EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PRINTERS

Crownfield retired from the office of printer in 1740 and received a pension from the university until his death in 1743[103]. He was a bookseller as well as a printer and seems to have done some binding as well[104]. His bookselling business was carried on after his death by his son James, and a book of 1744 is described on the title-page as "printed for J. Crownfield."

His successor was Joseph Bentham, appointed first by the Curators as 'Inspector' on 28 March, 1740[105], and elected printer on 14 December of the same year.

Bentham was the son of Samuel Bentham, Vicar of Wichford, near Ely; one of his brothers was James Bentham the historian of Ely and another, Edward Bentham, of Oxford, author of Funebres Orationes and other works.

Joseph Bentham was free of the Stationers' Company and Carter, the historian of Cambridge, refers to him as "allowed by all Judges to be as great a Proficient in the Mystery as any in England; which the Cambridge Common Prayer Books and Bibles ... printed by him, will sufficiently evince."[106]

Before Bentham's appointment, steps had already been taken by the university to revive the business of printing and selling bibles. Thus, in December, 1740, the Curators agreed to print small bibles (9000) price 2s and 1000 on large paper at 2s 6d, and six months later 11,000 small nonpareil bibles and 1000 on large paper.

The services of Charles Bathurst, of London, were secured as agent and from 1738 to 1744 he was engaged in "buying, procuring, and expediting Paper, Types, Servants, and other necessaries."

Bathurst's memorandum of 1751, though an ex parte statement, throws an interesting light on printing conditions at Cambridge:

The Insolvency (he writes) of the University's late Lessees for Bibles and the wishes and power of the King's Printer considered, it was then a prevailing opinion, that no advantage could well be made by printing Bibles and Com. Prayers: therefore the Syndics were very diffident and cautious in undertaking other Impressions[107].

However, having previously passed a resolution that Bentham was to sell no bibles without authority from one of themselves, the Syndics in March, 174³/₄, covenanted with Bathurst that he should be the sole selling agent for all books printed at Cambridge. Several editions of the bible and prayer-book were put in hand and subsequently reprinted, "but not near so fast as they were sold." Bathurst grew impatient: "If two presses will not do," he wrote to the Vice-Chancellor, "[I hope that] three shall [be] employ'd in it: for truly the jests People make here of the negligence of our Advantage and Honour are very irksome." The university, on the other hand, found itself unable to make the necessary outlay of money for paper. Bathurst had, according to his own account, spent considerable sums in the purchase of type and had made a six weeks' voyage to Holland in 1747 to procure a good stock of paper. One parcel was duly received by Bentham at Cambridge, but by the time that the second consignment arrived, a new Vice-Chancellor (Dr Parris, Master of Sidney Sussex College) had taken office and the paper was promptly returned.

I have returned your paper again (wrote the Vice-Chancellor) which yet I would not have done, if we had either wanted it, or had money left to have paid for it.... The Welsh Bible is paid for within a trifle: works of authors bring in but a trifle: our chief dependance must be on what our books in your hands produce.... I am reduced to y^e necessity of either returning your paper, or, what is still worse, putting an intire stop to y^e press[108].

A fresh arrangement was therefore proposed by which Bathurst should pay ready money for books printed and the university should not be required to advance money to carry on the business.

Another source of trouble both to the Press and to Bathurst during this period was a second attack made by Baskett, the king's printer, upon the rights of the university.

In 1741 the Syndics had printed for Bathurst an Abridgement of the Laws of Excise, and on its publication Baskett obtained an injunction to stop its sale. Litigation dragged on until 1758, when the Court of King's Bench decided in favour of the university, declaring that it was entrusted with "a concurrent Authority to print Acts of Parliament and Abridgements by letters patent of K. Hen. VIII and K. Charles I."

Dyer says of Bentham that "he was not eager after money in the way of business, but rather ambitious of printing Works that would do him credit. He had a great taste for Gardening and a turn for humour. He was an amiable man, as all the Benthams were; and was the only Bentham of the family that was not in orders. There were six brothers, who all used to assemble at the Prebendal-house in Ely at Christmas."[109] Joseph was an alderman of Cambridge and lived in a house adjoining the Press in Silver Street, the whole group of buildings forming "a sort of Quadrangle or Square." This house had belonged to Matthew Stokes, Registrary from 1558 to 1591, and Cole refers to the arms ("carved very handsomely and very large") over the chimneypiece in the parlour[110].

