God's voice obey;
now modified without loss of its poetic fire—
By Washington,
Great deeds were done—
led captivity captive, and had an unlimited circulation, for the better diffusion of knowledge and patriotism throughout the land. As our city grew apace, and both instructors and their functions enlarged, he engaged in the Latin classics. Having a little Latin about me, it became my duty to set up at the printing office of Lewis Nicholls, Duyckinck's reprint of De Bello Gallico. The edition was edited by a Mr. Rudd. He was the first editor I ever saw; I looked on him with school-boy admiration when I took him the proofs. What alterations or improvements he made in the text of Oudendorp, I never ascertained. This, however, must have been among the beginnings of that American practice, still prevailing among us, of having in reprints of even the most important works from abroad, for better circulation, the name of some one as editor, inserted on the title-page. Mr. Duyckinck was gifted with great business talents, and estimated as a man of punctuality and of rigid integrity in fiscal matters. He was the first who had the entire Bible, in duodecimo, preserved—set up in forms—the better to supply, at all times, his patrons. This was before stereotype plates were adopted. He gave to the Harpers the first job of printing they executed—whether Tom Thumb or Wesley's Primitive Physic, I do not know. The acorn has become the pride of the forest—the Cliff-street tree, whose roots and branches now ramify all the land. Duyckinck faithfully carried out the proverbs of Franklin,[pg 261] and the sayings of Noah Webster's Prompter. He was by birth and action a genuine Knickerbocker.
There was, about forty years ago, an individual somewhat remarkable in several respects, whose bookstore was in Maiden Lane—William Barlas. He was by birth a Scotchman, and was brought up to the ministry; but from causes which I never learned, he relinquished that vocation in his native land, and assumed that of a bookseller in this city. He was reputed to be a ripe scholar. He dealt almost exclusively in the classics, and for numerous years imported the editions—in usum Delphini, for the students in our schools and colleges. Hardly a graduate among us, of the olden time, can have forgotten him—Irving, Verplanck, John Anthon, and Paulding, can doubtless tell much of him. When, on a large scale, was commenced in Philadelphia, reprints of the Latin and Greek writers, poor Mr. Barlas's functions were nearly annihilated. I mention him here from his relation to the advancement of learning in my juvenile days. His opinion on the various editions was deemed conclusive; and he controlled the judgment as well as the pocket of the purchaser. He was long in epistolary correspondence with "the friend of Cowper," as some call him—old John Newton of London; and I have often wondered that no enterprise has yet brought forward, in a new edition of the writings of Newton, their correspondence. It is not for me to dwell on the contrast, so striking, between the present period and that to which I have just adverted, when even professors of Colleges were controlled in their opinions of books by the dicta of a bookseller. Such was the fact some forty or fifty years ago. What would be the reply of our Professor Anthon, of Columbia College, to a bookseller who assumed such authority? of him whose love and devotion to the philosophy of the classics has led him already in so many works to spread before the cogitative scholars, of both worlds, the deepest researches of antiquarian disquisition and philological lore, evincing that America is not tardy in a just appreciation of the excellencies of those treasures which enriched a Bentley, a Horseley, a Porson, and a Parr.
Those of our literary connoisseurs who cast a retrospective glance over days long past, may awaken into memory that delicately constructed and pensive-looking man, of Pearl-street, recognized by the name of Charles Smith. I believe he was a New-Yorker. Pulmonary suffering was his physical infirmity—his relief, tobacco, the fumes of which aver surrounded him like a halo. He abounded in the gloom and glory of the American Revolution, and published, with portraits, numerous diagrams of the campaigns of the war in the Military Repository, a work of great fidelity, in which it is thought he was aided by Baron Steuben and General Gates. As a bibliopolist, little need be said of him. But the curious in knowledge will not overlook him as the first who popularly made known to the English reader the names of Kotzebue and Schiller. Several of the novels and plays of these German authors were done into English by him; and, with William Dunlap, both as a translator and as a theatrical manager, The Stranger and other plays were presented to the cultivators of the drama in New-York long before their appearance in London, or the publication of Thompson's German Theatre. It is a circumstance worthy of notice, that the Rev. Mr. Will, then of this city, added to the stock of our literary treasures, by other translations into the English, such as the Constant Lovers, &c., of Kotzebue, before, I believe, any recognized English version appeared abroad. But I must leave this subject for the fuller investigation of the learned Dr. Schmidt professor of German, in Columbia College.
