Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/319

Rh death. I think the good old Elizabethan plan of monopolies should be revived in favour of literature. An eminent author, in our time, is a species of mental Alexander; he erects a vast empire, out of which fifty small powers parcel little kingdoms and minor principalities." Mr. Morland.—"Your notion of an author's property in his own works is similar in spirit to the old French marquise in Marmontel, who prefers a husband to a lover, because 'I could then go with my contract in my hand and give un bon soufflet to any one who endeavoured to take him from me.'" Edward Lorraine.—"How full of wit, point, and, what is best expressed by a phrase of their own, such exquisite tournure, some of the short French stories possess! Hook is, I think, the only English author who possesses their analysis of action—that bird's-eye view of motive, and the neat keen style whose every second sentence is an epigram: he is Rochefoucault illustrated; and he unites, too, with his vein of satire, the more creative powers, the deeper tones of feeling, that mark our English writers." Mr. Morland.—"I give him credit for one very original merit. Do you remember Charles Summerford's letter in Maxwell?—it is the