among poets; and, before its seeing the world, I submit it wholly to the correction of your pens. I entreat, therefore, one of you would descend so far as to write two or three lines to me of your pleasure upon it; which, as I cannot but expect from gentlemen who have so well shown upon so many occasions that greatest character of scholars, in being favourable to the ignorant, so I am sure nothing at present can more highly oblige me, or make me happier." Ingenuous young Secretary of Sir William Temple, how much hadst thou to forget of the "pride which licks the dust," and to learn in the world's school of ambition and insolence, between 1691 and 1711! When Harley promised thee a bishopric for doing the dirtiest offices that a great intellect ever stooped to, thou would'st have made short work with the "devils of Grub-street rogues," such as John Dunton and his Athenians.

During the course of publication of the 'Athenian Mercury,' Dunton was relieved from some of his early difficulties, by coming "into possession of a considerable estate," by the decease of his cousin. "The

world," he says, "now smiled on me. I sailed with wind and tide, and had humble servants enough among the Stationers, Booksellers, Printers, and Binders." Honours awaited him. "Now the Master and Assistants of the Company of Stationers began to think me sufficient to wear a livery;" and he paid his livery-fine of twenty pounds. The business of bookselling had, upon the accession of William and Mary, attained that freedom which had been denied to authors and publishers by Charles I., Charles II.,

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and James II. "The Liberty of Unlicensed Printing," so nobly advocated by Milton, was established, although some restraint upon the Press still remained till 1694. Dunton's "character of the several licensers with whom I have had concerns" offers a curious peep behind the scenes. Sir Roger L'Estrange is the first on the list, and he is not simply dismissed with telling the world that his sting is gone, but is thus characterized:-"A man that betrays his religion and country in pretending to defend it; that was made Surveyor of the Press, and would wink at unlicensed books if the printer's wife would but smile on him." "Mr. Fraser," Dunton says, was our chief Licenser for several years. He licensed for me the Athenian Mercuries,' The Works of the Learned,' 'The Royal Voyage,' and such a numerous company of other books, as advanced his fees, for bare licensing, to thirty pounds per annum, which I paid him for several years together. . . . . 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." He names several others, always with commendation. John had no doubt learnt "the mystery of winning upon the hearts" of the Licensers. There was a

...

jackal of these lions in the path of publishers who is thus described:-"Mr. Robert Stephens is 'Messenger to the Press,' as well as a printer. I know Robin has many enemies that grunt at him (and perhaps they have reason for it); but if I will praise the bridge that I went over, 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; and Robin will be as true to his friend, when there is a fellow-feeling in the case, as any man in the world, which is a rare quality in a man that lives by informing." The licensing system, with all its tyranny and corruption, had one advantage. It did something to protect the copyright in books from piracy. The Licensing Acts and Proclamations prohibited the printing of any book without the consent of the owner, as also without a license. In the interval between the period when licenses for the press had ceased, and the passing of the Copyright Act of the 8th of Anne, there was no effectual protection for literary property. During those twenty years, the men abundantly flourished who are described by Addison in the 'Tatler' as “a set of wretches we authors call pirates, who print any book, poem, or sermon, as soon as it appears in the world, in a smaller volume, and sell it, as all other thieves do stolen goods, at a cheaper rate." Dunton has drawn the character of one of this tribe: "Mr. Lee, in Lombard-street. Such a pirate, such a cormorant, was never before. 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 for Ireland, where he acted as felonious Lee, as he did in London." There he might safely pirate. That trade flourished, more or less, till the Union of 1801 put an end to it.

Dunton's picture of "felonious Lee" is quite an

exception to the usual sugared style in which he portrays his professional contemporaries. Roger North described the booksellers of Little Britain as "knowing and conversable men, with whom, for the sake of bookish knowledge, the greatest wits were pleased to converse." But with John Dunton, many of them are almost miracles of talent and learning. 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 in the sacred writings;" a second "speaks French and Latin with a great deal of fluency and ease;" a third is " familiarly acquainted with all the books that are extant in any language." It is astonishing how many are remarkable for the beauty of their persons-their eyes "brisk and sparkling;" of "graceful aspect;" of "a lovely proportion, exceedingly well made." A valued friend who, like myself, has found something more than folly in Dunton's Life and Errors,' says "never certainly, 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."* I must not dwell upon these "words of such sweet breath composed," but look a little further into this historian of "the trade," to note down some of its peculiarities at the end of the seventeenth century, as developed in some of his characters.

First, let me catch a glimpse of the localities in which these busy bees buzzed and made their honey.

* G. L. Craik, in Knight's 'London,' Vol. V. No. CXV.

About twenty years after Dunton published his volume, Macky, the author of a 'Journey through England,' traced out their general distribution through the metropolis: "The booksellers of Antient books in all languages are in Little Britain and Paternosterrow; those for Divinity and Classics on the north side of St. Paul's Cathedral; Law, History, and Plays about Temple Bar; and the French Booksellers in the Strand. It seems, then, that the bookselling business has been gradually resuming its original situation near this Cathedral ever since the beginning of George I., while the neighbourhood of Ducklane and Little Britain has been proportionally falling into disuse." Little Britain, once the grand emporium of books, we thus learn, was going down in 1724; and was probably then chiefly tenanted by those called by Roger North "demi-booksellers," who furnished "half a shop which serves for the sign of a bookseller rather than a real one." He is hard upon this tribe: "It is wretched to consider what pickpocket work, with help of the press, these demibooksellers make. They crack their brains to find out selling subjects, and keep hirelings in garrets, at hard meat, to write and correct by the great; and so puff up an octavo to a sufficient thickness, and there is six shillings current for an hour and a half's reading, and perhaps never to be read or looked upon after." With the aid of Dunton I may behold the Shadow of many an entire or demi-bookseller, sitting under his sign in other places than Little Britain and Paternoster-row, than St. Paul's Churchyard, Temple Bar, and the Strand. They start up in the New