CHAPTER VIII.
Oh! Helen, fair Helen—type of the quiet, serene, unnoticed, deep-felt excellence of woman! Woman, less as the ideal that a poet conjures from the air, than as the companion of a poet on the earth! Woman who, with her clear sunny vision of things actual, and the exquisite fibre of her delicate sense, supplies the deficiencies of him whose foot stumbles on the soil, because his eye is too intent upon the stars! Woman, the provident, the comforting angel—whose pinions are folded round the heart, guarding there a divine spring unmarred by the winter of the world! Helen, soft Helen, is it indeed in thee that the wild and brilliant "lord of wantonness and ease" is to find the regeneration of his life—the rebaptism of his soul? Of what avail thy meek prudent household virtues to one whom Fortune screens from rough trial?—whose sorrows lie remote from thy ken?—whose spirit, erratic and perturbed, now rising, now falling, needs a vision more subtle than thine to pursue, and a strength that can sustain the reason, when it droops, on the wings of enthusiasm and passion?
And thou thyself, O nature, shrinking and humble, that needest to be courted forth from the shelter, and developed under the calm and genial atmosphere of holy, happy love—can such affection as Harley L'Estrange may proffer suffice to thee? Will not the blossoms, yet folded in the petal, wither away beneath the shade that may protect them from the storm, and yet shut them from the sun? Thou who, where thou givest love, seekest, though meekly, for love in return; —to be the soul's sweet necessity, the life's household partner to him who receives all thy faith and devotion—canst thou influence the sources of joy and of sorrow in the heart that does not heave at thy name? Hast thou the charm and the force of the moon, that the tides of that wayward sea[pg 252] shall ebb and flow at thy will? Yet who shall say—who conjecture how near two hearts may become, when no guilt lies between them, and time brings the ties all its own? Rarest of all things on earth is the union in which both, by their contrasts, make harmonious their blending; each supplying the defects of the helpmate, and completing, by fusion, one strong human soul! Happiness enough, where even Peace does but seldom preside, when each can bring to the altar, if not, the flame, still the incense. Where man's thoughts are all noble and generous, woman's feelings all gentle and pure, love may follow, if it does not precede;—and if not,—if the roses be missed from the garland, one may sigh for the rose, but one is safe from the thorn.
The morning was mild, yet somewhat overcast by tho mists which announce coming winter in London, and Helen walked musingly beneath the trees that surrounded the garden of Lord Lansmere's house. Many leaves were yet left on the boughs; but they were sere and withered. And the birds chirped at times; but their note was mournful and complaining. All within this house, until Harley's arrival, had been strange and saddening to Helen's timid and subdued spirits. Lady Lansmere had received her kindly, but with a certain restraint; and the loftiness of manner, common to the Countess with all but Harley, had awed and chilled the diffident orphan. Lady Lansmere's very interest in Harley's choice—her attempts to draw Helen out of her reserve—her watchful eyes whenever Helen shyly spoke, or shyly moved, frightened the poor child, and made her unjust to herself.
The very servants, though staid, grave, and respectful, as suited a dignified, old-fashioned household, painfully contrasted the bright welcoming smiles and free talk of Italian domestics. Her recollections of the happy warm Continental manner, which so sets the bashful at their ease, made the stately and cold precision of all around her doubly awful and dispiriting. Lord Lansmere himself, who did not as yet know the views of Harley, and little dreamed that he was to anticipate a daughter-in-law in the ward whom he understood Harley, in a freak of generous romance had adopted, was familiar and courteous, as became a host. But he looked upon Helen as a mere child, and naturally left her to the Countess. The dim sense of her equivocal position—of her comparative humbleness of birth and fortunes, oppressed and pained her; and even her gratitude to Harley was made burthensome by a sentiment of helplessness. The grateful long to requite. And what could she ever do for him?
Thus musing, she wandered alone through the curving walks; and this sort of mock country landscape—London loud, and even visible, beyond the high gloomy walls, and no escape from the windows of the square formal house—seemed a type of the prison bounds of Rank to one whose soul yearns for simple loving Nature.
Helen's reverie was interrupted by Nero's joyous bark. He had caught sight of her, and came bounding up, and thrust his large head into her hand. As she stooped to caress the dog, happy at his honest greeting, and tears that had been long gathering to the lids fell silently on his face, (for I know nothing that more moves us to tears than the hearty kindness of a dog, when something in human beings has pained or chilled us,) she heard behind the musical voice of Harley. Hastily she dried or repressed her tears, as her guardian came up, and drew her arm within his own.
"I had so little of your conversation last evening, my dear ward, that I may well monopolize you now, even to the privation of Nero. And so you are once more in your native land?"
Helen sighed softly.
"May I not hope that you return under fairer auspices than those which your childhood knew?"
Helen turned her eyes with ingenuous thankfulness to her guardian, and the memory of all she owed to him rushed upon her heart. Harley renewed, and with earnest though melancholy sweetness—"Helen, your eyes thank me; but hear me before your words do. I deserve no thanks. I am about to make to you a strange confession of egotism and selfishness."
"You!—oh, impossible!"
"Judge yourself, and then decide which of us shall have cause to be grateful. Helen, when I was scarcely your age—a boy in years, but more, methinks, a man at heart, with man's strong energies and sublime aspirings, than I have ever since been—I loved, and deeply—" He paused a moment in evident struggle. Helen listened in mute surprise, but his emotion awakened her own; her tender woman's heart yearned to console. Unconsciously her arm rested on his less lightly. "Deeply, and for sorrow. It is a long tale, that may be told hereafter. The worldly would call my love a madness. I did not reason on it then—I cannot reason on it now. Enough; death smote suddenly, terribly, and to me mysteriously, her whom I loved. The love lived on. Fortunately, perhaps, for me, I had quick distraction, not to grief, but to its inert indulgence. I was a soldier; I joined our armies. Men called me brave. Flattery! I was a coward before the thought of life. I sought death: like sleep, it does not come at our call. Peace ensued. As when the winds fall the sails droop—so when excitement ceased, all seemed to me flat and objectless. Heavy, heavy was my heart. Perhaps grief had been less obstinate, but that I feared I had cause for self-reproach. Since then I have been a wanderer—a self-made exile. My boyhood[pg 253] had been ambitious—all ambition ceased. Flames, when they reach the core of the heart, spread, and leave all in ashes. Let me be brief: I did not mean thus weakly to complain—I to whom heaven has given so many blessings! I felt, as it were, separated from the common objects and joys of men. I grew startled to see how, year by year, wayward humors possessed me. I resolved again to attach myself to some living heart—it was my sole chance to rekindle my own. But the one I had loved remained as my type of woman, and she was different from all I saw. Therefore I said to myself, 'I will rear from childhood some young fresh life, to grow up into my ideal.' As this thought began to haunt me, I chanced to discover you. Struck with the romance of your early life, touched by your courage, charmed by your affectionate nature, I said to myself, 'Here is what I seek.' Helen, in assuming the guardianship of your life, in all the culture which I have sought to bestow on your docile childhood, I repeat, that I have been but the egotist. And now, when you have reached that age, when it becomes me to speak, and you to listen—now, when you are under the sacred roof of my own mother—now I ask you, can you accept this heart, such as wasted years, and griefs too fondly nursed, have left it? Can you be, at least, my comforter? Can you aid me to regard life as a duty, and recover those aspirations which once soared from the paltry and miserable confines of our frivolous daily being? Helen, here I ask you, can you be all this, and under the name of—Wife?"
It would be in vain to describe the rapid, varying, indefinable emotions that passed through the inexperienced heart of the youthful listener as Harley thus spoke. He so moved all the springs of amaze, compassion, tender respect, sympathy, childlike gratitude, that when he paused and gently took her hand, she remained bewildered, speechless, overpowered. Harley smiled as he gazed upon her blushing, downcast, expressive face. He conjectured at once that the idea of such proposals had never crossed her mind; that she had never contemplated him in the character of a wooer; never even sounded her heart as to the nature of such feelings as his image had aroused.
"My Helen," he resumed, with a calm pathos of voice, "there is some disparity of years between us, and perhaps I may not hope henceforth for that love which youth gives to the young. Permit me simply to ask, what you will frankly answer—Can you have seen in our quiet life abroad, or under the roof of our Italian friends, any one you prefer to me?"
