Cave, when he formed the project, was far from expecting the success which he found; and others had so little prospect of its consequence, that though he had several years talked of his plan among printers and booksellers, none of them thought it worth the trial. That they were not restrained by their virtue from executing another man's design, was sufficiently apparent as soon as that design began to be gainful, for in a few years a multitude of Magazines arose and finished; only the London Magazine, supported by a powerful association of booksellers, and circulated with all the art, and all the cunning of trade, exemplified itself from the general fate of Cave's invaders, and obtained, though not an equal, a considerable sale; (it terminated its existence in 1785.)

Cave now began to aspire to popularity; and being a greater lover of poetry than any other art, he sometimes offered subjects for poems and proposed prizes for the best performances. The first prize was fifty pounds, for which, being but newly acquainted with wealth, and thinking the influence of fifty pounds irresistible, he expected the first authors in the kingdom to appear as competitors, and offered the allotment of the prize to the university. But when the time came, no name was seen among his writers that had been ever seen before; the universities and several private men rejected the province of assigning the prize.

At all this Mr. Cave wondered for awhile, but his natural judgment, and a wider acquaintance with the world, soon cured him of his as tonishment, as of many other prejudices and errors. He continued to improve his magazine, and had the satisfaction of seeing its success proportionate to his diligence: he died January, 1754.

Dr. Johnson.

LOSS OF BOOKS AT THE FIRE OF LONDON. The poor booksellers have been, indeed, ill-treated by Vulcan. So many noble impressions consumed by their trusting them to the churches, as the loss is estimated neare two hundred thousand pounds. Evelyn.

Oldys left a thick quarto manuscript, now lost, thus entitled ;Remarks on Booksellers.

Of London Libraries, with Anecdotes of Collectors of Books.

In proportion to the general profits on capital obtained in our country, booksellers are not opulent.

Their trade is too speculative, too hazardous; a few may be opulent, but not the greater number. Can that trade be generally lucra

tive, in which, within a year and a half, payments have been stopped to the amount of near a million sterling, in five or six houses only? An eighteen-penny volume has been known to have cleared eighteen hundred pounds in four or five years. Another instance-An authoress, who held her own copyright, received a hundred pounds yearly for a four-shilling tract. But are these common occurrences? By no means. On the other hand, I have known thousands of pounds expended on works, to sell less than one hundred copies. So in other trades; ten thousand pounds have been cleared by the pattern of a gown, but how many have never paid for the wood the block was cut on?

VYSE'S SPELLING.

It is, perhaps, useful to record, that while the compositions of genius are but slightly remunerated, though sometimes as productive as the household stuff of literature, the latter is rewarded with princely magnificence, At the sale of the Robinsons, the copyright of Vyse's Spelling Book sold at the enormous price of two thousand two hundred pounds, with an annuity of fifty guineas to the author.

WILLIAM CAXTON,

THE FIRST ENGLISH BOOKSELLER.

Was born, according to his own statement, in the weald or woody parts of Kent; with respect to the date of his birth we are left to surmise: Oldys states the year 1412. In his works he expresses hi gratitude to his parents for having caused him to be instructed in his youth, and thereby "to get his living truly." He was put apprentice between his fifteenth and eighteenth years, to one Robert Large, a mercer of considerable eminence, who was afterwards Lord Mayor of London. Mercers in those days traded in all sorts of rich goods; amongst other commodities books were included; his master on his death bequeathed him a legacy of twenty marks, a great sum in those days. After this he travelled as an agent or factor for the mercers in the low countries. In 1464 he was joined in a commission with Richard Whitehill, to continue and conclude a treaty of trade and commerce between Edward the Fourth, and Philip, Duke of Burgundy; in this document they are styled ambassadors and special deputies during his continuance abroad he indulged his literary passion in the perusal of histories and romances, and finished the transaction of Raoul le Fevre Recueil des Histoires de Troye.

:

On the marriage of Lady Margaret to Charles, Duke of Burgundy, his Majesty placed Caxton upon her house establishment; he informs us, on finishing the History of Troy, his eyes were dimmed with over much looking upon the white paper.

It is conjectured he consulted Zell and Olpe, of the Cologne press, and Colard Mansion, of Bruges, as to the materials necessary for the

art.

The Game of Chess is considered to be the first book ever printed in England, 1471; it is dedicated to the Duke of Clarence, brother to Edward the Fourth.

Upon his arrival in England, his press was set up in a part of Westminster Abbey, at which time Thomas Mulling, Bishop of Hereford, held the Abbotship of St. Peter, in commendam ; exclusive of the labour of working at his press, he continued, although stricken in years, to translate and print not fewer than five thousand folio pages, and that his like for industry had never yet appeared: he died in 1491 or 1492. Mr. Ames records the following as written in a very old hand in an edition of Fructus Temporum.-Of your charite pray for the soul of Myster Willyam Caxton, that in hys tyme was a man of moche ornate and moche renowned wysdome and cunninge, and decesed full crysterly, the yere of our Lord, 1491.

