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CoMonkiie*, which he dedicated to queen Ca- roline, and was presented to her majesty Nor. 3, 1737, seventeen days before her death. He had formed great expectations from the patronage of his royal mistress, and this disappointment was too much for him. He had shown ^rmptoms of insanity on a former occasion, and he was now reduced to such a state that his friends found it necessary to send him to a lunatic asylum. This interruption did not, however, terminate his literary career. Having made his escape from his place of confinement, he published a vehement remonstrance on the manner in which he had been treated ; and at the same time brought an action against Dr. Monro, ^d the other persons who had been concerned in the affair, in which, however, he was nonsuited. This new injustice, as he conceived it to be, gave occasion to several more pamphlets. After this, he found employ- ment for some years as a corrector of the press — the character in which he had first appeared in London, and for which he was well fitted by his education and acquirements. Very accurate editions of the Greek and Latin classics ap- peared at this time, printed under his superin- tendence. But in the course of a few years, his malady returned, and he was again placed in confinement; on his liberation from which he once more tried his old expedient of prosecuting the peisons who had presumed to offer him such an indignity, laying his damages on this occasion at £10,000. Being again unsuccessful, he de- termined as before to publish his case to the world ; and accordingly forth came his statement in four successive parts, under the title of the Advenlitres of Alexander the Corrector — a name which Cniden now assumed, not as the reader might suppose in reference to his occupation of inspector of proof sheets, but as expressive of his higher character of censor general to die public tnorals. His favourite instrument, and chief auxiliary in executing the duties of this office, was a large sponge, which he carried constantly about with him in his walks through town, for the purpose of obliterating all offensive inscrip- tions which he observed on the walls, especially the famous " No. 4d," the mark of the partizans of Wilkes, to whose excesses he strenuously op- posed himself, both in this way and by various admonitory pamphlets. On the publication of the secona part of his adventures, he went to court, in the expectation of being knighted ; and soon offered himself as a candidate to represent the city of London in parliament Giving out, too, that he had a commission from heaven to preach a general reformation of manners, he made the attempt first among the gownsmen at Oxford, and then among the prisoners in New- gate; but in both cases with very little effect In the midst of these and many other extrava- gances, he both brought out a second and greatly enlarged edition of hisConoordance, and pursued his labours as a corrector of the press and fabri- cator of indices, with as much steadiness as if his intellect had been perfectly sound, and doubt- less it was so when properly exercised. He even

managed his worldly affairs with great prudence; and left behind him considerable property in bequests to his relatives. He was found dead on his knees, apparently in a posture of prayer, at his lodgings in Islington; thus happily ex- periencing, as Milton finely expresses it, " A gentla waftinr to immortal life."

1770, Dec. 28. Died, Allinoton Wat)E, printer, in Aldeisgate-street, London, a very old member of the stationers' company, who was at the time of his death the oldest master printer in England, being upwards of eighty-two yeart of age. His father died in the year 1731.

1770. Isaac Collins, a printer from Phila- delphia, was the first who permanently set up a press at Burlington, the capital of New Jersey, in North America. Printing had been executed at this place so early as 1727, and again in 1765.

1770, Jidy. The Ladies' Magazine, No. 1.

1770. The Historical, Political, and Literary Register, for 1769. London.

1770. Bingley's Journal. William Bingley, the proprietor, editor, and publisher of this paper, was a man of some notoriety in these turbulent times, being strongly attached to " Wilkes and Liberty." He began his political career. May 10, 1768, by publishing, at a shop, opposite Durham-yard, in the Strand, the North Briton, No. 47, in continuation of the celebrated papers under that name by Mr. Wilkes; and, for a letter to lord Mansfield, in No. 50, was called on by the attorney-general to show cause why an at- tachment should not be issued against him as a publisher ; when he wished to have pleaded his own cause, but was not permitted. His intended speech, with the proceedings of the court, are given in No. 51. He was committed to New- gate, whence he addressed, July 1, a remarkable fetter to Mr. Harley, then lord mayor, occasioned by some cruel reflections of his lordships, No. 55 ; another to the North Briton, No. 59. In Nos. 64 and 75, he is stated to have been the first person, independent of a court of justice, imprisoned by attachment from the abolition of the court of star chamber. Nov. 7, after having been seventy-two days in Newgate, he was com- mitted to the king's bench, for " not putting in bail to answer interrogatories upon oath." As- sisted, as he doubtless was, by the private advice of some distinguished lawyers, the defence of the English subject's freedom, in his case, is ner- vously stated in No. 75. The result was, that, on Dec. 5, on entering into recognizance for his appearing on the first day of the next term, h« was discharged out of custody. His declaration to the public on this head is in No. 81. Jan^ 23, 1769, persisting in his refusal to answer in- terrogatories, he was remanded to the king's bench. No. 87; and Feb. 17, made a solemn affidavit that he never would, without torture, answer to the proposed interrogatories. No. 91. June 14, 1769, he was brought from the king's bench prison to the common pleas, by habeas corpus, to surrender himself to an action of debt, in order to be removed to the Fleet; but.

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