(From the Portrait by Kneller.)
Jacob Tonson, born in 1656, was the son of a barber-surgeon in Holborn, who died when his two sons were both very young, leaving them each a hundred pounds to be paid them on their coming of age. The two lads resolved to become printers and booksellers, and, at fourteen, Jacob was apprenticed to Thomas Barnet. After serving the usual term of seven years he was admitted to the freedom of the Stationers’ Company, and immediately commenced business with his small capital at the Judge’s House, in Chancery Lane, close to the corner of Fleet Street. Like many other publishers he began trade by selling second-hand books and those produced by other firms, but he soon issued plays on his own account; finding, however, that the works of Otway and Tate, which were among his first attempts, had no very extensive sale, he boldly made a bid for Dryden’s next play, but the twenty pounds required by the author was too great a venture for his small capital, so “Troilus and Cressida; or Truth found too Late,” was published conjointly by Tonson and Levalle in 1679. This connection with Dryden, which lasted till the poet’s death, was of only less importance to the furtherance of Tonson’s fortune than a bargain concluded four years later with Brabazon Aylmer for one-half of his interest in the “Paradise Lost,” which Dryden told him was one of the greatest poems England had ever produced. Still he waited four years before he ventured to publish, and then only by the safe method of subscription, and in 1788 the folio edition came out, and by the sale of this and future editions Tonson was, according to Disraeli, enabled to keep his carriage. The other moiety of the copyright was subsequently purchased. There is a pleasant description of Tonson, in these early days, in a short poem by Rowe:—
“While in your early days of reputation
You for blue garter had not such a passion,
While yet you did not live, as now your trade is,
To drink with noble lords and toast their ladies,
Thou Jacob Tonson, wert, to my conceiving,
The cheerfullest, best honest fellow living.”
From John Dunton, the bookseller, we get the following description:—“He was bookseller to the famous Dryden, and is himself a very good judge of persons and authors; and, as there is nobody more competently qualified to give their opinion upon another, so there is none who does it with a more severe exactness, or with less partiality; for, to do Mr. Tonson justice, he speaks his mind upon all occasions, and will flatter nobody.”
Not only did Tonson first make “Paradise Lost” popular, but some years afterwards he was the first bookseller to throw Shakespeare open to a reading public.
Then, as now, however, the works in most urgent demand were “novelties,” and with these Dryden supplied his publisher as fast almost as pen could drive upon paper. From the correspondence between Dryden and Tonson, printed in Scott’s edition of the poet’s works, they seem to have been privately on very friendly terms, falling out only when agreements were to be signed or payments to be made. Tonson was at this time publishing what are sometimes known as Tonson’s, sometimes as Dryden’s, Miscellany Poems, written, so the title-pages averred, by the “most eminent hands.” Apropos of this, Pope writes, “Jacob creates poets as kings create knights, not for their honour, but for their money. I can be satisfied with a bare saving gain without being thought an eminent hand.” The first volume of the “Miscellany” was published in 1684, and the second in the following year, and of this second, Dryden writes, after thanking the bookseller for two melons—“since we are to have nothing but new, I am resolved we shall have nothing but good, whomever we disoblige.” The third “Miscellany” was published in 1693, and Tonson sends an earnest letter of remonstrance anent the amount of “copy” received of the translation of Ovid:—“You may please, sir, to remember that upon my first proposal about the third ‘Miscellany,’ I offered fifty pounds, and talked of several authors without naming Ovid. You asked if it should not be guineas, and said I should not repent it; upon which I immediately complied, and left it wholly to you what, and for the quantity too; and I declare it was the furthest in the world from my thoughts that by leaving it to you I should have the less.” He proceeds to show that Dryden had sold a previous, though recent translation to another bookseller at the rate of 1518 lines for forty guineas, while he adds, “all that I have for fifty guineas are but 1446; so that if I have no more, I pay ten guineas above forty, and have 72 lines less for fifty in proportion. I own, if you don’t think fit to add something more, I must submit; ’tis wholly at your choice, for I left it entirely to you; but I believe you cannot imagine I expected so little; for you were pleased to use me much kindlier in Juvenal, which is not reckoned so easy to translate as Ovid. Sir, I humbly beg your pardon for this long letter, and, upon my word, I had rather have your good will than any man’s alive.”
These were hard times for Dryden, for through the change of government he had been deprived of the laureateship, and it is little likely that Tonson ever received his additional lines or recovered his money. Frequent at this period were the bickerings between them. On one occasion, the bookseller having refused to advance a sum of money, the poet forwarded the following triplet with the significant message, “Tell the dog that he who wrote these lines can write more:”—
“With leering looks, bull-faced and freckled fair,
With two left legs, with Judas-coloured hair,
And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air.”
The descriptive hint is said to have been successful. On another occasion, when Bolingbroke was visiting Dryden, they heard a footstep. “This,” said Dryden, “is Tonson; you will take care not to depart before he goes away; for I have not completed the sheet which I promised him; and, if you leave me unprotected, I shall suffer all the rudeness to which resentment can prompt his tongue.” And yet, almost at this period, we find Dryden writing, “I am much ashamed of myself that I am so much behindhand with you in kindness.”
