Page:A dictionary of printers and printing.djvu/766

 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

757

were respectably married. In the court-room of the stationers' company there is a portrait (by sir William Beachy) of " William Stratum, esq. master of the company, 1774."

1785, Aug. G. The Rev. Dr. Sjiiplbv, dean of St. Asaph, was tried at Shrewsbury, for a libel, in publishing sir William Jones's Dialogue on Government ; when the j ury returned the follow- ing verdict, guilty of fmbliihing, but whether a libel or not, the jury do not find. Mr. afterwards lord Erskine, was counsel for Dr. Shipley, and exerted himself with such eloquence that it had a most powerful effect on the verdict of the jury.

1785. I^d, Thomas Cotterell, a letter- founder, of whom Rowe Mores* says, " Mr. Thomas Cotterell is in order a prima proximui. He was in the late Mr. Caslon's house, an ap- prentice to dressing, but not to cutting. This part he learned, as Mr. Moxon terms it, 'of his own genuine inclination.' He began in the year 1757, with a fount of English roman ;" [and afterwards cut a fount of Norman, intended (but not used) for Domesday-book]. " He lives in Nevil's-oourt, in Fetter-lane; obliging, good- natured, and friendly ; rejecting nothing because it is out of the common way, and is expeditious in his performances." "Mr. Cotterell died, I am sorry to add," says Mr. NichoUs, " not in affluent circumstances, though to his profession of a letter-founder were superadded that of a doctor for the tooth-ache, which he cured by burning the ear; and had also the honour of serving in the troop of his majesty's life-guards." From the time that Cotterell was left to himself by Jackson, he continued to increase his founts as low as brevier. But he also cat some founts of dimensions which till then were unknown ; and which Rowe Mores calls " proscription, or posting letter, of great bulk and dimensions, as high as to the measure of 12 lines of pica P'

1785, Sept. 29. Died, William Baker, a learned pnnter of Ingiom-court, Fenchnrch- street, London. He was the son of William Baker, (a man of amiable character and manners, of great classical and mathematical learning, and more than forty years master of an academy at Reading,) and was born in 1742. Being from bis infancy of a studious turn, he passed so much of his time in his father's library as to injure

Jan. 13, 1730, where hia father was rector near thirty years, and was educated at Merchant Taylors' school, and Queen's college, Oxford. He pnbUshed an ancient frag- ment, entitled Nomina et Iniignia GentUitia Noiilium SqwUumque tub Bvardo primo Rege Mititantiumt 4to. In 1759 he was chosen a fellow of the society of antlqaaries, and he projected the equitable society for insorance on lives and sarriTorshlp by annuities. He was the author of the Bittory and Antiqtittia of Tunttatl, in Kent, and a Ditaeriation on Founders and Founderia, of which no more than eighty copies were printed : it will always be a typograpliical cariosity. Mr. John Nichols bought liie whole impression, at the sale of Mr. Mores' cariosities ; and after subjoining a small appendix, gave it to the pub- lic. Mr. Mores was a most indefatigtUde collector, and possessed great application in the early part of Ids life, but in the latter part gave himself up to habits of negli- gence and diasipation ; which brought him to his end by mortification, iii the forty-ninth year of his age, at his house at Low Layton, Nov. 28, 1778.— See Nichols's lAte- rofjr Anecdotu, vol. r. pp. 389-404.
 * Edward Rowe Mores was born at Tunstall, in Kent,

his health. His father, however, intended to have sent him to the imiversity ; but a disap- pointment in a patron who had promised to support him, induced him to place him as an apprentice with Mr. Kippax, a printer, in Cul- lum-street, London, where, while he diligently attended to business, he employed hts leisure hours in study, and applied what money he could earn to die purcm^e of the best editions of the classics, which collection, at his death, was purchased by Dr. Lettsom. This constant application, however, to business and study, again endangered his health, but by the aid of country air and medicine, he recovered ; and on the death of Mr. Kippax he succeeded to his business, and removed afterwards to Ingram- court, where he bad for his partner Mr. John William GaJabin, afterwards principal bridge- master of the city of London. Among his acquaintance were some of great eminence in letters; Dr. Goldsmith, Dr. Edmund Barker, the rev. James Merrick, Hugh Farmer, Ceesar De Missy, and others. An elegant correspon- dence between him and Mr. Robinson, author of the Indieet Tret, printed at Oxford, 1772, and some letters of inquiry into difficulties in the Greek language, which still exist, are proofs of his gpreat erudition, and the opinion enter- tained of him by some of the first scholars. Such was his modesty, that many amongst his oldest and most familiar acquaintance were ignorant of his learning ; and where learning was discussed, his opinion could never be known without an absolute appeal to his judgment. He left behind him some manuscript remarks on the abuse of grammatical propnety in the English language in common conversation. He wrote also a few minor poems, which appeared in the magazines, and is said to have assisted some of his clerical friends with sermons of his composition. In the Greek, Latin, French, and Italian languages, he was critically skilled, and had some knowledge of the Hebrew. He was interred in the vault of St Diones Backchurch, Fenchurch-street, and the following elegant Latin epitaph to his memory was placed on the tomb of his family in the churcu-yard of St Mary, Reading, by his brother John :

M.S.

Parentum, f^trumque duoram,

qaorum senior fait Ouuielmus Baker,

Vir, litterarum studiis ade5 eruditns,

Grtecarum prtedpni Lattnunmqne,

nt arti, qnam sednlns excoluit Londiid.

(Ubi in templo Dionysio dicato

Ossa ejus sepulta sunt;

Typogmphicse omamento ;

BC famiiiaribos,

ob benevolentiam animi, momm comitatem, et modestiam ,

delidis et desideiio fnerit

Omentum ^us auctum usque ad dnodecim pondo et ultra»

Literatos, auxillo ernditionis eximlK ;

Sororemque, et fTatres, etpatrem senem,

dulcibus iilius alloquils ;

ipsumque, mortem oculo immotum intnentem, vitA

{nivavit, die Septembris 39, 1785, et. 44.

E flUis, Johaimea, hoc manner P. C.

1785, Oct. 17. Died, Walter Sbropshirb ; formerly an eminent bookseller in Bond-street, London. He died at Hendon.

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