[18]Archæologia, vol. xxv. page 100, &c.
[18]Archæologia, vol. xxv. page 100, &c.
Imperfect Civilisation—Reading during the Civil Wars—Reading after the Restoration—French Romances—First London Catalogue, 1680—Authors and Booksellers—Subscription Books—Books in Numbers—The Canvassing System.
Ina condition of society which may be characterised as that of a very imperfect civilisation—when communication is difficult, and in some cases impossible; when the influence of the capital upon the provinces is very partial and uncertain; when knowledge is for the most part confined to the learned professions—we must regard the rich upper classes precisely in the same relation to popular literature as we now regard the poor lower classes. We must view them as essentially uncritical and unrefined, swallowing the coarsest intellectual food with greediness, looking chiefly to excitement and amusement in books, and not very willingly elevating themselves to mental improvement as a great duty. When Ben Jonson speaks of the "prerogative the vulgar have to lose their judgments, and like that which is naught"—when he derides the taste of "the beast the multitude"—he also takes care to tell us that his description of those who "think rude things greater than polished," not only applied to "the sordid multitude, but to the neater sort of our gallants: for all are the multitude; only they differ in clothes, not in judgmentor understanding."[19]About the time when Jonson wrote thus—more calmly than when he denounced "the loathed stage, and the more loathsome age"—Burton was exhibiting the intellectual condition of the gentry in his 'Anatomy of Melancholy:'—"I am not ignorant how barbarously and basely for the most part our ruder gentry esteem of libraries and books; how they neglect and contemn so great a treasure, so inestimable a benefit, as Æsop's cock did the jewel he found in the dunghill; and all through error, ignorance, and want of education." Again, he says, "If they read a book at any time, 'tis an English chronicle, St. Huon of Bordeaux, Amadis de Gaul, &c., a play-book, or some pamphlet of news; and that at such seasons only when they cannot stir abroad." The "pamphlet of news" was a prodigious ingredient in the queer cauldron of popular literature for the next half-century. Every one has heard of the thirty thousand tracts in the British Museum, forming two thousand volumes, all published between 1640 and 1660. The impression of many of these was probably very small; for Rushworth, to whom they became authorities, tells us that King Charles I. gave ten pounds for the liberty to read one at the owner's house in St. Paul's Churchyard. This was the twenty years' work of Milton's "pens and heads, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas." Others were, "as fast reading, trying all things." Milton asks,"What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge?" He truly answers: "wise and faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, sages, and worthies."[20]The "wise and faithful labourers" were scarcely to be found in the civil and ecclesiastical violence of these partisan writers. But they were the pioneers of constitutional liberty; and till that fabric was built up, literature, properly so called, would offer few things great or enduring. The demand for books in that stormy period was, doubtless, very limited. The belief that theΕιχὼγ Βασιλιχὴwas written by Charles I. would naturally account for the sale of fifty editions in one year. But from 1623 to 1664 only two editions of Shakspere were sold; and when the Restoration came, an act of Parliament was passed that only twenty printers should practise their art in the kingdom. The fact, as recorded by Evelyn, that at the fire of London, in 1666, the booksellers who carried on their business in the neighbourhood of St. Paul's lost as many books, in quires, as were worth 200,000l., is rather a proof of a slow demand than of the enormous extent of bookselling. In the vaults of Saint Faith's were rotting many a copy of what the world has agreed to call "heavy" books; books in advance of their time; books that no price would have made largely saleable—the books for the few.