"No, indeed, no!" murmured Helen. "How could I!—who is like you?" Then, with a sudden effort—for her innate truthfulness took alarm, and her very affection for Harley, childlike and reverent, made her tremble lest she should deceive him—she drew a little aside, and spoke thus: "Oh, my dear guardian, noblest of all human beings, at least in my eyes, forgive, forgive me if I seem ungrateful, hesitating; but I cannot, cannot think of myself as worthy of you. I never so lifted my eyes. Your rank, your position—"
"Why should they be eternally my curse? Forget them and go on."
"It is not only they," said Helen, almost sobbing, "though they are much; but I your type, your ideal!—I!—impossible! Oh, how can I ever be any thing even of use, of aid, of comfort to one like you!"
"You can, Helen—you can," cried Harley, charmed by such ingenuous modesty. "May I not keep this hand?"
And Helen left her hand in Harley's, and turned away her face, fairly weeping. A stately step passed under the wintry trees.
"My mother," said Harley L'Estrange, looking up, "I present to you my future wife."
REMINISCENCES OF PRINTERS, AUTHORS, AND BOOKSELLERS IN NEW-YORK.[8]
BY JOHN W. FRANCIS, M.D., LL. D.
When the great defender of the Constitution delivered the oration at Bunker Hill, he pointed to the just completed monument and exclaimed, "There stands the Orator of the Day." In humble imitation of that significant act, I also, in attempting to illustrate the interests and the meaning of this occasion, would point you, gentlemen, to the fact of your presence here to-night—to the union at one banquet of printers, editors, publishers, authors, and professional men—as the best evidence of the importance and attractiveness of the occasion. The art of printing, among other inestimable blessings, has fused together the most productive elements of society; it has established a vital relation between intellect and mechanics, between labor and thought. I see before me in this assembly those who have achieved enduring literary fame, and those who are the present guides of public opinion. I see them side by side with the men who have just put their thoughts and sentiments into a bodily form and disseminated them on the wings of the press. The association is not only appropriate, but it is honorable to his memory who united in his life the humblest manual toil and the loftiest flights of genius; who both set up types and drew the lightning from heaven, and combined in his own person the practical printer and the scientific philosopher.
By your courtesy, gentlemen, I have been invited to say a few words appropriate to the New York-Typographical Society. It is with unfeigned reluctance that I assume the task. In this presence I behold so many better qualified for the undertaking than myself, that I am apprehensive I shall be able neither[pg 254] to do justice to my theme nor satisfy the expectations which you in your clemency have anticipated. True it is, that in my early life I was connected with your fraternity by more immediate ties than at present exist. Circumstances have modified my career, but I should prove recreant to the best feelings of my heart, turn ingrate to the pleasantest associations of memory, and forget the most efficient causes which have favored my journey thus far to mellow years, were I unmindful of the gratifications I enjoyed while a fellow laborer in your noble pursuits. The press is the representative of the intellectual man on earth; it is the expositor of his cogitative powers; the promulgator of his most recondite labors; the strong arm of his support in the defence and maintenance of his inherent rights as a member of the social compact; the vindicator of his claims to the exalted station of one stamped in the express image of God; it is the charter of freedom to ameliorated man in the glorious strife of social organization, in the pursuits of life, liberty, and happiness. Hence I have ever cherished the deepest regard for those who have appropriated their time and talents to this vast engine of civilization. I have ever looked upon the vocation as holding the integrity of our highest privileges on earth; freedom of inquiry, freedom of utterance, and the vast behests of civil communion, with the kindred of every nation, and the tongues of every speech.
When I was a boy of ten years of age, I became acquainted with the biography of Franklin. I had purchased at auction a Glasgow edition of his Life and Essays. I had read Robinson Crusoe, George Barnwell, The House That Jack Built, Æsop's Fables, the duodecimo edition of Morse's Geography, and other common publications of the times. No work that I have perused, from that juvenile period of my existence up to the present day, has ever yielded the peculiar gratification which Franklin's memoirs gave me, and my admiration and reverence for our illustrious sage have through all subsequent inquiry into his actions and services, increased in intensity, in proportion as I have contemplated his wondrous character and his unparalleled achievements. I think I owe something to my mother for this happy appreciation of our Franklin. She was by birth a Philadelphian, and for years, during her residence in Arch street, was favored with opportunities of again and again beholding Dr. Franklin pass her door, in company with Dr. Rush and Thomas Paine. "There," the children of the neighborhood would cry out, "goes Poor Richard, Common Sense, and the Doctor." It is recorded that Franklin furnished many thoughts in the famous pamphlet of Common Sense, while Paine wrote it, and Rush gave the title. There is something in the hereditary transmission of the moral and of the physical qualities; yet I have thought that the benevolent schemes of Rush, the intrepid patriotism of Paine, and the honest maxims of Franklin—the topics of daily converse in that day—had some influence in strengthening the principles which my mother inculcated in her children.
You have told me, gentlemen, that you would be gratified with some reminiscences touching New-York—social, literary, personal—of men and books—all having a bearing, more or less immediate, either on the progress of human development, or the character of our metropolitan city. I know not how to satisfy either you or myself. To do justice to the subject would require a different opportunity from the one here enjoyed, and leisure such as I cannot now command.
The locality upon which we are assembled to-night has its associations. We meet this evening on the memorable spot in our city's early topography denominated the Bayard Farm—a property once in the possession of the affluent Bayards, of him who was companion in his strife with Governor Leisler, and whose death for high treason was the issue of that protracted contest. That he fell a martyr to freedom, our friend Charles F. Hoffman has ably demonstrated. Within a few doors of this place, on Broadway, very many years after, but within my recollection, lived that arch negotiator in public counsels, Talleyrand, the famous ambassador of France to the United States. He published a small tractate on America, once much read, and it was he who affirmed that the greatest sight he had ever beheld in this country, was the illustrious Hamilton, with his pile of books under his arms, proceeding to the court-room in the old City Hall, in order to obtain a livelihood, by expounding the law, and vindicating the rights of his clients.
Here too is the spot where, some short while after, the antics of the Osage tribe of Indians were displayed for the admiration of the belles and beaux of New-York, and on that occasion my old colleague, Dr. Mitchill, gave translations into English of their songs and war-whoop sounds, for the increased gratification of the literary public of that day, when Indian literature stood not so high as in these times of Congressional appropriation, and of Henry Schoolcraft, the faithful and patriotic expositor of the red-man's excellences. I think I am safe in saying, also, that near these grounds occurred the execution of Young, a play-actor, convicted of murder—a remarkable event in New-York annals, owing to peculiar circumstances which marked his imprisonment in our old jail, now converted into the Hall of Records. There were, about the period to which I now refer, other occurrences of singular influence in those days.
Crowther and Levi Weeks were both confined in this debased prison because of high crimes, and many were incarcerated for debt. There was, nevertheless, an atmosphere of some intellect immolated within its cells; and[pg 255] for the first, and I believe the only time in this country, a newspaper was issued for some months' duration from its walls, entitled The Prisoner of Hope. The Wilberforce impulse of that crisis had much to do with the movement; and no abolition paper of even later dates plead more earnestly in behalf of enslaved humanity, by graphic illustrations and literary talent, than did The Prisoner of Hope. At that day, many newspapers had their specific motto, and that of The Prisoner of Hope was in these words:
Soft, smiling Hope—thou anchor of the mind;
The only comfort that the wretched find;
All look to thee when sorrow wrings the heart,
To heal, by future prospect, present smart.
Naturalists tell us that this eligible site was once characterized by the graceful foliage of the pride of the American forests, the lofty plane-tree, the platanus occidentalis. It must further increase our interest in the spot, to be assured that through its shades strolled our Franklin, in company with that lover of rural scenery, the botanist Kalm—an occurrence not unlike the interesting one of the excursions of Linnæus with Hans Sloane, in the Royal Gardens, near London. Here, too, the wild pigeon was taken in great abundance; while in the Common (now Park) those primitive inhabitants of the city, the Beekman family, with the old doctor at their head, shot deer and other game in their field sports. But enough at present of the locality where this anniversary is held.
