THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 SKETCHES OF 
 BOOKSELLERS 
 
 OF OTHER DAYS 
 *
 
 BOOKS BY THE SAME WRITER. 
 
 COPYRIGHT. National and International, with 
 some Remarks on the Position of Authors 
 and Publishers. 8vo, 1879. Second edition, 
 sewed, 1883. 
 
 FRANK'S RANCH; or, My Holidays in the 
 
 Rockies, 1885. 
 
 This book went through Five Editions. The fifth 
 edition is quite out of print, but a few copies of the 
 third edition may still be had. 
 
 AN AMATEUR ANGLER'S DAYS IN DOVE- 
 DALE. Imp. 32010. 
 
 HOW STANLEY WROTE "IN DARKEST 
 AFRICA." Crown 8vo, with numerous Illustra- 
 tions, boards. 
 
 FRESH WOODS AND PASTURES NEW. 
 
 i6mo. 
 
 DAYS IN CLOVER. i6mo. 
 
 BY MEADOW AND STREAM. Pleasant 
 Memories of Pleasant Places. 
 
 25 numbered copies, printed on Japanese vellum, 
 and 250 copies, India proofs, all sold. Cheap 
 edition, illustrated, cloth, gilt edges. Boards. 
 
 ON A SUNSHINE HOLYDAY. Large Paper, 
 edition. Cheap edition. 
 
 AN OLD MAN'S HOLIDAYS. Fcap. 8vo, cloth. 
 Second edition, witli portrait (edition all sold).
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON, 1689-1761. 
 From a picture by Chamberlin.
 
 SKETCHES OF 
 BOOKSELLERS 
 
 OF OTHER DAYS 
 
 JKBY 
 ^ 
 E^MARSTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 MDCCCCI
 
 CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
 
 2>e&icateJ> 
 
 TO 
 THE BOOKSELLERS 
 
 OF 
 TO-DAY
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. JACOB TONSON 1656-1736 . . . 
 
 II. THOMAS GUY 1644-1724 15 
 
 III. JOHN DUNTON 1659-1733 29 
 
 IV. SAMUEL RICHARDSON 1689-1761 ... 50 
 V. THOMAS GENT 1691-1778 70 
 
 VI. ALICE GUY (wife of Thomas Gent) . . . 103 
 
 VII. WILLIAM HUTTON 1723-1815 .... 115 
 
 VIII. JAMES LACK INGTON 1746-1815 .... 149
 
 LIST OF PORTRAITS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON Frontispiece 
 
 JACOB TONSON face \ 
 
 FACSIMILE OF BOWYBR'S PRINTING BILL TO 
 
 TONSON 8 
 
 THOMAS GUY 15 
 
 JOHN DUNTON ,, 29 
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON (House at Fulham) . . ,, 67 
 
 THOMAS GENT ,,7 
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON ,, 115 
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON . 149
 
 NOTE 
 
 llNCE the death of the late Mr. 
 George Murray Smith, who was a 
 few months my senior, I am told 
 that I am the oldest London pub- 
 lisher. To be called the doyen of the trade is of 
 that kind of distinction which one can accept 
 without pride, and adopt without vanity. It is 
 a distinction to which everyone is heir who only 
 lives long enough, and it is presumably one which 
 no one specially envies or covets, seeing that 
 
 "... barring all pother 'twixt one and the other, 
 We shall all be kings in our turn." 
 
 An intercourse of sixty years and more with 
 Books and Booksellers, Authors and Publishers, 
 gives me almost the title to think that I am in 
 my own person a kind of link between the 
 Publishers of to-day and the Booksellers of the 
 eighteenth century of whom I have endeavoured 
 to give some glimpses. My late partner, Samp- 
 son Low, was a youth of twenty when my last
 
 Xll NOTE 
 
 two subjects, William Hutton and James Lack- 
 ington, died in 1815 ; and I was born not many 
 years afterwards ; this perhaps may serve as an 
 excuse for writing the following SKETCHES OF 
 BOOKSELLERS OF OTHER DAYS which have re- 
 cently appeared in "The Publishers' Circular." 
 The original idea was to condense into a read- 
 able sketch the main features of the " Lives " 
 treated of. In bringing them together into a 
 volume I have tried to make them a little more 
 complete by adding matter here and there, which 
 for want of space did not appear in the serial 
 issue. I have gathered the material from various 
 sources, chiefly from the autobiographies of those 
 who have written an account of their own lives ; 
 for the rest I am indebted to the industry of 
 Mr. Charles Knight, Mr. W. Roberts, "The 
 Dictionary of National Biography" and to a 
 curious book entitled " Fifty Years' Recollec- 
 tions of an old Bookseller." I have also found 
 material in Nichols' " Literary Anecdotes of the 
 Eighteenth Century" (nine volumes), in Southey's 
 " The Doctor," and in other works. I am also 
 indebted to Mr. W. H. Peet for the loan of 
 several books pertaining to the subjects. 
 
 April 25, 1901. E. M.
 
 JACOB TONSON, 1656-1736. 
 From the painting by Kneller.
 
 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 OF OTHER DAYS 
 I. JACOB TONSON, 1656-1736 
 
 |F all the booksellers of the olden 
 time whose figures stand out from 
 the depths of the shadowy past per- 
 haps the most conspicuous is the 
 figure of JACOB TONSON. Doubtless there have 
 lived in the past centuries hundreds of old book- 
 sellers, more worthy, more learned, and more 
 beloved in their generation than Jacob Tonson, 
 who, after pursuing the even tenour of their way, 
 have passed into the shadowy world, not unwept 
 but at least unsung and unrecorded in the pages 
 of history, as unknown to posterity as if they
 
 2 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 had never lived; their good deeds lie buried 
 with their bones, and they did no evil that should 
 live after them ; that, indeed, is the common 
 fate of many of the worthiest of human beings. 
 
 Only a few here and there of the shadows of 
 old booksellers have been evolved from the sur- 
 rounding darkness, either through their promi- 
 nent connection with some celebrated writer 
 who may have belauded or besmirched them 
 into lasting fame or lasting infamy, or else their 
 earthly careers have been brought to light by the 
 industry of such writers as the late Mr. Peter 
 Cunningham, Mr. Charles Knight, Mr. W. 
 Roberts, or Mr. Henry Curwen and thus it 
 was that the life and doings of Jacob Tonson 
 have been carried down for more than two hun- 
 dred years. 
 
 " The Dictionary of National Biography " de- 
 votes considerable space to the Tonsons (for 
 there were three of them) and other old book- 
 sellers; much of the same information some- 
 what differently told is to be found in each of 
 the authorities above mentioned, but the " Dic- 
 tionary of National Biography " is the most con- 
 cise. It is from these authorities and from John 
 Nichols' " Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth
 
 JACOB TONSON 3 
 
 Century," that the information given below has 
 been mostly obtained. 
 
 Jacob Tonson, like John Gilpin, was born " a 
 citizen of famous London town," about the year 
 1656 the younger of two sons of Jacob Tonson, 
 barber-surgeon and citizen, who died in the year 
 1 66 1, leaving ^100 to each of his two sons and 
 three daughters. " Ah ! Jacob," once said his 
 father to him, " if I hadn't a noble profession 
 for you to follow I should like to see you a 
 bookseller." Young Jacob had a decided aver- 
 sion to the business carried on " under the pole." 
 He had employed most of his holiday hours in 
 reading plays and poems, and so two years after- 
 wards he was apprenticed, on the 5th of June, 
 1670, to Thomas Basset, bookseller ("probably 
 in Little Britain," says W. Roberts). He was 
 then fourteen years old, and after seven years he 
 was admitted to his freedom in the Stationers' 
 Company, and immediately afterwards started in 
 business with his capital of ^100, following the 
 example of his elder brother who had com- 
 menced business as a bookseller the year before 
 in a shop within Gray's Inn Gate. Jacob's shop 
 was for many years under "The Judge's Head," 
 which he set up as his sign in Chancery Lane,
 
 4 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 close to the corner of Fleet Street. Had he 
 begun business a few years earlier he would have 
 been a near neighbour of Izaak Walton, but 
 they probably never met, for old Izaak was nearly 
 ninety years of age, and had left Fleet Street 
 before young Jacob started, and one can hardly 
 imagine two characters so widely divergent as 
 the tall and dignified Izaak and the short " bull- x 
 faced "Jacob. 
 
 Walton's printer and publisher was Richard 
 Marriott, in St. Dunstan's Churchyard close by. 
 
 Jacob Tonson was very ambitious of getting 
 in touch with authors of the highest standing, 
 and in his twenty-third year, 1679 (four years 
 before Walton died), he made the bold venture 
 of purchasing Dryden's " Troilus and Cressida " 
 for ^20, which sum he had to borrow ; and thus ^ 
 he became Dryden's publisher, and with Dry- 
 den he seems to have continued on more or less 
 friendly terms till the death of the poet. Before 
 this year he had published some of the plays of 
 Otway and Tate. At this period he is imagined 
 by Charles Knight, who endeavours to realize 
 the shadow of the figure and deportment of the 
 young bookseller in his twenty-third year as 
 " short and stout," and twenty years later Pope *
 
 JACOB TONSON 5 
 
 calls him "little Jacob." It was not till after 
 his death that he was immortalized in "The 
 Dunciad," as " left-legged Jacob." 
 
 It was in 1683 that Tonson became the pur- 
 chaser from Brabazon Ailmer, the assignee of 
 Samuel Simmons, of one half of his right in 
 " Paradise Lost," and of the remaining half in 
 1690. Milton at that time was very unpopular, 
 and Tonson waited four years after his purchase 
 before he ventured to bring it out by subscrip- 
 tion. Dryden had spoken of it as one of the 
 greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems 
 which either the age or nation had produced. 
 It was an immediate success and thus Jacob 
 Tonson identified himself with Milton by making 
 " Paradise Lost " popular. 
 
 He brought out the fourth edition in 1688, in 
 folio, with a portrait by White. It was as a 
 motto under this portrait that Dryden wrote the 
 well-known lines : 
 
 " Three poets in three distant ages born, 
 Greece, Italy, England, did adorn, 
 The first in loftiness of mind surpassed ; 
 The next in majesty, in both the last. 
 The force of nature could no further go, 
 To make a third she joined the former two. 
 
 In 1684 he brought out a volume of miscel-
 
 6 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 laneous poems under Dryden's editorship. Other 
 volumes followed in 1685, 1693, 1694, and 1703. 
 The series was called indifferently Dryden's or 
 Tonson's Miscellany. 
 
 Dryden's "Translation of Virgil" was pub- 
 lished by Tonson in July, 1697, by subscription, 
 and its publication gave rise to serious financial 
 differences between the poet and his publisher. 
 It has been stated that on one occasion, the 
 bookseller having refused to advance money, the 
 poet sent him the following triplet, with the sig- 
 nificant message : " Tell the dog that he who x 
 wrote these lines can write more : 
 
 " With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair ; f* 
 With two left legs and Judas-coloured hair, 
 And frowzy pores, that taint the ambient air. " 
 
 (From "Faction Displayed.' 1 '") 
 
 These lines were never intended by Dryden 
 to be transmitted to posterity but a Tory satir- 
 ist who gave vent to his spleen by including 
 them in a poem, ridiculed both Tonson and the 
 Kit-Cat Club. Pope has stated that Dryden 
 cleared every way about ,1,200 by his " Virgil." - 
 
 Subsequently author and publisher became 
 more friendly, and on the publication of the 
 volume of " Fables " which contained the cele-
 
 JACOB TONSON 7 
 
 brated " Ode to St. Cecilia," commonly known 
 as " Alexander's Feast," for which he paid the 
 
 / author two hundred and fifty guineas, to be 
 made up to ^300 when a second edition was 
 demanded Dryden wrote to Tonson : " I hope 
 it has done you service and will do more." 
 Dryden died in May, 1700. 
 
 Nichols says : " However plain in his appear- 
 ance, of which the above satirical description 
 may be supposed to have been a caricature, he 
 was certainly a worthy man, and was not only re- 
 spected as an honest and opulent tradesman, but 
 after Dryden's death lived in familiar intimacy 
 with some of the most considerable persons of 
 the early part of the last century." 
 
 Before the end of the century Tonson removed 
 from Chancery Lane to Gray's Inn Gate, the 
 shop previously occupied by his brother, who 
 had died. Here he dropped the sign of " The 
 Judge's Head," and adopted " The Shakspere's 
 Head." Charles Knight says : " He was truly 
 
 X the first bookseller who threw open Shakspere to 
 a reading public. ... In 1709 Tonson pro- 
 duced Rowe's edition in seven volumes octavo." 
 Jacob Tonson and his successors of the same 
 name quite justified the sign of " The Shakspere's
 
 8 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 Head," for the various editions edited by Rowe, 
 Pope, Theobald, Warburton, Johnson and Capell 
 were all associated with the name of Tonson. 
 
 Jacob had no children, and seemingly never x: 
 married ; he took his nephew Jacob into partner- 
 ship. 
 
 In the year 1700 Tonson was instrumental in 
 founding the Kit-Cat Club, of which he became 
 secretary. This club was composed of the most 
 distinguished wits and statesmen among the 
 Whigs. The meetings were first held at a shop 
 in Shire Lane kept by Christopher Cat, who ex- X 
 celled in making mutton pies, which were regu- 
 larly part of the entertainment. In 1703 he built 
 a room at Barn Elms, Barnes, for the use of the 
 club. This room was adorned with the portraits 
 of the Kit-Cat club, painted by Sir Godfrey 
 Kneller, on canvas of a special size which has 
 always since been called Kit-cat, viz., 36 inches 
 by 28 inches. A splendid volume, containing 
 43 portraits, beginning with Sir Godfrey Kneller *\ 
 and ending with Tonson, was published in 1735 
 by J. Tonson in the Strand. The plates were en- 
 graved by T. Faber. In a poem on the club, 
 attributed to Sir Richard Blackmore, these lines 
 occur :
 
 9 -2
 
 JACOB TONSON 9 
 
 " One night in seven, at this convenient seat, 
 Indulgent Boca) (Jacob) did the muses treat." 
 
 This year (1703) he went to Holland to obtain 
 paper and engravings for the fine edition of 
 " Caesar's Commentaries," which he published in 
 royal folio, with eighty-seven plates, under the 
 editorial care of Dr. Samuel Clark in 1712. 
 Nichols describes this edition " as perhaps the 
 most magnificent work that has been issued by 
 the English press." The manufacture of paper in 
 England at this period had become confined to 
 the commonest sorts, chiefly used for packing, 
 and the types used in the better English printing 
 offices were imported from Holland. In 1705 he 
 published " Addison's Remarks on several parts 
 of Italy"; and in 1706 he became acquainted 
 with "young Pope" and proposed the publication 
 of his " Pastorals," which ultimately appeared in 
 the " Miscellany " in 1709. 
 
 Writing of Tonson's " Miscellany Poems " in 
 a letter dated May 2oth, 1709, Mr. Pope says: 
 " I shall be satisfied if I can lose my time agree- 
 ably this way, without losing my reputation. I can 
 be content with a bare saving game, without being 
 thought an eminent hand (with which little Jacob 
 has graciously dignified his adventurers and volun-
 
 10 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 teers in poetry). Jacob creates poets, as kings /- 
 do knights ; not for their honour, but for their 
 money." Mr. Wycherley in reply, with an in- 
 decent allusion to scripture, observes, " You will 
 make 'Jacob's Ladder' raise you to immortality." x 
 
 In a letter to Steele, Pope says : " I should 
 myself be much better pleased if I were told you 
 called me your little friend, than if you compli- 
 mented me with the title of a great genius or an 
 eminent hand, as Jacob does all his writers." 
 
 In 1 7 1 2 he removed to "The Shakspere Head," 
 opposite Catherine Street, in the Strand. In 1 7 1 1 
 Swift, Addison, and Steele met at young Tonson's, 
 and from 1712 Tonson, in conjunction with 
 Samuel Buckley, became the publisher of the /; 
 " Spectator." In 1712 Addison and Steele sold 
 all their interest in one half of the copies of the 
 first seven volumes of the "Spectator" to Tonson, 
 junior, for ^575, and all rights, and the other ^ 
 half to Buckley for a like sum. In October 1714 
 Buckley resigned his half share to Tonson, 
 junior. 
 
 In consequence of his attachment to the Whigs 
 he obtained, in 1719-1720, a grant to himself and 
 his nephew Jacob Tonson, junior, of the office of * 
 stationer, bookbinder, bookseller and printer, to
 
 JACOB TONSON II 
 
 some of the principal public Boards, and great 
 offices for the term of forty years, and in 1722 he 
 assigned and made over the whole benefit of this 
 grant to his nephew, who in 1733 obtained from 
 Sir Robert Walpole a further grant of forty years. 
 This lucrative business remained in the Tonson 
 family till 1800. 
 
 In a dialogue between Tonson and Congreve, 
 published in 1714, in a small volume of poems 
 by Rowe, there is a pleasant description of 
 Tonson before he had grand associates : 
 
 " While in your early days of reputation, 
 You for blue garters had not such a passion, 
 While yet you did not live, as now your trade is, 
 To drink with noble lords and toast their ladies, 
 Thou, Jacob Tonson, were, to my conceiving, 
 The cheerfullest, best, honest fellow living." 
 
 Tonson seems to have been fortunate, not only 
 in his publishing ventures, but he was congratu- 
 f lated on his luck in South Sea stock ; he made 
 V. a large sum also in connection with Law's Mis- 
 sissippi Scheme. 
 
 In 1720 he gave up business and bought an 
 estate called "The Hazells," at Ledbury, in 
 Herefordshire. 
 
 Jacob Tonson died in 1736, and is reported, 
 according to Nichols, on his deathbed to have
 
 12 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 said : " I wish I had the world to begin again, x^ 
 because then I should have died worth a 
 hundred thousand pounds, whereas now I die 
 worth only ^80,000." Nichols, however, re- 
 garded it as a very improbable story, for, in spite 
 of Dryden's complaints, Tonson seems to have ?< 
 been a generous man for the times and to have 
 fully earned his title of the " Prince of Book- 
 sellers." 
 
 Dunton, a contemporary publisher, says of 
 Tonson : " He is a very good judge of persons 
 and authors ; and, as there is nobody more com- 
 pletely qualified to give their opinion of another, 
 so there is no one who does it with a more severe 
 exactness or with less partiality, for, to do Mr. 
 Tonson justice, he speaks his mind upon all oc- 
 casions and will flatter nobody." 
 
 Pope, writing of him to Lord Oxford, said that 
 if he would come to see him he would show him 
 a phenomenon worth seeing : " Old Jacob Ton- 
 son, who is the perfect image and likeness of 
 Bayle's Dictionary ; so full of matter, secret his- * 
 tory, and wit and spirit, at almost fourscore." 
 
 The elder Tonson's death at Ledbury, April > 
 2nd, 1736, was preceded by that of his nephew, 
 November 25th, 1735 who at his death wasde-
 
 JACOB TONSON 13 
 
 scribed as worth ^100,000, whilst the uncle's 
 estate is mentioned as ^"40,000. 
 
 Old Jacob made his will December 2nd, 1735, 
 after his nephew's death, in which he appointed 
 his great-nephew Jacob (the third of the name) 
 his executor and residuary legatee. This Jacob 
 the third bookseller of the name of whom 
 Dr. Johnson speaks as " the late amiable Mr. 
 Tonson," carried on business first in the old shop 
 opposite Catherine Street, in the Strand, but 
 latterly he removed to the other side of the way, 
 where he died, without issue, March 3151, 1767. 
 
 According to Curwen, Tonson's only rival in 
 business was Bernard Lintot, and he gives an 
 amusing anecdote of competition between these 
 two worthies for a work by Dr. Young. Both 
 had made an offer for the work. The poet an- 
 swered both letters the same morning, but un- 
 fortunately cross-directed them ; in the one in- 
 tended for Tonson he said that Lintot was so 
 great a scoundrel that printing with him was out 
 of the question, and in Lintot's that Tonson was 
 an old rascal. 
 
 W. Roberts, whose account of the Tonsons is 
 written in a kindly spirit, says of Jacob : " Lin- 
 gering for a moment or two over the character of
 
 14 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 old Jacob Tonson, we find it to be indubitably 
 that of a thorough tradesman, not of a hero, but 
 certainly of a generous, hearty, and good man, 
 with a plentiful sprinkling of the worldly in his 
 composition."
 
 THOMAS GUY, 1644-1724. 
 Founder of Guy's Hospital. 
 
 From the statue by J . Bacon, R.A.
 
 II. THOMAS GUY, 1644-1724 
 
 HE fame of Thomas Guy does not 
 rest upon him as a bookseller, 
 but as a philanthropist ; it is true 
 that by great industry, great fru- 
 gality, and great tact he made much money as 
 a bookseller, but, unlike his contemporary Jacob 
 Tonson, he did not seek to attach his name to 
 the works of great authors such as Dryden, 
 Pope, and Addison. The Bible first and the 
 Great South Sea Bubble next were the chief 
 sources of his wealth. "The Dictionary of 
 National Biography" states, however, that he 
 published numerous books, and his imprint is 
 not so rare as has been represented. 
 
 From his earliest days he seems to have re- 
 solved to be rich, not, according to all accounts 
 that I can gather, for the sake of being rich, but
 
 1 6 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 from a real desire to do good in his generation 
 and the generations that should come after him. 
 Mr. Charles Knight, quoting mainly from Mr. 
 William Maitland's memoir of Guy prefixed to 
 his account of Guy's Hospital, published in his 
 "History of London" in 1739, tells us that 
 Guy was born in the north-east corner of 
 Pritchard's Alley, in Fair Street, Horselydown, 
 in the year 1645, DUt tne precise date is not 
 given. The statue says 1644. 
 
 He was the son of Thomas Guy, citizen and 
 carpenter, who was by profession a lighterman 
 and coal-dealer in Horselydown, Southwark ; he 
 died when his son was eight years old. His 
 mother was a native of Tamworth, and after her 
 husband's death she returned to that town, and 
 soon afterwards married again. 
 
 Mr. Roberts states that a writer in the 
 "Gentleman's Magazine," 1784, page 340, says 
 that Tamworth was the place of young Guy's 
 birth ; but the probabilities are in favour of 
 Mr. Maitland's more precise statement ; the 
 latter authority says that Mrs. Guy " was care- 
 ful to have her children carefully educated." 
 Thomas's education from the age of eight to 
 eleven was in all probability in Tamworth.
 
 THOMAS GUY I/ 
 
 He was bound apprentice September 2nd, 
 1660, to John Clarke, a bookseller, in the porch 
 of Mercers' Chapel, Cheapside; and in 1668 
 he became a freeman of the City of London 
 and of the Stationers' Company ; he commenced 
 business with a capital of 200. 
 
 Up to this point there is much similarity in 
 the careers of Guy and Tonson. Both were 
 shrewd, careful, and plodding, and both started 
 with the intention of amassing wealth through 
 the medium of the business in which they had 
 been educated; there is, however, little or no 
 evidence to show that either of them possessed 
 any educational advantages or literary or intel- 
 lectual gifts that should distinguish them from 
 hundreds of their fellow tradesmen who have 
 departed and left no trace behind them Litera- 
 ture happened to be their trade, and they culti- 
 vated it at first doubtless on a little oatmeal, 
 not however for its own sake, but as a means to 
 bear them on to fortune. 
 
 Tonson's ambition seems to me to have been 
 of the bullying, blustering sort, which eventually 
 enabled him to patronize great authors and 
 hob-a-nob with dukes and lords at the Kit-Cat 
 Club. 
 
 c
 
 1 8 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 " Sweating and puffing for a while he stood, 
 And then broke forth in this insulting mood ; 
 I am the touchstone of all modern wit ; 
 Without my stamp in vain your poets write." 
 
 (From "Faction Displayed") 
 
 His name will be carried down to remote 
 generations on the title-page of the books of the 
 greatest writers of his time, not as a great bene- 
 factor, but as a fortunate plodding tradesman. 
 
 Thomas Guy's ambition to make money 
 seems to me to have been of the purely unselfish 
 sort. He lived penuriously, and grew rich with A 
 the single purpose of doing good with his riches. 
 
 He started in business in 1668, two years 
 after the Great Fire, in a little newly-built shop 
 near Stocks Market. The shop was at the angle 
 formed by Cornhill and Lombard Street, de- 
 scribed by Maitland as the " little corner shop." 
 
 Charles Knight says that the area upon which 
 the Mansion House now stands was for some 
 centuries the market for butchers and fish- 
 mongers, deriving its name from " The Stocks," 
 which were set up in the public thoroughfare 
 for the punishment of evildoers. The whole 
 place was swept clear by the Great Fire of 1666. 
 
 The position which Guy had chosen was an 
 admirable one. Within a year after he had
 
 THOMAS GUY 19 
 
 opened his shop the second Exchange was 
 opened with great pomp. 
 
 Mr. Knight fancifully portrays young Guy 
 sitting in his little shop amidst his small stock 
 of books of the value of ^200, restless at the 
 want of occupation, and envying the great mer- 
 chant adventurers congregating at the Exchange, 
 whose ships brought the produce of every land 
 to the port of London. 
 
 Mr. Guy was a good Protestant, and as he sat 
 in his shop, too often unvisited by customers, 
 he meditated frequently on the large trade he 
 could command if it was in his power to offer 
 godly people well-printed and cheap Bibles. 
 
 The King's printer and the two universities 
 possessed the exclusive privilege of printing the 
 Bible, a monopoly which still remains with the 
 Universities. The Oxford Bibles were chiefly 
 for the use of the churches, but those issued by 
 the King's printer were full of the grossest errors, 
 which caused Thomas Fuller to write, under 
 the quaint heading " Fye, for Shame ! " " What 
 is but carelessness in other books is impiety 
 in setting forth of the Bible." Maitland re- 
 lates that at the time when Guy opened his 
 shop the English Bibles printed in this kingdom
 
 2O SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 being very bad, both in the letter and paper, 
 occasioned divers of the booksellers in this city 
 to encourage the printing thereof in Holland, 
 with curious types and fine paper, and they im- 
 ported vast numbers of the same, to their no 
 small advantage. 
 
