upon this British Solomon as his flatterers called him, it appears that the booksellers were far from being fond of engaging in his works. The learned Thomas Lydyat, in a letter to Mr., afterwards Archbishop, Usher (written August 22, 1611) says, "I have sent you the King's book in Latin against Vorstius, yet scant dry from the press: which Mr. Norton, who hath the matter wholly in his own hands, swore to me, he would not print, unless he might have money to print it."

LORD BACON.

This great man, of whom the world is yet to seek for a good memoir, submitted the manuscript of his Novum Organum to the perusal of his cousin Sir Thomas Bodley, who in returning it, gave him this advice: "One kind of boldness doth draw on another. insomuch, that methinks I should offend not to signify, that before the transcript of your book be fitted for the press, it will be requisite for you to cast a censor's eye upon the stile and elocution, which in the frame of your periods, and in divers words and phrases, will hardly go for current, if the copy brought to me be just the same that you would publish."

WOTTON AND GRAY.

Sir Henry Wotton whose history has been so well related by honest Izaack Walton, spent the close of his very busy life in Eton College, when he entered into deacon's orders, and he became provost. The year before his death he said on returning to the College from an excursion to Winchester: "How useful was

sions of the people, we perceived a faint light issuing from a thick clump of bamboo. Attracted by this circumstance, we proceeded to the spot, and found a hut the interior of which, that was illuminated, contained five images of Hindoo gods, and one of them has since been ascertained to be Steetillah, or the formidable and celebrated Colat Beebee. In front of the idols that adorned this den of superstition, a female child apparently about 9 years of age, lay upon the ground-she was evidently stupified with intoxicating drugs, and in this manner prepared to return responses to such questions as those initiated into the mysteries should think proper to propose.

that advice of a holy monk, who persuaded his friend to perform his customary devotions in a constant place, because in that place, we usually meet with those very thoughts which possessed us at our last being there: and "added Sir Henry" I find it thus far experimentally true, that my now being in that school, and seeing that very place where I sat when I was a boy, occasioned me to remember those very thoughts of my youth which then possessed me; sweet thoughts indeed, that promised my growing years numerous pleasures without mixtures of cares; and these to be enjoyed when time (which I therefore thought slow paced) had changed my youth into manhood; but age and experience have taught me, that these were but empty hopes; for I have always found it true as my Saviour did foretel, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Nevertheless I saw there a succession of boys using the same recreations, and questionless possessed with the same thoughts that then possessed me. "Thus one generation succeeds another, both in their lives, recreations, hopes, fears and death."

Let the whole of this beautiful sentiment be compared with Gray's Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College, and I am much mistaken if the reader will not pathetic composition. at once see the original germ of that

Ah happy hills, ah pleasing shade,

Where once my careless childhood stray`d,
Ah fields belov'd in vain,
I feel the gales that from ye blow,
A stranger yet to pain!
A momentary bliss bestow,

As waving fresh their gladsome wing,
My weary soul, they seem to sooth,
And, redolent of joy and youth,

To breathe a second spring.

sportive joys of the youthful train that
But it is in the description of the
the sage instructs the poet.
Gay hope is theirs, by fancy led

Less pleasing when possest;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,

The sunshine of the breast;
Their's buxom health of rosy hue,
Wild wit, invention ever new,

And lively cheer of vigour born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
That fly th' approach of morn.

1818.]

Anecdotes, &c. Illustrative of the History of Literature.

Alas, regardless of their doom,

The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
No care beyond to day:

Yet see how all around them wait
The ministers of human fate,

And black misfortune's baleful train!
Ah shew them where in ambush stand
To seize their prey the murderous band,
Ah! tell them they are men.

SHAKESPEARE AND SPENSER.

All the critics upon our immortal
dramatist have dwelt with rapture upon
his creative genius in bodying the off-
spring of his imagination, or in other
words giving powers to airy nothings
exactly adapted to the character and
office for which he had occasion. Among
those beings by far the most extraor-
dinary is Caliban, the monstrous pro-
duction of a dæmon and a witch, in-
heriting all the qualities of each parent,
and uniting to the most hideous outward
form a diabolical malignity and acute-
ness, with simplicity and ignorance. Yet
this uncouth representation loses the
credit of originality when the reader
compares the picture with the person-
ification of lust in the Faery Queen:
It was to weet, a wild and savage man,
Yet was no man, but only like in shape,
And eke in stature, higher by a span,
All over-grown with hair, that could awhape
An hardy heart, and his wide mouth did
gape

With huge great teeth like to a tusked boar,
For he lived all on rapine and on rape,
Of men and beasts, and fed on fleshly gore,
The sign whereof yet stain'd his lips afore.

