The Memoires and rare Adventures of Henriette Sylvia Moliere, a great lady in France, now living; written by herself, in six parts, in French, and now translated into English, price 4s Melpomene, or the Muses' Delight, being a collection of New Songs and Poems, by several of the present wits, in octavo.

A Sermon preached at S. P. T. by the late Usurper, Oliver Cromwell, quarto, price 3d

Nathaniel Crouch was the compiler of a number of little books which were hawked about in the time of Charles the Second, by petty chapmen, at Is each, bound, with a number of wood cuts under the name of Richard Burton; he lived at the Bell, in the Poultry, near Cheapside, they have since been reprinted by Stace, in quarto; of which were Surprising Miracles of Nature and Art, Is Extraordinary Adventures of Famous Men, 1s

Admirable Curiosities and Rarities of England and Wales, Is
Wonderful Prodigies of Judgment and Mercy, Is

Wars in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1s

Historical Remarks on London and Westminster, &c. &c.

THE TONSONS.

The Tonsons were a race of booksellers who did honour to their profession for integrity, and by their encouragement of authors. Jacob Tonson was the son of Jacob, a barber-surgeon, in Holborn, who died in 1668. Jacob was apprenticed, June 5th, 1670, to Thomas Basset, bookseller, and having been admitted a freeman of the Company of Stationers, December 20th, 1677, commenced business, as his brother Richard had done the year before. The first edition of the Spanish Friar, 1681, was printed for Richard and Jacob Tonson, at Gray's Inn Gate, in Gray's Inn Lane, and at the Judge's Head, in Chancery Lane.

Moline published several letters from Dryden to Tonson, and Tonson to Dryden. Tonson displays the tradesman, acknowledging the receipt of the Translations of Ovid, which he had received for the

They were not without their Harriette Wilsons.

+ Cromwell himself was a preacher, and has left us one of his sermons in print, exactly in the style and manner with those of our modern Presbyterian Teachers; so was Colonel Howard, Sir G, Downing, and several others.

Swift.

third Miscellany, with which he is pleased, but not with the price, having only one thousand four hundred and forty six lines for fifty guineas, when be expected to have had one thousand five hundred and eighteen lines for forty guineas, adding that he had a better bargain with Juvenal, which is reckoned not so easy to translate as Ovid. Most of the other letters relate to the translation of Virgil, and contain repeated acknowledgments of Tonson's kind attentions. "I "thank you heartily," he says, "for the sherry; it was the best of the "kind I ever drank." The current coin was at that period wretchedly debased. In one letter Dryden says, “I expect forty pounds in

good silver, not such as I had formerly. I am not obliged to take "gold, neither will I, nor stay for it above four and twenty hours "after it is due." In 1698, when Dryden published his Fables, Tonson agreed to give him two hundred and sixty-eight pounds for ten thousand verses, and to complete the full number of lines stipulated, he gave the bookseller the Epistle to his Cousin, and the celebrated Ode.

The conduct of trades in general in the 17th century, as Mr. Malone observes, was less liberal, and their manners more rigid than at present; and hence we find Dryden sometimes speaking of Tonson with a degree of asperity, that confirms an anecdote communicated to Dr. Johnson by Dr. K. of Oxford, to whom Lord Bolingbroke related that one day when he visited Dryden, they heard as they were conversing, another person enter the house. "This (said Dryden) is Tonson; you will take care not to depart before he goes away, for I have not completed the sheet which I promised him, and if you leave me unprotected, I shall suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can prompt his tongue." On another occasion, Tonson having refused to advance him a sum of money for a work on which he was employed, he sent a second messenger to the bookseller, with a satirical triplet, adding, "Tell the dog that he who wrote these lines can write more." These descriptive verses, which had the desired effect, by some meaus got abroad in manuscript, and not long after Dryden's death, were inserted in "Faction Displayed," a satirical poem, supposed to have been written by William Shipper, which, from its virulent abuse of the opposite party, was extremely popular among the Tories. By his success in trade, Tonson had acquired a sufficient sum to purchase an estate near Ledbury, in Herefordshire. In 1703 he went to Holland for the purpose of procuring paper and getting engravings made for the splendid edition of Cæsar's Commentaries, which he published under the care of Dr. Clarke, in 1712. In 1719 he made an excursion to Paris, where he spent several months, and where he was fortunate enough to gain a considerable sum by adven

turing in the Mississipi scheme: from about 1720 he seems to have transferred his business to his nephew, and lived principally upon his estate in Hertfordshire, till 1736, when he died.

Swift says, Some know books as they do lords; learn their titles exactly, and then brag of their acquaintance.

