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By Root 2021 0

inherent property" in the work itself. Donaldson suggested instead that an author be regarded in the same light as "the inventor of any art, or the discoverer of any secret in nature." Such an author might well keep his work secret, in which case he or she might be said to retain a property in it. But when it was published, any natural right of property ceased. At most, the law might offer artificial protection for a limited period. That was precisely what it did, of course, for inventions. In effect, he advocated a routinized patents system for literature.

Donaldson ended his call to arms with an announcement. Since the Londoners had successfully frightened provincial booksellers into declining his business, he had decided to confront the monopolists directly. He would open his own "shop for cheap books" in London itself, just east of Norfolk Street in the Strand. There he would sell his reprints at 30-50 percent lower than the Londoners' prices. He invited country booksellers and those engaged in exports to trade with him there.34 At the same time, he also launched a newspaper, the EdinburghAdvertiser, that carried advertisements for his trade. They reveal that he also touted Scottish reprints from across the country-and that he acted as a subscription agent for Dublin's leading bookseller, George Faulkner, too. The whole enterprise amounted to a challenge that the London trade could not ignore.

Meanwhile, the Londoners finally got their chance to strike back. A bookseller of Berwick-upon-Tweed named Robert Taylor had taken advantage of Thomson's Seasons falling out of statutory protection to print his own edition. Millar immediately launched a suit. For the first time the Londoners won a definitive decision. The verdict was close, and the judges differed significantly in their reasoning, but three ofthe four- Lord Mansfield, Edward Willes, and Sir Richard Aston-affirmed literary property. And even the dissenter, Sir Joseph Yates, conceded that authorial labor might create a property in an unpublished work, although he believed that the act of publication amounted to presenting the work as a "gift" to the public.35 It seemed that literary property had finallywon the endorsement that it needed. Millar did not live to see the success, having dropped dead suddenly in 1768, but his allies swiftly pushed for a new hearing in Edinburgh. They singled out Donaldson as their target. This time, they chose to center their case on a History of the Bible initially prepared back in the 173os by a Berkshire vicar named Thomas Stackhouse. This was a hodgepodge work. It had been compiled rather than created; one judge expressed disdain at the very idea of being asked to consider Stackhouse an author at all. Still, it was commercially successful, and Donaldson had participated in a reprint. He defended himself stoutly, denying the possibility of a "right to the doctrine contained in the book." His side helped their cause by reprinting Millar v. Taylor with a commentary in favor of Yates's dissent and an appendix denying that the verdict applied north of the border.36 And once more, in Scotland what in London had looked selfevident turned out to be anything but. Donaldson's defense prevailed.

Donaldson was now determined finally to push the whole issue to a resolution. He took a calculated decision to reprint himself Thomson's Seasons- the very work on which the Londoners had rested their claims in Millar v. Taylor. And he displayed his reprint under their noses in his London shop. It was a deliberately provocative gesture: the commercial equivalent of throwing down the gauntlet. The Londoners could not possibly allow it to go unanswered. So they as usual sought an injunction, and, again as usual, got it. But Donaldson, unlike previous pirates, was not prepared to acquiesce. He appealed against the injunction to the House of Lords, the highest court in the land and the only one whose jurisdiction extended over the whole United Kingdom. The decades of conflicting customs, practices, and arguments in Scotland and England had come to a head.