This is a simple proposition, which nobody
disputes. The rate of such compensation must be a matter of agreement. As
between author and publisher, custom seems to have fixed on what an
arithmetician would call "square measure," as the basis of the bargain;
and the question of adjustment is simplified down to "how much by the
column, or the page?"
This system has its advantages in a business point of view; because, when
the price, or rate, is agreed on, nothing remains but to count the pages.
Whether the publisher or the writer is benefited by this plan of
computation, in a literary point of view, may, however, be doubted.
A man who is paid _by the page_ for his literary labour, has every
inducement but one to expand lines into sentences, sentences into
paragraphs, and paragraphs into extravagant dimensions. An idea, to him,
is a thing to be manufactured into words, each of which has a money value;
and if he can, by that simplest of all processes--a verbal dilution--give
to one idea the expansive power of twelve; if he can manage to spread over
six pages what would be much better said in half a page, he gains twelve
prices for his commodity, instead of one; and he sacrifices nothing but
the quality of his commodity--and _that_ is no sacrifice, so long as his
publisher and his readers do not detect it.
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