His nether lip was not like man nor beast, But like a wide deep poke, down hanging low,

In which he wont the relics of his feast, And cruel spoil, which he had spar'd to stow;

And over it his huge great nose did grow, Full dreadfully empurpled all with blood And down both sides two wide long ears did glow.

In the play Caliban shews the contracted limits of his knowledge and his attempt at grateful feeling, by the following very natural expressions:

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He brought to her in bands, as conquered
To be her thrall-

In pointing out these coincidences of
apparent imitation, it is not intended to
cast the slightest reflection upon the
human heart, whose original powers of
genius of the mighty master of the
conception and magical influence over
the passions must ever command the
admiration of mankind, even should the
language in which he wrote ever cease
to be a living tongue.

MILTON AND THOMSON.

In the year 1738 the patriotic bookseller Andrew Millar printed a new edition of Milton's Areopagitica with an admirable preface written in a style of animation equal to the unanswerable performance which it recommends. The author of this preface was James Thomson, the poet, and any publisher, who should undertake to reprint the book at this time would render an acceptable service to the public.

PARLIAMENTARY REPORT.

REPORT FROM THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON

THE COPYRIGHT ACTS OF 8 ANNE, C. 19; 15 GEO. III, c. 53; 41 GEO. III, C. 107; AND 54 GEO. III, C. 116. Ordered, by the House of Commons to be

Printed, 5 June 1818.

THE earliest foundation for a claim from any public Library, to the gra

tuitous delivery of new publications, is
to be found in a deed of the year 1610,
by which the Company of Stationers of
Bodley, engages to deliver a copy of
London, at the request of Sir Thomas
every book printed in the Company (not
having been before printed) to the Uni-
versity of Oxford. This however seems

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Report of the Committee on the Copyright Acts.

to be confined to the publications of the Company in its corporate capacity, and could in no case extend to those which might proceed from individuals unconnected with it.

Soon after the Restoration in the year 1662, was passed the "Act for preventing Abuses in printing seditious, treasonable, and unlicensed books and pamphlets, and for regulating of printing and printing presses;" by which, for the first time, it was enacted, that every printer should reserve three copies of the best and largest paper of every book new printed, or reprinted by him with additions, and shall, before any public vending of the said book, bring them to the Master of the Company of Stationers, and deliver them to him; one whereof shall be delivered to the keeper of his Majesty's Library, and the other two to be sent to the Vice Chancellor of the two Universities respectively, to the use of the public libraries of the said Universities. This Act was originally introduced for two years, but was continued by two Acts of the same Parliament till 1679, when it expired.*

It was, however, revived in the 1st year of James II, and finally expired in 1695.

It has been stated by Mr. Gaisford, one of the curators of the Bodleian Library, "that there are several books entered in its register, as sent from the Stationers' Company subsequent to the expiration of that Act;" but it is probable that this delivery was by no means general, as there are no traces of it at Stationers' Hall, and as Hearne, in the preface to the " Reliquiæ Bodleianæ," printed in 1703, presses for benefactions to that library as peculiarly desirable, "since the Act of Parliament for sending copies of books, printed by the London booksellers, is expired, and there are divers wanting for several years past."

During this period, the claim of authors and publishers to the perpetual Copyright of their publications, rested upon what was afterwards determined to have been the common law, by a majority of nine to three of the judges on the cases of Millar and Taylor in 1769, and Donaldson and Becket in 1774. Large estates had been vested in Copy

Upon reference to the continuing Act of 17. Ch. II. c. 4, the clauses respecting the delivery of the three copies appear to be perpetual, yet it should seem that they were not so considered, not being adverted to in the Act of Anne.

[Aug. 1,

rights; these Copyrights had been assigned from hand to hand, had been the subject of family settlements, and in some instances larger prices had been given for the purchase of them (relation being had to the comparative value of money) than at any time subsequent to the Act of the 8th of Queen Anne. By this Act, which in the last of these two cases, has since been determined to have destroyed the former perpetual Copyright, and to have substituted one for a more limited period, but protected by additional penalties on those who should infringe it, it is directed, that nine copies of each book that shall be printed or published, or reprinted and published with additions, shall, by the printer, be delivered to the warehouse-keeper of the Company of Stationers, before such publication made, for the use of the Royal Library, the libraries of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the libraries of the four Universities of Scotland, the library of Sion College in London, and the library belonging to the Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh.

