asion in
a certain story ('a small thing, but my own') to get rid of the whole
wicked population of an island by suddenly submerging it in the sea,
what did Nature do? She waited for an insultingly short time (if her
idea was that the story would be forgotten), and then reproduced the
same circumstances on her own account (and without the least
acknowledgment) in the Indian seas. My attention was drawn to both these
breaches of copyright by several correspondents, but I had no redress,
the offender being beyond the jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery.

When the story-teller has finished his task and surmounted every
obstacle to his own satisfaction, he has still a difficulty to face in
the choice of a title. He may invent indeed an eminently appropriate
one, but it is by no means certain he will be allowed to keep it. Of
course he has done his best to steer clear of that borne by any other
novel; but among the thousands that have been brought out within the
last forty years, and which have been forgotten even if they were ever
known, how can he know whether the same name has not been hit upon? He
goes to Stationers' Hall to make inquiries; but--mark the usefulness of
that institution--he finds that books are only entered there under their
authors' names. His search is therefore necessarily futile, and he has
to publish his story under the apprehension (only too well founded, as I
have good cause to know) that the High Court of Chancery will prohibit
its sale upon the ground of infringement of title.

_PENNY FICTION._

It is now nearly a quarter of a century ago since a popular novelist
revealed to the world in a well-known periodical the existence of the
'Unknown Public;' and a very curious revelation it was. He showed us
that the few thousands of persons who had hitherto imagined themselves
to be the public--so far, at least, as their being the arbiters of
popularity in respect to writers of fiction was concerned--were in fact
nothing of the kind; that the subscribers to the circulating libraries,
the members of book clubs, the purchasers of magazines and railway
novels, might indeed have their favourites, but that these last were
'nowhere,' as respected the number of their backers, in comparison with
novelists whose names and works appear in penny journals and nowhere
else.

This class of literature was of considerable dimensions even in the days
when Mr. Wilkie Collins first called attention to it; but