Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/93

67 THE BOOKSELLERS OP OLDEN TIME'S. 6') which, the " Congers," will be dealt with hereafter in connection with the history of families still represented in the trade, but the " Chapter Coffee House " is too important to be passed over altogether. There is an amusing account of the Chapter Coffee House in the first number of the Connoisseur, It "is fre- quented by those encouragers of learning, the book- sellers. . . . Their criticisms are somewhat singular. When they say a good book, they do not mean to praise the style or sentiment, but the quick and exten- sive sale of it. ... A few nights ago I saw one of these gentlemen take up a sermon, and after seeming to pe- ruse it for some time, with great attention, he declared it was 'very good English.' The reader will judge whether I was most surprised or diverted, when I dis- covered that he was .not commending the purity or elegance of the diction, but the beauty of the type, which, it seems, is known among the printers by that appellation. . . . The character of. the bookseller is generally formed on the writers in his service. Thus one is a politician or a deist ; another affects humour, or aims at turns of wit or repartee ; while a third per- haps is grave, moral, and sententious." In this Coffee House the associated booksellers met to talk over their plans, and many a germ of most valuable projects was originated here; the books so published coming in time to be called " Chapter Books." Among the chief members of the association were John Rivington, John Murray, and Thomas Longman, James Dodson, Alderman Cadell, Tom Davies, Robert Baldwin (whose name, if not family, figured in bookselling annals for a century and a half), Peter Elmsley, and Joseph Johnson. Johnson was Cowper's publisher; the first volumes of the poems