The terrible quarter of a century that had precededthe Restoration, and the new tastes which the return of the Stuarts brought to England, would seem to have swept away even the remembrances of the popular literature of Elizabeth and James. Edward Phillips, the nephew of Milton, has a remarkable passage with reference to the poets: "As for the antiquated and fallen into obscurity from their former credit and reputation, they are for the most part those who have written beyond the verge of the present age; for let us look back as far as about thirty or forty years, and we shall find a profound silence of the poets beyond that time, except of some few dramatics, of whose real worth the interest of the now flourishing stage cannot but be sensible."[21]This was written in 1674. What had the people to read who had forgotten Spenser, and Daniel, and Drayton; and Herbert—who knew little of Shakspere, except in the translations of Davenant and Dryden; and who, unquestionably, had small relish for the popular prose of another age, such as Bacon's 'Essays'? They had rhyming tragedies; they had obscene comedies; they had their Sedleys and Rochesters. It is not wonderful that the popular taste soon grew corrupted. Pepys says (1666), "To Deptford by water, reading Othello, Moor of Venice, which I ever heretofore esteemed a mighty good play; but having so lately read The Adventures of Five Hours, it seems a mean thing." Their "light reading" was a marvel—that romance literaturewhich at one time was as popular in its degree as the shilling novel of our own day. We have before us Mr. Samuel Speed's Catalogue of Books, printed for him in 1670. The first is 'Pharamond, the famed Romance, written by the author of those other two eminent volumes Cassandra and Cleopatra.' These famed and eminent volumes are large folios, translated from the French of M. de la Calprenede. If Calprenede was the Dumas, Madeleine Scudery was the Eugene Sue of those days. No popularity that these moderns have obtained by theirfeuilletonscould have exceeded the excitement produced here, as well as in France, by the wonderful folios of their predecessors. 'Artamenes' and 'Clelia,' to say nothing of 'Almahide' and 'The Illustrious Bassa,' were in every mansion of the ladies of quality. The matron and her daughters sate at their embroidery while the companion read aloud, night after night, a page or two of these interminable adventures, in which Greeks and Romans talked the language of theGrand Monarque; and the intrigues of the court, and the characters of its personages, were mysteriously shadowed forth in what were called "Portraits." What signified that they were stupid? They were as level to the comprehension of their high-born readers as the penny novels of the present day are to the intelligence of the factory-girl. They had a long popularity, and were reprinted again and again, in their eight or ten volumes, when the age of duodecimos had arrived. They had been fashionable,and that was enough. Character they had none, and very little of human passions. They were constructed upon the admirable recipe of Molière in the 'Précieuses Ridicules'—a lover without feeling; a mistress without preference; mutual insensibility; sedulous attention to forms; a declaration in a garden; the banishment of the lover by the coquetting fair; perseverance; timid confessions; rivals; persecutions of fathers; jealousies conceived under false appearances; laments; despairs; abductions; and all that. Mammas thought they were wisely instructing their daughters, when they permitted Mademoiselle Scudery to teach them "des règles dont, en bonne galanterie, on ne saurait se dispenser." In vain Molière, and Boileau, and Scarron laughed at the great heroic romances. They held their own till Le Sage in France, and Defoe and Fielding in England, spoke the language of real life. They show us how long the great and little vulgar will feed upon husks, till some real fruit is offered to them. But it is remarkable how, in the same age, works of real genius and works of intense dulness will run side by side. It may be a question how far 'Don Quixote' drove out the romances of chivalry. 'Tartufe,' and 'Le Malade Imaginaire' were of the same era as that of the wonderful productions in which Cyrus was talkinggalanterieto Mandane through a thousand folio pages. When Pepys thought 'Othello' a mean thing compared with 'The Adventures of Five Hours' he also bought"Hudibras, both parts, the book now in greatest fashion for drollery;" but he tells us his honest mind when he says, "I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies." Voltaire had a different standard of taste when he wrote, "I never met with so much wit in one single book as in this." The politics of 'Hudibras' made it "in greatest fashion;" the wit shot over the heads of the idle, dissipated, slavish, and corrupt courtiers who gave it their patronage, but eventually left its author to starve. Butler became popular in another generation; and so did Milton. The first edition of 'Paradise Lost' sufficed for a circulation of seven years.
The earliest Catalogue of Books published in this country contains a list of "all the books printed in England since the dreadful fire, 1666, to the end of Trinity term, 1680." The statistical results of this catalogue of the productions of the press for fourteen years have been ascertained by us. The whole number of books printed was 3550; of which 947 were divinity, 420 law, and 153 physic; 397 were school-books, and 253 on subjects of geography and navigation, including maps. About one-half of these books were single sermons and tracts. Deducting the reprints, pamphlets, single sermons, and maps, we have estimated that, upon an average, 100 new books were produced in each year.
