Many as were his merits, and great as was his enterprise, Isaac Collins was most widely known, the latter part of his long career, by his editions of the works on grammar, and other school books, by the prolific Lindley Murray. As in the case of Franklin, his earliest effort of magnitude was the printing Sewell's History of the Quakers. The neatness and accuracy of his printing were familiarly remarked among readers; and these excellencies he displayed in his quarto Bible, the first of that form which was printed in this country in 1790. Collins was a native of Delaware. He projected a weekly paper, the New Jersey Gazette, which he published at Burlington during the Revolution, and, some time after, upon strenuous Whig principles. He had authority, like Franklin, for the emission of paper money for the State Government. He removed to this city in 1796, and a few years after this time I knew him. As his career was, many portions of it, like Franklin's, I had the greater admiration of him. He died in 1817. That he enjoyed the acquaintance of Franklin, of Rittenhouse and Rush, of Livingston of New Jersey, and others of the truest patriots in the great struggles of the country, may be inferred from his profession, his public station, his integrity, and his general character. In the society of Friends he was prominent, and, like Thomas Eddy and Robert Bowne, he was occupied with hospitals, and ever zealous in good works. He did vast service to the city as a printer, and as such he is here introduced.
The oldest inhabitants of our city may well recollect the bookstore of the Swords, Thomas and James. Some sixty years ago they began operations in Pearl-street. They commenced when New-York was little more than a village in population, and when literary projects were almost unknown. They deserve ample notice as most efficient pioneers, in their day, as printers and booksellers, and through a long career they held a high rank; they were assiduous and economical almost to a fault: their integrity was never doubted; their word was as good as their bond. They printed good works in more acceptations of the phrase than one. They did a great service to our scientific enterprise, in issuing the Medical Repository, the earliest journal of that kind, in the country. A literary periodical, of many years duration, was also printed by them, called the New-York Magazine. It was remarkable for the contributions of a society, self-named the Drone. Brockden Brown, William Dunlap, Anthony Bleucker, Josiah Ogden Hoffman, and James Kent (afterwards the great Chancellor), were among the writers. William Johnson, the well-known Reporter, who died recently, was the last survivor of this club. Their store for a number of years was a rendezvous for professional men of different callings—divines, physicians, lawyers, with a sprinkling of the professed authors of those times, as Clifton, Low, Davis, &c. Its theological feature was its strongest; and the interest of episcopacy were here descanted on with the unction of godliness, by such men as Seabury of Connecticut,[pg 263] and Moore of New-York, with good old Dr. Bowden, and Dr. Hawks, my friends Drs. Berrian and McVicker of Columbia College, and the energetic Bishop Hobart, the busiest and most stirring man I ever knew. The Messrs. Swords were largely occupied in printing works on divinity, and were confessed the printers of sound orthodoxy long before "the novelties which disturb our peace" had invoked polemical controversy.
I should do injustice to my feelings were I in this rapid sketch to overlook the late James Eastburn, the founder of the first reading-room on a becoming scale, in this country, and the publisher of the American edition of the Edinburgh and London Quarterly Reviews. He was a gentleman deserving of much estimation, of bland manners, and enthusiastic in his calling. He was curious in antiquarian literature and a great importer of the older authors. Many are the libraries enriched by his perseverance. Consumption wasted his generous frame, and he died at a comparatively early age, to the deep regret of the scholar and the philanthropist.
I should like, before I close this portion of these reminiscences, to awaken recollections of one or two other estimable individuals with whom I was long acquainted—George F. Hopkins and Jonathan Seymour. Hopkins merits a biography; he justly boasted that his edition of Robertson's Charles V. was the most accurately printed work of the time. He was fastidious almost to a fault in typographical neatness. He printed only works of positive merit. His enterprise led him, now fifty years ago, to urge the craft to render themselves independent of imported types, by establishing type-foundries in the country. There were few indeed among us who knew practically much about the founts of Caslon, the Coryphæus of letter-founders. The Scotch hard-faced letter was then extensively in use. Hopkins induced the immigration to this country of the famous Binney and Ronaldson, whose great skill in the art was soon recognized, and from that era up to the present day competent judges affirm that our Bruce, White, Conner, and others, have accomplished all that is requisite in the type-founding business. Of Jonathan Seymour, it is enough to say, that at one period of his life he was more largely engaged than any of his rivals in printing from manuscripts—so well known and appreciated was his devotion to his calling, and the accuracy of its results. In his death, the art lost one who had given it elevation, and society a man possessed of the qualities of industry, temperance, honesty, and Christian philanthropy in the fullest measure.
