founder he looked very sly, and watched me as if I had been a thief, being I suppose very fearful that I should steal some of their art from them. Cupi was not very forward to let me see his work-house, and the first time avoided it by saying he could not stay for he was just going out, but the second time I did see it though he was as loth then as before, saying he believed there was nobody at work. But I told him the person who was with me wanted to see the trade, and he would oblige me by showing it. He had places for four to work, although there was but one casting. I did not ask Rolij to show me his work-house the first time I went to him, but the second time I went up and saw places for four men and nobody at work. I asked him where his men were; he told me they were gone to a fair at Harlem, but I believe he had lent them out as well as his matrices to some other letter founder. As I was going along the street with him, he told me there was an English gentleman that had lodged at such a house (pointing to it), for whom he had cast three hundred pounds worth of work not long ago, which if true must have been for Tonson. “I have bought of Rolij in all thirty sets of matrices, besides the box of flowers and 15 molds made of brass as almost all the Dutch molds I saw were. Mr. Cupi has in all but eighteen sets of matrices, but is continually, as I hear, cutting more, designing in time to set up printing and bookselling too. He is a very close and very civil fellow. I do not know but one time or other I may take another trip into this country for matrices, for there’s no trusting to anybody here to manage business for one. There’s hardly such a thing as an honest man to be found. They all live by buying and selling, and whatever they can bite anyone of, they count it fairly got in the way of trade. I hear but a very indifferent character of the young man, the broker, who interprets for me. He is very expert indeed at that, and I do not know what I should have done without him: but I am informed that if it lay in his power to come at any of my money, he would contrive some way or other to cozen me of it, or part of it at least; for which reason I took particular care. He stood very hard with me for a gilder per cent. for every hundred I laid out. The moulds and matrices together stand me in ——. I have enquired very diligently of abundance of Printers, Booksellers, and of Mr. Rolij whether there are any letter founders at Harlem, Leyden, The Hague, Delft or Utrecht. I was told by some they knew of none, and by others that there were none, and Rolij assured me there were none at any of those places; and I myself saw at Foskins[408] a box with letter in it, {217} directed for Utrecht; and it seems