COPYRIGHT.
[To TEL EDITOR OP TEL •• firsomon.."] SIR,—I have read with interest your valuable remarks on copyright, a propos of Matthew Arnold's . poems, in the Spectator of October 3rd. If a writer leaves his copyright (a* the late Master of Balliol did) to the University of Oxford or of Cambridge, or to any college in either, or to certain other learned bodies, on trust for the charitable and educational purposes of the institution, it is, I believe, the fact that the copyright is thereby made perpetual and does not expire in the ordinary course. Whenever this plan is adopted, such scandals as you mention are impossible. But I should like further information on a point connected with this. A writer may wish to provide for his widow or children by leaving them his copyright. Supposing he does this, and they thereupon keep the copyright till, say, six months before it is timed to expire, can they then, by making a present of the copyright to an Oxford College, prevent it at the last hour, so to speak, from earthing at all, or is it necessary that this should have been done by the author himself in his lifetime? Or again, supposing a copyright has twenty years to run, can the author bequeath it for nineteen years to his widow and then in perpetuity to a college P—I am, Sir, &c., NIILLITM TEMPUS OCCURRAT HONESTATL
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