The general question whether it befitted the dignity of authors (considered possibly not so much in the light of literary producers as of gentlemen who had happened to interest themselves in literature) to receive compensation for their work, was a matter of debate during a large part of the sixteenth century. It was inevitable, while all the conditions of literary production and distribution were still to be shaped, and while the difficulties of estimating with any degree of accuracy the possibilities of securing commercial returns for literary productions were still so great, that many questions concerning the division of ownership and returns, when any returns accrued, must arise and must for some time remain unsettled. The whole matter of compensation for literary service remained, therefore, during the period between the beginning of printing and the establishment of some system of control of the books printed, in a hap-hazard and anomalous condition. We find authors of one group, whose interest is limited exclusively to the circulation of sound doctrine, wondering that any writers of doctrinal works could permit themselves to receive pay for bringing the truth to mankind. We find other equally unselfish but more far-seeing authors like Luther and Melanchthon, accepting pay for books sold, if only for the purpose of instituting a larger production and a wider distribution of similar books. We find writers devoting their pens to the defence of the Roman Church unwilling to accept any returns from their booksellers, but quite ready to receive compensation for their labours in the form of presents of money from pope, cardinals, or bishops. Other authors, such as Cuspinian, whose letter has been quoted, who considered it beneath their dignity to make an agreement with their publishers for a royalty or an honorarium, were quite willing to utilise their pens in the composition of high-flown complimentary epistles or of fulsome dedications, which were, as they hoped, to result in bringing to the writers substantial presents from the patrons thus flattered. In the bitter controversy which Ulrich von Hutten, in the last year of his life, carried on with Erasmus, and in the course of which the knight took pains to bring together a long series of invectives, he found no ground for criticism in the relations borne by Erasmus to various patrons for whose gifts he had been a supplicant, but thought he could say nothing more invidious of his scholarly opponent than that he had received moneys from the publisher Froben, moneys which had been earned by the sale of the works of Erasmus.