The letter is worth quoting if only to indicate the different point of view of the author of the seventeenth century and of him of the nineteenth. The letters written, prior to the Convention of Berne, by the Parisian authors of the present time concerning the books which the publishers of the Low Countries had done them the honour of reprinting, are expressed in a very different manner.

In 1663, Daniel Elzevir had consented (this is the phrase used in the correspondence) to reprint a collection of the poetry of Ménage. The poet was so well pleased to have secured the imprint of the great publisher of Europe, that he took pains to insert in the volume an introduction in Latin verse to express his gratification. The lines begin somewhat as follows:

At the time when Ménage was expressing in florid eloquence his gratification at being accepted as an Elzevir author, the new typographical form had finally established itself against all criticism. A large proportion of the publishers, not only of the Netherlands, but also of Paris and of Florence, had adopted the Elzevir model, and the folios and quartos which had characterised the first two centuries of printing were put to one side as representing the literature of the middle ages. The earlier forms of printed volumes, at least in the divisions of classics and theology, were preserved to a later date in England than on the Continent.

As was necessarily the case with a firm acting as printers for the University and whose publications included so long a list of scholarly works, the Elzevirs had associated with their publishing office a group of scholarly editors and press-revisers. Apart also from the men who were directly in their employ or with whom they had arranged for editorial service, they enjoyed the benefit of the suggestions and the counsel of a number of scholarly friends and correspondents, without whose aid it would in fact not have been practicable to initiate or to carry on to a successful completion not a few of their important undertakings. The adviser whose coöperation was most important, and whose influence in directing the publishing policy of the House was most considerable, was Daniel Heinsius. After the year 1630, Heinsius acted as the chief literary adviser of the House, and to his hand can be traced a number of the dedicatory epistles, announcements, and introductions which (written nearly always in Latin) found place in a large number of the Elzevir editions.

Heinsius was a native of Ghent. He studied at Leyden, where he was the favourite pupil, and, later, the successor of the celebrated Scaliger. He filled in succession the Chairs in the University, of Greek, of History, and of Political Science. Later, he was placed in charge of the library of the University, and served also as secretary of the Academic Senate. He was so far accepted as an authority on orthodox Calvinistic theology that he was selected to be the secretary of the Synod of Dort. He possessed the faculty, not very common with a man of scholarship, of writing and speaking gracefully not only in Latin, the literary language of the time, but also in his mother tongue. The young publisher, Louis Elzevir, while a man of ready intelligence and of rather varied attainments, had never had the leisure or the opportunity for scholarship. He may well, therefore, have considered himself fortunate in being able to secure at the outset of his ambitious publishing schemes the coöperation of a man like Heinsius, and it is not surprising that the influence of the professor became all-important in the direction of the publishing business. In many ways this relation was a fortunate one, but there were some offsetting considerations. The scholars of the time appear to have been not only a controversial but an irritable group, and Heinsius possessed the genus irritabile to an exceptionable degree. He succeeded in embroiling the firm with a number of its scholarly friends and correspondents whose influence and whose coöperation it was important to retain. He was charged with having a special prejudice against, or hate of the German scholars, even of those who had associated themselves with Flemish or Dutch institutions. Among the men of note in the scholarly world who brought accusations against Heinsius for bad treatment and for malice, and who contended that the Elzevirs were seriously interfering with their relations with the scholarly world in retaining as their adviser so bad tempered, so unreasonable and so malicious a person, were Gebhardt, who held in the University of Groningen the Chair of Greek, Grotius the well-known publicist, Vossius, and, above all, Saumaise. The controversies between Saumaise and Heinsius, controversies carried on in part, so to speak, over the bodies of their publishers, continued over a series of years, and might well have formed the subject of a text in Disraeli’s Amenities of Literature. Saumaise, or Salmasius, was by birth a Frenchman, and his earlier university work was carried on in Paris. He then became intimate with Casaubon, through whose influence he became a Protestant. Later, he studied at Heidelberg, and the years between 1632 and 1650 he was associated with the University of Leyden. He then, at the instance of Queen Christina, passed some years in Sweden. Famous in various departments of learning, he was probably the chief authority of his time on philology. At the request of Charles II., at the time an exile in Holland, Saumaise wrote, in 1649, his Defensio Regia pro Carolo I., which brought forth the more famous Defensio pro Populo Anglicano of Milton. Hallam says that “what Saumaise did not know was considered to be beyond the bounds of knowledge.”[142] Notwithstanding some frictions caused by the antagonism of Daniel Heinsius, Saumaise remained a valued friend to two generations of the Elzevirs, by whom were issued editions of most of his works. The most important of them was Plinianæ Exercitationes in c. j. Solini Polyhistoria, published (by Bonaventure) in two volumes in 1629, three years before the author’s arrival in Leyden.

