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.
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