1802. Among the grants voted by parliament, was one of £1700 for the expense of copying manuscripts found at Herculaneum.
1803, Feb. 10, Died, William Ginger, of College-street, Westminster, bookseller to the royal society, aged seventy-six years, who was justly esteemed for industry, integrity, and every quality that adorns the Christian.
1803, Feb. 21. Jean Peltier, was found guilty, in the court of king's bench, London, before lord Ellenborough, and a special jury, of publishing a libel on Napoleon Bonaparte, first consul of the French republic, in a periodical work, called L'Ambigu.
1803, Feb. 22. Died, William Pine, aged sixty-four years, a printer at Bristol, and the original printer of the Bristol Gazette.
1803, Feb. 28. Robebt Kirkwood, engraver and copper-plate printer, Edinburgh, obtained a patent for certain improvements in the copperplate printing press.
1803, March 5. The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, No. 1, established by George Howe, at Sydney, New South Wales.
The introduction of the art of printing, and the establishment of a newspaper, are really grand epochs in the history of a colony, or infant state. Only the ignorant or the bigoted and prejudiced can look on such events with an indifferent or inimical eye. The names of those men, however humble may have been their condition in life, who first introduced a breed of domestic animals — horses, cows, sheep, or pigs— before unknown in the country to which they emigrated; who first sowed grain, or planted a new tree or useful shrub; who first made a road; but, above all, those who carried the press to a savage land, ought to be preserved with more care than the names of the warriors and conquerors that have desolated the earth. Fortunately, as regards the last species of utility, or printing, we are enabled, by an article in the first number of the New South Wales Magazine, (August 1, 1833,) to give the history of the introduction of the press into New South Wales, and both the name and the history of the individual to whom the honour of that introduction was due. This individual was not a governor, or a judge, or a man in authority — he was not an Englishman, nor even a white man — but a poor Creole from a West India island, where his father and brother were printers, and worked the government press, — see page 674, ante. The author of the article in the magazine has the right feeling on the subject. "As the names of Faust and Schoeffer, Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde, are held in veneration as the earliest introducers of the inestimable art of printing into the northern world, it is but reasonable that Australia should assign a niche in her temple of fame to the memory of him who first exercised that art in her territory. The individual to whom this honour belongs was the late Mr. George Howe, the undoubted father of the ars impressoria in this southern region." — For a notice of this worthy individual, and the progress of his press, see May 11, 1821, post.
1803, April. Died, James Sibbald, bookseller, proprietor of the Edinburgh circulating library,[1] and editor of the Edinburgh Magazine. He was born at Whitlaw, near Selkirk, Roxburghshire, in Scotland, in 1747, where his father was a farmer, and which occupation he himself followed until May, 1779, when, owing to the depression which the American war produced in the value of farm stock, he disposed of his stock by auction, and repaired to Edinburgh, with about £100 in his pocket, in order to commence a new line of life. A taste for literature, and an acquaintance with Mr. Charles Elliott, bookseller, who was from the same district, induced him to enter as a kind of volunteer shopman for about a year. He then purchased the circulating library, and, in 1780 or 1781, commenced business as a bookseller in the Parliament-square, and carried on business with a degree of spirit and enterprise, beyond the most of his brethren. He was the first to introduce the better order of engravings into Edinburgh, in which department of trade he was for a considerable time eminently successful. Early in 1791, with the view of devoting himself more to literary pursuits, Mr. Sibbald made an arrangement for giving up the management of his business to two young men, Messrs. Laurie and Symington, who paid him an allowance out of the profits. After conducting the Edinburgh Herald for a short time, and arranging with Mr. Laurie concerning the library, he went to London, where he resided for some years, in the enjoyment of literary society, and the prosecution of various literary speculations, being supported by the small independency which he had thus secured to himself. While in London, his Scottish relations altogether lost sight of him; they neither knew where he lived, nor how he lived. At length his brother William, a merchant at Leith, made a particular inquiry into these circumstances, by a letter, which he sent through such a channel as would be sure of reaching him. The answer was comprised in the following words: "My lodging is in Soho, and my business is so so." Having subsequently returned to Edinburgh, he there edited, in 1797, the Vocal Magazine, a selection of the most esteemed English, Scots, and Irish airs, ancient and modern, adapted for the harpsichord or violin. For such an employment he was qualified by a general acquaintance with music. In 1798, he published a work, entitled, Record of the Public Ministry of Jesus Christ, &c. This work was chiefly remarkable for the view which
it took respecting the space of time occupied by the public ministration of Christ, which former writers had supposed to be three or four years,
- ↑ The Edinburgh circulating library was established by Allan Ramsay, in 1725; and in 1757, it was sold to a Mr. Yair, whose widow carried it on till 1780, when it was sold to Mr. Sibbald. Under various circumstances it was conducted by Mr. Sibbald, till 1803, when his brother William carried it on under the superintendence of a Mr. Stephenson. Finding it by no means prosperous, and the latter gentleman having died, Mr. Sibbald disposed of it in l806, to Mr. Alexander Mackay, who conducted it until a recent period, when it was broken up, and sold by auction.
