NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

I must in future reserve a page, at the end of these Letters, partly for any chance word of correspondence; partly to give account of what I am doing, (when it becomes worth relating,) with the interest of the St. George’s Fund.

To-day I wish only to invite the reader’s attention to the notice, which is sent out with each volume of the revised series of my works, that I mean to sell my own books at a price from which there shall be no abatement—namely, 18s. the plain volumes, and 27s. 6d. the illustrated ones; and that my publisher, Mr. G. Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington, Kent, will supply them at that price without abatement, carriage paid, to any person in town or country, on remittance of the price of the number of volumes required.

This absolute refusal of credit or abatement is only the carrying out of a part of my general method of political economy; and I adopt this system of sale, because I think authors ought not to be too proud to sell their own books, any more than painters to sell their own pictures.

I intend the retail dealer to charge twenty shillings for the plain volumes, and thirty shillings for the others. If he declines offering them for that percentage, it is for the public to judge how much he gets usually.

1 I quote from the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ of January 16th. In the more elaborate review given in the ‘Fortnightly,’ I am glad to see that Professor Caird is beginning to perceive the necessity of defining the word “useful;” and, though greatly puzzled, is making way towards a definition: but would it not be wiser to abstain from exhibiting himself in his state of puzzlement to the public? ↑

2 Every man as good as his neighbour! you extremely sagacious English persons; and forthwith you establish competitive examination, which drives your boys into idiotcy, before you will give them a bit of bread to make their young muscles of! Every man as good as his neighbour! and when I told you, seven years ago, that at least you should give every man his penny of wages, whether he was good or not, so only that he gave you the best that was in him, what did you answer to me? ↑

FORS CLAVIGERA.