Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/107

77 fHE BOOKSELLERS OF OLDEN TIMES. ft the rich in order to give to the poor." In 1771, Donaldson reprinted Thomson's Seasons, and an action at law was brought against him by certain booksellers. He proved that the work in question had first been printed in 1729, that its author died in 1748, and that the copyright consequently expired in 1757 ; and the Lords decided in his favour, thereby settling finally the vulgar and traditional theory that copyright was the interminable possession of the purchaser. To fol- low this interesting question for a moment. In Anne's reign it was decided that copyright was to last for fourteen years, with an additional term of fourteen years, provided that the author was alive at the ex- piry of the first. In 1773-4, following upon Donald- son's prosecution, a bill to render copyright perpetual passed through the Commons, but was thrown out in the Lords, and in 1814 the term of fourteen years and a conditional fourteen was extended to a definite and invariable period of twenty-eight years. Finally in 1842, the present law was passed, by which the term was prolonged to forty-two years, but the copy- right was not to expire in any case before seven years after the author's death. Donaldson left a very large fortune, which was greatly augmented by his son, who bequeathed the total amount, a quarter of a million, to found an educational hospital for- poor children in Edinburgh, under the title of " Donaldson's Hospital." During the period under review the localities af- fected by the bookselling and publishing trade had greatly changed and altered. The stalls of the "Chap. Book " venders had disappeared from London Bridge and the Exchange, and even Little Britain had been entirely vacated. Little Britain, from the time of the