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Even regular booksellers and printers who were freemen of the Stationers' Company had been infected by the general lawlessness, and had fallen into the habit of publishing books and pamphlets without caring whether they were licensed, and without taking the trouble of registering their copyright; which, indeed, they could hardly do if the books were unlicensed.
We have seen in the previous chapter something of the difficulties of the trade in those days. The booksellers were a close guild of three hundred and sixty members, and the printers were limited to thirty-six. Their privileges brought them little fortune. They were of the lowest credit and repute, and most of them were hardly better than beggars.
Tailors, robemakers, and booksellers gave him trust, and did believe that they would get their money. And any persistent tradesman did get it. He did not actually hoist the black flag of impecuniosity, and proclaim his intention of preying generally upon the retail dealers, as his uncle the admiral had done. But he became known as a young man with whom money was "tight."
"And D. has been under-working for himself ever since; drudging at low rates for unappreciating booksellers, wasting his fine erudition in silent corrections of the classics, and in those unostentatious but solid services to learning, which commonly fall to the lot of laborious scholars, who have not the art to sell themselves to the best advantage.
The judges of their courts have re-sold them to the booksellers for a few pence or given them to those who had the care of their consciences to burn. In Vienna alone was my life described as a romance; in Hungary I found the compassion of men, their friendship, and effectual aid. Had my book been the production of an Englishman, good wishes would not have been his only reward.
For very many years he had been extremely well known to the second-hand booksellers, for he was a constant purchaser of their wares. He was a great pedestrian, and, being very much attached to the north of London, would take long, slow tramps ten miles out in the direction of Highgate, Wood Green, etc.
The dabblers, whether in verse or in any other high sphere, should be every day unsparingly reminded that neither gods, nor men, nor booksellers have pardoned their mediocrity: mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non Dî, non concessere columnae. Are they not the weeds that prevent the corn coming up, so that they may cover all the ground themselves?
Dugdale I hear the great loss of books in St. Paul's Church-yarde, and at their Hall also, which they value about L150,000; some booksellers being wholly undone, among others, they say, my poor Kirton. And Mr. Crumlu all his books and household stuff burned; they trusting St. Fayth's, and the roof of the church falling, broke the arch down into the lower church, and so all the goods burned.
The combined booksellers' and stationers' shops in the cities of the United States are in themselves more frequent and more attractive than in England: and I am going back to the days before the drug-store library which is as yet too recent an institution to have had an easily measurable influence.
The booksellers, justly sensible of the great additional value of the copy-right, presented him with another hundred pounds, over and above two hundred, for which his agreement was to furnish such prefaces as he thought fit.
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