is so contrived that, in the vast majority of cases, the blanks
will fall to the best books, and the prizes to books of inferior
merit.

Take Shakspeare. My noble friend gives a longer protection than
I should give to Love's Labour's Lost, and Pericles, Prince of
Tyre; but he gives a shorter protection than I should give to
Othello and Macbeth.

Take Milton. Milton died in 1674. The copyrights of Milton's
great works would, according to my noble friend's plan, expire in
1699. Comus appeared in 1634, the Paradise Lost in 1668. To
Comus, then, my noble friend would give sixty-five years of
copyright, and to the Paradise Lost only thirty-one years. Is
that reasonable? Comus is a noble poem: but who would rank it
with the Paradise Lost? My plan would give forty-two years both
to the Paradise Lost and to Comus.

Let us pass on from Milton to Dryden. My noble friend would give
more than sixty years of copyright to Dryden's worst works; to
the encomiastic verses on Oliver Cromwell, to the Wild Gallant,
to the Rival Ladies, to other wretched pieces as bad as anything
written by Flecknoe or Settle: but for Theodore and Honoria, for
Tancred and Sigismunda, for Cimon and Iphigenia, for Palamon and
Arcite, for Alexander's Feast, my noble friend thinks a copyright
of twenty-eight years sufficient. Of all Pope's works, that to
which my noble friend would give the largest measure of
protection is the volume of Pastorals, remarkable only as the
production of a boy. Johnson's first work was a Translation of a
Book of Travels in Abyssinia, published in 1735. It was so