"The existence of literary property," says Drone, "is traced back by record to 1558, when an entry of copies appears in the register of the Company of Stationers of London." Between 1558 and 1710 there was no legislation creating this property or confining ownership, nor any abridging its perpetuity or restricting its enjoyment. It was understood, therefore, to owe its existence to common law, and this conclusion, arrived at by the weightiest authorities, remained practically unquestioned until 1774. During this earlier period there were some instances of the recognition of literary property, but the earliest reported case concerning such property occurred in 1666, in which the House of Lords unanimously agreed that "a copyright was a thing acknowledged at common law." A licensing act, passed in Parliament in 1674, and expiring in 1679, prohibited, under pain of forfeiture, the printing of any work without the consent of the owner. But the first act attempting to fully define and protect copyright in Great Britain was that of 1710, known as the 8th of Anne. It was entitled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning," and, declaring that an author should have the sole right of publishing his book, prescribed penalties against any who should infringe that right. Its evident intention was to more clearly establish, and make more easily defensible, the rights of authors, but curiously enough it had for its effect a very material limitation of those rights. It provided, namely, that copyright should be secured to the author or his assigns for fourteen years, with a privilege of renewal to the author or his representatives for fourteen years longer. This privilege of renewal was not conveyed to any one who might have purchased the author's copyright. It was supposed for a long time that this statute had not interfered with any rights that authors might possess at common law, and in the oft-cited case of Millar _vs._ Taylor in 1769, in regard to a reprint of Thomson's "Seasons," a majority of the judges of the King's Bench (including among them Lord Mansfield) gave it as their opinion that the act was _not_ intended to destroy, and had not destroyed, copyright at common law, but had simply protected it more efficiently during the periods specified. The opinion delivered by Lord Mansfield, as chief justice of the court, remains one of the strongest and most conclusive statements of the property-rights of authors, and has been termed one of the grandest judgments in English judicial literature. Its conclusion is as follows: