Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/345

305 AND JAMES NISBET. 305 years he was a bookseller, doubly entitled, therefore, to a notice here, and upon the counter of his shop, under the Royal Exchange, his famous and laborious "Concordance "was compiled. Queen Caroline, to whom it was dedicated, unluckily died before publication, and the downfall of the expectations he had formed from her patronage was too much for the author, and his friends were compelled to place him in a lunatic asylum. Having made his escape, he brought an action against his relatives for false imprisonment offering his sister the choice of Newgate, Reading and Aylesbury jails, and the prison at Windsor Castle. He was never insane in the eyes of his employers, and as a corrector of the press, especially in the finer editions of the classics, his services were in- valuable. Henceforth he adopted the name of "Alex- ander the Corrector," as expressive of his character of censor general to the public morals. Armed with a large sponge, his favourite and incessant weapon, he perambulated the town, wiping out all obnoxious signs, more especially " Number 45," then rendered famous by Wilkes. Giving out, too, that he had a commission from above to preach a general reforma- tion of manners, he made the attempt first among the gownsmen at Oxford, and then among the prisoners at Newgate ; but in neither case did he meet with much encouragement. He asked for knighthood from the King, and a vacant ward from his fellow-citizens ; and on refusal said that he possessed the hearts if not .the hands of his friends. He was found dead on his knees, apparently in a posture of prayer, at his lodg- ings in Islington on November 1st, 1770. Samuel Richardson appears to have entertained grateful remembrance of the commission to write the