Chapter 5

“did th’ oration print,Imperfect, with false Latin in’t,”

and thereby aroused the anger of the Westminster scholars, who enticed him into Dean’s Yard on the pretence of giving him a more perfect copy; there, he met with a college salutation, for he was first presented with the ceremony of the blanket, in which, “when the skeleton had been well shook, he was carried in triumph to the school, and, after receiving a mathematical construction for his false concords, he was re-conducted to Dean’s Yard, and on his knees asking pardon of the aforesaid Mr. Barber (the captain whose Latin he had murdered) for his offence, he was kicked out of the yard, and left to the huzzas of the rabble.”

No sooner was Curll out of one scrape than he fell into another; for, still in this same year, he was summonedto the bar of the House of Lords for printing and publishing a paper entitledAn Account of the Trial of the Earl of Winton, a breach of the standing orders of the House. However, having received kneeling a reprimand from the Lord Chancellor, he was dismissed upon payment of the fees.

While the authorities were quick enough to punish any violation of their own peculiar privileges, they were graciously pleased to wink at the perpetual offences Curll was committing against public morals, for Curll was a strong politician on the safe party side, and in his political publications had in view the interests of the government. However, he was attacked on all sides by public opinion and the press.Mist’s Weekly Journalfor April 5, 1718, contained a very strong article on the “Sin of Curllicism.” “There is indeed but one bookseller eminent among us for this abomination, and from him the crime takes its just denomination of Curllicism. The fellow is a contemptible wretch a thousand ways; he is odious in his person, scandalous in his fame; ... more beastly, insufferable books have been published by this one offender than in thirty years before by all the nation.” Curll, “the Dauntless,” did not long remain in silence, and his reply is characteristically outspoken, for the writer was never a coward. “Your superannuated letter-writer was never more out than when he asserted that Curllicism was but of four years’ standing. Poor wretch! he is but a novice in chronology;” and then, after threatening the journalist with the terrors of an outraged government, he concludes “in the words of a late eminent controvertist, the Dean of Chichester.”

Curll was fond of the dignitaries of the Church, andendeavoured to play a shrewd trick upon one of them; he sent a copy of Lord Rochester’sPoems(certainly not the most innocent book he published) to Dr. Robinson, Bishop of London, with a tender of his duty, and a request that his lordship would please to revise the interleaved volume as he thought fit; but the bishop, not to be caught, “smiled” and said, “I am told that Mr. Curll is a shrewd man, and should I revise the book you have brought me, he would publish it as approved by me.”5

Public dissatisfaction seems to have been expressed more forcibly against Curll than heretofore, and to have taken the form of a remonstrance to government, for he publishedThe Humble Representation of Edmund Curll, Bookseller and Citizen of London, containing Five Books complained of to the Secretary. As the books were eminently of a nature requiring an apology, we cannot do more than give their titles: 1.The Translation of Meibomius and Tractatus de Hermaphroditis; 2.Venus in the Cloister; 3.Ebrietatis Encomium; 4.Three New Poems, viz. Family Duty, The Curious Wife, and Buckingham House; and 5.De Secretis Mulierum. At last the government did interfere, as we learn from a notice inBoyer’s Political State, Nov. 1725:—

“On Nov. 30, 1725, Curll, a bookseller in the Strand, was tried at the King’s Bench Bar, Westminster, and convicted of printing and publishing several obscene and immodest books, greatly tending to the corruption and depravation of manners, particularly one translated from a Latin treatise entitledDe Usu Flagrorum in Re Venereâ; and another from a Frenchbook calledLa Religieuse en Chemise.” In the indictment Curll is thus accurately summed up:homo iniquus et sceleratus ac nequiter machinans et intendens bonos mores subditorum hujus regni corrumpere et eos ad nequitiam inducere; and in theState Trialswe read the following report of thesentence:—

“This Edmund Curll stood in the pillory at Charing Cross, but was not pelted or used ill; for being an artful, cunning (though wicked) fellow, he had contrived to have printed papers dispersed all about Charing Cross, telling the people how he stood there for vindicating the memory of Queen Anne.”

