Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/89

65 THE BOOKSELLERS OF OLDEN TIMES. 65 spirit, if we take the victualling and furnishing of such an enterprise as Samuel Johnson's English Dic- tionary for its highest feat (as perhaps we justly may) ; and many a Petitor's Memories, Ency- clopedia Britannica, &c., in this country and others, for its lower, we must gratefully admit the real useful- ness, respectability, and merit to the world. But in later times owing to many causes, which have been active, not on the book guild alone, such spirit has long been diminished, and has now ' as good as dis- appeared without hope of reinstation in this quarter.' " To return to Dodsley, we find that in 1753 he commenced the World, a weekly essay ridiculing " with novelty and good humour, the fashions, follies, vices, and absurdities of that part of the human species which calls itself the World. Three guineas was allowed as literary remuneration for each number, but Moore, the editor, a receiver of this allowance, obtained much gratuitous assistance from Lord Ches- terfield, Horace Walpole, and other men of wit and fashion. Another periodical, but a bi-weekly, the Rambler, all the work of Samuel Johnson, appeared without intermission for the space of two years, and in its gravity, its high morality, and its sententious language presents a curious contrast to its livelier companion. Dodsley, after having published Burke's earliest productions, entrusted to his care the manage- ment of a very important venture, the Annual Register, which was to carry Dodsley's name up to our own times. In the same year, 1758, his last play Cleone, in which he ventured to rise to tragedy, after having been declined by Garrick was acted at Covent Garden amidst the greatest applause, and for a number of nights, that, in those times, constituted a