A GIFT THAT FAILED

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 141, 17 June 1922, Page 10

A GIFT THAT FAILED

'A curious instance of the insufficiency of good intentions without full knowledge is mentioned in a letter, signed by many distinguished men, published in the Manchester Guardian. Tolstoi wanted as many people as possible to read his books, and he did not mind how little money he made by 'them, says that paper editorially. So he renounced his copyrights. Anybody who chose might translate, print, and sell his writings, in any^-form, and at any price. The result has been that we have never yet had a good English edition of Tolatoi. M Tolstoi had stuck to his rights and sold, say, tho right of translation and publication in. the United Kingdom to a good British publisher, it would have been worth that publisher's while to commission a good complete translation. For the' publisher would then have had whatever profit there is to be. got from the reading of Tolstoi in Britain. If, under tho arrangement actually made by Tolstoi, an enterprising British publisher had done this, one of the first probable results would have been to popularise a few relatively ''best sellers" among Tolstoi's stories. Any rival publisher could then have cut in with cheaper separate editions of these, spoilt the sale of the more spirited publisher's complete edition and also the separate sale of its most attractive single volumes, and made the whole enterprise a pretty certain loss. Even apart irom this, there somehow accrues, on account no doubt of our imperfect nature, a certain loss of prestige to tho artist of any kind who gives his books or his pictures away. We have a ten-ibly deepseated habit of thinking that the mouths of gift horses need a good deal oE looking into. When we approach a man who is visibly giving away printed matter in the street wo instinctively look the other way, our hearts telling no that he means either to iinprovo us against our will or to make us by some' thing else afterwards. Iri Tolstoi's caso the former intimation was, in fact-, accurate. He did want to do us good gratis. And, by innocently provoking the natural reaction of fallen man against apostolic approaches which cost him nothing, he has really put a bar between us and the works by which ho particularly wanted us to be saved..