It does, in fact, appear that he received three sentences at once, and that not until Feb. 12, 1728. For publishing theNun in her Smock, and the treatiseDe Usu Flagrorum, he was sentenced to pay a fine of twenty-five marks each, and to enter into recognizances of £100 for his good behaviour for one year; but for publishing theMemoirs of John Ker of Kersland, Esq.(a political offence), he was fined twenty marks, and ordered to stand in the pillory for the space of one hour.6

In 1729 Curll was again pilloried—this time by Pope in theDunciad, in connection with Tonson and Lintot:

“With authors, stationers obey’d the call(The field of glory is a field for all);Glory and gain th’ industrious tribe provoke,And gentle Dulness ever loves a joke;A poet’s form she placed before their eyes,And bade the nimblest racer seize the prize.*****——Lofty Lintot in the circle rose:‘The Prize is mine, who ‘tempts it are my foes;With me began this genius, and shall end.’He spoke, and who with Lintot shall contend?“Fear held them mute. Alone untaught to fear,Stood dauntless Curll: ‘Behold that rival here!The race by vigour, not by vaunts, is won:So take the hindmost, hell,’ he said, ‘and run.’Swift as a bard the bailiff leaves behindHe left huge Lintot, and outstript the wind.As when a dab-chick waddles through the copseOn feet and wings, and flies, and wades, and hops,So labouring on with shoulders, hands, and head,Wide as a windmill all his figure spread,With arms expanded Bernard views his state,And left-legged Jacob seems to emulate.”

*****

——Lofty Lintot in the circle rose:‘The Prize is mine, who ‘tempts it are my foes;With me began this genius, and shall end.’He spoke, and who with Lintot shall contend?

“Fear held them mute. Alone untaught to fear,Stood dauntless Curll: ‘Behold that rival here!The race by vigour, not by vaunts, is won:So take the hindmost, hell,’ he said, ‘and run.’Swift as a bard the bailiff leaves behindHe left huge Lintot, and outstript the wind.As when a dab-chick waddles through the copseOn feet and wings, and flies, and wades, and hops,So labouring on with shoulders, hands, and head,Wide as a windmill all his figure spread,With arms expanded Bernard views his state,And left-legged Jacob seems to emulate.”

And finally Curll stumbles into an unsavourypool:—

“Obscene with filth the miscreant lies bewrayed,Fallen in the plash his wickedness had laid;Then first (if poets aught of truth declare)The caitiff vaticide conceived a prayer.”

In reference to Curll there is a note to this passage, “He carried the trade many lengths beyond what it ever before had arrived at; he was the envy and admiration of all his profession. He possessed himself of a command over all authors whatever; he caused them to write what he pleased; they could not call their very names their own. He was not only famous among them; he was taken notice of by the state, the church, and the law, and received particular marks of distinction from each.”

We have no space to discuss the vexed question as to how the letters of Pope published by Curll came into his hands—the discussion would occupy a volume and remain a moot question after all. But we are disposed to believe with Johnson and Disraeli that “being inclined to print his own letters, and notknowing how to do so without the imputation of vanity, what in this country has been done very rarely, he contrives an appearance of compulsion; that when he could complain that his letters were surreptitiously published, he might decently and defensively publish them himself.” The letters at all events were genuine, and Pope in a feigned or real indignation caused Curll to be brought for a third time (the second had been for publishing the Duke of Buckingham’s words) before the bar of the House of Lords for disobeying its standard rules; but on examination the book was not found to contain any letters from apeer, and Curll was dismissed, and boldly continued the publication till five volumes had been issued.

In spite, or perhaps on account of the unblushing effrontery with which he run amuck at everything and everybody, Curll was a successful man, as his repeated removals to better and better premises plainly testifies. Over his best shop in Covent Garden he erected the Bible as a sign. He has had many apologists, among others worthy John Nichols, as deserving commendation for his industry in preserving our national remains, but the scavenger, when he gathers his daily filth, lays little claim to doing a meritorious action, he only works unpleasantly for his daily bread; and it has been the repeated cry of publishers, even in our own times, in reproducing an immoral book, that they were wishing only for the preservation of something rare and curious. It were not well that any book once written should ever die,—that any one link in the vast chain of human thought should ever be irrecoverably lost, but the publisher of such a book must, at least, bear the same penalty of stigma as the author, for he has noteven the author’s self-vanity as an excuse, but only the still more wretched plea of mercenary motive. We will conclude our notice of Curll by an extract from “John Buncle,” by Thomas Amory, who knew him personally and well. “Curll was in person very tall and thin—an ungainly, awkward, white-faced man. His eyes were a light gray—large, projecting, goggle, and purblind. He was splay-footed and baker-kneed.... He was a debauchee to the last degree, and so injurious to society, that by filling his translations with wretched notes, forged letters, and bad pictures, he raised the price of a four-shilling book to ten. Thus, in particular, he managed Burnet’s ‘Archæology.’ And when I told him he was very culpable in this and other articles he sold, his answer was, ‘What would I have him do? He was a bookseller;—his translators, in pay, lay three in a bed at the Pewter Platter Inn, in Holborn, and he and they were for ever at work deceiving the public.’ He, likewise, printed the lewdest things. He lost his ears for the ‘Nun in her Smock’ and another thing. As to drink, he was too fond of money to spend any in making himself happy that way; but, at another’s expense, he would drink every day till he was quite blind and as incapable of self-motion as a block. This was Edmund Curll. But he died at last as great a penitent, I think, in the year 1748 (it was 1747), as ever expired. I mention this to his honour.”7