Within a few days has departed from among us, at the age of eighty years, a supporter of the press who long contributed to the diffusion of wholesome knowledge. I allude to Thomas Kirk. I shall terminate these notices by a striking occurrence, which involved him in great loss. He had determined, about the year 1801, to give the Christian community an octavo edition, in large type, of the Book of Common Prayer, the first of that size from an American press. To secure the utmost accuracy, he engaged, for a pecuniary consideration, the Rev. John Ireland, of Brooklyn, to revise the proofs. When the sheets were worked off, it was ascertained that the copy was an exact reprint, save in one particular. The critical acumen of Ireland had discovered, in the Apostles' Creed, a "tautological error," in the words, "from thence he shall come." The word "from" was superfluous, ungrammatical, and inelegant, according to Ireland, and, accordingly, it was not in Kirk's edition. Upon the sale of a few copies the omission was remarked; the fact became known to the bishop of the church; the book was pronounced defective, and the ecclesiastical authorities prohibited its circulation. The whole edition fell a dead weight upon the hands of the well-meaning publisher. I had this anecdote from Mr. Kirk himself, years ago, and he repeated it to me not long prior to his death, in last November.
This allusion to Kirk brings to my mind the notorious John Williams, better known as Anthony Pasquin, under which name he was doomed to everlasting infamy by Gifford, in his satire of the Baviad and Mæviad, in judgments afterwards confirmed in a celebrated trial for libel in which the famous Erskine delivered one of his best forensic speeches. Williams was the associate in London of a small but ambitious set of mutual admirers in literature, of whom Mr. Merry and his future wife were the "Della Crusca" and "Rosa Matilda," and all three of these worthies came to New-York about the year 1798. I have an impression that Kirk came at the same time. The character of Williams was infamous, and a large share of his infamy consisted in his ministering to, if not creating, the passion for personal scandal, and setting the example of black-mail collections, in newspapers. In the report of the great case of Williams vs. Faulder, it is said of his paper, called The World, that "In this were given the earliest specimens of those unqualified and audacious attacks on all private character which the town first smiled at for their quaintness, then tolerated for their absurdity—and will have to lament to the last hour of British liberty." After he came to this country he associated himself with the enemies of Hamilton, and published a satire called The Hamiltoniad, edited a magazine entitled The Columbian, and was a pioneer in that species of journalism which still subsists here upon the most scandalous invasions of private life and reputation. He was doubly detestable, in that he was the corruptor and worst specimen of the editorial calling in Europe and in America. I remember frequently seeing Williams, in the latter part of his life, in his shabby pepper-and-salt[pg 264] dress, in the obscure parts of the city. I believe he died during the first prevalence of the cholera in Brooklyn. Fancy may depict his expression as illustrating Otway's lines, "as if all hell were in his eyes, and he in hell." It must not be supposed that I in any degree associate the fame of the worthy Kirk with that of this literary vagabond.