About the time when this catalogue was published, John Dunton, one of the most eccentric,and perhaps therefore amusing, of the publishing race, went into business with half a shop. He can tell us something of the manufacture of some of these books of the London catalogue. He says, "Printing was now uppermost in my thoughts; and hackney authors began to ply me with specimens as earnestly, and with as much passion and concern, as the watermen do passengers with oars and scullers." He adds, "As for their honesty, 'tis very remarkable. They'll either persuade you to go upon another man's copy, to steal his thought, or to abridge his books which should, have got him bread for his lifetime."[22]There were varieties of this class:—"Mr. Bradshaw was the best accomplished hackney author I have met with; his genius was quite above the common size, and his style was incomparably fine." Dunton had a suspicion that Bradshaw wrote 'The Turkish Spy,' which might justify somewhat of his eulogium. Roger North says that "the demi-booksellers," who deal in "the fresh scum of the press," are such as "crack their brains to find out selling subjects, and keep hirelings in garrets, at hard meat, to write and correct by the great; and so puff up an octavo to a sufficient thickness, and there is six shillings current for an hour and a half's reading, and perhaps never to be read or looked upon after." The people get these wares cheaper now. The publishers of that day, and long afterwards, were not very nice as to the uniform excellence of the booksthey issued. Dunton informs us that Mr. William Rogers, who was the publisher of Sherlock and Tillotson, was concerned in publishing "some Dying Speeches." They had books for all tastes, and carried their goods to many markets. They were equally at home in Cheapside or at Sturbridge fair; and the great Bernard Lintot exhibited his "rubric posts" in his shop, and kept a booth on the Thames when it was frozen over. Some, according to Dunton, were "pirates and cormorants;" others, who had "the intimate acquaintance of several excellent pens, could never want copies." Some were good at "projection"—the devisers of "selling subjects;" and the talent of some "lies at collection," which Dunton exemplifies by Mr. Crouch, who "melted down the best of our English histories into twelvepenny books, which are filled with wonders, rarities, and curiosities." One, who "printed The Flying Post, did often fill it with stolen copies;" whilst Jacob Tonson, who paid Dryden like a safe tradesman as he was, and made him presents of melons and sherry, is very indignant that the great poet charged him fifty guineas for fourteen hundred and forty-six lines, when he expected to have had fifteen hundred and eighteen lines for forty guineas. Peace to their manes! They were all doing something towards the supply of that great want which was beginning to assert itself somewhat extensively in their day. They were, for the most part, rugged dealers in wares intellectual. They had many modes of turning apenny beyond the profits which they derived, as publishers, from "the great genius" or "the eminent hand," which each patronised. They had some difficulties in their way as manufacturers; although the more cautious and lucky did make fortunes. The more limited the public, the more uncertain the demand. They were pretty safe with their tracts, and their abridgments, and their new comedies; but when they had to deal with works of learning, which were necessarily costly, they and their authors—for the authors had often to sustain the charges of printing—encountered serious losses. We shall see how, as the commerce of books extended, new measures were adopted to lessen, if not to remove, the risk.
Amongst the 'Calamities of Authors' there are many touching records of
"Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty,"
produced by printing books that met with no ready sale. Purchas was ruined by his 'Pilgrimes;' Castell by his 'Lexicon Heptaglotton;' Ockley by his 'History of the Saracens;' Rushworth by his 'Historical Collections.' Bishop Kennett gave away his 'Register and Chronicle,' saying, "The volume, too large, brings me no profit." The remedy was to be found in publishing by subscription. This plan, like most other human things, was subject to abuse; but it was founded upon a true estimate of the peculiar risks of publishing. It is manifest that, if a certain number of persons unite in agreementto purchase a book which is about to be printed, the author may be at ease with regard to the issue of the enterprise, and the subscribers ought to receive what they want at a lower cost than when risk enters into price. For more than half a century nearly all the great books were published by subscription; and the highest in literature felt no degradation in canvassing themselves with their "subscription receipts." It is easy to perceive, by the subscription prices, when the work was set on foot by an author, or his friends, simply as a more convenient mode of obtaining or bestowing money than begging or borrowing; and when there was a real market value given for the commodity offered. The scheme of levying contributions upon subscribers was as old as the days of Taylor, the Water Poet. He published his 'Pennilesse Pilgrimage' in this fashion; and it seems that he sometimes gave his books to those who were unwilling to return his honorarium. He consoles himself by a lampoon against his false subscribers:—
"They took a book worth twelvepence, and were boundTo give a crown, an angel, or a pound;A noble, piece, or half-piece, what they list,—They past their words, or freely set their fist."
"They took a book worth twelvepence, and were boundTo give a crown, an angel, or a pound;A noble, piece, or half-piece, what they list,—They past their words, or freely set their fist."
"They took a book worth twelvepence, and were boundTo give a crown, an angel, or a pound;A noble, piece, or half-piece, what they list,—They past their words, or freely set their fist."
"They took a book worth twelvepence, and were bound
To give a crown, an angel, or a pound;
A noble, piece, or half-piece, what they list,—
They past their words, or freely set their fist."
Honest John had sixteen hundred and fifty such subscribers; but of these, seven hundred and fifty were "bad debtors."[23]In the next century, Myles Davies has the same story to tell of the degradation of the literary begging-letter writer. He leaves hisbooks at the great man's door; he writes letter upon letter, "with fresh odes upon his graceship, and an account where I lived, and what noblemen had accepted of my present." He walks before the "parlour-window," and "advances to address his grace to remember the poor author." At last his parcel of books is returned to him unopened, "with half-a-guinea upon top of the cargo," and "with desire to receive no more." Heaven, in its mercy, has relieved the tribe from these heartbreaking disgraces. There may be "the fear that kills," but there is no longer the patron who starves. Goldsmith has described the devices and the abasement of the little man in the coffee-house, who "drew out a bundle of proposals, begging me to subscribe to a new edition he was going to give the world of Propertius, with notes." His plans were more ingenious and diversified than those of Myles Davies: "I first besiege their hearts with flattery, and then pour in my proposals at the breach. If they subscribe readily the first time, I renew my request to beg a dedication fee. If they let me have that, I smite them once more for engraving their coat-of-arms at the top." Forty years after Myles Davies, Samuel Johnson was enduring the anxieties attendant upon the subscription plan, although friends stood between the author and the customer. He writes to Burney in 1758, "I have likewise enclosed twelve receipts (for Shakspere); not that I mean to impose upon you the trouble of pushing them with more importunity than may seem proper," &c.Long was the subscribed Shakspeare delayed; and the proud struggling man had to bear Churchill's malignity, as well as the reproaches of his own sense of honour:—
"He for subscribers baits his hook,And takes your cash; but where's the book?"
