The King’s Printing House, Blackfriars.
(From a drawing made about 1750.)
Among the earliest of Johnson’s employers was Edward Cave. The son of a shoemaker at Rugby, he contrived, in spite of the contumely excited by his low estate, to pick up much learning at the Grammar School, and after narrowly escaping an university training, and for a while obtaining his livelihood as clerk to a collector of excise and apprentice to a timber merchant, he found more congenial employment in a printing office, and conducted a weekly newspaper at Norwich. Returning to London, he contrived by multifarious work—correcting for the press, contributing to Mist’s Journal, writing news letters, and filling a situation in the Post Office simultaneously—to save a small sum of money sufficient to start a petty printing office at St. John’s Gate. He was now able to realize a project he had before offered to half the booksellers in London, of establishing the Gentleman’s Magazine, and to Cave must be conceded the honour of inventing that popular species of periodical literature. The first number was printed in 1731, and its success induced several rivals to enter the field, but only one—The London Magazine—and that a joint concern of the leading publishers, was at all able to hold any opposition to it; and the London Magazine ceased to exist in 1785, while the Gentleman’s Magazine has only quite recently displayed a sudden rejuvenation. In its early days Johnson was the chief contributor to its pages. He had a room set apart for him at St. John’s Gate, where he wrote as fast as he could drive his pen, throwing the sheets off, when completed, to the “copy” boy. The Life of Savage was written anonymously, in 1744, and Mr. Harte spoke in high terms of the book, while dining with Cave. The publisher told him afterwards: “Harte, you made a man very happy the other day at my house by your praise of Savage’s Life.” “How so? none were present but you and I.” Cave replied, “You might observe I sent a plate of victuals behind the screen; there lurked one whose dress was too shabby for him to appear; your praise pleased him much.”
In 1736, Cave began to carry out his scheme of publishing the reports of the debates in Parliament in the monthly pages of his magazine. With a friend or two he used to lurk about the lobby and gallery, taking sly notes in dark corners, remembering what they could of the drift of the argument, and then retiring to a neighbouring tavern to compare and adjust their notes. This rough material was placed in the hands of an experienced writer, and thus dressed up, presented to the readers of the magazine. In 1738, the House complained of the breach of privilege committed by Cave, and, among other debaters, Sir William Younge earnestly implored the House to put a summary check to these reports, prophesying that otherwise “you will have the speeches of the House every day printed, even during your session, and we shall be looked upon as the most contemptible assembly on the face of the earth.” After this check some expedient was necessary, and the proceedings in Parliament were given as Debates in the Senate of Great Lilliput, and were entrusted to Johnson’s pen. On one occasion a large company were praising a speech of Pitt’s; Johnson sat silent for a while, then said, “That speech I wrote in a yard in Exeter Street.” It had been reprinted verbatim from the magazine, and had been drawn up entirely from rough notes and hints supplied by the messengers. When congratulated on his uniform political impartiality, Johnson replied: “That is not quite true, sir; I saved appearances well enough, but I took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.” Cave’s attention to the magazine was unremitting to the day of his death; “he scarce ever looked out of the window,” says Johnson, “but for its improvement.”
In 1749, the first popular review was started, by Ralph Griffiths; but before the time of the Monthly Review there had been various journals professing to deal only with literature. In 1683, had been published a Weekly Memento for the Ingenius, or an Account of Books, and, in 1714, the first really critical journal, under the quaint title, The Waies of Literature, and these had been succeeded by others. Still, the Monthly Review was a very great improvement. Among the chief early contributors was Goldsmith, who escaped the miseries of ushership, and the weariness of a diplomaless doctor, waiting for patients who never came, or, at all events, never paid, to live as a hack writer in Griffiths’ house. Here, induced by want, or kindliness to a fellow-starver, he got into trouble by borrowing money from his master to pay for clothes, and appropriating it to other purposes. Termed villain and sharper, and threatened with the Roundhouse, he writes: “No, sir; had I been a sharper, had I been possessed of less good nature and native generosity, I might surely now have been in better circumstances; I am guilty I own of meanness, which poverty unavoidably brings with it.”