Thomas Guy, more eminent certainly as a very successful money-maker, and a generous benefactor to charitable institutions, than as a bookseller, was born in Horsley-down, the son of a coal-heaver and lighterman. The year of his birth is uncertain, but in 1660, he was bound apprentice to John Clarke, bookseller, in the porch of Mercers’ Chapel, and, in 1668, having been admitted a liveryman of the Stationers’ Company, he opened a small shop in “Stock Market” (the site of the present Mansion House, then a fruit and flower market, where, also, offenders against the law were punished) with a stock-in-trade worth above £200. From the first, Guy’s chief business seems to have been in Bibles, for Maitland, his biographer relates, “The English Bibles, printed in this kingdom, being very bad, both in the letter and the paper, occasioned divers of the booksellers in this city to encourage the printing thereof in Holland, with curious types and fine paper, and imported vast numbers of the same to their no small advantage. Mr. Guy, soon becoming acquainted with this profitable commerce, became a large dealer therein.” As early as Queen Elizabeth’s time, the privilege of printing Bibles had been conferred on the Queen’s (or King’s) printer, conjointly, of course, with the two Universities, and the effect of this prolonged monopoly resulted, not only in exorbitant prices, but in great typographical carelessness, and, says Thomas Fuller, under the quaint heading of “Fye for Shame,” “what is but carelessness in other books is impiety in setting forth of the Bible.” Many of the errors were curious;—the printers in Charles I.’s reign had been heavily fined for issuing an edition in which, the word “not” being omitted, the seventh,commandment had been rendered a positive, instead of a negative injunction. TheSpectatorwickedly suggests that, judging from the morals of the day, very many copies must have got abroad into continuous use. In the Bible of 1653, moreover, the printers allowed “know ye not that theunrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God” to stand uncorrected. However, the Universities and the King’s printer still possessed the monopoly, and this new trade of good cheap Bibles “proving not only very detrimental to the public revenues, but likewise to the King’s printer, all ways and means were devised to quash the same, which, being vigorously put in execution, the booksellers, by frequent seizures and prosecutions, became so great sufferers, that they judged a further pursuit thereof inconsistent with their interests.” Defeated in this manner, Guy cautiously induced the University of Oxford to contract with him for an assignment of their privilege, and not only obtained type from Holland, and printed the Bible in London, but was, later on, in 1681, according to Dunton, a partner with Parker in printing the Bible, at Oxford (Parker could have been no connection of the famous publishing family).

Thomas Guy, founder of Guy’s Hospital. 1644–1724.(From the statue by J. Bacon, R.A.)

Thomas Guy, founder of Guy’s Hospital. 1644–1724.

(From the statue by J. Bacon, R.A.)

Guy’s Hospital.(Bird’s-eye view from a Print, 1738.)

Guy’s Hospital.

(Bird’s-eye view from a Print, 1738.)

Guy seems to have contracted in his early days very frugal and personally pernicious habits. According to Nichols, he is said to have dined every day at his counter, “with no other table-cloth than an old newspaper,” and if the “Intelligence” or the “Newes” of that period really served him for a cloth, the dish that contained his meat must have been uncommonly small. “He was also,” it is added, “as little nice in his apparel.” It was probably, too, in the commencement of his career, that, looking round for a tidy andinexpensive helpmate, he asked his servant-maid to become his wife. The girl, of course, was delighted, but, alas! presumed too much upon her influence over her careful lover; seeing that the paviours who were repairing the street, in front of the house (an order was issued, in 1671, to every householder to pave the street in front of his dwelling, “for the breadth of six feet at least from the foundation”) had neglected a broken place, she called their attention to it, but they told her that Guy had carefully marked a particular stone, beyond which they were not to go. “Well,” said the girl, “do you mend it; tell him I bade you, and I know he will not be angry.” When Guy saw the extra charge in the bill, however, he at once renounced his matrimonial scheme.

The Bible trade proved prosperous, and Guy, ready for any lucrative and safe investment for his money, speculated in Government securities, and, according to Nichols and Maitland, acquired the “bulk of his fortune” by purchasing seaman’s tickets; but the practice of paying the royal sailors by ticket does not seem to have existed later than the year 1684; so that if he dealt in them at all it must have been a very early period in his career, when it appears unlikely that he would have had much spare cash to invest. Maitland adds “as well as in Government securities, and this was probably the manner in which the ‘bulk of his fortune’ was really acquired.”