"He for subscribers baits his hook,And takes your cash; but where's the book?"
"He for subscribers baits his hook,And takes your cash; but where's the book?"
"He for subscribers baits his hook,
And takes your cash; but where's the book?"
Well might Johnson write, in more prosperous times, "He that asks subscription soon finds that he has enemies. All who do not encourage him, defame him." Johnson and his publishers set no price upon their books, as a gratuity to the author, beyond their common market value. But great men had gone before them, who regulated their subscription prices by a higher estimate of the value of their works. Steele had received a guinea an octavo volume for the republication of 'The Tatler;' Pope had six guineas for his six quarto volumes of 'The Iliad;'—"a sum," says Johnson, "according to the value of money at that time, by no means inconsiderable." The subscription to Pope's 'Shakspeare' was also six guineas for six volumes. Johnson's projected translation of Paul Sarpi's 'History of the Council of Trent' was only to be charged twopence a sheet. That seems to have been the ordinary price of subscription books during the first half of the eighteenth century. Du Halde's 'China,' which appears to have required a great deal of what "the trade" call "pushing," was advertised by Cave at three halfpence a sheet; besides the attraction of a complicated lottery-scheme, with marvellous prizes. When the subscribers to a new bookwere served, the remaining copies were sold, generally at superior rates. Sometimes, in the case of high-priced works, the unsold copies lay quiet through the mildew of a quarter of a century in the bookseller's warehouse. At Tonson's sale, in 1767, Pope's six-guinea Shakspeare had fallen to sixteen shillings for the hundred and forty copies then sold as a "remainder."[24]Many of the subscription books were remarkably profitable. The gains of Pope upon his 'Iliad' are minutely recorded in his Life by Johnson. Lintot paid the expense of the subscription copies, and gave the poet two hundred pounds a volume in addition. Lintot looked for his remuneration to an edition in folio. The project was knocked on the head by a reprint in Holland, in duodecimo; which edition was clandestinely imported, as in the recent days of French editions of Byron and Scott. Lintot took a wise course. He went at once to the general public with editions in duodecimo, at half-a-crown a volume, of which he very soon sold seven thousand five hundred copies. But it may well be doubted if Pope would have made five thousand three hundred pounds, if he had originally gone, without the quarto subscription process, to the buyers of duodecimos. Perhaps even the duodecimos would not have sold extensively without the reputation of the quartos. There was no great reading public to make a fortune for the poet out of small profits upon large sales. Somemay think that Pope would have been as illustrious without the ease which this fortune gave him. It may be so. But of one thing we are clear—that in every age the higher rewards of authorship, reaped by one eminent individual, are benefits to the great body of authors; and thus that the villa at Twickenham had a certain influence in making what the world called "Grub-street" less despicable and more thriving. It dissociated authorship from garrets. Yet it is marvellous, even now, how some of the race of attorneys and stockbrokers turn up their eyes when they hear of a successful writer keeping a brougham, and lament, over their claret, that such men will be improvident.
In those days of subscription books there were great contrasts of success and loss; of steady support and capricious neglect. Conyers Middleton made a little fortune by his 'Life of Cicero,' in two volumes quarto, published in 1741. His suspected heterodoxy was no bar to his success. Carte, in 1747, printed three thousand copies of the first volume of his 'General History of England,' for which he had adequate support. In that unlucky volume his Jacobitism peeped out, in a relation of an astonishing cure for the king's-evil, produced by the touch of the first Pretender, who, he says, "had not at that time been crowned or anointed." Away went the "remainder" of the three thousand volumes to the trunk-maker, and of the subsequent volumes only seven hundred and fifty were printed. Whether by subscription, or by the mode of fixinga published price for a general sale,—which, in the second half of the century, was superseding the attempt to ascertain the number of purchasers before publication,—there was always a great amount of caprice, or prejudice, in the unripe public judgment of a book, which rendered its fate very hazardous and uncertain. Hume, in 1754, published the first volume of his 'History of England.' He says, "Mr. Millar told me that in a twelvemonth he sold only forty-five copies of it." Gibbon published the first volume of his 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' in 1776: "I am at a loss," he modestly tells us, "how to describe the success of the work without betraying the vanity of the writer. The first impression was exhausted in a few days; a second and third edition were scarcely adequate to the demand; and the bookseller's property was twice invaded by the pirates of Dublin." Thomson's 'Seasons' was lying as waste paper in the publisher's shop, when one Mr. Whatley purchased a copy; and his authority in the coffee-houses brought it into notice. Collins was not so fortunate. His 'Odes' would not sell. He repaid the bookseller the price he had received for the copyright, settled for the printing, and burnt the greater part of the impression.
