Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/41

25 Tonson and Levalle in 1679. This connection with Dryden, which lasted till the poet's death, was of only less importance to the furtherance of Tonson's fortune than a bargain concluded four years later with Brabazon Aylmer for one half of his interest in the "Paradise Lost," which Dryden told him was one of the greatest poems England had ever produced. Still he waited four years before he ventured to publish, and then only by the safe method of subscription, and in 1788 the folio edition came out, and by the sale of this and future editions Tonson was, according to Disraeli, enabled to keep his carriage. The other moiety of the copyright was subsequently purchased. There is a pleasant description of Tonson, in these early days, in a short poem by Rowe:—

While in your early days of reputation You for blue garter had not such a passion, While yet you did not live, as now your trade is, To drink with noble lords and toast their ladies, Thou Jacob Tonson, wert, to my conceiving, The cheerfullest, best honest fellow living."

From John Dunton, the bookseller, we get the following description:—"He was bookseller to the famous Dryden, and is himself a very good judge of persons and authors; and, as there is nobody more competently qualified to give their opinion upon another, so there is none who does it with a more severe exactness, or with less partiality; for, to do Mr. Tonson justice, he speaks his mind upon all occasions, and will flatter nobody."

Not only did Tonson first make "Paradise Lost" popular, but some years afterwards he was the first bookseller to throw Shakespeare open to a reading public.