Literature--that is, mental conceptions in literary form--had been known for many centuries before the literary idea, and any individual ownership in the form in which such idea was expressed, had been thought out and defined. Literary property--that is, an ownership, on the part of the producer, in a definite expression of literary ideas--dates, nevertheless, from a comparatively early period, and, in one sense, may be said to have existed from the time in which the first “poet” (maker or creator) received his first compensation from a grateful public or an appreciative patron. In the more precise interpretation of the term, it is doubtless more correct, however, to say that literary property dates from the time when authors first received compensation, not from the state or from individual patrons, but from individual readers throughout the community, who were ready to make payment in return for the benefit received. The labor, however, of placing the literary production in the hands of the reader and of collecting from these the compensation for the authors, required an intermediary,--some one to create the machinery for distribution and collection, and usually also to assume the risk and investment required. Literary property could, therefore, come into an assured existence only after, or simultaneously with, the evolution of the publisher. This, then, is the chain of causation at which we have arrived: The deed, the thought awakened by the deed, the consciousness of the thought, the power, first of oral and then of written expression of the thought (usually the description of the deed), which marks the appearance of the poet, the “maker” or author; the consecration of this expression or literary production to a definite purpose, usually the glorification of an individual in the commemoration of his deed; the habit of receiving from such individual a tangible recognition; the widening of the purpose of the production and its dedication to the community as a whole; the giving, by the community in return, of a reward or _honorarium_; the evolution of the publisher who develops the system under which the amount of the _honorarium_ secured for the author is proportioned (though somewhat roughly) to the number of persons benefited by his productions. It is when the higher stage of civilization has been reached which is marked by the appearance of the publisher, that we have a true beginning of property in literature. Centuries must, however, still elapse before we find record of any noteworthy attempts to arrive at precise definitions of the nature and origin of literary property, or to analyze the proper relations of the literary producer as well to the generation for which he originally worked, as to such later generations as derived benefit from his creations.