 Mr. Guy, soon becoming acquainted with this 
 profitable commerce, became a large dealer 
 therein. Mr. Knight, in his imaginary picture, 
 says that Guy, not trusting the Dutch com- 
 positors, would carefully revise the proof sheets 
 so that they should not print such terrible 
 blunders as were printed in the Bible of 1653 : 
 " Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit X, 
 the kingdom of God." He had learned from 
 Mr. Selden's " Table Talk " that in a Bible 
 printed in the reign of Charles I. the word not A 
 was left out of the seventh commandment, for 
 which blunder the printer was heavily fined. 
 
 The " Spectator " wickedly suggested that, < 
 judging from the morals of the day, very many 
 copies must have got into continuous circulation. 
 
 It was found, however, that this trade of im- 
 porting Bibles from Holland was injurious to 
 the public revenue as well as to the King's 
 printer; all ways and means were devised to
 
 THOMAS GUY 21 
 
 quash it, and consequently, owing to frequent 
 seizures and prosecutions, the booksellers became 
 great sufferers, so they judged a further pursuit 
 thereof inconsistent with their interests. They 
 could not stand out against the power of the 
 King's printer and the two Universities, although 
 as a matter of fact the King's printer and the 
 Universities were not by any means in a state 
 of cordial relationship. 
 
 Thomas Guy, says Mr. Knight, was too saga- 
 cious a man to resist the pretensions of powers 
 so influential in the counsels of the Stuarts. 
 With a more than common share of ability and 
 perseverance he finally induced the University 
 of Oxford to contract with him for an assign- 
 ment of their privilege. He bought type from 
 Holland and set about printing Bibles in London, 
 and soon established a large trade therein. 
 
 In the first two or three years of his struggle 
 for fortune he had to maintain his position by 
 the exercise of the most scrupulous frugality. 
 He was his own servant, having his dinner sent 
 in to him from a neighbouring cookshop, and 
 eating it on his counter, using an old newspaper 
 for his table-cloth. Mr. Knight doubts the 
 accuracy of this report, because at that time the
 
 22 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 largest newspaper issued was the size of an or- 
 dinary dish. Well, it does not seem necessary 
 on that account to deprive Mr. Guy of this 
 mark and proof of his frugality let us suppose 
 that instead of a newspaper he used a couple of 
 old demy broadside proofsheets. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting episode in the 
 young publisher's career occurred when he had 
 attained his twenty-eighth year. He begins to 
 feel lonely. He indulges himself with the luxury 
 of a maidservant who cooks his meals and keeps 
 his linen in order. He cares little about society, 
 he but rarely dines in his Company's Hall. Now 
 this neat-handed Phillis had never wasted his 
 money or victuals while in his service ; he asked 
 her to marry him, and he was graciously ac- 
 cepted. 
 
 But alas ! the frugal maiden made one fatal 
 mistake; she had not sufficiently learned the 
 lesson of implicit obedience to his will. Some 
 paviors were at work laying down some pave- 
 ment in front of the shop, under very special 
 and definite instruction given them by Mr. Guy. 
 The workmen finding that a certain portion re- 
 mained unpaved went to him for further instruc- 
 tion. Unhappily for the future destiny of him-
 
 THOMAS GUY 23 
 
 self and the maiden, he was not at home. " Do 
 as you wish," said the infatuated girl; "tell 
 him I bade you, and I am sure he will not 
 be angry ! " History recordeth not the words 
 that passed, but Thomas Guy's little love episode 
 is for ever at an end, and if the maiden was 
 ever married at all it must have been to some 
 one else. 
 
 It had been stated by a writer in Mr. Nichols' 
 " Literary Anecdotes " that the bulk of Mr. Guy's 
 fortune was acquired by purchasing seamen's 
 pay tickets at a discount of forty or fifty per 
 cent, during Queen Anne's wars, and by South 
 Sea stock in the memorable year 1720. Mr. 
 Knight, however, points out that the practice of 
 paying seamen by tickets belonged to the time 
 of Charles II. and had fallen into disuse before 
 Queen Anne's time. 
 
 Under William III., in 1692, a loan of a 
 million was sanctioned by Parliament, and of 
 this he is said to have taken up a portion. Two 
 years after he was elected as a member of Par- 
 liament for Tamworth, the town of his early 
 days and his frequent benefactions. 
 
 Maitland says of his early career : " As he 
 was a man of unbounded charity and universal
 
 24 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 benevolence, so was he likewise a great patron 
 of liberty and the rights of his fellow-subjects, 
 which to his great honour he strenuously asserted 
 in divers Parliaments whereof he was a member," 
 from 1695 to 1707. 
 
 The only contemporaneous notice of Guy is 
 by John Dunton, the bookseller. In his work 
 published in 1705, he says: " He makes an 
 eminent figure in the Company of Stationers, 
 having been chosen Sheriff of London, and paid 
 the fine, and is now member of parliament for 
 Tarn worth. . . . He is a man of strong reason 
 and can talk very much to the purpose on any 
 subject you will propose. He is truly charitable, 
 his almshouses to the poor are standing testi- 
 monies." 
 
 These almshouses were built at Tamworth in 
 1705 ; two years later he built three new wards 
 to St. Thomas's Hospital, besides being a regular 
 benefactor of ;ioo a year. 
 
 Mr. Roberts says that, according to Maitland, 
 his private acts of charity were many, especially 
 to his poor relations; he frequently accom- 
 plished the discharge from prison of insolvent x 
 debtors and reinstated them in business. He 
 was constantly ready to advance money without ,<
 
 THOMAS GUY 25 
 
 interest to deserving young men to start in 
 business. 
 
 Mr. Roberts also quotes an interesting story 
 from the " Saturday Magazine " of August 2nd, 
 1834. One day, leaning over one of the bridges 
 looking very despondent and melancholy, a by- 
 stander, thinking he was bent on suicide, im- 
 plored him not to commit any rash act. Then 
 quickly placing a guinea in his hand, he hastily 
 withdrew. Guy followed the stranger, assured 
 him that he was mistaken, and begged his 
 address. Some years afterwards Guy, seeing 
 the name of his friend in the bankruptcy list, 
 hastened to his house, reminded him of the 
 incident of the bridge, arranged with his credi- 
 tors, and finally re-established him in his busi- 
 ness, which prospered in his hands and those of 
 his children's children for many years in New- 
 gate Street, London. 
 
 He held Government securities to the amount 
 of many thousands, and subscribed the same 
 into the South Sea Company at 6 per cent, 
 interest. During the subsequent ten years, 
 being a fundholder at this moderate rate of 
 interest, he made large benefactions to the 
 Stationers' Company and Christ's Hospital.
 
 26 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 In 1720, when he was seventy-six years old, 
 came the culminating point of his prosperity. 
 Parliament had sanctioned an increase of South 
 Sea capital at that time Guy held ^45,500 of yt 
 stock. No sooner was this increase of capital 
 granted than there came a great run on the 
 stock ; and Mr. Guy, wisely considering that the 
 great rise of the stock was owing to the iniquitous 
 management of a few, began to " unload," as the 7* 
 modern phrase is; at first he sold at about 
 three hundred that which cost him about fifty or 
 sixty, and he continued selling till it rose to six 
 hundred, when he disposed of the last of his 
 property in the said Company. This sagacious 
 operation of his on the very brink of the bursting 
 of the Bubble is regarded by his biographers as 
 very legitimate business, and it would be diffi- 
 cult to gainsay it. He had held the stock for 
 ten years previously, and he only took advan- 
 tage of a rise in the market ; but, after all, the 
 money he so easily made came out of the pockets 
 of the many hundreds of families who were com- -f 
 pletely ruined when the crash came. Indeed, 
 it may almost be argued that Guy, under Provi- 
 dence, was the means of rescuing from the dis- 
 aster over a quarter of a million of money for
 
 THOMAS GUY 2/ 
 
 the sole purpose of building and endowing a 
 great hospital for the benefit of the poor and 
 distressed. 
 
 He got more money in three months of this 
 eventful year than was needed for the erecting, 
 furnishing, and endowing his hospital. 
 
 The building cost nearly .19,000, and the 
 endowment by him amounted to .220,000; 
 and he had the satisfaction of knowing that 
 his gains had been worthily applied, when he 
 saw his hospital roofed in before he died in 
 1724. 
 
 Thomas Guy's will, dated September 4th, 1 7 24, 
 bequeaths lands and tenements in Staffordshire, 
 Warwickshire, and Derbyshire to grandchildren 
 of his deceased sister; about ,75,000 4 per 
 cent, annuities, mostly in sums of .1,000 each, 
 to about ninety cousins in various degrees and 
 others not relatives, and annuities varying from 
 .10 to ,200 a year, mostly to older relatives, 
 being interest on .22,000 of stock; .1,000 
 was left to discharged poor debtors in sums not 
 exceeding ^5 each 600 persons were thus re- 
 lieved. An annuity of .400 was left to Christ's 
 Hospital for board and education of four poor 
 children annually.
 
 28 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 His death took place December lyth, 1724, 
 in his eighty-first year. 
 
 He was buried with great pomp after lying in 
 state at the Mercers' Chapel. 
 
 In the centre of the square of Guy's Hospital 
 is a bronze statue of Guy in his livery gown by 
 Scheemakers ; on the west side, in basso-relievo, 
 is represented the parable of the Good Shep- 
 herd, and on the east Christ healing the impo- 
 tent man.
 
 JOHN DUNTON, 1659-1733.
 
 III. JOHN DUNTON, 1659-1733. 
 
 INLIKE the two ancient shadows 
 of whom I have endeavoured to 
 give glimpses, both of whom, be- 
 ginning life in poor circumstances, 
 took the tide at flood which led them on to for- 
 tune, John Dunton began his business career in 
 fairly affluent circumstances, but, omitting to 
 catch the tide, the voyage of his life was bound 
 " in shallows and in miseries," and ended in the 
 Fleet prison. He was a bookseller who wrote 
 many books instead of selling them, and he 
 came to be looked upon as a sort of lusus 
 natures by the great literary people of his time, 
 and as an intruder ; and so he was called a 
 " lunatick " by his contemporaries. Warburton 
 described him as "an auction bookseller and
 
 30 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 an abusive scribbler " ; and the elder Disraeli 
 notices him as " a crack-brained scribbling book- 
 seller, who boasted he had a thousand projects, 
 fancied he had methodized six hundred, and 
 was ruined by the fifty he executed." 
 
 Among the many books which he wrote, the 
 most curious and interesting was "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." 1 
 
 It is from this work that the main facts of 
 John Dunton's life have been gathered by those 
 who have written about him. Charles Knight 
 says that he had waded for the third or fourth 
 time through a volume of 700 pages, vilely 
 printed upon the most wretched paper. It was 
 published by S. Malthus in 1705, and was 
 reprinted by Mr. John Bowyer Nichols in 1817. 
 
 1 The full title is " The Life and Errors of John 
 Dunton, late Citizen of London, written by himself in 
 solitude. With an Idea of a new Life ; wherein is shown 
 how he'd think, speak, and act, might he live over his 
 days again ; intermixed with the new Discoveries the 
 Author has made in his Travels abroad, and in his 
 private Conversation at home. Together with the Lives 
 and Characters of a Thousand Persons now living in 
 London. Digested into Seven Stages with their respec- 
 tive Ideas. London, printed for S. Malthus. 1705.
 
 JOHN DUNTON 31 
 
 I presume the first edition is the one referred to 
 by Mr. Knight. 
 
 John Dunton was born May 4, 1659. His 
 father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were 
 all named John, and all had been clergymen. 
 At the time of our hero's birth, his father was 
 rector of Graffham, Huntingdonshire. Losing 
 his wife when his only child was an infant, the 
 father, in a fit of despondency, went away to 
 Ireland, where he spent some years as chaplain 
 to Sir Henry Ingoldsby, having resolved not to 
 marry again for seven years. 
 
 Meanwhile, by his own account, the little boy 
 was left to strangers. He had been sent to 
 school with Mr. William Readings at Dungrove, 
 near Chesham, but seems to have learnt little, 
 and to have led an idle life, playing on the plea- 
 sant banks of the Chess, and rambling among 
 the Chiltern Hills. His father on his return to 
 England in 1668 became rector of Aston Clinton, 
 Bucks, and married again. During childhood 
 and youth he had several narrow escapes from 
 death ; on one occasion from slipping headlong 
 into a river ; on another, while playing with a 
 bullet, it slipped down his throat to his breast, 
 and, when nearly past hope, it suddenly bolted up.
 
 32 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 John was now taken home to his father, who 
 educated him with a view to making him fourth 
 clergyman of his line and a faithful preacher of 
 the doctrine of the old Puritans, but he was 
 disappointed. 
 
 Young John, describing himself at the age of 
 fourteen, says he was "wounded by a silent 
 passion for a virgin in my father's house." 
 " My father," he says, " tried all the methods 
 with me that could be thought of, in order to 
 reconcile my mind to the love of learning, but 
 all of them proved useless and ineffectual ; my 
 thoughts were all unbent and dissolved in the 
 affairs of love." His father's hopes that he 
 should become a clergyman were destroyed by 
 what he calls his "unsettled mercurial humour." 
 He learnt Latin, but the difficulties of Greek 
 quite broke all his resolutions. So the father, 
 not finding his son inclined to learning, thought 
 to make it his interest " to be a friend to learning 
 and the muses." 
 
 At the age of fourteen, in the year 1673, he 
 was apprenticed to Thomas Parkhurst, a book- 
 seller, in London, "a religious and just man," 
 and of whom he subsequently wrote as "my 
 honoured master, the most eminent Presby-
 
 JOHN DUNTON 33 
 
 terian bookseller in the three Kingdoms, and 
 now chosen Master of the Stationers' Com- 
 pany." From that time, says he, "I began to 
 love books to the same excess that I had hated 
 them before." His father died in 1676, giving 
 young John his dying counsels, " to know, fear, 
 love, obey, and serve God, your Creator and 
 Deliverer, as He hath revealed Himself through 
 His Son, by the Spirit, in His Holy Word." 
 
 During his apprenticeship he was again 
 smitten by the charms of a certain young virgin, 
 then lodging with Parkhurst. " This romantic 
 courtship," says he, "gave both of us a real 
 passion ; but my master, making a timely dis- 
 covery of it, sent the lady into the country ; 
 and absence cooled our passion for us, and by 
 little and little we both of us regained our 
 liberty." 
 
 There is a very curious old book which I 
 have just seen called " Three Hundred and 
 Fifty Years' Retrospection of an Old Book- 
 seller," published in 1835, in which I find many 
 of the anecdotes about Dunton which are to be 
 found in subsequent books. He says : " He 
 made himself conspicuous in a political dispute 
 between the Tories and the Whigs, being a 
 
 D
 
 34 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 prime mover on the part of the Whig appren- 
 tices. The Tories to the number of 5,000 pre- 
 sented an address to the King against the 
 petitioning for Parliaments. The Dissenting 
 party, with Dunton as their leader, made a 
 counter-address, which they presented to Sir 
 Patience Ward, then Lord Mayor, who pro- 
 mised he would acquaint the King; and then 
 ordered them to return home, and mind the 
 business of their respective masters." 
 
 When his apprenticeship was just expiring he 
 "invited a hundred apprentices to celebrate a 
 funeral for it, though it was no more than a 
 youthful piece of vanity." 
 
 He immediately started in business on his 
 own account, occupying " half a shop, ware- 
 house, and a fashionable chamber." His good 
 father had advised him to use all possible 
 prudence in the choice of a wife, and very 
 wisely exhorted him to keep something more 
 solid than investments in publishing specula- 
 tions. "Sell not," said he, "any part of your 
 estate in land, if either your wife's portion or 
 your borrowing of money upon interest may 
 conveniently serve to set up your trade. 
 " Even," said the cautious father, " if you shall,
 
 JOHN DUNTON 35 
 
 by some remarkable providence, meet with a 
 wife of a considerable estate, you may by her 
 portion set up your trade without mortgaging 
 your land." 
 
 It is evident that John Dunton had some 
 capital at his disposal, and he soon made the 
 acquaintance of what he calls " hackney authors, 
 who began to ply me with specimens as earnestly 
 and with as much passion and concern as the 
 watermen do passengers with oars and scullers." 
 His first venture was a work by the Rev. Thomas 
 Doolittle, entitled " The Sufferings of Christ." 
 " This book," he says, "fully answered my end; 
 for, exchanging through the whole trade, it fur- 
 nished my shop with all sorts of books saleable 
 at the time." This method of exchange and 
 barter must have been a very convenient method 
 for a beginner not overburdened with capital. 
 The success of this work and one or two others 
 gave him "an ungovernable hitch for similar 
 speculations." 
 
 It was now urged upon John that he should 
 marry, and many desirable young ladies were 
 suggested to him. One was Miss Sarah Doolittle, 
 in addition to whose personal charms and en- 
 dowments there would be the chance of getting
 
 36 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 her father's "copies" for nothing ; " his book on 
 the Sacraments you know has sold to the twentieth 
 edition." "At last," as Mr. Roberts says, "he 
 met with Dr. Annesley's daughter, by whom he 
 was " almost charmed dead " when he saw her 
 in her father's meeting-place." But this young 
 lady was already engaged, so he was advised to 
 make an experiment upon her elder sister, Eliza- 
 beth, and the result was marriage. By this 
 marriage he became brother-in-law of the Rev. 
 Samuel Wesley, the father of John Wesley, the 
 founder of Methodism, who appears to have 
 married Anne, the young lady who had almost 
 " charmed him dead." It is supposed that Daniel 
 Defoe, author of " Robinson Crusoe," married 
 a third daughter. 
 
 His excellent wife became bookseller and cash- 
 keeper, at the shop called " The Black Raven," 
 in Gracechurch Street, and, as Dunton admits, 
 " she managed all my affairs for me, and left me 
 entirely to my own rambling and scribbling hu- 
 mour." Here, in 1685, he published "Maggots; 
 or, Poems on several subjects never before handled 
 by a Scholar." This work is said to have been 
 written (at the age of nineteen) by Mr. Samuel 
 Wesley.
 
 JOHN DUNTON 37 
 
 Owing to the defeat of Monmouth at Sedg- 
 moor, July 5th, 1685, there came a great depres- 
 sion in trade in general and publishing did not 
 flourish. John had a debt of ^500 owing to him 
 in New England; he decided to make a trip to 
 Boston, taking a cargo of books with him. He 
 procured storage for his venture in two ships ; 
 the one in which he himself took passage was the 
 "Susannah and Thomas," and after a terrible 
 passage of four months and many adventures on 
 board he at length reached Boston, but whether 
 the other ship ever reached her destination is not 
 quite clear ; at all events, poor Dunton seems to 
 have lost half his cargo, valued at ^500, which 
 appears to have been cast away in the Downs. 
 On his arrival at Boston " he consoled his dear 
 Iris " (his wife) " by sending her sixty letters in 
 one ship." 
 
 He was absent from home nearly a year en- 
 deavouring to sell the remainder of his stock, but 
 he found dealing with the four booksellers of 
 Boston not very profitable, for, says he, " he that 
 trades with the inhabitants of Boston may get 
 promises enough, but their payments come late," 
 and he found himself " as welcome as sour ale in 
 summer."
 
 38 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 He had taken with him a steady appren- 
 tice, Samuel Palmer, to whom he intrusted 
 the whole charge of his business ; which left 
 him at leisure to make many excursions into 
 the country. He visited Harvard College, and 
 opened a warehouse in the town of Salem and 
 other places. 
 
 On his return to England he found his affairs 
 in a bad condition. " He had become security 
 for his brother and sister-in-law" (presumably 
 Mr. and Mrs. S. Wesley) "for about ^"1,200, 
 which caused him much trouble ; he had to keep 
 within doors for ten months." " My confine- 
 ment," says Dunton, " growing very uneasy to 
 me, especially on Lord's days, I was extremely 
 desirous to hear Dr. Annesley preach, and im- 
 mediately the contrivance was started in my 
 head that dear Iris should dress me in woman's \ 
 cloaths." Accordingly he went, and heard the 
 doctor, but on his return he was discovered 
 " I'll be hanged if that ben't a man in woman's X 
 cloaths ! " He bolted, and twenty or thirty 
 roughs gave chase, but he eventually eluded 
 them, and " came off with honour." 
 
 His confinement had now become so irksome 
 that he slipped away and rambled through Hoi-
 
 JOHN DUNTON 39 
 
 land, Flanders, Germany, etc., and stayed four 
 months at Amsterdam. After an absence of 
 some months he returned to London, November 
 1 5th, 1 688, and having now settled with his credi- 
 tors he started afresh as a bookseller : on the 
 day the Prince of Orange came to London he 
 opened a shop at "The Black Raven" in the 
 Poultry. One of his projects, says Mr. Knight, was 
 a decided success. He started the " Athenian 
 Gazette " (afterwards changed to " Mercury ") 
 the first number of which appeared March i7th, 
 1690, and he kept on this penny tract of a single 
 leaf till February, 1696, when he proposed to 
 publish the " Mercuries " in quarterly volumes, 
 and of these, according to Mr. Knight, he seems 
 to have issued nineteen volumes, 1 which Mr. 
 Knight regarded as " the precursors of a revolu- 
 tion in the entire system of our lighter literature, 
 which turned pamphlets and broadsides into 
 magazines and miscellanies." The associates in 
 the conduct of this publication, who called them- 
 selves the Athenian Society, were Richard Sault, 
 
 1 Mr. Dunton says : ' ' Our ' Athenian Mercuries ' were 
 continued till they swelled, at least to twenty volumes 
 folio : and then we took up to give ourselves a little ease 
 and refreshment."
 
 40 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 a Cambridge theologian, Samuel Wesley, and 
 the Rev. Dr. John Norris. The aim of the Athe- 
 nian Society, which had, says Dunton, " their 
 first meeting in my brain," was "to advance all 
 knowledge and diffuse a general learning through 
 the many, and by that civilise more now in a 
 few years than Athens itself did of old during 
 the ages it flourished." 
 
 Samuel Wesley was connected with him in 
 several of his trade speculations though they 
 afterwards parted with irreconcilable hatred. " I 
 could," says John, "be very maggotty on the 
 character of this conforming dissenter ; but, ex- 
 cept he further provokes me, I bid him farewell 
 till we meet in heaven ; and then I hope we shall 
 renew our friendship, for human frailties excepted, 
 I believe Sam Wesley a pious man." 
 
 Theoriginal agreement between Dunton, Sault, 
 and Wesley, for writing their paper, dated April 
 loth, 1691, is in the Rawlinson MSS. in the 
 Bodleian (D.N.B.). Mr. Knight says that Dunton 
 was naturally proud of the success of his little 
 periodical. " Poems in its honour were written 
 by the chief wits of the age." The Marquis of 
 Halifax perused it, and Mr. Swift, "a young 
 country gentleman, the haughtiest of mankind,"x
 
 JOHN DUNTON . 41 
 
 bowed down to it. He wrote a poem, of which 
 the following are the first two lines : 
 
 ' ' Pardon, ye great and far exalted men, 
 The wild excursion of a youthful pen." 
 
 "These old Athenian volumes growing quite out 
 of print, a choice collection of the most valuable 
 questions and answers, in three volumes, have 
 been reprinted under the title of ' The Athenian 
 Oracle.' Two of these volumes I dedicated to 
 the most illustrious and most magnanimous 
 Prince, James, Duke of Ormond. These two 
 volumes I presented to his Grace with my own 
 hand ; and if any thing could make me vain of 
 the Athenian project it would be the generous 
 reception his Grace gave to each of the volumes." 
 
 During the progress of this work, in 1692, he 
 inherited an estate on the death of his cousin 
 Carter. "The World," he says, "now smiled 
 upon me ; I sailed with wind and tide, and had 
 humble servants enough among the booksellers, 
 printers, and binders. Now the master and 
 assistants of the Company of Stationers began 
 to think me sufficient to wear a livery." He paid 
 his livery fine of twenty pounds. 
 
 One of Dunton's projects and one would 
 think his maddest was what Nichols calls his
 
 42 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 " greatest project? viz., "The Night Walker; or 
 Evening Rambles in search of Lewd Women." 
 It was intended for the extirpation of lewdness 
 from London, a scheme highly creditable to the 
 schemer, had it been practicable. Armed with a 
 constable's staff, and accompanied by a clerical 
 companion, he sallied forth in the evening, and 
 followed the wretched prostitutes home, where 
 every effort was made 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 exhortation." 
 
 The licensing system was in vogue in those 
 days, and Dunton gives a quaint account of 
 " the several licensers with whom I have had 
 concerns." The first on his list is Sir Roger 
 L'Estrange, 1 and he is thus characterized: "a 
 man that betrays his religion and country in 
 pretending to defend it; that was made sur- 
 
 1 In August, 1663, Roger L'Estrange, Esq. (after more 
 than twenty years spent in serving the royal cause, near 
 six of them in gaols, and almost four under sentence of 
 death in Newgate) had interest sufficient to obtain an 
 appointment to a new created office under the title of 
 Surveyor of the Imprimery and Printing Offices, together 
 with the sole licensing of books, etc.
 
 JOHN DUNTON 43 
 
 veyor of the press, and would wink at unlicensed 
 books if the printer's wife would but smile on 
 him." 1 
 
 On the other hand, he says of a Mr. Fraser, 
 that " no man was better skilled in the mystery 
 of winning upon the hearts of booksellers, nor 
 were the Company of Stationers ever blessed 
 with an honester licenser." Of Mr. Robert 
 Stephens, a messenger to the press, he says, " I 
 must say he never did me the least injury, for if I 
 printed a book that had no license, I took such 
 care to dazzle his eyes that he could not see it." 
 
 Mr. Knight says of this licensing system, 
 "with all its tyranny and corruption it had one 
 advantage ; it did something to protect the copy- 
 right in books from piracy. The licensing acts 
 and proclamations prohibited the printing of 
 any books without the consent of the author, 
 as also without a license." 
 
 In the interval between the period when 
 licenses of the press had ceased and the passing 
 of the Copyright Act of 8th Queen Anne, there 
 
 1 In 1662 THE LICENSING ACT was passed, and re- 
 pealed in 1691. The Act of Queen Anne was passed in 
 1 709 ; in the interim perpetual copyright ruled, but chaos 
 reigned.
 
 44 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 was no protection for literary property a period 
 of twenty years and of course piracy was ram- 
 pant. 
 
