Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/63

Rh knowing how to do so without the imputation of vanity, what in this country has been done very rarely, he contrives an appearance of compulsion; that when he could complain that his letters were surreptitiously published, he might decently and defensively publish them himself." The letters at all events were genuine, and Pope in a feigned or real indignation caused Curll to be brought for a third time (the second had been for publishing the Duke of Buckingham's words) before the bar of the House of Lords for disobeying its standard rules; but on examination the book was not found to contain any letters from a peer, and Curll was dismissed, and boldly continued the publication till five volumes had been issued.

In spite, or perhaps on account of the unblushing effrontery with which he run amuck at everything and everybody, Curll was a successful man, as his repeated removals to better and better premises plainly testifies. Over his best shop in Covent Garden he erected the Bible as a sign. He has had many apologists, among others worthy John Nichols, as deserving commendation for his industry in preserving our national remains, but the scavenger, when he gathers his daily filth, lays little claim to doing a meritorious action, he only works unpleasantly for his daily bread; and it has been the repeated cry of publishers, even in our own times, in reproducing an immoral book, that they were wishing only for the preservation of something rare and curious. It were not well that any book once written should ever die, that any one link in the vast chain of human thought should ever be irrecoverably lost, but the publisher of such a book must, at least, bear the same penalty of stigma as the author, for he has not