As to the payment for periodical writing in that day, we are told by an author who recollected the Monthly Review for fifty years, that in its most palmy days only four guineas a sheet were given to the most distinguished writers, and as late as 1783, when it was reported that Doctor Shebbeare received as much as six guineas, Johnson replied, “Sir, he might get six guineas for a particular sheet, but not communibus sheetibus;” and yet he afterwards explains the fact of so much good writing appearing anonymously, without hope of personal fame, “those who write in them write well in order to be paid well.”
Of all the booksellers of the Johnsonian era, Robert Dodsley, however, was facile princeps. Born in the year 1703, he commenced life as a footman, but a poem entitled The Muse in Livery, so interested his mistress, the Hon. Mrs. Lowther, that she procured its publication by subscription. After this he entered the service of Dartineuf, a celebrated voluptuary, the reputed son of Charles II., and one of the most intimate friends of Pope. Here he wrote a dramatic satire, The Toy Shop, with which Pope was so pleased, that he interested himself in procuring its acceptance at Covent Garden. The piece was successful, and Pope, adding a substantial present on his own account of one hundred pounds, Dodsley was enabled to open a small bookseller’s shop in Pall Mall, then far from enjoying its present fashionable repute. In this new situation, without any apprenticeship whatever, he soon attracted the attention not only of celebrated literary men, but his shop became a favourite lounge for noble and wealthy dilettanti. In 1738, began his first acquaintance with Johnson, who offered him the manuscript of London, a Satire. “Paul Whitehead had a little before got ten guineas for a poem, and I would not take less than Paul Whitehead,” and without any haggling, the bargain was concluded. Busy as he soon began to be in his shop, Dodsley did not neglect original composition. He produced several successful farces, and in 1744, edited and published the work by which his name is best known now, A Collection of Plays by Old Authors, which did much to revive the study of Elizabethan literature, and was most fruitful in its influence on later generations.
In about the following year Dodsley proposed to Johnson that he should write a dictionary of the English language, and after some hesitation on the author’s part, the proposal was accepted. The dictionary was to be the joint property—as was then beginning to be the case with all works of importance—of several booksellers, viz.: Robert Dodsley, Charles Hitch, Andrew Millar, Messrs. Longman, and Messrs. Knapton; the management of it during publication being confided to Andrew Millar. The work took eight years, instead of the three on which Johnson had calculated, of very severe study and labour, and the £1575 which was then considered a very handsome honorarium, was all drawn out in drafts, for at the dinner given in honour of the completion of the great work, when the receipts were produced it was found that he had nothing more to receive. Johnson, after sending his last “copy” to Millar, inquired of the messenger what the bookseller said. “He said, ‘Thank God I have done with him.’” “I am glad,” said the Doctor smiling, “that he thanks God for anything.”
Andrew Millar was by this time the proprietor of Tonson’s shop in Fleet Street, and was a man of great enterprise. He was the publisher, among other authors, of Thomson, Fielding, and Hume, and Johnson invariably speaks well of him. “I respect Millar, sir; he has raised the price of literature:” “and,” writes John Nichols, “Jacob Tonson and Andrew Millar were the best patrons of literature, a fact rendered unquestionable by the valuable works produced under their fostering and genial hands.” Literature now was rapidly changing its condition. Johnson had discovered that the subscription system was essentially a rotten one, and that the real reading public, the author’s legitimate patrons, were reached of course through the medium of the booksellers: “He that asks for subscriptions soon finds that he has enemies. All who do not encourage him defame him:” and then again—“Now learning is a trade; a man goes to a bookseller and gets what he can. We have done with patronage. In the infancy of learning we find some great men praised for it. This diffused it among others. When it becomes general an author leaves the great and applies to the multitude.” As to what the booksellers of the eighteenth century were, and as to how they compare with the publishers of the nineteenth century, we will quote from an unedited letter of Mr. Thomas Carlyle, dated 3rd May, 1852, addressed to Mr. John Chapman, bookseller (Emerson’s first English publisher, we believe), now Dr. Chapman:—