Bonaventure, whose control of the business had covered the most noteworthy and prosperous years of the Leyden House, died, as we have noted, in 1652. Among the undertakings which were at the time in train and which were interrupted by his death, was a complete edition, based upon the Vatican manuscripts, of the Greek historian Procopius; a Latin version of the same, to be prepared by Grotius; a complete edition of Alemanus, edited by Holstenius; the complete works of Galileo, in folio; the Latin epistles of Grotius; the works of Montaigne, which were to follow Comines in the collection of French classics; an edition of Tacitus, edited by Gronovius; the Latin Dictionary of Calepino, as a companion to the Greek Lexicon of Scapula; and, finally, a complete and definitive edition of the Corpus Juris. This summary of the undertakings that were in hand during the month of Bonaventure’s death, gives an indication of the activity of the House at the time, and of the direction of its enterprises. The Corpus Juris was afterwards completed by the Amsterdam firm.

The most famous of the authors whose works were associated with the imprint of the second Louis, who was the founder of the publishing establishment of Amsterdam, were Descartes, Velthuysen, Wittichius, Coronius, Vossius, and Grotius. The first complete edition of the works of Descartes was issued in 1643, with the imprint of Louis of Amsterdam. The new philosophy became at once a cause of strife not only with the metaphysicians but with the theologians. The partisans of Aristotle made common cause with the ministers of the Reform Church against the “Cartesian heresies.”

By the year 1655, the publishing undertakings of the Amsterdam House exceeded in importance those issued from Leyden. It is with this date that the presses of Amsterdam begin to produce the series of Latin authors in the twelvemo form of which Leyden heretofore held the monopoly. It is also with this date that the Amsterdam imprint finds place upon the works of Balzac, Barclay, Charron, Du Refuye, etc. The most considerable of the undertakings of Louis of Amsterdam, in respect at least to the risk incurred and the investment required, was the French Bible of Desmarets, a work that had been begun in 1664 and that was completed, in two folio volumes, in 1669. This work was the culmination of the publishing career of Louis, whose death occurred in the year following its completion.

His successor in the management of the Amsterdam House, his cousin Daniel, gave to the business a large measure of skill, experience, judgment, and activity, which appears to have been without break. Daniel’s first experience as sole partner came in a time of difficulty. The disastrous war with England during the years 1665-1667 interfered very seriously with the general prosperity of the State, and caused special embarrassments to the book-trade and publishing interests. This was the war which resulted in the transfer to the English flag of the colony of New Amsterdam, thereafter to be known as New York. Daniel succeeded in weathering the storm, and by the time of the Peace of Breda, he had been able, with the aid of his editorial adviser Wetterus and of the skilled typographer Wetstein, to place the business on what seemed to be an assured foundation. One of his correspondents of the time was the ingenious Nicholas Thoynard, author of the Harmony of the Gospels. Thoynard gave special study to the possibility of improving the methods of printing, and, as early as 1680, put before Elzevir a scheme for placing on the presses formes solides, apparently the first suggestion of the modern stereotype plates. Daniel dismissed the scheme as impracticable. “To print two forms at one time,” he said, “is something absolutely impossible to carry out, and it would in any case be of no service.” Nicholas Heinsius (the son of Daniel Heinsius), who had first been associated with Daniel in Leyden, had, when the latter migrated to Amsterdam, transferred his own literary interests and editorial service to the Amsterdam House. The intimacy of the two men continued through their lives, and they died within a few months of each other.

