It would, however, be very absurd to pass judgment by the standard of later times, upon the literary appropriations of the publishers of the seventeenth century. It is not probable that either the Elzevirs or their publishing contemporaries had any thought that in reprinting French, English, or German books, they were causing wrong either to the writers or to the original publishers, or that their action could be considered as an interference with any existing rights. Using the term in its strict legal sense, there were, of course, at this time no “rights” in literary productions outside of the territory covered by any particular “privilege.” The Elzevirs were accustomed to protect their own books, both the works of contemporary authors and the editions of old time writers, by privileges covering the territories of the Republic, and they occasionally secured also a privilege from the French Crown. It does not appear that any of the foreign works reprinted by them had been placed under the protection of a Dutch privilege, and, in fact, I find no references in the correspondence that has been preserved to any questions of infringement of privilege protection, with which the Elzevirs had to do either as complainants or as defendants. It is probable that even in the territory covered by a privilege, the difficulty of enforcing the same under the law was considerable, and that publishers and editors found it wise for the most part to accept the annoyance of interference and of competition rather than to incur the labour and expense of an appeal to the authorities. It was also doubtless the case that the superior facilities for production and for distribution possessed by the Elzevirs, enabled them to protect themselves pretty effectively against any unauthorised competition, at least in the Low Countries. I find record of no complaints from Molière, Scarron, or Hobbes, or from any other of the foreign authors whose works the Elzevirs printed, and it is probable either that these authors did not think it worth while to waste words on an evil for which there was no remedy, or that (as was the case with the Sieur de Balzac, whose letters have been quoted) they considered the issue of Elzevir editions of their writings as an honour which added to their literary fame.