'Life and Errors,' he had ceased to be a bookseller.

But he is an indefatigable scribbler. The success of 'The Tatler' in 1709 seems to have excited his ambition to rival the paper which Steele and Addison had carried into a far more exalted region of literature than The News Letter' and 'The Post Boy,'

nd even Defoe's 'Review.' In the original folio edition of 'The Tatler,' No. 144, I find this wonderful advertisement of a new Journal, also issued by John Morphew. As his imprint is continued through the whole series of Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff's two hundred and seventy-one half-sheets, Steele appears not to have been offended at his printer's association with a noted rival:

"Just published, A Weekly Paper, entitled Athenian News; or Dunton's Oracle: To be continued every Tuesday and Saturday, in 3000 distinct Posts, entitled, The Merry-Post, the Philosophick-Post, and so on to 3000 Posts, 30 of which complete a Volume. To each of these Posts will be added, The CasuisticalPost; or, Athenian Mercury; resolving all nice and curious questions in Prose or Verse. Numb. I. The Subject this Time is, Dunton's Post; or, A Dying Farewell to this Life."

Swift, in his more than party-malignity against his old friend Steele, has preserved the name of Dunton "like a fly in amber," to give a sharper point to his bitter irony. Two-and-twenty years had passed since the secretary of Sir William Temple had addressed the writers of The Athenian Mercury' as "great unknown and far-exalted men." Thus the ablest tool of Harley and Bolingbroke writes in 1713:—

"Among the present writers on the Whig side, I can recollect but three of any great distinction, which are The Flying Post,' Mr. Dunton, and the author

6

of The Crisis' [Steele]. The first of these seems to have been much sunk in reputation since the sudden retreat of the only true, genuine, original author, Mr. Ridpath, who is celebrated by 'The Dutch Gazetteer' as one of the best pens in England. Mr. Dunton hath been longer and more conversant in books than any of the three, as well as more voluminous in his productions: however, having employed his studies in so great a variety of other subjects, he hath, I think, but lately turned his genius to politics. His famous tract, entitled 'Neck or Nothing,' must be allowed to be the shrewdest piece, and written with the most spirit of any which hath appeared from that side since the change of the ministry. It is, indeed, a most cutting satire upon the Lord Treasurer and Lord Bolingbroke; and I wonder none of our friends ever undertook to answer it. I confess I was at first of the same opinion with several good judges, who from the style and manner suppose it to have issued from the sharp pen of the Earl of Nottingham; and I am still apt to think it might receive his Lordship's last hand. The third and principal of this triumvirate is the author of The Crisis,' who, although he must yield to 'The Flying Post' in knowledge of the world and skill in politics, and to Mr. Dunton in keenness of satire and variety of reading, hath yet other qualities enough to denominate him a writer of a superior class to either, provided he would a little regard the propriety and disposition of his words, consult the grammatical part, and get some information on the subject he intends to handle."*

Public Spirit of the Whigs.'

Poor John Dunton! He receives this banter as serious praise, which proves that "the Reverend and Learned Dr. Jonathan Swift, though a great Jacobite," clears him from "the undeserved slander of being crazed in his intellectuals." Vain old bookseller! An age of poverty and dire wretchedness was before you when you mistook irony for admiration. You did not make hay when the sun was shining, and now it is, dreary night with you. But you still look back with more than complacency upon your multifarious labours. In an appeal to King George I., which you call your Dying Groans from the Fleet Prison, or last shift for life,' you claim to have had "the most distinguished share" in bringing about "the general deliverance" accomplished by the accession of the House of Brunswick. You appeal to the King's compassion for your miseries, wants, and services, "the Pretender having sworn that John Dunton is the first man he will hang at Tyburn if ever he ascends the British throne, for his having writ forty books to prove him a Popish impostor, and all his adherents either fools, knaves, or madmen."

CHAPTER III.

JACOB TONSON.

Tis the second week of September, the year 1666. At his shop-door in Holborn, beneath the time-honoured emblem of his profession, the particoloured pole, stands Mr. Jacob Tonson, barber-surgeon. He looks earnestly and sorrowfully at the dense canopy of smoke that hangs over the east. The fire that had destroyed more than half of London is still smouldering. Fragments of burning paper still fall upon the causeway, as the remains of the books that were stowed in St. Faith's, under Paul's, are stirred by the wind. Mr. Tonson is troubled. He has friends amongst the booksellers in the ruined City; and occasional customers who have come thence to be trimmed, with beards of a se'nnight's growth, tell him that these traders are most of them undone.

A month has passed since the fire broke out. The wealthy are finding house-room in Westminster and Southwark, and in streets of the City which the flames have not reached. The poor are still, many of them, abiding in huts and tents in Moorfields and St. George's Fields, and on the hills leading to Highgate. Some of the great thoroughfares may now be traversed. Mr. Tonson will venture forth to see the

condition of his Company's Hall.

With his second son, Jacob, holding his hand, he makes his way to Mugwell Street. Barber Surgeons' Hall has sustained some injury; but the Theatre, built by Inigo Jones, which is the pride of the Company, has not been damaged. He shows his son Holbein's great picture of the Company receiving their charter from Henry VIII., and expatiates upon the honour of belonging to such a profession. Young Jacob does not seem much impressed by the paternal enthusiasm. The blood-letting and tooth-drawing are not more attractive to him than the shaving, which latter operation his father deputes to his apprentices. They make their way through narrow lanes across Aldersgate Street, and so into Little Britain. Mr. Tonson enters a large book-shop, and salutes the bookseller with great respect. By common repute, Mr. Scot is the largest librarian in Europe. Young Jacob listens attentively to all that passes. His father brings out William London's 'Catalogue of the most vendible Books in England,'* and inquires for The Anatomical Exercises of Dr. W. Harvey, Physician to the King's Most Excellent Majesty, concerning the Motion of the Heart and Blood.' Mr. Scot is somewhat at leisure, and says that he has heard more dis

* I am indebted to Dr. John Edward Gray, of the British Museum, for the loan of this curious and rare volume, published in 1658. Dibdin says, in a note to his edition of 'More's Utopia,' that in the Introduction to this catalogue, "Almost every popular English writer, up to the period when it was composed, is quoted or referred to. Such an excellent treatise has never since accompanied any bookseller's catalogue."