religious character of the poems. Johnson strongly urged Cowper not to let this preface stand. The candid poet saw the judiciousness of this advice, and wrote thus to the Rev. Mr. Unwin:-" It is possible, after all, that my book may come forth without a preface. Mr. Newton has written (he could, indeed, write no other) a very sensible as well as a very friendly one; and it is printed. But the bookseller, who knows him well, and esteems him highly, is anxious to have it cancelled, and, with my consent first obtained, has offered to negotiate that matter with the author. He judges that, though it would serve to recommend the volume to the religious, it would disgust the profane, and that there is really no need of any preface at all. I have found Johnson a very judicious man on other occasions, and am therefore willing that he should determine for me upon this."

The preface was cancelled. Cowper, in deprecating any offence to Newton, pays another cordial tribute to the merit of Johnson:-"I have reason to be very much satisfied with my publisher. He marked such lines as did not please him, and, as often as I could, I paid all possible respect to his animadversions. You will accordingly find, at least if you recollect how they stood in the MS., that several passages are the better for having undergone his critical notice. Indeed, I do not know where I could have found a bookseller who could have pointed out to me my defects with more discernment; and as I find it is a fashion for modern bards to publish the names of the literati who have favoured their works with a

revisal, would myself most willingly have acknowledged my obligations to Johnson, and so I told

him."

The bookseller of St. Paul's Churchyard did not, after his first venture with Cowper, attain the cheapness which he desired for his publications by a niggardly payment for authorship. In 1786, the poet writes to Lady Hesketh: "Johnson behaves very handsomely in the affair of my two volumes. He acts with a liberality not often found in persons of his occupation, and to mention it, when occasion calls me to it, is a justice due to him." It would be difficult, amongst old booksellers or modern, to find one of more liberality and judgment than Joseph Johnson. He encouraged Fuseli in his design to paint a Milton Gallery,' to be published in imitation of Boydell's Shakspeare.' The poems were to be edited by Cowper, but his illness put an end to that project; yet Johnson subscribed, with five other friends of Fuseli, to advance him a sum of money till the paintings were completed. Johnson had to bear the common fate of other right-minded men in a season of political persecution. He was imprisoned nine months in the King's Bench for selling the political works of Gilbert Wakefield. He was enabled to bear his confinement with equanimity; for he rented the Marshal's house, where he used to give dinners to his literary friends, of whom he had a large number of the most distinguished.

Let me say a word of the mischievous spirit-the very Puck of booksellers-who has caused all this commotion in the trade, JOHN BELL, of the Strand.

Leigh Hunt has described him, as he appeared early in the present century, when he published Bell's Weekly Messenger:'-" He was a plain man, with a red face, and a nose exaggerated by intemperance; and yet there was something not unpleasing in his countenance, especially when he spoke. He had sparkling black eyes, a good-natured smile, gentlemanly manners, and one of the most agreeable voices I ever heard. He had no acquirements, perhaps not even grammar; but his taste in putting forth a publication, and getting the best artists to adorn it, was new in those times, and may be admired in any." This remarkable man, as Hunt calls him, was not satisfied with producing his British Poets,' to invade "our literary property," but he sent forth his British Theatre' to drive out of the market the old octavo editions of single Plays, or the cumbrous collections of the works of dramatic authors, from Dryden and Farquhar to Thomson and Colman. He published 'Shakespear,' also in small pocket volumes. His draughtsmen and engravers were not selected for their cheapness, but for their excellence. His love of innovation was really awful. Nichols (John Bowyer) records that "Mr. Bell, in publishing his 'British Theatre,' first set the fashion of discarding the long s." Worst of all, he raised up a series of rivals and imitators, who went upon the same principle of giving the common reader nicely-printed small volumes, with embellishments by first-rate artists. Cook, of Paternoster-row, was one of those who made a fortune

by this illegitimate business. Then came HARRISON, with his British Novelists, in 100 volumes, illustrated by Stothard. I have a series of these charming designs. What wealth of fancy; what fertility of humour; what truth of characterization, do these cheap embellishments present to me! As I turn over my two or three hundred little engravings, the incidents which filled my young mind with wonder, and the people over whose fortunes I once laughed and cried, rise up once more, and Memory takes me again over the old ground which Genius has covered with its imperishable fruits and flowers. Robinson Crusoe is there, leaving the foundered ship, upon his raft; or building his boat, with his faithful Friday assisting in the labour. Peter Wilkins (does any one now read that delightful imitation of Defoe?) is at the door of his lonely cabin, holding a lamp as he gazes upon a woman with wings, lying upon the ground as if dead ;-his tender and loving Yonwarkee. Gulliver, in Lilliput, is pegged to the earth, whilst diminutive beings are climbing by ladders up the steep sides of the Man-mountain. Sir Launcelot

Greaves goes forth armed cap-d-pie, to redress the evils of society; but the modern knight, as delineated by the artist, is not to be compared to the Knight of La Mancha. Motteux's translation of Cervantes, and Stothard's designs, would make me well content to renew my acquaintance with the adventure of the Windmills, and with Sancho, the governor of Barataria; even though Dickens or Thackeray were at hand, to wile away a long winter evening. I pass over the Grandison and the Clarissa (with costumes

slightly modernized as compared with the original plates), to converse as familiarly as of old with Peregrine Pickle, Commodore Trunnion, and Tom Pipes. But more prized even than these worthies are Gil Blas, in the Robber's Cave; and Asmodeus, that marvellous little figure upon crutches, which genius only could have conceived. But whither am I wandering? I would fain linger over the immortal Uncle Toby and the Widow, or weep with the Cook and the Scullion, as Corporal Trim drops his hat upon the ground to point the moral of the story of Le Fevre. But this dallying with pleasant recollections must not be. I must close my portfolio, and say no more about the cheap publishers of popular works eighty years ago, beyond expressing my conviction that they had right notions of Art for the multitude.