The history of the American periodical press, if given with any thing like fidelity and minuteness, would occupy several hours; it is a noble specimen of our triumphs as a free people, and of our determination so to remain; it has demonstrated the progress of knowledge, and the intrepidity of New-Yorkers, as much as any one series of facts or occurrences we could summon for illustration. Everybody within this hall is aware that William Bradford was the first in time of the newspaper publishers of New-York. His gazette made its earliest appearance in October, 1725, four years after James, the brother of Benjamin Franklin, began the New England Courant—this being seventeen years after the commencement of the Boston News Letter, the first regular newspaper commenced in North America. I advert to this circumstance because we possess the completed file of that earliest of the journals of our land now in existence. The copy in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society was presented that institution by the famous antiquary, Dr. Eliot; that in our own Historical Society is the file which was preserved by Professor McKean, of Harvard University, who bequeathed it to the Rev. T. Alden, from whom I purchased it and deposited it where it now remains.
From Franklin's representations, Bradford was a sorry individual, of low cunning, and sinister; yet I must not deal harshly with him. His, I believe, was the first printing press set up in New-York: he published the laws, and other state papers, and he was the grandfather of Bradford, afterwards Attorney-General of the United States; and as from his loins proceeded Thomas Bradford, the adventurous and patriotic publisher of Rees's Cyclopædia—the most enterprising of the craft, and our greatest patron of engravers—I desire to hold him in grateful memory. Our second newspaper was the New-York Weekly Journal, commenced about three years after Bradford's. John Peter Zenger, its proprietor, was a German by birth, a palatine, and something of a scholar; a man of enlarged liberality, patriotic, and an advocate of popular rights. He attacked the measures of the provincial Governor and Council, was subjected to a prosecution by the officers of the crown, and was brought to trial in 1735, when Andrew Hamilton, the Recorder of Philadelphia, came to this city and successfully defended him. I have before stated that the late illustrious Governor Morris considered the decision of that case in behalf of the press as the dawn of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America. To the ladies now present, the lovers of sweet sounds, it may not be uninteresting to know that the first piano forte (harpsichord) imported into America, arrived in this city for the musical gratification of the family of the noble Zenger.
But I can say at this time little concerning newspapers. Our worthy associate in good works, Edwin Williams, has lately issued a memoir of much value on the subject, to which I must refer you. I regret that his catalogue of early journals is somewhat defective. As he justly observes, our Historical Society is wonderfully rich in these interesting documents. Our most precious treasures in that way are, unquestionably, the Rivington Royal Gazette, the old New-York Daily Advertiser, containing debates on the State Constitution, the American Citizen and Republican Watch Tower, the New-York Evening Post, and the Commercial Advertiser, through a long series, the New-York American, the Independent Reflector, containing the patriotic Essays on Toleration, by William Livingston, of New Jersey, and the Time-Piece of New-York, replete with invective against the Washington Administration—whose editor, Philip Freneau, verbally assured me that its most vituperative features were from suggestions of Jefferson, during the crisis in our public affairs provoked by Citizen Genet. But I must hasten to other topics.
Among the most conspicuous editors and publishers of gazettes whom I have personally known was Noah Webster, now so famous for his Dictionary. At the time I knew him, some forty years ago, he was in person somewhat above the ordinary height, slender, with gray eyes, and a keen aspect; remarkable for neatness in dress, and characterized by an erect walk, a broad hat, and a long cue, much after[pg 256] the manner of Albert Gallatin, as depicted in the engraving in Callender's Prospect Before Us. If with philologists he is deemed a man of merit, it may with equal justice be said that he is to be recognized by medical men as an author of importance, for his History of Pestilence.
Next I may note William Coleman, usually called in earlier days, by his antagonist Cheetham, Field-Marshal Coleman. Mr. Bryant, the able editor of the Post, in his biography of the first fifty years of that prominent gazette, has well described him. He was a sensitive man, of great tenacity of opinion, which he cherished by intercourse with many of the leading patriots and politicians who were among us some thirty years ago. He almost leaned on the arm of the inflexible Timothy Pickering, and had, in his younger days, held communion with Hamilton, John Wells and Rufus King. I shall never forget how the death of the immortal Hamilton subdued his feeling. When Gouverneur Morris delivered his felicitous eulogy from the portals of old Trinity Church, over the dead body of the noble martyr, with grief in every countenance, and anguish in every heart, Coleman's acuteness of feeling paralyzed every movement of his frame, and drowned every faculty of his mind. While on this topic, the decease of Hamilton, I may state an anecdote, the import of which can be readily understood. It was not long prior to the time of his death that the new and authentic edition of The Federalist was published by George F. Hopkins. Hopkins told me of the delicacy with which Hamilton listened to his proposition to print a new edition of these papers. "They are demanded by the spirit of the times and the desire of the people," said Hopkins. "Do you really think, Mr. Hopkins, that those fugitive essays will be read, if reprinted?" asked Hamilton; "well, give me a few days to consider," said he. "Will this not be a good opportunity, Gen. Hamilton," rejoined Hopkins, "to revise them, and, if so, to make, perhaps, alterations, if necessary, in some parts?" "No, sir, if reprinted, they must stand exactly as at first, not a word of alteration. A comma may be inserted or left out, but the work must undergo no change whatever."
A few days had elapsed when, on the next interview, General Hamilton agreed to the reprint, with the express condition that he himself must inspect the revised proofs. Not a word was ever altered. "You think something of the papers?" says Hamilton to the printer. "Mr. Hopkins, let them be issued. Heretofore, sir, I have given the people common milk; hereafter, shortly, sir, I shall give them strong meat." What the Union lost by that fatal duel, the Deity only knows.
Coleman was a writer of grammatical excellence, though occasionally sadly at fault in force of diction. Under the influence of some perverse conceits, he would labor for months to establish a theoretical doctrine, or to elucidate a useless proposition. It was hardly in the power of mortals ever to alter his opinions when once formed. That yellow fever was as contagious as small-pox; that skull-cap (the scutellaria) was a specific for hydrophobia; that Napoleon wanted the requisites of a military chieftain, were among the crotchets of his brain. The everlasting tractates which he put forth on these and other subjects, would in the present day of editorial prowess scarcely be tolerated in a chronicle depending on public patronage. Coleman had read extensively on medical topics, and was the principal writer of that able and elaborate Criticism of Miller's Report on the Yellow Fever in New-York, addressed to Governor Lewis, and printed in the second volume of the American Medical and Philosophical Register.
Coleman would underrate the best public services, if rendered by a political opponent. Chancellor Livingston found no quarters with him for his instrumentality in the Louisiana purchase. He would ride a hobby to death. During the many years in which I read the Post, I can summon to recollection no contributions on any subject, made to that paper, that ever awakened one half the attention which was enlisted by the felicitous productions of our poet Halleck, and the lamented Dr. Drake, under the names of Croaker, and Croaker & Co.
For numerous years I have well known Charles Holt, once editor of the Bee, during John Adams's administration, and afterwards of the New-York Columbian, during Dewitt Clinton's gubernatorial career. I am unable to tell you whether he is still among the living. I would estimate his age, if so, as approaching ninety years. He was a lump of benevolence, and a strenuous advocate of the great internal improvement policy of New-York. He comes forcibly to my mind this evening, because in 1798 he wrote a history of the yellow fever in New London, and every now and then I find him quoted in medical books as Dr. Holt, just as his predecessor, who wrote on the yellow fever in Philadelphia, of 1793, stands in bold relief as Dr. Matthew Carey.
Nathaniel Carter is vividly impressed on my recollection; he had very considerable literary taste; was many years editor of the New-York Statesman; and after his visit to Europe, published his Letters on his tour, in two large volumes. His merit was only equalled by his modesty. He was strongly devoted to Dewitt Clinton and the Erie Canal; with becoming tenacity he cherished much regard for his eastern brethren, and was the first I think who introduced his personal friend, our constitutional expositor, Daniel Webster, to the Bread and Cheese Lunch, founded by J. Fenimore Cooper, at which sometimes met, in familiar discussions, such minds as those of Chief Justice Jones, Peter A. Jay, Henry Storrs, Professor Renwick, John Anthon,[pg 257] Charles King, John Duer, and others of like intellectual calibre. Carter was of a feeble frame, struggling with pulmonary annoyance, from which he died early. He was little initiated in the trickery of political controversy. His heart was filled with the kindliest feelings of which nature is susceptible.
