Page:A dictionary of printers and printing.djvu/956

 NINETEENTH CENTURY.

M9

Unshaw, R. N. Mr. Fuher was interred at the cemetery in the Harrow road, being followed to to the grave by his children, prirate friends, fore- men, and the principal part of his workpeople, to many of whom he had been an indulgent master during a period of thirty-six years.

One or the latest works published by Mr. Henry Fisher was A History of the County Pa- latine and Duchy ofLancailer, edited by Edward Baines, esq.* M. P. for Leeds, in four vols. 4 to.

1837, July la. The printers of Edinburgb celebrated the fourth centenary of the invention of the art of printing, by a social entertiunmenl in the theatre-royal. Thomas Campbell, author of the Pleature* of Hope, and other poems, in Uie chair. In the course of the evening, the fol- lowing song, written for the occasion by Mr. Alexander Smart, printer, was sung by Mr. Heat- ley, printer: the music by Mr. George Croall :

When liberty first sonsht a home on the earth,

No altar the goddess could And. TiU art's greatest tzinmph to lointing gave blitb.

And her temple she reared In the mind. Hie phantoms of ignorance sbmnk from her sight,

And tyranny's visage grew wan t As wildly he traced, in the Volume of Light,

The pledge of redemption to man I

All boll the return of the glorious day.

When freedom her banner unfurled — And sprung trova the Press the Promethean ray

That dawned on a Blnmberlng world -, When Sdance. exalting in freedom and mi^t.

Unveiled to the nations her eye. And waved ttom her tresses, refulgent in light,

A glory that never can die.

The mighty Enchanter, whose magical key

Unlocked all the fountains of mind. The thoughts of the mighty in triumph set free.

In cloistered confusion confined j The lay of the Poet, the lore of the Sage,

Burst forth ITom obaenrity's gloom. And started to life, in the wonderful page,

The glories of Greece and of Rome.

Great ark at our freedom I the Prem we adoi«—

Our glory and power are in thee ; A vnlce thou hast wafted to earth's farthest shore—

The shout of the great and the free. The slave's galling fetters are burst by the might*

The empire of reason is thine ; And nations rejoice in the glorious light,

Which Hows (Tom a fountain divine.

Walton-le-Oale, Lancashire, in 1774, and was apprenticed to Thomas Wallier, printer and stationer, at Preston ; but before the expiration of his time he removed to Leeds, and was placed with Messrs. Btnns and Brown. Im- mediately after the terroination of his apprenticeship he formed a connexion in trade with Mr. John Fenwick, and carried on the printing business for about a. year, under the firm of Baines and Fenwick, Leeds. This connexion having been di^lved, he succeeded, in the year IBOO, after the death of Mr. Binns, to the proprietorship of the Lteds Meratrp, of which he became the sole conductor. In the hands of Mr. Baines, the Leeds Mercurf became a Journal of extensive political influence in the north of Kngtand, which has been enlarged since he obtained the co-operation of bis son, and partner in business, Mr. Bdward Baines, in the year ISSIS. In 1799, he married Charlotte, the daughter of Mr. Matthew Talbot, known in the literary and theological world as the author of a very laborious work, under the title of Analymu of the Bi6ie. The issue of this marriage has been six sons and five daughters, all of whom survive, except two sons, who died m infoncy. It is curious that Mr. Fisher and Mr. Balnea, natives of the same town, neither of them indebted to the favours of fortune in early life, bat entirely de- pendent on their own exertions, should have both risen to such a rank in their respective occupations. On the ap-
 * Kdward Baines, esq., M. P. <br Leeds, was born at

IS37, Aug. 14. Festival in honoob of John Gutenberg, the inventor of printing, held at Meutz, (Mayence) in Gennany.* The opposite engraving gives a correct view oi the line statue, by Thurwalsden, which had been erected by a general subscription, to which all Europe had been invited to contribute. " We apprehend," says a writer in the Penny Magazine, who had witnessed the important ceremony, " that the English, amidst the incessant claims upon their attention for the support of all sorts of under- takings, whether of a national or individual cha- racter, had known little of the purpose which the good citis^ns of Mayence had been advoca- ting with unabating zeal for several years ;t — and perhaps the object itself was not calculated to call forth anv very great liberality on the part of those who are often directed in their bounties as much by fashion as by their own convictions. Be that as it may, England liter- ally gave nothing towards the monument of a man whose invention has done as much as any other single cause to make England what she is. The remoteness of the cause may also have les- sened its importance ; and some people, who, without any deserts of their own, are enjoving a more than full share of the blessings whicn have been shed upon us by the progress of intellect, (which determines the progress of national wealth) have a sort of instinctive notion that the spread of knowledge is the spread of something inimical to the pretensions of mere riches. We met with a lady on board the steam-boat ascending the Rhine, two days before the festival at Mayence, who, whilst she gave us an elaborate account of the fashionable dulness of the baths of Baden, and Nassau, and all the other German watering

5 laces, told us by all means to avoid Mayence uring the following week, as a crowd of low people from all parts would be there, to make a great fuss about a printer who had been dead two or three hundred years. The low people did assemble in great crowds: it was com- puted that at least 15,000 strangers had arrived to do honour to the first printer. In the morn- ing of the 14th, all Mayence was in motion by six o'clock ; and at eight a procession was formed to the cathedral, which was conducted with a

pointment of Mr. Macauley to the supreme council of India, the decton at Leeds bestowed upon Mr. Bainea the highest mark of their confidence and esteem, by returning him to parliament on the 17th of February, 1S34, as their representative, without solicitation on his part, without cost, and on those principles of purity of elec- tion which he had so long and so strenooosly advocated.

• To show that the important controversy for the honour of the iovention of printing Is not yet decided, the reader is referred to the following recent works : —

VerhandeliHg vam Koning over den oonprong, de M/pfnif. ffl^, verbetering en ooimaJting der BoekdntkJmut te Haarlem I8S8, Hj Looejee.

Gedenkaekriften wrgene het vterde eeuiogetij de son de urivinding der Boekdrrnkkumei door Lourene Janasoon Kotter ttan ttmdavege gevierd te Haarlem den 10 en 11 Jut/t 1 833, bij eeuverxameld door Vincent LoetJeM,te Haartem 1 824.

M. Jncobue Scheltema'e getehied en Letterlnadig Men- getwerk f»o/. v. — vl.

Antotogia di Fierenxe vol. 41. Jan, — April, 1831.

See also, .^ DietionarpoftJte Anglo Sajmi Lang u age, 4v. by the rev. J. Boaworu, LL.I>. London, 1838. Intro- duction, pogexcU. — xdii.

t See page IM ante.

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