Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/517

475 PROVINCIAL BOOKSELLERS. 475 writes " At the age of eighty-two I considered myself a young man. I could, without fatigue, walk forty miles a day. But during the last few years I have felt a sensible decay, and, like a stone rolling downhill, its velocity increases with its progress. The strings of the instrument are one after another giving way, never to be brought into tune." Yet he did not die till 1815, at the ripe old age of ninety-two. At the close of the last century Hutton lost a valuable collection of books, and other valuable property, through the lav/less riots that took place in his native city ; of these disturbances the author of the Press says : " When Birmingham, for riots and for crimes, Shall meet the keen reproach of future times, Then shall she find, amongst' our honoured race, One name to save her from entire disgrace. " This "one name" was that of John Baskerville, a printer, a contemporary of Hutton, and one of the most famous English type-founders. Commencing life as a schoolmaster, his inclination for books turned his attention to type-founding, but he spent 600 before he produced one letter that thoroughly satisfied his exquisitely critical taste, and probably some thousands before his business began to prove remune- rative ; and, after all, his printing speculations yielded more honour than profit. Upon paying a heavy royalty to the University of Cambridge, he was allowed to print a Bible in royal folio, which, for beauty of type, is still unrivalled ; but the slender and delicate form of his letters were, as Dr. Dibdin remarks, better suited to smaller books, and show to the greatest advantage in his I2mo. "Virgil" and 302