My acquaintance with the late Colonel Stone, so long connected with the Commercial Advertiser, commenced while he was the efficient editor of the Albany Daily Advertiser. His devotion to the best interests of the state and country; his extensive knowledge of American history; his patriotic feeling evinced on all occasions in behalf of our injured Aborigines; his biographies of Red Jacket and Brandt; his great political consistency during so many years—all commend him to our kindest and most grateful recollections. That he was cut off at a comparatively early age, was the result of his severe and unremitting literary toils. With a touching patience, he endured an agonizing illness, nor did he cease his useful labors till exhausted nature forbade further efforts.
About the time of the death of Colonel Stone, New-York lost a valuable promoter of its substantial interests by the demise of John Pintard. His career is still fresh in the memories of those who cherish the actions of the benevolent and humane. He was a native of this city (born in 1759), where he passed the greater part of his life, and died in 1844, in his eighty-sixth year. He was connected with the newspaper press in the earlier times of the Daily Advertiser. Pintard was well acquainted with nearly all the distinguished public characters at the period of the adoption of our constitution. Possessed of sound attainments by his Princeton College education, the ardor of his patriotism displayed itself by his uniting with a body of his college companions, in a military movement, in the revolutionary contest. He afterwards returned for a while to his alma mater, with the approbation of President Witherspoon. He was next appointed a sub-commissioner for American prisoners in New-York, and had frequent intercourse with the notorious Cunningham, the keeper of the Provost; visited the Sugar House, occupied by the unfortunate prisoners of war, in Crown street (now Liberty street); the Dutch Church in Nassau street, the Scotch Church in Little Queen street (now Cedar street), and also the Friends' Meeting House in Queen street (now Pearl street), near Cherry street, all tilled with the wretched victims of tyranny. He interceded in their behalf with the German General Heister, and with Henry Clinton, the British commander. He became acquainted with Knyphausen, William Smith the historian of New-York, Lord Howe, and others, and he has described, as an eye-witness, the scenes occurring at Washington's inauguration, in 1789. He was an advocate of the Federal policy of that day, and was a member of our State Legislature when it held its sessions in this city. Time forbids my detailing the objects to which he directed his attention during a long career of usefulness. Several of our important municipal regulations still in force were suggested by him. He was an earnest champion and successful advocate for the incorporation of the Bank of New-York. He was one of the founders of the Tammany Society, in those days made up of gentlemen of all political parties, and the express object of which was to preserve the history and habits of our red brethren. He urged the plan of a Registry of Mortality in this city, and was appointed the first City Inspector. The New-York Historical Society must look upon him as its chief founder. Some of its most precious treasures are fruits of his munificence. He was among the most strenuous, with Bishop Hobart, in establishing and increasing the library of the Protestant Episcopal Seminary, and was not deficient of contributions towards it. He was active with Elias Boudinot in projecting the American Bible Society. The first Bank of Savings mainly originated with him. He revived the Chamber of Commerce after its long repose. He convened the first assemblage of our citizens at the Park; for the purpose of obtaining a public expression of opinion in favor of the Canal policy for connecting the Erie and the Hudson, and this at a period when the spirit of party strife had widely scattered doubts and ridicule on the contemplated movement. In the war of 1812, when paper money in small bills largely became our currency, Mr. Pintard was the person who caused those well-known mottoes, "Mind your own business," "Never despair," "Economy is wealth," and others of a like import, chiefly drawn from Franklin, to surround the designations of the value of the money. He had, I believe, done a like service in our revolutionary times. He carried the measure of having the British names of our streets changed to the modern ones they are now known by. I have noticed these few circumstances concerning him, because I wish it to be impressed on your memories that the editors and proprietors of public journals are often zealous in good measures not necessarily connected with their immediate vocation. Pintard enjoyed an intimacy with booksellers and authors. He and Freneau, a native also of this city, and his contemporary, had often been in close communion, as patriots of the revolution. This essential difference, however, obtained between them. Pintard was a federalist; Freneau an antifederalist. Old Rivington had often a hard time with them. The sordid tory could neither endure the conservative republican principles of Pintard, nor the relentless bitterness of the sarcasm of Freneau. I shall only add that he was a student of many books, and an observer of men in every walk of life. He was of grave thought, yet often facetious in conversation.[pg 258] During forty years of medical practice, I have rarely fell in with one richer in table-talk, or better supplied with topics in life and letters. In his death, he manifested the strength of his religious faith, and resigned his spirit with a benignant composure. But I am forbidden to enlarge on the many excellences and services of the public-spirited John Pintard.
Were we to dwell upon the excellence of a gazette according to its merits, I should have much to say of the Morning Chronicle, a paper established in this city in the year 1802. The leading editor was Dr. Peter Irving, a gentleman of refined address, scholastic attainments, and elegant erudition. It exhibited great power in its editorial capacity, and was the vehicle of much literary matter from the abundance and ability of its correspondence. If I do not greatly err, in this paper Washington Irving first appeared as an author, by his series of dramatic criticisms, over the signature of Jonathan Oldstyle. The only poetic writer of whose effusions I now retain any recollection was Miss Smith, the sister of the late Thomas E. Smith. Her pieces were known by the signature of Clara; and in bringing together the effusions of the early female poets, Dr. Griswold, in his praiseworthy zeal in behalf of American literature, might well have increased in value his interesting collection by specimens of the productions of Miss Smith.
The omission, in these reminiscences, of some notice of John Lang, would be so quickly discovered, that I am necessarily compelled to dwell for a moment on the character and services of one who, for a long succession of years, filled a notable place in our newspaper annals. Lang was of Scotch descent, but the place of his birth, I believe, was New-York. For some forty or more years, Lang's Gazette was recognized as the leading mercantile advertiser, and the patronage which it received from the business world was such as doubtless secured ample returns to its proprietor. The distinction of the paper was unquestionably its attention to the shipping interests of this commercial emporium. As a journal of either political or miscellaneous matter it was sadly deficient. Lang adhered to his "arrivals" as the prominent object of consideration, and the mightiest changes of revolutions, in actions or opinions, found but a stinted record in his widely-diffused journal. Rarely, indeed, did our acknowledged politicians or essayists seek its columns for the promulgation of their ideas, and its editorial displays were generally tormentingly feeble. Nevertheless, it was in this gazette, then under the control of Lang and McLean, that General Hamilton first gave to the public his numbers of The Federalist. There is often to be found in one daily issue of the Post, the Courier and Enquirer, the Journal of Commerce, the Herald, the Tribune, or the Times of these days, more thought, nice disquisition, and real knowledge which awakens the contemplation of the statesman and politician, than the New-York Gazette contained during a twelvemonth; and yet it flourished. The traits of Lang's character were unwavering devotion to his pursuits; no one could excel him in the kindness of his demeanor; unconscious of the penury of his intellectual powers, he at times, unwittingly became the pliant agent of designing individuals, and from the blunders into which he was led, his baptismal name, John, seemed easily converted into that of Solomon, by which specification much of his correspondence was maintained. He bore the pleasantry with grateful composure.
With a characteristic anecdote I must dismiss the name of Lang. The discussions of a point in chronology, which occurred on the commencement of the present century, awakened some attention with mathematicians and astronomers abroad, and among many with us. The learned and pious Dr. Kunze, after much investigation, addressed a communication on the vexed question to Mr. Lang. He had adverted to the Gregorian style in his letter, and had mentioned Pope Gregory. The faithful Gazette printed the article Tom Gregory: the venerable Doctor hastened to his friend, and remonstrated on the injury he had done him, and requested the erratum to specify, instead of Tom Gregory, Pope Gregory XIII. Again an alteration was made, and the Gazette requested its readers, for Tom Gregory to read Pope Tom Gregory XIII. Only one more attempt at correction was made, when the compositor had its typography so changed that it read Tom Gregory, the Pope. The learned divine, with a heavy heart, in a final interview with the erudite editor, begged him to make no further improvements, as he dreaded the loss of all the reputation his years of devotion to the subject had secured to him. This Dr. Kunze was long a prominent minister of the German Lutheran Church of this city. He was the preceptor in Philadelphia of Henry Stuber, author of the continuation of the life of our Socrates, Dr. Franklin: a work executed with much ability. He was a physician, and a most delectable character. Many years ago, I was so fortunate as to procure some materials for a biography of him, and Dr. Sparks has courteously given them a place in his invaluable edition of Dr. Franklin's works. Justice to the departed Lang demands that I should add that he was a gentleman of the old school, of great moral excellence, and as a husband and a father most exemplary; deeply devoted to the interests of this city, and evincing a philanthropic spirit on every becoming occasion. He died at an advanced age; but his career was shortened by the great fire, in this city, in 1835. That vast destruction in his beloved New-York was an oppressive weight upon his heart.