We have put together some of these scattered facts, to show how difficult was the publication of books before a great general public had been raised up to read and purchase, and how the riskof expensive works was sought to be lessened by taking hostages against evil fortune. The subdivision of large books into weekly or monthly numbers was one of the expedients that was early resorted to for attracting purchasers. Some curious relations of the first days of number-publishing are given in a rare pamphlet by the Rev. Thomas Stackhouse, the author of the well-known 'History of the Bible.' In 1732 two booksellers, Mr. Wilford and Mr. Edlin, "when the success of some certain things published weekly set every little bookseller's wits to work," proposed to this poor curate of Finchley "to write something which might be published weekly, but what it was they knew not." At the Castle Tavern, in Paternoster Row, the trio deliberated upon the "something" that was to have a run. Edlin was for a "Roman History, brushing up Ozell's dull style, when the old thing would still do in a weekly manner." Wilford was for 'Family Directors.' Stackhouse proposed the 'New History of the Bible.' Wilford backed out; Edlin and Stackhouse quarrelled. The divine wanted many works of commentators and critics. The bookseller maintained "that the chief of his subscribers lived in Southwark, Wapping, and Ratcliff Highway; that they had no notion of critics and commentators; that the work would be adapted to their capacity, and therefore the less learning in it the better." Stackhouse got out of the hands of this encourager of letters, found another publisher, and prospered, as well ashe could, upon the subscriptions to his "four sheets of original matter for sixpence."[25]Many of the number-books were published under fictitious names of authors; and some actual authors, clerical and lay, lent their names to works of which they never saw a line. One of the most accomplished of the number-book writers was Dr. Robert Sanders, a self-created LL.D. He produced Histories of England, in folio and quarto, under various names. He was the writer of the Notes to the edition of the Bible, published in 1773, under the honoured name of Dr. Henry Southwell. The ingenious note-writer has told the story without reservation:—"As I was not a clergyman, my name could not be prefixed to it. Application was made to several clergymen for the use of their names; and at last Henry Southwell, LL.D., granted his." In a year or two the indefatigable Sanders was ready with a scheme for a larger commentary. He found a Doctor who would lend his name for a hundred pounds; but such a sum was out of the question. A mere A.M. was purchased for twenty pounds; but the affair broke down. The commentator relates that he was told by the proprietors "they had no further occasion for my services, and even denied me my week's wages." We hope the laborious Sanders was less scurvily treated by the publishers of that immortal work of his, which has been the glory of the number-trade even up to this hour, namely, 'The Newgate Calendar, orMalefactor's Bloody Register.' How many fortunes have been made out of this great storehouse of popular knowledge is of little consequence to society. It may be of importance to consider how many imps of fame have here studied the path to glory. Sanders had a rival—the Rev. Mr. Villette, ordinary of Newgate—who published the 'Annals of Newgate, or Malefactor's Register,' &c., "intended as a beacon to warn the rising generation against the temptations, the allurements, and the dangers of bad company." In this title-page "the celebrated John Sheppard," and "the equally celebrated Margaret Caroline Rudd," are leading attractions. The author of the 'Annals,' no doubt, prospered better than he of the 'Calendar.'
