Authors have not been the only beings who have suffered by their writings, but frequently they have involved the printers and sellers of their works in their unfortunate ruin. The risks which adventurous publishers run in our own enlightened age are not so great as those incurred a few centuries ago. Indeed Mr. Walter Besant assures us that now our publishers have no risks, not even financial! They are not required to produce the huge folios and heavy quartos which our ancestors delighted in, and poured forth with such amazing rapidity, unless there is a good subscribers' list and all the copies are taken. The misfortunes of booksellers caused by voluminous authors might form a special subject of inquiry, and we commend it to the attentions of some other Book-lover. We should hear the groans of two eminent printers who were ruined by the amazing industry of one author, Nicholas de Lyra. He himself died long before printing was invented, in the year 1340, but he left behind him his great work, _Biblia sacra cum interpretationibus et postillis_, which became the source of trouble to the printers, Schweynheym and Pannartz, of Subiaco and Rome. They were persuaded or ordered by the Pope or his cardinals to print his prodigious commentary on the Bible; when a few volumes had been printed they desired most earnestly to be relieved of their burden, and petitioned the Pope to be saved from the bankruptcy which this mighty undertaking entailed. They possessed a lasting memento of this author in the shape of eleven hundred ponderous tomes, which were destined to remain upon their shelves till fire or moths or other enemies of books had done their work. These volumes began to be printed in 1471, and contain the earliest specimens of Greek type. The printers of the works of Prynne, Barthius, Reynaud, and other voluminous writers must have had a sorry experience with their authors; but "once bitten twice shy." Hence some of these worthies found it rather difficult to publish their works, and there were no authors' agents or Societies of Authors to aid their negotiations. Indeed we are told that a printer who was saddled with a large number of unsaleable copies of a heavy piece of literary production adopted the novel expedient of bringing out several editions of the work! This he accomplished by merely adding a new title-page to his old copies, whereby he readily deceived the unwary. Catherino, in his book entitled _L'Art d'Imprimer_, quotes the saying of De Fourcey, a Jesuit of Paris, that "one might make a pretty large volume of the catalogue of those who have entirely ruined their booksellers by their books."