Major Noah has so recently departed from[pg 259] among us, and the expectation that his active life will soon find a biographer is so general, that it seems unnecessary on the present occasion to speak at any length concerning him. I knew him well some thirty-five years. In religion a Jew, he was tolerant of all creeds, with equal amenity; his natural parts were of a remarkable order; few excelled him in industry, none in temperance and sobriety. He wrote for many journals, and established several. By his Travels in Africa he became known as an author. His work on the Abolition of Imprisonment for Debt was widely read. He was lively in converse, and a most social companion. His literary compositions, though not always pure in style, often showed a nice sense of the ludicrous and a love of humor. He abounded in anecdote. Mr. Matthews, from his personal knowledge, has not overdrawn the character of Noah. He possessed the organ of benevolence on a large scale. It is to be regretted that by his political vacillations his talents finally lost all influence in public councils and affairs.
We are susceptible of the pleasures and the pains of memory. A retrospect will confirm this declaration on many occasions. It is so in our contemplations of a newspaper; and in no instance have I been more sensible of this than when considering the origin, the career, and the termination of the New-York American. Its prominent projector was Johnson Verplanck, a native of this city, of a conspicuous family, whose mental qualities were of a robust order, and whose classical attainments entitled him to distinction. With the countenance and assistance of enlightened associates, he soon acquired for the American a reputation for eminent talents, great independence in opinion, and the most perfect freedom in scrutinizing public acts, and in literary and artistic criticism. Mr. Verplanck was one of the writers of the Buck Tail Bards, a satirical poem, of Hudibrastic flavor. He died in 1829. The American fell then into other hands, and for a long succession of years was editorially sustained by one who had often previously enriched its columns with his lucubrations. I allude to Charles King, now President of Columbia College. It was soon demonstrated to the satisfaction of its patrons, that, although under a new government, and its supplies derived from another source, its nutrition was not less wholesome and productive. For many years it claimed the admiration of the conservators of constitutional right and of critical taste. It was conducted with a manly boldness. Its tone gave dignity to political disquisition, though its manner was sometimes dreaded by objects of its animadversion: if its censures were occasionally severe, its approbation was the more highly appreciated: it was a record of historical value; nor can I comprehend why, in this age of universal reading in journalism, its career was closed. Its many volumes must hereafter be ranked with the once famous National Gazette of Robert Walsh, and the National Intelligencer of Gales & Seaton. Its distinguished editor, satisfied that for so long a period he had performed his part in the promotion of sound principles, with singleness of purpose, in behalf of the city, the state and the nation, may have sought that relief from mental care which is often secured by change of occupation. When I cast a thought over the hours I have spent in reading the American, I feel as Whitfield has expressed himself on a different occasion, "I am glad, but I am sorry;" glad that I have had so long the pleasure of being informed by its perusal; sorry that the opportunity no longer exists.
In closing this short list of editors, I feel justified in deviating for a moment in my chronology by a word or two on the character and death of one whom I have ever considered the ablest writer we have had in our public journals. He has been already incidentally mentioned. I allude to James Cheetham. He succeeded as editor of Greenleaf's paper, calling it the American Citizen. Cheetham was an English radical; had left Manchester for this country, and was by trade a hatter. His personal appearance was impressive; tall, athletic, with a martial bearing in his walk, a forehead of great breadth and dimensions, and penetrating gray eyes, he seemed authoritative wherever he might be. He arrived in this country at a period of perplexing excitement in the times of Adams's administration and Jefferson's entrance into the presidency. He found many to countenance his radicalism, as Tennis Wortman, James Dennison, Charles Christian and others—men whom we might call liberals, both in religion and in politics. Accidental circumstances made me well acquainted with him, so early as the summer of 1803. He was then universally known as the champion of Jefferson, of Governor George Clinton, and of De Witt Clinton. He was a most unflinching partisan writer, and with earnestness asserted the advantages arising from the possession of Louisiana, countenanced Blind Palmer, the lecturer on Deism, and congratulated the public on the return to America of Thomas Paine. He ever remained an active advocate of old George Clinton, but his friendship was suddenly turned into hatred of Paine, and his life of that once prominent but wretched individual demonstrates the rancor of his temper. The murderous death of Hamilton, I think, had a strong influence on him. No sooner had he breathed his last than Cheetham extolled him as the greatest of patriots. Many speak of Cheetham as at times holding the pen of Junius—a judgment sustained by some of his political assaults and essays. He possessed a magnificent library, was a great reader, and studied Burke and Shakspeare more than any other authors. I know nothing against his moral character. His death, however, was most remarkable: he had removed with his family to a country residence,[pg 260] some three miles from the city, in the summer of 1809. A few days afterwards he exposed himself to malaria, by walking without a hat, through the fields, under a burning September sun. He was struck with a complication of ills—fever, congestion of the brain, and great cerebral distress. The malignancy of his case soon foretold to his physician, Dr. Hosack, the uncertainty of his recovery. Being at that time a student of medicine, I was requested to watch him; on the second day of his sickness, his fever raging higher, he betrayed a disturbed intellect. On the night of the third day raving mania set in. Incoherently he called his family around him, and addressed his sons as to their peculiar avocations for life, giving advice to one ever to be temperate in all things, and to another urging the importance of knowledge. After midnight he became much worse, and was ungovernable. With herculean strength he now raised himself from his pillow; with eyes of meteoric fierceness, he grasped his bed covering, and in a most vehement but rapid articulation, exclaimed to his sons, "Boys! study Bolingbroke for style, and Locke for sentiment." He spoke no more. In a moment life had departed. His funeral was a solemn mourning of his political friends.
Paine has been referred too. I have often seen him at the different places of his residence in this city, now in Partition-street, now in Broome-street, &c. His localities were not always the most agreeable. In Partition-street, near the market, a portion of his tenement was occupied for the display of wild beasts. Paine generally sat, taking an airing, at the lower front windows, the gazed-at of all passers by. Jarvis, the painter, was often his visitor, and was fortunate enough to secure that inimitable plaster cast of his head and features, which at his request, I deposited with the New-York Historical Society. While at that work, Jarvis exclaimed, "I shall secure him to a nicety, if I am so fortunate as to get plaster enough for his carbuncled nose." Jarvis thought this bust of Paine his most successful undertaking as a sculptor.
