bookseller, "whose circumstances being
somewhat perplexing, was making his way to
Holland," and he himself embarked for Boston
with thirty passengers flying for safety from
the rout of Sedgemoor. While they were
still detained in the Downs, a terrible storm
came on, and he remarks that it was on that
very day "when the innocent Cornish, and
the compassionate Mrs. Gaunt fell sacrifices
to popish cruelty." We were four months
at sea, and the captain being a rough, covetous
tarpaulin, with a smattering of divinity,"
half starved the passengers: also inflicted
insufferably long expositions of Scripture upon
them, which highly offended the poor
Sedgemoor fugitives. It was a happy day for
them all when they landed at Boston.

John Dunton's picture of Boston, the Boston
only some twenty years later of Hester Prynne,
is very graphic; and we are vividly reminded
of Hawthorn's powerful story when we
find him detailing how a woman, convicted
of intrigue with an Indian, was condemned
to wear upon her right arm the figure of
an Indian, and in red cloth. His accounts
of the visits he paid, and the marvels he saw,
are very amusing. He visited the venerable
Elliott, and his company of civilised red men,
and saw the king and queen; the former,
he says, had a sort of a horse face; but the
lady had eyes black as jet, and teeth white
as ivory. There was somewhat of the sharp
Yankee spirit of trade extant, even at that early
day; for he remarks that "he who trades with
the people of Boston, should be furnished with
a Grecian faith, as he may get promises enough,
but their payments come late." The venture
of books, however, which he took over,
answered well, and after a pleasant sojourn
of some months, he returned safely to
England.

During this time, his business seems to
have been carried on by his excellent wife,
whose letters prove her to have been a
woman of no common attainments, Philaret
Iris notwithstanding. The following summer
Dunton went to Holland, and at the close of
that year, trusting better times were at hand,
he returned, determined now in good earnest to
stick to his shop. "My humour of rambling,"
he says, "was now pretty nigh over,"
so he took a new shop, opposite the Poultry
Compter, again set up the sign of the Black
Raven, and opened it on the same day that
the Prince of Orange came to London.

The next nine years of his life passed
pleasantly and prosperously. He became
an extensive publisher, and the accounts he
gives, both of the writers he employed, and the
booksellers whom he knew, are very curious
and entertaining. The literary profession was
as low as it well could be, and it is singular to
find how many hack writers were in orders.
The Nonconformist ministers, however, wrote
largely, and their works were sure of an
extensive sale. John remarks how anxious
the trade was to obtain any works of
Baxter, Bates, or Howe, and there were
plenty of hacks who, for a trifling consideration
were ready to manufacture to order,
works that had never been written by the
author whose name was displayed on the title-
page. This practice, as may well be supposed,
was scouted by respectable publishers.
Among John Dunton's writers, we find some
well-known names: Defoe, whom he characterises
as "of very good parts, and of very clear
sense, but he writes too much;" Elkanah
Settle, who "has got himself the report of
being a good poet;" then there is Mr. Pitts,
"a mere angel of a man," who was, in part,
author of a work of a very unangelic character,
The Bloody Assize; but which he was
well qualified to write, having been a surgeon
in Monmouth's unfortunate army, and thus a
witness of Jefferies' appalling butcheries. Of
this work more than six thousand were sold.
Another writer, now forgotten, was a Mr.
Barlow, rector of Chalgrove, "a man, in some
sense, of very great worth; but he has got a
strange habit (scarcely so strange to us, we
must add, as to John) of borrowing money,
and deferring the payment thereof;" there
is, also, Mr. Phillips, "who will write a design
off in a very little time, if the gout or claret
do not stop him." But "the best-accomplished
hackney author I ever met with, was
Mr. Bradshaw; his genius was quite above
the common size, and his style was
incomparably fine." This fine genius unhappily had
an unaccountable habit of receiving money in
advance, and then walking off, no one knew
whither; as "you could present to him no
design, but he would go through with it."
Dunton "fixed him down to one, and furnished
him both with money and books; but my
gentleman thought fit to remove himself, nor
could I find him, till one day I met his wife,
who told me he was engaged on the Turkish
Spy, at forty shillings a sheet, twenty shillings
for himself as he sent them, and twenty
shillings to pay off old arrears.

John tells us that during these nine
years he printed more than six hundred
works; when we bear in mind that there
were several London booksellers in more
extensive trade than he, we can scarcely accuse
that age of the general illiteracy which is
commonly charged on it. Many of John's
publications were certainly but of ephemeral
value, but there were some, both religious
and historical, that took a high place.
His great venture, however, he tells us,
was the Athenian Mercury, a weekly
paper devoted to all kinds of discussion, but
chiefly to literature. This met with great
success, being highly commended by many
writers: the Pindaric lady Philomela, now
known as Mrs. Rowe, writing a poem in it, and
"Mr. Swift, a country gentleman, sent me an
ode." Swift was, at that time, all unknown to
fame, a resident at Moor Park, as the humble
protégé of Sir William Temple. This
periodical flourished for six years, ending in