the learned Dr
Snooks, of North Britain, was actually waiting its turn for immediate
reproduction? Would Snatchett and Brothers cast an eye on their
compatriot's scrawled and blotted quires, when they had just run the
pen-knife through a new "Dombey," for which fifty compositors waited
stick-in-hand, and which the million expected with insatiable
greediness? The excellent person to whom I refer ran the gauntlet of
such patrons with no better success than my questions imply; and if
the dignified production to which I have referred shall ever see the
light, I am informed that it will first issue from the English press;
for should its author publish it here, at his own expense, he will be
forced to put it at a price which, compared with the pirated works of
British authors, will appear unreasonable, and kill it in the birth.
No American is patriot enough to buy a book, simply because it is
valuable, and the product of national genius: and Congress takes care
that if any be found to do so, they shall be roundly taxed for their
patriotism.

I have given this instance because it has come under my immediate
notice; but you will not doubt, dear Godfrey, that the country which,
even in existing circumstances, has bred such writers, in their
several departments, as Prescott, and Audubon, and Wheaton, and Kent,
and Story, has crushed at least as many more by the pressure of her
copyright laws: and, if so, America has deprived herself of
intellectual sons, whose gifts, in their stimulated exercise, would
have made her rich, as well as illustrious in the sure sequel of their
fame. The "Calamities of Authors" are indeed proverbial, but few are
the unnatural mothers who, to prevent them, destroy genius in the
embryo. Yet there is an ingenuity of mischief in this government, from
which every thing that can be of benefit to letters, is sure to
suffer. Even the poor permission to import books _duty free_, which
has heretofore been enjoyed by the few public libraries that are
struggling into existence from private liberality, was, by the tariff
of 1846, peremptorily withdrawn; whether through a niggard parsimony,
or a besotted indifference to learning, more worthy of Caliph Omar
than of an enlightened state, it is difficult to conjecture.

If things continue as they are, one thing is certain--it will be long
before America will have a literature. Nor am I disposed to sneer,
when I think of it, at the alarm of the _New York Gazette_, whi