I shall trespass some moments by giving a few reminiscences concerning booksellers and publishers. There are many of this professional order, whose character and influence might justly demand a detailed account. Spence himself would find among them anecdotes worthy consideration in the world of letters. I must, however, write within circumscribed limits. The first in my immediate recollection is Everet Duyckinck. He was a middle-aged man, when I, a boy, was occasionally at his store, an ample and old-fashioned building, at the corner of Pearl-street and Old Slip. He was grave in his demeanor, and somewhat taciturn; of great simplicity in dress; accommodating and courteous. He must have been rich in literary recollections. He for a long while occupied his excellent stand for business, and was quite extensively engaged as a publisher and seller. He was a sort of Mr. Newbury, so precious to juvenile memories in the olden times. He largely dealt with that order of books, for elementary instruction, which were popular abroad, just about the close of our revolutionary war and at the adoption of our Constitution—Old Dyche, and his pupil Dilworth, and Perry, and Sheridan. As education and literature advanced, he brought forward, by reprints, Johnson and Chesterfield, and Vicissimus Knox, and a host of others. His store was the nucleus of the Connecticut teachers and intellectual products, and Barlow and Webster, and Morse and Riggs, found in him a patron of their works in poetry and their school books. Bunyan, Young, Watts, Doddridge and Baxter, must have been issued by his enterprise in innumerable thousands throughout the old thirteen States; and the English Primer, now improved into the American Primer, with its captivating emendations, as
The royal oak, it was the tree
That saved his Royal Majesty;
changed to the more simple couplet—
Oak's not as good
As hickory wood;
and the lines—
Whales in the sea
God's voice obey;
now modified without loss of its poetic fire—
By Washington,
Great deeds were done—
led captivity captive, and had an unlimited circulation, for the better diffusion of knowledge and patriotism throughout the land. As our city grew apace, and both instructors and their functions enlarged, he engaged in the Latin classics. Having a little Latin about me, it became my duty to set up at the printing office of Lewis Nicholls, Duyckinck's reprint of De Bello Gallico. The edition was edited by a Mr. Rudd. He was the first editor I ever saw; I looked on him with school-boy admiration when I took him the proofs. What alterations or improvements he made in the text of Oudendorp, I never ascertained. This, however, must have been among the beginnings of that American practice, still prevailing among us, of having in reprints of even the most important works from abroad, for better circulation, the name of some one as editor, inserted on the title-page. Mr. Duyckinck was gifted with great business talents, and estimated as a man of punctuality and of rigid integrity in fiscal matters. He was the first who had the entire Bible, in duodecimo, preserved—set up in forms—the better to supply, at all times, his patrons. This was before stereotype plates were adopted. He gave to the Harpers the first job of printing they executed—whether Tom Thumb or Wesley's Primitive Physic, I do not know. The acorn has become the pride of the forest—the Cliff-street tree, whose roots and branches now ramify all the land. Duyckinck faithfully carried out the proverbs of Franklin,[pg 261] and the sayings of Noah Webster's Prompter. He was by birth and action a genuine Knickerbocker.
There was, about forty years ago, an individual somewhat remarkable in several respects, whose bookstore was in Maiden Lane—William Barlas. He was by birth a Scotchman, and was brought up to the ministry; but from causes which I never learned, he relinquished that vocation in his native land, and assumed that of a bookseller in this city. He was reputed to be a ripe scholar. He dealt almost exclusively in the classics, and for numerous years imported the editions—in usum Delphini, for the students in our schools and colleges. Hardly a graduate among us, of the olden time, can have forgotten him—Irving, Verplanck, John Anthon, and Paulding, can doubtless tell much of him. When, on a large scale, was commenced in Philadelphia, reprints of the Latin and Greek writers, poor Mr. Barlas's functions were nearly annihilated. I mention him here from his relation to the advancement of learning in my juvenile days. His opinion on the various editions was deemed conclusive; and he controlled the judgment as well as the pocket of the purchaser. He was long in epistolary correspondence with "the friend of Cowper," as some call him—old John Newton of London; and I have often wondered that no enterprise has yet brought forward, in a new edition of the writings of Newton, their correspondence. It is not for me to dwell on the contrast, so striking, between the present period and that to which I have just adverted, when even professors of Colleges were controlled in their opinions of books by the dicta of a bookseller. Such was the fact some forty or fifty years ago. What would be the reply of our Professor Anthon, of Columbia College, to a bookseller who assumed such authority? of him whose love and devotion to the philosophy of the classics has led him already in so many works to spread before the cogitative scholars, of both worlds, the deepest researches of antiquarian disquisition and philological lore, evincing that America is not tardy in a just appreciation of the excellencies of those treasures which enriched a Bentley, a Horseley, a Porson, and a Parr.
Those of our literary connoisseurs who cast a retrospective glance over days long past, may awaken into memory that delicately constructed and pensive-looking man, of Pearl-street, recognized by the name of Charles Smith. I believe he was a New-Yorker. Pulmonary suffering was his physical infirmity—his relief, tobacco, the fumes of which aver surrounded him like a halo. He abounded in the gloom and glory of the American Revolution, and published, with portraits, numerous diagrams of the campaigns of the war in the Military Repository, a work of great fidelity, in which it is thought he was aided by Baron Steuben and General Gates. As a bibliopolist, little need be said of him. But the curious in knowledge will not overlook him as the first who popularly made known to the English reader the names of Kotzebue and Schiller. Several of the novels and plays of these German authors were done into English by him; and, with William Dunlap, both as a translator and as a theatrical manager, The Stranger and other plays were presented to the cultivators of the drama in New-York long before their appearance in London, or the publication of Thompson's German Theatre. It is a circumstance worthy of notice, that the Rev. Mr. Will, then of this city, added to the stock of our literary treasures, by other translations into the English, such as the Constant Lovers, &c., of Kotzebue, before, I believe, any recognized English version appeared abroad. But I must leave this subject for the fuller investigation of the learned Dr. Schmidt professor of German, in Columbia College.
David Longworth's name is a good deal blended with the progress of American literature during years gone by. He was by birth a New Jerseyman; and the publication of his City Directory, for some thirty or more years, gave him sufficient notoriety; while his Shaksperean Gallery introduced him to many of the cultivators of the fine arts, at a period, when Trumbull and Jarvis were our prominent painters. Longworth had been brought up as a printer, at a daily press, but he seems early to have got a taste for copper-plate engraving, accurate printing, and elegant binding. With determined energy he issued an edition of Telemachus, which, for beauty of typography and paper, was looked upon, by the lovers of choice books, as a rich specimen of our art. His Belles-Lettres Repository no less evinced his taste in the elegantiæ literarum. He was, nevertheless, a man of many strange notions. It is well known that about the commencement of the eighteenth century, in our English books, printed in the mother country, the substantive words were almost always begun with a capital; the like practice obtained in many newspapers; but Longworth, not content with the partial change which time had brought about, of sinking these prominent and advantageous upper case type, waged a war of extermination against almost every capital in the case, and this curious deformity is found in many of his publications, as british america, and london docks. Even in poetry, of the first word, he tolerated only small letters at the beginning of the lines. His practice, however, found no imitators, though 'tis said that it first began in Paris. His bookstore, at a central situation by the Park, with works of taste classically displayed, afforded an admirable lounge for the litterateurs of that day. Here, when Hodgkinson, and Hallam, and Cooper, and Cooke were at the zenith of their histrionic career in the Park Theatre, adjacent, might be seen a group of poets and prose writers, who, in their generation, added to the original off-spring[pg 262] of the American press—Brockden Brown, Dunlap, Verplanck, Paulding Fessenden, Richard Alsop, Peter Irving, and the now universally famed Washington Irving.
I must note a circumstance of some import on the state of letters among us about those times. Longworth had secured from abroad a copy of the first edition, in quarto, of Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, and determined to reprint it; yet, not satisfied with his own judgment, he convened a meeting of his literary friends to settle the matter. The committee, after solemn deliberation, suggested his venturing to reproduce only the introductions to the cantos, as an experiment, in order to ascertain the public taste. Would I speak in terms too strong if I affirmed that since that committee sat, millions of copies of the numerous volumes of Sir Walter Scott have been bought by the reading world in America. My circle of literary acquaintance was a good deal enlarged by the coteries I now and then found at Longworth's, as he was not backward in seizing opportunities of issuing new works, when from their nature they might excite the appetite of the curious. No publication of his so effectually secured this end, as the Salmagundi, in 1807, sent forth in bi-weekly numbers by young Irving and his friend Paulding. When we are apprised that some few of our middle-aged citizens, who sustained the stroke of that literary scimetar so long ago, still survive among us, I think we may argue from strong data for the salubrity of our climate. At Longworth's, I first saw the youngest dramatic genius of the time, Howard Payne, then about fourteen years old, and who, a short while after, appeared as young Norval on the boards of the theatre. He was editor of the Thespian Mirror.
Originally of Ireland, Hugh Gaine, upon his emigration to this country during our colonial dependence, set up in this city in 1753 his Royal Gazette, the New-York Mercury. His fame as well as his patriotism is embalmed in the irony of Freneau. It is only as a bookseller that I knew him, in Hanover Square. He was then at a very advanced age. His savings rendered him in due time independent in pecuniary matters. We may safely infer that he was not surpassed in industry, and that he was ever awake to the main chance, when we are assured that at the commencement of his journal, he collected his own news, set up his types, worked off his papers, folded his sheets, and personally distributed them to his subscribers. Franklin had done pretty nearly the same things before. Gaine, who in his after-life was an object of a good deal of curiosity to the citizens of the republic, enjoyed the consideration due to an honest man, and many kindly feelings.
