Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/66

48 commandment had been rendered a positive, instead of a negative injunction. The Spectator wickedly suggests that, judging from the morals of the day, very many copies must have got abroad into continuous use. In the Bible of 1653, moreover, the printers allowed "know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God" to stand uncorrected. However, the Universities and the King's printer still possessed the monopoly, and this new trade of good cheap Bibles "proving not only very detrimental to the public revenues, but likewise to the King's printer, all ways and means were devised to quash the same, which, being vigorously put in execution, the booksellers, by frequent seizures and prosecutions, became so great sufferers, that they judged a further pursuit thereof inconsistent with their interests." Defeated in this manner, Guy cautiously induced the University of Oxford to contract with him for an assignment of their privilege, and not only obtained type from Holland, and printed the Bible in London, but was, later on, in 1681, according to Dunton, a partner with Parker in printing the Bible, at Oxford (Parker could have been no connection of the famous publishing family).

Guy seems to have contracted in his early days very frugal and personally pernicious habits. According to Nichols, he is said to have dined every day at his counter, "with no other table-cloth than an old newspaper," and if the "Intelligence" or the "Newes" of that period really served him for a cloth, the dish that contained his meat must have been uncommonly small. "He was also," it is added, "as little nice in his apparel." It was probably, too, in the commencement of his career, that, looking round for a tidy and