That his finances were in a healthy condition, is apparent, from his appearance in Parliament as member for Tamworth, from 1695 to 1707. According to Maitland, “as he was a man of unbounded charity, and universal benevolence, so he was likewise a good patron of liberty, and the rights of his fellow-subjects;which, to his great honour, he strenuously asserted in divers parliaments.” An honourable testimony to his character, supported also by Dunton: “Thomas Guy, of Lombard-street, makes an eminent figure in the Company of Stationers, having been chosen sheriff of London, and paid the fine.... He is a man of strong reason, and can talk very much to the purpose on any subject you can propose. He is truly charitable.”

Throughout his life, he was very kind to his relatives, lending money when needed to help some, and pensioning others. To charities, whose purpose was pure benevolence, apart from sectarian motive, his purse was ever open, and St. Thomas’s Hospital and the Stationers’ Company were largely indebted to his generosity.

In his latter days, Guy was able to multiply his fortune many fold. The South Sea Company was a good investment for a wary, cool-headed business man, and he became an original holder in the stock. “It no sooner received,” says Maitland, “the sanction of Parliament, than the national creditors from all parts came crowding to subscribe into the said company the several sums due to them from the government, by which great run, £100 of the Company’s stock, that before was sold at £120 (at which time, Mr. Guy was possessed of £45,500 of the said stock) gradually arose to above £1,050. Mr. Guy wisely considering that the great use of the stock was owing to the iniquitous management of a few, prudently began to sell out his stock at about £300 (for that which probably at first did not cost him about £50 or £60) and continued selling till it arose to about £600 when he disposed of the last of his propertyin the said company,” and then the terrible panic came.

He was between seventy and eighty years of age when he determined to devote his fortune to building and endowing a hospital which should bear his name, and, dying in 1724, he lived just long enough to see the walls roofed in. The cost of building “Guy’s Hospital” amounted to £18,793, and he left £219,499 as endowment. At Tamworth, his mother’s birthplace, which he represented in Parliament for many years, he erected alms-houses and a library. Christ’s Hospital received £400 a year for ever, and, after many gifts to public charities, he directed that the balance of his fortune, amounting to about £80,000, should be divided among all who could prove themselves in any degree related to him. Guy’s noble philanthropy would be unequalled in bookselling annals, but that Edinburgh, happily boasting of a Donaldson, can rival London in the generosity of a bookseller.

We have had occasion to quote several times from “Dunton’s Characters;” and, as the author was himself a bookseller, and was, moreover, the only contemporary writer who thought it worth his while to preserve any continuous record of the bookselling fraternity, we must give him a passing notice here. John Dunton, the son of a clergyman, was born in 1689, and, after passing through a disorderly apprenticeship, commenced bookselling “in half a shop, a warehouse, and a fashionable chamber.” “Printing,” he says, “was the uppermost in my thoughts, and hackney authors began to ply me with specimens as earnestly and with as much passion and concern as the waterman do passengers with oars and sculls.”

Having some private capital he went ahead merrily,printing six hundred books, of which he repented only of seven, and these he recommends all who possess to burn forthwith. Somewhat erratic in his habits he went to America to recover a debt of £500, consoling his wife, “dear Iris,” through whom he became connected with Wesley’s father, by sending her sixty letters in one ship. Here he stayed for nearly a twelvemonth, pleasantly viewing the country at his leisure, and cultivating a platonic friendship with maids and widows. At his return he found his business disordered, and sought to make amends by another voyage to Holland. By this time he had pretty nearly dissipated his capital, but luckily came “into possession of a considerable estate” through the death of a cousin. “The world,” he says, “now smiled on me, and I have humble servants enough among the stationers, booksellers, printers, and binders.”

Of all his publications, the only one that attained any fame was the “Athenian Mercury,” which reached twenty volumes. His three literary associates in this work were Samuel Wesley, Richard Sault, and Dr. John Norris, and with his aid they resolved all “nice and curious questions in prose and verse,” concerning physic, philosophy, love, &c. They were afterwards reprinted in four volumes, under the title of theAthenian Oracle, and form a curious picture of the wants, manners, and opinions of the age; but the work is, perhaps, chiefly to be remembered as one of the earliest periodicals not professing to contain “news.”

Dunton now, finding that he did not make much money by bookselling in London, went over to Dublin for six months with a cargo of books andstarted as auctioneer, naturally falling foul of the Irish booksellers, whom he dressed off in a tract entitled “The Dublin Scuffle.” He returned to England complacently believing that he had done more service to learning by his auctions “than any single man that had come into Ireland these hundred years.”

In London, however, he was by this time so involved in commercial difficulties, that he was fain to give up bookselling altogether, and take to bookmaking instead; and his pen was so indefatigable that he soon bid fair to be the author of as many volumes as he had published. The book that concerns us most here is the “Life and Errors of John Dunton, written by himself in Solitude,” in which is included the “Lives and Characters of a Thousand Persons now living in London.” In this latter part he was obliged, “out of mere gratitude,” “to draw the characters of the most eminent of the profession in the three kingdoms;” consequently we find some half-dozen lines of “character” given to every bookseller of his time in London, “gratitude” compelling him, however, to be almost invariably laudatory; the other parts of the “three kingdoms” are thus summarily and easily dealt with, “Of three hundred booksellers now trading in country towns, I know not of one knave or a blockhead amongst them all.” The book, however rambling and incoherent, contains much worth preservation, and is not unpleasant desultory reading.