Of the books printed by Bentham the most sumptuous is The History of Ely Cathedral by his brother, James Bentham, a large volume illustrated with many engravings and published in 1765.

Other illustrated works of some interest are Zachary Grey's edition of Samuel Butler's Hudibras (1774) with a "set of new cuts" by Hogarth and Cantabrigia Depicta (1763)[111]. There may also be noted a Latin version of Pope's Ode on St Cecilia's Day and a succession of Seatonian prize poems by Christopher Smart; a volume of Odes (1756) by William Mason; Roger Long's Astronomy (1744); Robert Masters's History of the College of Corpus Christi (1752); a Latin version (anonymously published) of Gray's Elegy by Christopher Anstey and W. H. Roberts, Provost of Eton: and many editions of the classics, including Squire's Plutarch de Iside et Osiride (1744), Taylor's Demosthenes (various years) and Richard Hurd's Horace (1757).

In 1715, when James Gibbs presented his design for "the Publick Building at Cambridge," his plans included provision for the printing-house above the Registrary's office in the southern wing; and it has been therefore inferred that the printing-house in Silver Street was not adequate to the needs of the university[112]. Only a portion of Gibbs's scheme (the Senate House) was carried out and in 1762 the Syndics of the Press, seeking fresh accommodation, purchased a house, called The White Lion, which probably stood on the south side of Silver Street, facing the old Press. This was the first step taken in the acquisition of the present site.

Bentham continued in office until 1766 and well maintained the typographical reputation of the Press, but a more famous name is that of John Baskerville. Originally a writing-master at Birmingham where, from 1733 to 1737, he was teaching at a school in the Bull Ring, he afterwards took up, with great success, the trade of japanning and in 1750 began his experiments in type-founding. He set his mind to the improvement of type, press, paper, and method of printing:

It is not my desire (he wrote in the preface to his Milton, 1757) to print many books, but such only as are books of Consequence, and which the public may be pleased to see in an elegant dress, and to purchase at such a price as will repay the extraordinary care and expense that must necessarily be bestowed upon them.... If this performance shall appear to persons of judgment and penetration in the Paper, Letter, Ink, and Workmanship to excel; I hope their approbation may contribute to procure for me what would indeed be the extent of my Ambition, a power to print an Octavo Common-Prayer Book, and a Folio Bible.

This ambition was fulfilled by Baskerville's getting into touch with the university. In 1757 he sent a specimen of type to a friend at Cambridge, explaining that

the size is calculated for people who begin to want Spectacles but are ashamed to use them at Church.... If I find favour with the University, & they give me a Grant to print an Edition of a prayer book according to the specimen I would ... send to Cambridge two presses, Workmen & all other requisites, but should be glad to take the chance of the Edition to my self, & make the University such Considerations as they should think fit to prescribe.... My highest Ambition is to print a folio Bible, with the same letter of the inclosed Specimen.

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The application was successful and on 15 December, 1758, an agreement was made with the university by which Baskerville was to have leave to print a folio bible and two octavo common-prayer books, and on the following day Baskerville was duly elected to be "one of the Stationers & Printers" of the university for ten years, securities for £500 each being given by Baskerville himself and by John Eaves, a toymaker of Birmingham.

The conditions imposed upon the new printer were strict: he was to print in Cambridge only such books as the Syndics gave him leave to print; on the title-page of no other book was he to describe himself as Printer to the University; inspectors appointed by the Syndics were to have free access to his printing-office; and Baskerville was to pay the university £20 for every 1000 of the 8vo common-prayer. On 31 May, 1759, Baskerville wrote from Birmingham to the Vice-Chancellor:

Sir,

I have at last sent everything requisite to begin the Prayer Book at Cambridge. The Bearer M^r Tho. Warren is my Deputy in conducting the whole. I have ordered him to inform you of every step he takes, and to desire you would appoint a person to tell out the number of sheets before they go to press and again before they are packed up for Birmingham. M^r Bentham will inform you how many sheets per 1000 are allowed for wast. I have attempted several ornaments, but none of them please me so well as the specimen; which I hope will be approved by you and the Gentlemen of the Syndick. I propose printing off 2000 the first impression, but only 1000 of the State holidays &c which the patentee has left out. The paper is very good and stands me in 27 or 28 shillings the Ream.

