APPENDIX.

THE following is a reprint, without alteration, of an article written by the author of this volume in 1834, and published in a monthly periodical called 'The Printing Machine.' It contains some general views of the progress of Printing and Bookselling in England which may illustrate some of the details of the preceding pages. The date of this paper must be borne in mind by the reader of thirty years later :

THE MARKET OF LITERATURE.

THERE was an ingenious gentleman in the seventeenth century who was greatly alarmed lest the breed of horses should be annihilated in England, by the introduction of public conveyances. The people that were accustomed to ride “their good pad-nags" wickedly preferred, he says, the smaller cost of making their journeys in the stage-coaches" that go to almost every town within twenty or twenty-five miles of London, at very low rates; so that,” he adds, "by computation, there are not so many horses, by 10,000, kept now in these parts, as there were before stage-coaches set up."

It would be very easy now, by computation, to show that the establishment of public carriages has multiplied the breed of horses fifty-fold more than it would have multiplied, had the rich only continued to use horses. But that is not our present business. What the worthy encourager of travelling maintained would happen, and, indeed, had happened, by the extension of the advantages of travelling from the few to the many, a considerable number of the worthy encouragers of knowledge maintain will happen, and, indeed, has happened, by a similar extension of the benefits of knowledge. They show, by compu

tation, that the breed of books has deteriorated—that the market for books is narrowed-and that "there are not so many books, by 10,000, used now in these parts, as there were before books for all, at very low rates, were set up." The complaint may be just; but we shall take the liberty of investigating its correctness with a care proportioned to the alleged magnitude of the evil.

To conduct this investigation upon data that may be satisfactory to ourselves and our readers, we must open a very wide field of inquiry. It embraces the literary history, not only of England, but of every other country where books are printed. The subject is a most interesting one; but its facts are to be sought for in barren and thorny places. In the present paper we can only bring together some of the more striking results which lie upon the surface. It is possible that we may occasionally devote some other papers to particular branches of the inquiry. In the mean time this preliminary view will, if we mistake not, establish one great truth-that at every step of the diffusion of knowledge, from the first slow efforts of the rude Printing Press of 1460, to the last rapid workings of the Printing Machine of 1833, the foundations of the prosperity, the independence, and the consequent excellence of literature, have been deepened and widened; and the condition of every labourer and chapman in the market of literature successively ameliorated. If we do not show this by computation, we shall be content to believe, for the rest of our lives, that good horses and good books will never appear again in England; and that, as the Bristol mail is the destruction of travelling, so the Penny Cyclopædia' is the destruction of literature. We are not obstinate.

We may probably simplify this large subject, by determining to confine this introductory paper to the progress of printing in England, and by dividing this progress into five periods, viz :— I. From 1471 (the introduction of printing by Caxton) to the accession of James I., 1603.

II. From 1603 to the Revolution, 1688.

III. From 1688 to the accession of George III., 1760.

IV. From 1760 to 1800.

V. From 1800 to 1833.*

I omit this latter period, which does not belong to the subject of the "Old Booksellers."

I. It is a remarkable characteristic of the first century of printing, not only in this country but wherever a press was erected, that the highest and most constant efforts of the new art were addressed to the diffusion of the old stores of knowledge, rather than to an enlargement of the stores. The early professors of the art on the continent,-in Germany, Italy, and France, were scholars who knew the importance of securing the world's inheritance of the knowledge of Greece and Rome from any further destruction, such as the scattered manuscripts of the ancient poets, and orators, and historians had experienced, through neglect and ignorance. The press would put them fairly beyond the reach of any new waste. But after the first half century of printing, when these manuscripts had been copied in type, and the public libraries and the princes and nobles of Europe had been supplied, a fresh want arose out of the satisfaction of the former want. Men of letters, who did not belong to the class of the rich, anxiously demanded copies of the ancient classics, and their demands were not made in vain. The Alduses, and Stephenses, and Plantins, did not hold it good to keep books dear for the advancement of letters; they anxiously desired to make them cheap; and they produced, therefore, not expensive folios only, as their predecessors had done, but neat and compactly printed octavos and duodecimos, for the general market. The instant that they did this, the foundations of literature were widened and deepened. They probably at first overrated the demand; indeed, we know they did so-and they suffered in consequence. But the time was sure to come when their labours would be rewarded; and, at any rate, they were at once placed beyond a servile dependence upon patrons. When they had their customers in every great city and university, they did not wait for the approving nod of a pope or a cardinal before they began to print.

A new demand very soon followed upon the first demand for cheap copies of the ancient classics; and this was even more completely the demand of the people. The doctrines of the Reformation had proclaimed the Bible as the best spiritual guide and teacher,—and the people would have Bibles. The first English Bible was bought up and burnt; those who bought the Bibles contributed capital for making new Bibles, and those who burnt the Bibles advertised them. The first printers of the Bible

were, however, cautious-they did not see the number of readers upon which they were to rely for a sale. In 1540 Grafton printed but 500 copies of his complete edition of the Scriptures; and yet, so great was the rush to this new supply of the most important knowledge, that we have existing 326 editions of the English Bible, or parts of the Bible, printed between 1526 and 1600.

The early English printers did not attempt what the continental ones were doing for the ancient classics. Down to 1540 no Greek book had appeared from an English press. Oxford had only printed a part of Cicero's Epistles; Cambridge, no ancient writer whatever :-only three or four old Roman writers had been reprinted, at that period, throughout England. But a great deal was done for public instruction by the course which our early printers took; for, as one of them says-" Divers famous clerks and learned men translated and made many noble works into our English tongue, whereby there was much more plenty and abundance of English used than there was in times past." The English nobility were, probably, for more than the first half century of English printing, the great encouragers of our press:they required translations and abridgments of the classicsversions of French and Italian' romances-old chronicles, and helps to devout exercises. Caxton and his successors abundantly supplied these wants; and the impulse to most of their exertions was given by the growing demand for literary amusement on the part of the great. Caxton, speaking of his Boke of Eneydos,' says "This present book is not for a rude uplandish man to labour therein, nor read it; but only for a clerk and a noble gentleman, that feeleth and understandeth in feats of arms, in love, and in noble chivalry." But a great change was working in Europe; the "rude uplandish man," if he gave promise of talent, was sent to school. The priests strove with the laity for the education of the people; and not only in Protestant, but in Catholic countries were schools and universities everywhere founded. Here, again, was a new source of employment for the press-A. B. C.'s or Absies, Primers, Catechisms, Grammars, Dictionaries, were multiplied in every direction. Books became, also, during this period, the tools of professional men. There were not many works of medicine, but a great many of law. The people, too, required instruction in the ordinances they were