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cannot continue the quotation as applied to Mr. Payne: "When he threw up his trade, Europe had no small loss of him." He had a worthy suc

whom he resigned his

cessor in his eldest son, to business in 1790. Thomas Payne of Pall Mall carried the reputation of his father into a grander place of business than the original little shop in the shape of an L.

The dynasty of LONGMAN, in Paternoster Row, seems to have endured for almost as many generations as the House of Brunswick. The surname is to be found on the same title-pages as the names of Jacob Tonson and Thomas Osborne, and the baptismal name of Thomas has descended in the firm as regularly as that of the four Georges. Nearly a century and a half of uninterrupted prosperity and reputation has crowned the labours of very few mercantile houses. The first Thomas Longman was succeeded by his nephew, whom we have seen honourably associated with Dodsley and Millar in the project of Johnson's Dictionary.' It is he of the booksellers' club whose shadow I now trace at the Chapter Coffee-house. Another member

of that club was ROBERT BALDWIN, whose name is legion in the annals of bookselling. Whether the Baldwins of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can be traced back to the William Bauldwyn, or Baldwin, of the time of Edward VI. and Elizabeth I cannot affirm or deny. If their ancestor were the printer who wrote a metrical version of Solomon's Song, and to whom Thomas Sackville recommended

a completion of his 'Mirrour for Magistrates,' the Robert Baldwin of 1777 might well have been stimulated to contend for the claim of some of the early poets to appear in the Booksellers' Collection, instead of being, as it was,

"The Monument of banish'd Mindes."

I must complete in another chapter my shadows of this parliament of old booksellers.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE CHAPTER COFFEE-HOUSE (Concluded).

OHN RIVINGTON and Sons hold their state under the Bible and Crown, in St. Paul's Churchyard, as did their predecessor Charles very early in the century. His name is associated, in 1725, with Lindsay's translation of Mason's Vindication of the Church of England.' Was the old bookseller incautiously sliding into dissent when he published one of the earliest works of George Whitefield, "The Nature and Necessity of a New Birth in Christ, a Sermon preached at Bristol, in September, 1737'? The young student of Oxford, who, with his coadjutor Wesley, had, in 1736, to bear with being called Bible-moth and Methodist, had gone forth to preach in the fields to the most ignorant and debased. But Whitefield was not then separated from the Church, in which he had been ordained Deacon by Dr. Benson, Bishop of Gloucester. After the publication, by Rivington, of his earliest printed sermon, he went to America, where he widely diffused the tenets of Methodism. But he still belonged to the English Church, in which he was ordained Priest in 1739.

Foote, in his little comedy of 'The Author,' which appeared in 1757, makes a bookseller say to a candi

date for publication, "I don't deal in the sermon way now; I lost money by the last I printed, for all 'twas wrote by a Methodist." The printed effusions of Methodism had thus, it would appear, become popular in twenty years. But, by this time, John Rivington sat beneath the Bible and Crown, and how well he flourished under the auspices of orthodoxy may be gathered from the enumeration of his dignities by Mr. Nichols: "He carried on his business, universally esteemed, for more than half a century; and enjoyed the especial patronage of the Clergy, particularly those of the higher order. He was many years Bookseller to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; a Governor of most of the Royal Hospitals; a Member of the Court of Lieutenancy, and of the Common Council; a Director of the Amicable Society in Serjeant's Inn, and of the Union Fireoffice; and an ancient Member of the Company of Stationers, of which he was Master in 1775." John Rivington must have been quite clear of the seductive influences of Whitefield and Wesley, when, in 1752, he published The Mischiefs of Enthusiasm and Bigotry,' an Assize-sermon by the Rev. Richard Hurd. Yes! Enthusiasm was the word with which the old race of the clergy assailed their supposed enemies, and defended their own rich pluralities after they had given up Jacobitism. The bête-noire of half a century was the Methodist. Against the sect did George Lavington, Bishop of Exeter, pour out the vials of his satire in 1749. The Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared,' was a fertile theme for fun. The earnestness which was at first ridiculed came in time to be despised. The respect

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able country clergyman, meddling little with the affairs of his neighbours, kind after his fashion to the poor, but rather opposed to the new notion of Sunday Schools; not given to hard-drinking and fox-hunting as the satirist and caricaturist represented; he nevertheless thought it a duty which he owed to his cloth not to be disturbed in his habitual repose by the rivalry of modern dissent. It was not the old-fashioned Non-conformity, which had nearly died out, but something new which had been engendered in the very seat of orthodoxy, and might be dangerous if it crept into the bosom of the Church. It was not much to be feared, however, he thought, as long as it was Dissent.

The example of George III., which banished profligacy from the Court, had contributed to banish gross and licentious manners from the Church. But apathy had taken the place of indecorum, and it was abundantly manifested in the pulpit oratory. Dr. Campbell (the Irish Dr. Campbell) came to London in 1775. He goes to the Temple Church ;"The sermon was preached by a Master of the Society, a brother to Thurlow, the Attorney-General. The discourse was the most meagre composition (on our Saviour's temptation), and the delivery worse. He stood like Gulliver stuck in the marrow-bone, with the sermon (newspaper-like) in his hand, and without grace or emphasis, he in slow cadence measured it forth. In the evening I strolled to Westminster Abbey, where I (being locked in) was obliged to listen to a discourse still duller, and as ill delivered." By way of contrast, he went on a Good Friday to hear Dr. Dodd, "who is cried up as the

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