Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/86

62 6i THE BOOKSELLERS OF OLDEN TIMES. mate friends of Pope. Here he wrote a dramatic satire, The Toy Shop, with which Pope was so pleased, that he interested himself in procuring its acceptance at Covent Garden. The piece was successful, and Pope, adding a substantial present on his own account of one hundred pounds, Dodsley was enabled to open a small bookseller's shop in Pall Mall, then far from enjoying its present fashionable repute. In this new situation, without any apprenticeship whatever, he soon attracted the attention not only of celebrated literary men, but his shop became a favourite lounge for noble and wealthy dilettanti. In 1738, began his first acquaintance with Johnson, who offered him the manuscript of London, a Satire. " Paul Whitehead had a little before got ten guineas for a poem, and I would not take less than Paul Whitehead," and with- out any haggling, the bargain was concluded. Busy as he soon began to be in his shop, Dodsley did not neglect original composition. He produced several successful farces, and in 1744, edited and published the work by which his name is best known now, A Collection of Plays by Old Authors, which did much to revive the study of Elizabethan literature, and was most fruitful in its influence on later generations. In about the following year Dodsley proposed to Johnson that he should write a dictionary of the English language, and after some hesitation on the author's part, the proposal was accepted. The dic- tionary was to be the joint property as was then beginning to be the case with all Avorks of import- ance of several booksellers, viz. : Robert Dodsley, Charles Hitch, Andrew Millar, Messrs. Longman, and Messrs. Knapton ; the management of it during publication being confided to Andrew Millar. The