I am taking great pains, in order to produce a striking title-page & specimen of the Bible which I hope will be ready in about six weeks. The importance of the work demands all my attention; not only for my own (eternal) reputation; but (I hope) also to convince the world, that the University in the honour done me has not intirely misplaced their Favours.

You will please to accept & give my most respectful duty to the University, particularly to the Gentlemen of the Syndick. I should be very happy if I could make an Interest to a few Gentⁿ. to whom the work would not be disagreeable, to survey the sheets, after my people had corrected them as accurately as they are able, that I might, if possible, be free from every error of the press; for which I would gladly make suitable acknowledgements. I procured a sealed copy of the Common prayer with much trouble and expense from the Cathedral of Litchfield, but found it the most inaccurate and ill printed book I ever saw: so that I returned it with thanks[113].

Evidently neither the university nor Bentham was willing to give Baskerville a free hand. Bentham was naturally jealous of his own position and the Syndics' previous experience of leases granted to outside printers had been unfortunate. Reed's criticism is therefore a little too harsh: "This learned body," he writes, "appear to have been influenced in the transaction more by a wish to fill their own coffers than by a desire to promote the interests of the Art; and the heavy premiums exacted from Baskerville for the privilege thus accorded effectually deprived him of any advantage whatever in the undertaking."[114]

By a further agreement of 3 July, 1761, Baskerville undertook to pay £12 10s 0d per 1000 for the 4000 copies to be printed of the 12 mo Common Prayer and in a letter of 2 November, 1762, he wrote in a dismal strain to Horace Walpole:

The University of Cambridge have given me a Grant to print there 8vo. & 12mo. Common prayer Books; but under such Shackles as greatly hurt me. I pay them for the former twenty, & for the latter twelve pound ten shillings the thousand, & to the Stationers Company thirty two pound for their permission to print one Edition of the Psalms in Metre to the small prayer book: add to this the great Expence of double and treble Carriage, & the inconvenience of a Printing House an hundred Miles off. All this Summer I have had nothing to print at Home. My folio Bible is pretty far advanced at Cambridge, which will cost me near £2000 all hired at 5 p Cent. If this does not sell, I shall be obliged to sacrifice a small Patrimony which brings me in [£74] a Year to this Business of printing; which I am heartily tired of & repent I ever attempted. It is surely a particular hardship that I should not get Bread in my own Country (and it is too late to go abroad) after having acquired the Reputation of excelling in the most useful Art known to Mankind; while every one who excels as a Player, Fidler, Dancer &c not only lives in Affluence but has it [in] their power to save a Fortune.

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However, four prayer-books (two with long lines and two in double column) were produced by Baskerville in 1760 and of these two were reprinted in the following year; the folio bible appeared in 1763.

In spite of their failure from the commercial point of view, Baskerville's prayer-books and bible were recognised as something finer than, or at any rate as something different in kind from, what had been produced before. Dibdin called the bible "one of the most beautifully printed books in the world" and called special attention to the title-page as having "all the power and brilliancy of copper-plate." The contrast, too, between the dignified design of Baskerville's title-pages and the conventionally crowded title-page of the period has also been duly emphasised[115].

On the other hand, Baskerville's type has been criticised as being modelled too closely upon his own mastery of penmanship—the upstrokes very thin, the downstrokes very thick, the serifs very fine[116]. Controversy apart, Baskerville's is without doubt the most distinguished typographical work associated with the University Press in the eighteenth century.

Depressed by the financial failure of his bible, Baskerville printed no more in Cambridge after 1763[117]; when he died twelve years later, a French society bought his types and used them for an edition of Voltaire and other works.

