seller's apprentice at Liverpool, and had also spent part of his early life at sea.

ALEXANDER CRUDEN, the author of the well-known and valuable Concordance of the Old and New Testament, was a bookseller in London, as much distinguished for eccentricity as for learning. He opened his shop under the Royal Exchange in 1732, and it was here that he composed his Concordance. The work appeared in 1737, and was dedicated to Queen Caroline, who died, however, only a few days after receiving the presentation copy. Poor Cruden had formed very extravagant expectations from the patronage of his royal mistress, and this disappointment was too much for him. He had shewn symptoms of insanity on a former occasion, and he was now reduced to such a state that his friends found

it necessary to send him to a lunatic asylum. This interruption did not, however, terminate his literary career. Having made his escape from his place of confinement, he published a vehement remonstrance on the manner in which he had been treated; and at the same time brought an action against Dr. Monro and the other persons who had been concerned in the affair, in which, however, he was nonsuited. This new injustice, as he conceived it to be, gave occasion to several more pamphlets. After this, he found employment for some years as a corrector of the press-the character in which he had first appeared in London, and for which he was well fitted by his education and acquirements. Very accurate editions of several of the Greek and Latin classics appeared at this time, printed under his superintendence. But, in the course of a few years, his malady returned, and he was again placed in confinement, on his liberation from which he once more tried his old expedient of prosecuting the persons who had presumed to offer him such an

indignity, laying his damages, on this occasion, at ten thousand pounds. Being again unsuccessful, he determined, as before, to publish his case to the world; and accordingly forth came the statement, in four successive parts, under the title of The Adventures of Alexander the Corrector'- -a name which he now assumed, not, as the reader might suppose, in reference to his occupation of inspector of proof-sheets, but as expressive of his higher character of censor-general of the public morals. His favourite instrument and chief auxiliary in executing the duties of this office was a large sponge, which he carried constantly about with him in his walks through town, for the purpose of obliterating all offensive inscriptions which he observed on the walls, especially the famous No. 45,' the mark of the partisans of Wilkes, to whose excesses he strenuously opposed himself, both in this way and by various admonitory pamphlets. On the publication of the second part of his Adventures, he went to present it at court, in the expectation of being knighted; and soon after offered himself as a candidate to represent the city of London in parliament, Giving out, too, that he had a commission from heaven to preach a general reformation of manners, he made the attempt first among the gownsmen at Oxford, and then among the prisoners in Newgate; but in both cases with very little effect. In the midst of these and many other extravagances, he both brought out a second and greatly enlarged edition of his Concordance, and pursued his labours as a corrector of the press and a fabricator of indexes, with as much steadiness as if his intellect had been perfectly sound; and doubtless it was so when properly exercised. He even managed his worldly affairs with great prudence; and at his death, which took

/ place suddenly in 1770, he left behind him considerable property in bequests to his relations.

Among booksellers who have been likewise men of letters, we ought not to omit the names of the two PANCKOUCKES, father and son, who were both natives of Lille, where the elder carried on business during the early part of last century. He was a person of very considerable learning and talent, and the author of a number of works on subjects of His son, philosophy, history, and belles lettres. Charles Joseph, settled at Paris in the same line with his father, when he was twenty-eight years of age, and eventually became one of the most eminent publishers of that capital. Beside having projected and given to the world the first collected edition of the works of Voltaire, and having borne the chief part in most of the other great literary enterprises undertaken at Paris in his time, he has made his name particularly memorable by the establishment of the Moniteur, the idea of which is said to have suggested itself to him from what he saw during å visit to England of the influence of the newspaper press, even at that time. With him also originated the Encyclopédie Methodique,' still in course of publication after the appearance of above 150 volumes. Panckoucke lived in habits of intimacy with all the most distinguished French writers and men of genius of his time. We find in the published works both of Voltaire and Rousseau, many letters addressed to him by those celebrated men. He was also the author of a considerable number of works, among which may be mentioned translations of Tasso, Ariosto, and Lucretius; philosophical discourses on beauty, pleasure, and pain; treatises on certain subjects connected with finance; and an esteemed dissertation, intended to serve as an introduction to the

ROTHSCOLTZ. PALMER. AMES. HERBERT. 189

Natural History of Buffon, of which he was the publisher. FREDERICK ROTHSCHOLTZ of Nuremberg, who flourished in the beginning of last century, was another bookseller who acquired a distinguished name in the world of literature. The list of his productions is very extended, and many of them display great learning. Among them is one in two volumes quarto, entitled, "A Short Essay towards an Ancient and Modern History of Booksellers.'

The

The history of the art of printing has, in our own country at least, been chiefly illustrated by the labours of writers to whom authorship was only a relaxation from the toils of business and active life. volumes of tracts on the subject of typography, which originally formed part of the Harleian Library, and are now in the British Museum, were purchased by Lord Oxford from a London bookseller, named JOHN BAGFORD, who had spent a great part of his life in collecting them, and had intended to use them as materials for a History of Printing, for which, in 1709, he published proposals in the Philosophical Transactions. Bagford was in early life a shoemaker, but contrived afterwards to establish himself in business both as a vender and printer of books. SAMUEL PALMER, the author of a General History of Printing, published in 1733, was also himself a printer. JOSEPH AMES, the author of the well known Typographical Antiquities, as well as of various other antiquarian works, had been originally a plane maker, and carried on business as a ship chandler, in Wapping, till his death. Mr. WILLIAM HERBERT, who published an augmented edition of Ames's work, in three volumes quarto, was a map and printseller in London, having formerly carried on business as a hosier. To these names we may add that of Mr. SAMUEL PATERSON, who, having been first a bookseller, became afterwards an auctioneer, and, besides several works

in light literature, is known as the author of a learned and valuable catalogue of the best books in all the different departments of study, which appeared in 1786, entitled, Bibliotheca Universalis Selecta. But we even owe the art of printing itself, in its different forms, chiefly to persons with whom literature was not a profession, but whose attention was merely attracted to it from the midst of other, and, as is sometimes supposed, uncongenial pursuits. Of the two individuals to whom the invention of the art is generally ascribed, the one, JOHN GUTTENBERG, was a merchant of Strasburg, and the other, JOHN FAUST, was a goldsmith of Mentz. Stereotype Printing was the invention of WILLIAM GED, a goldsmith of Edinburgh; and we are indebted for the more recent process, now so well known by the name of Lithography, to M. SENEFELDER, who had spent the earlier part of his life as a strolling actor.

He

Most of our readers are probably familiar with ISAAC WALTON's delightful little work, TheComplete Angler,' since its simple and natural style, and the unaffected benevolence and love of its author for his subject, together with its fresh and touching pictures of rural landscapes and rural enjoyments, give it many charms even for those who do not care at all for the sport of which it more particularly professes to treat. Walton was during the greater part of his life a linendraper in London, and kept a shop in Fleet-street. appears to have received only a very ordinary educa tion; but his love of reading enabled him, even while actually engaged in carrying on his business, to store his mind with a great variety of information, and so to fit himself for becoming an able and highly interesting writer. The occasion of his first attempting authorship was this:-On the death of his friend, the celebrated Doctor Donne, it was proposed that the life of that distinguished poet and divine should