S44
HISTORY OF PRINTING.
many men been seen ndsed by accident or in- dustry to sudden riches, that retained less of the meanness of their former state. In a conversa- tion with Boswell, Dr. Johnson said, " his fiiend Edward Care used to sell 10,000 of the Gentle- man's Magazine ; yet such was then his minute attention and anxiety that the sale should not suffer the smallest decrease, that he would name a particular person who he heard had talked of leaving off the magazine, and would say,' let us have something good next month'.'" Care's attention to the magazine may indeed truly be termed unremitting ; for, as Johnson observed to Boswell, " he scarcely ever looked out of the window but with a view to its improvement."
1731, Feb. 15. Their majesties, George II. and the queen, being desirous of seeing " the noble art of printing," a printing-press and cases were put up in St. James's ptJace on this day. The duke of York composed a small book of his own writing, called the Laws of Dodge-Hare, under the direction of Mr. Samuel Palmer.
1731. TTie Weekly Rehearsal was set on foot at Boston by the famous Jeremy Gridley, after- wards attorney-general of Massachusetts Bay, then a young lawyer of brilliant promise. At the end of a year he wearied of the work, mi which he had expended much classical lore, and the labour of weekly essays full of sense and entertainment ; and it went into the hands of Thomas Fleet, an EngHshman by birth, and a printer by trade, who had brought himself into trouble in London by his antipathy to the high church party, manifested in a studied affront to the procession in honour of Dr. Sacheverel. • * Fleet was a humorist — a man of talent and energy, and possessing uncommon resources, in his mind and experience, for his present under- taking. His satire was generally good-natured, and always free and copious. He fully pre- served the latter strain, ana somewhat abandoned the former, in an attack on Whitefield, then at the height of his popularity. For some unex- plained reason he changed uie name of the Re- hearsal, after printing it about two years, to that of the Boston Evening Post. This he continued thirteen years longer, to the time of his death, and it was undoubtedly much the best paper of its time. It was brought down by hb two sons to the month of the Lexington battle.
1731. The first public library in America was established at Philadelphia, through the exer- tions of Benjamin Franklin. Fifty persons at first subscribed forty shillings each, and agreed to pay ten shillings annually ; in the course of ten years it became so valuable and important as to induce the proprietors to get themselves in- corporated by royal charter.
1731. Died, Allimoton Wilde, printer, in Aldersgate-street. His daughter Martha was the first wife of Samuel Richardson, the author of Pamela, See. See page 633 ante.
1731, April24. Died, Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, and other celebrated works, the whole of which were the mere fabrications of the writer's invention, and are so distinguished
by an air of nature and trutlu Uiat it b tfaDaH impossible not to take them for genuine ; u^ the vast amount of his literary labouis may is some degree be conceived born the fact, that Ae list of his publications given by Mr. Wilson, liii biogragher, contains no fewer than two handiied and ten articles. He was the son of James Foe, a butcher, in the parish of Cripplegate, Londin, where he was born in the year 1 660. In 1688 he kept a hosier's shop in Comhill, bntbecomiiif a bankrupt, he had recourse to his pen for toll. nstence ; but however subordinate and compa- ratively humble as was the sphere in which be moved, and exposed as he was from his ciitiuB- stances to all sorts of temptations, his polilital career was distinguished by a coDastencr, i disinterestedness, and an independence, wUdi have never been surpassed, and but rarely ex- emplified to the same degree by those oocupTisg the highest stations in the direction of nalioiiil affairs. His principles, which were those of tk whigs, repeatedly drew upon him obloquy, das- ger, persecution, and punishment, both m tbe ^ape of personal and pectmiaiy suffering, uA in that of stigma and degradation ; but DOthiif ever scared him from their courageous arowu and maintenance. The injustice he met with oo more tlian one occasion was not more sboeUnj from its crueltv than from its absurdity. Con- formably to the fate which had puisued bin through life, the accession of the house of Em- over, although the end and consummation, it may be said, of all his political labouis, ioctetd of bringing him honours and rewards, consigsed him oidy to neglect and poverty. At length, Ik resolved to abandon politics, and to emjdojU! pen for the future on less ung^teful tbemes. The extraordinary effect of this detennioatioii was to enable him, by a series of wprks vhidi he began to produce aKer he had reached neadr the age of sixty, to eclipse all that he had for- merly done, and to secure to himself a fame which has extended as far and will last as los;; as the language in which he wrote. Defoe died in his native parish, in the seventieth year of lii! age, and was buried in Bunhill Fields, ihes called Tindall's buiying-ground. He leii his widow, and a large umily, in tolerable circiuii- stances. His youngest daughter, Sophia, m married, April 30, 1729, to Heniy Baker, lie celebrated naturalist, who served an apprentin- ship to Mr. John Parker, bookseller. Pill MsB-
1731, Jon. 1. The Kendal Counml, No. 1. printed and published by Thomas Cottoo, me- dium 4to. price three halfpence.
1731. The Templar.
1731. The Corremondent.
1731. The Comedian ; or, Philosoj^ical En- quirer. The author of this work, whicn came out monthly, was Mr. Thomas Cooke, author of • translation of Hesiod, with notes. It was con- tinued but for eight months, and then expiwd, from its inability to defray the expeiiMs «i printing and paper. Mr. Cooke oBto'i'^^ passport to the Chnciad. Ho died, in disiw** circumstances, in the year 1750.
LjOOQ IC
