The Aldine Magazine of Biography, Bibliography, Criticism, and the Arts: Dec ...

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SPECTABLE.

LETTERS TO MY SON AT ROME. That work, with my retrospection, crude as it

was, is nearly out of print. Its general features

came down only to the period of 1785. I have, DEDICATION.

therefore, nearly fifty-four years' material to lay MY DEAR Son,

before you

and the public. A brother bibliopole, about forty-five years The style you advised me to adopt of writing ago, wrote and published Memoirs of the plain facts into agreeable Fiction does not Forty-five First Years of his Life,” in a series suit either my talent or my taste, (if I possess of letters to a friend, with the following triple either,) nor would it meet the taste of the pubdedication :

lic, unless I could infuse the wizard-like spell 1st. To the public.

of a Scott, or the lofty imagination or profound 2nd. To that part of the numerous body of classical attainments of a Croly. I have no prebooksellers of Great Britain and Ireland, whose tensions to the school of either ; my intention conduct JustLY claimed the addition of re- is merely to státe facts, and their results, as

they occurred. (And lastly, though not least, in fame,) Although you are now treading on classic 3rd. To those sordid and malevolent BOOK ground, you are aware that I left a country SELLERS, whether they resplendent live in state school at twelve years of age; and was engaged, ly mansions, or in wretched huts of dark and like Cincinnatus, in agricultural pursuits till grovelling obscurity; to whom he says

fourteen, when I proceeded to London, imme“ I'll give every one a smart lash in my way.”

diately after the demise of Dr. Samuel John

son, 13th December, 1784. To this event I Now this personage, of whom I shall have to give an extended memoir, with anecdotes, in formerly alluded, as indirectly leading me to be

articled in 1785 to Mr. Thomas Evans, an emi. their proper place, had fair causes, great objects, and weighty motives for adopting his nent bookseller of that day, (in Paternoster

Row,) and with whom my brother had been armode of procedure, which succeeded to the ex

ticled from the year 1778. tent of his “most sanguine expectations." My first object is to gratify my vanity in en eventful and varied life, you and the public

Of the experience and vicissitudes of my deavouring to amuse the public; my second, to have yet to be informed through the succeeding benefit myself;—and I would not desire a more powerful distich applied to me than the follow-pages, addressed to you in a series of letters; ing, by my old friend Pindar,* to the venerable and of objects diverging from each other, with

a form that will admit of unlimited digressions, and worthy John Nichols and his Gentleman's out running into a dry and tedious detail

, or Magazine :

causing those unpleasant breaks and interrup“ John's Magazine all Magazines excels,

tions to which a common narrative might be And what's still better too for John-it sells .”

deemed liable. The phrase, “ it sells,” is so well understood

For this mode, too, I have the precedentby every bookseller, that its mention requires no

1st. Of an old bibliopolist, noticed at the apology; nor shall I offer any for dedicating a

commencement of this dedication. certain portion of my bibliographical labours to

2ud. The plain unsophisticated style of Hecyou, although in a style so different from the tor St. John, the supposed “ American Farmer," one which you suggested, after the publication whose feelings, habits, manners, and views so of my introductory, volume of “Fifty YEARS' much accord with my own, had Providence RECOLLECTIONS AN OLD BOOKSELLER.'

spared me a few paternal acres, or that, like his, * I published for Peter Pindar, (the late Dr. my only landlord were the Lord of all land. John Wolcot,) for five years.

3rd. The Letters of a Montague.

VOL. I. NO, I.

VARIETY.

4th. The Letters of Ignatius Sancho, (could From these chambers my letters will be conI happily follow his diction) a black, vulgarly veyed to you as “part and parcel” of “The called a negro, or negur, whose freedom of style ALDINE MAGAZINE.” often gratified me.

It is from this port, or harbour, that the 5th. The powerful Letters of Paul to his Aldine vessel is to get under weigh weekly and Kinsfolk ; and

monthly, with its cargo of literary merchan6th. The playful Letters of Peter to his dize, as stated in its original MANIFEST ; and Kinsfolk.

as I have changed my position in the land serSurely then there can be no impropriety in vice of others, in the language of Dryden, to my thus addressing my lucubrations to you.

