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TONSON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

It is 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 Monkwell Street. Barber Surgeon's 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 parentalenthusiasm.
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 nar-
row 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 Eu-
rope. Young Jacob listens atten-
tively to all that passes. His father
brings out William Loudon's "Cata-
logue 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 disputes
about Dr. Harvey's opinions of the
circulation of the blood, than upon
any subject not theological.
Tonson buys for his son, who has a
taste for verse, a little volume of
"Mr. Milton's Poems, with a Mask
before the Earl of Bridgwater." Mr.
Scot informs him that Mr. Milton,
who had gone to Buckinghamshire
upon the breaking out of the plague,
has returned to his house in Bunhill
Fields, and, as he hears, is engaged
upon a heroic poem. The sum
which Mr. Tonson has to pay for
the two books rather exceeds his
expectation; but Mr. Scot gives it
not only as his own opinion, but
that of a very shrewd customer of
his, Mr. Pepys, that, in consequence
of so many books being burned,
there will be a great want of books.
Mr. Scot is firmly impressed with
the truth of an old adage, that what
is one man's loss is another man's
gain, and has no scruple about rais--

Mr.

ing the prices of his large stock. "A good time is coming, sir, for printers and booksellers," says Mr. Scot. "Ah, Jacob," exclaims Mr. Tonson, " if I hadn't a noble profession for you to follow, I should like to see you a bookseller."

Two years have elapsed. The good chirurgeon has fallen sick; and not even his conversion to Dr. Harvey's opinions “concerning the motion of the heart and blood" can save him. Young Jacob has employed most of his holiday hours in reading plays and poems, and he had a decided aversion to the business carried on "under the pole." His father had left his brother Richard, himself, and his three sisters, one hundred pounds each, to be paid them upon their coming of age. The two brothers resolved for printing and bookselling. Jacob was apprenticed, on the 5th of June, 1670, to Thomas Bassett, bookseller; he was then of the age of fourteen. I scarcely need trace the shadow of the boy growing up into a young man, and learning, what a practical experience only can give, to form a due estimate of the trade value of books, and the commercial reputation of authors. After seven years 'he was admitted to his freedom in the Stationers' Company, and immediately afterwards commenced business with his capital of a hundred pounds. The elder brother had embarked in the same calling a year before. Thus, at the beginning of 1678, he entered "the realms of print "-a region not then divided into so many provinces as now. Under "The Judge's Head," which he set up as his sign in Chancery Lane, close to the corner of Fleet Street, he might have an open window, and exhibit, upon a capacious board, old law books and new plays, equally vendible in that vicinity of the inns of court. But he had a higher ambition than to be a mere vender of books. He would purchase and print original writings,

I see him as

and he would aim at securing "the most eminent hands." He published before 1679 some of the plays of Otway and Tate. But he aimed at more illustrious game. he sits in his back shop, pondering over such reputations. Mr. Otway's "Friendship in Fashion," is somewhat too gross, and his "Caius Marius," has been stolen, in great part, from Shakspere. As for Mr. Tate, he may be fit to mangle "King Lear," but he has no genius. Could he get hold of Mr. Dryden ! Не, indeed, were worth having. Herringman has been Mr. Dryden's publisher, but the young aspirant hears of some disagreement. will step over to the great writer's house near St. Bride's Church, and make a bidding for his next play. “Troilus and Cressida; or, Truth found too late," was published by Tonson and Swalle, in 1679. venture of twenty pounds for the copy is held to have been too large for our Jacob to have encountered singly.

Mr.

He

The

Let me endeavour to realise the shadow of the figure and deportment of the young bookseller. He is in his twenty-third year, short and stout. Twenty years later, Pope calls him "little Jacob." It was not till after his death that he became immortalised in the "Dunciad” as "left-legg'd Jacob." In one previous edition, Lintot, "with steps unequal;" in another, "with legs expanded," "seemed to emulate great Jacob's pace." The "two left legs," as well as "leering looks," "bull face," and "Judas-coloured hair," are attributed to Dryden in a satirical description of "Bibliopolo,” a fragment of which is inserted in a virulent Tory poem, published at the time when Tonson was secretary of the Kit-Cat Club, composed of the Whigs most distinguished as statesmen and writers. In a dialogue between Tonson and Congreve, published in 1714, in a small volume of poems by Rowe, there is a pleasant description of Tonson before he had grand associates

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While, in your early days of reputation, You for blue garters had not such a passion, While yet you did not live, as now your trade is,

To drink with noble lords, and toast their ladies,

Thou, Jacob Tonson, were, to my conceiving,

The cheerfullest, best, honest fellow living. After this, the eulogy of John Dunton is somewhat flat :-" He was bookseller to the famous Dryden, and is himself a very good judge of persons and authors; and, as there is nobody more competently qualified to give their opinion upon another, so there is none who does it with a more severe exactness, or with less partiality: for, to do Mr. Tonson justice, he speaks his mind upon all occasions, and will flatter nobody."

