Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/178

144 144 CONSTABLE, CAD ELL, AND BLACK. ordinary stock of general knowledge, his biographer relates a characteristic anecdote. " A gentleman in this city of Edinburgh once told me he wanted as much matter as would form a junction between a certain history and its continuation to a later period. He found Tytler lodged in one of those elevated apartments called garrets, and was in- formed by the old woman with whom he resided, that he could not see him, as he had gone to bed rather the worse for liquor. Determined, however, not to depart without his errand, he was shown into Mr. Tytler's apartment by the light of a lamp, where he found him in the situation described by the landlady. The gentleman having acquainted him with the nature of the business which brought him at so late an hour, Mr. Tytler called for pen and ink, and in a short time produced about a page and a half of letterpress, which answered the end as completely as if it had been the result of the most mature deliberation, pre- vious notice, and a mind undisturbed by any liquid capable of deranging its ideas." On the death of Macfarquhar the whole work be- came the property of Andrew Bell. The fourth edition, augmented to twenty volumes, was completed in 1810, under the able superinten- dence of Dr. James Millar ; but the editor was pre- vented from availing himself of Professor Robison's excellent supplementary articles by a temporary separation of that property from that of the principal work. This issue consisted of three thousand five hundred copies. With the completion of this edition the progress of improvement was for a time suspended ; but in 1814 the copyright of the work was purchased by Archibald