Part 6

3 Order'd, That all Combinations, Verses, and other exercises upon Public Occasions be printed only at yͤ University's New Printing House.

May 3ͬͩ 1699

Ordered--that 400 lbs weight of Paragon Greek Letter be sent for to the Widow Voskins in Holland.

* * * * *

At a general meeting of the Curators June 7ᵗʰ 1699

Order'd that Dͬ Green & Dͬ Oxenden or either of them do examine Dͬ Bentley's account in relation to our Press, and upon his delivery of the Vouchers relating to it, and all other things in his hands belonging to the University Press; give him a full discharg; and likewise take a discharg of him for the Summ of four hundred and thirty three pounds received by him of the University.

1 At a General Meeting of the Curatͬˢ Septebͬ yͤ 6ᵗʰ 1699 'twas then agreed yͭ Mr Crownfield be order'd to buy twelve Gallons of Linseed Oyle and a rowl of Parchment.

2 Order'd yͭ yͤ Sashes be renew'd.

3 Order'd yͭ twenty shillings per annū be allowed to Printers for their weigh-goes.

This last entry refers to the printers' annual holiday of which Randall Holme, writing in 1688, says

It is customary for all journeymen to make every year, new paper windows about _Bartholomew-tide_, at which time the master printer makes them a feast called a _waygoose_ to which is invited the corrector, founder, smith, ink-maker, etc., who all open their purses and give to the workmen to spend in the tavern or ale-house after the feast. From which time they begin to work by candle light[81].

By 1701 Bentley's activities had begun to bear fruit.

Already (says Monk) some handsome editions of Latin Classics had been printed.... Terence had been edited by Leng, of Catharine Hall, afterwards Bishop of Norwich; Horace by Talbot, the Hebrew Professor; Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius by the Hon. Arthur Annesley, Representative for the University; and Virgil by J. Laughton of Trinity.

Nor was it only in Holland that search was made for beautiful types. In 1700 Matthew Prior was sent, on behalf of the university, to procure Greek type (the famous _Grecs du Roi_) from the Paris press. The negotiations, however, fell through owing to the demand of the French that on the title-page of any book for which their type was used there should be added after the words _typis Academicis_, a full acknowledgment in the form _Caracteribus Græcis e typographeo regio Parisiensi_. Correspondence passed between Prior, the Earl of Manchester, the Chancellor, and the Abbé Bynon, but the university refused to comply with this condition[82].

Of the books printed about this time we may note first the works edited by Bentley himself.

The title-page of the famous edition of Horace (1711) is reproduced here and a full account both of its compilation and of its reception may be read in Monk's _Life_:

This publication had been long and anxiously expected; and its appearance excited much sensation and surprise. There were found between seven and eight hundred alterations of the common readings of Horace; all of which, contrary to the general practice of classical editors, were introduced into the text.... This book was, it must be confessed, unlike any edition of a Latin author ever before given to the world.

Especially characteristic of the atmosphere in which Bentley lived and worked is "the important affair of the dedication." Having discovered that the Earl of Oxford was "anxious that the world should know, that his ancestors were related to the Veres and Mortimers of former centuries, and that his family estate in Herefordshire had been in possession of the Harleys since the reign of Edward the First," Bentley took particular pains that these glories should be "fully and accurately displayed." "Good taste" comments Monk "had not yet abolished the fashion, which demanded from every dedicator, whether classical or vernacular, the most unsparing praise that language could supply."

Bentley's edition of Terence (1726) was designed, characteristically, to supplant and extinguish that of Francis Hare, Dean of Worcester. The text was corrected "in not less than a thousand places" and in every line the first accented syllable of every _dipodia_ was marked with an acute accent--"a laborious task, which must have vastly increased the trouble of correcting the press." Included in the first half of the volume were a _Schediasma_ or dissertation upon the metres of Terence and Bentley's _Commencement Oration_ of 1725, on the occasion of the creation of seven Doctors of Divinity. The second half of the book consisted of an edition of Phaedrus and Publius Syrus, the Phaedrus being undertaken to anticipate an edition projected by Hare containing emendations "of the most daring class."

