"While, in your early days of reputation, After this, the eulogy of John Dunton is somewhat flat:-"He was bookseller to the famous Dryden, and is himself a very good judge of persons and authors; and, as there is nobody more competently qualified to give their opinion upon another, so there is none who does it with a more severe exactness, or with less partiality; for, to do Mr. Tonson justice, he speaks his mind upon all occasions, and will flatter nobody." The young bookseller is gradually attaining a position. In 1681 there was an indefatigable collector of the fugitive poetry, especially political, which formed the chief staple of many booksellers' shops, and the most vendible commodity of the noisy hawkers. Mr. Narcissus Luttrell recorded-according to his custom of marking on each sheet and halfsheet of the Sibylline Leaves' the day he acquired it-that on the 17th of November he received a copy of the first part of Absalom and Achitophel," "from his friend Jacob Tonson." Dryden and his publisher appear to be on a very friendly footing in 1684. He sends the poet a present of two melons; and the poet, in his letter of thanks, advises him to reprint 'Lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse,' and to print a thousand copies. Dryden was now at work upon the Miscellany Poems;' that collection which 6 is sometimes called Tonson's,' and sometimes 'Dryden's.' According to the fashion of title-pages at that time, it was to be written "by the most eminent hands." The poet writes, "Since we are to have nothing but new, I am resolved we will have nothing but good, whomever we disoblige." The first volume. was published in 1684; a second volume appeared in 1685. Malone says, "This was the first collection of that kind which had appeared for many years in England." The third Miscellany' was published in 1693. Tonson has now become a sharp tradesman. A letter from him to Dryden exhibits him haggling about the number of lines he ought to receive of the translation of parts of Ovid. He had only 1446 for fifty guineas, whereas he expected 1518 lines for forty guineas. He is, nevertheless, humbly submissive. "I own, if you don't think fit to add something more, I must submit; 'tis wholly at your choice." Still holding to his maxim to have a pennyworth for his penny, he adds: "You were pleased to use me much kindlier in Juvenal, which is not reckoned so easy to translate as Ovid." Although the bookseller seems mercenary enough to justify Malone's remark that "by him who is to live by the sale of books, a book is considered merely as an article of trade," Dryden soon after writes to Tonson, "I am much ashamed of myself that I am so much. behindhand with you in kindness. Above all things, I am sensible of your good nature in bearing me company to this place" (somewhere in Northamptonshire). Dryden could now ill afford to be curtailed in the bookseller's payment for his verses. The Revolution had deprived him of his office of Poet-Laureate; but he might do better than writing 'Miscellany Poems ' at the rate of ninepence a line. He will publish a specimen of his translation of Virgil in the Miscellany,' but he will produce the complete work by subscription. Tonson shall be his agent for printing the volumes, with engravings. The plan succeeds. There are large-paper copies for the rich and great; there are small-paper copies for a second-class of subscribers. "Be ready with the price of paper and of the books," writes Dryden. They were to meet at a tavern. "No matter for any dinner; for that is a charge to you, and I care not for it. Mr. Congreve may be with us, as a common friend." Few were the literary bargains that were settled without a dinner. Fewer, indeed, were the coffee-house meetings between author and bookseller that were not accompanied with that solace which was called a "whet." Their business is completed. Mr. Dryden goes again into the country for his poetical labours and his fishing. Mr. Tonson is "My good friend," and "I assure you I lay up your last kindnesses to me in my heart." But a terrible subject of dispute is coming up which much perplexes the bookseller. In October, 1695, the poet writes, "I expect fifty pounds in good silver: not such as I had formerly. I am not obliged to take gold, neither will I, nor stay for it beyond fourand-twenty hours after it is due." The sellers and the buyers in all trades are sorely disturbed in their calculations, whilst Charles Montague, and Locke, and Newton, are thinking over the best means for a reform of the coinage. Mr. Tonson's customers give him bad silver for his books, and Mr. Dryden's subscribers for his five-guinea edition would take care not to pay the bookseller at the rate of twenty-one shillings for each golden piece whose exchangeable value is increased forty per cent. When the author writes, "I expect fifty pounds in good silver," he demands an impossibility. All the "good silver" was hoarded. When he says, "I am not obliged to take gold," he means that he was not obliged to take guineas at their market value as compared with the clipped and debased silver. Cunningham, a historian of the period, says, "Guineas on a sudden rose to thirty shillings a piece-all currency of other money was stopped." Dryden was, in the end, compelled to submit to the common fate of all who had to receive money in exchange for labour or goods. So the poet squabbles with his publisher into the next year, and the publisher of whose arguments in his self-defence we hear nothing-gets hard measure from the historian one hundred and fifty years afterwards. "The ignorant and helpless peasant," says Macaulay, "was cruelly ground between one class which would give money only by tale, and another which would take it only by weight; yet his sufferings hardly exceeded those of the unfortunate race of authors. Of the way in which obscure writers were treated we may easily form a judgment from the letters, still extant, of Dryden to his bockseller Tonson." The poet's complaints, presented without any attendant circumstances, and with some suppression, would seem to imply that Tonson attempted to cheat Dryden as he would have attempted to cheat obscure writers. But Macaulay justly says, "These complaints and demands, which have been preserved from destruction only by the eminence of the writer, are doubtless merely a fair example of the correspondence which filled all the mail-bags of England for several months." Reconciliation soon comes. The business intercourse of Dryden and Tonson continues uninterrupted. Jacob, we may believe, sometimes meditates upon the possible loss of his great friend. Will any poetical genius arise worthy to take his place? He thinks not. He must look around him, and see which of the old writers can be successfully reproduced, like the Milton, which he has now made his own, as the world may observe in the portrait which Sir Godfrey Kneller has painted for him, with 'Paradise Lost' in his hand. I see the shadow of a younger Jacob Tonson than he who is thus represented in the engraving. I see him bargaining, in 1683, with Brabazon Aylmer, for one-half of his interest in Milton's poem. Aylmer produces the document which transfers to him the entire copyright, signed by Samuel Simmons; and he exhibits also the original covenant of indenture, by which Milton sold to Simmons his copy for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation for other payments, according to the future salestwenty pounds in the whole. Mr. Tonson thinks that the value of other literary wares than "prologues and plays" has risen in the market. He could scarcely have dreamt, however, that the time would |