The young bookseller is gradually attaining a position. In 1681 there was an indefatigable collector of the fugitive poetry, especially political, which formed the chief staple of many booksellers' shops, and the most vendible commodity of noisy hawkers. Mr. Narcissus Luttrell recorded according to his custom of marking on each sheet and half-sheet of the "Sibylline Leaves" the day he acquired itthat on the 17th of November he received a copy of the first part of "Absalom and Achitophel," "from his friend Jacob Tonson." Dryden and his publisher appear to be on a very friendly footing in 1684. He sends the poet a present of two melons; and the poet, in his letter of thanks, advises him to reprint "Lord Roscommon's Essay Translated Verse," and to print a thousand copies. Dryden was now at work upon the "Miscellany Poems" that collection which is sometimes called "Tonson's," and sometimes "Dryden's." According to the fashion of title-pages at that time, it was to be written "by the most eminent hands." The poet

on

“I

writes, "Since we are to have nothing but new, I am resolved we will have nothing but good, whomever we disoblige." The first volume was published in 1684; a second volume appeared in 1685. Malone says, "this was the first collection of that kind which had appeared for many years in England." The third “Miscellany" was published in 1693. Tonson has now become a sharp tradesman. A letter from him to Dryden exhibits him haggling about the number of lines he ought to receive of the translation of parts of Ovid. He had only 1446 for fifty guineas, whereas he expected 1518 lines for forty guineas. He is, nevertheless, humbly submissive. own, if you don't think fit to add something more, I must submit ; 'tis wholly at your choice." Still holding to his maxim to have a pennyworth for his penny, he adds, "you were pleased to use me much kindlier in Juvenal, which is not reckoned so easy to translate as Ovid." Although the bookseller seems mercenary enough to justify Malone's remark that "by him who is to live by the sale of books, a book is considered merely as an article of trade," Dryden soon after writes to Tonson, “I am much ashamed of myself that I am so much behindhand with you in kindness. Above all things, I am sensible of your good nature in bearing me company to this place" (somewhere in Northamptonshire).

Dryden could now ill afford to be curtailed in the bookseller's payment for his verses. The Revolution had deprived him of his office of PoetLaureate; but he might do better than writing "Miscellany Poems" at the rate of ninepence a line. He will publish a specimen of his translation of Virgil in the "Miscellany," but he will produce the complete work by subscription. Tonson shall be his agent for printing the volumes, with engravings. The plan succeeds. There are large-paper copies for the

66

rich and great; there are small-paper copies for a second class of subscribers. "Be ready with the price of paper and of the books," writes Dryden. They were to meet at a tavern. "No matter for any dinner.; for that is a charge to you, and I care not for it. Mr. Congreve may be with us, as a common friend." Few were the literary bargains that were settled without a dinner. Fewer, indeed, were the coffee-house meetings between author and bookseller that were not accompanied with that solace which was called "a whet." Their business is completed. Mr. Dryden goes again into the country for his poeticallabours and his fishing. Mr. Tonson is My good friend," and "I assure you I lay up your last kindness to me in my heart." But a terrible subject of dispute is coming up which much perplexes the bookseller. In October, 1695, the poet writes, "I expect fifty pounds in good silver: not such as I had formerly. I am not obliged to take gold, neither will I, nor stay for it beyond four-andtwenty hours after it is due." The sellers and the buyers in all trades are sorely disturbed in their calculations, whilst Charles Montague, and Locke, and Newton are thinking over the best means for a reform of the coinage. Mr. Tonson's customers give him bad silver for his books, and Mr. Dryden's subscribers for his five-guinea edition would take care not to pay the bookseller at the rate of twenty-one shillings for each golden piece whose exehangeable value is increased forty per cent. When the author writes, "I expect fifty pounds in good silver," he demands an impossibility. All the "good silver" hoarded. When he says, "I am not obliged to take gold," he means that he was not obliged to take guineas at their market value as compared with the clipped and debased silver. Cunningham, a historian of the period, says, "Guineas on a sudden rose to thirty shillings