Many as were his merits, and great as was his enterprise, Isaac Collins was most widely known, the latter part of his long career, by his editions of the works on grammar, and other school books, by the prolific Lindley Murray. As in the case of Franklin, his earliest effort of magnitude was the printing Sewell's History of the Quakers. The neatness and accuracy of his printing were familiarly remarked among readers; and these excellencies he displayed in his quarto Bible, the first of that form which was printed in this country in 1790. Collins was a native of Delaware. He projected a weekly paper, the New Jersey Gazette, which he published at Burlington during the Revolution, and, some time after, upon strenuous Whig principles. He had authority, like Franklin, for the emission of paper money for the State Government. He removed to this city in 1796, and a few years after this time I knew him. As his career was, many portions of it, like Franklin's, I had the greater admiration of him. He died in 1817. That he enjoyed the acquaintance of Franklin, of Rittenhouse and Rush, of Livingston of New Jersey, and others of the truest patriots in the great struggles of the country, may be inferred from his profession, his public station, his integrity, and his general character. In the society of Friends he was prominent, and, like Thomas Eddy and Robert Bowne, he was occupied with hospitals, and ever zealous in good works. He did vast service to the city as a printer, and as such he is here introduced.
The oldest inhabitants of our city may well recollect the bookstore of the Swords, Thomas and James. Some sixty years ago they began operations in Pearl-street. They commenced when New-York was little more than a village in population, and when literary projects were almost unknown. They deserve ample notice as most efficient pioneers, in their day, as printers and booksellers, and through a long career they held a high rank; they were assiduous and economical almost to a fault: their integrity was never doubted; their word was as good as their bond. They printed good works in more acceptations of the phrase than one. They did a great service to our scientific enterprise, in issuing the Medical Repository, the earliest journal of that kind, in the country. A literary periodical, of many years duration, was also printed by them, called the New-York Magazine. It was remarkable for the contributions of a society, self-named the Drone. Brockden Brown, William Dunlap, Anthony Bleucker, Josiah Ogden Hoffman, and James Kent (afterwards the great Chancellor), were among the writers. William Johnson, the well-known Reporter, who died recently, was the last survivor of this club. Their store for a number of years was a rendezvous for professional men of different callings—divines, physicians, lawyers, with a sprinkling of the professed authors of those times, as Clifton, Low, Davis, &c. Its theological feature was its strongest; and the interest of episcopacy were here descanted on with the unction of godliness, by such men as Seabury of Connecticut,[pg 263] and Moore of New-York, with good old Dr. Bowden, and Dr. Hawks, my friends Drs. Berrian and McVicker of Columbia College, and the energetic Bishop Hobart, the busiest and most stirring man I ever knew. The Messrs. Swords were largely occupied in printing works on divinity, and were confessed the printers of sound orthodoxy long before "the novelties which disturb our peace" had invoked polemical controversy.
I should do injustice to my feelings were I in this rapid sketch to overlook the late James Eastburn, the founder of the first reading-room on a becoming scale, in this country, and the publisher of the American edition of the Edinburgh and London Quarterly Reviews. He was a gentleman deserving of much estimation, of bland manners, and enthusiastic in his calling. He was curious in antiquarian literature and a great importer of the older authors. Many are the libraries enriched by his perseverance. Consumption wasted his generous frame, and he died at a comparatively early age, to the deep regret of the scholar and the philanthropist.
I should like, before I close this portion of these reminiscences, to awaken recollections of one or two other estimable individuals with whom I was long acquainted—George F. Hopkins and Jonathan Seymour. Hopkins merits a biography; he justly boasted that his edition of Robertson's Charles V. was the most accurately printed work of the time. He was fastidious almost to a fault in typographical neatness. He printed only works of positive merit. His enterprise led him, now fifty years ago, to urge the craft to render themselves independent of imported types, by establishing type-foundries in the country. There were few indeed among us who knew practically much about the founts of Caslon, the Coryphæus of letter-founders. The Scotch hard-faced letter was then extensively in use. Hopkins induced the immigration to this country of the famous Binney and Ronaldson, whose great skill in the art was soon recognized, and from that era up to the present day competent judges affirm that our Bruce, White, Conner, and others, have accomplished all that is requisite in the type-founding business. Of Jonathan Seymour, it is enough to say, that at one period of his life he was more largely engaged than any of his rivals in printing from manuscripts—so well known and appreciated was his devotion to his calling, and the accuracy of its results. In his death, the art lost one who had given it elevation, and society a man possessed of the qualities of industry, temperance, honesty, and Christian philanthropy in the fullest measure.
Within a few days has departed from among us, at the age of eighty years, a supporter of the press who long contributed to the diffusion of wholesome knowledge. I allude to Thomas Kirk. I shall terminate these notices by a striking occurrence, which involved him in great loss. He had determined, about the year 1801, to give the Christian community an octavo edition, in large type, of the Book of Common Prayer, the first of that size from an American press. To secure the utmost accuracy, he engaged, for a pecuniary consideration, the Rev. John Ireland, of Brooklyn, to revise the proofs. When the sheets were worked off, it was ascertained that the copy was an exact reprint, save in one particular. The critical acumen of Ireland had discovered, in the Apostles' Creed, a "tautological error," in the words, "from thence he shall come." The word "from" was superfluous, ungrammatical, and inelegant, according to Ireland, and, accordingly, it was not in Kirk's edition. Upon the sale of a few copies the omission was remarked; the fact became known to the bishop of the church; the book was pronounced defective, and the ecclesiastical authorities prohibited its circulation. The whole edition fell a dead weight upon the hands of the well-meaning publisher. I had this anecdote from Mr. Kirk himself, years ago, and he repeated it to me not long prior to his death, in last November.
This allusion to Kirk brings to my mind the notorious John Williams, better known as Anthony Pasquin, under which name he was doomed to everlasting infamy by Gifford, in his satire of the Baviad and Mæviad, in judgments afterwards confirmed in a celebrated trial for libel in which the famous Erskine delivered one of his best forensic speeches. Williams was the associate in London of a small but ambitious set of mutual admirers in literature, of whom Mr. Merry and his future wife were the "Della Crusca" and "Rosa Matilda," and all three of these worthies came to New-York about the year 1798. I have an impression that Kirk came at the same time. The character of Williams was infamous, and a large share of his infamy consisted in his ministering to, if not creating, the passion for personal scandal, and setting the example of black-mail collections, in newspapers. In the report of the great case of Williams vs. Faulder, it is said of his paper, called The World, that "In this were given the earliest specimens of those unqualified and audacious attacks on all private character which the town first smiled at for their quaintness, then tolerated for their absurdity—and will have to lament to the last hour of British liberty." After he came to this country he associated himself with the enemies of Hamilton, and published a satire called The Hamiltoniad, edited a magazine entitled The Columbian, and was a pioneer in that species of journalism which still subsists here upon the most scandalous invasions of private life and reputation. He was doubly detestable, in that he was the corruptor and worst specimen of the editorial calling in Europe and in America. I remember frequently seeing Williams, in the latter part of his life, in his shabby pepper-and-salt[pg 264] dress, in the obscure parts of the city. I believe he died during the first prevalence of the cholera in Brooklyn. Fancy may depict his expression as illustrating Otway's lines, "as if all hell were in his eyes, and he in hell." It must not be supposed that I in any degree associate the fame of the worthy Kirk with that of this literary vagabond.
