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By Root 1955 0

piracy of it quite impracticable."56 In addition, Thomas Longman supplied evidence of twenty-three books (mostly reprints, and hence until now exempt) published in impressions Of10 0-250 copies each. In these cases the tax aggregated to over 6 percent. Longman testified that apres- tigiousvolume of SouthAmerican botany by Humboldt had been cancelled because of the mere prospect of the tax being imposed. Humboldtian exploration was perhaps the most important and influential enterprise in the sciences of the Romantic era, and yet it was being suppressed. Here, then, was real evidence of the deposit stifling knowledge.

In part these contrasting estimates of cost reflected the extent to which the economics of genius, far more than those of mass print, were still at the mercy of chapel customs. "By an invariable ancient custom" pressmen charged by units of 25o, and refused to subdivide such units; so if an impression stood at 250 before the deposit, to print eleven more copies would be as expensive as printing another 25o, and thus prohibitively costly.57 The universities' estimates always ignored this. Worse, according to Longman and Brydges, prices could not be raised to cover the deposit, not least because a universal deposit itself removed from the marketplace a substantial number of potential purchasers who now had access to library copies.58 Moreover, by reducing the appeal of rarity it "absolutely" nullified the "ardour" of the private collectors who otherwise might pay elevated prices. For works of learning of such a nature, the combination threatened to prove decisive. Only by charging high prices to the discriminating few could a true author of genius be adequately remunerated for producing a specialist work. That was why testimony before a Commons committee on the subject concentrated on the deposit's effects on "Natural History or Science"-subjects that in many cases had to be published at the author's cost, and for a miniscule market. Brydges and his allies argued that the deposit would curtail their production altogether.

Needless to say, such an argument rested on fundamental assumptions about genius and readership. Brydges assumed that genius was rare, individual, mysterious, and above all incompatible with the appetites of a mass audience. The most important literature was therefore at little to no risk of outright piracy, because true genius was at best incommensurable with a publishing system based on copyright. Despite this, he nevertheless believed the very possibility of literary creativity to be at stake. Both points rested onwhat he took to be aprofound difference between learned publishing in Queen Anne's day and that a century later. Given the old custom of optional copyright registration, the reciprocity of copyright and deposit had not been a serious concern. Small-circulation specialist works could simply remain outside the system altogether: no protection, no deposit. "Howutterly different then," Brydges declared, "in their very essence are the grievances of the late act!" By the 18oos, publishing was divided into specialisms. Learned works enjoyed far smaller print runs, and were targeted at niche markets. "There are a fewworks of great genius adapted to the general reader," Brydges conceded, "ofwhich probably the demand for copies exceeds that of any former time." But most works of genius were not of that kind.59 It was axiomatic that "whatever is deep, whatever is abstruse, whatever appeals to the highest qualities of the mind, or the most difficult subjects of intellectual acquirement" was ipso facto "fitted to interest a very limited number of readers." Therefore, for such works "a very small impression supplies the utmost demand." Two hundred copies might easily exhaust the readership for advanced works of mathematics, antiquarianism, botany, or bibliography. But this scarcely negated the cultural value of such works -indeed, it confirmed it, with a logic no less beautiful for being circular. The real reason why the deposit would kill learned culture was therefore that true genius was incompatible