 Dunton mentions one Mr. Lee in Lombard 
 Street, " such a pirate, such a cormorant was 
 never before known, copies, books, men, ships, 
 all was one; he held no propriety, right or 
 wrong, good or bad, till at last he began to be 
 known ; and the booksellers, not enduring so ill 
 a man among them, to disgrace them, spewed 
 him out, and off he marched to Ireland, where 
 he acted as felonious Lee as he did in London." 
 There he might safely pirate. That Irish trade 
 flourished more or less till the Union, 1801, put 
 an end to it. 
 
 Among the " Thousand Friends " described 
 in his book, he gives the name probably of 
 every bookseller in London with a few lines of 
 laudation to each one of them. Thus (modestly 
 referring to himself) " Mr. D ton. He is 
 happy in a very beautiful wife, and she in a 
 kind husband ; they have lived so happily since 
 their marriage, that, sure enough, the banns of 
 their matrimony were asked in heaven. Mr. 
 D ton may value himself upon his beautiful 
 choice."
 
 JOHN DUNTON 45 
 
 If his description of them individually and 
 collectively was not tinged with a liberal degree 
 of exaggeration and flattery, London and pro- 
 vincial booksellers of to-day may well be 
 proud of their predecessors of the latter part 
 of the seventeenth and the first half of the 
 eighteenth century. " Never, certainly," writes 
 Mr. G. L. Craik, referring to Mr. Dunton's book, 
 "before or since were all the graces, both of 
 mind and body, so generally diffused among 
 any class of men as among these old London 
 booksellers." One is a man "of very quick 
 parts;" of another it is affirmed that "for sense, 
 wit, and good humour, there are but few can 
 equal, and none can exceed him." One is 
 "very much conversant with the sacred writings." 
 Another " speaks French and Latin with a great 
 deal of fluency and ease." Another " is familiarly 
 acquainted with all the books that are extant in 
 any language." As to their persons, " many of 
 them are remarkable for their beauty," their 
 "eyes brisk and sparkling," "of a graceful as- 
 pect," and " of a lovely proportion, exceedingly 
 well made." 
 
 As to the provincial booksellers of his time, 
 he describes only a few of them individually,
 
 46 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 but with a sweeping commendation which, it 
 may be hoped, is deserved by their successors, 
 now multiplied twenty-fold. " Of three hundred 
 booksellers now trading in country towns, I 
 know not of one knave or blockhead among 
 them all." 
 
 Book auctioneers are also noticed by Mr. 
 Dunton : " The famous Mr. Edward Millington 
 was one of them ; he had a quick wit and a 
 wonderful fluency of speech. 'Where,' said 
 Mr. Millington, 'is your generous flame for 
 learning ? Who but a sot or a blockhead would 
 have money in his pockets and starve his 
 brains?' Dr. Cave was once bidding too 
 leisurely for a book. ' Where,' said Mr. Mil- 
 lington, ' is your Primitive Christianity ? ' 
 alluding to a book the honest doctor had just 
 published under that title." 
 
 In 1697 Dunton lost his wife, whose death 
 he bitterly lamented ; though, in the same year, 
 he consoled himself by another marriage, with 
 Sarah, daughter of Mrs. Nicholas, of St. Albans. 
 With this lady he does not seem to have added 
 much to his comforts or his fortune. The 
 mother-in-law was a woman of property, who 
 left some money to the poor of St. Albans ; she
 
 JOHN DUNTON 47 
 
 quarrelled with Dunton, who complained be- 
 cause she refused to pay his debts. He left his 
 wife soon after the marriage; he turned from 
 publishing to book-auctioneering, and in 1698 
 was busy in Dublin with a cargo of books. He 
 was in Ireland about six months, and during 
 that time he had many quarrels with the book- 
 sellers, the story of which he related in a tract, 
 called " The Dublin Scuffle ; being a Challenge 
 sent by John Dunton, Citizen of London, to 
 Patrick Campbell, Bookseller in Dublin." In 
 his "Farewell to his acquaintances in Dublin, 
 friends and enemies," says Mr. Roberts, he has 
 the satisfaction of announcing the disposal of 
 the " Venture of books I brought into this 
 country, maugre all opposition." His receipts 
 were about ^1,500. 
 
 " A worthy member of the House of Com- 
 mons," says John, " did me the honour to say 
 that I had been, by this undertaking, a great 
 benefactor of this country, and other gentlemen 
 said that I had ' done more service to learning 
 by my three auctions than any one single 
 man that had come to Ireland these hundred 
 years.' " 
 
 Dunton said that during a short period he
 
 48 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 published no less than 600 books, and of this 
 great number he only repented of seven. 
 
 The " Life and Errors," from which most of 
 the information about Dunton has been obtained, 
 was published in 1705. "It is," says Mr. 
 Roberts, " the maddest of all mad books . . . 
 but its value to all students of the literary 
 history of the eighteenth century can hardly be 
 over-estimated." He also gives a brief descrip- 
 tion of an immense number of books and 
 pamphlets written by Dunton, even the titles of 
 which my space does not permit me to quote. 
 He had given up publishing a short time before 
 he wrote his " Life." 
 
 One of his latest projects is " An Appeal to 
 George I.," which he considered in some sense 
 his " Dying Groans from the Fleet Prison, or a 
 last shift for Life." He claims to have had a 
 most distinguished share in bringing about the 
 Hanoverian succession, " the Pretender," he 
 says, " having sworn that John Dunton is the 
 first man he will hang at Tyburn if ever he 
 ascends the British Throne." 
 
 " Dunton," says Nichols, " was a most 
 voluminous writer, as he seems to have had 
 his pen always ready, and never to have been
 
 JOHN DUNTON 49 
 
 at a loss for a subject to exercise it upon. 
 Though he generally put his name to what he 
 wrote, it would be a difficult task to get together 
 a complete collection of his various publications. 
 As containing notices of many persons and 
 things not to be found elsewhere, they certainly 
 have their use; and his accounts are often 
 entertaining." 
 
 The last halfscore years or more of his life 
 were spent in great misery. He died in 1733, 
 in the 75th year of his age, but where and under 
 what circumstances is not now known. The 
 "Old Bookseller," says that Dunton "certainly 
 threw more light upon the periodical publica- 
 tions of his day than any other writer. He 
 appears to have laid the foundation of the plan 
 upon which Mr. Nichols has so much improved."
 
 IV. SAMUEL RICHARDSON, 
 1689-1761 
 
 NE of Mr. Richardson's biographers 
 says that he was "the most emi- 
 nent man who ever stood behind 
 a bookseller's counter." I do 
 not think he ever did so stand. He should 
 more properly be called a printer. He was 
 brought up as a printer ; he became a printer of 
 books, and doubtless his name appears on the 
 title-page of many books. His first book of 
 " Familiar Letters " l having been suggested to 
 
 1 This volume of "Familiar Letters" seems to have 
 been published at first anonymously, and it was not till 
 after the author's death that his name appears on the 
 title-page. It is not included in the Bibliography given 
 by Mrs. Thomson at the end of her work, but she men- 
 tions it as preceding " Pamela."
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 51 
 
 him by Rivington and Osborne, probably bears 
 their imprint. His other books would doubtless 
 bear his own name ; indeed, his own name on a 
 title-page as the publisher came to be regarded 
 as a great honour. Thus Dr. Edward Young, 
 who was an enthusiastic admirer, wrote : " Sup- 
 pose on the title-page of ' The Night Thoughts ' 
 you should say, ' Published by the Author of 
 ' Clarissa.' " 
 
 The term " publisher " was rarely used in those 
 days the word "bookseller" being generally 
 adopted and in that sense Richardson was one. 
 
 There has been so much written by and about 
 Richardson that it is difficult to compress into a 
 short sketch the material available from which 
 to glean. Mrs. Barbauld wrote a biography of 
 him as an introduction to his correspondence. 
 This biography and the correspondence form 
 the basis from which all subsequent writers have 
 obtained their information. The last and most 
 interesting work was published only a few months 
 ago, entitled " Samuel Richardson : a Biogra- 
 phical and Critical Study," by Clara Linklater 
 Thomson. 
 
 Samuel Richardson was born in a Derbyshire 
 village in the year 1689, but for some reason he
 
 52 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 always avoided mentioning the name of the 
 town or village, and, to this day, Derbyshire 
 may as a county claim the honour of owning his 
 birthplace, but it cannot identify the spot where 
 the author of " Clarissa " first saw the light of 
 day. His father was a joiner by trade, with 
 some knowledge of architecture. He settled in 
 London and married a lady whose parents had 
 died within half-an-hour of each other in the 
 time of the great plague, 1665. He had been 
 employed by the Duke of Monmouth and the 
 first Earl of Shaftesbury, and was probably con- 
 cerned in Monmouth's rebellion ; on this ac- 
 count, at the time of Monmouth's fall, suspicion 
 of his loyalty fell upon him ; he closed his busi- 
 ness in London, and retired to this mysterious 
 village in Derbyshire, " though to his great 
 detriment," says Samuel, " and there I and three 
 other children out of nine were born." It was 
 no joke in Chief Justice Jeffreys's days of 
 authority to come under suspicion ; for he might 
 have been sent to the gallows, or to the planta- 
 tions across the Atlantic. This possibly explains 
 Richardson's reticence about his native village. 
 
 Samuel, one of nine children, was intended 
 for the Church, but heavy losses obliged his
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 53 
 
 father to abandon his thought of making his 
 ingenious son a parson, and he had him bound 
 apprentice to a printer instead. He is said to 
 have been for a time at Christ's Hospital, but 
 his name does not appear in the school registers. 
 In any case he never attained more than a 
 smattering of the learned languages. 
 
 Mrs. Barbauld states that when Richardson 
 was an old man (1753) he received a letter from 
 a Dutch clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Stinstra, who 
 had translated " Clarissa," as follows : " May I 
 ask you (although I am too bold, my letter 
 blushes not) in what kind of life you have been 
 conversant in your youth ? Have you, as fame 
 reports, been constantly employed in book- 
 selling ? Whence did you attain so accurate a 
 knowledge of the various dispositions of nature 
 and of the manners of mankind ? By what 
 means have you compiled your immortal works?'' 
 etc., etc. 
 
 To these flattering inquiries the author replies 
 without reserve as to the facts of his early life. 
 " I was not eleven years old," he says, "when I 
 wrote spontaneously a letter to a widow of nearly 
 fifty, who, pretending to a zeal for religion, and 
 being a constant frequenter of Church ordi-
 
 54 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 nances, was continually fomenting quarrels and 
 disturbances, by backbiting and scandal among 
 all her acquaintances. I collected, from Scrip- 
 ture, texts that made against her. Assuming 
 the style and address of a person in years, I ex- 
 horted her, I expostulated with her. But my 
 handwriting was known ; I was challenged with 
 it, and owned the boldness, for she complained 
 to my mother with tears. . . . My mother, how- 
 ever, commended my principles, though she 
 censured the liberty I had taken." 
 
 It was at the ripe age of thirteen that he be- 
 came a writer of love-letters for the girls in his 
 neighbourhood. "A bashful and not forward 
 boy," he says, " I was an early favourite with all 
 the young women of taste and reading in the 
 neighbourhood. Half a dozen of them, when 
 met together with their needles, used, when they 
 got a book they liked, to borrow me to read to 
 them. ... I was not more than thirteen when 
 three of these young women, unknown to each 
 other, having a high opinion of my taciturnity, 
 revealed to me their love secrets, in order to in- 
 duce me to give them copies to write after, or 
 correct, for answers to their lovers' letters ; nor 
 did any of them ever know that I was the secre-
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 55 
 
 tary to the others. . . . One, highly gratified 
 with her lover's fervour and vows of everlasting 
 love, has said when I have asked her directions : 
 ' I cannot tell you what to write, but ' (her heart 
 on her lips) ' you cannot write too kindly.' " 
 
 Thus it was in those early days that he laid 
 the foundation for that intimate knowledge of 
 the intricacies of the feminine side of human 
 nature, which is so abundantly displayed in his 
 three great works of fiction. 
 
 Like Dunton he was intended for the Church, 
 but the Fates ordained that he should be a pub- 
 lisher and printer. When he was seventeen 
 years old, in 1 706, he was bound apprentice to 
 Mr. John Wilde, a printer of some eminence in 
 his day, who, according to Dunton, had "a very 
 noble printing house in Aldersgate Street." Re- 
 ferring to this period of his life, Richardson 
 writes : "I served a diligent seven years to it ; 
 to a master who grudged every hour to me that 
 tended to his profit ; even of those times of 
 leisure and diversion which the refractoriness of 
 my fellow-apprentices obliged him to allow them, 
 and were usually allowed by other masters to 
 their apprentices. I stole from the hours of 
 rest and relaxation my reading times for the im-
 
 56 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 provement of my mind. I took care that even 
 the candle was of my own purchasing, that I 
 might not, in the most trifling instance, make 
 my master a sufferer." 
 
 After the expiration of his apprenticeship with 
 this hard task-master, he worked for some years 
 as a compositor, a reader, and as overseer. In 
 1719 he took up his freedom, and became a 
 master printer in a small way in a court off Fleet 
 Street, and filled up his leisure hours by com- 
 piling indexes for the booksellers, and writing 
 prefaces, and what he calls honest dedications. 
 He afterwards removed to Salisbury Square. It 
 was in 1724 that another future literary celebrity 
 came to work with him as a compositor. Thomas 
 Gent, in the "Story of his Life," 1 says: "Mr. 
 Woodfall was so kind to recommend me to 
 the ingenious Mr. Richardson, in Salisbury 
 Court, with whom I staid to finish his part of 
 the Dictionary, which he had from the book- 
 sellers composed of English, Latin, Greek, and 
 Hebrew." 
 
 " His knowledge of the heart of man was pro- 
 
 1 "The Life of Mr. Thomas Gent, Printer, of York," 
 written by himself. London : Thomas Thorpe, 38, Bed 
 ford Street. 1832.
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 57 
 
 bably extended," says Mr. Knight, " by his 
 acquaintance with the clever and profligate 
 Duke of Wharton, for whom he printed the 
 " True Briton," but he withdrew from it after 
 the publication of the sixth number, and so 
 escaped prosecution." 
 
 Two years after he started business he married 
 in 1726 Martha, daughter of Allington 
 Wilde, of Aldersgate Street so says Mrs. Bar- 
 bauld (quoting Nichols), " whom," says the 
 D.N.B., " she confuses with his master, John 
 Wilde," but in this instance the D.N.B. seems 
 to be mistaken, for I notice that Clara L. 
 Thomson, in the very interesting work she has 
 just published, shows pretty clearly that Richard- 
 son, after all, did "carry out his resemblance 
 to the industrious apprentice, by marrying his 
 master's daughter." She found in the registers 
 of Charterhouse Chapel, under date 1692, that 
 John Wilde, widower, of the parish of St. Bar- 
 tholomew the Great, married Martha A. Alling- 
 ton, spinster; and under date November 23, 
 1721, Samuel Richardson (ccdebs) married 
 Martha Wilde (solutd) of the parish of St. 
 Botolph's, Aldersgate. It seems likely that this 
 Martha was the daughter of the John and Martha
 
 58 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 above named ; and as, from Richardson's will, 
 we know that he had a brother-in-law, Allington 
 Wilde, Nichols probably confused the son, who 
 was named after his mother's family, with the 
 father, John, who died in 1728, and who had 
 " a very noble printing house in Aldersgate." 
 
 Through the influence of the Right Honour- 
 able Arthur Onslow, who became Speaker of the 
 House of Commons in 1728, he was entrusted 
 with printing the Journals of the House of Com- 
 mons. Of these he printed twenty-six volumes, 
 and incurred thereby a debt owing to him by 
 the Government of ,3,000, which he had great 
 difficulty in getting paid, " owing," says Mr. 
 Knight, " to every sort of jobbery and fraud 
 during most part of the eighteenth century 
 . . . of under-secretaries and auditors of 
 accounts." 
 
 In 1736 he printed the " Daily Journal," and 
 in 1738 the " Daily Gazetteer." Some noblemen 
 and authors founded, in 1736, "A Society for 
 the Encouragement of Learning," and ap- 
 pointed him to be one of the printers. The 
 Society was intended to make authors independent 
 of publishers. It soon collapsed. 
 
 " These years," says Mrs. Thomson, " were
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 59 
 
 for Richardson a period of much domestic 
 trouble. His first wife, overwhelmed by grief 
 at the loss of all her children, died in 1731. He 
 did not long remain a widower, and the next 
 year he married Elizabeth Leake, the daughter 
 of a bookseller at Bath. Their eldest child, 
 Elizabeth, born in 1733, lived only a few months, 
 but Mary, born in 1734, Martha, in 1736, Anne, 
 in 1737, and Sarah, in 1740, all survived their 
 father. There was also a son, Samuel, born 
 in 1739, and buried in 1740. Richardson felt 
 his bereavements deeply." 
 
 Thus Samuel Richardson pursued the even 
 tenour of his way till 1740, when two members 
 of the trade Mr. Rivington and Mr. Osborne 
 proposed to him to undertake for them a 
 literary work rather more interesting than "in- 
 dexes and dedications." Here is his own 
 account of the affair : " Two booksellers, my 
 particular friends, entreated me to write for 
 them a little volume entitled, ' Familiar Letters 
 to and from Persons in Business and other 
 Subjects," in a common style on such subjects 
 as might be of use to those country readers who 
 were unable to write for themselves. 'Will it 
 be any harm,' said I, ' in a piece you want to
 
 60 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 be written so low, if we should instruct them 
 how they should think and act in common cases 
 as well as indite ? " They were the more urgent 
 with me to begin the little volume for this hint. 
 I set about it, and in the progress of it wrote 
 two or three letters to instruct handsome girls, 
 who were obliged to go out to service, as we 
 phrase it, how to avoid the snares that might be 
 laid against their virtue. And hence sprung 
 " Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded," l which appears 
 to have been written in three months. 
 
 Evidently " Pamela " " sprung " from the ''two 
 or three letters" and not from the volume sug- 
 gested by R. and O.. which was a separate 
 work. 
 
 Fielding ridiculed " Pamela " in his " Joseph 
 Andrews, "and Richardson ever afterwards spoke 
 very bitterly of his rival. It is curious that 
 neither of these two admired writers (of totally 
 different schools) could discover the least merit 
 in the other's works. Fielding laughed at the 
 " puny Cockney bookseller pouring out endless 
 volumes of sentimental twaddle," and held him 
 up to scorn as "a moll-coddle and a milksop." 
 
 1 See Footnote ante, page 50.
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 6l 
 
 Richardson said that "had he not known 
 Fielding, he should have believed the author of 
 ' Joseph Andrews ' to have been an ostler." 
 
 Highly as his reputation as an author was 
 raised by " Pamela," he acquired, and justly, 
 still higher fame by " Clarissa Harlowe," " the 
 first four volumes of which, with a preface by 
 Warburton, appeared in 1747, and the last four 
 by the end of 1748. This work soon won for 
 him a European reputation." D.N.B. Mrs. 
 Barbauld says she "very well remembers a 
 Frenchman who paid a visit to Hampstead for 
 the sole purpose of finding out the house in the 
 Flask Walk 1 where Clarissa lodged, and was 
 surprised at the ignorance or indifference of 
 the inhabitants on that subject. The Flask Walk 
 was to him as much classic ground as the rocks 
 of Meillerie to the admirers of Rousseau." 
 
 His next and last great work was " Sir Charles 
 Grandison," which was received with great en- 
 
 1 Mr. George Stevens lived in a house just on the rise 
 of Hampstead Heath. It was paled in, and had, im- 
 mediately before it, a verdant lawn skirted with a variety 
 of picturesque trees formerly a tavern, known by the 
 name of ' The Upper Flask,' and which my fair readers 
 will recollect to have been the same to which Richardson 
 sends Clarissa in one of her escapes from Lovelace." 
 ("Nichols* Literary Anecdotes.")
 
 62 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 thusiasm. Mr. Knight, with prophetic vision, 
 says : " I fear there will never be a revival of 
 three-volume novels in large type, of the devotion 
 which rarely wearied of a story told in some 
 three or four hundred epistles. I lately asked 
 at a country circulating library for 'Clarissa' 
 and ' Sir Charles Grandison,' and the worthy 
 caterer of literary novelties told me he had 
 never heard of these books." "Clarissa" was 
 originally published in eight volumes, and has 
 frequently been reprinted since Mr. Knight's 
 time in the same number of volumes and in 
 other forms. As to "three-volume novels," they 
 have had a tremendous vogue since he wrote in 
 1865, but now in 1901 it can truly be said, as 
 he said then, " there will never be a revival of 
 them." 
 
 Richardson, like John Dunton, had cause to 
 complain of the want of copyright in Ireland. 
 He had hurried forward the printing of " Sir 
 Charles Grandison," in order to be the first in 
 that market, but he was beaten. The sheets 
 were stolen from his printing office, and three 
 Irish booksellers (Dunton's " Felonious Lee " 
 may have been mixed up with them) each pub- 
 lished cheap editions of nearly half the work,
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 63 
 
 before a volume appeared in England. He had 
 heard an Irish bookseller boast that he could 
 procure from any printing office in London 
 sheets of any books printed in it, and while it 
 was going on. "This occurrence," says Mr. 
 Knight, "excited naturally the indignant de- 
 nunciation of the English Press." "The 
 Gray's Inn Journal " observed that " a greater 
 degree of probity might be expected from book- 
 sellers, on account of their occupation in life and 
 connections with the learned. What then should 
 be said of Messrs. Eckshaw, Wilson, and 
 Saunders, booksellers in Dublin, and per- 
 petrators of the vile act of piracy? They 
 should be expelled from the Republic of Letters, 
 as literary Goths and Vandals who are ready to 
 invade the property of every man of genius." * 
 
 Dr. Johnson wrote of Richardson, who had 
 contributed one or two papers to the " Rambler," 
 as " an author who had enlarged the knowledge 
 
 1 Nichols gives in full a long letter " From the Courts 
 of Parnassus," addressed to " The Students of Trinity 
 College in Dublin." In it he writes : "We do hereby 
 enjoin our young collegians, in a collective body, to 
 march to the respective houses of the said Peter Wilson, 
 John Eckshaw, and Henry Saunders, their bodies to 
 seize, and in solemn procession to proceed with the same
 
 64 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 of human nature, and taught the passions to 
 move at the command of virtue." 
 
 In 1754 he was chosen Master of the Sta- 
 tioners' Company, all the duties of which he 
 was well fitted to perform, says Mrs. Thomson, 
 except that of hearty participation in the 
 banquets. " I cannot but figure to myself," 
 said Thomas Edwards, " the miserable example 
 you will set at the head of the loaded tables, 
 unless you have two stout jaw-workers for your 
 wardens, and a good hungry Court of Assistants. 
 Yours indeed is an example which, were the 
 Company to follow, your cook's place would be 
 in effect a sinecure." The new Master's weak 
 health had for some time necessitated a vege- 
 tarian and water diet. 
 
 An imprisoned debtor wrote to him in praise 
 of "Sir Charles Grandison," which he said 
 had in a few hours " done for him what five 
 years' imprisonment, with all the want and in- 
 to the place where William Wood, hardwareman, was 
 executed in effigy, and then and there the said persons in 
 a blanket to toss, but not till they are dead." . . "Given 
 on Parnassus, the loth of October, in the year of the 
 Homeric zera two thousand seven hundred and fifty- 
 three. By order of Apollo. JONATHAN SWIFT, Secre- 
 tary."
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 65 
 
 digence imaginable annexed to it, could not 
 do." Another correspondent, one Eusebius 
 Sylvester, wrote to him in a similar strain, prais- 
 ing his books, flattering his vanity, and begging 
 for a loan. Richardson replied to this latter in 
 a long letter, sent him ^25, and apologised for 
 the smallness of the loan on the score of many 
 calls upon his purse. 
 
 Mrs. Piozzi, in " Johnsoniana," says : " We 
 were talking of Richardson, who wrote 'Clar- 
 issa.'" "You think I love flattery," says Dr. 
 Johnson, " and so I do ; but a little too much 
 always disgusts me ; that fellow Richardson, on 
 the contrary, could not be contented to sail 
 quietly down the stream of reputation without 
 longing to taste the froth from every stroke of 
 the oar." 
 
 As a proof of Richardson's good nature, Dr. 
 Johnson gives a curious instance. " I remember 
 writing to him from a sponging house, and was 
 so sure of my deliverance through his kindness 
 and liberality that, before his reply was brought, 
 I knew I could afford to joke with the rascal 
 who had me in custody, and did so over a pint 
 of adulterated wine for which, at that instant, I 
 had no money to pay." 
 F
 
 66 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 Mr. Nichols quotes from a MS. of Mr. 
 Whiston, a bookseller of the period, in which 
 he says that Richardson, " being very liable to 
 passion, he directed all his men, it is said, by 
 letter, not trusting himself to reprove by words 
 which threw him into a passion and hurt him, who 
 had always a tremor in his nerves." Nichols says 
 this was not the reason, though the fact was cer- 
 tainly true it was rather for convenience, and 
 because his principal assistant, Mr. Tewley, was 
 deaf. 
 
 Richardson never allowed his immense popu- 
 larity as a writer to interfere with his business 
 occupation as a printer. He regularly attended 
 his office in Salisbury Court, and he was evi- 
 dently in very prosperous circumstances. He 
 purchased a moiety of the Patent of Law Printer, 
 at Midsummer, 1760, and carried on that de- 
 partment of business in partnership with Miss 
 Catherine Lintot. 
 
 He often regretted that he had only females 
 to whom to transfer his business, but he had 
 taken in to assist him a nephew, who relieved 
 him from the more burdensome cares of it, and 
 who eventually succeeded him. (Nichols.) 
 
 He had lived in a country house at North
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 67 
 
 End, Hammersmith, for many years. In 1754 
 he removed to Parson's Green, Fulham. 
 
 His house was generally rilled with his friends 
 of both sexes. He was regularly there from 
 Saturday to Monday, and frequently at other 
 times, but never so happy as when he made 
 others so, being himself, in his narrower sphere, 
 the Grandison he drew ; his heart and hand were 
 ever open to distress. (Nichols.) 
 
 The accompanying picture of this house is 
 from an old engraving in my possession dated 
 1799. It bears the inscription which is now 
 underneath it. But as "Clarissa" was pub- 
 lished in 1747-48, it could not have been written 
 in 1754 I cannot vouch for its authenticity. 
 
