land. It was a very simple and straightforward proceeding for the investment of his accumulations. "In the year 1710, when the debt of the navy was increased to divers millions, an Act of Parliament was made to provide for the payment of that and other men's dues from the Government, by erecting the South Sea Company, into which the creditors of divers branches of the National Debt were empowered to subscribe the several sums due to them from the public." He goes on to state that Mr. Guy, being possessed of such securities to the amount of many thousand pounds, subscribed the same into the South Sea Company, it being the condition that the subscribers should receive an annual interest of six per cent. upon their respective subscriptions, until the same should be discharged by Parliament. During the subsequent ten years, when he was a fundholder at a moderate rate of interest-not a stockjobber-he made large benefactions to the Stationers' Company for poor members, and to Christ's Hospital. In 1720 came the culminating point of his prosperity. We borrow Maitland's account, which is simple and clear enough, to show how Guy profited by the scheme proposed to Parliament by the South Sea Company, for reducing some of the public debts by increasing their capital. "It no sooner received the sanction of Parliament than the national creditors from all parts came crowding to subscribe into the said company the several sums due to them from the Government, by which great run one hundred pounds of the company's stock that before was sold at one hundred and twenty pounds (at which time Mr. Guy

was possessed of forty-five thousand and five hundred pounds of the said stock), gradually arose to above one thousand and fifty pounds. Mr. Guy, wisely considering that the great rise of the stock was owing to the iniquitous management of a few, prudently began to sell out his stock at about three hundred (for that which probably at first did not cost him above fifty or sixty pounds), and continued selling till it arose to about six hundred, when he disposed of the last of his property in the said company." It thus appears that Mr. Guy's "gains" during this season of financial madness were not produced by buying at a low price and selling at a high price. He was an original large holder of South Sea Stock, and he followed the course of the market in wisely selling out at the right season. His decision of character would lead him to determine this critical question, which so many speculators fail to solve. When Sir Robert Walpole sold out at a profit of 1000 per cent., the rich bookseller might safely follow his lead in private as well as public affairs. He does not appear to have been a South Sea Director, or in any way a promoter of the scheme upon which was founded "the most enormous fabric of delusion that was ever raised amongst an industrious, thrifty, and prudent people." Thomas Guy was amongst the few sagacious ones who profited by the common phrensy. His fortune had arisen out of the slow accumulations of a long period of industry. When he was seventy-six years of age, there came a great and unexpected accession of wealth. The wonderful increase produced by the sale of the stock which he had regarded as a safe investment, "occa

sioned," says Malcolm, "those the best acquainted with his affairs to aver that, by the execution of the pernicious South Sea scheme, Mr. Guy got more money within the space of three months than what the erecting, furnishing, and endowing his hospital amounted to." The building cost nearly nineteen thousand pounds. The endowment by him amounted to two hundred and twenty thousand pounds. He had the satisfaction of knowing that his gains had been worthily applied, when he saw his hospital roofed in before his death in 1724.

I have been desirous of defending Thomas Guy against the charge of having made his great riches chiefly by usury and stock-jobbing, because I believe that the printing and sale of Bibles for nearly half a century would have secured for him very large accumulations. Let me look a little more par

ticularly at this question.

There is preserved, in the handwriting of Christopher Barker, in 1582, A Note of the offices and other special licences for printing granted by her Majesty, with a conjecture of their valuation.' This printer to the Queen says that the whole Bible requires so great a cost, that his predecessors kept the realm twelve years without venturing a single edition; but that he had desperately adventured to print four in a year and a half, expending about 30007., to the certain ruin of his wife and family if he had died in the time. Of these four editions, three were in folio, and one in quarto. The sale of the folios would necessarily be limited by the cost, in the way that the same patentee complains of as to his Book of Common Prayer, "which few or none do

buy except the minister." During the ninety years which elapsed between the date of this letter, and that period which I may assign for the opening of the Oxford Bible Warehouse by Guy, there had probably been very small competition for the sale of the Holy Scriptures between the King's printer and the two Universities. The Church Bible was well printed by each; but the smaller Bible for private use was as dear as it was ill-printed. The demand by the laity produced the attempt of associated booksellers to print the Bible in Holland. The attempt failed; and if Guy, or some other spirited bookseller, had not stepped in to render the Oxford privilege an active principle, instead of a dead letter, as regarded the general circulation of the Bible, the same state of things would have gone on, as that over which the King's printer lamented in 1682, namely, that some books which partially supplied the place of the Common Prayer Book were in general use.

It required no acquaintance with Christopher Barker's letter to satisfy Thomas Guy that a cheap book sold largely would be "a profitable copy;' that where Field's great Bible would sell one copy, a hundred common Bibles might be sold at a tenth of its price. Guy called forth a real competition between two privileged bodies, and this neutralised the evil of their monopoly. In the present day the same limited competition has produced a cheapness which excites the wonder of those who are not aware of what results can be produced in the price of books by an universal demand.

CHAPTER II.

JOHN DUNTON.

Na copy of verses prefixed to The Life and Errors' of John Dunton - which poem is entitled 'The Author's Speaking Picture, drawn by Himself, in 1705,' there is the following couplet :

"I love to know the inside of a man,

Let who will gaze o' th' shadow of him then."

I must be content to gaze on the shadow of this man, without too much regard to his moral or intellectual peculiarities. These procured for him the name of a "lunatick" among his contemporaries. Warburton described him as "an auction bookseller and an abusive scribbler;" and the elder D'Israeli notices him as "a cracked-brain scribbling bookseller, who boasted he had a thousand projects, fancied he had methodised six hundred, and was ruined by the fifty he executed." And yet, in spite of all this, I must call up the shadow of John Dunton to say something for himself, and to usher in other shadows of his contemporaries-booksellers, printers, authors, journalists, licensers of the press-around whom he has gathered many illustrations of the literary history of the time from James II. to