_A Sermon upon Popery_, preached by Bentley before the university on 5 November, 1715, and printed in the same year, is of interest not only as an expression of the vigorous No-Popery spirit of 1715, but as supplying material and phraseology for the sermon recited by Corporal Trim in the second book of _Tristram Shandy_.

It was Bentley, too, who arranged for the publication of a second edition of Newton's _Principia_ in 1713. "The first impression being entirely exhausted," says Monk, "the lovers of philosophy were, in a manner, debarred access to the fountain of truth" and Bentley engaged Roger Cotes to supervise the new edition.

Into the history of Bentley's many controversies it is fortunately unnecessary to enter, but one of his pamphlets, which brought the university printer into the Vice-Chancellor's court on a charge of libel, must be mentioned.

In 1721 there appeared a pamphlet, written by Conyers Middleton, but published anonymously in London, entitled _Remarks, Paragraph by Paragraph, upon the Proposals lately publish'd by Richard Bentley, for a New Edition of the Greek Testament and Latin Version_, and full of "sheer personal malice." Bentley's proposals were described as "low and paltry higgling to squeeze our money from us," reminiscent of "those mendicants in the streets, who beg our charity with an _half sheet of proposals_ pinned upon their breasts."

Bentley's reply was prompt and vigorous; he chose to assume that the author of the pamphlet was Dr John Colbatch, the Casuistical Professor[83], and answered him in what Monk describes as the vocabulary of Billingsgate. "Cabbage-head," "Maggot," "Gnawing-rat," "Mountebank" were some of the terms used. "He never," wrote Bentley, "broaches a piece of mere knavery, without a preface about his conscience; nor ever offers to us downright nonsense, without eyes, muscles, and shoulders wrought up into the most solemn posture of gravity."

This was too much, even for academic controversy of the eighteenth century; Colbatch, having first disavowed the authorship of the _Remarks_, appealed to the Heads of Colleges. This body declared the book to be "a most virulent and scandalous libel" and Crownfield was prosecuted in the Vice-Chancellor's Court for having sold it. Dr Crosse, the Vice-Chancellor, was a "quiet and timid man" and after hazarding a judgment in Crownfield's favour, adjourned the case. In the next year Bentley was cited to appear in the Vice-Chancellor's Court to give evidence concerning the libel. "There was no difficulty," says Monk, "in obtaining the citation, but a great one in getting it served upon the Master: the Esquire-beadles ... were all as averse to such perilous service, as the mice in the fable were to undertake the office of belling the cat." One of the beadles, however, was bribed with a double fee, and Bentley offered no resistance. Instead, he contrived, by an exchange with a brother-chaplain, to be on duty at St James's during the month in which the Court was to assemble and eventually the proceedings against him were abandoned.

The most ambitious work which the University Press undertook about this time was an edition of the Suidas Lexicon in three volumes folio. For this enterprise Bentley was chiefly responsible. Ludolf Kuster, a professor from Berlin, had collated three of the Suidas manuscripts at Paris and was invited by Bentley to take up his residence at Cambridge and to publish his edition of the lexicon at the Press. Accordingly on 4 October, 1701, the university made an agreement with John Owen, an Oxford stationer, by which Owen undertook to purchase an edition of 1500 copies (150 on large paper) of Suidas in three volumes at the price of £1 10_s_ 6_d_ per sheet[84].

The exact relation of Owen to Cambridge is not quite clear. Evidently, he was a protegé of Bentley and though there is no record of his official appointment as a Cambridge printer, several books bear his imprint as _Typographus_, including Cellarius, _Geographia_ 1703; Ockley, _Introductio_ 1706; Caesar, 1706; Minucius Felix, 1707; Sallust, 1710[85]. The word _typographus_, as Bowes pointed out, is used rather loosely and Owen seems only to have been the publisher of the books quoted; on the other hand, there are among Crownfield's vouchers for 1705 the following:

June 23. 1705

Then received of Mr Corn. Crownfield (for the use of Mr Davies, and for correcting Caesars Commentary) the summe of thirty seven shillings and four pence, being for 28 sheets at 16_d_ the sheet from A to Ee, inclusive by me

£ _s_ _d_ JOHN OWEN 01 17 4

Compos'd in Caesar's Commentary's the sheets Ccc, Ddd, Eee, Fff at 8_s_ the sheet--_l_1 12_s_ 0_d_

Sept. 17. 1705

Receiv'd by JOHN OWEN

These receipts appear to show that Owen actually was at work as a compositor upon Davies's edition of Caesar which appeared with the imprint _Impensis Joannis Oweni, Typographi_[86].

