Amenities of Literature Part 63

The anonymous voucher for this extraordinary charge which appears in the preface, was an after-thought of our historical scribe at the late hour of publication, when it must have occurred to him that the world would require the most positive testimony of such a foul forgery. It is remarkable that Oldmixon had already, in the body of his work, broadly embroidered the narrative. We may form some notion of the mode in which this impetuous writer composed history, blending his pa.s.sions with his facts, by observing what he did in the present matter. In the text of his history we discover the tale solemnly worked up into a tragic scene of penitential remorse on a death-bed; and, still farther to appropriate and confirm the exciting narrative of this forgery, he had artfully bolstered it up by an accompanying anecdote. When Smith the poet had foisted in the description of Cataline, (or Cinna, as it is erroneously written in Clarendon,) one of the doctors slapped him on the back, exclaiming with an a.s.severation, "_It will do!_" And our historian proceeds: "The remorse he expressed for being concerned in this imposture were his last words." He then declares that in the highly-finished portraits of Clarendon, "all likeness is lost in a barren superfluity of words, and the workings of a prejudiced imagination, where one may suppose the drawing was his own. But that there has been much daubing in some places, and more dirt in others, put in by his editors, is now incontestable. In those clumsy painters into whose hands his work fell, there is something so very false and base, that such coin could only come from a college mint." Thus, inconsiderately, but not the less maliciously, Oldmixon filled his rapid page, and betrays his eagerness to s.n.a.t.c.h at any floating rumour or loose conversation, which he gives the world with the confidence, though he could not with the dignity, of historical truth. And it is this reckless abandonment of his pen in his post-haste and partial works of history, which must ever weaken our trust in those more interesting portions for whose authority he refers to unknown ma.n.u.scripts; and the more so, when we often detect his maimed and warped, and even interpolated quotations; and farther, recollect that Oldmixon stands himself a convicted criminal at the bar of history, having been detected in interpolating the historian Daniel when employed as editor by Kennet, which sunk the value of the first edition of that historical collection.

How was this positive and particularising charge to be refuted? Years had elapsed, and Smith had never whispered such an important secret to any friend. The original ma.n.u.script had not yet appeared to confront the detractor, and to prove the fidelity of the editors. There are difficulties which truth cannot always surmount. It is not only easier to raise a falsehood than to prove a truth, but it is possible that there may be accidents which may wholly prevent the discovery of truth.

Of an accusation made years after the event, and the persons no longer in existence, we may never be enabled to remove the objections which it has succeeded in raising.

From this calamity the History of Clarendon had a narrow escape. All the parties concerned were no longer in life, save one, who seemed as much lost to the world--Atterbury, forgotten in exile. The authenticity of the History of Clarendon was, however, the concern of literary Europe.

Foreign journalists conveyed the astounding tale, a.s.suring the literary exile that if he remained silent, the accusation must be considered as proved. The reply did not linger, for a simple fact demolished this inartificial fabric. Atterbury solemnly declared that he had never seen any ma.n.u.script of Lord Clarendon's History; that he believed he had never exchanged a word in his life with Smith, whose habitual conduct was too loose to tolerate; and if that were true which Ducket had affirmed, that "Smith had died with a lie in his mouth." Atterbury added some new information respecting the real editors, who were Dean Aldrich and Bishop Sprat, and the late Earl of Rochester, the son of Lord Clarendon.

This unexpected confutation from the sole survivor of the accused parties revived the dismayed Clarendonians. The cards had changed; and these in their turn called for a sight of that copy of Clarendon said to have been scored by Smith. Oldmixon, baffled and mortified, appealed to his communicator; the most idle prevarications were alleged; and Colonel Ducket even cavilled at the wording of the letter which Oldmixon had published. Both parties were anxious to fling the odium on the other, but neither had the honesty to retract the slander. We may believe that they were both convinced that the ma.n.u.script of Clarendon had been tampered with, but that neither could ascertain either the matter or the manner. Ducket died during their embarra.s.sment, and to his last day persisted in confirming his account, and even furnis.h.i.+ng fresh particulars, as Oldmixon a.s.sures us.

In this extraordinary history of the fate of a disputed ma.n.u.script, which all had inquired after, and none had found, an incident occurred which put to rout Oldmixon and the numerous objectors to its authenticity. Seven books of the Clarendon ma.n.u.scripts at length were discovered lodged in the custody of a lawyer in Bartlett's Buildings, Holborn, who was one of the executors of the second Earl of Clarendon; and, to the utter dismay of Oldmixon, the often-controverted pa.s.sage of Hampden was to be seen in the original writing of the n.o.ble author.

