Page:Biographia literaria; or, Biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions (IA biographialitera04cole).pdf/175

 joined my old friend. Only three guineas for selling a thousand copies of a work in two volumes? O Sir! (cries the young traveller) you have mistaken the word. There have been none of them sold; they have been sent back from London long ago; and this £3. 3s. is for the cellaridge, or warehouse-room in our book cellar. The work was in consequence preferred from the ominous cellar of the publisher's to the author's garret; and on presenting a copy to an acquaintance the old gentleman used to tell the anecdote with great humor and still greater good nature.

With equal lack of worldly knowledge, I was a far more than equal sufferer for it, at the very outset of my authorship. Toward the close of the first year from the time, that in an inauspicious hour I left the friendly cloysters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever honored Jesus College, Cambridge, I was persuaded by sundry Philanthropists and Anti-polemists to set on foot a periodical work, entitled, that (according to the general motto of the work) all might know the truth, and that the truth might make us free! In order to exempt it from the stamp-tax, and likewise to contribute as little as possible to the supposed guilt of a war against freedom, it was to be published on every eighth day, thirty-two pages, large octavo, closely printed, and price