George II., which I should in vain look for in the graver records of a sober bibliographer. So I wade, for the third or fourth time, through a volume of seven hundred pages, vilely printed upon the most wretched paper, whose title-page is itself emblematic of the "inside of the man," as setting forth not only his "life and errors," but his "idea of a new life;" his "discoveries made in his travels already, and in his private conversation at home;" together with "the lives and characters of a thousand persons now living in London, &c." This volume, "written by himself in solitude," was published by R. Malthus, in 1705, and was reprinted by Mr. John Bowyer Nichols, in 1817. John Dunton's "speech is like a tangled chain, nothing impaired, but all disordered;" so I will endeavour to arrange some of its more interesting portions into some method.

From an early age to his ninth year, there was a boy growing up almost as an orphan, in a school at Dungrove, near Chesham, in Buckinghamshire. His father was born at Little Missenden, in the same county, of which parish two previous John Duntons had been the ministers. He records that he was born on the 14th of May, 1659. His father was then rector of Graffham in Huntingdonshire. Losing his wife when his only child was an infant, the father went away to Ireland, with the resolution not to marry again for seven years. Meanwhile the little boy was left to strangers, appearing by his own account to have learnt little, and to have led an idle life, playing on the pleasant banks of the Chess, and rambling amongst the Chiltern hills. His father

returning to England after his long exile, was presented to the living of Aston Clinton. He then married a second time, and sent for his little son home, to superintend his education, with a view to his becoming a faithful preacher of the doctrines that had come down from the old Puritans, but were growing into disrepute after the restoration of the Stuarts and the re-establishment of episcopacy. He was doomed to disappointment. Young John, describing himself at the age of fourteen as being "wounded by a silent passion for a virgin in my father's house," says, "my father 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." What he calls his "unsettled mercurial humour," destroyed his father's hopes that he might be able to transmit "the priesthood to his own posterity." learnt Latin, but the difficulties of the Greek quite broke all his resolutions. So the worthy man, seeing that his son's inclinations did not lead him to learning, "thought to make it his interest to be a friend to learning and the Muses." He was to be apprenticed to a London bookseller. He was now, he says, "only to traffic with the outside, the shell, and the casks of learning." His intended master, Mr. Parkhurst, "a religious and a just man," was kind to the youth upon trial, but having gratified his curiosity, John took horse to Aston Clinton without leave. His father sent him back again, with a kind and sensible letter of excuse, and so he was bound

He

apprentice. Better thoughts came upon him, and "from that very time 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." Amidst all his "errors," the thought of his father's instruction seems to have had some influence upon his wayward nature, and to have kept him from greater evils than the misfortunes which sprang from his instability. The bookseller's apprentice had then five more years to serve. These he accomplished without any other outbreak, beyond that of taking a prominent part in a political movement of Whig apprentices against the Tory; and 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 was soon a bookseller on his own account, occupying" half a shop, a warehouse, and a fashionable chamber." The young man had inherited some property, which might be available for his business. His excellent father, amongst other counsels, had advised him to use all possible prudence in the choice of a wife, further exhorting him to keep something more solid than investments in publishing speculations. "Sell not," he said, "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, by some remarkable

providence, meet with a wife of a considerable estate, you may, by her portion, set up your trade without mortgaging of your land." John Dunton had thus some present command of capital, which he was in a fair way to improve into a fortune, or, more probably, to dissipate. "Printing," he says, "Printing," he says, "was now the uppermost in my thoughts, and hackney authors began to ply me with specimens as earnestly, and with as much passion and concern, as the watermen do passengers with oars and scullers." with oars and scullers." He was, however, for a time, prudent; confined his business of publishing to the works of Nonconformist ministers, to whom his name was a recommendation. His first

venture was a work by the Reverend Thomas Doo little. His mode of managing this volume shows how in the primitive days, when there was little ready money, and credit was not easily attainable for a beginner, there was a good understanding amongst booksellers, which had much of the simplicity of barter. "This book fully answered my end; for, exchanging it through the whole trade, it furnished my shop with all sorts of books saleable at that time." He says, "I would endeavour to penetrate, as far as possible, into the mysteries of my trade." Some of the publishing mysteries of that time he seems to have eschewed. "A man should be furnished with an honest policy, if he intends to set out in the world now-a-days. And this is no less necessary in a bookseller, than in any other tradesman, for in that way there are plots and counterplots, and a whole army of hackney authors, that keep their grinders moving by the travail of their

pens. These gormandisers will eat you the very life out of a copy so soon as ever it appears; for, as the times go, original and abridgment are almost reckoned as necessary as man and wife; so that I am really afraid a bookseller and a good conscience will shortly grow some strange thing in the earth." Dunton, I trust, was preserved from some of the dangers of his susceptible nature, as well as from the temptations of commercial life, by marrying into a religious family. He fell in love at church with Elizabeth Annesley, the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Annesley, an eminent preacher amongst the Nonconformists. By marrying this lady he became the brother-in-law of Samuel Wesley, the father of the famous John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. The courtship appears to have been conducted on Dunton's part with as much poetical as religious fervour. Plain Elizabeth was not sufficiently lofty for his impassioned letters. His mistress was the "lovely Iris," and he, "poor languishing Philarete." In spite of these affectations they were united in 1682, and Dr. Annesley preached the marriage sermon. "Dear Iris" gave an early specimen of her prudence and diligence. She was "bookseller and cash-keeper" at Dunton's shop, the Black Raven, in Gracechurch-street, and he honestly admits, "managed all my affairs for me, and left me entirely to my own rambling and scribbling humours." He soon found, or made, an occasion for the indulgence of his vagrant humour. "There came an universal damp upon trade by the defeat of Monmouth in the West; and at this time, having 5007.