From the passing of this Act until the decision of the cases of Beckford and Hood in 1798, and of the University of Cambridge and Bryer, in 1813, it was universally understood, that neither the protection of copyright, nor the obligation to deliver the eleven copies attached to the publication of any book, unless it was registered at Stationer's Hall, an act which was considered as purely optional and unnecessary, where it was intended to abandon the claim for Copyright; and in conformity to this construction, the Act of 41 Geo. III. expressly entitled the libraries of Trinity College, and the King's Inn, Dublin, to copies of such books only as should be entered at Stationers' Hall.t

In Beckford versus Hood, the Court of King's Bench decided, that the omission of the entry only prevented a prosecution for the penalties inflicted by the statutes, but it did not in any degree impede the recovery of a satisfaction for the violation of the copyright. The same Court further determined, in the case of the University of Cambridge

*Birch, in his Life of Archbishop Tillotson, states, that his widow, after his death in 1695, sold the Copyright of his unpublished sermons for 2,500 guineas.

+ The whole number of entries during the 70 years, from 1710 to 1780, does not equal that which has taken place in the last four years. See Appendix No. 1.

1818.]

Report of the Committee on the Copyright Acts.

against Bryer in 1812, that the eleven copies were equally claimable by the public libraries, where books had not been entered at Stationers' Hall as where they had.

The burthen of the delivery, which by the latter decision was for the first time established to be obligatory upon publishers, produced in the following year a great variety of petitions to the House of Commons for redress, which were referred to a Committee, whose Report will be found in the Appendix ;* and in 1814 the last Act on this subject was passed, which directed the indiscriminate delivery of one large paper copy of every book which should be published (at the time of its being entered at Stationers' Hall) to the British Museum, but limited the claim of the other ten libraries to such books as they should demand in writing within twelve months after publication; and directed that a copy of the list of books entered at Stationers' Hall should be transmitted to the librarians once in three months, if not required oftener.

It appears, so far as Your Committee have been enabled to procure information, that there is no other country in which a demand of this nature is carried to a similar extent. In America, Prussia, Saxony and Bavaria, one copy only is required to be deposited; in France and Austria two, and in the Netherlands three; but in several of these countries this is not necessary, unless copyright is intended to be claimed.

The Committee having directed a statement to be prepared by one of the witnesses, an experienced bookseller, of the retail price of one copy of every book entered at Stationers' Hall between the 80th July 1814 and the 1st of April 1817, find that it amounts in the whole to 1,419. Ss. 11d. which will give an average of 532. 4s. per annum; but the price of the books received into the Cambridge University Library from July 1814 to June 1817. amounts to 1,1457. 10s. the average of which is 381/. 16s 8d. per annum.

In the course of the inquiry committed to them, the Committee have proceeded to examine a variety of evidence, which, as it is already laid before the House, they think it unnecessary here to recapitulate; but upon a full consideration of the subject, they have come to the following resolutions:

1. Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Committee, that it is desirable that so Appendix, No. 2.

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much of the Copyright Act as requires the gratuitous delivery of eleven copies should be repealed, except in so far as relates to the British Museum, and that it is desirable that a fixed allowance should be granted, in lieu thereof, to such of the other public libraries, as may be thought expedient. this Committee, that if it should not be 2. Resolved, That it is the opinion of thought expedient by the House to comply with the above recommendation, it is desirable that the number of libraries entitled to claim such delivery should be restricted to the British Museum, and the Libraries of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Dublin Universities.

this Committee, that all books of prints, 3. Resolved, That it is the opinion of wherein the letter-press shall not exceed a certain very small proportion to each plate, shall be exempted from delivery, except to the Museum, with an exception of all books of mathematics.

4. Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Committee, that all books in respect of which claim to Copyright shall be expressly and effectually abandoned, be also exempted.

5. Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Committee, that the obligation imposed on Printers to retain one Copy of cach

Work printed by them, shall cease, and the

lieu of it.
copy of the Museum be made evidence in

June 5, 1818.

Appendix, No. 1.—Books and Music enter-
ed at Stationers' Hall from the passing
April 1710 to April 1720 (10 years)
of the Act 8th Anne, 1710 to 1818.

1730

(do)

872

492

1740

(do) 343

1750

(do) 618

1760

(do) 417

1770

(do)

433

1780

(do)

1,033

1790

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1800

(do)

5,386

1810

(do)

3,076

1814 (4 do)

1,235

(do) 4,353

1818

Stationers' Hall till 1776-7, when some legal Very little, if any Music was entered at dispute arose respecting the Copyright of Music; and single Songs do not appear to have been entered till April 1783: since that period, Music, particularly single songs, has formed a considerable portion of the

articles entered.

Geo. Greenhill, Warehouse-keeper of the Company of Stationers. Appendix, No. 2.—Report from the Committee (in June 1813) on the Copyright of Printed Books.

The Committee appointed to examine several Acts passed in the 8th year of Queen Anne, and in the 15th and 41st years of his present Majesty, for the encouragement of learning, by vesting

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