Several distinguished personages were admitted to consult the autograph; but when others applied, who came formally armed with an autograph letter of Lord Clarendon, to compare the writing with the ma.n.u.script, the lawyer was alarmed at the hostile investigation, and cautiously evaded an inspection by these eager inquirers, perhaps judging that whatever might be the consequence, the trouble was certain.

Oldmixon, in his last distress, persisted in declaring that he was not bound to trust in the genuineness of a ma.n.u.script of which he was refused the examination. It must be acknowledged, that any partial view of the Clarendon ma.n.u.script, seen by a few, was not sufficient to establish its authority with the public; and certainly till the recent edition by Dr. Bandinel appeared, admirably collated, the aspersions and surmises of the objectors to its genuineness had by no means been removed, and, we may add, were not wholly unfounded.

This history of the great work of Lord Clarendon would be imperfect did we not develope the real causes which so long continued to obscure the inquiry, and involve its mysterious publication in the most perplexing intricacy.

Lord Clarendon himself not only doubted the propriety of the publication, but had even consented to its suppression till a "fit season, which was not likely to be in the present age." His elevated genius looked far onward to posterity. In his remarkable will, he recommended his sons to consult Archbishop Sancroft and Bishop Morley; and it was only his second son, the Earl of Rochester, who took an active part. The position of editors was as delicate as it was perilous, and it has been aptly described by the last editor, who at length has furnished us with a complete Clarendon. "The immediate descendants of the princ.i.p.al actors were alive; many were high in favour; others were connected by the closer links of friends.h.i.+p or alliance." The change of a virulent epithet might be charitable, and spare the ulcerated memories of a family; and time, which blunts the keen edge of political animosities, might plead for the omission of "the unfavourable part of a character," which happened to be rather of a domestic than of a public nature.

All these were important causes which perplexed the editors.h.i.+p of the History of Lord Clarendon; and there were also minor ones which operated on the publication. Difficulties occurred in the arrangement of the parts. The Earl hardly lived to revise his work; portions of the "Life"

had been marked by him to be transferred to the "History." The first transcript by Shaw, the secretary of the author, was discovered to be very incorrect. It was necessary that a fairer copy should repair the negligence of the secretary's. Dean Aldrich read the proofs, and transmitted them to the Earl of Rochester, accompanied by the ma.n.u.script copy which the earl preserved. The corrections on the proofs were by his hand. Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, who then had the reputation of being the most skilful critic in our vernacular idiom, it appears, suggested some verbal alterations. But it was affirmed, that the Earl of Rochester had been so scrupulous in altering the style of his father, and so cautious not to allow of any variations from the original, that the strictures of Sprat had not been complied with, which however was not true; for though the Earl of Rochester would allow no hand but his own to correct the proofs, there were omissions and verbal alterations, and occasionally may be found what went far beyond the mere change of words or phrases.

The ma.n.u.script which Calamy saw at the press shows that the transcript, however fair, had required corrections, and probably some confusion had sometimes occurred in transferring pa.s.sages from the "Life" into the "History." This only can account for the reasonable suspicions of "The Curious Impertinent," which part had been so gratuitously acted by the learned Doctor on this occasion, and evidently spread the first rumours of a corrupted or an altered text.

The pretended forgery on Clarendon was nothing but a gross imposture.

Who was most deeply concerned in the fabricated lie, we cannot now ascertain. Of the poet, however, we know that after frequent admonitions he had been expelled his college, for habitual irregularities; and having lost his election of the censors.h.i.+p of the college, indulged vindictive feelings towards Dean Aldrich. It was his delight to ridicule and vituperate the Christ Church deans,--and he might have called the History of Clarendon, "patch-work," from some imperfect knowledge picked up at the Oxford press. The poet, whose conversation flowed with his wine, on a visit at the seat of Colonel Ducket, indulging to excess his Epicurean tastes, there died suddenly of repletion, by prescribing for himself so potent a dose, that the apothecary warned him of "the perilous stuff," which advice was received with contempt. As the scored Clarendon by Smith was never brought forth, it probably never existed to the extent described; and as Smith died unexpectedly, there could have been no scene of a death-bed repentance, about a forgery which had never been committed. The party-lie caught up in conversation was too suitable to the purposes of Oldmixon's History not to be preserved, and even exaggerated; Ducket found a ready tool in a popular historian, who was not too critical in his researches, whenever they answered his end.