 In 1757 his eldest daughter, Polly, was mar- 
 ried to Mr. Philip Ditcher, a Bath surgeon ; she 
 died a widow in 1783 ; Patty, who acted as his 
 amanuensis, was married after her father's death 
 in 1762 to a Mr. Bridgen; and Sarah, the 
 youngest, to Mr. Crowther, surgeon of Boswell 
 Court. Nancy, the third daughter, died unmar- 
 ried in 1803, the last survivor of the family. 
 
 " I have a very good wife," said Richardson 
 to Edwards, " I am sure you think I have. But 
 the man who has passed all his days single is
 
 68 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 not always a loser." In another letter he writes, 
 half playfully : " Many who think they know us 
 well (God help them, or rather God help me !) 
 imagine I carry every point, so meek my wife 
 Be quiet, standers by, you don't always see 
 more than those who play. Let me warn you 
 to doubt your own judgments when you take 
 upon you to decide in favour of the yielding 
 qualities of a meek wife, not obstinacy itself is 
 more persevering ! " 
 
 It need not be inferred from this that Richard- 
 son was not an affectionate husband ; there may 
 have been occasional exhibition on both sides 
 of incompatibility of temper, that is all. " His 
 esteem for his wife," says Mrs. Thomson, "is 
 further proved by the fact that he appointed her 
 one of the executors of his will, which he made 
 in 1757. His increasing infirmities can scarcely 
 have improved a temper naturally irritable and 
 exacting." 
 
 He was seized on a Sunday evening with a 
 most severe paralytic stroke, and after lingering 
 unconscious for two days he died on July 4th, 
 1761. He was buried beside his first wife in 
 the middle aisle of St. Bride's Church, which 
 had witnessed the baptism of all his children.
 
 SAMUEL RICHARDSON 69 
 
 I may properly conclude this rapid sketch by 
 quoting his own portrait of himself : 
 
 "Short, rather plump, about five feet five 
 inches, fair wig, one hand generally in his bosom, 
 the other a cane in it, which he leans upon 
 under the skirt of his coat that it may imper- 
 ceptibly serve him as a support when attacked 
 by sudden tremors or dizziness which too fre- 
 quently attack him, but not, thank God ! so 
 often as formerly ; looking directly foreright, as 
 passers by would imagine, but observing all that 
 stirs on either hand of him without moving his 
 short thick neck ; hardly ever turning back ; of 
 a light-brown complexion, teeth not yet failing 
 him, smooth-faced and ruddy-cheeked ; at some 
 times looking to be about sixty-five, at other 
 times much younger ; a regular even pace, steal- 
 ing away the ground rather than seeming to rid 
 it; a grey eye too often overclouded by misti- 
 ness from the head; by chance lively, very 
 lively it will be if he have hope of seeing a lady 
 whom he loves and honours."
 
 V. THOMAS GENT, PRINTER, OF 
 YORK, 1691-1778 
 
 OTHING was known of Thomas 
 Gent's early history beyond what 
 could be incidentally gathered from 
 his own publications, until many 
 years after his death, when a manuscript was 
 discovered in his own handwriting by Mr. Thorpe, 
 bookseller in Bedford Street, Covent Garden. 
 The title was, " The Life of Mr. Thomas Gent, 
 Printer, of York, written by himself." It was 
 written in 1746, when he was fifty-three years 
 old, so that presumably he was born in I6Q3. 1 
 The volume was published by Mr. Thorpe in 
 
 1 At the end of the book it is stated that he died 
 May igth, 1778, in his eighty-seventh year. In that 
 case he must have been born in 1691 or 1692.
 
 THOMAS GENT, 1691-1778, 
 Printer of York. 
 
 Front a ntezzotinto engraving by Valentine Green, 
 after Nathan Drake.
 
 THOMAS GENT 71 
 
 1832. It is to this volume that I am chiefly 
 indebted for the matter which forms this sketch. 
 
 It is a story of hardships bravely borne, 
 described sometimes with quaint unconscious 
 humour of success sometimes within his grasp, 
 but never really attained, and of a disastrous 
 ending. Southey, mentioning him in "The 
 Doctor," says the volume "contains much in- 
 formation relating to the state of the press in 
 his days, and the trade of literature." It would 
 be quite impossible, and I think uninteresting, 
 to go into dry details of this description. 
 
 Gent was a native of Ireland. It so happened, 
 however, when Mr. Thorpe came to print the 
 book, three closely printed folios were missing, 
 the first, the third, and the ninth. Doubtless 
 the first contained an account of his parentage 
 and his childhood. His parents were resident 
 in Ireland, and when the story begins he was 
 apprenticed to a printer in Dublin, who by his 
 own account treated him so badly that, after 
 having served from the age of twelve or thirteen 
 to sixteen or seventeen, he ran away, and it is at 
 this point the MS. begins. He got a shilling 
 from his mother, gave her and his father a fare- 
 well kiss, and, without a hint as to where he was
 
 72 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 going, he started with three small loaves of bread 
 and seventeen pence in his pocket. He managed 
 to creep unperceived into the hold of Captain 
 Wharton's ship just starting for England, and 
 there was hidden when his father and master 
 came aboard in search of him, but he was not 
 discovered. 
 
 On the fourth day, after a very rough passage, 
 the ship reached England. Knowing that his 
 stock of cash would not pay for his passage, he 
 tremblingly approached Captain Wharton and 
 offered him his waistcoat. 
 
 " ' Pretty lad,' said the captain, 'why, if I were 
 to strip you of your rayment you might happen 
 to be starved to death ; had my sailors told me 
 you were hid in my ship, upon my word, you 
 should have been delivered up to your friends. 
 What will your parents think ? Here, young lad, 
 take this sixpence, endeavour to get employment, 
 and take to good ways.' " 
 
 Gent, with tears, thanked the good old captain, 
 and told him that if ever he met him again he 
 would recompense him. 
 
 He landed and set off on foot for Chester, but 
 there was no printing office in Chester in those 
 days, so he started at once for London, and on 
 the way was near being kidnapped by a company
 
 THOMAS GENT 73 
 
 of recruiting soldiers, and after other adventures, 
 footsore, weary, and famishing, he reached St. 
 Albans ; there a good landlord and his wife took 
 pity on him, gave him a good supper and sent 
 him to bed. 
 
 At this point the narrative is interrupted by 
 the second missing leaf, and when it resumes we 
 find our hero in London, in the employ of a Mr. 
 Midwinter, a printer, who carried on his trade at 
 Pie Corner. There he made the acquaintance 
 of a Dublin schoolfellow, son of Sir Richard 
 Levintz, who took him about London to see the 
 sights ; he was a very handsome young fellow, of 
 good character, about to start on his travels in 
 the East, and Mrs. Midwinter, seeing that her 
 apprentice had such an honourable acquaintance, 
 began to treat him with greater respect than 
 before. 
 
 He was now about twenty years old, and had 
 been seven years at the trade, including his 
 Dublin time ; his master had usually treated him 
 with great cruelty, and had recently given him a 
 thrashing because he had told him that he was 
 sadly in want of a pair of breeches, but he now, 
 to his surprise, began " to show a glorious spirit 
 of generosity " towards him. Gent had with great
 
 74 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 pains taken down a sermon by Dr. Sacheverel 
 after his suspension, by the printing of which his 
 master made near ^30 in one week. Midwinter 
 sent for him, presented him with a crown piece, 
 and told him that as he had now been seven 
 years at the business he might have his freedom 
 and work with whom he pleased. 
 
 " Upon their asking me what money I had I 
 told them my poor stock amounted to a tester ; 
 that indeed I had a shilling, but sixpence of it 
 went to pay for a letter that my dear mother 
 hapily sent me, wherein, considering my condition, 
 she had ordered me forty shillings and half a 
 dozen shirts, to be received from Mr. Gunnell, 
 in Throgmorton Street." 
 
 He then engaged with Mrs. Bradford, a Quaker 
 and widow in Fetter Lane, who treated him 
 kindly, and before the week was out he had 
 earned ijs., and having ^3 in the bank and a 
 new suit of clothes of ^3 price which Mr. Mid- 
 winter had given him, he thought himself very 
 well off in the world ; with this money he bought 
 a new composing stick, a pair of scissors, a sliding 
 box to contain them, a galley, and other appurten- 
 ances. 
 
 Not knowing when he was well off, he left the 
 widow, and engaged with a Mr. Mears, in Black-
 
 THOMAS GENT 75 
 
 friars. In his office he was called upon to pay 
 Ben-money, and was initiated into some of the 
 mysteries of the trade. He was obliged to sub- 
 mit to what he says was the immemorial custom. 
 
 " ' I was dubbed,' says he, 'as great a cuz as 
 the famous Don Quixote. It commenced by 
 walking round the chapel singing an alphabetical 
 anthem, tuned literally to the vowels ; striking 
 me, kneeling, with a broad sword ; and pouring 
 ale upon my head. My titles were exhibited 
 much to this effect : " Thomas Gent, Baron of 
 College Green, Earl of Fingal, . . . and Lord 
 High Admiral of all the boys in Ireland, etc." ' 
 
 After this initiation it was a matter of surprise 
 to him to find that he was still regarded as a 
 " foreigner," and in a fortnight's time he was dis- 
 charged, not having as yet taken up his freedom. 
 " This," says he, " was like a javelin to my soul, 
 especially when I thought I had left Mrs. Brad- 
 ford, in whose house I had lived without envy or 
 danger." 
 
 After this he became a " smoulter," that is, 
 he jobbed about from one office to another, and 
 this kind of work afforded him a tolerable sub- 
 sistence, and made him just a little proud, so 
 that when he met Mears he did not show him 
 " the least respect but scorn."
 
 76 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 After some months had passed he heard of a 
 Mr. White, of York, who wanted a journeyman 
 at the business. Mr. White offered him jiB a 
 year, besides board, washing, and lodging. He 
 agreed, and, on April i2th, 1714, he set off on 
 foot from London for York. On his arrival he 
 says : 
 
 " The first house I entered to inquire for my 
 new master was in a printer's at Petergate the 
 very dwelling that is now my own, by purchase; 
 but not finding Mr. White therein, a child brought 
 me to his door, which was opened by the head 
 maiden, that is now my dear spouse. She ushered 
 me into the chamber where Mrs. White lay some- 
 thing ill in bed, but the old gentleman was at his 
 dinner by the fireside, sitting in a noble armchair 
 with a good large pie before him, and made me 
 partake heartily with him. I had a guinea in my 
 shoe lining, which I pulled out to ease my foot ; 
 at which the old gentleman smiled and pleasantly 
 said it was more than he had ever seen a journey- 
 man save before. I could not but smile too, be- 
 cause that my trunk, with my clothes and eight 
 guineas, was sent about a month before to Ireland, 
 where I was resolved to go and see my friends, 
 had his place not offered to me as it did." 
 
 Mr. White had plenty of business to employ 
 several persons, there being few printers in Eng- 
 land at that time except in London. He was 
 King's printer for York and five counties, which
 
 THOMAS GENT 77 
 
 appointment he obtained through having printed 
 the Prince of Orange's declaration when it had 
 been refused by all the printers in London. The 
 death of Queen Anne at Kensington, on July 
 2 gth, occasioned the proclamation of King 
 George I. on August 3rd following, at York, and 
 " it was," says Gent, "on the steps of the mag- 
 nificent cathedral that I perceived the comely, 
 tall presence of the most illustrious prelate Sir 
 William Dawes, the Archbishop, in company with 
 the Lord Mayor and chief citizens by whom the 
 ceremony was performed." 
 
 He made himself as comfortable as possible 
 with Mr. White till his year was out, but he 
 would not agree to stay with him any longer till 
 he had seen his friends in Ireland. Meanwhile 
 " he vented the diversity of his flowing pas- 
 sions " in a long poem of thirty -six stanzas, in 
 which he tells the story of his early days and his 
 various adventures down to the time of writing. 
 I will quote the first two verses and the last but 
 one. The first verse presents the kingdom of 
 Ireland in the eighteenth century as in a more 
 happy state of peace and contentment than that 
 in which it has been customary to regard it 
 during the nineteenth century.
 
 78 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 " In fair Hibernia first I sucked in breath, 
 
 A pleasant isle, where spreading plenty flows, 
 
 A kingdom which, of all the realms on earth, 
 Is sure most happy, free from mortal foes, 
 
 Where wars and animosities do cease, 
 
 And, 'midst of war, enjoys a silent peace. 
 
 " Of meek and gentle parents dear I came, 
 Whose great delight was once in me their son ; 
 
 Who though for greatness they bore not a name, 
 Yet for proximic virtue, bright have shown ; 
 
 Were rich in grace, though not in glittering ore, 
 
 They had enough, and who need value more ? " 
 
 He goes on to tell of his apprenticeship in his 
 thirteenth year, and " three years with a tyrant, 
 strove to live," and then he bolted, as has 
 been already told. In the thirty-fifth verse (the 
 last but one) he writes : 
 
 "And now to ancient Ebor's city come, 
 
 Perchance I may some time recline my head, 
 
 Till future years shall make me spring in bloom, 
 Or I, through fate, or all my foes, be dead ; 
 
 Which way it will, I trust that God will be 
 
 My guardian here and in eternity." 
 
 Miss Alice Guy, the young woman who 
 "opened the door to him," was the daughter 
 of a schoolmaster at Ingleton ; she seems to 
 have been a girl of considerable attractions. 
 He was evidently smitten by her charms, but he 
 never told his love, because he had no desire for
 
 THOMAS GENT 79 
 
 matrimony till he could afford to give his wife a 
 handsome maintenance. His master's grandson, 
 Mr. Charles Bourne, a deserving young fellow, 
 was also one of her admirers. Being now on 
 the point of starting for Ireland, he told Miss 
 Guy that he should respect her as one of his 
 dearest friends ; she presented him with a little 
 dog as a companion on the road. His rival, 
 young Bourne, and several of his late com- 
 panions accompanied him as far as Bramham 
 Moor on May 15, and after numerous adven- 
 tures at sea, and having been cast away on the 
 Isle of Man, where he remained some weeks, he 
 eventually arrived in Dublin. 
 
 During his stay at Douglas he came in con- 
 tact one rainy evening in a public-house with an 
 atheistical exciseman, and when he was inno- 
 cently praising God for His preservation of his 
 ship's company, he deridingly mocked, and 
 hinted as if Almighty God had no hand in 
 human concerns that way. " No, no," said he, 
 " think not that your preservation was any con- 
 cern of His." On this subject they had a long 
 discussion : 
 
 "Though I was but young," said he, "to 
 engage with a man of his age and capacity, with
 
 80 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 a sort of mathematical genius, yet I argued as 
 well as I could from the Holy Scriptures. . . . 
 He called me a poor, pious philosopher. The 
 company round seemed mightily pleased with 
 what I said, called him an atheistical foolish un- 
 mannerly fellow, and told him that he had now 
 met with his match upon this he flung away in 
 a huff." 
 
 The company were very well pleased at his 
 absence, and they treated our orator willingly. 
 
 " ' When I reached my father's house, as our 
 dutiful custom is there, I fell on my knees to ask 
 his blessing. The good old man took me up 
 with tears in his eyes, blessed me, saying, 
 'Tommy, I hardly knew thee.' My mother 
 being at my sister Standish's, I went thither, 
 and found her in the parlour, and she as little 
 knew me, till, falling in the same position, I dis- 
 covered her wandering son. The children, my 
 nephews and nieces, ran out of the pleasant 
 garden to behold their uncle, and, in short, I 
 was as much made of as my heart could desire ; 
 but the most fond of me was my dear niece, Ann 
 Standish, a perfect beauty." 
 
 Gent soon engaged himself with Mr. Thomas 
 Hume, a printer, but he had not been there 
 long before he met with " a sad persecution " 
 from his old master, Powell, 1 who employed 
 
 1 Dunton says of this man : " His person is handsome, 
 and his mind has many charms. He is the very life and
 
 THOMAS GENT 8 1 
 
 officers to seize him for running away from his 
 apprenticeship. This, he says, "was a cutting 
 stroke, and with extreme sorrow pierced me, 
 even, I may say, to the very marrow of my 
 soul." His father and his brother-in-law offered 
 Powell a certain sum for his releasement. 
 
 " But this made him insist the more ; so that, 
 upon due consideration, finding there was no 
 other, indeed no better remedy, that the best of 
 men have their troubles, that King George him- 
 self just then had an unnatural rebellion raised 
 in his kingdom, that nothing could be worse to 
 me than Powell's tyranny, ... I determined to 
 leave my native country once more. About that 
 time I received a letter from my dearest, at 
 York, that I was expected thither, and thither 
 too, purely again to enjoy her company, was I 
 resolved to direct my course." 
 
 On July 8 he took leave of his friends. On 
 the 1 3th he reached Liverpool. 
 
 [At this point there is another break in the 
 narrative, and when it is resumed he is on his 
 way to London, having apparently spent some 
 time in York in the years 1715 and 1716.] 
 
 Now we find him again employed by his old 
 
 spirit where he comes, and it is impossible to be sad if he 
 sets upon it ; he is a man of a great wit and sense, and I 
 hope as much honesty. . . . He is a good man, and a 
 good printer, as well as a good companion. " 
 
 G
 
 82 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 friend, Midwinter, and fighting Henry Lingard, 
 one of his fellow apprentices. 
 
 "Lingard swore he would fight me whether I 
 would or no. I gave him all the good words I 
 could to be quiet, but in vain. . . . ' I wish,' 
 said I, ' they that put you on, like a dog, to worry 
 me, would appear as open as you do ! ' ' Dog ! ' 
 said he. With that he lets drive the first stroke, 
 which obliged me to return his salutation. I 
 beat him heartily in the case room, and then we 
 tumbled like fighting cats, downstairs amongst 
 the presses. The lye-trough standing at the 
 bottom, he happened to fall with his head 
 therein, when that unholy liquid smeared him 
 to some purpose ; we descended down another 
 pair of grades, where the paper-bank tumbled 
 after us for company into the back-kitchen, and, 
 notwithstanding his great strength, it was my 
 happy fortune, through God's good providence, 
 to give him that just, though severe correction, 
 that he ran howling like a dog indeed that had 
 lost his ears to complain of me to his indulgent 
 parents. . . . Afterwards never young persons 
 proved better friends than he and I together." 
 
 Shortly after this he received a letter from 
 " his dear " at York, referring clearly to some- 
 thing mentioned in the missing pages telling 
 him that " the poor condemned persons had 
 been hanged for stealing three halfpence ! " 
 which after all it appears they did not steal. 
 The story told is rambling and confused, but
 
 THOMAS GENT 83 
 
 a very touching one, though too long for 
 quotation. 
 
 It appears that Mrs. White, the widow of his 
 old employer in York, was so touched by the 
 speeches of the two men, Barren and Bourne, 
 before they were hanged at Tyburn, York, that 
 she determined to print their speeches, in which 
 two men who were the means of bringing them 
 to the gallows, named Jackson and King, were 
 characterized as perjurers. These men prose- 
 cuted poor Mrs. White, judgment went against 
 her, and she lost "near fourscore pounds." Mr. 
 Gent says : 
 
 " I should not have mentioned this shocking 
 digression if I had not ascertained how much 
 Mrs. White was affected by my absence. Often 
 would she say to my dearest, " Alas ! had poor 
 Gent been with me ! Though young, he was 
 adorned with prudence, and I am sure would 
 not have done anything whereby I could have 
 been hurt in this barbarous manner. How does 
 he do ? Does he never write to you ? I wonder 
 what's the reason he never lets me know so 
 much as how he lives." 
 
 After this Mrs. White continued for some 
 time in a languishing condition, "attended care- 
 fully by my dear." Her death was universally 
 lamented.
 
 84 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 In the year 1717 he had the great happiness 
 of being made freeman of the Company of 
 Stationers, and on October gth commenced 
 citizen of London at Guildhall. Shortly after 
 this his parents informed him that his first 
 master, Powell, had accepted ^5 for his dis- 
 charge, with a willing heart, wishing him all 
 manner of happiness. Thus he was absolutely 
 free both in England and Ireland, which made 
 him " give sincere thanks to the Almighty from 
 the inmost recesses of his soul." 
 
 Now finding himself free, though not quite 
 sufficiently furnished for marriage, he decided 
 to make another trip to York. On telling Mid- 
 winter that he was going to leave him, he called 
 him a Jesuitical dog, and bade him go at once. 
 " Sir," said he, " have you no copies of mine in 
 your trunk which you may think to get printed 
 in another place? " " Well, master," answered 
 I, " this wounds me more than the worst action 
 you could have done by me ; here's the key 
 open it, take them if you find such, and seize 
 everything I have." Mrs. Midwinter interposed, 
 and eventually things were made pleasant. 
 
 He did not then go to York, but he kept up 
 correspondence with his " dear." After various
 
 THOMAS GENT 85 
 
 employments in London, and after urgent re- 
 quest from his parents, he once more found his 
 way to Ireland. There for some time he was 
 employed with Mr. Hume, and although he 
 could but obtain common subsistence, his affec- 
 tion for his dear parents took all thoughts of 
 further advantages away, 
 
 " till Mr. Alexander Campbell, a Scotchman in 
 the same printing office, getting me in liquour, 
 made me promise to accompany him to England, 
 where there was greater likelihood of prosperity." 
 
 Accordingly he agreed to go, to the great 
 grief of his parents. " What, Tommy," said his 
 mother, "this English damsel of yours, I sup- 
 pose, is the chiefest reason why you slight us 
 and your native country. . . . Whether I live to 
 see you again or no I shall pray God to be your 
 defender and preserver." 
 
 He and his friend embarked for England, 
 reached Holyhead, climbed over Penmaenmawr, 
 and eventually arrived at Chester, where he left 
 his friend. On arriving at London he found 
 employment with Mr. Watts. Mr. Knight re- 
 minds us that this Mr. John Watts was the 
 partner of Jacob Tonson. He carried on his 
 business in Lincoln's Inn Fields ; it was in this
 
 86 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 office that a youth of nineteen, who turned out 
 to be a far greater man than Gent, worked for 
 some time, viz., Benjamin Franklin. He was 
 called the Water American, and in his " Auto- 
 biography " he states that he drank only water, 
 whilst his companion at the press drank every 
 day a pint of ale before breakfast, a pint at his 
 breakfast, a pint between breakfast and dinner, 
 a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon, and 
 another when he finished work his own exam- 
 ple caused many of his companions to give up 
 this muddling beer and drink hot water gruel 
 sprinkled with pepper. 
 
 He was enticed away from this highly respect- 
 able establishment by a Mr. Clifton, a Roman 
 Catholic, who employed him in a variety of ways 
 for some time and with whom he got into much 
 trouble. Clifton had found it necessary to move 
 his goods into the Liberty of the Fleet, and 
 there became entered as a prisoner. 
 
 " He paid me honestly almost every week, as 
 my constancy and my labour deserved. Some- 
 times in extreme weather have I worked under 
 a mean shed adjoining the prison wall, when 
 snow and rain have fallen alternately on the 
 cases. Yet the number of wide-mouthed sten- 
 torian hawkers, brisk trade, and very often a
 
 THOMAS GENT 8/ 
 
 glass of good ale nerved the drooping spirits of 
 me and other workmen. ... I remember once 
 a piece of work came from a reverend Bishop 
 vindicating the reputation of a clergyman who 
 had been committed to the King's Bench through 
 an action of scandalum magnatum, . . . and 
 though I composed the letters, I was not allowed 
 to know who was the author. The same night 
 these were packed, my master and I hiring a 
 coach were driven to Westminster, where we 
 entered a large monastic building." 
 
 They were soon ushered into a spacious hall, 
 where they found on a table a bottle of wine 
 placed for their entertainment. They were visited 
 by a grave man in black. He told them to be 
 secret, "for," said he, "the imprisoned divine 
 does not know who is his defender." "You 
 need not fear me," said my master ; and " I, 
 good sir," added I, " you may be less afraid of; 
 for I protest I do not know where I am, much 
 less your person. ... I shall forget I ever did 
 the job to-morrow and I shall drink to your 
 health with this brimful glass." This set them 
 both a laughing, and truly I was got merrily 
 tipsy, so merry that I hardly know how I was 
 driven home afterwards." 
 
 Happening afterwards to behold a state pri- 
 soner in a coach, guarded from Westminster to
 
 88 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 the Tower, " God bless me, thought I, it was no 
 less than the Bishop of Rochester, Dr. Atterbury, 1 
 by whom my master and I had been treated." 
 
 Madam Midwinter now did all she could to 
 get him back, but without avail ; he continued 
 to work with the seemingly disreputable Clifton, 
 and a few months afterwards Mrs. Midwinter 
 died, Feb. 10, 1719-20, and was buried in Isling- 
 ton churchyard near the steeple. He attended 
 the funeral, and wrote an epitaph, of which this 
 is the first verse : 
 
 "Lo ! underneath this heap of mould 
 
 My mistress dear is laid ; 
 A wife none better could be loved, 
 
 None chaster when a maid." 
 
 On one occasion he was sent by Midwinter to 
 write a description of the assizes at Kingston, and 
 he gives an account of the various trials. One 
 of them was that of a wretched sexton for steal- 
 ing dead bodies out of their graves and selling 
 them, as represented in " The Beggar's Opera," 
 " to those fleaing rascals, the surgeons " ; the 
 sexton was cleared of the new indictment because 
 
 1 Bishop Atterbury, regarded as indisputably the best 
 preacher of his day, was sent to the Tower for treason, 
 deprived of all his offices, and banished for ever from the 
 realm.
 
 THOMAS GENT 89 
 
 he had already suffered a year's imprisonment 
 for a similar misdemeanour. 
 