“ You authentic witnesses I bring
My dear Son, I am,

Of this my manifest, that never more
Your affectionate Father,

My hand shall combat on the crooked shore.”
AN OLD BOOKSELLER,

I rest my hope on the Aldine anchor, and its

little bark, which will ever be freighted with LETTER I.

On the arrival of its contents at

Rome, I have to request you will return an exAldine Chambers, Paternoster Row, change of commodity, acceptable and interest

London, Oct. 24, 1838. MY DEAR Son,

ing to the literary world.

The booksellers and bookish world have al. I date this from a spot of classic name : to you, who are luxuriatinginaregion of classic glory

ready anticipated the objects of the Aldine - upon the very soilon which, in your neighbour Magazine, and express themselves warmly in hood of Bassiano and the Pontine Marshes,

its favour. Some, well acquainted with the subAldus Manutius drew his earliest breath. 1 ject, observe that no publisher, or wholesale or

retail bookseller, or his assistants, should be was glad to hear that you had quitted Rome for a time, and again sojourned at Florence, that without it as it passes through the press. city of palaces, and which appears to have gra- sister Mrs. C., and nine of my grandchildren

Yesterday was my birthday. Your dear tified you more than Pisa. Your return, however, to the Eternal City was requisite ; and affectionate mother and me. They were all in

out of fifteen, spent the day with your aged and the kind attention paid you by the venerable Thorwaldsen, (that heaven-inspired sculptor,) in the morn.” I regretted that my great grand

ruddy health, and, like Aurora, they “ushered -- by your brother artists, architects as well as children also were not with me; but they are painters and sculptors, and by the British no- still in Warwickshire, reclining on the banks of bility,—will, I trust, enable you at some future

the Avon. I must rest upon my oars, for day to become the architect of your own fortune. At all events, this attention and your letters “ The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve,” are eminently gratifying to an old man, hasten- and apprised me that I must conclude. ing on to the septuagenarian.

Your affectionate Father, To return to the Aldine Chambers, and

AN OLD BOOKSELLER. early associations. Nearly fifty four years have elapsed since I first beheld Mr. Stanley Crow

P.S. After the biographical sketch of the der on these premises, surrounded by his dozen Aldine Triumvirate, will be given memoirs of clerks, and double that number of black leather the most eminent persons connected with litewater buckets, hung around his warehouse in rature in the olden times, with their various case of fire. This impressed me with an idea marks, &c.; and, what will create consideraof his respectability and consequence. He was, ble interest in the present race, anecdotes of indeed, one of the most eminent booksellers of some of the most respectable booksellers and that day. He graduated with the celebrated others of our own time and their ancestors, for Sir James Hodges, bookseller, at the sign of three, four, and even five generations. the Looking Glass, on Old London Bridge, and who made himself conspicuous in voting the freedom of the city to the late Earl Chatham.

THE ALDINE TRIUMVIRATE. The present proprietor of the Aldine Chambers is Mr. Bagster, the printer and publisher The“ invention of printing" is a subject which of the exquisite Polyglotts, in various sizes, of has exercised many pens, and has elicited the “ Comprehensive book of Holy Writ;" a volumes upon volumes of controversy. Mr. performance that will render his name as impe- Timperley, in his very useful “ Biographical, rishable as the name of Aldus, after whom he Chronological

, and Historical Dictionary of the has appropriately designated the property. Most Remarkable Persons and Occurrences

connected with the Art of Typography,” after at this period that Aldus first conceived the citing more than one hundred arguments and idea of establishing a printing office. About opinions on the priority of claims to the inven- the year 1488 he is believed to have taken up tion, draws this conclusion : That to John his residence at Venice, as a spot eligible for GUTENBERG is due the appellation of the Father maturing his plans; and in 1494, or 1495, he of Printing; to PETER SCHOEFFER, that of sent forth the first production of his press. Father of Letter-founding; and to John Faust, In the course of the ensuing twenty years that of the Generous Patron, by whose means Manutius printed the works of the most ancient the wondrous discovery of the art of Printing Latin and Greek authors, as well as many was brought rapidly to perfection.”

