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The Sosii Brothers were rich, and probably owned their workmen as slaves, both the writers and those who prepared the delicate materials, the wonderful ink, of which we have not the like today, the fine sheets of papyrus, Pliny tells how they were sometimes too rough, and how they sometimes soaked up the ink like a cloth, as happens with our own paper, and the carefully cut pens of Egyptian reed on which so much of the neatness in writing depended, though Cicero says somewhere that he could write with any pen he chanced to take up.
You may even ask me why I have not published my odes since you last saw me." Maecenas's eyes brightened with affectionate amusement. "Well, my friend," he said, "both money and glory would wing your flight. You have the public ear already, and can fix your own royalties with the Sosii. And everybody, from Augustus to the capricious fair, would welcome the published volume.
Few novelties are more called for, in this halcyon age of authorship, this summer season for the Sosii, this every-day-a-birth-day for some five-and-twenty books, than the establishment of a recognised literary tribunal, some judgment-hall of master spirits, from whose calm, unhurried, unbiased verdict, there should be no appeal.
In these days of universal knowledge, schoolmaster and scholars all abroad together, quotation is voted pedantry, and to interpret is accounted an impertinence; yet will I boldly proclaim, as a mere fact, clear to the perceptions of all it may concern, "This book deserves richly of the Sosii."
The epigrams of Martial inform us of the existence of a class of slaves whose occupation was copying books, and innumerable allusions in Horace, Martial, &c., to the Sosii and others prove that the trade of a bookseller at Rome was both extensive and profitable.
The author sent back from Tomi some lines of apology and explanation which he wished prefixed. He also arranged with the Sosii for the bringing out of his work on the Roman Calendar when he should have completed it.
Before you know it, the billboards of the Sosii will announce the completed work, and the dedication shall show Rome who is responsible for my offending."
Behold, then, hungry novel-monger, what grist is here for the mill! Behold, Sosii, what capabilities of orders from every library in the kingdom! As doomed ones, and denounced ones, and undying ones, and unseen ones, seem to be such taking titles, what think you of the Buried-alive-one! is it not new, thrilling, terrible?
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