taking up a book was no proof of a publication by the defendant. Mr. Bosanquet insisted, that, as the book lay exposed to public view, it was a publication. The court, however, ruled in favour of Mr. Bosanquet, but the jury returned a verdict of not guilty.
1802, Feb. 1. Died, Paul Vaillant, an opulent and respectable bookseller in the Strand, London, in the eighty-seventh year of his age, being at that time father of the company of stationers, of which he had been a liveryman sixty-four years. He left two sons, one of them in holy orders; the other, well known and respected as a gentleman of great literary talents, and eminent as one of the counsellors at law in the corporation of London. In 1739, or 1740, Mr. Vaillant went to Paris, for the purpose of superintending the famous edition of Cicero by the abbé Olivet; and again, in 1759, to settle the plan for a new edition of Tacitus, by the abbé Brotier. He was one of the sheriffs of London and Middlesex in 1760, memorable for the conviction of a noble earl,[1] who, previous to his execution, made Mr. Vaillant a present of his stop-watch, with many acknowledgments for his polite attentions and civilities; and he was also in the commission of the peace for Middlesex.[2] His grandfather (Paul Vaillant) was of a respectable Protestant family at Samur, in the French province of Anjou. At the time of the revocation of the edict of Nantes, he escaped with his life from the bloody Dragonade of the Hugonots by that merciless tyrant Louis XIV.; and in 1686, settled as a foreign bookseller in the Strand, opposite Southampton-street, (see page 664 ante,) where himself, his sons Paul and Isaac, his grandson, the late Mr. Vaillant, and Mr. Elmsly, successively carried on the same trade, in the same house, till nearly the end of the eighteenth century.
1802, Feb. 19. Died, R. Trueman, proprietor and printer of the Exeter Flying Post, which he had established and conducted for forty years.
1802, March. Died, Henry Serjeant, printer and bookseller, at Preston, Lancashire; a young man highly valued by all who knew him.
1802, March 8. The lord chancellor (Eldon) determined "that bibles printed by the king's printer in Scotland, cannot be sold in England."
1802. The German plan of disposing of books by means of literary fairs, was adopted in the United States of America: the first was held at New York, when it was proposed to hold them statedly in that city.
1802. April 16. Died, Mr. Burgess, printer to the university of Cambridge.
1802. May 3. Died, Peter Elmsly, some time partner with, and many years successor to Paul Vaillant, in the Strand, in that department principally of an importer of foreign books. He was a native of Aberdeenshire, and to the tolerable education which it is in the power of almost every Scotchman without much difficulty to attain, Mr. Elmsly had gradually superadded, as he advanced in life and prosperity, such a fund of general knowledge, and so uncommonly accurate a discrimination of language, that, had he chosen to have stood forward as a writer, he would have secured a permanent niche in the temple of fame. Nor was he less critically nice in the French language than his own. For a short time before his death he had wholly quitted business with a competent fortune, most handsomely acquired by consummate ability, the strictest integrity, and respected by every human being who knew him. He died at Brighton, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. His remains were conveyed to Sloane-street, London, and deposited in the family vault at Marybone, attended by a large party of friends, sincere mourners on the melancholy occasion; as for strength of mind, soundness of judgment, and unaffected friendship, he left not many equals. He left a widow to whom he had long been an affectionate husband. Mr. Elmsly resigned his business to his shopman, Mr. David Bremner; whose anxiety for acquiring wealth rendered him wholly careless of indulging himself in the ordinary comforts of life, and hurried him prematurely to the grave. He was succeeded by Messrs. James Payne and J. Mackinlay; the former of whom was the youngest son of Thomas Payne, of the Mews-gate, noticed at page 799, ante; the latter shopman to Mr. Elmsly.
1802. The printing office of Samuel Hamilton, of London, destroyed by fire. Amongst other property destroyed, was the second edition of the Travels of Anacharsis the Younger, in Greece, from the French of Barthelemy, seven vols. 8vo. It was then given to Mr. Gillett, to print, and finished within a few sheets, when the whole impression perished in a second conflagration,—a circumstance which gave rise to an expensive litigation between the printer and the proprietors of the work.—See under Dec. 12, 1805.
1802. The Holy Bible, printed in a new manner, with notes, ten vols. 8vo. by John Reeves, esq. F.R.S. This gentleman, who followed the profession of the law, became a sort of lay-brother of our profession, (in conjunction with George Eyre and Andrew Strahan, as king's printers) by means of the right hon. William Pitt, as a reward for some political services which he had rendered to the cause of that statesman. Mr. Reeves embarked pretty largely in his new profession of prayer-book and bible-printing, until his interest in the patent was purchased by Mr. Strahan. This mode of requiting political services in the reign of George III. gave rise to some parliamentary inquiries, which caused a new patent to be made out. Mr. John Reeves died at London, August 7, 1829.
1802 It was announced that 20,000 per day of the Moniteur, French newspaper, was printed.
1802. John Pares, printer, of Leicester, was sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment, at the sessions held in that town, for publishing a song of a seditious tendency.