"Moder of Merci shyld hym from thorribul fynd,

"And bring hym to lyff eternall that nevyr hath ynd." Newcourt, in his Repertorium, says.-St. Ann's, an old chapel, over against which the Lady Margaret, mother to King Henry the Seventh, erected an alms-house for poor women, which is now turned into lodgings for singing men of the college. The place wherein this chapel and alms-house stood was called the Eleemosinary or Almonry, now, corruptly, the Amboy; for that the alms of the abbey were there distributed to the poor: in which the Abbot of Westminster erected the first press for printing that ever was in England, and where William Caxton practised it.

Caxton had a shop at the Sun, in Fleet Street, in which he was succeeded by Wynkyn de Worde

GERMAN BOOK TRADE.

As Frankfort monopolizes the trade in wine, so Leipzig monopolizes the trade in books.

It is here that every German author (and in no country are authors so numerous) wishes to produce the children of his brain, and that too, only during the Easter fair. He will submit to any degree of exertion that his work may be ready for publication by that import

ant season, when the whole brotherhood is in labour, from the Rhine to the Vistula. Whatever the period of gestation may be, the time when he shall come to the birth is fixed by the Almanack. If the auspicious moment pass away, he willingly bears his burden twelve months longer, till the next advent of the Bibliopolical Lucina. This periodical littering at Leipzig, does not at all arise, as is sometimes supposed, from all or most of the books being printed there; Leipzig has only its own proportion of printers and publishers. It arises from the manner in which this branch of trade is carried on in Germany. Every bookseller of any eminence, throughout the Confederation, has an agent or commissioner in Leipzig. If he wishes to procure works which have been published by another, he does not address himself directly to the publisher, but to his own commissioner in Leipzig. The latter again, whether he be ordered to transmit to another, books published by his principal, or to procure for his principal books published by another, instead of dealing directly with the person from whom he is to purchase, or to whom he is to sell, treats only with his Leipzig agent. The order is received by the publisher, and the books by the purchaser at third hand. The whole book trade of Germany thus centres in Leipzig. Wherever books may be printed, it is there they must be bought, it is there that the trade is supplied.

Such an arrangement, though it employ four persons instead of two, is plainly an advantageous arrangement for Leipzig, but the very fact, that it has subsisted two hundred years, and still flourishes, seems to prove that it is likewise beneficial to the trade in general. Abuses in public institutions may endure for centuries, but inconvenient arrangements in trade, which affect the credit side of a man's balance sheet at the end of the year, are seldom long lived, and German booksellers are not less attentive to profit than any other honest man in an honest business.

Till the middle of the sixteenth century, publishers, in the proper sense of the word, were unknown.

John Otto, born at Nurnberg, in 1510, is said to be the earliest on record, who made bargains for copyrights without being himself a printer. Some years afterwards two regular dealers in the same department, settled at Leipzig, where the university, already in high fame, had produced a demand for books, from the moment the art of printing wandered up from the Rhine.

Before the end of the century the book fair was established. It prospered so rapidly that in 1660 the Easter Catalogue, which has been annually continued ever since, was printed for the first time.

It now presents every year, in a thick octavo volume, a collection

of new books, and new editions, to which there is no parallel in Europe. The writing public is out of all proportion too large for the reading public of Germany.

At the fair, all the brethren of the trade flock together in Leipzig, not only from every part of Germany, but from every European country where German books are sold, to settle accounts and examine the harvest of the year. The number always amounts to several hundreds, and they have built an Exchange for themselves.

Yet a German publisher has fewer prospects of turning his manuscripts to good account, than the same class of persons in any other country, that knows the value of intellectual labour.

There is a part called Nachdruckerei, or reprinting, which gnaws on the vitals of the poor author, and paralyzes the most enterprising publisher. Each state of the confederation has its own law of copyright, and an author is secured against piracy only in the state where he prints. But he writes for all, for they all speak the same language. If the book be worth any thing it is immediately reprinted in some neighbouring state, and as the pirate pays nothing for the copyright, he can obviously afford to undersell the original publisher.

Wirtemberg, though she can boast of possessing, in Cotta, one of the most honourable and enterprising publishers of Germany, is peculiarly notorious as a nest for these birds of prey. The worst of it is, that authors of reputation are precisely those to whom the system is most fatal. The reprinter meddles with nothing except what he already knows will find buyers. The rights of unsaleable books are scrupulously observed, the honest publisher is never disturbed in his losing speculations, but when he has been fortunate enough to become master of a work of genius or utility, the piratical publisher is instantly in his way. All the states do not deserve to be equally involved in this censure. Prussia, I believe, has shown herself liberal in protecting every German publisher. Some of the utterly insignificant states are among the most troublesome; for reprinting can be carried on in a small just as well as in a great one. The bookseller who published Reinhardt's Sermons was attacked by a reprint which was announced to appear in Reutlinger, in Wirtemberg. The pirate demanded fourteen thousand florins, or nearly twelve hundred pounds, to give up his design.

The publisher thought that so exorbitant a demand justified him in applying to the government, but all he could gain was the limitation of the sum to a thousand pounds. Such a system almost annihilates the value of literary labour.

No publisher can pay a high price for a manuscript, by which, if it