Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/256

 Walter Dodsley, proprietor of the 'Annual Register' (, Men of Invention and Industry). This is a misconception based on the following passage in 'Literary Anecdotes' (vol. vi. pt. i. p. 443): 'Mr. John Walter died July 25, 1803. He was the only apprentice of Mr. Robert Dodsley; was afterwards forty years a bookseller at Charing Cross' (see also Annual Reg. xxxix. 13). Robert Dodsley retired from business early in 1759 (ib. ut sup.) John Walter, his only apprentice, may or may not have been a relative of the founder of 'The Times,' but was certainly not identical with him; he was related to Richard Walter [q. v.] Like his namesake, he was a printer and publisher, but his business had been established at Charing Cross for upwards of forty years, whereas his namesake's business was always carried on at Printing House Square; and in 1789 John Walter of 'The Times' announced that 'for the more effectual carrying into execution the various objects of the logographic press, he has taken the premises lately occupied by Mr. Debrett, opposite Old Bond Street, Piccadilly' (advertisement in Morning Herald, 19 Jan. 1789). There is thus no doubt that the two men were different persons, carrying on business of the same kind simultaneously in different localities.

The logographic process was not a success, although the titles of some forty books printed by it, and sold by John Walter in Printing House Square, are given in a flysheet, now in the British Museum, issued by John Walter as an appeal for public support some time between 1785 and 1788. Many of the books are of quite ephemeral interest. But among them are ' Robinson Crusoe,' 2 vols. 8vo; 'Bishop Butler's Analogy,' 8vo; 'Translation of Necker's Finances of France,' 3 vols. 8vo; 'Translation of Arataeus' (sic), 8vo, and 'Life of Henry VII,' 8vo, presumably a reprint of Bacon's treatise (cf. Notes and Queries, 1st ser. i. 198, 3rd ser. ix. 3, 5th ser. xii. 223, 252, 314). Possibly 'as a means of obtaining a profitable business in job printing' (, ut sup.), he started a small newspaper originally entitled 'The Daily Universal Register,' of which the first number, 'printed logographically,' was issued on 1 Jan. 1785. This was really, though not in name, the first number of 'The Times.' The nine-hundred-and-fortieth number, which appeared on 1 Jan. 1788, was for the first time entitled 'The Times, or Daily Universal Register,' and was still described as 'printed logographically;' but the alternative title was dropped on 18 March, though the logographic process of production survived for some time longer. A symptom of its practical failure is to be found in the fact that when the name was changed the price of the paper was raised from twopence-half- penny to threepence.

'The Times'—including under this title the 'Daily Universal Register'—was no great success at the outset. It was regarded by its founder rather as a by-product of the logographic press than as an independent venture standing on its own merits. As a printer and an innovator in the art of printing, Walter regarded himself as a public benefactor, and frequently advanced his claims to the national gratitude in the columns of his paper and in fly-sheets reprinted therefrom. But the American war, which had shattered his fortunes as an underwriter, still exercised a malign influence over his new project. 'Among many other projects which offered themselves to my view was a plan to print logographically. I sat down closely to digest it, and formed a fount which reduced the English language from ninety thousand words which were usually used in printing to about fifteen hundred. . . . By this means I was enabled to print much faster than by taking up single letters. ... I was advised to get a number of nobility and men of letters. . . to patronise the plan, to which his majesty was to have been the patron. But happening unfortunately, as it turned out, to correspond with Dr. Franklin, then ambassador at Paris, whose opinion I wished for, his name was among my list of subscribers, and when it was given, among near two hundred more, to the king's librarian, and a fount of the cemented words had been sent there [to Buckingham House] for his majesty's inspection and acceptance, I found an increasing coolness in the librarian, and afterwards a note from him, saying the king had viewed it with pleasure, but, there being no room in Buckingham House, he desired I would send some person to take it away. Thus ended royal patronage; and when it [the invention] was used by me in business, the journeymen cabaled and refused to work at the invention without I paid the prices as paid in the common way. Thus all the expence and labour I had been at for some years fell to the ground' (letter to Lord Kenyon, ut sup.) The fount was removed from Buckingham House to the British Museum, where it is still preserved (Walter to Earl of Ailesbury in Hist. MSS. Comm. 15th Rep. vii. 244).

The printing business, however, apart from the publication of the paper, cannot have been quite so unsuccessful as Walter here