Dunton’s own “character” has been preserved elsewhere than in hisLife and Confessions. Warburton describes him as “an auction bookseller and an abusive scribbler;” Disraeli, “as a crack-brain,scribbling bookseller, who boasted that he had a thousand projects, fancied he had methodised six hundred, and was ruined by the fifty he executed.” His greatest project, by the way, was intended “to extirpate lewdness from London.” “Armed with a constable’s staff, and accompanied by a clerical companion, he sallied forth in the evening, and followed the wretched prostitutes home to a tavern, where every effort was used to win the erring fair to the paths of virtue; but these he observes were perilous adventures, as the cyprians exerted every art to lead him astray in the height of his spiritual exhortations.”

There is something so Quixotic about his schemes, so complacent about his marvellous self-vanity, that we are really grieved when we find him ending his life, as most “projectors” do, withDying Groans from the Fleet Prison; or, a Last Shift for Life. Shortly after this, in 1733, his teeming brain and his eager pen were at rest for ever.

Another bookseller, also a “man of letters,” but of very different calibre from poor John Dunton, must have a niche here, not because he was eminent as a publisher, but because he was, taken altogether, the most famous man who has ever stood behind a bookseller’s counter. One of our greatest novelists, his general life is so well known, that we will only treat here of his bookselling career. Samuel Richardson, born in 1689, was the son of a joiner in Derbyshire; a quiet shy boy, he became the confident and love-letter writer of the girls in his neighbourhood, gaining thereby his wonderful knowledge of womankind. Fond of books, and longing for opportunities of study, he was, at the age of sixteen, apprenticed to JohnWilde, of Stationers’ Hall, but his master, though styling him the “pillar of his house,” grudged him, he says, “every hour that tended not to his profit.” So Richardson used to sit up half the night over his books, careful at that time to burn only his own candles. On the termination of his apprenticeship, he became a journeyman and corrector of the press, and six years later commenced business in an obscure court in Fleet-street, where he filled up his leisure hours by compiling indices, and writing prefaces and what he terms “honest dedications” for the booksellers.

Through his industry and perseverance his business became much extended, and he was selected by Wharton to print theTrue Briton; but, after the publication of the sixth number, he would not allow his name to appear, and consequently escaped the results of the ensuing prosecution. Through the friendly interest of Mr. Speaker Onslow he printed the first edition of theJournal of the House of Commons, completed in twenty-six folio volumes, for which, after long and vexatious delays, he received upwards of £3000. He also printed from 1736 to 1737 theDaily Journal, and in 1738 theDaily Gazette.

In 1740 Mr. Rivington and Mr. Osborne proposed that he should write for them a little volume of letters, which resulted in his first novelPamela, the publication of which will be treated in our account of the Rivingtons. This was followed byClarissa, one of the few books from which it is absolutely impossible to steal away, when once the dread of its size has been overcome. Though famous now as the first greatnovelistwho had written in the English tongue,Richardson was not then above his daily work. He writes to his friend Mr. Defreval, “You know how my business engages me. You know by what snatches of time I write, that I may not neglect that, and that I may preserve that independency which is the comfort of my life. I never sought out of myself for patrons. My own industry and God’s providence have been my sole reliance.” In 1754, he was, to the great honour of the members, chosen master of the Stationers’ Company, the only fear of his friends being that he would not play thegourmandwell. “I cannot,” writes Edwards, “but figure to myself the miserable example you will set at the head of their loaded tables, unless you have two stout jaw-workers for your wardens, and a good hungry court of assistants.”

Samuel Richardson, Bookseller and Novelist. 1689–1761.(From a Picture by Chamberlin.)

Samuel Richardson, Bookseller and Novelist. 1689–1761.

(From a Picture by Chamberlin.)