 Eventually Gent left Midwinter and purchased 
 some old type and a fount of new pica of Mrs. 
 Bodingham, resolving to venture on the world 
 anew with his " dearest." Shortly afterwards he 
 was taken ill and went to bed, but about two 
 o'clock in the morning he was roused up, and, 
 in dreadful pain as he was, dragged out of bed 
 by a King's messenger, and carried off to prison, 
 because he was suspected of writing something 
 about the Bishop of Rochester. Midwinter and 
 Clifton were also imprisoned with him. Nothing, 
 however, was proved against him, and he was 
 discharged. Then, his stock of goods growing 
 larger by careful industry, he set up his press 
 near the Fleet Prison, and there he wrote and 
 published some things relating to the Bishop 
 that made amends for what he had suffered 
 through wrong information on his account ; and 
 now he began to imagine that after some little 
 time he should have occasion to invite his 
 " dear " to London ; but, alas ! the course of 
 true love never did run smoothly with him. A 
 Mr. John Hoyle called on him : 
 
 " ' Mr. Gent,' said he, ' I have been to York
 
 90 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 to see my parents, and am but just returned to 
 London. I am heartily glad to see you, but 
 sorry to tell you that you have lost your old 
 sweetheart, for I assure you that she is really 
 married to your rival, Mr. Bourne.' I was so 
 thunderstruck that I could scarcely return an 
 answer. . . . The consideration of spending my 
 substance on a business I would not have en- 
 gaged in but for her sake ; my own remissness 
 occasioned this, and after all she could not be 
 much blamed for mending her fortune." 
 
 This disaster, brought about by his own dila- 
 toriness, caused his " old vein of poetry to flow 
 in upon him," and so he obtained some vent for 
 his passion. The poem comprises eight verses 
 of eight lines, entitled "The Forsaken Lover's 
 Letter to his Former Sweetheart." The first 
 two lines are a fair sample of the whole : 
 
 " What means my dearest, my sweet lovely creature, 
 Thus for to leave me to languish alone ? " 
 
 He got a neighbouring printer, Mr. Dodd, to 
 print the poem, who sold thousands of them, for 
 which he offered to pay him, " but," says he, 
 "as it was my own proper concern, I scorned to 
 accept of anything, except a glass of comfort or 
 so. I became so gracious with him and his 
 spouse that if I did not often visit them they 
 would be offended. Yet here I perceived some-
 
 THOMAS GENT QI 
 
 thing in matrimony that might have weaned me 
 from affection that way; for this couple often 
 jarred for very trifling occasions. . . . Once he 
 threw a thing at her which hit me in the head 
 and set me bleeding, at which they were mightily 
 concerned, and craved pardon, which I readily 
 granted, though I came not so frequently after- 
 wards." 
 
 This outpouring of his soul in poetry greatly 
 relieved his mind and he set to work again. 
 
 He again found employment with Mr. Watts 
 for some time, but left him, owing apparently to 
 his mania for writing. Mr. Woodfall recom- 
 mended him to 
 
 "the ingenious Mr. Richardson, in Salisbury 
 Court, with whom I stayed to finish his part of 
 the Dictionary which he had from the Book- 
 sellers', composed of English, Greek, and He- 
 brew." 
 
 Afterwards he wrought in the house of Mrs. 
 Susannah Collins, where he lived for some time 
 in great felicity but trouble with her son caused 
 him to leave and then it happened that the 
 widow of the late Mr. Dodd, who had desired 
 on his death-bed, to get him to assist her when- 
 ever opportunity served, wanted a person to 
 manage her printing business.
 
 92 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 As he was disappointed of his first love he had 
 formed the intention of disposing of his materials, 
 and was therefore the more willing to enter into 
 the employment of this gentlewoman, and he 
 soon found that her conversation and fine edu- 
 cation "almost wounded him with love," par- 
 ticularly as he must never expect to see his first 
 love again. 
 
 " But see the wonderful effects of Divine Pro- 
 vidence in all things ! . . . One Sunday morning 
 Mr. Philip Wood entering my chambers, where 
 I sometimes used to employ him too, when slack 
 of business in other places, ' Tommy,' said he, 
 ' all these fine materials of yours must be removed 
 to York,' at which, wondering, 'What mean you?' 
 said I. 'Aye,' said he, 'and you must go too, 
 without it's your own fault ; for your first sweet- 
 heart is now at liberty, and left in good circum- 
 stances by her dear spouse, who deceased but of 
 late.' ' I pray heaven,' said I, ' that his precious 
 soul may be happy, and, for aught I know, it 
 may be as you say, for indeed I think I may not 
 trifle with a widow as I have formerly done with 
 a maid.' " 
 
 He told his mistress that he had business in 
 Ireland, as an excuse for starting off at once for 
 York, promising her that he would be back in a 
 month ; if not, he had left everything in order, 
 so that she might carry on the business with any
 
 THOMAS GENT 93 
 
 other person ; but she said she would not have 
 anyone in the business but him, and she should 
 expect him to return. Respectfully taking leave 
 of her, he never beheld her again, but he heard 
 that she was very indifferently married. 
 
 He took leave of his friends at the Black Swan, 
 in Holborn,and started in the stage-coach, which 
 landed him safely in York in four days. There 
 he found his " dearest " once more, though much 
 altered from what she was ten years ago, when 
 he saw her last. " There was no need for new 
 courtship," he writes, but decency suspended the 
 ceremony of marriage for some months. Even 
 now things did not go quite smoothly : his 
 dearest's uncle, Mr. White, at Newcastle, was 
 very much against them, though his own parents 
 sent him their blessing. His goods arrived from 
 London, adding greatly to the former printing 
 office, and notwithstanding all opposition from 
 the uncle the nuptials were performed by the 
 Rev. Mr. Knight, on the loth of December, 1724, 
 in the stately cathedral dedicated to St. Peter. 
 
 Thus ends the first part of Gent's career. We 
 now find him established at York, changed from 
 the late condition of a servant to be a master, 
 from a citizen of London to the like at York.
 
 94 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 His first trouble was in the management of his 
 servants, who for a time proved to be as insub- 
 ordinate to him as they had previously been to 
 their too kind mistress, the widow ; but what 
 concerned him most was that he found the widow, 
 his wife, not altogether as angelic as his fond 
 fancy had painted her. 
 
 " ' I found her temper,' says he, ' much altered 
 from that sweet natural softness and most tender 
 affection that rendered her so amiable to me 
 while I was more juvenile and she a maiden. Not 
 less sincere, I must own, but with that presump- 
 tive air and conceited opinion . . that made me 
 imagine an epidemical distemper reigned among 
 the good women.' " 
 
 However, he wisely remembered that he was 
 but a novice in the ways of matrimony, so he re- 
 solved to accept with a sort of stoical resolution 
 some very harsh rules, that otherwise would have 
 grated on his human understanding, and likewise 
 in a Christian sense, to make his yoke as easy as 
 possible, thereby to give no offence to custom or 
 law of any kind. 
 
 Then his dear wife's uncle, White, who had a 
 printing office in Newcastle-on-Tyne, gave him 
 much anxiety. He had done all he could to pre- 
 vent their marriage, and now he vowed that he
 
 THOMAS GENT 95 
 
 would oppose him to the very utmost of his 
 power; the servants too, who were most ungovern- 
 able before his marriage, proved very little better; 
 they loitered away their time and were quite idle 
 in his absence, so that, says he, " I became sorry 
 almost to death that I was ever placed over such 
 incorrigible wretches." 
 
 His parents, who had approved of his marriage, 
 growing very ancient, desired once more to see 
 him, and to pay over to him certain moneys he 
 had intrusted them with ; so with the consent 
 of his " spouse, who was then pretty far gone 
 with child," he yielded to their desire and set 
 forth. He was very nearly shipwrecked, but 
 eventually arrived safely in Dublin, where he 
 found his mother languishing upon her death- 
 bed, and his poor father in a weak condition. He 
 continued with them about a fortnight, but whilst 
 occupied in their behalf he received 
 
 " a letter from my spouse : that her villainous 
 uncle, being come again from Newcastle, was 
 setting up, against us, a printing office, with one 
 Robert Ward, and therefore she desired my quick 
 return." 
 
 Accordingly he took shipping as early as pos- 
 sible and after a pleasant voyage reached Liver- 
 pool ; thence he hired a brave, strong horse and
 
 96 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 rode home at pleasure. He had not rode, so he 
 says, more than a few miles, but overtaking a 
 good-looking countryman and falling into dis- 
 course with him, 
 
 " I asked him what news was stirring? who 
 answered, 'Sir, I know of nothing more or greater 
 than that this day (November 3rd, 1725) is to be 
 hanged the greatest rogue in England, called 
 Jonathan Wild.' I had seen that thief-catcher 
 several times about the Old Bailey, and particu- 
 larly took notice of him when he rode trium- 
 phantly, with pistols before the criminals, whilst 
 conveying them to the place of execution." 
 
 The next day he continued his journey and 
 about midnight, to the great joy of his spouse 
 (since matrimony the " dear " has dropped out), 
 who told him that her barbarous uncle had dined 
 with her in his absence, which " showed the fel- 
 low was a perfect compound of nonsense, villainy, 
 hypocrisy, and impudence." The uncle published 
 a newspaper in conjunction with Ward, who had 
 been his father's footboy but who had married 
 a wife with a fortune and set up as a master 
 printer. 
 
 "They cried up their newspaper almost in the 
 same breath they ran down mine, with that eager 
 bitterness of spirit which they had instilled into 
 them. . . . His business was to go to the houses
 
 THOMAS GENT 97 
 
 of my customers, and substituting his papers in 
 the room of what I sent, and the prices were 
 lowered by one-third ; supposing their riches in 
 Newcastle would support through all expenses 
 whilst they endeavoured to ruin me at York. . . . 
 What a vast disparity was now from my former 
 condition in London, enjoying plenty of business 
 and beloved by the best; oppressed in York, and, 
 as it were, prosecuted by a tyrannical villain. . . . 
 But it was not long before his partner, Ward, 
 failed for debt, and was glad to become my 
 journeyman, whom I screened, though he had 
 threatened my ruin." 
 
 In October, 1725, his dear spouse was brought 
 to bed with a son, who died in the following 
 year. It was a most beautiful child. 
 
 " I wished for its life," says he, " but I was 
 not very sorry to think of its death, considering 
 what it might have been exposed to through 
 oppression of its woful parents by the villain 
 aforesaid, who was plotting our ruin to the 
 utmost of his power." 
 
 It was in the year 1726 that he got in trouble 
 through the issue of some copies of his news- 
 paper without their being stamped, for which he 
 was liable to a penalty of fifty pounds. He was 
 able to prove, however, that this had been done 
 by a servant of his, who had been corrupted to 
 print an unstamped copy : one that had been 
 H
 
 98 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 stamped was taken from a customer's house and 
 the spurious one put in its place ; information 
 was made to a magistrate, and he was sent for, 
 and was able to prove his innocence. 
 
 In 1726 he printed some books learnedly- 
 translated into English by Mr. John Clarke, 
 schoolmaster in Hull. 
 
 In 1728, his unmerciful uncle continued to 
 plot against him, so he felt himself obliged to 
 contrive some business rather than go back in 
 the world; and in 1729 he issued proposals for 
 the publication of a work relating to the antiqui- 
 ties of York. To his astonishment, old Hildyard, 
 a neighbouring bookseller, sent his son John to 
 tell him that if he printed anything relating to 
 the city he would sue him in an action of two 
 thousand pounds damages. The father had 
 printed a book of the mayors and sheriffs of 
 York already, and would have no other to be 
 done. 
 
 " This put me on viewing the book. I found 
 that his production was mere theft from a 
 lawyer's copy. ... I returned word by the 
 said coxcomb to the old fellow, that if I copied 
 after such a wretched threadbare piece he might 
 arrest me if he pleased, so turned the blockhead 
 out of my house."
 
 THOMAS GENT 99 
 
 In 1730 the great work was published, under 
 the title " The Ancient and Modern History of 
 the famous City of York, and in a particular 
 manner of its magnificent Cathedral, commonly 
 called York Minster, and the whole diligently 
 collected by T. G., York, 1730," and his joy was 
 inexpressible to be told what a kind reception it 
 met with, and he returned thanks to Heaven 
 that he had written what was thought worthy to 
 be read. 
 
 " I had several admirers, who were surprised 
 to think a person so obscure as I was generally 
 deemed should have the courage to venture on 
 so noble and pious a design ; nor was I free 
 from the sarcastic scoffs of others, whose envy 
 was far superior to their judgments ; at a peram- 
 bulation one Mr. Wiseacre reported, in ridicule, 
 what a parcel of stuff I had collected, ' such as 
 old illegible monuments and inscriptions in 
 churches, before the days of their ancient gran- 
 nams.' 'Aye,' said the Rev. Mr. Knight, 'has 
 he done so? ... I will buy one of them for 
 my serious perusal,' which he did, and was 
 pleased to tell me that what I had collected 
 deserved a larger volume and a better price. 
 Mr. Hildyard, from an enemy, turned my friend, 
 and bought and sold many." 
 
 Thenceforward for some years he brought 
 out many books of his own writing and others.
 
 100 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 Of these I can only quote some of the titles and 
 dates. 
 
 In 1731 he printed a translation of "Oppian's 
 Cynegeticks" for Dr. Mawer, and the supple- 
 ment for the Polyglott Bible. 
 
 In 1732 he printed for Mr. Thomas Baxter, 
 a schoolmaster, "The Circle Squared," "but as 
 it never proved of any effect, it was converted 
 to waste paper." 
 
 In 1773 he opened a printing office at Scar- 
 borough ; and at York he also published his 
 " History of Ripon, with the Antiquities of the 
 Most Noted Towns in the County." 
 
 In 1734 he printed "Miscellanea Curiosa" 
 for Mr. Thomas Turner, "a work which got 
 credit both to the author and to me for the 
 beautiful performance thereof." 
 
 In 1736 he published his "History of Hull." 
 There was also published in the same year a 
 work by Mr. Francis Drake, entitled " Ebora- 
 cum," in two vols. In this work the author 
 patronisingly says thst : 
 
 " he has nothing to say to Mr. Gent's work, but 
 only to assure my contemporary historian that I 
 have stolen nothing from his laborious perform- 
 ance. Whereas, Mr. T. G., as author, printer, 
 and publisher of the work himself, endeavouring
 
 THOMAS GENT IOI 
 
 to get a livelihood for his family, deserves com- 
 mendation for his industry." 
 
 To this Gent replies at some length, " As to 
 his stealing anything of mine, that expression, 
 so exceedingly vulgar, might well have been 
 spared in a polite doctor, since such are seldom 
 charged with theft, except stealing people out of 
 their graves." 
 
 In 1737 he studied music on the harp, flute, 
 and other instruments. 
 
 In 1738 he wrote and printed a pastoral 
 dialogue on the death of the Right Hon. and 
 illustrious Charles Howard, Earl of Carlisle, 
 who died at Bath, May ist, "which poem was 
 universally received with kindness and appro- 
 bation." 
 
 In January, 1739, the frost being extremely 
 intense, the rivers became so frozen that he 
 printed names on the ice. He set up a new 
 kind of press, only a roller wrapped about with 
 blankets. He was reading the verses he had 
 made to follow the names, wherein King George 
 was most loyally inserted the ice suddenly 
 cracked and all ran away, but not hearing he 
 remained but nothing happened. 
 
 In 1741, having printed the "News" for
 
 102 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 several years, for want of encouragement he 
 was obliged to give it up. 
 
 In the two following years he seems to have 
 been engaged in litigation about his premises, 
 and in 1744, when his affairs were beginning to 
 decline, his narrative closes, and it does not 
 appear that he ever continued the story. " It 
 would," says the editor of the volume, " it is to 
 be feared, have been but a narrative of a course 
 of life which was bound in shallows and in 
 miseries. . . . New and more enterprising 
 printers arose in that northern metropolis, till 
 at length Gent's press became in little request. 
 His topographical resources were exhausted in 
 his three works on York, Ripon, and Hull, and 
 when he wrote his work on " The History of 
 the East Window in York Minster," which he 
 published in 1762, he was sinking under age 
 and necessity." 
 
 A portrait was painted of him by one of the 
 Drakes, a family who were particularly attentive 
 to him in his old age, and was exhibited for his 
 benefit. 
 
 He died at his house in York on May igth, 
 1778, in the eighty-seventh year of his age, and 
 was interred in the church of St. Mary-le-Belfrey.
 
 VI. ALICE GUY. 
 
 JHE 'subject of this sketch does not 
 properly belong to that of " Book- 
 sellers of Other Days," but it has 
 somewhat to do with an old book- 
 seller's wife. It will be remembered that Alice 
 Guy was the young person who "opened the 
 door " to Thomas Gent and subsequently became 
 his spouse ; it will also be remembered that she 
 was the daughter of Richard Guy, a school- 
 master of Ingleton in Yorkshire, and it is on 
 his account mainly that I have written this 
 sketch. Since writing about Thomas Gent, I 
 have been looking through " The Doctor," by 
 Robert Southey, and I find that therein he has 
 given a sketch of Gent taken from the same 
 volume as that from which my story sprang : he
 
 104 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 has told the same story in another and of course 
 a better way, but he connects Richard Guy not 
 only with Gent, who printed for him the old 
 poem of " Flodden Field," but also with "The 
 Doctor" himself, and the account of this 
 connection is so curious and amusing that I 
 have been unable to resist the temptation of 
 endeavouring to tell a consecutive story out of 
 material which really runs through nearly 200 
 pages of " The Doctor." Of course everybody 
 knows that " The Doctor " occupies seven 
 octavo volumes, compressed subsequently into 
 one, a volume of about 700 pages of closely 
 printed double-column matter and treats de 
 omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis, but I have 
 limited myself to " The Doctor " and the school- 
 master. 
 
 In order to come to a proper understanding 
 it is necessary to begin our sketch at the begin- 
 ning. Who was " The Doctor" ? " The Doctor" 
 was Doctor Daniel Dove Daniel, the son of 
 Daniel Dove and of Dinah his wife, was born 
 near Ingleton, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, 
 on the 22nd of April, old style, 1723, nine 
 minutes and three seconds after three in the 
 afternoon. Daniel, the father, was one of a
 
 ALICE GUY 105 
 
 race of men who unhappily are now almost 
 extinct. He was commonly called " Flossofer " 
 Daniel by his neighbours. He lived on an estate 
 of six-and-twenty acres which his fathers pos- 
 sessed before him, all Doves and Daniels in 
 uninterrupted succession from time immemorial, 
 farther than registers or title-deeds could ascend. 
 Their dwelling was a bowshot to the east of the 
 church called Chapel-le-Dale, and the inter- 
 vening fields belonged to the family. Happily 
 for Daniel, he lived before the age of magazines, 
 reviews, cyclopaedias, and literary newspapers. 
 His books were few in number but they were 
 all weighty in matter or in size. He had looked 
 into all these books, had read most of them, 
 and believed all he read, except "Rabelais," 
 which he could not tell what to make of. 
 Having nothing to desire for himself, Daniel's 
 ambition had taken a natural direction, and was 
 fixed upon his son. He resolved that his son 
 should be made a scholar. 
 
 Richard Guy, in the decline of life, came to 
 settle at Ingleton, in the humble capacity of 
 schoolmaster. He was the person to whom the 
 lovers of Old Rhyme are indebted for the pre- 
 servation of the old poem of "Flodden Field,"
 
 106 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 which he transcribed from an old manuscript, 
 and which was printed from his transcript by 
 Thomas Gent, of York. In his way through 
 the world, which had not been along the king's 
 high Dunstable road, he had picked up a com- 
 petent share of Latin, and a little Greek, some 
 theoretical and practical knowledge of physic, 
 of astrology enough to cast a nativity, and he 
 had some acquaintance with alchemy. Five 
 and fifty years of life had taught him none of 
 the world's wisdom, but he had a wise heart 
 worth all other wisdom. As a schoolmaster he 
 never consumed birch enough to have made a 
 besom. Young Daniel was committed to his 
 tuition when he was approaching his seventh year. 
 
 Daniel, and his son and Richard Guy, were 
 walking together one day when young Daniel, 
 looking up in his father's face, proposed this 
 question : " Will it be any harm, father, if I 
 steal five beans when next I go into John 
 Dowthwaite's, if I can do it without anyone 
 seeing me ? " 
 
 "And what wouldst thou steal beans for," 
 was the reply, " when anybody would give them 
 to thee, and when thou knowest there are plenty 
 at home ? "
 
 ALICE GUY IO7 
 
 " But it won't do to have them given, father," 
 replied the boy ; " they are to charm away my 
 warts. Uncle William says I must steal five 
 beans, a bean for every wart, and tie them 
 carefully up in paper, and carry them to a place 
 where two roads cross, and then drop them, and 
 then walk away without ever once looking be- 
 hind me, and then the warts will go away from 
 me, and come upon the hands of the person 
 that picks up the beans." 
 
 " My boy," the father made answer, " if thy 
 warts are a trouble to thee, they would be a 
 trouble to anyone else. . . . Have nothing to 
 do with charms like that ! " 
 
 " May I steal a piece of raw beef, then," said 
 the boy, " and rub the warts with it and bury it ? 
 For uncle says that will do, and as the beef rots 
 the warts will die away." 
 
 " Daniel," said the father, " there can be no 
 lawful charms that begin with stealing. I could 
 tell thee how to cure thy warts in a better 
 manner ; there is an infallible way, which is 
 by washing thy hands in moonshine, but then 
 the moonshine must be caught in a bright 
 silver basin. You wash, and wash in the 
 basin, and a cold moisture will be felt upon
 
 108 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 the hands, proceeding from the cold rays of 
 the moon." 
 
 " But what shall we do for a silver basin ? " 
 said little Daniel. The father answered : " A 
 pewter dish may be tried if it were made very 
 bright, but it is not deep enough ; the brass 
 kettle may do better." 
 
 " Nay ! " said Richard Guy, who had now 
 begun to attend with some interest, " the shape 
 of the kettle is not suitable." So they borrowed 
 John Wilson the barber's brass basin, "for," 
 said Guy, " nobody comes to be shaved by 
 moonlight. If you come in this evening at six 
 o'clock, I will have the basin as bright and 
 shining as a good scouring can make it. The 
 experiment is curious, and I shall like to see it 
 tried. Where, Daniel, didst thou learn it?" 
 "I read it," replied Daniel, "in 'Sir Kenelm 
 Digby's Discourses,' and he says it never fails." 
 
 Accordingly the parties met at the appointed 
 time. Schoolmaster, father, and son retired to 
 a place of observation by the side of the river. 
 On a stone sate Daniel the elder, holding the 
 basin in such an inclination towards the moon 
 that there should be no shadow in it. Guy 
 directed the boy where to place himself, and
 
 ALICE GUY 109 
 
 stood looking complacently on while young 
 Daniel revolved his hands one within the other 
 as if washing them. "I feel them cold and 
 clammy, father," said the boy. "Ay," replied 
 the father, "that's the cold moisture of the 
 moon ! " " Ay," echoed the schoolmaster, and 
 nodded his head in confirmation. The experi- 
 ment was repeated on the two following nights. 
 In spite of the patient's belief that the warts 
 would waste away no alteration could be per- 
 ceived in them at a fortnight's end. 
 
 Daniel was of opinion that the experiment 
 had failed because it had not been repeated 
 sufficiently often or continued long enough. The 
 schoolmaster was of opinion that the cause was 
 in the basin, for that silver, being the lunar 
 metal, would by affinity assist the influential 
 virtues of the moonlight, which, finding no such 
 afifinity in a mixed metal of baser compounds, 
 might contrariwise have its potential qualities 
 weakened or even destroyed when received in a 
 brazen vessel and reflected from it. " Flossofer " 
 Daniel assented to this theory. Nevertheless 
 the child got rid of his excrescences in the 
 course of three or four months, then all parties 
 agreed that the experiment had been effectual,
 
 1 10 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 and Sir Kenelm Digby, had he been living, 
 might have procured the solemn attestation of 
 men more veracious than himself that moonshine 
 was an infallible cure for warts. 
 
 From this time the two " Flossofers " were 
 friends. Daniel seldom went to Ingleton with- 
 out looking in upon Guy, and Guy, on his part, 
 would walk as far with him on his way back as 
 the tether of his own time allowed. 
 
 Young Daniel was from his childhood fond 
 of books ; his uncle William used to say he was 
 a chip of the old block, and this hereditary dis- 
 position was regarded with much satisfaction by 
 both parents, whilst Guy observed his progress 
 with as much delight as Daniel himself ; he had 
 from the first conceived a liking for the boy, 
 both because of the right principle which was 
 evinced by the manner in which he proposed 
 the question concerning stealing the beans, and 
 of the profound gravity with which he behaved 
 in the affair of the moonshine. The boy had 
 indeed a kind master, as well as a happy home, 
 and was never subject to brutal treatment, nor 
 was any of that inhuman injustice ever exercised 
 upon him to break his spirit, " for which," says 
 our author, " it is to be hoped Dean Colet has
 
 ALICE GUY III 
 
 paid in purgatory ; to be hoped, I say, because 
 if there be no purgatory the Dean may have 
 gone farther and fared worse." 
 
 The intellectual education which Daniel re- 
 ceived at home was as much out of the ordinary 
 course as the books in which he studied at 
 school. "Robinson Crusoe" had not yet 
 reached Ingleton ; the only book within his 
 reach was "The Pilgrim's Progress," and this 
 he read at first without a suspicion of its alle- 
 gorical import. 
 
 " Oh ! what blockheads," exclaims our author, 
 " are those wise persons who think it necessary 
 that a child should comprehend everything it 
 reads ! " 
 
 "What, sir," exclaims a lady, who is bluer 
 than ever one of her naked and woad-stained 
 ancestors appeared at a public festival in full dye. 
 " What, sir, do you tell us that children are not 
 to be made to understand what they are taught ? 
 Are we to make our children learn things by 
 rote like parrots ? " " Yes, madam, in very 
 many cases." 
 
 " I should like, sir, to be instructed why ? " 
 " What I say is, do not feed them with meat till 
 they have teeth to masticate it. There is a great
 
 112 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 deal which they ought to learn, and must learn, 
 before they can or ought to understand it. Let 
 me tell you a story which the Jesuit Manuel de 
 Vergara used to tell of himself. When he was 
 a little boy he asked a Dominican friar what 
 was the meaning of the seventh commandment, 
 for he said he could not tell what committing 
 adultery was. The friar, not knowing how to 
 answer, cast a perplexed look round the room, 
 and, thinking he had found a safe reply, pointed 
 to a kettle on the fire, and said the command- 
 ment meant that he must never put his hand in 
 the pot while it was boiling. The very next 
 day a loud scream alarmed the family, and, 
 behold, there was little Manuel running about 
 the room, holding up his scalded finger, and 
 exclaiming, ' Oh, dear, oh, dear, I've committed 
 adultery ! I've committed adultery ! I've com- 
 mitted adultery ! ' 
 
 " That," said the author, " though I say it 
 who shouldn't, is a good story well applied." 
 
