Such reprints were made in many cases by zealous disciples, who multiplied and distributed copies for “missionary” work, but outside of the believers, there were naturally many others, printers and book-pedlars, who were very ready to take advantage of a time of religious fervour or of controversial interest, and to make money by supplying the literature produced by the Reformers or by their antagonists. The objections that came from the authors were mainly on the ground of inaccuracy in the printing of these unsupervised editions. If the cause was to be furthered by the wholesale appropriation and general distribution of their writings, they were estopped from any serious opposition to the reprinters. The habit thus became very generally established on the part of the printers and the booksellers, of regarding literary productions as _feræ naturæ_, in connection with which no property right could be claimed. The reading public, which, as far as the mass of the people was concerned, came into existence only with the application of the printing-press to the literature of the Reformation, grew up, therefore, with the general belief that nothing more was due to the author than to read his teachings in any form in which they could be obtained, and for these earlier readers any distinction between an authorised and an unauthorised edition was, for more reasons than one, an impossibility. While Luther received moneys from the sale of the Wittenberg editions of his books and possibly from a few others, it is certainly the case that he made no money from these sales. Every gulden that was paid for the books, every pfennig that came in from the fly-leaves or pamphlets, appears to have been at once expended in further printings and in instituting further distributing machinery. The same was the case with the other writers of the Lutheran group and also with Zwingli and the Swiss reformers generally. The books of Calvin formed to some extent an exception. They were less available for popular circulation, and, being addressed more particularly to scholarly readers, were for the most part printed in Latin. For them, the publishing arrangements were more in accord with later methods, and the competition of piracy editions was less serious. It is probable, therefore, that they produced some returns for the author. Some details concerning the Calvin publications are given in the chapter on Robert Estienne. We may conclude that while the Reformation was of important service in furthering the work of the printers, in giving material for the booksellers, and in inducing the habit of buying and of reading printed matter, it probably helped to delay for a number of years the formation of a correct conception of literary productions as property. The one writer of the time who was, however, able to do something to establish such an understanding, and who succeeded also in securing some substantial returns from the sale of his works, was Erasmus. An account