The work of Heinsius as adviser for and business associate with his publishing friend was interrupted by various periods of public service, as he served as Ambassador both in Sweden and in Russia, but on being relieved from office, he always returned to his literary studies and to his friend’s publishing-office. It is somewhat surprising that the States-General should have favoured Heinsius with posts of honour, as he appears to have been wanting in public spirit, or at least in patriotic feeling. When, in 1674, the armies of Louis XIV. were carrying ruin and devastation through the territory of Holland, Heinsius, in a country retreat at Vianen (well out of the course of the campaigning) was amusing his leisure in composing verses in honour of the oppressor of his country, verses which he utilised later as a dedication to his Virgil. “The true country of Heinsius,” says his biographer, “was imperial Rome, and in looking upon Louis XIV. as Augustus, he thought of himself as a Horace or a Virgil.”

The war with France, which continued for six years (1672-1678), a war which brought with it all the horrors of occupation of the country by invading armies, caused almost a complete cessation of all business undertakings and of all literary enterprises. The presses stopped work and the book-shops were closed. The whole energy of the people (excepting only in the case of an occasional dilettante like Heinsius) was concentrated in the defence of the country. Daniel Elzevir devoted a part of this period of enforced idleness to the preparation of a classified catalogue of his general stock, a catalogue more extensive and more comprehensive than any heretofore issued. Daniel died in 1680, in the midst of a long series of unfinished undertakings and of literary plans. Graevius, in sending the news to Heinsius, says, “This is a great loss to letters.” The philosopher Locke writes, “The death of Elzevir is a public misfortune.” Such indeed was the universal feeling throughout the world of letters and the community of scholars. With the death of Daniel, the history of the House of Elzevir comes to a close. Some printing of college theses was, in 1680, still being done by Abraham in Leyden, but the work of the great family, which had for nearly a century stood at the head of the book-making and of the bookselling business of Europe, occupying the first places alike among typographers, publishers, and booksellers, was completed. Daniel left no son, and the widow dying the year following, the concern was wound up by the administrators.

The limits of this sketch will not permit even a summary of the long list of books issued by the Elzevirs during this century in which they were doing business as publishers. It is only practicable to refer to the general character of these publications and to point out that they included the most considerable and comprehensive series of important literature that had been associated with any imprint since the invention of printing, while it is also in order to remember that a very large proportion of the volumes represented the highest development of the art of typography. After two centuries of competition, the country of Koster had, in the work of the printing-press, unquestionably outclassed the country of Gutenberg and the rest of the world.

The publishing career of Louis Elzevir, the founder of the House, continued from 1583 to 1617, a period of thirty-four years. During this term he published a hundred and one separate works. His first book, the work which initiated the publishing undertakings of the Elzevirs, bears the title:

The following were the more noteworthy of the later publications of Louis:

With a few exceptions in Dutch and in French, the works of Louis were printed in Latin.

The greater number bear on their title-page the words cum privilegio. The privilege, when secured, was issued by the States-General, and the usual term was from ten to fifteen years. I find in the catalogue of titles no specification (such as was at this time usual in France) of an official censorship.

The association of Matthew, Bonaventure, and Abraham Elzevir, who succeeded to the business of their father Louis, and with whom was associated as the printer to the concern their brother, Isaac Elzevir, continued from 1617 to 1625. During these seven years, they published one hundred and twenty-two separate works and editions. I specify certain of the more important:

The third concern, comprising Bonaventure and Abraham, continued from 1625 to 1652, a period of twenty-seven years. Their list comprises four hundred and sixty-one works. These included: A long series of Greek and Latin classics, in the new twelvemo form. The texts were officially adopted or prescribed for use by the University, and the titles bear the words editus in usum scholarum Hollandiæ et West Frisiæ; ex decreto Illustriss. D. D. Ordinum ejusdem provinciæ. There is also a long series of theological works, an increasing proportion of which are printed in Dutch, indicating an extending popular interest in this class of literature.

The firm of John and Daniel Elzevir continued for three years, from 1652 to 1655, during which time it published fifty-four works. The list includes an increasing proportion of light literature. I cite a few titles:

John Elzevir carried on the business for six years, from 1655 to 1661, during which time he printed one hundred and twelve works.

Among these were the following:

The widow of John continued the business for twenty years, from 1661 to 1681. During this period she issued or printed forty-seven works.

These included:

Abraham Elzevir, with whose life was terminated the record of the Leyden House, carried on the business for thirty-one years, from 1681 to 1712, during which time he printed but twenty-three works.

The last twenty years were devoted, as stated, entirely to the printing of theses, the publishing business having gradually been allowed to rust out.

His publications and printings included:

• “Bibliotheca Heinsiana,” a catalogue of the collection of Nicholas Heinsius.
• Epictetus, the “Enchiridion” of, in Latin, and various Funeral Orations and Memorial addresses on William III., of England, who died in 1702.

Louis Elzevir, the second of the name, initiated, in 1638, the publishing business of the Amsterdam House, which he conducted until 1655, when he was joined by his cousin Daniel, from Leyden.

During these seventeen years he published one hundred and eighty works. His first publication belonged to a lighter class of literature than had previously been associated with the Elzevir imprint. It bore the title: Dominici Baudii Amores, edente Petro Scriverio, inscripti. Th. Graswinkelio, equiti. 12mo. 1638. It comprised a series of letters and views in which Baudius gives an account of his various amorous misadventures. Willems speaks of the work as originating in Holland, but I do not understand that it could very well have been the work of the Baudius who held the Chair of History in Leyden up to 1613.

Louis and David Elzevir were associated from 1655 to 1664, a period of nine years, during which time they published one hundred and forty-nine works. These included a number of new editions of works previously published by the House, either in Leyden or in Amsterdam.

I cite the following titles, omitting all reissues:

Daniel Elzevir, with whose death terminated the publishing work of the House, carried on the business after the retirement of his cousin, from 1664 to 1680, a period of sixteen years. During this term, he published two hundred and fifty-nine works, a very large proportion of which were reissues, often corrected and improved, of the earlier publications of the House.

I cite a few titles, omitting for the most part the re-issues.

The widow of Daniel Elzevir (who survived him but a year) was able to complete the printing of a few volumes which had been left unfinished, but the publishing record of the House was practically closed with the death of Daniel in 1680.

The Elzevirs had carried on business as printers, publishers, and booksellers, in their several Houses in Leyden, Amsterdam, Utrecht, and The Hague, from 1583 to 1681, a period covering nearly a century. Their several catalogues give the titles of 1608 separate works or editions issued or printed by them during this time, an average of about sixteen each year. It was naturally the case, however, that the publications issued annually during the later period very much exceeded those for which the founder of the House was responsible.

A very large proportion, and, as the years went by, an increasing proportion of the publications of each year consisted of new editions of the earlier issues of the House, but it is to be borne in mind that while, as a rule, these reissues did not call for further publishing initiative or editorial labour they did require an entire resetting of the type, and, therefore, involved a repetition (except perhaps as to the item of illustrations) of the first publishing outlay. The invention of stereotyping and electro-typing, by means of which the form of type once set can be cast, and the plates preserved for use in printing further editions, belongs to a later century. The process of stereotyping was probably first perfected in Paris in 1795, by Firmin Didot.

The categories and bibliographies from which I have cited the preceding statistics include not only the books printed and published by the Elzevirs, but the more important of the works which were printed by them for the account of other publishers, and which were, therefore, not issued with their publishing imprint. In the majority of instances, however, the Elzevirs retained, in their hands as booksellers, the agencies for the sale of these books for the Low Countries, for Scandinavia, and frequently for Germany. The lists cited also include the titles of certain books (the number being at best but inconsiderable) which, while published by the Elzevirs, had been printed for them by other printers; and, finally, they include the titles of a number of works which, while not bearing the name of Elzevir, and in fact usually having on their title-page a Lyons or a Cologne imprint, have been identified, through the character of their typography, as coming from one of the Elzevir printing-offices, while, later, it was discovered, chiefly through the investigation of Willems, that for certain classes of books the Elzevirs had made a practice of utilising one of two or three bogus imprints which they had invented for the purpose. By far the larger proportion of the Elzevir publications, probably more than nine-tenths, were printed in Latin. The texts in French were the next in importance, followed, in the order named, by those in Dutch, Greek, Italian, and Arabic.