Bentham continued to hold the office of printer until 1766. On 13 December of that year he resigned and John Archdeacon, an Irishman, was elected in his place, his salary being fixed two years later at £140 a year. Archdeacon had been appointed Inspector of the Press two months before, and, as appears from certain passages in Nichols's Literary Anecdotes[118], had been associated with a scheme by which Bowyer had contemplated taking over the management of the University Press:

In consequence (writes Nichols) of overtures from a few respectable friends at Cambridge, M^r Bowyer had some inclination, towards the latter end of 1765, to have undertaken the management of the University Press, by purchasing a lease and their exclusive privileges, by which for several years they had cleared a considerable sum. To accomplish this he took a journey to Cambridge; and afterwards sent the Compiler of these Anecdotes to negotiate with the Vice-Chancellor. The treaty was fruitless; but he did not much regret the disappointment.

Evidently it was intended that Archdeacon should be the printer under Bowyer's management, since Nichols wrote to Bowyer in September, 1765:

I write to you now from the house of M^r Labutte[119], with whom I have dined, and who has most obligingly shewn me all in his power. M^r Archdeacon is not at home. I have opened to M^r Labutte my plan, who is of opinion something may be done. I have talked also with a Compositor, who is sensible, and who now works in the house. Six hundred a year I believe may carry it. They talk of ten having been offered. For 7 years last past the University have cleared one-thousand-three-hundred pounds annually; besides farming the Almanack (200 l. more). This might at least be doubled by opening the trade in new channels. If any bookseller of reputation would enter into a scheme with you, an immense fortune would certainly be raised....

and Bowyer, in his reply, wrote:

M^r Archdeacon, as you observe, must be a leading person, and there is some delicacy necessary to be shewn to him.

This proposal, however, came to nothing, and no university documents relating to it have been preserved.

From the business point of view, the printing and selling of bibles and prayer-books no doubt continued to be the most important branch of Archdeacon's activities. In a collection of agents' accounts for the years 1766 and 1767 the well-known names of Edward Dilly, John Rivington, James Waugh, T. and J. Merrill appear. One of these accounts, made out in Archdeacon's own hand[120], is reproduced here as showing the numbers and prices of bibles supplied to Rivington during the period of six months and also the way in which the accounts were examined and approved by the Syndics of the Press.

In the year following that of Archdeacon's appointment a contract, similar to those of 1706 and 1727, was made with the Stationers' Company by which the Stationers, in return for an annual payment of £500, were granted the right of printing a large number of books (including school editions of classical authors, Lily's Grammar, Almanacks, Gradus ad Parnassum, Horn Book prints and Psalters) for the term of 21 years[121].

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Later, in 1775, an Act of Parliament secured to the universities the perpetual copyright of all schoolbooks bequeathed to them; but in the same year it was ruled in the Court of Common Pleas that the right of printing almanacks was a common law right over which the Crown had no control, and the Stationers' Company thereupon discontinued their payments to the universities.

However, in 1781 a new almanack duty act granted to each university the sum of £500 per annum as compensation. At Cambridge this sum was placed at the disposal of the Syndics of the Press for the publication of works of learning by the following grace of 11 June, 1782:

Cum ad graves librorum imprimendorum sumptus sublevandos omnigenaeque adeo eruditionis studium promovendum, annuo quingentarum librarum reditu Academiam nuper auxerit munificentia publica; ne aut nostra negligentia deflorescat tantus publice habitus literis honos, aut in alios usus transferatur quod doctrinae amplificandae sacrum esse oporteat; placeat vobis ut Typographici Preli Curatores in hac etiam parte Syndici vestri constituantur, atque ut quingentae quotannis librae, si ipsis necessarium videatur, vel in novas veterum scriptorum editiones apparandas, vel in recentiorum opera divulganda insumendae iis hoc nomine e Communi Cista erogentur....

Since the abolition of the paper duty and the consequent loss to the university of the advantage of drawback, this grant constitutes the single subsidy which the Syndics of the Press receive from an outside source.

About this time the competency of the Syndics was called into question. It was alleged, for instance, that one Syndic did not know the difference between collating and collecting MSS; a more serious charge was that the warehouse in Silver Street, acquired in 1672, was damp and that great injury had been done to the stock of sheets kept there. In reply, Dr Plumptre asserted that the damage done amounted only to £20. Archdeacon remained in office till the year of his death, 1795; in 1793 John Burges was elected printer and acted in partnership with him for two years.