The honourable post he occupied shows his position in the trade at this time. This was improved in 1760, by the purchase of a moiety of the patent of law-printer, which he carried on in partnership with Miss Lintot, grand-daughter of Bernard Lintot. He died in the following year, leaving funeral-rings to thirty-four of his acquaintances, and adding in his will, “Had I given rings to all the ladies who have honoured me with their correspondence, and whom I sincerely venerate for their amiable qualities, it would, even in this last solemn act, appear like ostentation.” It is impossible in treating of Richardson not to refer to his vanity; but the love of praise was his only fault, and it has grown to us, like the foible of a loved friend, dearer than all his virtues. It is not unpleasant to think that the ladies of that time, by the way in which they petted, coaxed, and humoured him, conferred an innocent pleasure upon the truest of all the delineators of their sex, except perhapsBalzac, who, if he knows it better, is more unfortunate in his knowledge. With all Richardson’s vanity, he drew a portrait of himself that is not far removed from caricature. “Short, rather plump than emaciated, notwithstanding his complaints; about five feet five inches; fair wig; lightish cloth coat, all black besides; one hand generally in his bosom, the other a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat usually, that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support, when attacked by sudden tremors or startlings, and dizziness which too frequently attacks him, but, thank God, not so often as formerly; looking directly foreright as passers-by would imagine, but observing all that stirs on either side of him without moving his short neck; hardly ever turning back; of a light brown complexion; teeth not yet failing him; smoothish face and ruddy cheeked; at some times looking to be about sixty-five, at other times much younger; regular even pace, stealing away ground rather than seeming to rid it; a gray eye, too often over-clouded by mistiness from the head; by chance lively—very lively it will be, if he have hope of seeing a young lady whom he loves and honours; his eye always on the ladies; if they have very large hoops, he looks down supercilious, and as if he would be thought wise, but, perhaps, the sillier for that; as he approaches a lady, his eyes are never set upon her face but upon her feet, and thence he raises it pretty quickly for a dull eye; and one would think (if one thought him at all worthy of observation) that from her air and (the last beheld) her face, he sets her down in his mind as so and so, and then passes on to the next object he meets.”

Among other letters to Richardson we come acrossan affecting one from Dr. Johnson: “I am obliged to entreat your assistance, I am under arrest for five pounds eighteen shillings.” As round Pope and Dryden formerly, so it is now round Johnson that the booksellers of the next decade cluster; and from the moment when first he rolled into a London bookseller’s shop, his huge unwieldy body clad in coarse country garments, worn and travel-stained, his face scarred and seamed with small-pox—to ask for literary employment, and to be told he had better rather purchase a porter’s knot, the future of the trade was very much wrapt up in his own. Forced by hunger to work for the most niggardly pay, he was yet not to be insulted with impunity. “Lie there, thou lump of lead,” he exclaims as he knocked down Osborne of Gray’s Inn Gate, with a folio. “Sir,” he explains to Boswell afterwards, “he was impertinent to me, and I beat him.”

Edward Cave, founder of the “Gentleman’s Magazine.” 1691–1754.

The King’s Printing House, Blackfriars.(From a drawing made about 1750.)

The King’s Printing House, Blackfriars.

(From a drawing made about 1750.)

Among the earliest of Johnson’s employers was Edward Cave. The son of a shoemaker at Rugby, he contrived, in spite of the contumely excited by his low estate, to pick up much learning at the Grammar School, and after narrowly escaping an university training, and for a while obtaining his livelihood as clerk to a collector of excise and apprentice to a timber merchant, he found more congenial employment in a printing office, and conducted a weekly newspaper at Norwich. Returning to London, he contrived by multifarious work—correcting for the press, contributing toMist’s Journal, writing news letters, and filling a situation in the Post Office simultaneously—to save a small sum of money sufficient to start a petty printing office at St. John’s Gate. He was now able to realize a project he had before offeredto half the booksellers in London, of establishing theGentleman’s Magazine, and to Cave must be conceded the honour of inventing that popular species of periodical literature. The first number was printed in 1731, and its success induced several rivals to enter the field, but only one—The London Magazine—and that a joint concern of the leading publishers, was at all able to hold any opposition to it; and theLondon Magazineceased to exist in 1785, while theGentleman’s Magazinehas only quite recently displayed a sudden rejuvenation. In its early days Johnson was the chief contributor to its pages. He had a room set apart for him at St. John’s Gate, where he wrote as fast as he could drive his pen, throwing the sheets off, when completed, to the “copy” boy. TheLife of Savagewas written anonymously, in 1744, and Mr. Harte spoke in high terms of the book, while dining with Cave. The publisher told him afterwards: “Harte, you made a man very happy the other day at my house by your praise ofSavage’s Life.” “How so? none were present but you and I.” Cave replied, “You might observe I sent a plate of victuals behind the screen; there lurked one whose dress was too shabby for him to appear; your praise pleased him much.”

