In 1712 Pope, mindful of Dryden’s success, commenced his translation of Homer, and in 1714 Lintot, equally mindful probably of the profits Tonson had derived from Virgil, made a splendid offer for its publication. He agreed to provide at his own expense all the subscription and presentation copies, and in addition to pay the author two hundred pounds per volume. The Homer was to consist of six quarto volumes, to be delivered to subscribers, as completed, at a guinea a volume, and through the unremitting labours of the poet’s literary and political friends, six hundred and fifty-four copies were delivered at the original rate, and Pope realized altogether the munificent sum of five thousand, three hundred and twenty pounds, four shillings.
It was probably just after the publication of the first volume, in August, 1714, that Pope wrote his exquisitely humorous letter to the Earl of Burlington, describing a journey to Oxford, made in company with Lintot. “My lord, if your mare could speak, she would give an account of what extraordinary company she had on the road; which since she cannot do, I will.” Lintot had heard that Pope was “designed for Oxford, the seat of the Muses, and would, as my bookseller, by all means accompany me thither.... Mr. Lintot began in this manner: ‘Now, damn them, what if they should put it in the newspapers, how you and I went together to Oxford? What would I care? If I should go down into Sussex, they would say I was gone to the Speaker. But what of that? If my son were but big enough to go on with the business, by God! I would keep as good company as old Jacob.’... As Mr. Lintot was talking I observed he sat uneasy on his saddle, for which I expressed some solicitude. ‘’Tis nothing,’ says he; ‘I can bear it well enough, but since we have the day before us, methinks it would be very pleasant for you to rest awhile under the woods.’ When we alighted, ‘See here, what a mighty pretty Horace I have in my pocket! what if you amused yourself by turning an ode, till we mount again? Lord, if you pleased, what a clever Miscellany might you make at leisure hours.’ ‘Perhaps I may,’ said I, ‘if we ride on; the motion is an aid to my fancy, a round trot very much awakens my spirits; then jog on apace, and I’ll think as hard as I can.’
“Silence ensued for a full hour, after which Mr. Lintot tugged the reins, stopped short and broke out, ‘Well, sir, how far have you gone?’ I answered, ‘Seven miles.’ ‘Zounds, sir,’ said Lintot, ‘I thought you had done seven stanzas. Oldworth, in a ramble round Wimbleton hill, would translate a whole ode in half this time. I’ll say that for Oldworth (though I lost by his Sir Timothy’s), he translates an ode of Horace the quickest of any man in England. I remember Dr. King would write verses in a tavern three hours after he could not speak; and there’s Sir Richard, in that rambling old chariot of his, between Fleet ditch and St. Giles’s pound shall make half a job.’ ‘Pray, Mr. Lintot,’ said I, ‘now you talk of translators, what is your method of managing them?’ ‘Sir,’ replied he, ‘those are the saddest pack of rogues in the world; in a hungry fit, they’ll swear they understand all the languages in the universe. I have known one of them take down a Greek book upon my counter and cry, Ay, this is Hebrew. I must read it from the latter end. My God! I can never be sure of those fellows, for I neither understand Greek, Latin, French nor Italian myself.’ ‘Pray tell me next how you deal with the critics.’ ‘Sir’, said he, ‘nothing more easy. I can silence the most formidable of them; the rich ones for a sheet a-piece of the blotted manuscript, which costs me nothing; they’ll go about to their acquaintance and pretend they had it from the author, who submitted to their correction: this has given some of them such an air, that in time they come to be consulted with, and dictated to as the top critic of the town. As for the poor critics, I’ll give you one instance of my management, by which you may guess at the rest. A lean man, that looks like a very good scholar, came to me t’other day; he turned over your Homer, shook his head, shrugged up his shoulders, and pished at every line of it. One would wonder, says he, at the strange presumption of some men; Homer is no such easy task, that every stripling, every versifier—He was going on, when my wife called to dinner. ‘Sir,’ said I, ‘will you please to eat a piece of beef with me?’ ‘Mr. Lintot,’ said he, ‘I am sorry you should be at the expense of this great book; I am really concerned on your account.’ ‘Sir, I am much obliged to you; if you can dine upon a piece of beef, together with a slice of pudding.’ ‘Mr. Lintot, I do not say but Mr. Pope, if he would condescend to advise with men of learning—’ ‘Sir, the pudding is on the table, if you please to go in.’ My critic complies, he comes to a taste of your poetry, and tells me in the same breath that the book is commendable and the pudding excellent. These, my lord, are a few traits by which you may discern the genius of Mr. Lintot, which I have chosen for the subject of a letter. I dropt him as soon as I got to Oxford.”