To a suggestion that I might refer to the late William Cobbett, as associated with the periodical press of this country, I may say that I see in it no impropriety. Unquestionably a minute record would include his Porcupine Gazette and his Weekly Register; the one an offspring of his juvenile life, the other of his ripened years. I had some personal acquaintance with him at the time of his last residence in New-York. Hazlitt has, in his attractive manner, described him to the life. He was deemed the best talker of his day, and his forcible pen has given us indubitable proofs of his powers in literary composition. It was not unusual with him to make a visit to the printing office at an early morning hour, take his seat at the desk, and after some half dozen lines were written, to throw off MSS. with a rapidity that engaged eleven compositors at once in setting up. Thus a whole sheet of the Register might be completed ere he desisted from his undertaking. I think that in quickness he surpassed even the lamented William Leggett, of the Evening Post. The circumstance is certainly interesting in a psychological point of view; and yet may not be deemed more curious than the fact that Priestley made his reply to Lind, quite a voluminous pamphlet, in twenty-four hours, or that Hodgkinson, the actor, was able to peruse crosswise, the entire five columns of a newspaper, and within two hours recite it thus by memory. I visited Cobbett, when his residence was within a couple of miles of this city, in company with a few professional gentlemen. It was in October, and a delightful day. He heard our approach, and came to the door without our knocking. "Walk in, gentlemen—am I to consider this as a visit to me?—walk in and be seated on these benches, for I have no chairs—you may be fatigued—will you have a bowl of milk? I live upon milk and Indian corn—I never drink spirit or wine, and yet I am a tolerable example of English health." And, indeed, he was a most ample specimen of the genuine John Bull. His nearly oval face, and florid countenance, with strong gray piercing eyes and head thickly covered with white hair, closely trimmed; his huge frame, of some two hundred and seventy pounds weight, corresponding abdominal development, and well-proportioned limbs, all demonstrated, with anatomical accuracy, the truth of his observation. His superior intellect seemed roused in all its functions. The United States, England, the reform measures, the union of church and state, and its absurdity, were only a few of the subjects of his caustic remark. "I have just performed a duty, gentlemen, which has been too long delayed; you have neglected the remains of Thomas Paine; I have done myself the honor to disinter his bones; I have removed them from New Rochelle; I have dug them up; they are now on their way to England; when I return, I shall cause them to speak the Common Sense of the great man; I shall gather together the people of Liverpool and Manchester in one assembly with those of London, and those bones will effect the reformation of England in Church and State." After some two or three hours we took our leave, with unlimited admiration of his brave utterance and his colloquial talents.
With such a hastily written and imperfect sketch of the newspaper periodical press, of printers, editors, booksellers, and authors, I must close this portion of my present reminiscences. I have depended on a memory somewhat tenacious as my authority, in most instances, having no leisure at command for reference. A volume might be written of pertinent details. Nevertheless, enough has been said to illustrate, in part, the advancement of one species of knowledge in this metropolis. Did we institute a comparative view of the past and present condition of the press, we might be better enabled to announce the existing condition of our city as a Literary Emporium, That it is in accordance with the spirit of the age, seems demonstrable. Abroad, in England, in 1701, when the stamp duty was levied upon every number of a periodical paper consisting of a sheet, the whole quantity of printed paper was estimated at twenty thousand reams annually. Nearly at this period (1704), when the Boston News Letter made its appearance in the American colonies, some two or three hundred copies weekly may have been its circulation. What is the quantity of paper demanded by the present British periodical press, I am unable to state. In this month of January, 1852, it is calculated that there are about three thousand different newspapers and other periodicals printed in this country, the entire issues of which approach the yearly aggregate of four hundred and twenty-three millions of numbers.
When Franklin was a printer it was a hard task to work off over a thousand sheets on both sides in a day, by the hand press. Since his time we have had the Clymer, the Napier, the Ramage, the Adams, and now Hoe's Lightning press. By this last-named achievement in the arts, so honorable to a son of New-York, and so stupendous in its results to the world at large, twenty thousand papers may be printed in one hour.
If we advert to the instructive fact, of the enormous circulation of many of the journals of New-York, as the Herald, the Sun, the Tribune, the Times, the Express, the Mirror, and others issued daily; if we calculate the copies of the Observer, the Home Journal, the Christian Advocate, and others[pg 265] of the weekly press; the circulation of the monthly and other periodicals; if we look at the Methodist Book Concern, the Tract Society, the American Bible Society, the publications of the Appletons, of Putnam, and of the enterprising booksellers of this city generally, what bounds can we set to the offspring of the typographic art? The Herald and the Tribune in their distinct circulation, consume an aggregate of fifty thousand reams per year. The Harpers, who have thrown John Baskerville, and other eminent typographers of Europe in the shade by the magnitude of their operations, use one hundred reams of paper daily, at six dollars per ream, and make about ten volumes a minute or six thousand a day. On a former occasion I stated to you the agency which Franklin had in bringing forward stereotype plates, as projected by Dr. Colden, in this city, in 1779, and the fact that the art was communicated to Didot in Paris, by Franklin himself. I well remember the anxious John Watts, when he showed me his first undertaking in this branch of labor in New-York, just forty years ago. It was a copy of the Larger Catechism, the one I now hold in my hand. Notwithstanding the doubts of many, he felt confident of its ultimate success, yet suffered by hope deferred. What is now the state of the business in the matter of stereotyping? The Harpers alone—a single firm—have within their vaults plates for more than two thousand volumes.
Need I dwell on the improved appliances in the great art, which enrich the present day, or on the influences now at work on the intellectual man? Justly has it been stated, that the press of a single office in this city issues more matter than the industry of the world, with all its scribes and illuminators, in an entire year, previous the time of Faust. Let us, then, reverence the press, as our Franklin did. Let us cherish its freedom, as the triumph of our fathers, if we love the name of patriot. Let us teach our children to acknowledge it the palladium of our altars and our firesides. Let us recognize it as the Great Instructor, knocking at every door, and rendering every hovel, as well as every palace, a school-house.
Nor is it solely on the score of quantity, that we are to contemplate the measures now in force for the disciplining of intellect, and the rearing the moral edifice of the nation. I have already remarked on the superior ability of the press of our days in comparison with that of the period through which some of us have lived. The same energy which has swelled its dimensions, has increased the excellence of its material. Libraries so abound, knowledge is so diffused, that individuals qualified by scholastic powers, can be called in requisition for the duties of every department a successful journal demands. There is moreover a happier recognition of intellectual merit; reward is higher and more certain; and there exists throughout the community a noble estimation of productive intellect. Instead of a scattered recruit here and there in the ranks of literature, we have armies at command, of well-disciplined men; and the belief is not altogether idle that, in due season, of these armies there will be legions. Lovesick tales and Della Cruscan poetry, have yielded to stately essays on the business of life, in philosophy and in criticism, while the native muse has often stronger claims to our homage than the verses Dr. Johnson has embalmed, and that have made the fame of ancient bards. We no longer gaze at the author as a drone in the hive of industry.
Our youth are taught that a true man may be found among the luxurious and refined as well in the humble avocations of life. Ambitious of a national literature, we honor those who have laid its foundations, in the persons of an Irving, a Prescott, and a Bancroft, a Longfellow, and a Hawthorne. We gratefully remember our historical obligations to Sparks. We feel the dignity of the scholar when we summon to our aid the classical Everett. Mourning with no feigned sorrow the demise of that true son of our soil, the lamented Cooper, we rejoice that a Bryant and a Halleck, a Verplanck and a Paulding, are still left with us. Warm in our feelings, and made happier by the relations of intercourse, we extend the cordial hand to Tuckerman, our classical essayist and poet; to Willis, for his felicitous comments on passing events; to Griswold, for his admirable works in criticism and biography; to Dr. Mayo, for his Kaloolah; to Stoddard, for his exquisite poems; to the generous Bethune, the orator and bard; to Morris, for his Melodies; to Kimball, for his St. Leger Papers; to Clark, for his Knickerbocker; to Melville, for Typee; to Ik. Marvell, for his Reveries; to Ripley, for his fine reviews; to Bigelow, for his book on Jamaica; to Bayard Taylor, for his Views A-Foot; to Greeley, for his Crystal Palace labors; and to Duyckinck, the son of our old friend, the bookseller, for his Literary World. In the name of the Republic, we give our heartiest thanks to our intimate friend, the learned Dr. Cogswell, as we look at the spacious walls of the Astor Library.
The very great length to which I have unconsciously extended these reminiscences, forbids me from dwelling, as my heart and your wishes dictate, upon the most glorious name in American Printing, the immortal Franklin's. His character and deeds, however, are familiar to you all; and the language of eulogy is needless in regard to one whose fame increases with time, and whose transcendent merits, the constant development of that element he brought under human dominion render daily more evident and memorable. It is related, gentlemen, that when the statues of the Roman Emperors were carried in a triumphal procession, one was omitted, and the name of that one was shouted with more zeal than all the others inspired.[pg 266] So I know it to be with us to-night. The memory of Franklin is too ripe in our hearts to require words; it is a spell that sheds eternal glory on the typographical art; it is the best encouragement of youthful energy; it is revealed in every telegraphic despatch; it hallows the name of our country to the civilized world.