From passages in Bentley's correspondence it also appears that Owen travelled in Holland on Bentley's behalf in 1706[87].

But long before this Owen had found himself unable, "through great poverty and being imprisoned on the amount of debts contracted," to carry out the Suidas agreement, and on 8 May, 1703, a new contract was made with Sir Theodore Janssen, who had already supplied Owen with large quantities of paper, for the completion of the work at the joint expense of the university and of Janssen himself, the editor's fee being fixed at £200[88].

As has been noted above, however, the Press continued to print certain other books for Owen. Thus Janssen writes to Crownfield on 19 October, 1704:

I have sent you to-day 150 Reams of fine genoa paper which is to be for yͤ use of Mͬ Jͦⁿ Owen when he hath signed an agreement such as Dͬ Bentley doth require ...[89].

In later years Owen seems to have laid his misfortunes at Bentley's door, since, in a dedication written by him to "Elias Abenaker of London, Gent." and prefixed to Ockley's translation of Modena, _History of the present Jews_ (ed. 1711), he writes:

I ... want Words to tell the World how much I am your Debtor, how often you have rescued me and my whole Family from the Jaws of Destruction; what noble Assistances you have supplied me with, to raise my Fortune in the World, and put my Affairs into a prosperous and flourishing Condition, had not a Person of an high Character, and a pretending Encourager of Arts and Sciences, and Printing in particular, (by the Encouragement of whose specious Promises I was induced to leave Oxford) been as Sedulous and Industrious to ruine and destroy me, by such Injustice and Cruelties, which if I should particularize, would gain Credit with few but those of the University of Cambridge, where the Fact is notoriously known[90].

In the meantime Kuster's edition of Suidas had duly appeared in 1705:

Kuster (writes Monk) having now, by means of his [Bentley's] patronage, completed the three noble volumes of his Suidas, their appearance raised the fame of the editor, while it excited public admiration at the spirit and liberality of the University of Cambridge in undertaking so magnificent a publication.

Correspondence between Janssen and Crownfield throws some interesting side-lights on business details--the fixing of the price and the choice of selling agents[91]:

Now that yͤ hurry of treating her Majᵗʸ is over[92] (writes Janssen) I hope yͤ University will come speedily to a resolution at what rate to sell Suidas, I would not have them to think of too high a price and I believe 3£ will be rather too much hoever I leave it to them but I hope they will not exceed 3£ which is 20_s_ a volume.

Dͬ Bentley had told me you would write to some booksellers in Hollͩ. Since we refused Mͬ Mortier's offers it might perhaps be of service but I think we could not pitch on a fitter person for disposing of a good quantity of Suidas beyond sea.

Bentley's financial negotiations with the Dutch booksellers were apparently not successful, since copies of the _Lexicon_ were disposed of to foreign booksellers by the method of exchange:

Feby 1ᵗʰ 1705/6. Agreed then also yͭ foreign booksellers be treated with for an exchange of an hundred[93] Suidas's, for a number of bookes wͨͪ shall be esteem'd of equal value, & yͭ Catalogues of proper bookes wᵗʰ their respective prises, be procur'd from them to be approv'd of by yͤ University.

The succession of troubles encountered by the university both in the production and distribution of this book illustrates the difficulties of the Curators in attempting to grapple with the details of stock-keeping and accountancy. By 1732 "part of yͤ impression was in yͤ University warehouse and yͤ rest was got into Mͬ Innys's[94] hands in London, but in such manner, yͭ neither had a perfect book."

After some two or three years of negotiation for the mutual purchase of sheets at ½_d_ a piece, the university, having bought the whole of Innys's stock for £400, acquired 410 complete sets of the work and appointed a Syndicate to dispose of them. The Syndics, however, found remaindering difficult:

It were well (says the writer of a memorandum of 1749) if we could get some one to take them all off our hands at almost any rate. I have tried Knapton and Whiston in vain. They durst not venture on the whole: but advise to advertize them at 30ˢ a Book, and let yͤ Booksellers have them at 25ˢ....

