Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/520

478 478 PROVINCIAL BOOKSELLERS, Dictionary," which occupied ten years in publication and is still far from complete. Brice was at all times a shielder of the oppressed ; and when the Exeter play-actors were purchased out of their theatre by the Methodists, who converted it into a chapel, and indicted them as vagrants, he published a poem " The Playhouse Church; or, new Actors of Devotion," which so stirred up popular feeling that the Method- ists were fain to restore the place to its former possessors, who, under Brice's patronage, opened their house for some time gratis to all comers. In grati- tude the players brought his characteristics of speech and dress into their dramas, and even Garrick eventually introduced him, under, of course, a pseudonyme, in the " Clandestine Marriage." At the time of his death, in 17/3, he was the oldest master-printer in England. His corpse lay for some days in state at the Apollo Inn ; every person admitted to view it paid a shilling, and the money so received went towards defraying the expense of his funeral, which was attended by three hundred freemasons, for he had not only been a zealous member of the fraternity, but at the period of his de- cease he was looked upon as the father of the craft. Another West of England worthy, though he was only a bookseller for the short space of seven years, has perhaps higher claim upon our attention than any other provincial bibliopole. Joseph Cottle was born at Bristol in the year 1770, and at the age of twenty-one he became a bookseller in his native city. In 1795 he published a volume of his own " Poems " and himself an author he was generously able to appreciate the work of better men. Through extraordinary circumstances he became acquainted