Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/116

86 repeated entry of Longman as publisher or share-holder in such miscellaneous works as Gil Blas, Humphrey Clinker, and Rasselas; and, true to the old traditions of the firm, educational works were by no means neglected. Among others we note a record of Cocker's Arithmetic, since proverbially and bibliographically famous.

Cocker was an unruly master of St. Paul's School, twice deposed for his extreme opinions, but twice restored for his marvellous talents of teaching. "He was the first to reduce arithmetic to a purely mechanical art," The first edition, however, was published only after his death by his friend "John Hawkins, writing master"—a copy sold by Puttick and Simpson, in 1851, realized £8 10s. The fifty-second edition was published in 1748, and the last reprint, though at that time the work was in Longman's hands, bears "Glasgow, 1777," on the title-page.

In those days the publishers clave together in a manner undreamt of in these latter times of keener competition. Nichols, in speaking of James Robson (a Bond-street bookseller), and a literary club of book-sellers, observes that Mr. Longman, with the late Alderman Cadell, James Dodsley, Lockyer, Davies, Peter Elmsley, Honest Tom Payne of the Mew's Gate, and Thomas Evans of the Strand, were all members of this society. They met first at the "Devil's Tavern," Temple-bar, then moved to the "Grecian," and finally from a weekly gathering, became