You will please to accept & give my most respectful duty to the University, particularly to the Gentlemen of the Syndick. I should be very happy if I could make an Interest to a few Gentn. to whom the work would not be disagreeable, to survey the sheets, after my people had corrected them as accurately as they are able, that I might, if possible, be free from every error of the press; for which I would gladly make suitable acknowledgements. I procured a sealed copy of the Common prayer with much trouble and expense from the Cathedral of Litchfield, but found it the most inaccurate and ill printed book I ever saw: so that I returned it with thanks[113].
Evidently neither the university nor Bentham was willing to give Baskerville a free hand. Bentham was naturally jealous of his own position and the Syndics' previous experience of leases granted to outside printers had been unfortunate. Reed's criticism is therefore a little too harsh: "This learned body," he writes, "appear to have been influenced in the transaction more by a wish to fill their own coffers than by a desire to promote the interests of the Art; and the heavy premiums exacted from Baskerville for the privilege thus accorded effectually deprived him of any advantage whatever in the undertaking."[114]
By a further agreement of 3 July, 1761, Baskerville undertook to pay £12 10s 0d per 1000 for the 4000 copies to be printed of the 12 mo Common Prayer and in a letter of 2 November, 1762, he wrote in a dismal strain to Horace Walpole:
The University of Cambridge have given me a Grant to print there 8vo. & 12mo. Common prayer Books; but under such Shackles as greatly hurt me. I pay them for the former twenty, & for the latter twelve pound ten shillings the thousand, & to the Stationers Company thirty two pound for their permission to print one Edition of the Psalms in Metre to the small prayer book: add to this the great Expence of double and treble Carriage, & the inconvenience of a Printing House an hundred Miles off. All this Summer I have had nothing to print at Home. My folio Bible is pretty far advanced at Cambridge, which will cost me near £2000 all hired at 5 p Cent. If this does not sell, I shall be obliged to sacrifice a small Patrimony which brings me in [£74] a Year to this Business of printing; which I am heartily tired of & repent I ever attempted. It is surely a particular hardship that I should not get Bread in my own Country (and it is too late to go abroad) after having acquired the Reputation of excelling in the most useful Art known to Mankind; while every one who excels as a Player, Fidler, Dancer &c not only lives in Affluence but has it [in] their power to save a Fortune.
A PAGE OF BASKERVILLE'S PRAYER-BOOK, 1762
However, four prayer-books (two with long lines and two in double column) were produced by Baskerville in 1760 and of these two were reprinted in the following year; the folio bible appeared in 1763.