David Longworth's name is a good deal blended with the progress of American literature during years gone by. He was by birth a New Jerseyman; and the publication of his City Directory, for some thirty or more years, gave him sufficient notoriety; while his Shaksperean Gallery introduced him to many of the cultivators of the fine arts, at a period, when Trumbull and Jarvis were our prominent painters. Longworth had been brought up as a printer, at a daily press, but he seems early to have got a taste for copper-plate engraving, accurate printing, and elegant binding. With determined energy he issued an edition of Telemachus, which, for beauty of typography and paper, was looked upon, by the lovers of choice books, as a rich specimen of our art. His Belles-Lettres Repository no less evinced his taste in the elegantiæ literarum. He was, nevertheless, a man of many strange notions. It is well known that about the commencement of the eighteenth century, in our English books, printed in the mother country, the substantive words were almost always begun with a capital; the like practice obtained in many newspapers; but Longworth, not content with the partial change which time had brought about, of sinking these prominent and advantageous upper case type, waged a war of extermination against almost every capital in the case, and this curious deformity is found in many of his publications, as british america, and london docks. Even in poetry, of the first word, he tolerated only small letters at the beginning of the lines. His practice, however, found no imitators, though 'tis said that it first began in Paris. His bookstore, at a central situation by the Park, with works of taste classically displayed, afforded an admirable lounge for the litterateurs of that day. Here, when Hodgkinson, and Hallam, and Cooper, and Cooke were at the zenith of their histrionic career in the Park Theatre, adjacent, might be seen a group of poets and prose writers, who, in their generation, added to the original off-spring[pg 262] of the American press—Brockden Brown, Dunlap, Verplanck, Paulding Fessenden, Richard Alsop, Peter Irving, and the now universally famed Washington Irving.
I must note a circumstance of some import on the state of letters among us about those times. Longworth had secured from abroad a copy of the first edition, in quarto, of Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, and determined to reprint it; yet, not satisfied with his own judgment, he convened a meeting of his literary friends to settle the matter. The committee, after solemn deliberation, suggested his venturing to reproduce only the introductions to the cantos, as an experiment, in order to ascertain the public taste. Would I speak in terms too strong if I affirmed that since that committee sat, millions of copies of the numerous volumes of Sir Walter Scott have been bought by the reading world in America. My circle of literary acquaintance was a good deal enlarged by the coteries I now and then found at Longworth's, as he was not backward in seizing opportunities of issuing new works, when from their nature they might excite the appetite of the curious. No publication of his so effectually secured this end, as the Salmagundi, in 1807, sent forth in bi-weekly numbers by young Irving and his friend Paulding. When we are apprised that some few of our middle-aged citizens, who sustained the stroke of that literary scimetar so long ago, still survive among us, I think we may argue from strong data for the salubrity of our climate. At Longworth's, I first saw the youngest dramatic genius of the time, Howard Payne, then about fourteen years old, and who, a short while after, appeared as young Norval on the boards of the theatre. He was editor of the Thespian Mirror.
Originally of Ireland, Hugh Gaine, upon his emigration to this country during our colonial dependence, set up in this city in 1753 his Royal Gazette, the New-York Mercury. His fame as well as his patriotism is embalmed in the irony of Freneau. It is only as a bookseller that I knew him, in Hanover Square. He was then at a very advanced age. His savings rendered him in due time independent in pecuniary matters. We may safely infer that he was not surpassed in industry, and that he was ever awake to the main chance, when we are assured that at the commencement of his journal, he collected his own news, set up his types, worked off his papers, folded his sheets, and personally distributed them to his subscribers. Franklin had done pretty nearly the same things before. Gaine, who in his after-life was an object of a good deal of curiosity to the citizens of the republic, enjoyed the consideration due to an honest man, and many kindly feelings.