was

a-piece-all currency of other money was stopped." Dryden was, in the end, compelled to submit to the common fate of all who had to receive money in exchange for labour or goods. So the poet squabbles with his publisher into the next year, and the publisher-of whose arguments in his self-defence we hear nothing-gets hard measure from the historian one hundred and fifty years afterwards. "The ignorant and helpless peasant," says Macaulay, "was cruelly ground between one class which would give money only by tale and another which would take it only by weight; yet his sufferings hardly exceeded those of the unfortunate race of authors. Of the way in which obscure writers were treated we may easily form a judgment from the letters, still extant, of Dryden to his bookseller, Tonson." The poet's complaints, presented without any attendant circumstances, and with some suppression, would seem to imply that Tonson attempted to cheat Dryden as he would have attempted to cheat obscure writers. But Macaulay justly says, "These complaints and demands, which have been preserved from destruction only by the eminence of the writer, are doubtless merely a fair example of the correspondence which filled all the mail-bags of England for several months."

Reconciliation soon comes. The business intercourse of Dryden and Tonson continues uninterrupted. Jacob, we may believe, sometimes meditates upon the loss of his great friend. Will any poetical genius arise worthy to take his place? He thinks not. He must look around him and see which of the old writers can be successfully reproduced, like the Milton, which he has now made his own, as the world may observe in the portrait which Sir Godfrey Kneller has painted for him, with "Paradise Lost" in his hand.

I see the shadow of a younger Jacob Tonson than he who is thus represented in the engraving. I see him bargaining, in 1683, with Brabazon Aylmer, for one half of his interest in Milton's poem. Aylmer produces the document which transfers to him the entire copyright, signed by Samuel Simmons; and he exhibits also the original covenant of indenture, by which Milton sold to Simmons his copy for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation for other pay ments, according to the future sales, -twenty pounds in the whole. Mr. Tonson thinks that the value of other literary wares than "prologues and plays" has risen in the market. He could scarcely have dreamt, how ever, that the time would come when a hundred guineas would be given for this very indenture, and that it would be preserved in a national museum as a sacred treasure. He buys a half of Aylmer's interest, and has many cogitations about the best mode of making profit out of his bargain. The temper of the times, and the fashionable taste, are not propitious to blank verse upon a sacred subject; and the name of Milton, the Secretary of the late Usurper, is held in hatred. It is true that Mr. Dryden had said that this was one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either the age or nation had produced; but the prudent Jacob would pause a little. The time might come when he who sang of "man's first disobedience" would not be hated by the clergy, and when Rochester would not be the fashion at court. He waited four years, and then issued proposals for publishing "Paradise Lost" by subscription. He was encouraged in this undertaking by two persons of some influence- John Somers, who had written verses and other things for him, a barrister; and Francis Atterbury, a student of Christ Church. There is sufficient encouragement to proceed; and so, in 1688, Milton

comes forth in folio, with a portrait, under which are engraven certain lines which Dryden had furnished to his publisher. Times were changed since Samuel Simmons paid his five pounds down for the copy, and agreed to pay five pounds more when thirteen hundred were sold. And so Mr. Dryden was not altogether opposed to the critical opinions of the existing generation when he wrote that "the force of Nature could no farther go" when she united Homer and Virgil in Milton. Dryden not only gave his famous six lines to Tonson, but paid his crowns as a subscriber.

It is Saint Cecilia's Day, the 22nd of November, 1697. Mr. Tonson has seen the manuscript of Mr. Dryden's Ode or Song, to be performed at the Music Feast kept in Stationers' Hall-" the Anniversary Feast of the Society of Gentlemen, lovers of musick." Mr. Tonson has attended many of these performances in his own Hall, and was particularly interested in one a few years before, for which his distinguished friend wrote the Ode. But on this latter occasion, as earnest Jacob tells to every one who will listen to him, Mr. Dryden has surpassed himself. Never, he thinks, and thinks truly, has there been so glorious an Ode as Alexander's Feast. His notions differed somewhat from the majority of the audience assembled on that occasion, who were accustomed to attach more importance to the music than to the words of the annual song of praise. Purcell died two years before, and Dryden wrote his elegy. One of less renown, Jeremiah Clarke, of the Chapel Royal, is now the composer. A great musician was to arise, in another generation, whose music should be married to this immortal verse. But the noble Ode can well stand alone.

The Ode to Saint Cecilia formed a part of the volume of "Fables” which Tonson published just before

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