Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/121

89 THE LONGMAN FAMILY. 89 Seven years, however, before this, Thomas Longman the second died, on the 5th February, 1797. Of the position to which he had attained it is sufficient to mention that when the Government were about to impose an additional duty on paper, subsequent to that of 1794, the firm of Longman urged such strong and unanswerable arguments against it and its impolicy that the idea was relinquished ; and at this time the house had nearly .100,000 embarked in various publications. Longman left his business to his eldest son, and to his second son, George, he bequeathed a handsome fortune, which enabled him to become a very extensive paper manufacturer at Maidstone, in Kent, and for some years he represented that borough in Parliament As a further honour, he was drawn for Sheriff of London, but did not serve the office. Edward Longman, the third son, was drowned at an early age in a voyage to India, whither he was pro- ceeding to a naval station in the East India Com- pany's service. At the time of Thomas Norton Longman's acces- sion to the chiefdom of the Paternoster Row firm, the literary world was undergoing a seething revolution* Genius was again let loose upon the earth to charm all men by her beauty, and to scare them for a while by her utter contempt for precedent. The torpor in which England had been wrapped during the whole of the foregone Hanoverian dynasty was changing into an eager feeling of unrest, and, later on, to a burning desire to do something, no matter what, and to do it thoroughly in one's own best manner, and at one's own truest promptings. No man saw the coming change more clearly than Longman ; and anxious to profit by 6