“If anybody says the name is undignified,” writes Willis, “tell them there are very few dignified people in the world, and still _fewer lovers_ of dignity, and by the Lord, we must live by the _many_. Then again we want a root, a reason, a rail, a runner to start upon, and this bloody copyright will answer the purpose. People will say, ‘Why, damme, Willis can’t get paid for his books because the law won’t protect him, so he has hauled his wind, and joined the people that robbed him.’” Willis felt very bitterly the absence of an international copyright. By the act of 1838, the English Parliament, acting in self-defense, had refused to protect any longer the literary property of American authors, until America should have the decency to reciprocate. This cut double upon the American author. It deprived him of any gain from the circulation of his writings in England, and it discouraged native literature by flooding this country with cheap reprints of English books, for the copy of which the American publisher paid nothing. The former loss would not have been serious to many American writers at that date, possibly not to so very many even now. But England had been Willis’s best market, literary work in America was wretchedly paid, and he saw starvation staring him in the face. The “Pirate” was finally toned down into the “Corsair,” and a prospectus which was a modification of the one drafted by Willis in the above letter was printed and circulated in January, 1839. He sent one to Henry Clay, and begged him to mention the “Corsair” in his argument on the copyright, as a good comment on the state of the law. Mr. Clay replied in a very polite letter, giving his views upon the copyright question, and inclosing his subscription. The office of the “Corsair” was in the Astor House, No. 8 Barclay Street. The first number was published March 15, 1839, and the last (No. 52) March 7, 1840. At the head of the sheet was a rakish looking craft under full sail, and Willis led off with a truculent editorial, “The Quarter Deck” proclaiming the policy of the new paper. To the earlier numbers he contributed art notes and miscellaneous chat, “The Pencil,” “The Gallery,” “The Divan,” etc.; two papers on autographs; a “Letter from Under a Bridge,” a generic name that he gave to much correspondence about this time, not comprised in the original “Letters”; some reminiscences of Miss Landon as “The Departed Improvisatrice,” and a very harsh review, “Paulding the Author Disinterred.” This last was unlike Willis, who was almost always kind in his notices of brother authors, and it provoked much unfavorable comment, particularly a rejoinder in the “Courier and Enquirer,” by Colonel James Watson Webb, a gentleman who afterwards fell foul of Willis in various ways. In this article he held him up to scorn as a writer “who revels on the cut of a coat or the ottomans of a lady’s