The general character of the literature in the production of which the family had interested itself, is indicated, however roughly, by the titles cited. The books belonged, in the main, to the class that would to-day be described as “heavy literature.” The classics, Greek and Latin, form the larger portion of the list, while there were also groups of important works in Calvinistic Theology, Metaphysics, Medicine, Natural Science, Political Science, History, and Biography. Fiction and legend were represented not at all, and poetry to but an inconsiderable extent. The dramatic list, while not large, was important, including as it did the great productions of Corneille and Molière.

The works of the Fathers of the Church, which had formed so important a portion of the undertakings of the printer-publishers of the preceding century, were represented on the Elzevir list only by an edition of the Confessions of S. Augustine. It is evident that the demand for these had been naturally lessened by the influence of the Reformation. It is rather surprising that the Elzevirs did not give a larger measure of attention to the publication of editions of the Scriptures, as the interest in the Bible was unquestionably very great in the communities which had accepted the Calvinistic and Lutheran doctrines. According to the catalogues, however, they published during the century but one edition of the Bible in Dutch and one in French. To these should be added several issues of the New Testament, printed in Greek, and evidently planned to meet the University requirements. The most noteworthy publishing undertaking, and the one which probably brought to the name of Elzevir the largest measure of prestige throughout Europe, and also the largest business returns, was the magnificent series of Classics, printed in duodecimo.

While by far the larger proportion of the publications of the century were the work of authors of a past generation, the Elzevir catalogues included the names of a number of contemporary writers, the works of whom have achieved an abiding fame. Without repeating the catalogue, I will refer here only to Descartes, Galileo, Grotius, Salmasius, Heinsius (father and son), Molière, Hobbes, etc. The historians of the Elzevirs do not give (doubtless because they have not been able to find) the record of the arrangements entered into between these contemporary authors and their publishers. They can only point out that, according to the evidence of the correspondence, the relations between the Elzevirs and the scholars resident in the Low Countries, whose works they printed, appear to have been very satisfactory, and resulted in a number of cases in close personal friendship. As far as the foreign authors were concerned, the Elzevirs appear to have followed simply the dictates of their own convenience and advantage. They took what material they thought they could use, without troubling themselves to make either requests or acknowledgments. They were, in fact, the most extensive piratical publishers that the world had as yet seen, and may be said to have reduced piracy to a business system.

It would, however, be very absurd to pass judgment by the standard of later times, upon the literary appropriations of the publishers of the seventeenth century. It is not probable that either the Elzevirs or their publishing contemporaries had any thought that in reprinting French, English, or German books, they were causing wrong either to the writers or to the original publishers, or that their action could be considered as an interference with any existing rights. Using the term in its strict legal sense, there were, of course, at this time no “rights” in literary productions outside of the territory covered by any particular “privilege.” The Elzevirs were accustomed to protect their own books, both the works of contemporary authors and the editions of old time writers, by privileges covering the territories of the Republic, and they occasionally secured also a privilege from the French Crown.

It does not appear that any of the foreign works reprinted by them had been placed under the protection of a Dutch privilege, and, in fact, I find no references in the correspondence that has been preserved to any questions of infringement of privilege protection, with which the Elzevirs had to do either as complainants or as defendants. It is probable that even in the territory covered by a privilege, the difficulty of enforcing the same under the law was considerable, and that publishers and editors found it wise for the most part to accept the annoyance of interference and of competition rather than to incur the labour and expense of an appeal to the authorities. It was also doubtless the case that the superior facilities for production and for distribution possessed by the Elzevirs, enabled them to protect themselves pretty effectively against any unauthorised competition, at least in the Low Countries.

I find record of no complaints from Molière, Scarron, or Hobbes, or from any other of the foreign authors whose works the Elzevirs printed, and it is probable either that these authors did not think it worth while to waste words on an evil for which there was no remedy, or that (as was the case with the Sieur de Balzac, whose letters have been quoted) they considered the issue of Elzevir editions of their writings as an honour which added to their literary fame.