 I had no thought of introducing Daniel Dove 
 and young Daniel his son, excepting so far as 
 the boy's boyhood had some connection with 
 Alice Guy's father, Richard Guy, the school- 
 master; so I will start young Daniel on his
 
 ALICE GUY 113 
 
 great career, by stating that it was in the year of 
 our Lord 1739, having then entered upon his 
 seventeenth year, accompanied by his father,, 
 he first entered Doncaster, and was there de- 
 livered up by that excellent man to the care of 
 Peter Hopkins. Father and son loved each 
 other so dearly that this, which was the first day 
 of their separation, was to both the unhappiest 
 of their lives. 
 
 There I, too, must part with Daniel, and leave 
 him to study medicine with Dr. Hopkins, and 
 so become, as he afterwards did, and as every- 
 body knows, " The Doctor " of world-wide fame. 
 As says the author, " My Dove, my Daniel, my 
 Doctor Daniel Dove everybody's Doctor yea, 
 the World's Doctor, the World's Doctor Daniel 
 Dove ! " 
 
 Richard Guy did not live to see the progress 
 of his pupil, he died a few months after the lad 
 had been placed at Doncaster, and the delight 
 of Daniel's first return to his home was over- 
 clouded by this loss. It was a severe one too 
 for the elder Daniel, who lost in the school- 
 master " his only intellectual companion." The 
 person whom the " Doctor " employed in col- 
 lecting certain books for him, and whom Peter 
 i
 
 114 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 Hopkins also employed in the same way, was 
 Thomas Gent, the son-in-law of the school- 
 master, for whom, as aforesaid, he printed 
 " Flodden Field."
 
 WILLIAM BUTTON, F.A.S.S., 1723-1815. 
 At the age of eighty.
 
 VII. WILLIAM HUTTON, F.A.S.S., 
 OF BIRMINGHAM, 1723-1815 
 
 T was a fashion among many of the 
 old booksellers to write and pub- 
 lish an account of their own lives ; 
 if they had not done so there 
 would probably have been very little known 
 about them by their representatives of to-day. 
 
 One wonders whether there was really a com- 
 pensating sale for these quaint and curious 
 " Autobiographies," but to us at least a glimpse 
 of their doings, their manner of life, their suc- 
 cesses and their failures, must, I think, possess 
 some degree of interest. 
 
 William Hutton wrote the story of his life 
 from memory when he was seventy-five years
 
 Il6 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 old : it forms an 8vo. volume of nearly four hun- 
 dred pages. The title is : 
 
 THE 
 LIFE OF WILLIAM HUTTON, F.A.S.S. 
 
 INCLUDING 
 A PARTICULAR ACCOUNT OF 
 
 THE RIOTS AT BIRMINGHAM IN 1791, 
 
 TO WHICH IS SUBJOINED 
 
 THE HISTORY OF HIS FAMILY. 
 
 WRITTEN BY HIMSELF 
 AND PUBLISHED BY HIS DAUGHTER, 
 
 CATHERINE HUTTON. 
 
 London : BALDWIN & CRADOCK & JOY, 
 
 Birmingham : BEILBY & KNOTTS> 
 
 1816. 
 
 There have been other editions published 
 since, 1 but the material which forms this sketch 
 is taken from this edition of 1816. 
 
 Mutton's early career was not unlike that of 
 Thomas Gent. Both were cruelly treated in 
 their early days, and both were runaway appren- 
 
 1 There was a third edition, with additional notes by 
 his daughter, published in 1841 in " Knight's English 
 Miscellanies," and a fourth edition "William Hutton 
 and the Hutton Family " edited by Llewellynn Jewitt, 
 I2mo., was published in 1872 by Warne & Co.
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON 117 
 
 tices Gent, with is. $d. in his pocket and three 
 loaves in his wallet ; Hutton had zs. in his 
 pocket, which he had stolen from his uncle. 
 
 Hutton, Gent, and Dunton were all poets in 
 their way : they wrote a quantity of matter in 
 rhyme, but as far as I can pretend to judge 
 there was not a spark of the " divine afflatus " 
 in either of them. Between Dunton and Hutton 
 there was this difference as regards their birth ; 
 Hutton's mother said of him that he was the 
 largest child she ever had, but so very ordinary 
 (a soft word for ugly) she was afraid she should 
 never love him. Dunton, on the other hand, 
 says of himself that he was so diminutive a baby 
 that a quart pot could contain the whole of him, 
 but he was called " a pretty child." As a baby, 
 Dunton swallowed a bullet, which was all but 
 the death of him : in like manner Hutton when 
 he was about the same age managed to swallow 
 a large hollow brass drop, which caused the 
 utmost consternation in his family, but eventu- 
 ally the brazen bolus " did no injury." 
 
 William Hutton was born Sept. 30, 1723, at 
 the bottom of Full Street, Derby, on the banks 
 of the Derwent. In 1725, when he was two 
 years old, he began to rely wholly on his own
 
 Il8 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 memory for his facts : thenceforward he tells 
 the story of his life year by year very circum- 
 stantially. " At which," he says, " those who 
 know me are not surprised. There is not a 
 statement either false or coloured." This year 
 he was nearly drowned by tumbling into the 
 Derwent, just as Dunton had been before him. 
 
 The most remarkable event in 1726 was that 
 he tumbled downstairs from top to bottom and 
 was surprised that he escaped with life. In 
 1727 he was put into breeches and was taken to 
 visit one of his aunts who told him that he was 
 " an ugly lad, like his father." In 1728 he was 
 sent to school to Mr. Thomas West, who often 
 beat his head against a wall, holding it by the 
 hair, "but never could beat any learning into 
 it." 
 
 In 1730 his play days came to an end, and he 
 was placed in a silk mill. He had now to rise 
 at five every morning for seven years, submit to 
 the cane whenever convenient to the master, 
 and be the constant companion of the most 
 rude and vulgar of the human race. 
 
 The next year, while still working at the mill, 
 he saw the wonderful feats performed by one 
 Cadman, in flying from the top of All Saints
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON IIQ 
 
 Steeple to the bottom of St. Michael's. The 
 only other event was that his father broke his 
 walking stick while thrashing him for losing a 
 halfpenny. In 1733 his mother died and he 
 had to live among strangers. At one time he 
 fasted from breakfast one day till noon the next, 
 and then dined on hasty pudding ; he had now 
 completed the first ten years of his life, and the 
 following year he was engaged in the manufac- 
 ture of a gown and petticoat for Queen Char- 
 lotte ; " thus," says he, " an insignificant animal, 
 nearly naked himself, assisted in cloathing a 
 queen." 
 
 The year 1737 was the last of his servitude at 
 the silk mill. He had served seven years there, 
 and now he is sent to his uncle at Nottingham 
 to serve another seven years at stocking weaving ; 
 his uncle was a seriously religious man, but his 
 aunt was as serious a hypocrite. Now that food 
 was more plentiful she begrudged every meal he 
 tasted. 
 
 The year 1740 ushered in the greatest frost 
 ever remembered in those times, it lasted from 
 New Year's Day to March ; l in the severest 
 
 1 Gent mentions that it was in January, 1739, that the 
 rivers were frozen and he set up his press on the ice at
 
 I2O SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 part of it Button's wearing apparel was a thin 
 waistcoat, without lining, and no coat. In 1741 
 things went on prosperously for a time; he 
 made shift somehow to obtain a genteel suit of 
 clothes and " the girls eyed him with some 
 attention." But he detested the frame, and an 
 unhappy quarrel with his uncle caused him to 
 run away, blasted his views of happiness, sunk 
 him in the dust, and placed him in a degraded 
 position from which he did not recover for five 
 years. He tells the story of this terrible episode 
 in what he calls the " History of a Week " from 
 this story I can only give a brief summary : 
 
 His uncle had promised him a thrashing at 
 night if he failed to perform a certain piece of 
 work ; he did fail through idleness he con- 
 fessed that he could have done it if he would. 
 " Then," says he, " I'll make you." He took a 
 birch broom handle and continued his blows so 
 heavily and so long that the poor boy " thought 
 he would have broken him to pieces." He was 
 now drawing towards eighteen, and had become 
 exceedingly sensitive to female criticism. The 
 news of his thrashing had gone abroad, and a 
 
 York. The great frost of 1740 mentioned by Hutton is 
 well known.
 
 WILLIAM MUTTON 121 
 
 female acquaintance passing him next morning 
 said, sneeringly, " You were licked last night ! " 
 a remark which " stung him to the quick." He 
 put on his hat as if going to meeting, slipped 
 upstairs till the family were gone, he found ten 
 shillings in a beaufet, pocketed two shillings and 
 seemed rather to pride himself on his honesty 
 in not taking the whole. 
 
 " Figure to yourself, says he, " a lad of seven- 
 teen, not elegantly dressed, near five feet high, 
 rather Dutch built, with a long narrow bag of 
 brown leather that would hold a bushel in which 
 was neatly packed up a new suit of clothes ; also 
 a white linen bag containing a sixpenny loaf of 
 coarse blencorn bread, a bit of butter wrapped 
 in the leaves of an old copy-book ; a new Bible 
 value 3-y., one shirt, a pair of stockings, a sun 
 dial, my best wig carefully folded and laid at top 
 that it might not be crushed. The ends of the 
 two bags being slung together over my left shoul- 
 der, my best hat hung to the button of my coat. 
 I had only two shillings in my pocket, a spacious 
 world before me, and no plan of operation. " 
 
 He cast back many a melancholy look, think- 
 ing he was taking an everlasting farewell of Not- 
 tingham : he had a heavy heart and a heavy load, 
 and there was nothing light about him but the 
 sun in the heavens and the money in his pocket. 
 By ten o'clock he arrived at Derby, the inhabi-
 
 122 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 tants had gone to bed ; he passed his father's 
 door, which was open, he heard his father's foot- 
 steps not three yards away, and he retreated with 
 precipitation. " I was running," he says, " from 
 the last hand that could have saved me ! " 
 
 He took up his abode in an adjoining field on 
 the cold grass with the sky overhead and the bags 
 by his side. He rose at four, July 1 3th, starved, 
 sore, and started for Burton, where he arrived 
 the same morning, having travelled twenty-eight 
 miles and spent nothing. " I was an economist," 
 says he, "from my cradle, and the character never 
 forsook me." He took a view of the town and 
 spent one penny. The same evening he arrived 
 near Lichfield and prepared to lodge in a barn, 
 but finding it closed he left his things and went 
 on to another barn a stone's throw off which he 
 found open, and returned after an absence of 
 only a few minutes what was his surprise ! his 
 bags had disappeared. He shouted, he roared 
 after the rascal, but, says he, "I might have been 
 silent, for thieves seldom come at a call." He ran 
 raving about the road, told his loss to all he met, 
 found pity from all, but redress from none ! At 
 eleven o'clock at night he found himself in the 
 open street, " left to tell his mournful tale to the
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON 123 
 
 silent night." " It is not easy," he writes, " to 
 place a human being in a more distressed situ- 
 ation. My finances were nothing, a stranger to 
 the world and the world to me ; no employ, no 
 food to eat or place to rest, I sought repose in 
 the street upon a butcher's block." 
 
 Next day he found himself at Walsall. There 
 were no frames there. His feet were sorely 
 blistered ; he begged some fat from a butcher to 
 rub on them, and found immediate relief, and 
 then set off for Birmingham. There were three 
 stocking-weavers there. One was an old Quaker 
 named Evans, whom he asked to employ him. 
 His reply was : " 'You are a run-away apprentice; 
 go about your business.' I retreated, sincerely 
 wishing I had business to go about." He next 
 waited upon Holmes in Dale End, who gave him 
 a penny to get rid of him. The next was Francis 
 Grace, whose niece he married many years after- 
 wards ; but on this visit he was so closely ques- 
 tioned that he told three or four lies to patch up 
 a lame tale, and he left the shop with the severe 
 reflection that his lying brought him no advant- 
 age, for he was dismissed without any assistance. 
 
 " It was now about seven in the evening, July 
 1 4th, 1741, I sat to rest upon the north side of
 
 124 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 the old cross the poorest of all the poor belong- 
 ing to that great parish, of which twenty-seven 
 years after I should be the overseer." 
 
 Two men in aprons noticed his forlorn condi- 
 tion, took him to the Bell Inn, gave him bread, 
 cheese, and beer, and found him a lodging, where 
 he slept for three-halfpence. He walked on next 
 day to Coventry, then to Nuneaton and Hinckley. 
 Everywhere the word 'Prentice rang in his ears ; 
 they called him a boy and refused to employ him. 
 One man named Millward did employ him one 
 afternoon, when he earned twopence^ and his em- 
 ployer told him he would give him a bed if he 
 would promise to return to his uncle in the morn- 
 ing. On the 1 8th he turned homewards woefully; 
 he reached Ashby-de-la-Zouch with eightpence 
 left out of his 2S. " Extreme frugality," he re- 
 peats, " composes a part of my character." 
 
 On the i gth he reached home ; his father 
 gladly received him and dropped tears for his 
 misfortunes. 
 
 This unhappy ramble damped his rising spirit ; 
 he did not recover his balance for two years ; it 
 also ruined him in point of dress, for he was not 
 able to reassume his former appearance for five 
 years. " It ran me in debt," he says, " out of
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON 125 
 
 which I have never been to this day, November 
 21, 1779." 
 
 During the next two or three years nothing 
 happened except that he became for a time in- 
 fatuated with music, 1 it became his study and 
 delight. He had purchased a bell-harp whose 
 sounds he thought seraphic, but he had no books 
 and no instruction, nor the least hint as to putting 
 his instrument in tune. For six months he made 
 every effort to get a tune out of it ; he succeeded 
 at last. Then he borrowed a dulcimer and soon 
 learned to play on it. He made one like it out 
 of the boards of an old trunk, his only tools being 
 a pocket knife and a fork with one limb with 
 this he discoursed such lovely music that a young 
 baker's apprentice offered him i6s. for it, which 
 he accepted, and bought a coat with the money ; 
 his friend practised vigorously for some time till 
 he could play part of " Over the Hills and Far 
 Away," and then grew tired of it. The next time 
 he saw him he asked how he was progressing. 
 " O damn the music, I couldn't make it do. I 
 took a broomstick and whacked the strings and 
 burned the body in the oven." 
 
 1 Curiously enough, it was much about this time that 
 Thomas Gent, then in business at York, spent a year in 
 studying music. See Sketch No. V., ante.
 
 126 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 At Christmas 1 744 his servitude expired : he 
 had served two seven years to two trades, by 
 neither of which he could subsist. He con- 
 tinued as a journeyman with his uncle. In 1746 
 his inclination for books began to expand, but 
 money to buy them was wanting. His first pur- 
 chase was three volumes of the " Gentleman's 
 Magazine," 1742-4. He could not afford to pay 
 for binding, so he cobbled them together as best 
 he could. He could buy only shabby books, and 
 in this way he became acquainted with "a shabby 
 bookseller," who was also a binder, and watched 
 him at work : he never saw him perform one act 
 but he could do it himself, so strong was his de- 
 sire to acquire the art of bookbinding. With the 
 assistance of this bookseller, he soon became a 
 fair adept in binding. The first work work he 
 bound was Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis"; 
 so well was it done that the bookseller was sur- 
 prised. Charles Knight says : " Ah ! William 
 Hutton, if you had known the value of those 
 twenty-seven leaves ! All the separate editions 
 of ' Venus and Adonis ' are of great rarity." He 
 then bought from the same man, for 2S., an old 
 worn-out press which had been destined for the 
 fire. He studied its construction, and, with the
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON I2/ 
 
 aid of a hammer and a pin, he perfectly cured the 
 machine. " This," he says, " proved for forty- 
 two years my best binding-press." Now he bought 
 a tolerably genteel suit of clothes and was so 
 careful of it that it continued his best for five 
 years. It was in that year, 1747, that his good 
 uncle died. 
 
 In 1747 the desire and pride of his life was to 
 wear a watch ; he bought a silver one for 35^. ; 
 it went ill, he gave it and a guinea for another 
 one, which was quite as bad. Then he bought 
 another brass one which he soon sold for $s. 
 which he gave away in charity ; after that he 
 went without a watch for thirty years. This year 
 he began to " drop into rhime." 
 
 In 1749 he took to bookbinding as his chief 
 business, but he had no tools, and they were 
 only to be got in London, so to London he de- 
 cided to go, but he had no money; his good 
 sister raised three guineas and stitched them in 
 his collar, being certain that he would be robbed. 
 She also put 1 1 s. in his pocket. With this slen- 
 der provision he started on Monday, April 8th. 
 After a walk of ten miles he became so footsore 
 that he could only walk with difficulty. His first 
 stop was Leicester, where he left a pocket-knife,
 
 128 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 the loss of which he deplored because it was the 
 gift of a friend and so worth to him ten times its 
 money value. His next stop was at Brixworth, 
 having walked fifty-one miles and spent fivepence. 
 The following day he reached Dunstable, and on 
 the third day, weary and worn out, he arrived at 
 " The Horns " in Smithfield. He called for a 
 chop and porter, but was so jaded that he could 
 scarcely touch it. This was the only meal he 
 tasted under a roof during the whole time of his 
 stay in London. The next morning he break- 
 fasted on furmity at a wheel-barrow ; sometimes 
 he had a halfpenny worth of soup and another of 
 bread, at other times bread and cheese. " I ate 
 to live," he says. 
 
 " If a man goes to receive money it may take 
 him a long time to transact business ; if to pay 
 money it will take him less, and if he has but 
 little to pay it will take him still less. My errand 
 fell under the third class. I only wanted three 
 alphabets of letters, a set of figures and some orna- 
 mental tools for gilding books with leather and 
 boards for binding." 
 
 He soon obtained these things, and then he 
 determined to see all the sights of London that 
 were to be seen without pay ; but he did spend 
 one penny to see Bedlam. He was in London
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON 129 
 
 three days: he had walked 125 miles to London, 
 and was on his feet all the time he was there. 
 On Saturday evening, April i3th, he set out 
 for Nottingham, having four shillings left out 
 of the eleven shillings he had started with. 
 On the 1 6th he reached Leicester the land- 
 lady had carefully preserved the precious knife. 
 He reached Nottingham the same evening, 
 having walked forty miles. He had been 
 away nine days three in going, which cost 
 35-. &., three in London, which cost the same, 
 and three in returning, which cost a trifle less. 
 He brought back ^d. out of the eleven shillings 
 he started with. Surely a youth who could walk 
 250 miles in six days (that is an average of nearly 
 43 miles a day) and spend three days in perambu- 
 lating London at a total cost of ten shillings and 
 eightpence was no ordinary adventurer. He had 
 an admirable capacity for telling everything he 
 had seen, so this singular journey "furnished 
 vast matter for detail among his friends." 
 
 It was now time to look out for a future place 
 of residence. His plan was to fix upon some 
 market town within a stage of Nottingham and 
 open a shop there on market days. He fixed on 
 Southwell as his " first step to elevation." It was 
 K
 
 130 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 fourteen miles away and the town as despicable 
 as the road to it. He took a shop there at the 
 rate of 2os. a year, sent a few boards for shelves, 
 a few tools, and about 2 cwt. of trash worth per- 
 haps a year's rent of the shop ; he was his own 
 joiner, put up the shelves, and in one day " be- 
 came the most eminent bookseller in the place." 
 
 During that rainy winter he set out at five 
 every Saturday morning, carried a bundle of 
 books sometimes thirty pounds in weight, opened 
 shop at ten, starved in it all day upon bread, 
 cheese, and half a pint of ale, took from one to 
 six shillings, shut up at four and trudged back, 
 arriving at Nottingham at nine, where a mess of 
 milk and porridge always awaited him. Nothing 
 short of surprising resolution could have carried 
 him through such fruitless toil as this. 
 
 In the month of February, 1750, he took a 
 journey to Birmingham to pass a judgment on 
 the probability of future success there. He found 
 there "three eminent booksellers, Aris, Warren, 1 
 and Wollaston," and as he considered the town 
 crowded with inhabitants he thought he might 
 
 1 Mr. Knight mentions this Mr. Warren as having 
 been associated with the early literary efforts of Samuel 
 Johnson.
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON 1$! 
 
 " mingle in that crowd unnoticed by the three 
 great men, for an ant is not worth destroying." 
 
 On his return he fell into trouble through losing 
 himself in Charnwood Forest, but eventually got 
 back to Nottingham. He then gave notice to 
 quit Southwell and " prepared for a total change 
 of life." On April loth he entered Birmingham 
 for the third time to try if he could be accom- 
 modated with a small shop, and the next day 
 agreed with Mrs. Dix .for the lesser half of her 
 shop, No. 6 Bull Street, at one shilling a week, 
 and returned to Nottingham. 
 
 On May i3th a Mr. Rudsdall, a Dissenting 
 minister of Gainsborough, let him have the re- 
 fuse of his library at his own price. Mr. Ruds- 
 dall gave him a corn-chest in which the books, 
 about 2 cwt., were packed, and for payment drew 
 out the following note : 
 
 " I promise to pay to Ambrose Rudsdall one 
 pound seven shillings when I am able." Mr. 
 Rudsdall added : "You need never pay this note 
 if you only say you are not able." The books 
 made a better show and were more valuable than 
 all he possessed besides. On May 23rd, he had 
 a hard parting from his friends and arrived at 
 Birmingham on the 25th.
 
 132 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 In a few weeks he was able to tell his brother 
 who came to see him that his trade supported 
 him. Five shillings a week covered every expense 
 as food, rent, lodging, washing. " Thus," he 
 says, " a year rolled round, when a few young 
 men of elevated character and sense took notice 
 of me, I had saved 20, and was become more 
 reconciled to my situation." In this beginning 
 of his prosperity something happened which 
 ' threatened totally to eclipse the small prospect 
 before me." The overseers, fearing that he may 
 become chargeable to the parish, ordered him to 
 procure a certificate or they would remove him. 
 He wrote to his father to get one, and the reply 
 came, " that All Saints in Derby never granted 
 certificates." He was hunted by this ill nature 
 for two years. He offered to pay the levies, which 
 they refused. A new overseer, however, from 
 whom he had bought two suits of clothes for 
 ;io, consented to take them. 
 
 The next year, 1751, he took the house ad- 
 joining that of Mr. Grace, the hosier, who had 
 refused to employ him when he applied for work 
 during his runaway week, and to whom he had 
 " told several lies, and without the least advant- 
 age." He was frightened at the rent, which was
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON 133 
 
 -8 a year. Here he pursued business in a more 
 elevated style, and with more success. His new 
 clothes introduced him to new acquaintances ; 
 it was at this time that he became acquainted with 
 Mr. William Ryland, " one of the worthiest of 
 men," he writes, " with whom I contracted a close 
 and intimate friendship which has continued 
 forty-six years, and is only to be broken by 
 death." 
 
 In 1752 he had a smiling trade to which he 
 closely attended. He hired out books, and " the 
 fair sex did not neglect the shop." This hiring 
 out of books was really the beginning of a Circu 
 lating Library, the first that had ever been es- 
 tablished out of London. 1 As capital increased 
 he opened a shop on market days at Bromsgrove, 
 but found it did not pay and soon dropped it. 
 He also took a female servant who was still less 
 profitable, for during his absence she sold his 
 books for what they would fetch, left the shop, 
 "and got drunk with the money." This year 
 his neighbour Mr. Grace, being a widowet 
 
 1 The first Circulating Library in London was estab- 
 lished in the Strand by a bookseller of the name of Bathoe 
 in 1740. " Cunningham's Handbook of London." The 
 first Circulating Library in Cambridge was established by 
 Robert Watts in 1745.
 
 134 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 took his niece, Miss Sarah Cock, to keep his 
 house. 
 
 The following year Mr. Hutton cultivated ac- 
 quaintance with Miss Cock, and in 1755, June 
 23rd, he says : " I awoke before seven and rumi- 
 nating on the first object of my life I thought to 
 myself, ' What am I waiting for ? I have nothing 
 to expect, no end to answer by delay ; that which 
 must be done may as well be done now. I will 
 rise and tell my love she must be no longer 
 single.' " Mr. Grace interposed no obstacle, Miss 
 Cock was "willin," so the marriage ceremony 
 took place at St. Philip's Church. " Thus," says 
 he, " I experienced another important change, 
 and one I never wished to unchange. ... I 
 found in my wife more than ever I expected to 
 find in woman." 
 
 In 1756 his wife brought him a little daughter, 
 who proved to be the pleasure of his life. And 
 now occurred an event which proved an advan- 
 tageous change in his career. Mr. Robert Bage, 
 a paper-maker, proposed that he should sell paper 
 for him either on commission or on his own ac- 
 count. He found that he could spare about 
 200, so he chose to buy. He appropriated a 
 room and hung out a sign, " The Paper Ware-
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON 135 
 
 house." " From this small hint," says he, " I 
 followed the stroke for forty years, and acquired 
 an ample fortune." 
 
 Mr. Grace died in 1757 and left him his re- 
 siduary legatee, and his wife brought him a son. 
 He now occupied Mr. Grace's house, and kept 
 his own as a warehouse. 
 
 Prosperous times were now opening up for 
 him, and in July, 1758, his wife presented him 
 with another son. I quote the following passage 
 in full because it contains words of wisdom 
 applicable to all times and seasons : 
 
 "I perceived more profit would arise from 
 the new trade than the old; that blank paper 
 would speak in fairer language than printed ; 
 that one could only furnish the head, but the other 
 would furnish the pocket ; and that the fat kine 
 would in time devour the lean. . . . Few men 
 can bear prosperity. It requires a considerable 
 share of knowledge to know when we are well ; 
 for it often happens that he who is well, in 
 attempting to be better, becomes worse." 
 
 He concluded that, as there was a profit to 
 the seller of paper, there must be to the maker, 
 and so on this erroneous principle he longed for 
 a paper-mill, and by degrees he became, as he 
 says, "mill mad." In 1759, on taking stock, he 
 had saved in the past year ^137, exclusive of all
 
 136 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 expenses. By this time his property, exclusive of 
 his furniture, was ^777. But 1760 proved on 
 the whole a melancholy year. His wife was 
 afflicted with jaundice, one of his sons died, then 
 he himself was brought low with the jaundice, 
 and was for a long time between life and 
 death. 
 
