Tonson may be deemed the prince of booksellers in his association with some of the most eminent men of his own time. But the mighty ones of the past had not less to do than the living in the establishment of his fortune and his fame. He identified himself with Milton by first making 'Paradise Lost' popular. A few years after, when he moved from his old shop in Chancery Lane, he no longer traded under the sign of "The Judge's Head," but set up "Shakspere's Head." He was truly the first bookseller who threw open Shakspere to a reading public. The four folio editions had become scarce even in his time. The third folio was held to have been destroyed in the fire of London. In 1709 Tonson produced Rowe's edition in octavo. Bernard Lintot the elder, who about the same time republished Shakspere's Poems, expresses himself in his advertisement as if Tonson's speculation were an experiment not absolutely certain of success :-"The writings of Mr. Shakspere are in so great esteem that several gentlemen have subscribed to a late edition of his Dramatic Works in six volumes, which makes me hope that this little book will not be unacceptable to the public." Tonson and his family were long associated with editions of Shakspere. Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Warburton, Johnson, and Capell, were liberally paid by the Tonsons for their editorial services-as liberally, perhaps, as the demand of a new reading public would allow.

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CHAPTER IV.

THOMAS GENT, PRINTER, OF YORK.

OUTHEY, in his most amusing volume of The Doctor,' writes in Chapter CXIV., "If I were given to prolixity and allowed myself to be led away, I might here be tempted to relate certain particulars concerning Thomas Gent." In the previous chapter Southey says, "His autobiography is as characteristic as John Dunton's, and, like it, contains much information relating to the state of the press in his days, and the trade of literature." Of some of these matters the author of The Doctor' gives a very brief notice, and, as stated in his heading of Chapter CXIV., only "hints at certain circumstances in the life of Thomas Gent, on which he does not think it necessary to dwell." The autobiography from which these "certain circumstances" are derived was published in 1832 by Mr. Thomas Thorpe, which celebrated bookseller met with the MS. in a collection of books that he had purchased in Ireland. Without being "given to prolixity," I may take this memoir of Thomas Gent, written in his own hand in 1746, as the groundwork of a chapter essentially connected with "the subject before me."

Thomas Gent, though of English extraction, was

born of humble parents in Dublin. He was apprenticed to a printer of that city, who used him so brutally that, having served three years of his time, he ran away, in August, 1710, with seventeen pence in his pocket. Having got into the hold of a vessel bound for England, he met with kind usage from the captain, and was landed at Park-gate. Setting forward towards Chester, he tried there to obtain employment; "but then no printing-press, as I could hear of, was set up in those parts." He reached St. Albans with twopence in his pocket, but there found a good landlord, who, observing him very lame and tired, gave him food and lodging. There is now a break in the narrative; but when it is resumed we find him in the employ of Mr. Midwinter, a London printer, who carried on his trade at Pie Corner. His labour in this servitude, where he remained until he was about twenty years old, appears to have been severe and incessant, "working many times from five in the morning till twelve at night, and frequently without food from breakfast time till five or six in the evening, through our hurry with hawkers.”

Let me diverge a little from my pursuit of the shadow of Thomas Gent, to glance at that large portion of the printing and bookselling business of London which was chiefly carried on by hawkers. This business was in full activity when Gent arrived in London in 1710. It soon received a heavy blow, whose consequences were thus anticipated by Swift in his Journal to Stella,' January 31, 1711: "They are here intending to tax all little printed penny papers, a halfpenny every half-sheet, which will

utterly ruin Grub-street." Swift's definition of Grubstreet, as the generic name for the literature of hawkers, has superseded that of Johnson, in his Dictionary, in which, with a sly humour, he points at his own avocations: "Originally the name of a street near Moorfields, in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems; whence any mean production is called grub-street." The actual Grub-street has of late years been refined into Milton-street. The name might not have looked quite so genteel on a great haberdasher's bill of parcels, but it has literary associations which have their significance in connection with the history of an interesting period. When Hoole, the translator of "Tasso,' told Johnson he was born in Moorfields, and had received part of his early instruction in Grubstreet: "Sir," said Johnson, "you have been regularly educated." The polite changers of the vulgar name sought to justify their act by alleging that Grub-street was very near Cripplegate Church where Milton was buried.

In spite of Swift's prediction, Grub-street was not utterly ruined by the dread of the halfpenny stamp. A new spirit had come over it when Thomas Gent first became a slave to a hard task-master. The lad was of good abilities, had received a decent education, and it is not to be supposed that he could shut his ears to what the compositors and the hawkers talked about-that there had been published a penny paper twice a week; called 'The Tatler,' which was written by some of the cleverest men in the kingdom, but was not above the level of the capacity of a printer'

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apprentice. A successor to that famous half-sheet was then being published daily, which all the world was reading. The Spectator' had totally eclipsed "The British Apollo' and 'The Observator,' and made the coffee-house politicians care less for The Flying Post' and 'The Post Boy.'

The war was coming to an end: troops were discharged. In 'The Tatler' of May 20, 1709, Addison wrote his first paper, so charming in its delicate humour and so truthfully describing the leading newspapers of the time, that I may be permitted to transcribe part of it. There are not many readers now, I fear, of the old essayists:-"There is another sort of gentlemen whom I am much more concerned for, and that is the ingenious fraternity of which I have the honour to be an unworthy member: I mean the news-writers of Great Britain, whether Post-men or Post-boys, or by what other name or title soever dignified or distinguished. The case of these gentlemen is, I think, more hard than that of the soldiers, considering that they have taken more towns and fought more battles. They have been upon parties and skirmishes, when our armies have lain still; and given the general assault to many a place, when the besiegers were quiet in their trenches. They have made us masters of several strong towns many weeks before our generals could do it; and completed victories when our greatest captains have been glad to come off with a drawn battle. Where Prince Eugene has slain his thousands, Boyer has slain his ten thousands. This gentleman can, indeed, be never enough commended for his courage and intrepidity during this whole war: he has laid about him with an inex