Pope’s Iliad took longer in coming out than was expected. Gay writes facetiously, “Mr. Pope’s Homer is retarded by the great rains that have fallen of late, which causes the sheets to be long a-drying.” However, in 1718, the six volumes had been completely delivered to the subscribers, and three days afterwards Tonson announced, as a rival, the first book of Homer’s Iliad, translated by Mr. Tickell. “I send the book,” writes Lintot to Pope, “to divert an hour, it is already condemned here; and the malice and juggle at Button’s (for Addison had assisted Tickell in the attempted rivalry) is the conversation of those who have spare moments from politics.”
Lintot intended to reimburse his expenses by a cheap edition, but here he was anticipated by the piratical dealers, who caused a cheap edition to be published in Holland; a nefarious proceeding that Lintot met by bringing out a duodecimo edition at half-a-crown a volume, “finely printed from an Elzevir letter.”
The Odyssey was published in 1725, likewise by subscription, and Pope gained nearly three thousand pounds by the transaction, avowing, however, that he had only “undertaken” the translation, and had been assisted by friends; and “undertaker Pope” became a favourite byword among his many unfriendly contemporaries. Lintot was, however, disappointed with his share of the profits, and, pretending to have found something invalid in the agreement, threatened a suit in Chancery. Pope denied this, quarrelled, and finally left him, and turned his rancour to good account in the pages of the Dunciad.
By this time Lintot’s fortunes were firmly assured. Pope was, says Mr. Singer, “at first apprehensive that the contract (for the Iliad) might ruin Lintot, and endeavoured to dissuade him from thinking any more of it. The event, however, proved quite the reverse. The success of the work was so unparalleled as to at once enrich the bookseller, and prove a productive estate to his family,” and he must have certainly been progressing when Humphrey Walden, custodian of the Earl of Oxford’s heraldic manuscripts, made, in 1726, the following entry in his diary: “Young Mr. Lintot, the bookseller, came inquiring after arms, as belonging to his father, mother and other relations, who now, it seems, want to turn gentlefolks. I could find none of their names.” “Young Mr. Lintot” was Bernard’s son and successor—Henry.
There was scarcely a writer of eminence in the “Augustan Era,” whose name is not to be found in Lintot’s little account book of moneys paid. In 1730, however, he appears to have relinquished his business and retired to Horsham in Sussex, for which county he was nominated High Sheriff, in November, 1735, an honour which he did not live to enjoy, and which was consequently transferred to his son. Henry Lintot died in 1758, leaving £45,000 to his only daughter, Catherine.
Edmund Curll is, perhaps, as a name, better known to casual readers than any other bookseller of this period, and it is not a little comforting to find that the obloquy with which he has ever been associated was richly merited. He was born in the west of England, and after passing through several menial capacities, became a bookseller’s assistant, and then kept a stall in the purlieus of Covent Garden. The year of his birth is unknown, and the writer of a contemporary memoir, The Life and Writings of E. C—l, who prophesied that “if he go on in the paths of glory he has hitherto trod,” his name would appear in the Newgate Calendar, has unluckily been deceived. He appears to have first commenced publishing in the year 1708, and to have combined that honourable task with the vending of quack pills and powders for the afflicted. The first book he published was An Explication of a Famous Passage in the Dialogue of St. Justin Martyr with Typhon, concerning the Immortality of Human Souls, bearing the date of 1708; and, curiously enough, religious books formed in aftertime a very large portion of his stock, side by side, of course, with the most filthy and ribald works that have ever been issued.
In 1716 began his quarrel with Pope, originating as far as we know in the publication of the Court Poems, the advertisement of which said that the coffee-house critics assigned them either to a Lady of Quality, Mr. Gay, or the translator of Homer. It is not clear now whether Pope was really annoyed by the appearance of the volume, or whether he had first secretly promoted it, and then endeavoured to divert suspicion. At all events, he had a meeting with Curll at the “Swan Tavern,” in Fleet Street, where, writes the bookseller, “My brother, Lintot, drank his half-pint of old hock, Mr. Pope his half-pint of sack, and I the same quantity of an emetic powder; but no threatenings past. Mr. Pope, indeed, said that no satire should be printed (tho’ he has now changed his mind). I answered that they should not be wrote, for if they were they would be printed.” Curll, on entering the tavern, declared he had been poisoned, and for months the town was amused with broadsides and pamphlets relative to the affair. Pope afterwards published his version of the story in his Miscellanies; the “Full and True Account” is, however, as gross and unquotable as Curll’s own worst publication.