Poor wretched Sanders, during the period when he was correcting Lord Lyttleton's 'History of Henry II.,' had "a weekly subsistence;" but in 1768 he writes, "During these six weeks I have not tasted one whole meal of victuals at a time."[26]The original race of number-publishers had no very exalted notion of the value of literary labour. Their successors had no will to bestow any payment upon literature at all, while they had the old stores to produce and reproduce. They have now been forced into some few attempts at originality. But the employment of new authorship is a rare exception to their ordinary course. When the necessity does arise, there is always perturbation of mind. In a moment of despair, when his press was standingstill for some of that manuscript which, in an unlucky hour, he had bargained for with a living writer, one of this fraternity exclaimed, "Give me dead authors, they never keep you waiting for copy!" Many good books have, however, been produced by the early number-publishers. We may mention Chambers' 'Cyclopædia,' Smollett's 'History of England,' and Scott's 'Bible.' Some well-printed books are still being produced, but the compilers help themselves freely to what others have dearly paid for. Taken as a whole, they are the least improved, and certainly they are the dearest books, in the whole range of popular literature. The system upon which they are sold is essentially that of forcing a sale; and the necessary cost of this forcing, called "canvassing," is sought to be saved in the quantity of the article "canvassed," or in the less obvious degradation of its quality. The "canvasser" is an universal genius, and he must be paid as men of genius ought to be paid. He has to force off the commonest of wares by the most ingenious of devices. It is not the intrinsic merit of a book that is to command a sale, but the exterior accomplishments of the salesman. He adapts himself to every condition of person with whom he is thrown into contact. As in Birmingham and other great towns there is a beggars' register, which describes the susceptibilities of the families at whose gates beggars call, even to the particular theological opinions of the occupants, so the canvasser has apretty accurate account of the households within his beat. He knows where there is the customer in the kitchen, and the customer in the parlour. He sometimes has a timid colloquy with the cook in the passage; sometimes takes a glass of ale in the servants' hall; and, when he can rely upon the charms of his address, sends his card boldly into the drawing-room. No refusal can prevent him in the end leaving his number for inspection. The system is most rife in North and Midland England; it is not so common in the agricultural South, although it might be an instrument of diffusing sound knowledge amongst a scattered population. If an effort were honestly made to publish works really cheap, because intrinsically good, upon "the canvassing system," that system, which has many real advantages, might be redeemed from the disgrace which now too often attaches to it, in the hands of the quacks who are most flourishing in that line.
The number-trade was a necessary offshoot of that periodical literature which sprang up into importance at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and which, in all its ramifications, has had a more powerful influence than that of all other literature upon the intelligence of the great body of the people.
[19]Discoveries.[20]Areopagitica.[21]Theatrum Poetarum, Preface.[22]Dunton's 'Life and Errors,' ed. 1705, p. 70.[23]'A Kicksey Winsey.'[24]'Gentleman's Magazine,' vol. lvii., quoted in Nicholls' 'Literary Anecdotes,' vol. v. p. 597.[25]See Nicholls' 'Literary Anecdotes,' vol. ii. p. 394.[26]Nicholls' 'Literary Anecdotes,' vol. ii. p. 730, and vol. iii. p. 760.
[19]Discoveries.
[20]Areopagitica.
[21]Theatrum Poetarum, Preface.
[22]Dunton's 'Life and Errors,' ed. 1705, p. 70.
[23]'A Kicksey Winsey.'
[24]'Gentleman's Magazine,' vol. lvii., quoted in Nicholls' 'Literary Anecdotes,' vol. v. p. 597.
[25]See Nicholls' 'Literary Anecdotes,' vol. ii. p. 394.
[26]Nicholls' 'Literary Anecdotes,' vol. ii. p. 730, and vol. iii. p. 760.
Periodical Literature—Prices of Books; 18th Century—Two classes of Buyers—The Magazines—Collections of the Poets—The Circulating Library—Cheap Book-Clubs.
Onthe 8th of February, 1696, our friend John Dunton completed the nineteenth volume of 'The Athenian Mercury, resolving all the most nice and curious questions proposed by the ingenious.' This penny tract, published twice a-week, consisted of a single leaf. "The ingenious" ceased to question, and "The Athenian Society," as the bookseller called his scribes, ceased to answer, after six years of this oracular labour. There came an irruption of the barbarians, in the shape of "nine newspapers every week." John proposed to resume his task "as soon as the glut of news is a little over." The countryman waiting for the river to roll by was not more mistaken. In 1709 there was one daily paper in London; twelve, three times a-week; and three, twice a-week. Amongst those of three times a-week was 'The Tatler,' which commenced April 12, 1709. The early Tatlers had their regular foreign intelligence. They were as much newspapers as 'The Flying Post' and 'The Postboy.' But Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., very soon discontinued the information which he derived from letters from the Hague and advices from Berlin. He had something of a moreoriginal character to offer his readers. The state of popular enlightenment at this period has been described by Johnson in his Life of Addison:—"That general knowledge which now circulates in common talk was in his time rarely to be found. Men not professing learning were not ashamed of ignorance; and in the female world any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured." Steele and Addison had to form the taste of the new generation that they were addressing. They knew that there was a large class craving amusement, who might at the same time be refined