CHAPTER V.

THE TONSONS; LINTOTTS; CURLL.

HERE has been a dinner at "young Jacob Tonson's" a literary dinner at which Swift, and Steele, and Addison, were of the company. The nephew of old Jacob had become his partner. This dinner was on the 26th of July, 1711. The Tories had come into power. Swift had deserted his former political friends; and so had Prior, who was in consequence expelled from the Kit-cat Club. The distinguished guests are departed, and the nephew and the uncle are left alone to talk over the occurrences of the evening. It had not been altogether a pleasant evening, for Addison and Swift were not cordial; and Steele, goodtempered as he was at all times, and especially so over his wine, was more than usually careful in his talk. "Well! I think you gave that puffed-up Vicar of Laracor a piece of your mind when you charged him with trying to make the Secretary take from us the printing of The Gazette." " "But he denied it," replied old Jacob. "True! But he writes foul libels, and therefore might not stick at a falsehood." "No, no, he is too proud to speak a lie, especially when there is a chance of being found out." "I firmly believe that it was he," said young Jacob, "who got

Steele turned out of his office of 'Gazette' writer." "It is a great shame," said the uncle, "The Gazette' is just that one little place which an honest government would give to a deserving man of letters, without regard to party; or at any rate would not turn out the holder of it when he had done nothing offensive in his office. Poor Dick was very careful. I have heard him say that the Gazetteer was the lowest minister of state; and that he never erred against the rules observed by all ministries to keep 'The Gazette' very innocent and very insipid." "It will become a post for the lowest Grub-street Judas, or the vulgarest hanger-on of an Irish viceroy," quoth young Jacob.*

6

The Tonsons did not give themselves up to fruitless lamentations when they lost the printing of The Gazette.' Naturally they did not abate their suspicions of the management of Swift in these petty things of party. He was well known to be stirring heaven and earth to procure John Barber some lucrative appointments, in connexion with a brother stationer. Barber and his lucky friend appear to have been insatiable in their demands upon the Tory government. In the Journal to Stella' he describes

I dined with

* "Mr. Addison and I have at last met again. him and Steele to-day at young Jacob Tonson's. The two Jacobs think it is I who have made the secretary take from them the printing of the Gazette,' which they are going to lose, and Ben Tooke and another are to have it. Jacob came to me t'other day to make his court; but I told him it was too late, and that it was not my doing. I reckon they will lose it in a week or two."'Swift's Journal to Stella,' July 26th, 1711.

these exertions. He had obtained for them the appointment of Stationers to the Ordnance-the third employment he had got for them. When they still want something more, the great humourist, who can be kind enough to the most unblushing partisan, writes (January 16, 1711-12):-"My printer and bookseller want me to hook in another employment for them in the Tower, because it was enjoyed before by a stationer, although it be to serve the Ordnance with oil, tallow, &c., and is worth four hundred pounds per annum more. I will try what I can do. They are resolved to ask several other employments of the same nature to other offices; and I will then grease fat sows, and see whether it be possible to satisfy them. Why am not I a stationer ?" In a letter, written at the time when the successful printer had reached the highest civic dignity (being the only one of that trade who became Lord Mayor of London), Swift says, "Alderman Barber was my old acquaintance; I got him two or three employments when I had credit with the Queen's ministers." The alderman was not only one of the most violent of Tories, but a Jacobite. Travelling in Italy, he was introduced to the Pretender, and was arrested on his return home. His memory is preserved by the ostentatious inscription which he placed upon the monument of Butler, erected in Westminster Abbey at his expense. There was another patron of genius who, in the same manner, desired to link his fame to that of Milton. An epigram, ascribed to Pope, which he proposed to be placed on the blank scroll under Shakspere's bust,

has not yet been efficient in warning off trespassers upon this hallowed ground:

"Thus Britain lov'd me, and preserv'd my fame,

Safe from a Barber's or a Benson's name."

The elder Jacob, in 1706, had made his advances to Pope in a plain tradesman-like fashion, which the great publishers of later times may probably deem too humble. He had been shown the manuscript of a Pastoral, which he thought "extremely fine," and he thus concludes his brief note of solicitation: "I remember I have formerly seen you in my shop, and am sorry I did not improve my acquaintance with you. If you design your poem for the press, no one shall be more careful in printing it, nor no one can give greater encouragement to it than, Sir, &c." Pope's Pastorals were published in 'Tonson's Miscellany' in 1709. The young poet, however, was not constant; and he committed the Essay on Criticism' -published at first anonymously-to a bookseller of no great celebrity, of the name of Lewis. Its sale was at first slow. It was attacked by Dennis and praised by Addison. Tonson had to bear a more marked desertion by Pope than the choice of a new publisher for the Essay. Bernard Lintott had set up a Miscellany which was to be a rival to Tonson's, and here, in 1712, appeared the first sketch of the 'Rape of the Lock.' As the success of Tonson had been founded upon Dryden, so that of Lintott was established by his connexion with Pope. Yet Tonson and Pope were not upon unfriendly terms. Spence has recorded several anecdotes, in which they are

introduced as conversing as intimate acquaintances only converse. For example: "Ay, Mr. Tonson, he was ultimus Romanorum (with a sigh)-speaking of poor Mr. Congreve, who died a year or two before."

The Bernard Lintott, whom Pope has made famous, was a bookseller, described in his quaint style by John Dunton: "He lately published A Collection of Tragic Tales, &c.,' by which I perceive he is angry with the world, and scorns it into the bargain; and I cannot blame him; for Durfey (his author) both treats and esteems it as it deserves-too hard a task for those whom it flatters, or perhaps for Bernard himself, should the world ever change its humour and grin upon him." Mr. Durfey's comic songs were probably more profitable to the bookseller than his tragic tales. Of Durfey's reputation amongst country squires there is a capital description by Pope, in a letter written in 1710 to his town friend Cromwell: "I assure you I am looked upon in the neighbourhood for a very sober, well-disposed person; no great hunter, indeed, but a great esteemer of the noble sport, and only unhappy in my want of constitution for that and drinking. They all say 'tis pity I am so sickly, and I think 'tis pity they are so healthy. But I say nothing that may destroy their good opinion of me. I have not quoted one Latin author since I came down, but have learned without book a song of Mr. Thomas Durfey's, who is your only poet of tolerable reputation in this country. He makes all the merriment in our entertainments, and, but for him, there would be so miserable a dearth of catches, that I fear they would (sans cérémonie) put either the parson or me upon making some for 'em.