At the close of the last century Hutton lost a valuable collection of books, and other valuable property, through the lawless riots that took place in his native city; of these disturbances the author of the Press says:—
“When Birmingham, for riots and for crimes,
Shall meet the keen reproach of future times,
Then shall she find, amongst our honoured race,
One name to save her from entire disgrace.”
This “one name” was that of John Baskerville, a printer, a contemporary of Hutton, and one of the most famous English type-founders. Commencing life as a schoolmaster, his inclination for books turned his attention to type-founding, but he spent £600 before he produced one letter that thoroughly satisfied his exquisitely critical taste, and probably some thousands before his business began to prove remunerative; and, after all, his printing speculations yielded more honour than profit. Upon paying a heavy royalty to the University of Cambridge, he was allowed to print a Bible in royal folio, which, for beauty of type, is still unrivalled; but the slender and delicate form of his letters were, as Dr. Dibdin remarks, better suited to smaller books, and show to the greatest advantage in his 12mo. “Virgil” and “Horace.” His strenuous endeavours, and his large outlay, met with but little return; and he writes of the “business of printing” as one “which I am heartily tired of, and repent I ever attempted.” He died in 1775, and appears to have printed nothing during the last ten years of his life. By the direction left in his will, he was buried under a windmill in his own garden, with the following epitaph on his tomb-stone: “Stranger! beneath this cone, in unconsecrated ground, a friend to the liberties of mankind directed his body to be inurned. May the example contribute to emancipate thy mind from the idle fears of superstition, and the wicked arts of priesthood.” His fount of type was unluckily allowed to leave the country, and was purchased by Beaumarchais, of Paris, who produced some exquisite editions, particularly of Voltaire’s works, but who lost upwards of one million livres in his speculations.
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A successful modern bookselling venture in this city resulted from the establishment of the “Educational Trading Company (Limited)”—a novel phase in the trade—of which the chief proprietor and chairman was Mr. Josiah Mason. The business management was placed in the hands of Mr. Kempster, and, by a thorough system of travellers, who personally canvassed the proprietors of schools and colleges, offering them very liberal terms, a large connection was almost immediately established. The company’s operations were, of course, confined to the publication of cheap educational works; and some of these, such as Gill’s and Moffat’s series, attained a wide popularity, and necessitated, in 1870, the opening of a London branch at St. Bride’s Avenue, and another branch house at Bristol.
One of the most famous booksellers and printers of the West of England was Andrew Brice, who was born in Exeter in the year 1690. He was educated in early life with a view to the ministry, but family misfortunes obliged him to become apprentice to Bliss, a printer in that city. Long before the expiry of his apprenticeship the improvident young printer married, and, being unable to support a wife and two children upon the pittance he received, he enlisted as a soldier in order to break his indentures, and, by the interest of his friends, soon procured a discharge. He commenced business on his own account, and started a newspaper, but, possessing only one kind of type, he carved in wood the title and such capitals as he stood in need of. Becoming embarrassed through a law suit, in which heavy damages were cast against him, he was obliged to bar himself in his own house to escape the debtor’s gaol. He spent seven long years in this domestic confinement, but still continued to conduct his business with assiduity, and, as a solace, to compose a poem, “On Liberty,” the profits of which enabled him to compound with the keepers of the city prison. After regaining his freedom his business largely increased, and, in 1740, he set up a printing-press at Truro, the first introduced into Cornwall; the miners were, however, at that time in little need of literature, and he soon removed the types to Exeter. Among his chief publications were the “Agreeable Gallimanfly; or, Matchless Medley,” a collection of verses chiefly the production of his own pen; the “Mob-aid,” so full of newly-coined words that, in Devonshire, “Bricisms” were for long synonymous with quaint novelty of expression; and the folio “Geographical Dictionary,” which occupied ten years in publication and is still far from complete. Brice was at all times a shielder of the oppressed; and when the Exeter play-actors were purchased out of their theatre by the Methodists, who converted it into a chapel, and indicted them as vagrants, he published a poem—“The Playhouse Church; or, new Actors of Devotion,” which so stirred up popular feeling that the Methodists were fain to restore the place to its former possessors, who, under Brice’s patronage, opened their house for some time gratis to all comers. In gratitude the players brought his characteristics of speech and dress into their dramas, and even Garrick eventually introduced him, under, of course, a pseudonyme, in the “Clandestine Marriage.” At the time of his death, in 1773, he was the oldest master-printer in England. His corpse lay for some days in state at the Apollo Inn; every person admitted to view it paid a shilling, and the money so received went towards defraying the expense of his funeral, which was attended by three hundred freemasons, for he had not only been a zealous member of the fraternity, but at the period of his decease he was looked upon as the father of the craft.
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Another West of England worthy, though he was only a bookseller for the short space of seven years, has perhaps higher claim upon our attention than any other provincial bibliopole. Joseph Cottle was born at Bristol in the year 1770, and at the age of twenty-one he became a bookseller in his native city. In 1795 he published a volume of his own “Poems”—and himself an author he was generously able to appreciate the work of better men. Through extraordinary circumstances he became acquainted with Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, and Lamb, when they were still unknown to fame, and with a rare perception of genius he was able to assist them materially towards the goal of success. From his interesting “Early Recollections,” we gather that one evening Coleridge told him despondently that he had been the round of London booksellers with a volume of poems, and that all but one had refused to even look over the manuscript, and that this one proffered him six guineas for the copyright, which sum, poor as he was, he felt constrained to decline. Cottle at once offered the young author thirty guineas, and actually paid the money before the completion of the volume, which appeared in 1796.
To Southey he made the same bid for his first volume, and the offer was eagerly accepted. Cottle at once, however, added, “You have read me some books of your ‘Joan of Arc,’ which poem I perceive to have great merit. If it meet with your concurrence I will give you fifty guineas for this work, and publish it in quarto, when I will give you in addition fifty copies to dispose of among your friends.” Southey corroborates this account, and further says, “It can rarely happen that a young author should meet with a bookseller as inexperienced and as ardent as himself; and it would be still more extraordinary if such mutual indiscretion did not bring with it cause for regret to both. But this transaction was the commencement of an intimacy which has continued without the slightest shade of displeasure at any time on either side to the present day.” Cottle ordered a new fount of type “for what was intended to be the handsomest book that Bristol had ever yet sent forth,” and owing, perhaps, more to the party feelings of the periodical press, and the subject of the poem, than to any intrinsic merit, other than as holding out vague hope of future promise, the young author acquired a sudden reputation, which was afterwards fully sustained by his prose if not by his poetry.
Later on Cottle was introduced to Wordsworth, who read him portions of his “Lyrical Ballads.” The venturous bookseller made him the same offer of thirty guineas for the first-fruits of his genius, saying that it would be a gratifying circumstance to issue the first volumes of three such poets, and (a veritable prophecy) “a distinction that might never again occur to a provincial bookseller.” After mature consideration, Wordsworth accepted the offer; but the “Lyrical Ballads,” in which also Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner” first appeared, went off so slowly that he was compelled to part with the greater part of the five hundred copies to Arch, a London bookseller. We have already related how Cottle, and after him, Longman, rendered material assistance to Chatterton’s sister, by an edition of the poems of the Sleepless Boy who perished in his Pride, and how in 1798 Cottle disposed of all his copyrights to Longman, and obtained his consent to return the copyright of the “Lyrical Ballads” to the author.