But Truth is the daughter of Time--all the Clarendon ma.n.u.scripts at length were collected together, and now securely repose in the Bodleian Library, where had they been deposited at first, the anxiety and contention which for half a century disturbed the peace of honest inquirers had been spared. Why they were not there placed, open to public inspection, is no longer difficult to conjecture. Although no historical fact in the main had been altered, yet omissions and variations, and some of a delicate nature, there were, sufficient to awaken the keen glance of a malicious or an offended observer. The anxious solicitude to withdraw the ma.n.u.scripts till they might more safely be examined, at a remote period, was the real and the sole cause of their mysterious concealment; and led many from party-motives to question the authenticity, and others to defend the genuineness, of which they were so many years without any evidence.

This bibliographical tale affords a striking ill.u.s.tration of the nature of hearsays, surmises, and cavils; of confident accusations, but ill parried by vague defences; of the infamous fictions to which party-men can be driven; all which were the consequences of that apparent suppression of the original work, which had occurred from the critical difficulties which await the editors of contemporary memoirs. The disingenuity of both parties, however, is not less observable, for while the Clarendonians maintained that the editors, as these had protested, scrupulously followed the ma.n.u.script, they themselves had never seen the original, and the Oldmixons as audaciously a.s.sumed that it was interpolated and mutilated, without, however, producing any other evidence than their own surmises, or gross fictions of popular rumours.

With the fate of Clarendon before his eyes, a witness of the injury which this mysterious mode of publis.h.i.+ng the History of Lord Clarendon had occasioned, the son of Bishop Burnet suffered that congenial work, the "History of his own Times," to partic.i.p.ate in the same ill-fortune.

On the publication of the first volume, this editor promised that the autograph "should be deposited in the Cottonian Library for the satisfaction of the public, as soon as the second volume should be printed." This was not done; the editor was repeatedly called on to perform that solemn contract in which he had engaged with the public. A recent fire had damaged many of the Cottonian ma.n.u.scripts, and this was now pleaded as an excuse for not trusting the bishop's ma.n.u.script to the chance of destruction. Expostulation only met with evasion. We are not now ignorant of the real cause of this breach of a solemn duty. The bishop in his will had expressly enjoined that his History should be given in the state in which he had himself left it. But the freedom of the paternal pen had alarmed the filial editor. He found himself in the exact position which the son of Lord Clarendon had already preoccupied.

Omissions were made to abate the displeasure of those who would have writhed under the severity of the historian's censure--characters were but partially delineated, and the tale sometimes was left half told. It happened that the bishop had often submitted his ma.n.u.script to the eyes of many during his life-time. Curious researchers into facts, and profound observers of opinions, had become diligent extractors, more particularly the supervisor of the printed proofs; and when the printed volumes appeared, most of these omissions stood as living testimonials to the faithlessness of the prudential editor. The margins of various copies, among the curious in Literature, overflowed with the castrations: the forbidden fruit was plucked. We now have the History of Burnet not entirely according to "the will" of the fervid chronicler, but as far as its restored pa.s.sages could be obtained; for some, it is evident, have never been recovered.[1] Thus it happened, that the editors of Clarendon and Burnet form a parallel case, suffering under the inconveniences of editors of contemporary memoirs.

The perplexed feeling of the times in regard to both these Histories we may catch from a ma.n.u.script letter of the great collector, Dr.

Rawlinson:--"Among Bishop Turner's[2] ma.n.u.scripts," Rawlinson writes, "are observations on Lord Clarendon's History, when sent him by old Edward's son, the Nonjuror, who gave it to Alma Mater; _if alterations were made_, this may be a means of discovering. I have often wondered why _the original MS._ of that History is not put into some public place to answer all objections; but when I consider _a whimsical family_, my surprise is the less. Judge BURNET has promised under his hand, on the backside of every t.i.tle of the second volume of his father's History of his Life and Times, to put in the originals into some public library; but _quando_ is the case. I purchased the MS. of a gentleman who corrected the press, when that book was printed, and amongst his papers I have _all the castrations_, many of which, I believe, he communicated to Dr. Beach's sons, whom T. Burnet had abused in a life of his father, at the end of the second volume."[3] Here, then, the world possessed sufficient evidence at the time of their early appearance, that these Histories had suffered variations and omissions--by the heirs of their authors, and the imperfect executors of their solemn and testamentary will.