I have hopes yͭ Vailliant may take them all at 25ˢ a book, especially if he be allowed time for payment of the money, & yͤ University would take some of it in books, which we really want for yͤ Rustat Library[95].

Eventually, in 1752, 75 sets were disposed of to T. Merrill (a Cambridge bookseller) at one guinea each and the rest seem to have been exchanged[96]. So ended the most ambitious of the early publishing enterprises of the university.

Amongst the other books printed during this period, editions of the classics are prominent. The titles of these will be found in Appendix II and Davies's editions of Cicero, Barnes's Anacreon (1705) and Homer (1711), Taylor's Lysias (1740) may be specially noted. The edition of the _Medea_ and _Phoenissae_ of Euripides by W. Piers (1703) contains, in its preface, an interesting tribute to the renovation of Cambridge typography:

Si _Typorum elegantiam_ mireris, gratias merito ingentes habeto _Illustrissimo Principi_ Carolo _Duci_ Somersetensium _munificentissimo nostrae Academiae Cancellario_, cui Cordi est _nostrum_ imo _suum_ denuò revixisse _Typographéum_.

Mathematics is represented primarily by the second edition of Newton's _Principia_ (1713), by Le Clerc's _Physica_ (1700 etc.), by Robert Green's _Principles of Natural Philosophy_ (1712--an anti-Newtonian treatise) and by the _Praelectiones_ (1707 and 1710) and other works of W. Whiston; biography by Knight's _Life of Erasmus_ (1726); Oriental studies by Ockley's _Introductio ad Linguas Orientales_ (1706) and Lyons's _Hebrew Grammar_ (1735).

A work of more general interest is the first edition of Sir Thomas Browne's _Christian Morals_, published from the MS of the Author by John Jeffery and printed by Crownfield in 1716.

(Among the items may be noted one of Sir Isaac Newton's works and the Vice-Chancellor's order putting Sturbridge Fair out of bounds)

These, of course, are only a few titles selected from the bibliography of the period.

Between 1725 and 1738/9 there are no entries in the Curators' minute-book; the driving power of Bentley's energy and enthusiasm was flagging and the Press had become a source of pecuniary loss to the university. The agreements of 1706 and 1727 with the Stationers, by which the university surrendered the right of printing a large number of school books in return for money payments, no doubt represent an attempt to meet this difficulty[97].

Similarly in December, 1730, it was resolved to lease the university's right of printing bibles and prayer-books to "Mr James & Company" for the sum of £100 per annum, an additional £5 per annum to be paid during the lifetime of Jonathan Pindar, whose formal resignation had been arranged by a grace of 28 August[98].

This arose out of an application which has a special interest in the history of printing.

About the beginning of 1730 William Fenner, a London stationer,

did bring up from Edinburgh a Scotsman named Wᵐ Ged; who had or pretended to have found out the Art of casting, upon Plates, whole Pages of Letters ... wͨͪ 'twas thought would be of great advantage to the publick, as well as to the proprietors of the Invention.

This invention came to the notice of a type-founder named Thomas James who was so much struck by its possibilities that he was

of opinion that the Design of printing by such plates would in short time be brought to such perfection as would greatly injure if not wholly ruine the business of letter-founding, by wͨͪ he then made shift to support a large family.

Accordingly a partnership was formed between Ged, Fenner, and Thomas James. The design, it was alleged, "had at that time all imaginable appearance of Success"; Thomas James, being unable to get any help from his father ("a Clergyman then living upwͩˢ of 85 years of age, who had, upon a small Endowmͭ in Hampshire, brought up a numerous family"), applied to his brother John, an architect at Greenwich, for financial assistance. John James came into the partnership, paying an entrance fee of £100, and, as the invention of stereotype plates was likely to be used with most advantage for the printing of bibles and prayer-books, undertook to apply for a licence to the University of Cambridge--"the only one at that time unemploied."[99]

This application was successful and the lease was granted to Fenner on 23 April, 1731; Fenner's name was used as that of the only member of the partnership who was a stationer, and John James gave a bond for £100.

