Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/34

22 almanac on his own account, and defended himself against an action brought by the Company in which the monopoly was declared worthless. As, however, the Company still paid the Universities for the lease of the sole right to publish almanacs, they endeavoured to recover their privilege by Act of Parliament, but were defeated by Erskine in a memorable speech, who showed that, while supposed to be protectors of the order and the decencies of the press, the Company had not only entirely omitted to exercise their duties, but that, even in using their privileges, they had, to increase their revenue, printed, in the "Poor Robin's" and other almanacs, the most revolting indecencies; and the question was decided against them.

The "earliest men of letters" if we accept the word in its modern meaning of those who earn their bread by their pens were the dramatists; but the publication of their plays was a mere appendix to the acting thereof, and Shakespeare never drew a penny from the printing of his works. The Elizabethan dramatists the Greenes and Marlowes led a life of wretchedness only paralleled later on by the annals of Grub Street. As the use of the printing press expanded, however, a race of authors by profession sprang into existence. At the time of the Commonwealth James Howell, author of the "Epistolæ Ho-elianæ," who was thrown into the Fleet prison, appears to have made his bread by scribbling for the booksellers; Thomas Fuller, also, was among the first, as well as the quaintest, hack-writers; he observes, in the preface to his "Worthies," that no stationers have hitherto lost by him. His "Holy State" was reprinted four times before the Restoration, but the publisher continued to describe the last two impressions, on the