To a suggestion that I might refer to the late William Cobbett, as associated with the periodical press of this country, I may say that I see in it no impropriety. Unquestionably a minute record would include his Porcupine Gazette and his Weekly Register; the one an offspring of his juvenile life, the other of his ripened years. I had some personal acquaintance with him at the time of his last residence in New-York. Hazlitt has, in his attractive manner, described him to the life. He was deemed the best talker of his day, and his forcible pen has given us indubitable proofs of his powers in literary composition. It was not unusual with him to make a visit to the printing office at an early morning hour, take his seat at the desk, and after some half dozen lines were written, to throw off MSS. with a rapidity that engaged eleven compositors at once in setting up. Thus a whole sheet of the Register might be completed ere he desisted from his undertaking. I think that in quickness he surpassed even the lamented William Leggett, of the Evening Post. The circumstance is certainly interesting in a psychological point of view; and yet may not be deemed more curious than the fact that Priestley made his reply to Lind, quite a voluminous pamphlet, in twenty-four hours, or that Hodgkinson, the actor, was able to peruse crosswise, the entire five columns of a newspaper, and within two hours recite it thus by memory. I visited Cobbett, when his residence was within a couple of miles of this city, in company with a few professional gentlemen. It was in October, and a delightful day. He heard our approach, and came to the door without our knocking. "Walk in, gentlemen—am I to consider this as a visit to me?—walk in and be seated on these benches, for I have no chairs—you may be fatigued—will you have a bowl of milk? I live upon milk and Indian corn—I never drink spirit or wine, and yet I am a tolerable example of English health." And, indeed, he was a most ample specimen of the genuine John Bull. His nearly oval face, and florid countenance, with strong gray piercing eyes and head thickly covered with white hair, closely trimmed; his huge frame, of some two hundred and seventy pounds weight, corresponding abdominal development, and well-proportioned limbs, all demonstrated, with anatomical accuracy, the truth of his observation. His superior intellect seemed roused in all its functions. The United States, England, the reform measures, the union of church and state, and its absurdity, were only a few of the subjects of his caustic remark. "I have just performed a duty, gentlemen, which has been too long delayed; you have neglected the remains of Thomas Paine; I have done myself the honor to disinter his bones; I have removed them from New Rochelle; I have dug them up; they are now on their way to England; when I return, I shall cause them to speak the Common Sense of the great man; I shall gather together the people of Liverpool and Manchester in one assembly with those of London, and those bones will effect the reformation of England in Church and State." After some two or three hours we took our leave, with unlimited admiration of his brave utterance and his colloquial talents.
With such a hastily written and imperfect sketch of the newspaper periodical press, of printers, editors, booksellers, and authors, I must close this portion of my present reminiscences. I have depended on a memory somewhat tenacious as my authority, in most instances, having no leisure at command for reference. A volume might be written of pertinent details. Nevertheless, enough has been said to illustrate, in part, the advancement of one species of knowledge in this metropolis. Did we institute a comparative view of the past and present condition of the press, we might be better enabled to announce the existing condition of our city as a Literary Emporium, That it is in accordance with the spirit of the age, seems demonstrable. Abroad, in England, in 1701, when the stamp duty was levied upon every number of a periodical paper consisting of a sheet, the whole quantity of printed paper was estimated at twenty thousand reams annually. Nearly at this period (1704), when the Boston News Letter made its appearance in the American colonies, some two or three hundred copies weekly may have been its circulation. What is the quantity of paper demanded by the present British periodical press, I am unable to state. In this month of January, 1852, it is calculated that there are about three thousand different newspapers and other periodicals printed in this country, the entire issues of which approach the yearly aggregate of four hundred and twenty-three millions of numbers.
When Franklin was a printer it was a hard task to work off over a thousand sheets on both sides in a day, by the hand press. Since his time we have had the Clymer, the Napier, the Ramage, the Adams, and now Hoe's Lightning press. By this last-named achievement in the arts, so honorable to a son of New-York, and so stupendous in its results to the world at large, twenty thousand papers may be printed in one hour.
If we advert to the instructive fact, of the enormous circulation of many of the journals of New-York, as the Herald, the Sun, the Tribune, the Times, the Express, the Mirror, and others issued daily; if we calculate the copies of the Observer, the Home Journal, the Christian Advocate, and others[pg 265] of the weekly press; the circulation of the monthly and other periodicals; if we look at the Methodist Book Concern, the Tract Society, the American Bible Society, the publications of the Appletons, of Putnam, and of the enterprising booksellers of this city generally, what bounds can we set to the offspring of the typographic art? The Herald and the Tribune in their distinct circulation, consume an aggregate of fifty thousand reams per year. The Harpers, who have thrown John Baskerville, and other eminent typographers of Europe in the shade by the magnitude of their operations, use one hundred reams of paper daily, at six dollars per ream, and make about ten volumes a minute or six thousand a day. On a former occasion I stated to you the agency which Franklin had in bringing forward stereotype plates, as projected by Dr. Colden, in this city, in 1779, and the fact that the art was communicated to Didot in Paris, by Franklin himself. I well remember the anxious John Watts, when he showed me his first undertaking in this branch of labor in New-York, just forty years ago. It was a copy of the Larger Catechism, the one I now hold in my hand. Notwithstanding the doubts of many, he felt confident of its ultimate success, yet suffered by hope deferred. What is now the state of the business in the matter of stereotyping? The Harpers alone—a single firm—have within their vaults plates for more than two thousand volumes.