I cannot quit the present subject without a remark on these great party Histories of Clarendon and Burnet. Both have pa.s.sed through the fiery ordeal of national opinion,--and both, with some of their pages singed, remain unconsumed: the one criticized for its solemn eloquence, the other ridiculed for its homely simplicity; the one depreciated for its partiality, the other for its inaccuracy; both alike, as we have seen, by their opposite parties, once considered as works utterly rejected from the historical shelf.

But Posterity reverences Genius, for posterity only can decide on its true worth. Time, potent over criticism, has avenged our two great writers of the history of their own days. The awful genius of CLARENDON is still paramount, and the vehement spirit of BURNET has often its secret revelations confirmed. Such shall ever be the fate of those precious writings, which, though they have to contend with the pa.s.sions of their own age, yet, originating in the personal intercourse of the writers with the subject of their narratives, possess an endearing charm which no criticism can dissolve, a reality which outlasts fiction, and a truth which diffuses its vitality over pages which cannot die.[4]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Burnet's "History," iv. 552, edition 1823.

[2] _Sic_ in original, but probably Tanner.

[3] Rawlinson's Bodleian MSS., vol. ii., lett. 38.

[4] I refer the reader to "Curiosities of Literature," vol. ii. art.

"Of Suppressors and Dilapidators of Ma.n.u.scripts;" he will there find that in the case of the Marquis of Halifax' Diary, of which to secure its preservation the writer had left two copies, both were silently destroyed by two opposite partisans, the one startled at some mean deceptions of the Revolutionists of 1688, and the other at the Catholic intrigues of the court.

THE WAR AGAINST BOOKS.

The history of our literature, at the early era of printing, till the first indications appear of what is termed "copyright," forms a chapter in the history of our civilization which has not been opened to us.

This history includes two important incidents in our literary annals; the one, an exposition of the complicate arts practised by an alarmed government to possess an absolute control over the printers, which annihilated the freedom of the press; and the other, the contests of those printers and booksellers who had grants and licenses, and other privileges of a monopoly, with the rest of the brotherhood, who maintained an equal right of publication, and contended for the freedom of the trade.

Although Caxton, our first printer, bore the t.i.tle of _Regius Impressor_, printed books were still so rare in this country under Richard the Third, that an act of parliament in 1483 contains a proviso in favour of aliens to encourage the importation of books. During a period of forty years, books were supplied by foreign printers, some of whom appear to have accompanied their merchandise, and to have settled themselves here. It became necessary to repeal this privilege conceded to foreign presses, when under Henry the Eighth the art of printing was skilfully exercised by the King's natural subjects, and to protect the English printers lest their art should decline from a failure of encouragement.

Our earliest printers were the vendors and the binders of their own books, and their domicile on their t.i.tle-pages directed the curious to their abodes. Few in number, their limited editions, it is conjectured, did not exceed from two to four hundred copies. The first printers were generally men of competent wealth; and every book was the sole property of its single printer. The separate departments of author, bookseller, and bookbinder, were not yet required, for as yet there was no "reading public." Some of our ancient printers combined all these characters in themselves. The commerce of literature had not yet opened in the speculative vendors of books, and that race of writers who have been designated in the modern phrase as "authors by profession." The very nature of literary property could only originate in a more advanced and intellectual state of society, when unsettled opinions and contending principles would create a growing demand for books which no one yet contemplated, and a property, of a novel and peculiar nature, in the very thoughts and words of a writer.

The art of printing, confined within a few hands, was usually practised under the patronage of the King, or the Archbishop, or some n.o.bleman.

There existed not the remotest suspicion, that the simple machinery of the printer's press, could ever be converted into an engine of torture to try the strength, or the truth, of the church and the state.

Sedition, or any allusion to public affairs, never entered the brains of the ingenious mechanics, solely occupied in lowering the prices of the text-writers in the ma.n.u.script market, by their own novel and wondrous transcript. Their first wares had consisted of romances which were consulted as authentic histories; "dictes, or sayings," of ancient sages which no one cared to contradict; and homilies and allegories whose voluminousness had no tediousness. Neither did the higher powers ever imagine that any control seemed needful over the printer's press. They only lent the sanction of their names, or the shelter of their abode, at the Abbey of Westminster or the monastery of St. Albans, to encourage the manufacture of a novel curiosity, for its beautiful toy, a printed book--and the press at first was at once free and innocent.