Booksellers of Little Britain,

AT THE LATTER END OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY,

The Honourable Roger North makes the following remarks on the booksellers of his time. Mr. Robert Scott was, in his time, the greatest librarian in Europe; for besides his stock in England, he had warehouses in Frankfort, Paris, and other places, and dealt by factors. After he was grown old and much worn by multiplicity of business, he began to think of his ease and to leave off; hereupon he contracted with one Mr. Mills, of St. Paul's Church Yard, near £10,000. deep, and articled not to open his shop any more; but Mills, with his Auctioneering, Atlases, and Projects, failed; whereby poor Scott lost above half his means, but he held to his contract of not opening his shop; and when he was in London, for he had a country house, passed most of his time at his house amongst the rest of his books; and his reading (for he was no mean scholar,) was the chief entertainment of his time. He was not only a great bookseller, but a conscientious good man; and when he threw up his trade, Europe had no small loss of him. Little Britain was, in the middle of the last century, a plentiful emporium of learned authors; and men went thither as to a market. This drew to the place a mighty trade, the rather because the shops were spacious, and the learned gladly re sorted to them, where they seldom failed to meet with agreeable con versation; and the booksellers themselves were knowing and conversable men, with whom, for the sake of bookish knowledge, the greatest wits even pleased to converse, and we may judge the time as well spent there as (in latter days) either in taverns or coffee houses, though the latter hath carried off the spare time of most people. But now the emporium is vanished, and the trade contracted into the hands of two or three persons, who, to make good their monopoly, ransack not only their neighbours of the trade that are scattered about town, but all over England; aye, and beyond the sea too, and send abroad their circulators, and in that manner get into their hands all that is

valnable; the rest of the trade are content to take their refuse; with which, and the first scum of the press, they furnish one side of a shop, which serves for the sign of a bookseller rather than a real one, but instead of selling, deal as factors, and procure what the country divines and gentry send for; of whom each has his book factor; and when wanting any thing, writes to his bookseller, and pays his bill; and it is wretched to consider what pick-pocket work, with the help of the press, these demi booksellers make: they crack their brains to make out selling subjects; and keep hirelings in garrets on hard meat, to write and correct by the groat; so puff up an octavo to a sufficient thickness, and there is six shillings current for an hour and a half's reading, and, perhaps, never to be read or looked upon after. One that would go higher, must take his fortune at blank walls and corners of streets, or repair to the sign of Bateman,* Innys, and one or two more, where are choice, and better pennyworths.

Gentleman's Magazine.

EDMUND CURLL.

Edmund Curl lived at the Pope's Head, in Rose Street, Covent Garden, and afterwards, at the Bible and Dial, in Fleet Street: he died in 1748. He was rendered memorable by Pope, in consequence of having published a satirical piece, entitled Court Poems, in the preface of which, they were attributed to a lady of quality, Mr. Pope, or Mr. Gay. Curll was, on many accounts, obnoxious to Pope. The mode of revenge, however, does as little credit to Pope's philosophy and good sense, as it does to his assumed dignity.

The memory of Edmund Curl has been transmitted to posterity with more severe obloquy than he deserved: his demerits were in a great degree atoned for by his indefatigable industry in preserving our national remains. Nor did he publish a single volume but what, amidst a profusion of base metal, contained some precious ore, some valuable reliques, which future collectors would no where else have found. Nichols.

Mr. Bateman, who lived in Little Britain, dealt principally in old books. He would never suffer any person whatever to look into one book in his shop; and when asked a reason for it, would say "I suppose you may be a Physician, or an Author, and want some receipt or quotation ; and if you buy it, I will engage it to be perfect before you leave me, but not after, as I have suffered by leaves being torn out, and the books returned, to my very great loss and prejudice."

The General Biographical Dictionary states he had his ears cut off in the pillory, for publishing some obscene books.

Bowles says Curll raked up whatever he could that might throw the least reflection on Pope, who seemed to think, in his literary transactions, that "all was fish which came to the net," whether it was gained respectably in his profession, or by “helping lame scandal about.”

Swift thus relates the story, p. 391. The mode of revenge alluded to was this.

Wm. Lintot, a bookseller, desired a conference with Mr. Curll about settling a title page, inviting him at the same time to take a whet together. Mr. Pope, who is not the only instance how persons of bright parts may be carried away by the instigation of the devil, found means to convey himself into the same room, under pretence of business with Mr. Lintot, who, it seems, is the publisher of his Homer. This gentleman, with a seeming coolness, reprimanded Mr. Curll for wrongfully ascribing to him the aforesaid poems; he excused himself by declaring that one of his authors (Mr. Oldmixon by name,) gave the copies to the press, and wrote the preface. Upon this, Mr. Pope, being to all appearances satisfied, very civilly drank a glass of sack to Mr. Curll, which he as civilly pledged, and though the liquor, in colour and taste, differed not from common sack, yet was it plain, by the pangs this unhappy stationer felt soon after, that some poisonous drug had been secretly infused therein.

Curll, when at the Pope's Head, in Rose Street, published a catalogue of books, of twenty-five pages, classed according to the subjects. He also dealt in second-hand books.

EDWARD CAVE,

THE PROJECTOR OF THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE.

Cave was born in 1691. At the time he planned the magazine he was a journeyman printer, and had obtained by his wife's interest a small place in the post office: by a constancy of diligence and diversification of employment, he, in time, collected a sum sufficient for the purchase of a small printing house, and began, in 1738, the Gen. tleman's Magazine, a periodical pamphlet, of which the scheme is known wherever the English language is spoken. To this undertaking he owed the affluence in which he passed the last twenty years of his life, and the fortune which he left behind him, which, though large, might have been much larger, had he not rashly and wantonly impaired it by innumerable projects, of which, I know not that one succeeded.

L