“Bacon? I know nothing of Bacon,” retorted John Saville. “But I am very much in love with the works of a certain William Shakespeare.” “You think you are. Shakespeare did not write the plays bearing his name. The real author was Bacon, as several individuals have set themselves to prove.” “I am afraid they have proved their case but badly. For while all our scholars have Shakesperian quotations at their tongues’ ends, there is not one of us who has ever heard a whisper of any presumed Baconian origin of our best loved classics.” Poor Mr. Donnelly! From playwright to novelist was a natural transition; and, remembering sundry financial bruisings in connection with the publication of one of my earliest and lengthiest novels, a glow of exultation possessed me when I learnt the conditions under which books were published nowadays. The long-suffering author had triumphed at last, and his erstwhile oppressor was shorn of his glory. I was told that the State had established an immense Literary Bureau, with which large printing and publishing works were associated. All works other than already licensed newspapers and magazines intended for publication were submitted in the first instance to the Bureau, and read by the official censor. If found to be innocent of offences against morality, the book was taken in hand, and published under State authority, the author paying the whole of the cost, and receiving the whole of the future emoluments, subject to the five per cent. tax accruing to the State. There was no arbitrary range of charges, but a scale of payment for work done which was sufficient to repay the State outlay, _plus_ a slight percentage of profit. Writers could, by studying the printed tariff, know exactly what style and quality of material and workmanship to choose, and would also know to a fraction what their expenses would be. Nor did present lack of funds stand in the way of success, for the State helped capable, industrious authors by a judicious system of credit, just as it helped any other of its people who had done nothing to forfeit the supposition that they were deserving of such assistance. As already pointed out, State aid within certain limits was unattended with any risk to the Government, as it had means of repaying itself. The law of copyright was simplicity itself. For one hundred years the copyright was the inalienable property of the author, or the author’s nominees. At the end of that time the State succeeded to all copyrights as were still of value. No grasping publisher was allowed to step in and reap the profits of an author’s brain toil, and there was no gall mixed with the thought that a work was being written which might possibly survive to become a valuable property of the nation, even as Gibbons’ “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” is still a gold mine to enterprising and speculative publishers in England.