While many details have been preserved of the business history of the Elzevirs, I find no reference to their books of account, and no record of manufacturing expenditures such as has been preserved of the Antwerp publisher, Plantin. I have, therefore, been unable to ascertain what payments were made to the home authors like Descartes, Grotius, Heinsius, and others, of whose works repeated editions were issued. As these later editions were in the majority of cases revised by the authors themselves, it is evident that they must have been published under some satisfactory arrangement. It would also have been interesting to ascertain what remuneration was paid for editorial service, especially in such undertakings as the great series of Classics, for translations, for the work of press supervision, and for the service of literary counsel, of which the Elzevirs secured from scholarly associates a very full measure. But the data for such information are not available.

There is a similar lack of information concerning the success or the lack of success of the different publishing undertakings. We can only conclude from the fact that so large a proportion of the books printed reached later editions, in some cases being reprinted five or six times, that for these works, at least, a continued and a remunerative sale was secured. The references in the correspondence from different parts of Europe give evidence that the most important of the undertakings of the House, the series of Latin and Greek Classics, had won for itself a favourable reception with students and scholars in far distant educational centres, and it is evident that the total sale of these volumes must have been very considerable.

There is also what might be called the negative testimony to the general success of the publishing judgment of the Elzevirs, that there is record on their long list of no single undertaking of importance which proved a burdensome failure, as was the case, for instance, with the great Bible of Plantin. It was certainly the case that the thorough organisation of the bookselling business of the House, an organisation which included connections not only throughout the Netherlands, but with the principal book-centres of Germany, France, Scandinavia, and Italy, gave them in the work of finding a market for the output of their presses, a very material advantage over the firms whose business was limited to printing and publishing. The catalogues issued by the several retail concerns carried on by the Elzevirs were by far the most comprehensive, the best classified, and in every way the most complete that had as yet been known in the book trade, and these catalogues served as models for the trade bibliographies of the succeeding half century.

One very material advantage which was enjoyed by the Elzevirs as compared with other families whose names belong to the record of publishing, was the continued vitality of the family itself, a vitality which ensured the carrying on of the work of the House effectively through three generations. In each one of the two generations which succeeded that of Louis the founder, there were from two to five representatives who had the interest and the ability to continue the special work which had brought fame to the family. Such a persistency of family purpose and of living representatives of the family competent to carry out such purpose has been paralleled in but few other instances. The publishing business of the Rivingtons of London is now (1896) being directed by a Rivington of the fifth generation from its foundation by Charles Rivington, in 1711, and with an existence of one hundred and eighty-five years, has doubtless a longer career to boast of than can be credited to any other family which has devoted itself to publishing. The House of Murray, of London, is now in the hands of two Murrays of the fourth generation, and can show an unbroken record of about a century.

In certain respects, however, the Harpers, of New York, present a closer parallel to the Elzevirs. The two English firms above referred to, have depended for their continuation in more than one of their generations upon a single representative. The Harpers, however, whose business is now in the hands of a third generation assisted by active members of a fourth, have, like the Elzevirs, found in each generation a sturdy group of representatives, imbued with the traditions of the House, and able and willing to devote themselves to carrying forward its work, and the activities and prestige of the House bid fair to be extended and expanded through the twentieth century.

Omitting the names of certain Elzevirs of the fourth and fifth generation who, while continuing certain interests in connection with book-selling, did not continue the business of printing or of publishing, eleven Elzevirs were, in the three generations from the founder, actively engaged as typographers and as publishers. Four names are, however, to be borne more particularly in mind, of the men who impressed their individual force and character upon the business and to whom its creation, expansion, and direction were practically due. Louis, the founder, had, in various respects, by far the most difficult task of the four. The special character of his work and the nature of the obstacles overcome by him, have already been described. His ambition and ability passed in largest measure to his youngest son, Bonaventure (leaving out of the count Adrian, who died young). Bonaventure directed the fortunes of the Leyden House during the most successful period of its existence. The grandsons of Louis, Louis the second and Daniel, can share between them the responsibility for the distinctive work done by the House in Amsterdam, a work which, by the time Daniel was left in sole control, very much exceeded in importance all that had been accomplished in Leyden.

It seems evident that, while the connection with the University had been, as was so frequently the case with the earlier publishing undertakings of Europe, of very material and perhaps indispensable service in initiating the business of the House, the trade facilities offered by a great commercial centre like Amsterdam were of still greater value than the coöperation and material to be secured from the University.

