abruptly adds, that he gave up love-making,
and was now hurried on to another extreme
—politics.

The aspect of affairs in one thousand six
hundred and seventy-nine was certainly
threatening. The King's continued
unwillingness to call the parliament together, and
the influence of the Duke of York over him,
excited the just indignation of the people,
who felt that they had already borne too
much. Petitions, therefore, were got up by
the Whig party, praying that parliament
might be assembled; and counter-petitions
were got up by the "Tories and Tantivies,"
expressing their "abhorrence" of all such
petitioners. In London, the head-quarters
of the Whigs, there was great ferment, and

          Up arose the 'prentices all,
          Living in London both proper and tall,

to vindicate the rights of free Englishmen to
a free parliament.

The apprentices of the chief Presbyterian
bookseller could not be inactive
on such an occasion, so Joshua Evans, and
John Dunton were among the first, and were
soon joined by three hundred, and had
frequent meetings at Russel's house in
Ironmonger Lane; a tavern honored by Sir
Roger l'Estrange, on account of the opinions
of its frequenters, with some of his choicest
Billingsgate. Here the valorous apprentices
met; doubtless toasting The Good Cause, as
their fathers had done during a more
successful contest, and probably wearing the
green ribbon, the badge of the Petitioners
in their caps, just as the Abhorrers
mounted the scarlet ribbon—the blue and the
orange being as yet unknown. With no little
glee John tells us how badly the counter-
petition of the Tory apprentices succeeded,
and how thousands of signatures were
subscribed to theirs. It appears that this
petition was in the form of a remonstrance to
be addressed to the Lord Mayor. So, on the
appointed day, a deputation of twenty—
John among the foremost—went, being
introduced by that worthy man, so celebrated for
his lifelong benevolence, Mr. Firmin. The
young patriots were courteously received by
the Lord Mayor—Sir Patience Ward—who
promised he would acquaint the King with
its contents, and then dismissed them with a
recommendation to behave themselves as
became London apprentices.

Dunton's term of servitude was now near
its close, and the next notice we find is, the
customary feast which he provided for his
friends at its expiration, to celebrate its
funeral; such entertainments, he remarks,
"are vanity and very expensive," and we
find that one hundred apprentices were
invited!

John Dunton, now free of his master and
of the City, and of the worshipful Stationers'
Company, determined to set up for himself
at once—a practice very general in all
trades at this time. But the young London
trader was expected to be thrifty; so John
did not begin with a dashing shop, but took
"half a shop, a warehouse, and a fashionable
chamber, which I had of honest Mr. John
Brown, whose extra civility to me I have not
yet forgotten;" and he adds, "the world and
business now set me perfectly at ease from all
inclination to love and courtship." Printing,
he tells us, was "uppermost in my thoughts,
and, therefore, authors began to ply me with
specimens, as earnestly and with as much
passion and concern, as the watermen do
passengers with oars and scullers." Having
had some acquaintance with this class during
his apprenticeship, John kept them all at a
distance, knowing them, as he says, to be
inveterate paste and scissors hacks, and most
inveterate liars, too; for, "they will pretend
to have studied six or seven years in the
Bodleian Library, and to have turned over
all the fathers, though you shall find that
they can scarce tell whether they flourished
before the Christian era or afterwards." So
the first publication of our young tradesman
was no trashy work, but a pious book,
written by worthy Mr. Doolittle, "and it fully
answered its end, for, by exchanging it
through the whole trade, it furnished my
shop with all sorts of books saleable at that
time, and, moreover, brought me acquainted
with the ingenious gentlemen who were then
students under Mr. Doolittle's care." These
belonged to the academy at Islington, where,
it still being the period of the Indulgence,
this learned Nonconformist was permitted
to teach young gentlemen to construe Greek,
without having, as heretofore, the fear of bonds
and imprisonment before his eyes. Among
other books, Dunton also printed a sermon,
preached by a country clergyman on the
occasion of the "Ignoramus Jury" acquitting
Lord Shaftesbury. This is worthy of notice,
if only to show the extravagance of party-
feeling, since the title of the sermon was,
Daniel in the Den; or, the Lord-President's
Imprisonment and Miraculous Deliverance.

If in the year one thousand six hundred
and seventy-nine public affairs were gloomy,
they were far more gloomy in one thousand
six hundred and eighty-one—two, when the
King dissolved the Parliament, and the laws
against the Nonconformists were put in force
more severely than ever. But John Dunton,
who seems to have been, to use Cuddie
Headrigg's phrase, but a coward body after
a', kept respectfully aloof from politics.
It was a dangerous time for booksellers
and printers, many of whom were fined:
among them two of his acquaintance, Janeway,
the chief opponent of Sir Roger l'Estrange,
and Benjamin Harris, a bookseller in
Gracechurch-street, who were set in the pillory
besides, for pretended libels. When Harris
was pilloried, Dunton tells us, that his noble-
hearted wife stood by him, to defend her
husband from the mob, and doubtless she