Under an act thus
dubiously worded, and in a country which makes Bancroft a collector
of the customs and Hawthorne a weigher and gauger, the works of an
Alison and a Tupper would be put beyond the reach of all but the
immensely rich. The man of moderate means would be deprived of the
exhaustless misinformation of the Scottish Baronet, who has so
completely disproved the old charge against his countrymen of
possessing an _ingenium perfervidum_, (which Dr. Johnson would have
translated by _brimstone temperament_,) and of the don't-fail-to-
spread-your-umbrella-when-it-rains-or-you'll-spoil-your-hat wisdom of
the English Commoner, who seems to have named his chief work in a
moment of abnormal inspiration, since it has become proverbial as the
severest test of human philosophy.
But we cannot suspect the Congressional Committee of a joke, still
less of a joke at the expense of those anglers in the literary
current whose tackle, however bare of bait, never fails of a sinker
at the end of every line. They have been taught to look upon books as
in no wise differing from cotton and tobacco, and rate them
accordingly by a merely material standard. It has been the dealers in
books, and not the makers of them, who have hitherto contrived to
direct public opinion in this matter.
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