While Dougal Graham was thus actively employed, and with so much effect, other writers were contributing their quota to chapman literature. None of these authors can now be traced, possibly because they kept their identity concealed, but a few of their works still remain. One or two of them may be noticed. In 1764, there were issued in Edinburgh two chap-books which may be regarded as the forerunners of the modern ‘letter-writers.’ One of them, The Art of Courtship, contained ‘Amorous dialogues, love letters, complimental expressions, with a particular description of Courtship, etc.’; while the other bore the title of The Accomplished Courtier, or A New School of Love. In the same city, in 1767, there was published The Comical Notes and Sayings of the Reverend Mr. John Pettegrew, minister in Govan. It contained stories, humorous and sometimes very broad, about the reverend gentleman, but they had probably as little foundation in fact as the extraordinary tales recorded of George Buchanan. There are other chap-books with a popularity almost equal to those named, and to the productions of Dougal Graham, such as—The Wife of Beath, a metrical travesty of Chaucer’s tale; the still highly esteemed Watty and Meg; Thrummy Cap; The Dominie Deposed; Margaret and the Minister; and a host of others.
Nothing that can be said to have given any new feature to chap literature was published after Graham’s death, though it still continued to be very popular. Many printers throughout the country set themselves almost exclusively to its circulation, which, it has been stated, had reached, before the close of the century, a quarter of a million copies annually. The old chap-books were reprinted in almost every town of any note in Scotland, sometimes in full, sometimes abridged; songs and ballads were collected and got up in chap-book and broadside form; and extracts from larger works were made and published in a guise under which their authors would have had difficulty in recognising them. Dougal Graham, of course, had great attention paid to him; and edition after edition of his numerous works was scattered over the country; while Robert Burns, then rising into fame as a poet, had his writings reproduced in many of the collections of songs. For the first twenty years of the present century the chap-books enjoyed an unimpaired popularity, but they gradually began to decline in favour. An impression of their vulgarity got abroad, they were regarded by public moralists as pestilential and therefore deserving extinction; some publishers turned out from their presses ‘New and Improved Series,’ and at last they came to be regarded as belonging to a bygone age, worthy only of the consideration of antiquaries, some utilitarians being doubtful if they even merited that attention. The time had changed, and the popular taste had improved; and, after 1832, Chambers’ Journal took the place among the people formerly occupied by chap-books. As the taste for reading increased, the Journal shared honours with other publications, until now the issue of ephemeral literature has reached an extraordinary development. There are, however, many still living who remember the days of chap-literature, and who can recall the zest with which they first read the adventures of ‘Louden Tam,’ ‘Leper the Tailor,’ ‘John Cheap,’ and all that race.
It would be impossible in this place to give a note of the printers who assisted in the issue of the chap literature of Scotland, though to do so would be highly interesting. Their name is legion. Of the work of the earlier printers very few specimens remain; but towards the end of last century some of the printers in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Falkirk, and other large towns, attained to quite a celebrity for their efforts in this direction. James and Matthew Robertson, whose shop was in the Saltmarket, between the Cross and what is now known as St. Andrew’s Street, and who were in business at the end of the eighteenth, and beginning of the nineteenth, century, made about £30,000 off them. They published all Dougal Graham’s booklets in their most complete forms, besides everything of the chap-book kind then in circulation. At their death their money went to the only daughter of Matthew, and her reputation for benevolence to the poor long survived her. Two other Saltmarket printers were Thomas Duncan, at No. 159, and R. Hutchison, at No. 10, both of whom flourished in the early years of this century. The headquarters of the chap-book printers in Edinburgh were in Niddery’s Wynd and the Cowgate. Some most valuable pieces were issued from the Wynd about the middle of last century; and, in the Cowgate in the early years of this century, Morren printed all and sundry, scattering chap-books broadcast over the east coast. About 1760, A. Robertson, Coalhill, Leith, did an extensive business in this way. Falkirk, again, occupies a high position in this respect, for during the last few years of the eighteenth, and the early years of the present, century, T. Johnston issued a large number of chap-books, most of them valuable because they do not seem to have been much, if any, abridged. C. and M. Randall, of Stirling, about the same time were engaged in a similar work. Without further detail, this list of these eminent printers may be closed by the mention of the name of George Caldwell, Paisley, who flourished in both centuries, and who is believed to have been the original printer of many of Dougal Graham’s chap-books. Few, if any, of his early productions can now be found.
In concluding this necessarily brief outline of the history of the chap-literature of Scotland, we may be allowed to quote from The Thistle, a Glasgow magazine published in 1847. It was edited by Alexander B. Grosart, the now eminent editor of the Fuller Worthies’ Library, etc., who was at that time in the employment of Dr. John Buchanan, the Glasgow banker and antiquary. Mr. Grosart had in that magazine a quaintly written article on ‘Chap-Beuks and Ballats,’ beginning in this strain:—
‘Chap-Beuks and Ballats
—— “To rede are delectabill.
Suppois that thai be nocht bot fabill;
Then suld ‘auld storyss’ that suthfast were,
Have ‘doubill pleasance.’”
‘So said or sung “Makkar” Barbour in his “Quhair” of the Bruce. Chap-beuks and Ballats occupied a “far-ben corner o’ the heart” of our Fathers and Grandfathers; indeed we have a “doubill pleasaunce” in these “auld storyss” when “tauld in gude manner.”’ Such is a true estimate of their position in the hearts and minds of the Scots of the eighteenth century. The opinions Sir Walter Scott and William Motherwell had of Dougal Graham’s writings have already been shown, and their estimate of the value of the literature for which he wrote has been clearly brought out.