NINETEENTH CENTURY.
801
failed and became a joumeyman. The educa- tion which the son received was, of coune, very scanty, for at the age of seren yean he was bound apprentice to the silk mill at Derby; and at fourteen he entered on a second appren- ticeship to a stocking maker at Kottingnam. From the age of twenty-one to twenty .seven, he worked at the latter trade. He had now ac- quired an inclination for reading; and, having met with three volumes of the GentlenuaCi Magazine, contrived, in an awkward manner, to bind them himself — a profession to which he afterwards applied himself with some success. He opened a shop at Southwell, at the rent of 20s. a-year, with about twenty-shillings-worth of books. Finding great labour and little profit from the market-day concern at Southwell, in February, 1750, he took a journey to Birming- ham, in order to see if there were any probability of succeeding in a shop there. He iound there were then three booksellers in Birmingham — Aris, Warren, and Wollaston; but he judged ftom the number, activity, intelligence, and
eroqterity of the inhabitants, that uiere mig^t e room for a fourth in a small way; and he hoped that he, as an ant, would escape the notice or envy of the " three great men. He took half a shop, for which he paid a shilling a- week. He soon after purchasea the refuse of a dissaating minister's library; and from that period his affairs began to wear a pleasant and
Cnising aspect At the end of the year he saved jC20, and, being persuaded to take a house of £8 a-year, he soon carried on business on a larger scale, and secured many valuable and intimate friendships. In 1766, he married Sarah Cock, the niece of Mr. Orace, a respect- able former at Aston, near Birmingham, with whom be lived forty years,* and by whom he had several children; and two of them, a son and daughter, survived him. Soon after his marriage he opened a paper warehouse, the first ever seen in Birmingham, and added the stationanr business to that of bookselling, with so much success as to induce him in time to relinquish the latter altogether. At the age of fifty-six Mr. Button commenced author, and the first fruits of his application appeared in the Hiitary tf Biarmiitgkaim, to the tnd ofth* year 1780, 8vo. published in 1782, of which a foiuth edition was published in 1815. In the riots of 1791, not- withstanding his pacific habits, his house, stock- in-trade, and furniture, in Birmingham, were destroyed, and the infuriated mob demolished his residence in the country .f At the age of sixty- nine, he retired from business with a handsome
« Hn. Hotton died Ju. », IW).
t Mr. Hotton, In one of Ua Letten to John NtdioOs,
S., nyv: — " Ajnonr other porsnits, I ipent nraoh time, I man attention. In condnettng the oonit of reqoesti, iriiich, for nineteen reen, chiefly devolved upon mjraelf. But from the 14th of Jolr, 17gi, when the rloten choee to amnae themselvee with the deetmctlon of jtf lO.OM worth of mj inuu c i ' ly , I declined public tnulncaa. Thiu I paid, batcadof Minf jMirfformyUbonts. As I had never with deaign, or nwlect, offimded anjr man, the aorprlK, the loea. the anxiety, the inralt, the tronble, nearly bronght me to the grave."
fortune, and resided on Bennett's hill, neat Bir- minghsan. In an essentialpotnt, Button stands as a shining example. When the race, after many a hard year's labour, was fairly won, he showed no triumph or conceit; but was grateful, and as modest as when he knew the bitterness of other people's bread, and of waiting at other men's doors. Hiswealth did not make him purse- proud, (that most repulsive of all prides) and the considoation in which he was held by people of condition and rank, did not make him ashamed of the lowness of his origin or of his poor rela- tions. Be enjoyed his faculties with uncommon vigour, though considerably advanced beyond the ordinary period of human existence. He had retired from business twenty-two years; but after he had ceased to receive any emolument firom the concern, he attended it with the same reg^ularitT, first for his son, and afterwards for his grand-nephew, to whom it was successively given. Six davs in the week he walked to the scene of his old employmait and back again, thourii the distance was four miles and a half; and this he did to a very advanced age. One day, when he wanted but five of completing his ninetieth year, his strength failed before he reached his house, and he was carried home in a chair. ISis daughter, Catherine Button,* pub- lished the Autohegrapkyfothet father in 1816, which is full of exsmple and encouragement to that vast majority of mankind whose inheritance is pover^ and hardship; and shows the acquire- ment of knowledge under the pressure of the heaviest difficulties; and that there is many a point well stacked with comfort which the sober and peisevering may be almost sure of reaching. Even as a literary compoeition. Button's AtLto- biograpky has great merits : he condenses much meaning in few words; he describes events with astonishing vivaci^; he is playful and pathetic by turns; his quiet drollery never misses the mark; and his deep, short, quick pathos affects us like Crabbe's poems. Here, too, all is real, simple, and nane, without any aiming at effect; and this makes the effect produced the stronger. 1815, Oct. 1. The umversity of Cambridge received from government during the seven pre- vious years, as a drawback for the duty on paper printed at their press, the sum of £13,0877*. 6d.; the nniverdty or Ozibrd, for the same period, the sum of £18,668 2*, 6d. The number of bibles printed at Cambridge during the seven previous years, was 392,000; of new testaments, 423,000; of prayer books, 194,000. At Oxford the number of bibles printed of all kinds was 460,500; of
- She pnUlahed flie Jfiur JTarrM; a novd, fat Otm
vola. iimo. isas.
\ Mr. HattOD'atttamy lahonrawereeloaed in 1811, hy J Trip to Coatlmm,aWatiHmt-pUct in U« Kmih Eatremitf itf YorkMn i written in ISM, (in hla sSth year,) and pob- Uahedin iSlCk in which lie thnatalcea leave of hiareaden: — " Aa it la, penwpa, the last time I shall appear befbre the world aa an author, allow me the liberty at exhibiting my p etf ui mancea in that character. I took op my pen, and that with fear and trembling, at the advanced age of filty- alx, a period In which nwat aothora lay it down. ( drove the quill thirty years, In which time I wrote and publiahed /mtriren book:
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