Authors — Public libraries — Their condition — George Psalmanazar — Hack writers — Poverty of authors — Their punishment — The press — Daily Courant — List of newspapers — London Gazette — Postboy — Postman — Dawk's News Letter — Dyer's — Evening papers — Dearth of domestic news — Amenities of the press — Roper and Redpath — Tutchin — His trial — Press remuneration — Mrs. Manley — The Essay papers — The halfpenny stamp — Its effect — Advertising — Almanacs — List of them — Moore's — The Ladies' Diary — Poor Robin's Almanack — Merlinus Liberatus — The Essayists and Partridge — His false death — His elegy and epitaph — An amateur magazine.
Well might the time of Anne be called the Augustan age of literature. The writers of that day have lived till ours, and will live and be quoted as models of purity of style, as long as, and wherever, the English language is spoken. In what other age can such a wealth of literary names be found as Addison, Steele, Swift, Pope, Warburton, Gay, Prior, Parnell, Defoe, Vanbrugh, Congreve, Rowe! It was the grand awakening of letters; and, having good food provided for them, the people appreciated it, and it undoubtedly laid the foundation of the present reading age. Before this time there had been no books, i.e. adapted to the general public, to read. Truly, there were scholars here and there, and the Universities were ever fountains of learning; but literature had not entered into every-day life, and we have to thank Steele and Addison, who charmed the public taste by their social and moral essays, into becoming first a reading, and then a thinking people.
There were men who loved their books—veritable bibliophiles—and what choice editions they must have possessed! Look at the huge volumes of title-pages which Bagford collected as materials for his history of printing—which never was written—look at the treasures that have come down to us in the Cotton, Harleian Royal, and Lambeth libraries! A sale like that of the Sunderland library[504] convulses the literary world, and buyers come from all parts of the globe. Then, however, an advertisement like this was not uncommon: 'A curious Collection of Books, which was Collected by a great Antiquarian, in Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, and English, in all Faculties and Sciences, many of them very scarce, of the best Authors and Editions, as Aldus, Stevens, Elzevir and others,' etc.
We learn from Misson the state of our public libraries. He says: 'At present I know but three publick ones in this City; those of the Chapter at Westminster, and Sion College (which are very much neglected, and in a sorry Condition in all Respects) and that which Dr. Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury, has lately founded. The two former are going to Decay, and the latter is not yet quite form'd. Neither the one nor the other are much frequented. The King's Library at St. James's is also in a miserable state; I am told that Dr. Bentley, who has the keeping of it, in the room of Mr. Instel, does all he can to restore it; but his Endeavours will be to no purpose, unless the Master of it has Leisure and Will to have an Eye to it himself. There have been Books in Pawn in the Hands of the Binders, I know not how many Years. King Charles II. did but laugh at it. It is, nevertheless, a Pity that so many good Books, and so well bound, should be given up to the Mould and Moisture of the Air, to Moths and to Dust. The Library of Sir Robert Cotton is particularly famous for Manuscripts. The Royal Society have begun to Collect a pretty good one: the late Duke of Norfolk, who was of it, left them his. There are a great many Noble men in England that love Books, and have good Collections of them.'
A literary curiosity of this reign deserves to be, and must be, noticed. It is George Psalmanazar, the impostor who, for a while, deceived the majority of the English literati. He seems to have been born in France in 1679, and to have received a good education. He wandered about as a pilgrim, and that either not paying, or else being dissatisfied with the life, he hit upon the extraordinary idea of passing himself off as a Formosan, and to do this he actually had to invent a new language and grammar. Accompanied by a clergyman named Innes, he came over to England, where he translated the Church Catechism into pretended Formosan, and he published a History of Formosa, and of his own adventures; but the suspicions of the learned were aroused, and he was unmasked. He tried to fight against it for some time, and issued advertisements in the papers, that he could be seen, spoken with, and catechised, but to no purpose. He afterwards lived by doing hack work for the booksellers, and at his death he thoroughly confessed his imposture.
The hack writers of the time are thus humorously described in the Guardian (No. 58): 'According as my necessities suggest it to me, I hereby provide for my being. The last summer I paid a large debt for brandy and tobacco, by a wonderful description of a fiery dragon, and lived for ten days together upon a whale and a mermaid. When winter draws near, I generally conjure up my spirits, and have my apparition ready against long dark evenings. From November last to January I lived solely upon murders; and have since that time, had a comfortable subsistence from a plague and a famine. I made the Pope pay for my Beef and Mutton last Lent, out of pure spite to the Romish Religion; and at present my good friend the King of Sweden finds me in clean linen, and the Mufti gets me credit at the Tavern.'
Literary men had their money troubles then as now—probably not more so—as many a melancholy tale of modern Grub Street could tell. Swift's society did some good. Take his Journal to Stella, Feb. 12 and 13, 1713, as an example: 'I gave an account of Sixty guineas I had collected, and am to give them away to two Authors to-morrow, and lord Treasurer has promised me a hundred pounds to reward some others.... I found a letter on my table last night to tell me that poor little Harrison ... was ill, and desired to see me at night.... I went in the morning, and found him mighty ill, and got thirty guineas for him from Lord Bolinbroke, and an order for a hundred pounds from the treasury to be paid him to-morrow.... I was to see a poor poet, one Mr. Diaper, in a nasty garret, very sick. I gave him twenty guineas from Lord Bolinbroke, and disposed the other sixty to two other authors.' This was practical benevolence, but its record only shows the sad necessity there was for its exercise.
Other troubles they had, and perhaps not the least of them was the fear of personal violence. They hit hard in those days, and people did not always take their castigation meekly. Sometimes they took the law into their own hands, and then woe be to the unfortunate author. Samuel Johnson (author of Julian) in Charles the Second's reign was not only publicly whipped, but was nearly murdered in his own house. Tutchin, too, who wrote a poem on the death of James II., was waylaid, and so frightfully beaten that he died from its effects. Defoe also frequently mentions attempts to injure him. So Swift wrote to Stella,[505] 'No, no, I'll walk late no more; I ought to venture it less than other people, and so I was told.'
In what condition was the press of that day? Let Pope's bitter pen answer—
Next plunged a feeble, but a desperate, pack,
With each a sickly brother at his back;
Sons of a day; just buoyant on the flood,
Then numbered with the puppies in the mud.
Ask ye their names? I could as soon disclose
The names of these blind puppies as of those.
And monumental brass this record bears,
These are—ah—no—these were—the gazetteers.[506]