In 1736, Cave began to carry out his scheme of publishing the reports of the debates in Parliament in the monthly pages of his magazine. With a friend or two he used to lurk about the lobby and gallery, taking sly notes in dark corners, remembering what they could of the drift of the argument, and then retiring to a neighbouring tavern to compare and adjust their notes. This rough material was placed in the hands of an experienced writer, and thusdressed up, presented to the readers of the magazine. In 1738, the House complained of the breach of privilege committed by Cave, and, among other debaters, Sir William Younge earnestly implored the House to put a summary check to these reports, prophesying that otherwise “you will have the speeches of the House every day printed, even during your session, and we shall be looked upon as the most contemptible assembly on the face of the earth.” After this check some expedient was necessary, and the proceedings in Parliament were given asDebates in the Senate of Great Lilliput, and were entrusted to Johnson’s pen. On one occasion a large company were praising a speech of Pitt’s; Johnson sat silent for a while, then said, “That speech I wrote in a yard in Exeter Street.” It had been reprintedverbatimfrom the magazine, and had been drawn up entirely from rough notes and hints supplied by the messengers. When congratulated on his uniform political impartiality, Johnson replied: “That is not quite true, sir; I saved appearances well enough, but I took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.” Cave’s attention to the magazine was unremitting to the day of his death; “he scarce ever looked out of the window,” says Johnson, “but for its improvement.”

In 1749, the first popular review was started, by Ralph Griffiths; but before the time of theMonthly Reviewthere had been various journals professing to deal only with literature. In 1683, had been published aWeekly Memento for the Ingenius, or an Account of Books, and, in 1714, the first really critical journal, under the quaint title,The Waies of Literature, and these had been succeeded by others. Still, theMonthly Reviewwas a very great improvement.Among the chief early contributors was Goldsmith, who escaped the miseries of ushership, and the weariness of a diplomaless doctor, waiting for patients who never came, or, at all events, never paid, to live as a hack writer in Griffiths’ house. Here, induced by want, or kindliness to a fellow-starver, he got into trouble by borrowing money from his master to pay for clothes, and appropriating it to other purposes. Termed villain and sharper, and threatened with the Roundhouse, he writes: “No, sir; had I been a sharper, had I been possessed of less good nature and native generosity, I might surely now have been in better circumstances; I am guilty I own of meanness, which poverty unavoidably brings with it.”

As to the payment for periodical writing in that day, we are told by an author who recollected theMonthly Reviewfor fifty years, that in its most palmy days only four guineas a sheet were given to the most distinguished writers, and as late as 1783, when it was reported that Doctor Shebbeare received as much as six guineas, Johnson replied, “Sir, he might get six guineas for a particular sheet, but notcommunibus sheetibus;” and yet he afterwards explains the fact of so much good writing appearing anonymously, without hope of personal fame, “those who write in them write well in order to be paid well.”

Of all the booksellers of the Johnsonian era, Robert Dodsley, however, wasfacile princeps. Born in the year 1703, he commenced life as a footman, but a poem entitledThe Muse in Livery, so interested his mistress, the Hon. Mrs. Lowther, that she procured its publication by subscription. After this he entered the service of Dartineuf, a celebrated voluptuary, the reputed son of Charles II., and one of the most intimatefriends of Pope. Here he wrote a dramatic satire,The Toy Shop, with which Pope was so pleased, that he interested himself in procuring its acceptance at Covent Garden. The piece was successful, and Pope, adding a substantial present on his own account of one hundred pounds, Dodsley was enabled to open a small bookseller’s shop in Pall Mall, then far from enjoying its present fashionable repute. In this new situation, without any apprenticeship whatever, he soon attracted the attention not only of celebrated literary men, but his shop became a favourite lounge for noble and wealthydilettanti. In 1738, began his first acquaintance with Johnson, who offered him the manuscript ofLondon, a Satire. “Paul Whitehead had a little before got ten guineas for a poem, and I would not take less than Paul Whitehead,” and without any haggling, the bargain was concluded. Busy as he soon began to be in his shop, Dodsley did not neglect original composition. He produced several successful farces, and in 1744, edited and published the work by which his name is best known now,A Collection of Plays by Old Authors, which did much to revive the study of Elizabethan literature, and was most fruitful in its influence on later generations.

In about the following year Dodsley proposed to Johnson that he should write a dictionary of the English language, and after some hesitation on the author’s part, the proposal was accepted. The dictionary was to be the joint property—as was then beginning to be the case with all works of importance—of several booksellers, viz.: Robert Dodsley, Charles Hitch, Andrew Millar, Messrs. Longman, and Messrs. Knapton; the management of it during publication being confided to Andrew Millar. Thework took eight years, instead of the three on which Johnson had calculated, of very severe study and labour, and the £1575 which was then considered a very handsomehonorarium, was all drawn out in drafts, for at the dinner given in honour of the completion of the great work, when the receipts were produced it was found that he had nothing more to receive. Johnson, after sending his last “copy” to Millar, inquired of the messenger what the bookseller said. “He said, ‘Thank God I have done with him.’” “I am glad,” said the Doctor smiling, “that he thanks God for anything.”