No one of the Elzevirs appears to have been entitled to be described as a scholar, although Daniel, the last of the House, was evidently a man of a wide range of cultivation and of attainments. Each one, however, of the family who had responsibilities in the management of the publishing interests, evidently possessed adequate judgment as to what constituted scholarship, and they were always able to secure in the selection of their material, in the higher class of editorial work, and in supervising the printing of the more exacting classes of books, the service of some of the most learned men who were at the time resident in Holland. Not a few of these scholarly assistants and associates became, as said, near friends of their publishers or of their chiefs.

The Elzevirs did not have upon their hands the peculiar responsibilities that had to be met by the printer-publishers of the preceding generations. It was not necessary for them, as it had been for Aldus, to ransack distant convents for manuscripts, and to do the personal work of collating and preparing these manuscripts for the compositors. The Elzevirs were, in nearly every instance, in a position, for their classical publications, to give to the type dealers printed “copy,” the text of which had had the advantage of the supervision of a long series of previous editors. It was not necessary for the Elzevirs to create methods of organisation for a printing-office, or themselves to invent mechanism for the production of books. At the time their work was begun, printing was already if not a perfected at least a well developed art, the processes of which had been very fully worked out. They were able, after utilising to best advantage the experience of previous generations, so far themselves to develop and improve methods and results as to make of printing not only an art but a fine art; and even if they had never placed a publishing imprint upon a title-page, they would, through their service as typographers, have earned an honourable place in the annals of bookmaking.

In their work as publishers, they had a very great advantage in doing business in a country in which literature was practically free from the burdensome interference of censorship. When we recall the long series of contests carried on by the printers of Venice and of Florence against the ecclesiastical censorship of Rome, and the almost equally hampering obstacles placed upon the printer-publishers of Paris, first by the theologians of the Sorbonne, and, later, by the officials of the Crown, we can appreciate the value of the freedom enjoyed by the Press in Leyden and in Amsterdam, in the history of publishing in which places, there is hardly a single reference to the burdens of interference or censorship.

The successive generations of Elzevirs seem always to have been (as was certainly the case with Louis the founder) consistent Calvinists, and they were unwilling to place their imprint upon any publications assailing the doctrines of the Reformed Church. While they certainly rendered a very large service indeed to the development of book-making and of book-selling in Europe, and by this means, to the extension of the influence of literature, it would probably not be accurate to claim that they were men of exceptionally high ideals. They were traders, although traders on a great scale and with comprehensive and far reaching ideas as to the possibilities of their trade. Their business appears to have been carried on, however, with little reference to anything except their own business advantage. It could not be said of them, as it was of Aldus, that they were willing to risk their fortunes for the sake of bringing new ideas to Europe; or, as was the case with Robert Estienne, that they were prepared to sacrifice both fortune and life, if necessary, in order to maintain the freedom of the Press and the right of bringing the Scriptures to the people.

It was probably true that, however unconsciously, they were able to do an important work in helping to prepare the way for interstate copyright. They had themselves, as we have seen, no idea of the possibility of securing the protection of the law for literary productions beyond the territory that could be covered by a privilege or by a series of privileges. In extending, however, the sale of their own publications in countries far distant from the “country of origin” and in finding sale not only in their home city, but in the cities of Germany and Scandinavia, for the works of widely separated authors, they helped to develop in several communities the understanding that literary productions had nothing to do with political boundaries, that the readers of one country were of necessity dependent upon the literature of all countries, and that the boundaries of the world of literature were the boundaries of civilisation.

This is the conception that forms a necessary foundation for the idea of International Copyright. It is under such a conception that the reader comes to feel that sense of obligation to the author, which makes him more than ready to pay to such author a return for the service rendered. When such a relation has once been established between authors and their readers, it becomes practicable to secure from communities the recognition by law of the rights of authors to such returns. It may fairly be said, therefore, that in creating and in developing the business of distributing literature throughout Europe, the Elzevirs took the first step that was necessary in order to bring about the European copyright, which was finally secured, two centuries later, under the Convention of Berne.