Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/48

30 In 1700 the poet died, but Tonson was by this time in affluent circumstances.

About the date of Dryden's death, probably before it, as his portrait was included among the other members, the famous Kit-Cat Club was founded by Tonson. Various are the derivations of the club. The most circumstantial account of its origin is given by the scurrilous writer, Ned Ward, in his "Secret History of Clubs." It was established, he says, "by an amphibious mortal, chief merchant to the Muses, to inveigle new profitable chaps, who, having more wit than experience, put but a slender value as yet upon their maiden performances." (Tonson must have been a rare publisher if he found "new chaps" to be in any way profitable.) With the usual custom of the times, Tonson was always ready to give his author, especially upon concluding a bargain, wherewithal to drink, but he now proposed to add pastry in the shape of mutton pies, and, according to Ward, promises to make the meeting weekly, provided his clients would give him the first refusal of their productions. This generous proposal was very readily agreed to by the whole poetic class, and the cook's name being Christopher, called for brevity Kit, and his sign the Cat and Fiddle, they very merrily derived a quaint denomination from puss and her master, and from thence called themselves the Kit-Cat Club. According to Arbuthnot, their toasting-glasses had verses upon them in honour of "old cats and young kits," and many of these toasts were printed in Tonson's fifth "Miscellany." At first they met in Shire Lane, (Ward says Gray's Inn Lane), and subsequently at the Fountain Tavern in the Strand. In a short time the chief men of letters having joined the club,