BOOK 111. Authorship by Choice. THE Booksellers were never more active than at the close of 1759. If Literature had anything to 1759 то 1767 hope from such exertions, its halcyon days were come. If it could live on Magazines and Reviews; if strength, subsistence, and respect, lay in employment of the multitudinous force of Grub-street; if demand and supply were law sufficient for its higher interests; Literature was prosperous at last, and might laugh at all Pope's prophecies. Every week had its spawn of periodical publications; feeble, but of desperate fecundity. Babblers and Schemers; Friends and BB Advisers; Auditors, Comptrollers, and Grumblers; Spendthrifts and Bachelors; Free-Enquirers, Scrutators, and Investigators; Englishmen, Freeholders, and Moderators; Sylphs and Triflers; Rangers and Cottagers; Templars, Gentlemen, and Skeptics; in constant succession rose and fell. 'Sons of a day, just buoyant on the flood,' next day might see them 'numbered with the puppies in the mud': but the parents of the dull blind offspring had meanwhile eat and drank, and the owners or masters profited. Of Magazines alone, weekly and monthly, I will enumerate the specimens which a very few weeks, between the close of 1759 and the beginning of 1760, added to a multitude already wearing out their brief existence. They were: the Royal Magazine, or Gentleman's Monthly Companion ; the Impartial Review, or Literary Journal; the Weekly Magazine, or Gentlemen and Ladies' Polite Companion; the Ladies' Magazine; the Public Magazine; the Imperial Magazine; the Royal Female Magazine; the Universal Review; the Lady's Museum; the Musical Magazine; and the British Magazine, or Monthly Repository for Gentlemen and Ladies. See all her progeny, illustrious sight! Behold, and count them, as they rise to light! In homage to the mother of the sky, A hundred sons, and ev'ry son a God: Not less with glory mighty Dullness crown'd, Now took thro' Grub-street her triumphant round, And her Parnassus glancing o'er at once, Beheld a hundred sons and each a Dunce. Whether with equal triumph she beheld the new recruit advance to take his place, may admit of question. But her favourite Purdons, Hills, Willingtons, Kenricks, Kellys, Shiels, Smarts, Bakers, Guthries, Wotys, Ryders, Collyers, Joneses, Francklins, Pilkingtons, Huddlestone Wynnes, and Hiffernans, were always at hand to comfort her and there was an ill-fashioned, out-of-theway corner, in even her domain, for temporary reception of the Smolletts and the Johnsons; men who owed her no allegiance, but had not yet deserted Grub-street altogether. It is a street in London,' was Johnson's definition, four years before the present, 'much inhabited 'by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems: whence any mean production is called Grub street.' Why, a man might enter even Grub-street, then, with bold and cheerful heart, seeing the author of the English Dictionary there. For there, as occasion called, he was still to be seen poor, persevering, proud; 'unplac'd, unpension'd, no man's heir or slave': inviting the world to take heed that indeed he was there, 'tugging 'at the oar.' With that great, independent soul of his, Samuel Johnson had no reproach for Fortune: she might come to him now, or stay away for ever. What other kind of man he might have been, if something more than fourpence halfpenny a day had welcomed him in the outset; or if houseless and homeless street-wanderings with Savage, and resolutions to stand by his country, had been fore stalled by house and home, and resolution of his country to stand by him; is not in his case a matter of much importance. He dealt with Life as he found it. Toil, 'envy, want, the patron, and the jail,' he grappled with as they came. Literature he took upon its own terms. Repulsed from the West-end mansion, he quietly turned to the counters of the East; insulted by bookseller Osborne, he knocked him down with one of his own folios; decently paid by bookseller Millar, he told the world to honour him for raising the rewards of books: and treating Authorship, since the world would have it so, as any other trade, and still heartily embracing Poverty as a trusted and honest companion, was content in Grubstreet, or any other street, to work out his case as he could. 'Seven years, my lord, have now past,' he wrote to Lord Chesterfield, on appearance of the Dictionary four years before, since I waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been 'pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is ' useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one 'word of encouragement, or one smile of favour. ... Is 'not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on ' a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has 'reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice 'which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind: but it has been delayed 'till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am 'solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do 'not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to 'confess obligations where no benefit has been received; ' or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as 'owing that to a patron, which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.' And from this man, even now, there was nothing to separate the humblest of literary workmen. Here were his words, as a trumpet, to call them to the field; and there he was, in person, to animate the struggle. To what, then, should he first look, who, hitherto a compelled and reluctant dweller on the threshold of literature, was now of his own resolute choice advancing within to try his fortune, if not to this great, unyielding figure of Samuel Johnson, for courage and sustainment? There, beyond a doubt, were the thoughts of Oliver Goldsmith now. With poverty, not simply endured, but made a badge of honour; with independence, though but a bookseller's servant; without remonstrance or uneasy resistance, should even the worst attendants of the garret continue to be his lot for ever. 'He assured 'me,' says the author of the Rambler of his friend Ofellus, that thirty pounds a year was enough to enable a man to live in London without being contemptible. 'He allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. 'said a man might live in a garret at eighteenpence a 'week; few people would inquire where he lodged; and if they did, it was easy to say, Sir, I am to be found at 6 He |