 The next year he was worried about 'fas paper- 
 mill. He had purchased two acres of waste 
 land at Handsworth, and there he began to 
 build ; his workmen saw his ignorance, and 
 "bit me as they pleased." They said, and 
 acted up to the principle : " Let us fleece 
 Hutton ; he has money." He discharged them 
 all, let the work stand, and left himself some 
 rest. He was persuaded to convert what was 
 never finished as a paper-mill into a corn-mill. 
 He found that, as a miller, he was cheated on 
 all sides. He sold it for eighty guineas, and 
 found he had lost in cash ^229. He was so 
 provoked with his folly that he followed up 
 his business with redoubled spirit, and soon he 
 prospered ; he had no rival, and, as he says, he 
 struck the nail that would drive. " I never 
 could bear," says he, " the thought of living to 
 the extent of my income; I never omitted to
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON 137 
 
 take stock or regulate my annual expenses so as 
 to meet casualties and misfortunes." 
 
 So far I have followed Button's progress 
 almost year by year, but now that we find him 
 fairly launched in a prosperous business it is 
 unnecessary to do more than glance at him 
 now and then till he reaches the final goal, 
 and that is a long way ahead, for we have 
 now accompanied him down to the year 1763, 
 when he was only about forty, and he lived a 
 vigorous life till he was ninety-two. 
 
 No sooner did he find himself on the high 
 road to fortune by perseverance in his own trade, 
 than he must needs become discontented : he 
 had always a fondness for land, and wished to 
 call some his own. "This ardent desire for 
 dirt," says he, "never forsook me." In the 
 course of the next few years he bought and sold 
 several small estates ; sometimes he made large 
 profits by these transactions, and not unfre- 
 quently considerable losses. 
 
 In 1768 he was chosen overseer of the parish 
 of Birmingham, and thought himself " elevated 
 above his ancestors," for " none of them within 
 the reach of tradition had equalled it ; they had 
 rather been the poor than the overseers of the
 
 138 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 poor." His property by this time had reached 
 ^2,000. 
 
 As an overseer he soon became very popular, 
 especially among his brethren at the Castle for 
 by active conduct he did not only his own duty, 
 but a considerable part of theirs. He also ac- 
 quired an amiable character among the depen- 
 dent class, and his successor told him that he 
 was " the favourite of all the old women." 
 
 In 1769 he bought land at Bennett's Hill, 
 near Washwood Heath, and there he built a 
 residence for himself; he quitted the office of 
 overseer, but his friend, William Ryland, dread- 
 ing the office, gave him twenty guineas to serve 
 for him, and so he had another year of the 
 office, but he did not find this second year so 
 pleasant as the first, so he took " the tail end of 
 an overseer no more." 
 
 Ambition and the idea of being useful now 
 spurred him on to enter public life. In the 
 year 1773 he was chosen a Commissioner of 
 the Lamp and Street Act, a position which he 
 relished. His plan was to execute the Act with 
 firmness, but with mildness, but he soon found 
 there were clashing interests among the Com- 
 missioners : some wished to retain their own
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON 139 
 
 nuisances ; others to protect those of their 
 friends a rich man was also favoured beyond 
 a poor one. He was blamed for some removals 
 because he was a speaker, an advocate for im- 
 partial reform, and was not supported by his 
 brother Commissioners ; he lost some friends, 
 and so declined attendance. 
 
 The year 1779 was one of a series of misfor- 
 tunes : the carpenter who was building his 
 house cheated him heavily; a paper-maker 
 compelled him to pay ^30 for paper never 
 received; many customers failed in his debt; 
 one of his tenants broke, by which he lost 
 several hundred pounds ; the indisposition of 
 his wife began which lasted seventeen years ; 
 his daughter was taken ill of a nervous com- 
 plaint ; he had an abscess in his throat, and at 
 length he broke out in boils. 
 
 In 1 780 he says he was distressed in the midst 
 of plenty. For nine months he was mostly em- 
 ployed in writing the " History of Birmingham." 
 On showing it to Dr. Withering he pronounced 
 it " the best topographical history he had ever 
 seen." In the next year a new duty was put on 
 paper, consequently an advance in price. 
 
 In 1782 he writes :
 
 140 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 " A man may live half a century and not be 
 acquainted with his own character. I did not 
 know I was an antiquary till the world informed 
 me, from having read my history ; but when 
 told I could see it myself. The Antiquarian 
 Society of Edinburgh chose me a member, and 
 sent me an authority to splice to my name 
 F.A.S.S." 
 
 In 1784 he lost his mother as the age of 87, 
 and in 1786 he lost his sister, "a woman of an 
 extraordinary character, and as amiable as ex- 
 traordinary. Her age was 67." 
 
 In 1787, being Master of the Rules in the 
 Court of Requests, he wrote a full history of the 
 process in octavo, being his third publication. 
 This year he took his wife to Aberystwith, and 
 on his return he walked from Aberystwith to 
 Shrewsbury with his coat on his arm in two 
 days and a half, the weather being extremely 
 hot and the roads dusty ; this laid him up for a 
 month. 
 
 We now reach 1791; the year began pros- 
 perously, but terminated in disaster. He 
 writes : 
 
 " My family loved me : were in harmony. I 
 enjoyed the amusements of the pen, the court, 
 and had no pressure on the mind, but the de- 
 clining health of her I loved. But a calamity
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON 14! 
 
 awaited me I little suspected. The Riots in 
 1791, which hurt my fortune, destroyed my 
 peace, nearly overwhelmed me and my family, 
 and not only deprived us of every means of 
 restoring to health the best of women, but 
 shortened her days. I wrote a history of that 
 most savage event at the time, with a view to 
 publication, but my family would not suffer it to 
 see the light. I shall now transcribe with exact- 
 ness the MS. copy." 
 
 And now follows " A Narrative of the Riots 
 in Birmingham, July 14, 1791, particularly as 
 they affected the author." 
 
 This narrative of the Riots occupies sixty-one 
 pages of the book, and presents an interesting 
 account of the Riots and the cause of ;them. 
 One of the causes thereof seems to have arisen 
 from the members of a certain public library 
 desiring to introduce Dr. Priestley's polemical 
 works, to which the clergy were averse; this 
 produced two parties, and its natural con- 
 sequence, animosity in both. From this small 
 beginning arose a general proscription of the 
 Dissenters. A furious mob arose, calling itself 
 champion of Church and King, which, as 
 Hutton remarks, was composed of people 
 "who would have sold their King for a jug 
 of ale, and demolished the Church for a bottle
 
 142 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 of gin." Hutton was always of a peace-loving 
 nature, and said that he was "a firm friend to 
 our present Establishment, notwithstanding her 
 blemishes." He had taken no part in these 
 religious disputes, but he was known as a Dis- 
 senter and a friend of Priestley, and not a few 
 of the rioters remembered him as Chairman of 
 the Court of Requests who fined them or other- 
 wise punished them for their misdeeds. They 
 now seized the opportunity of revenging them- 
 selves. They attacked his business house in 
 the High Street, threw his furniture and exten- 
 sive stock into the street, and reduced the house 
 to a skeleton. And, not satisfied with this dia- 
 bolical deed, they went next day to his country 
 home at Bennett's Hill, and burnt down the 
 house and all its contents. What was not con- 
 sumed in the fire was carried off by the rioters. 
 
 " The fatal i4th of July was by far the most 
 important era of my life. ... A black cloud 
 was raised over my head which the sun of pros- 
 perity can never disperse. I entered Birmingham 
 July 1 4th, 1741, as a runaway apprentice, with- 
 out money, friend, or home. And that day fifty 
 years began those outrages which drove me from 
 it, and left me in a more deplorable state of mind 
 than at the former period."
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON 143 
 
 Many of his friends, Churchmen as well as 
 Dissenters, offered him the use of their houses 
 after the riots. It does not appear, however, 
 that this cruel destruction of his property brought 
 such absolute ruin upon him as he has described. 
 His actual claim for loss and damages amounted 
 to ^8,243, and of this he eventually received 
 ^5,390. Besides he was in possession of a con- 
 siderable amount of landed property. 
 
 In 1795 ne purchased an estate in Hereford- 
 shire, and in 1796, January 23rd, his beloved 
 wife died. Her loss was a very real and sore 
 trial to him, but for this loss his later days would 
 have been ideally happy. He now transferred 
 his business to his son, and during the next few 
 years he occupied his time partly in writing poems 
 and in travelling about with his daughter. He 
 concluded the writing of the story of his own 
 life in May 1798, when he was seventy-five, and 
 then he began to write the history of his family. 
 He performed most of his journeys afoot. One 
 day he walked forty-six miles, the next ten miles 
 and forty-two the third and then he fell lame, 
 having injured the tendon of Achilles and so 
 " limped out of this year and limped into the 
 next." In 1800 he lost his elder brother aged
 
 144 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 seventy-eight, and 1801 his brother Samuel 
 died at the age of sixty-seven. 
 
 " My years run round like a boy who beats 
 his hoop round a circle, and with nearly the same 
 effect, that of a little exercise. I rise at six in 
 summer and seven in winter march to Birming- 
 ham, two and a half miles, where my son receives 
 me with open arms. I return at four or five when 
 my daughter receives me with a smile. I then 
 amuse myself with reading, conversation, or study, 
 without any pressure on my mind, except the 
 melancholy remembrance of her I loved." 
 
 This year he took his daughter to the Lakes 
 and left her there whilst he took a walking tour 
 to explore the famous Roman Wall. He crossed 
 the kingdom twice in one week and six hours 
 melted in a July sun. When he rejoined his 
 daughter near Lancaster, he had walked 60 1 
 miles in thirty-five days an average of over 
 eighteen miles a day. In June 1802 the "His- 
 tory of the Roman Wall " was published. 
 
 Mr. Hutton dedicated his work on " The 
 Roman Wall " to Mr. John Nichols (of Literary 
 Anecdotes] who also published it for him. Mr. 
 Nichols quotes a letter from him in which he 
 says :
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON 145 
 
 " BIRMINGHAM, 
 
 "October 6th, 1801. 
 " DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 " I enclose for your perusal ' The History 
 of the Roman Wall.' If approved you are wel- 
 come to the work gratis. I wish it printed in 
 octavo, upon the best paper, and with the best 
 letter. ... A bold type and open words best 
 suit antiquarian eyes. As plates ornament and 
 promote the sale of the work I could furnish you 
 with five octavo drawings from Warburton's ' His- 
 tory of the Wall.' . . . You will excuse the 
 liberty I have taken in the Dedication. I am cer- 
 tain the public will excuse you and I think both. 
 
 " W. HUTTON." 
 
 In closing the dedication Hutton says : "You 
 will also pardon the errors of the work, for you 
 know I was not bred to letters ; but that the 
 Battledore, at an age not exceeding six, was the 
 last book I used at school." 
 
 Mr. Hutton ends his Introduction by saying : 
 " Perhaps I am the first man that ever travelled 
 the whole length of this Wall, and probably the 
 last that ever will attempt it. Who then will say 
 he has, like me, travelled it twice ? Old people 
 are much inclined to accuse youth of their follies ; 
 but on this head silence will become me, lest I 
 should be asked ' What can exceed the folly of 
 that man, who at seventy -eight walked six 
 L
 
 146 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 hundred miles to see a shattered wall ! ' 
 W. H ." 
 
 He was now in his old age apparently as happy 
 as could be. "What is a happy life," he says : 
 "Suppose a man endeavours after health, and, 
 by a proper use of his animal powers, can at four- 
 score walk thirty miles a day. Suppose him, by 
 assiduity and temperance, to have obtained a 
 complete independence, that he can reside in a 
 house to his wish, is blessed with a son and 
 daughter of the most affectionate kind . . . would 
 you pronounce this a happy man ? That man is 
 myself. Though my morning was lowering, my 
 evening is sunshine." 
 
 He was never more than twice in London on 
 his own concerns : the first was in April 1 749, to 
 make purchase of materials for his trade amount- 
 ing to ^3. The last was in April 1 806, fifty-seven 
 years after, to ratify the purchase of an estate 
 which cost 11, 500. * One laid a foundation for 
 the other and both answered expectation. 
 
 In 1807 "The Monthly Review," in reviewing 
 
 1 In a letter to Nichols, April 13, 1813, on the subject 
 of Bosworth Field he concludes by saying " I purchased 
 the hill, with other contiguous lands for ; 11,500." This 
 is doubtless the estate above referred to.
 
 WILLIAM HUTTON 147 
 
 one of his works, "A Tour through Wales," spoke 
 of him as having "at length taken a longer jour- 
 ney, the important details of which he will not 
 transmit to us poor wanderers here below." In 
 reply to this he sent the editor a poem " From 
 my shades at Bennet's Hill, August i3th, 1807." 
 I may quote a verse as a sample : 
 
 " Your work for July tells the world that I'm dead, 
 And have ceased to become an inditer. 
 
 But by praising my book, it will rather be said, 
 That you keep me alive as as writer." 
 
 In 1808 he supplies a list of all the books he 
 had written in thirty years, viz., "The History 
 of Birmingham," 1781; "Journey to London," 
 1784; "Court of Requests," 1787; "The 
 Hundred Court," 1788; "History of Blackpool," 
 1788; "History of Bosworth Field," 1789; 
 "History of Derby," 1790; "The Barber, a 
 Poem," 1793; "Edgar and Elfreda, a Poem," 
 1793; "The Roman Wall," 1801 ; "Tour to 
 Scarborough," 1803; "Poems, chiefly Tales," 
 1804; "Trip to Coatham," 1808 (all published 
 by Nichols) ; "Life written by Himself," 1815 
 (published by Baldwin). 
 
 At the age of eighty-two he considered himself 
 a young man, and could walk forty miles a day,
 
 148 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 but during the succeeding six years he began to 
 feel a sensible decay ; nevertheless, on Novem- 
 ber i yth, 1812, when he was eighty-nine, he 
 walked twelve miles with ease, and on his nine- 
 tieth birthday he walked ten miles. 
 
 His daughter 1 wrote a very interesting and 
 touching account of his last days. He died 
 September 2oth, 1815, aged ninety-two. 
 
 His daughter closes her account with the fol- 
 lowing description of him : 
 
 " My father was nearly five feet six inches in 
 height, well made, strong and active ; a little in- 
 clined to corpulence, . . . his countenance wore 
 an expression of sense, resolution, and calmness, 
 though when irritated or animated he had a very 
 keen eye. Such was the happy disposition of 
 his mind, and such the firm texture of his body, 
 that ninety-two years had scarcely the power to 
 alter his features or make a wrinkle on his face." 
 
 1 Miss Catherine Hutton was a lady of great literary 
 ability. She was a voluminous letter writer and the 
 author of several novels a full account of her, under the 
 title " Catherine Hutton and Her Friends," edited by her 
 cousin, Miss Catherine Hutton Beale, was published by 
 Cornish Brothers, Birmingham, 1895.
 
 JAMES LACKIN'GTON, 1746-1815,
 
 VIII. JAMES LACKINGTON. 
 1746 1815 
 
 IAMES LACKINGTON wrote an 
 
 account of the first forty-five years 
 of his life in 1791, a second edition 
 of which was published in 1794. 
 It is from this edition that I have gathered matter 
 for the present sketch. The title is as follows : 
 
 MEMOIRS OF 
 THE FORTY-FIVE FIRST YEARS OF 
 
 THE LIFE OF 
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 
 
 THE PRESENT BOOKSELLER IN CHISWELL STREET, 
 
 MOORFIELDS, LONDON. 
 
 WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. 
 
 IN FORTY-SEVEN LETTERS TO A FRIEND, 
 
 WITH A TRIPLE DEDICATION. 
 
 i. To the Public. 
 
 2. To Respectable i 
 
 3. To Sordid 
 
 Booksellers. 
 
 A new edition, corrected and enlarged ; interspersed 
 with many original humoroiis stories, and droll anecdotes, 
 not in former editions.
 
 ISO SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 James Lackington writes with great facility, 
 and with no want of vigour, but more than half 
 of his bulky volume is made up of flippant 
 attacks on Methodism, of "humorous stories" 
 which are not particularly humorous, and of 
 droll anecdotes, the drollness of which consists 
 mainly in their indecency. 1 Apart from these 
 distinct blemishes, however, there is a great 
 deal of matter in the book which may be re- 
 garded as both interesting and instructive. 
 
 His earliest days were very much like those 
 of his contemporary William Hutton (see Sketch 
 No. VII.) ; the one was starved and shivered in a 
 silk mill, his father was a sottish stocking- 
 weaver, the other was the son of a drunken 
 shoemaker. 
 
 Lackington was born at Wellington, in Somer- 
 setshire, August 3ist (old style), 1746. Like 
 many other human beings, he was inclined to 
 boast of the antiquity of his family, for, although 
 his father was a journeyman shoemaker, one of 
 his ancestors gave the name of White Lackington 
 to a village in Somersetshire where the family 
 
 1 The original humorous stories and droll anecdotes 
 are said to have been furnished by the pen of Peter 
 Pindar. (D.N.B.)
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 151 
 
 had settled. His grandfather was a gentleman 
 farmer, at Longford, near Wellington ; he was a 
 man of considerable property. He bound his 
 son apprentice to a Mr. Hordley, a master shoe- 
 maker in Wellington, with the intention of setting 
 him up in that business, but when he had worked 
 a year or two after his apprenticeship as a 
 journeyman, he greatly displeased his father by 
 marrying Jane Trott, a young woman of " a mean 
 family," and without a shilling. 
 
 Our hero, James, the first-born and hope of 
 the family, was born in the house of his grand- 
 mother Trott. Jane proved to be an excellent 
 wife and a most admirable mother, and by the 
 time she had borne her husband three or four 
 children the grandfather so far relented that he 
 supplied his son with money to open a shop for 
 himself; but no sooner did he find himself more 
 at ease than he contracted the fatal habit of 
 drinking, and, although his father made several 
 fruitless attempts to keep him in trade, his 
 habitual drunkenness soon reduced him to his 
 old state of journeyman shoemaker, from which 
 he never emerged, and he and his large family 
 were involved in the extremest poverty. 
 
 To their worthless father the children, now
 
 1 52 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 increased to eleven, owed no debt of gratitude, 
 while to their good mother they were indebted 
 for everything. For many years together she 
 worked nineteen hours out of the twenty-four 
 to feed her children and supply her miserable 
 husband with drink. His drunkenness short- 
 ened his days, and when he died his family were 
 thankful that the source of their poverty was 
 taken out of the way. 
 
 For the first few years the father had been a 
 careful hard-working man, and James, being the 
 eldest; son, was put for two or three years to a 
 day school, and used to astonish several ancient 
 dames by his wonderful memory which enabled 
 him to learn chapters of the Bible on hearing 
 them read and repeat them perfectly though he 
 never learnt to read ; but it soon came to pass 
 that the poor mother could afford no longer to 
 pay twopence a week for his schooling, and he 
 had to take the place of nurse to the younger 
 children. He soon forgot the little he had learnt, 
 and instead of learning to read it became his 
 chief delight to excel in all kinds of mischief. 
 
 When he was about ten years old, a man 
 began to cry apple pies about the streets, and he 
 thought he could do it much better; he was
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 153 
 
 accordingly sent to live with a baker, and he 
 cried pies for him so vigorously that the old pie- 
 man had soon to shut up his shop, and he was 
 the means of extricating his master from em- 
 barrassing circumstances through the immense 
 number of pies he sold for him; but he soon 
 began to play such tricks among the old women 
 that the baker had to discharge him. He then 
 had to sit down and work at his father's trade. 
 
 At the age of fourteen-and-a-half he was bound 
 apprentice to Mr. George Bowden and Mrs. 
 Mary Bowden, shoemakers, of Taunton, "as 
 honest and worthy a couple as ever carried on 
 trade." They carefully attended their shop six 
 days of the week, and on the seventh they went 
 with their family to an Anabaptist meeting, where 
 excellent morality was taught, but little atten- 
 tion was paid to speculative doctrine. 
 
 During his apprenticeship he had as his com- 
 panions two of his master's sons; the eldest, 
 about seventeen, had heard and was converted 
 by one of John Wesley's itinerant preachers. 
 He set about to convert his parents and his 
 brother, and eventually James himself became a 
 member of the Wesleyan body from which he 
 eventually broke away for a long time, and
 
 1 54 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 henceforth at least one half of his book is filled 
 with sneering, contemptuous, and, as it seems to 
 me, vulgar and contemptible attacks on that 
 most respectable body of Christians, and espe- 
 cially on John Wesley himself. More than once 
 during his career was he reconverted only to 
 relapse, and it was during these relapses that 
 he indulges in his offensive sarcasms, which only 
 show much crass ignorance, abounding self-con- 
 ceit, and an assumption of superior knowledge, 
 which he boastingly regarded as " broadminded 
 philosophy." 
 
 These dreary and needless discussions are 
 certainly a great blot on his book, and in his 
 latter days he was utterly ashamed of them. I 
 wholly object to him as a teacher of "broad- 
 minded philosophy." He only learnt to read 
 during his apprenticeship, and to write some 
 time afterwards. When he could read he be- 
 came a great reader; he read every book he 
 could get hold of. He had an excellent memory, 
 and whilst he remained a member of the Wes- 
 leyan body he accumulated books suitable to his 
 profession, and soon considered himself quite 
 master of the various arguments made use of by 
 polemical divines ; but gradually getting rid of
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 155 
 
 these leading strings, he studied Plato and 
 Seneca, and Plutarch and Epicurus, and other of 
 the old pagan philosophers, and all the modern 
 ones, such as Voltaire, Tom Paine, etc., and so 
 he soon found himself fully equipped as against 
 what he now looked upon as the narrow-minded 
 teaching of John Wesley. 
 
 It does not seem, however, to have been his 
 study of philosophy that first caused him to 
 break away from Methodism. It happened that 
 just about the time when he had reached his 
 twenty-first year, and near the end of his appren- 
 ticeship, the election occurred of two Members 
 of Parliament for Taunton, and he, having ob- 
 tained his freedom from his mistress, was soon 
 launched into the midst of scenes of riot and 
 dissipation. He had a vote, and being as he 
 says " possessed of a few ideas above those of 
 my rank and station, my company was courted 
 by some who were in a much higher sphere," 
 and " here," he says, " I had nearly sunk for 
 ever into meanness, obscurity, and vice, for 
 when the election was over I had no longer open 
 houses to eat and drink at free of cost." 
 
 It was this dissipated life that first caused his 
 backsliding, and doubtless the " superior " learn-
 
 156 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 ing he got from his philosophical books led to 
 his final emancipation. 
 
 I can find no admiration for him as a philo- 
 sopher, as he was pleased to call himself. His 
 book, which contains over 500 pages of text, 
 as I have said, only brings down the story of 
 his life for forty-five years. It is so largely made 
 up of scornful abuse of Methodism and of long 
 irrelevant stories, many of them vulgar and in- 
 decent, that it is not easy to follow the thread 
 of his life therein. The volume is also brimful 
 of poetical quotations. He seems to have had, 
 or thought he had, the art of finding an apt 
 quotation for every incident of life. I will attempt 
 to dig out from the great mass of matter he has 
 written sufficient to give an intelligent sketch of 
 him as a bookseller. In this capacity he assuredly 
 exhibited very great ability ; he was honest, fear- 
 less, straightforward, and clear headed. Starting 
 as a bookseller, in utter ignorance of all the old 
 rules and customs, and in defiance of them, he 
 invented an entirely new system of his own, and 
 in this he persevered, always honestly and hon- 
 ourably till it led him on to fortune. His suc- 
 cess was of course greatly due to his own per- 
 severance, but more perhaps to the fact that
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 1 57 
 
 he had, accidentally as it were, hit upon a new 
 line of operation, and success followed because 
 it was new. 
 
 After some years of wandering about the 
 country as a journeyman shoemaker he married 
 an old sweetheart of his boyish days one Nancy 
 Smith, a dairymaid. They were married at St. 
 Peter's, Bristol, in the year 1770-1 : on search- 
 ing their pockets after the marriage ceremony 
 was over and the necessary expenses paid, they 
 had just one halfpenny between them wherewith 
 to begin the world. He laboured hard at his 
 trade as a worker in stuff shoes and she earned 
 a few shillings weekly in binding them. They 
 worked together bravely and were very happy 
 on a combined income of los. or 125. a week. 
 Soon, however, the wife fell ill and so continued 
 for many months ; she suffered excruciating 
 agonies, with none of the comforts of life to 
 aid her. 
 
 These sad times of sickness and starvation 
 continued for more than two years. At last, 
 with a view to getting a better price for his 
 work, Lackington resolved to visit London. He 
 reached the metropolis in August, 1773, with 
 the traditional half-crown in his pocket, and
 
 158 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 eventually found work with Mr. Heath in Fore 
 Street. Notwithstanding his previous back- 
 sliding, his first inquiry was for Mr. Wesley's 
 " Gospel shops," and on producing his class and 
 band tickets he was duly admitted. In a month 
 he saved money enough to bring his wife up to 
 town, and it happened just about the same time 
 he received intelligence of the death of his 
 grandfather, who left him 10. He started off 
 to Somersetshire to receive the money. On re- 
 turning he lost about i6s., seemingly through a 
 hole in his pocket, for he first discovered, while 
 travelling on the coach, some of the silver drib- 
 bling through the basket on to the ground he 
 bore the loss with the equanimity of a philo- 
 sopher, reasoning with Epictetus that he could 
 not have lost it if he had never had it, and that 
 as he had lost it, why, it was all the same as if it 
 had never been in his possession. 
 
 But a sadder misfortune befell him on that 
 cold coach journey ; to keep out the bitter cold, 
 he drank some purl and gin, which made him 
 so drunk that the coachman put him inside the 
 coach for fear of his falling off the roof. He 
 there met a jovial set who also drank to keep 
 out the cold ; they were in high glee, and asked
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 159 
 
 him to sing them a song ; he at once complied, 
 forgetting, as he says, that he was " one of the 
 holy brethren." 
 
 By the time he reached home he had become 
 sober, though in great perturbation of mind for 
 what he had done so ashamed was he that 
 he concealed the affair from his wife " that he 
 might not grieve her righteous soul with the 
 knowledge of so dreadful a fall " ; fortunately, 
 before mounting the coach on his homeward 
 journey, he had sewn the bulk of his fortune in 
 his clothes. His good wife ripped open his 
 clothes which contained the treasure, and with 
 a heart full of gratitude piously thanked Pro- 
 vidence for the supply. 
 