The plates were at first made in London, at a house in Bartholomew Close, but in the summer of 1732 a house was hired in Cambridge and all the materials and implements moved thither. "For yͤ better prosecuting the Affair," a certain James Watson was sent to Holland "as well as to hire Men, as to buy Presses" and several Dutchmen were employed in printing the nonpareil bible and the small book of common prayer by the new process.

But the business did not prosper. Ged quarrelled with Fenner and "left the whole business at a stand, Secreting or taking with him several Tools and other things to which he had no Right"[100]; Baskett, the king's printer, filed a Bill in Chancery against Fenner for printing bibles; the injunction was subsequently withdrawn, but meanwhile John James was losing confidence in the scheme and growing anxious about his money; he urged Fenner to "go on with the Cambridge Patent Work in common Type Way by the Assistance of Mr Watson, _and have nothing farther to do in the Plate Way_." "As far as I can learn," wrote James in another letter (28 Nov. 1732), "the Booksellers all agree that the Prayer-Book that is done will by no means pass. So that to proceed farther in this Way will but run us more and more out of Pocket." Finally, Fenner died in debt in 1734; four specimens of his work in Cambridge have survived: an octavo Book of Common Prayer, Thomas Johnson's _Letter to Mr Chandler_, John Colbatch's _Examination of the marriage treaty of Charles II_, and _A Collection of Poems_, by the Author of _A Poem on the Cambridge Ladies_.

His widow, Mary Fenner, carried on such business as was left and a bitter controversy, recalling the days of Thomas Buck, arose between her and her deceased husband's partners. The brothers James declared that they were £1000 out of pocket and had received not a penny in return; that Fenner had taken a grossly unfair advantage of the lease being in his name. Mrs Fenner, in reply, maintained that her husband had borne the brunt of many business difficulties alone and that his appeals to his partners for help and co-operation had been neglected.

In their complaints to the Vice-Chancellor Thomas and John James did not mince their words:

I humbly request (writes Thomas) that my Brother and I may be heard; that so the Scene of Iniquity carried on by Mr Fenner and now prosecuted by his Widow may be laid open ... for I do not find the change of Mrs Fenner's Religion has made any alteration in her morals.

As to what Fenner's wife (writes John) (who I fear is of as bad a principle as he was) may alledge, I can only say, she has no other cause of complaint, than that I refused to throw away all I had in yͤ world, for the Knave her husband to make Ducks and Drakes with.

The details of the controversy need not be examined here[101], but one short letter from Mrs Fenner to the Vice-Chancellor is worth preserving:

London 19 Jun. 1735 Honͬͩ Sͬ

these wates on you to beg the favour you will be so good as to stay three weeaks & then will wate on you, in that time will Do my indaver to See Mͬ James & if it is possable to bringe him to Some agreament I Rely upon your Goodness till that time & then Shall have an oppertuneyty to inform your worship of my case & will do wat is in my power to make you eassey as to the Deate is oing to the university

I am Sͬ your Dutyful Sarvant Mary Fenner

Only one book bearing the imprint of Mary Fenner (the sixth edition of Bentley's _Boyle Lectures_, 1735) has been preserved and her association with the university came to an end in 1738. In that year she relinquished her lease and John James agreed to pay £150 in settlement of the university's claim upon the ill-fated partnership.

The chief cause of the failure of the Press to fulfil the high hopes of 1696 appears, in Monk's words,

to have been the want of a permanent committee of management, a measure which, however obvious, was not adopted till many years afterwards. In the meantime, the receipt and disbursement of large sums of money, as well as the necessary negotiations with persons of business, were entrusted to the individuals holding the annual office of Vice-Chancellor, who in many cases possessed no previous acquaintance with the concern; a system which inevitably led to injurious and almost ruinous consequences.

This state of affairs is reflected in the preamble of the grace of 1737:

Cum prelum typographicum in usum et commoditatem Academicam olim destinatum per quadraginta retro annos ita negligenter fuerit administratum, ut Academiam oneraverit sumptu ultra bis mille et trecentas libras....

A Syndicate was accordingly appointed with plenary powers over the Press for three years.