and instructed without the pretensions of "the budge doctors of the stoic fur." They meddled little with politics. They left the furious discussions about Church and State to papers with an earnest political purpose, of which Charles Leslie, a violent Tory, thus spoke in his 'Rehearsals:'—"The greatest part of the people do not read books; most of them cannot read at all: but they will gather together about one that can read, and listen to an Observator or Review, as I have seen them, in the streets." The Tatler has been described as a great success; but we may measure that success by that of the more popular Spectator. In No. 555 of that work Steele says,—"The tax on each half-sheet has brought into the Stamp-Office, one week with another, above 20l.a-week, arising from the single paper, notwithstanding it at first reduced it to less than half the number that was usually printed before the tax was laid." The tax being a halfpenny,this would only show a daily circulation of 1600, and of about 3000 when it was unstamped. But the sale in volumes, according to the same statement, was as high as 9000 of each volume. This fact gives us a higher notion of the popularity of these charming papers, and of the consequent extent of general reading, than any other circumstance in the literary history of that period. But even the comparatively small daily sale was of importance, as showing that the great middle class was beginning to seek something better than could be found in the coarse and meagre news-sheets. The annals of 'The Gentlemen's Society at Spalding' record that in April, 1709, some residents there heard of the Tatlers, and ordered them to be sent to the coffee-house in the Abbey-yard:—"They were accordingly had, and read there every postday, generally aloud to the company, who could sit and talk over the subject afterwards." The narrative goes on to say that "in March, 1711, the Spectator came out, which was received and read here as the Tatler had been." Such are the beginnings of popular knowledge. What the Tatler and Spectator were to the gentlemen of Spalding, the Penny Magazine and Chambers' Journal were to many a mechanic a hundred and twenty years after. One of this class has recorded the influence of such works, which addressed a far larger number than could be addressed at the beginning of the eighteenth century:—"The Penny Magazine was published. I borrowed the first volume, and determinedto make an effort to possess myself with the second. Accordingly, with January, 1833, I determined to discontinue the use of sugar in my tea, hoping that my family would not then feel the sacrifice necessary to buy the book.... I looked as anxiously for the issue of the monthly part as I did for the means of getting a living."[27]It is this spirit in the great mechanical class of this country that, in spite of some popular reading that is corrupting, and much that is frivolous, will ultimately raise and purify even the meanest sheet of our cheap literature, and compel those who have the responsibility of addressing large masses of the people to understand that an influential portion do feel that the acquirement of knowledge is worth some sacrifice.
The 'Complete Catalogue of Modern Books, published from the beginning of the century to 1756,' contains 5280 new works. In this Catalogue "all pamphlets and other tracts" are excluded. We can scarcely, therefore, compare this period, as to the number of books published, with that of 1680. The average number of the first 57 years of the 18th century was 93 new works each year. At the beginning of the century, the price of a folio or quarto volume ranged from 10s.to 12s.; an octavo from 5s.to 6s.; and a duodecimo from 2s.6d.to 3s.We have the original 'Tatler' before us, with its curious advertisements of books, sales by the candle, cordial elixirs, lotteries, andbohea tea at 24s.a-pound. Whitelocke's 'Memorials,' folio, is advertised at 12s.; Rowe's edition of Shakspeare, 8vo., is 5s.per volume; 'The Peerage of England,' 8vo., 6s.; Shakspeare's Poems, 12mo., 1s.6d.; 'The Monthly Amusement,' each number containing a complete novel, is 1s.; Sermons are 2d.each. We learn, from other sources, that the first edition of 'The Dunciad' was a sixpenny pamphlet; whilst 'The Governor of Cyprus, a Novel,' and 'The Wanton Fryar, a Novel,' were each 12s.The number printed of an edition was, no doubt, very moderate, except chiefly of books that were associated with some great popular excitement. Sacheverell's Trial is said to have sold 30,000; as, in a later period, 30,000 were sold of Burke's 'Reflections on the Revolution in France.' The old booksellers were cautious about works of imagination when they were expected to pay handsomely for copyright. The manuscript of 'Robinson Crusoe' was pronounced dangerous by the whole tribe of publishers, till one ventured upon an edition. The demand was such that the copies could only be supplied by dividing the work amongst several printers. One of Defoe's numerous assailants, in attempting to ridicule him, gives the best evidence of his popularity: "There is not an old woman that can go to the price of it but buys 'The Life and Adventures,' and leaves it as a legacy with the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'" Richardson's 'Pamela,' published in 1741, sold five editions in one year. There are fabulous accounts of Millar, the publisher, clearing18,000l.by 'Tom Jones.' In those times the Dublin pirates were as assiduous in their plunder of English copyrights as the American publishers have been in plundering the English, and the English the American, in our days. Richardson was driven wild by the publication of half 'Sir Charles Grandison' in Ireland, in a cheap form, before a single volume was issued in England. There was a regular system of bribery in the English printing-offices, through which the Dublin booksellers organised their robberies. They sold their books surreptitiously in England and Scotland; and from their greater cheapness they had the command of their own market. This system lasted till the Union.
