Easter Sunday has been called the King of Days, though Christmas Day might dispute the sovereignty, being in Greek the Queen day of the Kalendar. Ἡ βασιλίσσα ἡμέρα Justin Martyr calls it.
Who is King of the Booksellers? There is no King among them at this time, but there is a Directory of five Members, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green in the East; the Emperor Murraylemagne, whom Byron used to call the Grand Murray, reigned alone in the West, till Henry Colburn divided his empire, and supported the station which he had assumed by an army of trumpeters which he keeps in constant pay.
If the Books had a King that monarchy must needs be an elective one, and the reader of these volumes knows where the election would fall. But literature being a Republic, this cannot be the King of Books. Suffice it that it is a BOOK FOR A KING, or, for our SOVEREIGN LADY THE QUEEN.
INTERCHAPTER XXI.
MEASURE FOR MEASURE.
Le Plebe è bestia
Di cento teste, e non rinchiude in loro
Pur oncia di saper.
CHIABRERA.
The Public, will, I very well know, make free with me more suo, as it thinks it has a right to do with any one who comes before it with anything designed for its service, whether it be for its amusement, its use, or its instruction. Now my Public, I will more meo make free with you—that we may be so far upon equal terms.