less than $6,000 for the 12mo. volume published but six months since. Mr.
Prescott was stated, several years since, to have then received $90,000
from his books, and I have never seen it contradicted. According to the
rate of compensation generally understood to be received by Mr. Bancroft,
the present sale of each volume of his yields him more than $15,000, and
he has the long period of forty-two years for future sale. Judge Story
died, as has been stated, in the receipt of more than $8,000 per annum;
and the amount has not, as it is understood, diminished. Mr. Webster's
works, in three years, can scarcely have paid less than $25,000. Kent's
Commentaries are understood to have yielded to their author and his heirs
more than $120,000, and if we add to this for the remainder of the period
only one half of this sum, we shall obtain $180,000, or $45,000 as the
compensation for a single 8vo. volume, a reward for literary labor
unexampled in history. What has been the amount received by Professor
Greenleaf I cannot learn, but his work stands second only, in the legal
line, to that of Chancellor Kent. The price paid for Webster's 8vo.
Dictionary is understood to be fifty cents per copy; and if so, with a
sale of 250,000, it must already have reached $125,000. If now to this we
add the quarto, at only a dollar a copy, we shall have a sum approaching
to, and perhaps exceeding, $180,000; more, probably, than has been paid
for all the dictionaries of Europe in the same period of time. What have
been the prices paid to Messrs. Hawthorne, Longfellow, Bryant, Willis,
Curtis, and numerous others, I cannot say; but it is well known that they
have been very large. It is not, however, only the few who are liberally
paid; all are so who manifest any ability, and here it is that we find the
effect of the decentralizing system of this country as compared with the
centralizing one of Great Britain. There Mr. Macaulay is largely paid for
his Essays, while men of almost equal ability can scarcely obtain the
means of support. Dickens is a literary Croesus, and Tom Hood dies leaving
his family in hopeless poverty. Such is not here the case. Any