The prices of books do not appear to have much increased at the beginning of the reign of George III. In some cases their moderation is remarkable. We have seen how small was the demand for the first volume of Hume's 'History' in 1754. We have a number of 'The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser' at hand, May 9, 1764; and there we learn, from an advertisement, what a change ten years had produced. A new edition of the third and fourth volumes, in quarto, is advertised at 1l.5s.; but "the proprietor, at the desire of many who wish to be possessed of this valuable and esteemed history, is induced to a monthly publication, which will not exceed eight volumes." These volumes were 5s.each. It is manifest that the bookseller had found a new class to addresswhen he issued the monthly volumes. Hume says, "Notwithstanding the variety of winds and seasons to which my writings had been exposed, they had still been making such advances that the copy-money given me by the booksellers much exceeded anything formerly known in England." He had complained of the neglect of the "considerable for rank or letters." His publisher saw that a history with such charms of style—so freed from tedious quotations from state-papers and statutes—so unlike the great folios of Carte and Rapin—was a book for a new race of readers. Coleridge humorously enough says—"Poets and philosophers, rendered diffident by their very number, addressed themselves to 'learned readers;' then, aimed to conciliate the graces of 'the candid reader;' till, the critic still rising as the author sank, the amateurs of literature collectively were erected into a municipality of judges, and addressed as 'the Town.' And now, finally, all men being supposed to read, and all readers able to judge, the multitudinous 'Public,' shaped into personal unity by the magic of abstraction, sits nominal despot on the throne of criticism."[28]There is a great truth beneath the sarcasm. The enduring patronage of the public was beginning when Andrew Millar was bold enough to publish Hume's History in monthly five-shilling volumes. But there are still many evidences that the commerce of books at that period, and subsequently, did not contemplate theexistence of a large class of buyers, beyond those who were at ease in their fortunes. In that farrago of sense and absurdity, 'The Life of James Lackington, the present Bookseller, Finsbury-square, London, written by himself' (1791), there is a remarkable disclosure of the mode in which books were prevented being sold cheaply, after the original demand had been satisfied:—"When first invited to these trade-sales, I was very much surprised to learn that it was common for such as purchased remainders to destroy one-half or three-fourths of such books, and to charge the full publication price, or nearly that, for such as they kept on hand. And there was a kind of standing order amongst the trade that, in case any one was known to sell articles under the publication price, such a person was to be excluded from trade-sales—so blind were copyright holders to their own interest." In the same manner, it is within the memory of many living persons that there was an invariable high price for fish in London, because the wholesale dealers at Billingsgate always destroyed a portion of what came to market, if the supply were above the average. The dealers in fish had not recognised the existence of a class who would buy for their suppers what the rich had not taken for their dinners; and knew not that the stalls of Tottenham Court Road had as many customers ready for a low price as the shops of Charing Cross for a high price. The fishmongers had not discovered that the price charged to the eveningcustomers had no effect of lowering that of the morning. Nor had the booksellers discovered that there were essentially two, if not more, classes of customers for books—those who would have the dearest and the newest, and those who were content to wait till the gloss of novelty had passed off, and good works became accessible to them, either in cheaper reprints, or "remainders" reduced in price. But books and fish have one material difference. Good books are not impaired in value when they are cheapened. Their character, which has been established by the first demand, creates a second and a larger demand. Lackington destroyed no books that were worth saving, but sold them as he best could. We have no quarrel with his self-commendation when he says, "I could almost be vain enough to assert that I have thereby been highly instrumental in diffusing that general desire for reading now so prevalent among the inferior orders of society."
What Lackington thought "a general desire for reading" was, nevertheless, a very limited desire. "The inferior orders of society" who had the desire did not comprehend many of the mechanics, and none of the husbandry labourers. It may be doubted whether the Magazine Literature that the eighteenth century called forth ever went beyond the gentry and the superior traders. Kippis says of the magazines, "they have been the means of diffusing a general habit of reading through the nation." There appears to have been a sort oftacit agreement amongst all who spoke of public enlightenment in the days of George III. to put out of view the great body of "the nation" who paid for their bread by their weekly wages. The magazines were certainly never addressed to this class. But for the general book-buyers of the time, Cave's project of 'The Gentleman's Magazine' was a great step in popular literature. The booksellers would not join him in what they held to be a risk. When he had succeeded, and sold 10,000, then they set up the rival 'London Magazine.' Cave threw all his energy into the magazine, and was rewarded. "He scarcely ever looked out of the window, but with a view to its improvement," said Johnson. 'The Gentleman's Magazine' commenced in 1731. Then came, year after year, magazines "as plenty as blackberries:"—'The London,' 'The Universal,' 'The Literary,' 'The Royal,' 'The Complete,' 'The Town and Country,' 'The Ladies',' 'The Westminster,' 'The European,' 'The Monthly.' The first popular review, 'The Monthly,' was published in 1749, and 'The Critical' in 1756. The public were now firmly established as the real patrons of letters. There was an end of poor authors knocking at great men's doors with a bundle of books. There was an end to paid Dedications and gratulatory Odes. Johnson could afford to launch his Dictionary without the help of the Earl of Chesterfield. Hume became "not only independent but opulent" through the "copy-money" of the booksellers.