"compleated the whole of his plan "in four books. His experience "of the fraudulent practices of cer"tain Bookfellers has fince intimated "to him the danger of a Piracy; "and therefore he has thought it

expedient to reprint it, for public "fale. He has alfo entered it (as "the Act directs) in Stationer's"hall, in order fo far to prevent a "violation of his property as the "law will permit him to do; which "though it encourages an injured "Author to profecute, feems not

66

(as it now ftands) to give him damages from the delinquent, adequate to the injury he may fuf"tain."

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BEFORE I analyze this formidable performance, permit me to mention that if you had refted like a man of probity in the juftice of the bill you have filed against me, you would not have attempted to bias the public by an appeal in your favour. Do you defire to elude the force of this charge by pleading, that your advertisement, being conceived in general terms, can be applied to no particular perfon? Had the cause even been decided, from the circumftances noticed above little force would have been admitted in this defence. As it actually stands, none at all. I also have fome arguments to offer in my behalf. But I fhould have fcorned to intereft the public

in

in the difpute. And I take up the pen now to repel an infult, not to folicit favour.

YOUR advertisement is a real, and perhaps an intended, mifreprefentation of facts from the beginning to the end; for you cannot bring one. inftance of the fraudulent practices you mention.-The publication you would refolve into a piracy fhall be explained hereafter.-You will not alledge, that The Traveller, The Deferted Village, Armine and Elvira, The Fables of Flora, The Minstrel, or any poem in request, have been pirated. And if this is truth, who can forbear, fmiling at the apprehenfion entertained of pirating Mafon's English

Garden?-But admitting the truth of this popular complaint of the fraudulent practices of Bookfellers, you might nevertheless have entered your Poem in Stationer's-hall, confining the publication of it to your friends alone with more fafety to its literary property, than you have fince done by printing it for fale*. Was

you

* IF Mr. Mafon had been able to underfand the ftatute, he would have discovered that entering his Poem in Stationer's-hall after a first edition, is of no avail. He has therefore abandoned the monopoly of B. 2, of The English Garden, by omitting to enter it at the first printing; and his performance at this moment lies actually at the mercy of the public to multiply what copies they please of it. But he need not be intimidat

ed;

you acquainted with this circumstance? Or did you think that the commodity required a little quackery to push it off? You hazarded nothing, you imagined, by the affertion that could not fecure the property but by printing for fale: and you did not fear being detected by a modern bookfeller. But I haften to investigate the real grounds of your fingular advertisement.

you

THE Reverend William Mafon, Precentor of York, has commenced an action in the Court of Chancery

ed; for I will venture for once to pronounce that no person will be tempted to reprint Mafon's English Garden for the fake of Emo- \\

Mument.

B 4

against