Gluvias in Cornwall; and am as willing as his warmest well-wisher to believe it true.'
[1295] Johnson (Works, vii. 240) quotes the following by Edmund Smith, and written some time after 1708:--'It will sound oddly to posterity, that, in a polite nation, in an enlightened age, under the direction of the most literary property in 1710, whether by wise, most learned, and most generous encouragers of knowledge in the world, the property of a mechanick should be better secured than that of a scholar! that the poorest manual operations should be more valued than the noblest products of the brain! that it should be felony to rob a cobbler of a pair of shoes, and no crime to deprive the best authour of his whole subsistence! that nothing should make a man a sure title to his own writings but the stupidity of them!' See post, May 8, 1773, and Feb.7, 1774; and Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 17 and 20, 1773.
[1296] The question arose, after the passing of the first statute respecting literary property in 1710, whether by certain of its provisions this perpetual copyright at common law was extinguished for the future. The question was solemnly argued before the Court of King's Bench, when Lord Mansfield presided, in 1769. The result was a decision in favour of the common-law right as unaltered by the statute, with the disapproval however of Mr. Justice Yates. In 1774 the same point was brought before the House of Lords, and the decision of the court below reversed by a majority of six judges in eleven, as Lord Mansfield, who adhered to the opinion of the minority, declined to interfere; it being very unusual, from motives of delicacy, for a peer to support his own judgment on appeal to the House of Lords. Penny Cylco. viii. I. See post, Feb. 7, 1774. Lord Shelburne, on Feb 27, 1774, humourously describes the scene in the Lords to the Earl of Chatham:--'Lord Mansfield showed himself the merest Captain Bobadil that, I suppose, ever existed in real life. You can, perhaps, imagine to yourself the Bishop of Carlyle, an old metaphysical head of a college, reading a paper, not a speech, out of an old sermon book, with very bad sight leaning on the table, Lord Mansfield sitting at it, with eyes of fixed melancholy looking at him, knowing that the bishop's were the only eyes in the House who could not meet his; the judges behind him, full of rage at being drawn into so absurd an opinion, and abandoned in it by their chief; the Bishops waking, as your Lordship knows they do, just before they vote, and staring on finding something the matter; while Lord Townshend was close to the bar, getting Mr. Dunning to put up his glass to look at the head of criminal justice.' Chatham Corres. iv. 327.
[1297] See post April 15 1778, note.
[1298] Dr. Franklin (Memoirs iii. 178), complaining of the high prices of English books, describes 'the excessive artifices made use of to puff up a paper of verses into a pamphlet, a pamphlet into an octavo, and an octavo into a quarto with white-lines, exorbitant margins, &c., to such a degree that the selling of paper seems now the object, and printing on it only the pretence.'
[1299] Boswell was on friendly terms with him. He wrote to Erskine on Dec. 2, 1761:--'I am just now returned from eating a most excellent pig with the most magnificent Donaldson.' Boswell and Erskine Correspondence, p. 20.
[1300] Dr. Carlyle (Auto. p. 516) says that Lord Mansfield this year (1769) 'talking of Hume and Robertson's Histories, said that though he could point out few or no faults in them, yet, when he was reading their books, he did not think he was reading English.' See post, ii. 72, for Hume's Scotticisms. Hume went to France in 1734 when he was 23 years old and stayed there three years. Hume's Autobiography, p. vii. He never mastered French colloquially. Lord Charlemont, who met him in Turin in 1748, says:--'His speech in English was rendered ridiculous by the broadest Scotch accent, and his French was, if possible, still more laughable.' Hardy's Charlemont, i. 15. Horace Walpole, who met him in Paris in 1765, writes (Letters, iv. 426):--'Mr. Hume is the only thing in the world that they [the French] believe implicitly; which they must do, for I defy them to understand any language that he speaks.' Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 122) says of Hume's writings:--'Their careless inimitable beauties often forced me to close the volume with a mixed sensation of delight and despair.' Dr. Beattie (Life, p. 243) wrote on Jan. 5, 1778:--'We who live in Scotland are obliged to study English from books, like a dead language, which we understand, but cannot speak.' He adds:--'I have spent some years in labouring to acquire the art of giving a vernacular cast to the English we write.' Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto, p. 222) says:--'Since we began to affect speaking a foreign language, which the English dialect is to us, humour, it must be confessed, is less apparent in conversation.'
[1301] Discours sur L'origine et les fondemens de l'inegalite parmi les hommes, 1754.
[1302] 'I have indeed myself observed that my banker ever bows lowest to me when I wear my full-bottomed wig, and writes me Mr.