Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/50

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32 THE BOOKSELLERS OF OLDEN TIMES.

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Rowe... ,,. ... ... 36 10 o Hughes 28 7 o Pope 217 12 o Fenton ... . !f ... 30 14 o Ga y ... ... 35 17 6 Whalley ... ... ... 12 o o Theobald 652 10 o Warburton ... ... ... 500 o o Capell 300 o o Dr. Johnson, for ist edition . 375 o o for 2nd edition . 100 o o Upon Dryden's death Tonson had looked round anxiously for a likely successor, and - had made humble overtures to Pope, and in his later " Miscel- lanies" appeared some of Pope's earliest writings ; but Pope soon deserted to Tonson's only rival Bernard Lintot, who also opposed him in an offer to publish a work of Dr. Young's. The poet answered both letters the same morning, but unfortunately cross- directed them : in the one intended for Tonson he said that Lintot was so great a scoundrel that printing with him was out of the question, and in Lintot's that Tonson was an old rascal. Jacob Tonson died in 1736, and is reported on his death-bed to have said " I wish I had the world to begin again, because then I should have died worth a hundred thousand pounds, whereas now I die worth only eighty thousand ;" a very improbable story, for, in spite of Dryden's complaints, Tonson seems to have been a generous man for the times, and to have fully earned his title of the " prince of booksellers." His nephew died a few months before this, and was succeeded by his son, Jacob Tonson the third, who carried on the business in the same shop opposite Catherine Street in the Strand, until his removal