But the day of portents was not slow in its approach--a stirring age pressed on, an age for books. Under Henry the Eighth, books became the organs of the pa.s.sions of mankind, and were not only printed, but spread about; for if the presses of England dared not disclose the hazardous secrets of the writers, the people were surrept.i.tiously furnished with English books from foreign presses. It was then that the jealousy of the state opened its hundred eyes on the awful track of the strange omnipotence of the press. Then first began that WAR AGAINST BOOKS which has not ceased in our time.

Perhaps he who first, with a statesman's prescient view, had contemplated on this novel and unknown power, and, as we shall see, had detected its insidious steps stealing into the cabinet of the sovereign, was the great minister of this great monarch. It has been surmised that the cardinal aimed to crush the head of the serpent, by stopping the printing press in the monastery at St. Albans, of which he was the abbot; for that press remained silent for half a century. In a convocation the cardinal expressed his hostility against printing; a.s.suring the simple clergy that, if they did not in time suppress printing, printing would suppress them.[1] This great statesman, at this early period, had taken into view its remote consequences. Lord Herbert has curiously a.s.signed to the cardinal his ideas as addressed to the pope:--"This new invention of printing has produced various effects of which your Holiness cannot be ignorant. If it has restored books and learning, it has also been the occasion of those sects and schisms which daily appear. Men begin to call in question the present faith and tenets of the church; and the laity read the Scriptures; and pray in their vulgar tongue. Were this suffered, the common people might come to believe that there was not so much use of the clergy. If men were persuaded that they could make their own way to G.o.d, and in their ordinary language as well as Latin, the authority of the ma.s.s would fall, which would be very prejudicious to our ecclesiastical orders. The mysteries of religion must be kept in the hands of priests--the secret and arcanum of church government. Nothing remains more to be done than to prevent further apostacy. For this purpose, since printing could not be put down, it were best to set up learning against learning; and, by introducing able persons to dispute, to suspend the laity between fears and controversies. Since printing cannot be put down, it may still be made useful." Thus, the statesman, who could not by a single blow annihilate this monster of all schism, would have wrestled with it with a statesman's policy.

The cardinal at length was shaken by terrors he had never before felt from the hated press. This minister had writhed under the printed personalities of the rabid SKELTON and the merciless ROY; but a pamphlet in the form of "_The Supplication of Beggars_" is a famed invective, which served as a prelude to the fall of the minister. The author, SIMON FISH, had been a student of Gray's Inn, where, in an Aristophanic interlude, he had enacted his grace the cardinal to the life, and deemed himself fortunate to escape from his native sh.o.r.es to elude the gripe of Wolsey. In this pamphlet all the poverty of the nation,--for our national poverty at all times is the cry of "The Beggars,"--the taxation, and the grievances, are all laid to the oppression of the whole motley prelacy. These were the thieves and the freebooters, the cormorants and the wolves of the state, and the king had nothing more to do than to put them to the cart's tail, and end all the beggary of England by appropriating the monastic lands.

On a day of a procession at Westminster this seditious tract, aiming at the annihilation of the whole revenues of churchmen, was found scattered in the streets. Wolsey had the copies carefully gathered and delivered to him, to prevent any from reaching the king's eyes. Merchants, at that day, were often itinerants in their way of trade with their foreign correspondents, and frequently conveyed to England these writings of our fugitive reformers. Two of these merchants, by the favour of Anne Bullen, had a secret interview with the king. They offered to recite to the royal ear the substance of the suppressed libel. "I dare say you have it all by heart," the king shrewdly observed, and listened. After a pause, Henry let fall this remarkable observation--"If a man should pull down an old stone wall, and begin at the lower part, the upper might chance to fall on his head." What at that moment was pa.s.sing in the sagacious mind of the future regal reformer, is now more evident than probably it was to its first hearers. Wolsey, suspicious and troubled, came to warn the king of "a pestilent heretical libel being abroad."

Henry, suddenly drawing the very libel out of his bosom, presented a portentous copy to the startled and falling minister. The book became a court-book; and "the witty atheistical author," as the Roman Catholic historian designated him, was invited back to England under the safeguard of the royal protection.

But the secret, and, perhaps, the yet obscure influence of the press, must often have been apparent to Henry the Eighth, when the king sat in council. There he marked the alarms of Wolsey, and the terrified remonstrances of the entire body of "the Papelins;" and when the day came that their ejectors filled their seats, the king discovered, that though the objects were changed, the same dread of the press continued.

The war against books commenced; an expurgatory index, or a catalogue of prohibited books, chiefly English, was sent forth before Henry had broken with the papal power; subsequently, the fresher proclamation declared the books of the Papelins to be "seditious," as the use of "the new learning" had been anathematized as "heretical."