Of the books printed in the last thirty years of the eighteenth century one of the most ambitious was Thomas Kipling's facsimile edition, in two folio volumes, of the Codex Bezae (1793), "the very crown of the Cambridge Press." Kipling was the leader of the prosecution of William Freind, author of Peace and Union recommended to the associated bodies of Republicans and Anti-Republicans (2nd ed. 1793), and refused to allow Gilbert Wakefield's Silva Critica to be printed at the Press on account of the author's unorthodoxy[122].

Gray's Commemoration Ode, set to music by Dr Randal, was printed in 1769[123]; Samuel Ogden's Sermons on the Efficacy of Prayer and Intercession (Boswell's favourite reading during his tour to the Hebrides) were published in 1770 and were followed by other volumes of sermons in 1777; the Parker MSS were catalogued by James Nasmith and published in 1777, the Baker collection by Robert Masters in 1784; Thomas Martyn, Professor of Botany, published a Catalogus Horti Botanici in 1771 and Elements of Natural History in 1775; the second edition of John Wesley's Duty and Advantage of early rising was printed in 1785 and the changing spirit of the age is reflected in a sermon of 1788 entitled Slavery inconsistent with the Spirit of Christianity and a Sermon on Duelling, by Thomas Jones (1792).

The beginnings of the study of modern languages in Cambridge are seen in La Butte's French Grammar (2nd ed. 1790) and in various editions of Tasso and other Italian authors by Agostino Isola, a teacher who, at different times, could reckon Thomas Gray, William Pitt, and William Wordsworth among his pupils[124].

Ten Minutes' Advice to Freshmen by A Questionist, printed by Archdeacon for J. Deighton in 1785, deserves a few lines of quotation:

It is not reckoned fashionable to go to St Mary's on a Sunday.—But I know no harm in going, nor that it is any reproach to a man's understanding to be seen publickly in the same place with the most dignified and respectable persons of the University.—To say nothing about the regularity of the thing, and its being approved of by people whose good opinion you may be desirous to obtain.

It is neither my business nor my inclination to prose to you upon the usefulness of Mathematical learning—it is sufficient that it has its uses....

Of the standard of mathematical printing at this period a circumstantial complaint is preserved by Nichols in a letter from William Ludlam, author of Rudiments of Mathematics (2nd ed. 1787) and other works[125]:

For my own part, I am sometimes forced to make types, which are commonly brass, of which I here send you a specimen (± a ± b ± c). It is called plus-minus ±. I printed my first tracts at Cambridge when Archdeacon (not Bentham) was their printer. I was very sick of it; the University meanly provided with mathematical types insomuch that they used daggers turned sideways for plus's. They were sunk into arrant traders, even to printing hand-bills, quack-bills, &c., which they then for the first time permitted for Archdeacon's profit. As to tablework of which I had a deal, they knew nothing of it; and many a brass rule was I forced to make myself.... I complained of this to Mr Bowyer, and would have had him print my essay on Hadley's quadrant[126]; but he was too full of more important work. I remember I told him I had marked all Archdeacon's damaged letters; which were not a few, especially in the italic. To which the old gentleman replied 'I don't like you the better for that.'

One of the last books printed by the Archdeacon-Burges partnership was a translation of a Latin poem, The Immortality of the Soul, by Isaac Hawkins Browne who, "one of the first wits of this country," according to Johnson, "got into Parliament, and never opened his mouth."

John Burges continued as sole printer after the death of Archdeacon in 1795. Two large dictionaries were, amongst other works, printed during his term of office: Ladvocat's Historical and Biographical Dictionary (1800-1801) and Hoogeveen's Dictionarium Analogicum (1800); academical works of reference, such as Cambridge University Calendar (1796) and the Graduati Cantabrigienses (1800), also begin to appear; the Calendar, however, was not regularly printed at the Press until 1826, and it is only since 1914 that the Syndics have been responsible for its publication[127].

Finally, there may be noted Relhan's Flora Cantabrigiensis (2nd ed. 1802) and Harraden's Picturesque Views of Cambridge (1800) containing 24 views from original drawings by Richard Harraden, a London artist who came to Cambridge in 1798.

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(From Cantabrigia Depicta, 1763)

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