 With this store of cash they purchased house- 
 hold goods, and they worked hard and lived 
 still harder, so that in a short time they had 
 a room nicely furnished with their own goods, 
 but it fell out that on Christmas Eve they had 
 only half-a-crown left to purchase their Christ- 
 mas dinner. Lackington says that he often 
 spent in books money which should have gone 
 in buying food to eat. On this Christmas Eve 
 his wife sent him out to buy their Christmas 
 dinner. On passing a bookseller's shop he
 
 l6o SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 espied a copy of "Young's Night Thoughts," 
 he forgot his dinner, down went the half-crown, 
 and he hastened home vastly elated with his 
 acquisition. When his wife asked him for the 
 Christmas dinner, he told her it was in his 
 pocket. " How could you think of stuffing a 
 joint of meat into your pocket ? " He then 
 began to harangue on the superiority of intel- 
 lectual pleasures over sensual gratifications. It 
 took him considerable time and much eloquence 
 to convince his wife that it was far better to 
 feast on " Young's Night Thoughts " than on 
 beef and pudding, 
 
 "And sacrifice your dinner to your books." 
 It was in June, 1774, that Mr. Boyd, one of 
 Mr. Wesley's people, told him of a little shop 
 and parlour behind it to be let in Featherstone 
 Street, where he might get some work as a 
 master. He decided at once to take the place, 
 and told Mr. Boyd that he would sell books 
 there also. For several months he had ob- 
 served a great increase in a certain old-book 
 shop, and he felt persuaded that he knew as 
 much about old books as the person who kept 
 it. He considered that, being a lover of books, 
 if he could but be a bookseller he should then
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON l6l 
 
 have plenty of books to read, which was the 
 greatest motive for him to make the attempt. 
 His friend promised to get the shop for him, 
 and added : " When you are Lord Mayor, you 
 shall use all your interest to get me made an 
 alderman." 
 
 The shop was taken and opened on Mid- 
 summer Day, 1774, with a stock worth five 
 pounds, in Featherstone Street, St. Luke's. He 
 was as well pleased to see his name over the 
 door as was Nebuchadnezzar when he said : " Is 
 not this great Babylon that I have built ? " and 
 his wife piously cautioned him against setting 
 his mind too much on the riches of the world, 
 and assured him that all was vanity. 
 
 Notwithstanding the obscurity of the street, 
 and the mean appearance of the shop, he soon 
 found customers for what few books he had, 
 and laid out the money in other " old trash." 
 He borrowed five pounds from a fund which 
 Wesley's people kept on purpose to lend out 
 to such of their society whose characters 
 were good for three months without in- 
 terest. This sum enabled him to increase his 
 stock. 
 
 In this new establishment he and his wife 
 
 M
 
 1 62 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 lived very frugally ; they dined on potatoes, and 
 quenched their thirst with water. 
 
 They lived in this street for six months ; by 
 that time his stock had increased from ^5 to 
 ^25. This immense stock he deemed too 
 valuable to be buried in Featherstone Street, 
 so he took a shop and parlour at No. 46 Chis- 
 well Street ; here he bade a final adieu to the 
 gentle craft, and converted his little stock of 
 leather into old books; his stock consisted 
 chiefly of old divinity, and he had a great sale 
 of such books as he approved of for says he, 
 " such was my ignorance, bigotry, superstition 
 (or what you please), that I conscientiously 
 destroyed such books as fell into my hands 
 which were written by free-thinkers." 
 
 He went on prosperously till September, 
 1775, when he was suddenly taken ill of a 
 dreadful fever, and his wife was seized ten days 
 after with the same disorder, and she died on 
 the gth of November. He says, " she was in 
 reality one of the best of women, but enthusi- 
 astical in the extreme, and of course very super- 
 stitious, but as I was very far gone myself I did 
 not think that a fault in her." 
 
 He continued in the fever for many weeks,
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 163 
 
 and his life was despaired of; his wife died 
 and was buried without his once having a sight 
 of her : the nurses who were hired to attend to 
 him and his wife robbed him of linen, etc., and 
 kept themselves drunk with gin while he lay 
 in bed ready to perish owing to want of proper 
 care. 
 
 When he was well enough to look after his 
 affairs he found that two of his friends had 
 saved him from ruin by locking up his shop 
 which contained his all. 
 
 Soon after he returned to his shop he made 
 the acquaintance of Miss Dorcas Turton, a 
 young lady of good family who in days gone 
 by had shown their goodness by dissipating 
 large fortunes and estates, and Dorcas was re- 
 duced to keeping a school to support her father, 
 who had gambled away a large fortune of his 
 own and ,20,000 of his wife's. 
 
 This young lady was immoderately fond of 
 books ; who then could be better suited for a 
 bookseller's wife? Lackington proposed, was 
 accepted, and they were married January 30, 
 1776, or little more than two months after the 
 death of his first wife ! To most people this 
 would surely be regarded as indecent haste,
 
 164 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 but he only remarks quite coolly : " Thus I re- 
 paired the loss of one very valuable woman by 
 the acquisition of another still more valuable." 
 
 Shortly after this he took up the " Life of 
 John Buncle " ; and " I know not," says he, " of 
 any work more proper to be put into the hands 
 of a poor ignorant superstitious Methodist." 
 The study of this valuable work formed the 
 groundwork for a fresh attack on Methodism, 
 which occupies above a hundred continuous 
 pages of scurrilous abuse mixed up with nasty 
 anecdotes. 
 
 His new wife's extreme love of books (novels 
 chiefly) made her delight to be in the shop, so 
 that she soon became perfectly acquainted with 
 every part of it, and was a most valuable help 
 in taking care of it during his absence. He 
 now began to buy parcels of books, and found 
 his trade so rapidly increasing in this direction 
 that he was several times so hard pushed for 
 cash to pay for them that he more than once 
 pawned his watch and a suit of clothes, and 
 sometimes he even pawned books to pay for 
 others. 
 
 Early in 1778 Mr. John Denis became his 
 partner, who found money to increase largely
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 165 
 
 the stock of books, and the first catalogue of 
 12,000 volumes was issued by J. Lackington 
 and Co. in 1779. After going on very plea- 
 santly together for more than two years, Mr. 
 Denis hinted that he thought Lackington was 
 making purchases too fast this led to con- 
 siderable warmth on both sides, and conse- 
 quently they dissolved partnership in May, 
 1780. They parted in great friendship, and 
 at his death soon afterwards Mr. Denis left 
 behind him the best collection of scarce, valu- 
 able, mystical, and alchemical books that was 
 ever collected by one person. 
 
 It was in this year 1780 that he resolved to 
 give no person whatever any credit, an innovation 
 on the ordinary custom of the trade which for 
 the time caused him to be much laughed at and 
 ridiculed ; he was told that he might as well 
 attempt to build the Tower of Babel as to 
 establish a large business without giving credit ; 
 but he determined to make the experiment ; he 
 began by plain marking in every book facing 
 the title the lowest price he would take for it ; 
 which being much lower than the common 
 market prices, he not only retained his former 
 customers, but soon increased their numbers ;
 
 1 66 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 but he had innumerable difficulties to encounter, 
 as he would make no exception whatever, all his 
 customers, " even the nobility," were treated 
 alike cash down, no credit. "There were not 
 wanting," says he, " among the booksellers some 
 who were mean enough to assert that all my 
 books were bound in sheep, and many other 
 unmanly artifices were practised, all of which, so 
 far from injuring me, as basely intended, turned 
 to my account." 
 
 He says, with perhaps some truth, and cer- 
 tainly with his usual conceit : 
 
 " In this branch of trade it is next to impos- 
 sible for me ever to have any formidable rivals, 
 as it requires an uncommon exertion as well as 
 very uncommon success for many years together 
 to rise to any degree of eminence in that par- 
 ticular line. This success must be attained, 
 too, without the aid of novelty, which I find of 
 very great service to me." 
 
 In the first three years after he began the cash 
 system his business increased, and the whole of 
 his profit was expended in buying books, so that 
 his Catalogue in 1784 was largely increased; it 
 now contained 30,000 books, mostly of a much 
 superior character to those of his first Catalogue. 
 He now found a difficulty which he had not fore-
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 167 
 
 seen. Many of his customers were always ready 
 to buy from him, but were not equally inclined 
 to sell to him such books as they had for sale ; 
 they said, " Lackington sells very cheap ; he 
 therefore will not give much for what is offered 
 him," he had difficulty in controverting this 
 heresy, but he at length adopted the following 
 plan to put the matter beyond a doubt : 
 
 "When I am called upon to purchase any 
 library or parcel of books either myself or my 
 assistants carefully examine them and if desired 
 to fix a price I mention at a word the highest I 
 will give for them, which I always take care is as 
 much as any bookseller can afford to give, but if 
 the seller entertains any doubts respecting the 
 price offered and chooses to try other booksellers 
 he pays me five per cent, for valuing the books, 
 and as he knows what I valued them at he tries 
 among the trade, and when he finds he cannot 
 get any greater sum offered, on returning to me 
 he not only receives the price I at first offered, 
 but also return of the five per cent, paid me for 
 the valuation." 
 
 When he was first initiated into the various 
 manoeuvres practised by booksellers he found it 
 customary among them, when any books had 
 not gone off so rapidly as expected, to put what 
 remained of such articles into private sales where 
 only booksellers were admitted, and of these only
 
 1 68 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 such as were invited by having a catalogue sent 
 them. At one of these sales he had frequently 
 seen seventy or eighty thousand books sold after 
 dinner. 
 
 He was very much surprised to learn on his 
 first attending these sales that it was common for 
 such as purchased remainders to destroy half or 
 three-fourths, 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." 
 
 He adhered to this rule for a time, but he soon 
 discovered that books that would not sell for six 
 shillings may still be sold for three or two shil- 
 lings, and so in proportion. He adopted this 
 plan instead of destroying stock, and so disposed 
 of many hundreds of thousands of books. "This 
 part of my conduct," he says, " though evidently 
 highly beneficial to the community, and even to 
 booksellers, created me many enemies among the 
 trade, some of whom ... by a variety of pitiful 
 insinuations and dark innuendos strained every 
 nerve to injure the reputation I had already ac-
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 169 
 
 quired with the public, determined to effect my 
 ruin, which indeed they daily prognosticated, with 
 a demon-like spirit, must inevitably very speedily 
 follow." 
 
 In Letter XXXVI. Lackington furnishes some 
 curious information about the relations of authors 
 and publishers. " Nothing is more common," 
 he says, "than to hear authors complaining 
 against publishers for want of liberality in pur- 
 chasing their manuscripts." He seldom pur- 
 chased manuscripts or published new books 
 himself. He felt himself on that account quite 
 impartial in expressing the opinion that pub- 
 lishers possessed more liberality than any other 
 set of tradesmen as relates to purchasing manu- 
 scripts and copyrights, in confirmation of which 
 he quotes Dr. Johnson : " Sir, I always said, the 
 booksellers were a generous set of men." x 
 
 1 Nichols, in " The Literary Anecdotes," gives the 
 whole account thus: " Johnson has dignified the Book- 
 sellers as the ' Patrons of Literature.' In the case of his 
 ' Lives of the Poets,' which drew forth that encomium, 
 he had bargained for 200 guineas ; and the Booksellers 
 spontaneously added a third hundred. On this occasion 
 the great moralist observed to the writer of this article ; 
 ' Sir, I always said the Booksellers were a generous set 
 of men. Nor, in the present instance, have I reason to 
 complain. The fact is, not that they have paid me too
 
 I/O SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 We are in the habit of boasting in our own 
 days of the very large sums paid by publishers 
 to authors, but it may surprise some of our 
 friends to learn that the same spirit of large 
 liberality was not wanting more than a hundred 
 years ago. Lackington quotes a few of the 
 authors of those days who were not badly paid 
 by their publishers. " Mr. Elliott, bookseller, 
 Edinburgh " (presumably a forbear of the present 
 respected Andrew), "gave Mr. Smallie a thou- 
 sand pounds for his 'Philosophy of Natural 
 History ' when only the heads of the chapters 
 were written. Dr. Robertson received ;6oo 
 for his ' History of Scotland,' but for his 
 ' Charles V.' he received ^"4,500. Hume re- 
 ceived ^"5,200 for his ' History of Britain.' Dr. 
 Hawksworth received ^6,000 for his ' Compila- 
 tion of Voyages,' and I leave it to any con- 
 siderate person to judge whether in paying so 
 enormous a price the publisher did not run a 
 great risk when it is considered how great the 
 expenses of bringing forward such a work must 
 have been." He quotes an instance, not by 
 
 little, but that I have written too much.' The 'Lives' 
 were soon published in a separate edition, when, for a 
 very few corrections, the Doctor was presented with 
 another hundred guineas."
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON I/I 
 
 any means without parallel in our own days, of 
 a Mr. R. who was paid ^1,600 to do work 
 which he died without performing, having spent 
 the money, which was not recoverable. 
 
 Here is an astounding fact ! " Many novels 
 have been offered to booksellers ; indeed, many 
 have been actually published that were not 
 worth the expense of paper and printing ; so that 
 the copyright was dear at any price" 
 
 Ah ! prophetic Lackington, you must have 
 been thinking of the Twentieth, not the Eigh- 
 teenth Century ! 
 
 Lackington was now in the full swim of his 
 prosperity, he bought books by the thousand, 
 and even tens of thousands and, reflecting 
 thereon, he says that he often looked back with 
 astonishment at his own courage in purchasing, 
 and his wonderful success in taking money 
 enough to pay the extensive demands made 
 upon him. " There is not," says he, " another 
 instance of success so rapid and constant under 
 such circumstances." 
 
 As was customary in the eighteenth century, 
 Lackington issued immense quantities of Half- 
 penny Tokens. The following is a description 
 of one of them :
 
 1/2 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 Obv. Bust to left, LACKINGTON, 1795. 
 
 Rev. Fame blowing a trumpet, Halfpenny of Lack- 
 
 ington, Allen, & Co., cheapest booksellers in 
 
 the world. 
 Edge. Payable at the Temple of the Muses. 
 
 "Among all the schools where the knowledge 
 of mankind is to be acquired I know of none 
 equal to that of a bookseller's shop" says Lack- 
 ington. " A bookseller who has any taste in 
 literature may, in some measure, be said to feed 
 his mind as cooks and butchers' wives get fat 
 by the smell of meat." And thus it was that he 
 himself " grew fat and kicked " like Jeshurun. 
 He kicked against the pricks of his early 
 training in Methodism, and held himself to be 
 free of all narrow creeds and dogmas. " Mr. 
 Wesley," he says, "told his society in Broad- 
 mead, Bristol, in my hearing, that he could 
 never keep a bookseller six months in his 
 flock." 
 
 Now that we have landed him on the full 
 stage of prosperity, we can but briefly trace the 
 remainder of his course. I will quote here one 
 or two of his maxims. " I was obliged to be 
 pretty well informed of the state of politics in 
 Europe, as I have always found bookselling is
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 173 
 
 much affected by the political state of affairs . . . 
 if there is anything in the newspapers of con- 
 sequence, that draws many to the coffee-house, 
 where they chat away the evenings instead of 
 visiting the shops of booksellers (as they ought 
 to do, no doubt} or reading at home. The best 
 time for bookselling is when there is no kind of 
 news stirring" "As I never had any part of 
 the miser in my composition, I always propor- 
 tioned my expenses according to my profits ; 
 that is, I have for many years expended two- 
 thirds of the profits of my trade, which propor- 
 tion of expenditure I never exceeded." 
 
 His progressive steps from poverty to pros- 
 perity he thus describes : "In the beginning I 
 opened and shut my own shop," a year after " I 
 beckoned across the way for a pot of good 
 porter," a few years later " I sometimes invited 
 my friends to dinner off roast veal," next in due 
 progress " ham was introduced, and a pudding 
 was the next addition," then for some time " a 
 glass of brandy and water was a luxury," suc- 
 ceeded by a glass of Mr. Beaufoy's raisin wine ; 
 as soon as his two-third profits enabled him, 
 " good red port immediately appeared." Lodging 
 in the country in due time gave place to a country
 
 174 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 house> in another year the inconveniences of a 
 stage coach were remedied by a chariot. 
 
 " My precious rib has ventured to declare 
 'Tis vulgar on one's legs to take the air." 
 
 " For four years Upper Holloway was to me 
 an elysium, then Surry appeared unquestionably 
 the most beautiful county in England, and Upper 
 Merton the most rural village in Surry. So now 
 Merton is selected as the seat of occasional 
 philosophical retirement." 
 
 By his doctor's advice he bought a horse and 
 saved his life by the exercise it afforded him. 
 "The old adage," he says, "'Set a beggar on 
 horseback and he'll ride to the devil,' was 
 deemed to be fully verified, but when Mrs. 
 Lackington mounted another horse people were 
 very sorry to see people so young in business 
 run on at so great a rate." 
 
 " It seems that at last people have discovered 
 the secret springs from whence I drew my 
 wealth some can tell you the very number of 
 my fortunate lottery ticket, others are as posi- 
 tive that I found bank-notes in an old book 
 to the value of many thousand pounds. . . . 
 But I assure you upon my honour that / 
 found the whole of what I am possessed of in
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 175 
 
 small profits, bound by Industry and clasped by 
 Economy" 
 
 For some years he had contemplated going 
 out of business on account of his and Mrs. 
 Lackington's bad state of health, but although 
 he had no family of his own, his friends re- 
 minded him that he had about fifty poor rela- 
 tions, some old and helpless and many who had 
 justly formed some expectations from him, so 
 he regarded the giving up of such a trade as he 
 was in possession of before he was absolutely 
 obliged as a kind of injustice to those whose 
 ties of blood he felt bound to relieve and pro- 
 tect. These sentiments are very creditable to 
 him, and he seems to have carried them out. 
 
 For the next few years he spent much of his 
 time in travelling about the country with Mrs. 
 Lackington, and enjoyed life ; amongst many- 
 other places visited by him was his native town 
 of Wellington, where he was honoured with the 
 ringing of the bells during the whole of the day 
 after his arrival; and with a cordial reception 
 from the most respectable people of the vicinity, 
 who were pleased to see that he did not assume 
 the character of a rich upstart, but noticed his 
 poor relations and friends. In Bristol, Exbridge,
 
 176 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 Bridgewater, Taunton and other places, he 
 amused himself in calling on some of his old 
 masters, with whom he had twenty years before 
 worked as a journeyman shoemaker. He ad- 
 dressed each with, " Pray, sir, have you got any 
 occasion?" the term used when seeking em- 
 ployment. " Most of those honest men had 
 quite forgot my person, as many of them had 
 not seen me since I worked for them, so that it 
 is not easy for you to conceive with what aston- 
 ishment they gazed upon me. For you must 
 know that I had the vanity (I call it humour) to 
 do this in my chariot, attended by my servants ; 
 and on telling them who I was, all appeared 
 very happy to see me." Some of his old friends 
 declared they had known him for fifty years (he 
 being then forty-five). One old chap distinctly 
 remembered seeing him many times on the top 
 of a six-and-twenty round ladder, balanced on 
 the chin of a merryandrew ! but he says the old 
 man was egregiously mistaken. 
 
 The second edition of " The Life " ends with 
 the year 1794, when he was about forty-eight 
 years old. In 1793 he sold a fourth share of 
 his business to Mr. Robert Allen, who had been 
 brought up in the shop. He does not himself
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 177 
 
 mention the removal of the business from Chis- 
 well Street to Finsbury Square, which seems to 
 have occurred about the year 1794. The shop 
 occupied a large block at one of the corners of 
 the square. 
 
 I learn from Mr. Davenport's " Life of 
 Lackington," in a volume entitled "Lives of 
 Individuals" (Tegg, 1841), that Lackington 
 " purchased extensive premises in Moorfields at 
 the south-west corner of Finsbury Square, and 
 fitted them up in such a manner as was never 
 seen before or since. The shop was so capacious 
 that a mail-coach and four was easily driven 
 round the counters when it was opened. From 
 the shop to the roof, four or five stories high, 
 ran a wide cylindrical aperture surmounted 
 by a glazed dome and flagstaff. Every corner 
 of the vast edifice was crowded with books. 
 Its owner proudly called it ' The Temple of 
 the Muses.' It has recently been destroyed 
 by fire." 
 
 Charles Knight, who visited the " Temple of 
 the Muses " in 1801, when he was ten years old, 
 gives an interesting description of the building 
 the broad staircases, the "lounging rooms," 
 and the circular galleries, etc. 
 
 N
 
 178 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 I find the following in a footnote in Nichols's 
 " Literary Anecdotes," vol. iii. (1812) : 
 
 " The Bibliomaniacs (if any such survive) who 
 recollect the contents of Mr. Lackington's first 
 catalogue in Chiswell Street, and the dimensions 
 of his shop, would be astonished when they first 
 visited the ' Temple of the Muses ' in Finsbury 
 Square ; but, as Mr. Lackington observed in the 
 motto on his first carriage : ' Small gains do 
 great things,' and in him was exemplified the 
 quotation very aptly selected for him in more 
 than one of his catalogues : ' Sutor ultra crepidam 
 feliciter ausus.' As he is still living, and has 
 favoured the world with his own memoirs, I 
 shall only say that he is particularly fortunate in 
 having for his successor in business a well- 
 educated, gentlemanly nephew 1 and partners of 
 considerable talent and equal industry." 
 
 Lackington's second wife, Dorcas, died 
 February 27th, 1795, and on June nth, with 
 his usual promptness, he married a relative of 
 hers. 
 
 In 1798 he gave up his interest in the busi- 
 ness to his cousin x George Lackington (referred 
 to in the above quotation). 
 
 In 1804 he published a volume called "Con- 
 
 1 Davenport says '"> made over the whole of his 
 business to George, one of his cousins by the father's side, 
 to Mr. Allen, and other parties."
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON 
 
 fessions." This work I have only just seen ; in 
 it he expresses great regret at having in his 
 " Life " cast so much ridicule upon the Wes- 
 leyans. 
 
 Of his preface to this work it may certainly be 
 said that the oddity and self-sufficiency are fre- 
 quently much more apparent than the modesty 
 or good sense ; he says : 
 
 " Several of my friends have thought that if 
 the following letters were made public, they 
 might prove useful as a warning to others not to 
 fall into those errors which had nearly proved 
 fatal to me ; and also as an alarm to some of 
 those who are already fallen into that dreadful 
 state of infidelity from which, by the great mercy 
 of God, I am happily escaped." 
 
 He mentions his good wife Dorcas very un- 
 generously and slightingly as having misled him 
 into reading " gay, frothy narratives." 
 
 " I had no sooner married this young woman," 
 says he, "than Mr. Wesley's people began to 
 prophecy that I should soon lose all my religion. 
 This prophecy I must confess was too soon ful- 
 filled. I was often prevailed upon to hear her 
 read those gay frothy narratives, and I began to 
 lose my relish for more important things." 
 
 He retired first to Thornbury and next to 
 Alveston, in Gloucestershire, where he erected
 
 ISO SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 a small chapel. He soon became a preacher 
 himself in the neighbouring villages, and spent 
 his time chiefly in visiting the sick, relieving the 
 poor, distributing tracts, and expounding the 
 Scriptures. In 1806 he removed to Taunton, 
 the town in which he served his apprenticeship, 
 and built another chapel at a cost of 3,000, 
 and endowed it with ,^150 a year for the 
 minister. In front of this building appears the 
 following inscription : 
 
 " This Temple is erected as a monument of 
 God's mercy, in convincing an Infidel of the 
 important Truths of Christianity." 
 
 He subsequently became involved in a dispute 
 with the Conference, and he sold the chapel to 
 them for ^1,000. He removed to Budleigh 
 Salterton, where he built another chapel at a 
 cost of ^2,000, and allowed ^150 a year to 
 the minister. He died from apoplexy, in the 
 odour of sanctity, November 2 2nd, 1815, aged 
 seventy. His remains rest in Budleigh church- 
 yard. 
 
 At the date of Lackington's death in 1815 
 my late partner, Sampson Low, was a youth of 
 twenty, in the house of Messrs. Longman. I 
 have often heard him speak of the " Temple of
 
 JAMES LACKINGTON l8l 
 
 the Muses," and he had seen Lackington himself. 
 He seemed to have shared a pretty common 
 opinion among the members of the regular trade 
 that Lackington was looked upon as somewhat 
 of a black sheep, but this of course had reference 
 only to his vigorous innovations there was 
 never a question about his sterling honesty. 
 
 I find that this death of a man known to my 
 late partner, and who died within a few years of 
 my own birth, brings the story of " Booksellers 
 of Other Days " too nearly down to the present 
 day. If I am to continue these " sketches " I 
 must hark back for a century or two. 
 
 SINCE writing the foregoing, my attention has 
 been drawn to the fact that the late Adam Black, 
 founder of the great Edinburgh House, passed a 
 part of his early career in the house of Lacking- 
 ton, Allen and Co. When he first landed in 
 London, in the year 1804, a youth of twenty, he 
 had many letters of introduction to London 
 houses, among others to Lackington, but he had 
 so little desire to be employed there that he called 
 there last, and was told to call again. He was 
 not favourably impressed, but after calling there 
 two or three times he at last got employment at
 
 1 82 SKETCHES OF BOOKSELLERS 
 
 1 8s. a week, and remained there at an increasing 
 salary for nearly three years, of itself a satisfactory 
 proof that the house of Lackington was of a far 
 more sterling and reputable character than was 
 sometimes represented by its competitors in 
 trade. He gives an interesting description of 
 "The Temple of the Muses," very much as 
 given above. James Lackington had retired 
 from business before Adam Black entered the 
 house. See " Memoirs of Adam Black," edited 
 by Alexander Nicholson, LL.D. 
 
 The above is taken from a Lackington Token, kindly 
 lent to me by a descendant of one of the Lackingtons, 
 Mr. R. A. Lackington, who is now engaged in business in 
 the house of William Dawson and Sons, Bream's Build- 
 ings. See page 172. 
 
 CHISWICK PRESS: PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND co. 
 
 TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
 
 UTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACjLITJ 
 
 II I I I' M '"'"' 
 
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