PUBLISHING IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
Of the coffee-houses in the neighborhood of the Strand and Fleet street frequented by the witty and the learned from the restoration to the close of last century, we shall gladly speak if our limits permit. Meanwhile, being on a literary subject, we must not omit to mention that the father of [{840}] Mudie's and all other circulating libraries in London, was established at 132 Strand, in 1740, by a bookseller named Bathoe.
Had there been such establishments in Pepys' time, they would have saved him some money and some trouble. Witness his disappointment about "Hudibras:"
"26th of September, 1662. To the Wardrobe. Hither come Mr. Battersby, and we falling into discourse of a new book of drollery in use, called 'Hudibras,' I would needs go find it out, and met with it at the Temple; cost me 2s. 6d. But when I come to read it, it is so silly an abuse of the presbyter-knight going to the wars, that I am ashamed at it, and meeting at Mr. Townsend's at dinner, I sold it him for 18d." (The new book of drollery continuing to be the rage), "February 6th, 1663. To a bookseller's in the Strand, and there bought 'Hudibras' again. I am resolved once more to read him, and see whether I can find him an example of wit or no." (Success very doubtful.) "28th November. To Paul's Church-yard, and there looked upon the second part of 'Hudibras,' which I buy not, but borrow to read." (He bought it a few days after, however.) "The world hath mightily cried up this book, though it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried but (by?) two or three times reading to bring myself to think it witty."
We find him a few days after these researches purchasing "Fuller's Worthies," the "Cabbala, or Collection of Letters of State," "Les Delices de Holland," and "Hudibras" again, "now in great fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies."
Pepys' great acquaintances seem to have discovered this sore spot in his mental configuration, and to have angered it oftentimes by quoting "Hudibras" at him, and chuckling over the fun, which, alas, was the reverse of fun to him.
It was long after the introduction of printing into the country that bookseller's shops became an institution. At and before the time of the great fire, St. Paul's Church-yard was the chief bookselling mart. On the 31st November, 1660, Pepys bought a copy of the play of Henry IV. in that place, "and so went to the new theatre, and saw it acted, but my expectation being too great, it did not please me as otherwise I believe it would, and my having a book did, I believe, spoil it a little."
Poor Pepys! A leaf out of the scandalous chronicle of the court would have interested him more than all the wit and wisdom of Shakespeare. He tells us in his diary how his wife and he laughed a whole evening over a pamphlet written about the queen.
The fire destroyed thousands of fine works in the Church-yard; and so much was the value of books increased, that Ricaut's "Turkey," 8s. before the fire, could not be got under 55s. after it.
Later in time, Little Britain, from Duck-lane to the Pump, became a literary quarter. When Benjamin Franklin first visited London he took lodgings in Little Britain at 3s. 6d, per week, next door to a bookseller's, from whom, as circulating libraries were not in vogue, he purchased volumes, read them, sold them again to the same man, and bought others.
A great deal of information on bookselling and other subjects that interested the people near 200 years since, may be obtained from the perusal of the "Life and Errors of John Dunton," bookseller, an autobiography. The son of a clergyman in Huntingdonshire, he says he learned Latin so as to speak it pretty well extempore, but he could not get on well with the Greek; and this, coupled with an affection entertained for a "virgin in his father's house," such passion carefully concealed from its object, completely unhinged the classical and clerical designs of his father on him. He became a bookseller's apprentice, and in [{841}] 1685 a bookseller in his own person. He speaks very disparagingly of the mere men of letters of his day. He says, good simple-minded man, that what they got per sheet interested them more than zeal for the advancement of literature. Very little we blame the poor fellows, but they were really inexcusable for pretending to have ransacked the whole Bodleian Library, to have gone through the fathers, and to have read and digested all human and ecclesiastical history, while they had never mastered a single page in "St. Cyprian," nor could tell whether the fathers lived before or after our Saviour.
That was the golden age of sermons and pamphlets, the latter occupying the place of our monthlies. Mr. John Dunton's first essay in the publishing line was "The Sufferings of Christ," by the Rev. Mr. Doolittle. All the trade took copies in exchange for their own books, a feature peculiar to the business 160 years since. John throve and took a helpmate to himself, not Mrs. Mary Saunders, the virgin before mentioned. The beautiful Rachel Seaton, the innocent Sarah Day, the religious Sarah Briscow, had successively paled the image of the preceding lady in the mirror of his rather susceptible heart, and at the end he became the fond husband of Miss Annesley, daughter of a nonconformist divine. The happy pair always called each other by the endearing and poetic names of Iris and Philaret, but this tender attachment did not prevent Philaret from leaving Iris alone, and making excursions to Ireland, to America, and to Holland, and delaying in those regions for long periods. These separations and distant wanderings did not tend to make our bookseller's old age comfortable and independent.
Dunton has left an interesting account of most of the then eminent booksellers in the three kingdoms. He says that in general they were not much better than knaves and atheists. He also gave information of the writers he employed, the licensers of the press, etc. It would appear that the publishing business of the time was in a very vigorous condition. The shoals of pamphlets satisfied the literary hunger of those to whom, if they lived in the nineteenth century, Athenaeums and Examiners, Chambers's Journals and All the Year Rounds, would be as necessary as atmospheric air. The chief booksellers of that day, if not to be compared with continental Alduses or Stephenses or Elzevirs, were men of good literary taste and much information. Of the booksellers amber-preserved in the "Dunciad," Dunton mentions only Lintot and Tonson. The disreputable Curll was not known in his day. This genius, embalmed in the hearts of the rascally paper-men of Holywell street, being once condemned for a vile publication, and promoted to the pillory, cunningly averted the wrath of the mob by a plentiful distribution of handbills, in which he stated his offence to be a pamphlet complimentary to the memory of good Queen Anne. Edward Cave, in starting the Gentleman's Magazine, 31st January, 1731, gave healthy employment to many a pamphleteer, though he diminished the number of separate pamphlets.