productions of his contemporaries. Whilst he At a future season it is our intention to pre- paid the most sedulous attention to the affairs sent the readers of The ALDINE MAGAZINE of his printing office, he carried on a very exwith notices of the early printers; and, of the tensive correspondence with the literati of more eminent, to insert their distinctive mono- Europe ; he established an academy in his own grams and private marks. In the case imme- house, delivered lectures, and explained the diately before us the name and fame of Aldus classics to a numerous auditory of students ; were so nearly coeval with the first exercise of and even found time to compose a Latin Gramthe noble art, and were at an early period so mar, a Treatise on the Metres of Horace, a inseparably associated with the most elegant Greek Dictionary, and several other works chaproductions of the press, that we prefer plung-racterised by profound learning and an extening at once, in medias res, and gleaning, from sive variety of knowledge. So absorbed was various sources, a concise account of the Aldine Aldus in his professional duties, that, having Triumvirate—father, son, and grandson-by ordered his other essentially necessary affairs, whom, for more than a century, the business it was his custom to shut himself up in his of typography was carried on with a degree of study, and there to employ himself in revising success never yet surpassed, or even rivalled. his Greek and Latin manuscripts, in reading

According to Renouard (in his Annales de l'im- the letters which he received from the learned primerie des Aldes ), Tiraboski,* the Biographie in all parts of the world, and in writing answers Universelle, and other authorities, Aldus Manu- to them. To prevent interruption by impertitius was born at Bassian, or Bassiana, a little nent visits, he caused the following inscription town in the duchy of Lermonetta, in the Ro- to be placed over the door of his sanctum :man territory, about the year 1446 or 1447.

“ Whoever you are, Aldus earnestly entreats you He is thought to have been of Jewish extracto dispatch your business as soon as possible, and tion. His christian name, Aldus, was a con then depart; unless you come hither, like another traction of Theobaldus : his

was Hercules, to lend him some friendly assistance; for Manutius, or Manuzzio, to which he some- here will be work sufficient to employ you, and as times added the appellation of Pius, or Bassi- many as enter this place.” anus, or Romanus. The first of these appella This inscription was afterwards adopted, for tives was assumed by Aldus in 1509, from his a similar purpose, by the learned Oporinus, a having been the tutor of Albertus Pius, a prince printer, of Basil. of the noble house of Carpi, and to whom the Aldus Manutius was the inventor of the grateful printer dedicated the Organon of Aris- italic, or cursive character, which was first cut, totle, in 1495; the second was derived from under his instructions, by Francesco of Bohis birth-place.

The education of Aldus Manutius was re- another admirable Crichton. He was born in 1463. ceived at Rome and at Ferrara : in the latter At the age of eighteen he is said to have been master town he learned Greek under Baptista Guarino. of eighteen languages, and was accounted a prodigy As indicated above, he became tutor to Albertus of erudition. Master of all the liberal arts, an adPius, Prince of Carpi. In 1482 he left Ferrara, mirable poet, and a skilful disputant, he, in 1486, with his noble pupil, to reside at Mirandola, ing to dispute on nine hundred propositions on differ

went to Rome, where he published a challenge, offerwith the celebrated Pius Mirandola.t It was

ent subjects. Instead, however, of being answered as

he expected, a charge of heresy was brought against * Girolamo Tiraboschi, born at Bergamo in 1731, him, and he was compelled to leave the eternal city. died in 1794, was librarian and counsellor to the Settling at Florence, on ap estate given to him by Duke of Modena, by whom he was knighted. He Lorenzo de Medici, he devoted his latter years to the was the author of a History of Italian Literature, in study of theology. He died in 1496. It may not sixteen volumes, quarto, and other works.

be thought unamusing to add, that his works were

printed at Strasburgh, in the year 1507, by a printer + This John Picus, youngest son of John Francis named Knobloch ; when the errata of a single volume Picus, Prince of Mirandola, appears to have been occupied fifteen folio pages!

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