Andrew Millar was by this time the proprietor of Tonson’s shop in Fleet Street, and was a man of great enterprise. He was the publisher, among other authors, of Thomson, Fielding, and Hume, and Johnson invariably speaks well of him. “I respect Millar, sir; he has raised the price of literature:” “and,” writes John Nichols, “Jacob Tonson and Andrew Millar were the bestpatronsof literature, a fact rendered unquestionable by the valuable works produced under their fostering and genial hands.” Literature now was rapidly changing its condition. Johnson had discovered that the subscription system was essentially a rotten one, and that the real reading public, the author’s legitimate patrons, were reached of course through the medium of the booksellers: “He that asks for subscriptions soon finds that he has enemies. All who do not encourage him defame him:” and then again—“Now learning is a trade; a man goes to a bookseller and gets what he can. We have done with patronage. In the infancy of learning we find some great men praised for it. This diffused it among others. When it becomes generalan author leaves the great and applies to the multitude.” As to what the booksellers of the eighteenth century were, and as to how they compare with the publishers of the nineteenth century, we will quote from an unedited letter of Mr. Thomas Carlyle, dated 3rd May, 1852, addressed to Mr. John Chapman, bookseller (Emerson’s first English publisher, we believe), now Dr.Chapman:—

“The duties of society towards literature in this new condition of the world are becoming great, vital, inextricably intricate, little capable of being done or understood at present, yet all important to be understood and done if society will continue to exist along with it, or it along with society. For the highest provinces of spiritual culture and most sacred interests of men down to the lowest economic and ephemeral concerns, where ‘free press’ rules supreme, society was itself with all its sovereignties and parliaments depending on the thing it calls literature; and bound by incalculable penalties in many duties in regard to that. Of which duties I perceive finance alone, and free trade alone will by no means be found to be the sum.... What alone concerns us here is to remark that the present system of book-publishing discharges none of these duties—less and less makes even the appearance of discharging them—and, indeed, as I believe, is, by the nature of the case, incapable of ever, in any perceptible degree, discharging any of them in the times that now are. A century ago, there was in the bookselling guild if never any royalty of spirit, as how could such a thing be looked for there? yet a spirit of merchanthood, which had its value in regard to the prosaic parts of literature, and is even to be thankfully remembered. By this solid merchantspirit, if we take the victualling and furnishing of such an enterprise as Samuel Johnson’sEnglish Dictionaryfor its highest feat (as perhaps we justly may); and many aPetitor’s Memories,Encyclopædia Britannica, &c., in this country and others, for its lower, we must gratefully admit the real usefulness, respectability, and merit to the world. But in later times owing to many causes, which have been active, not on the book guild alone, such spirit has long been diminished, and has now ‘as good as disappeared without hope of reinstation in this quarter.’”

To return to Dodsley, we find that in 1753 he commenced theWorld, a weekly essay ridiculing “with novelty and good humour, the fashions, follies, vices, and absurdities of that part of the human species which calls itself the World”. Three guineas was allowed as literary remuneration for each number, but Moore, the editor, a receiver of this allowance, obtained much gratuitous assistance from Lord Chesterfield, Horace Walpole, and other men of wit and fashion. Another periodical, but a bi-weekly, theRambler, all the work of Samuel Johnson, appeared without intermission for the space of two years, and in its gravity, its high morality, and its sententious language presents a curious contrast to its livelier companion. Dodsley, after having published Burke’s earliest productions, entrusted to his care the management of a very important venture, theAnnual Register, which was to carry Dodsley’s name up to our own times. In the same year, 1758, his last playCleone, in which he ventured to rise to tragedy, after having been declined by Garrick was acted at Covent Garden amidst the greatest applause, and for a number of nights, that, in those times, constituted awonderful “run.” And the author, fond to distraction of his last child, “went every night to the stage side and cried at the distress of poor Cleone;” yet when it was reported that Johnson had remarked that if Otway had written it, no other of his pieces would have been remembered, Dodsley had the good sense to say “it was too much.”

A long and prosperous career enabled Dodsley to retire some years before his death, which occurred at Durham, in 1764.

Thomas Cadell, who had served his apprenticeship to Andrew Millar, was now taken into partnership, and in a few years he and the Strahans quite filled the place that Dodsley and Millar had previously occupied. Together they became the proprietors of the copyright of works by the great historical and philosophical writers who shed a lustre round the close of the eighteenth century, and among their clients we find the names of Robertson, Gibbon, Adam Smith and Blackstone. For theHistory of Charles V.Robertson received £4500, then supposed to be the largest sum ever paid for the copyright of a single work, and out of Gibbon’sDecline and Fall of the Roman Empirethe booksellers are said to have cleared £60,000. Cadell retired with an enormous fortune, and was honoured by being elected Sheriff of London at a very critical and important time. Alexander Strahan, became King’s printer, and left a fortune of upwards of a million. His business was eventually carried on by the Spottiswoodes.

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