In these rapid events, dates become as essential as arguments. In 1526, anti-popery books, with their dispersers, were condemned as heretical.

In 1535, all books favouring popery were decreed to be "seditious books." There were books on the king's supremacy, for or against, which cost some of their writers their heads; and there were "injunctions against English books," frequently renewed as "pestilent and infectious learnings."[2] All these show that now the press had obtained activity, and betray the uneasy condition of the ruling powers, who were startled by a supernatural voice which they had never before heard.

When the first persecution of "the new religion" occurred, it did not abate the secret importations of Lutheran books.[3] These with the merchant had become an article of commerce; and with the zealous dispensers, an article of faith: both alike ventured their lives in conveying them to London, and other places, and even smuggled them into the universities. They landed their prohibited goods in the most distant places, at Colchester, or in Norfolk. One of these chapmen in this hazardous commodity of free-thinking was at last caught at his bookbinder's. He suffered at the flaming stake, and others met his fate.

It was now apparent that the secrecy and velocity of conveying the novel projects of reform, which could not otherwise have been communicated to the great body of the people, till this awful instrument had been set to work; the unity of opinion which it might create among the confused mult.i.tude; and the pa.s.sions which a party either in terror, or in triumph, could artfully rouse in the sympathies of men; were felt and acknowledged by the monarch, who had himself staked the possession of his independent dominion on the energy and the eloquence of a single book,[4] to prepare his people for his meditated emanc.i.p.ation from the Tiara; and were any other proof wanting, we discover the terror of the Bishop of Durham, on the appearance of "a little book printed in English, issuing from Newcastle." His lords.h.i.+p writes in great trepidation to the minister Cromwell, of this portentous little book, "like to do great harm among the people," and advising that "letters be directed to all havens, towns, and other places, to forbid the book to be sold." All the ports to be closed against "a little book brought by some folks from Newcastle!" These incidents were certain demonstrations of the political influence of this new sovereignty of the printing-press.

In the simplicity of this early era of printing, the same bishop had all the copies of Tindal's Testament bought up at Antwerp, and burned. The English merchant employed on this occasion was a secret follower of the modern apostle, who, on his part, gladly furnished all the unsold copies which had hung on hand, anxious to correct a new edition which he was too poor to publish. When one of the Tindalites was promised his pardon if he would reveal the name of the person who had encouraged this new edition, he accepted the grace; and he a.s.sured the Lord Chancellor that the greatest encourager and supporter of his Antwerp friends had been the bishop himself, who, by buying up half the unsold impression, had enabled them to produce a second. This was the first lesson which taught that it is easier to burn authors than books.

There were two methods by which governments could counteract the inconveniences of the press: the one, by clipping its wings, and contracting the sphere of its action, which we shall see was early attempted; and the other, by adroitly turning its vehemence into an opposite direction, making the press contend with the press, and by division weaken its dominion.

Henry the Eighth left the age he had himself created, with its awakened spirit. The three succeeding reigns, acting in direct opposition to each other, disturbed the minds of the people; controversies raged, and books multiplied. The sphere of publication widened, in this vertiginous era, printers greatly increased in the reign of Edward the Sixth. But the craft did not flourish, when the craftsmen had become numerous. We have the contemporary authority of one of the most eminent printers, that the practice of the art, and the cost of the materials, had become so exceedingly chargeable, that the printers were driven by necessity to throw themselves into the hands of "the Stationers," or booksellers, for "small gains."[5] It is probable that at this period, the printers perceived that vending their books at the printing-office was not a mode which made them sufficiently public. This is the first indication that the printing, and the publication or the sale of books, were becoming separate trades.

In this history of the progress of the press in our country, the Stationers' Company now appears. This inst.i.tution becomes an important branch of our investigation, for its influence over our literature, for its monopoly, opposed to the interests of other publishers, and above all, for the practice of the government in converting this company into a ready instrument to restrain the freedom of the press.

Anterior to the invention of printing, there flourished a craft or trade who were denominated _Stationers_; they were scribes and limners, and dealers in ma.n.u.script copies, and in parchment and paper, and other literary wares. It is believed by our antiquaries that they derived their denomination from their fixed locality, or _station in a street_, either by a shop or shed, and probably when their former occupation had gone, still retained their dealings in literature, and turned to booksellers.[6] This denomination of _stationers_, indicating their stationary residence, would also distinguish them from the itinerant vendors, who in a more subordinate capacity at a later period, appear to have hawked about the town and the country pamphlets and other portable books.