arrangements were voluntary on their part, and might be withdrawn by them, wholly or in any particular case, if they should see reason for doing so.” It is wonderful, indeed, that such a business should have sprung from the unaided efforts of a raw, uneducated, uncouth Lancashire lad. Originally, most of the great London publishers were anything but wealthy men. Jacob Tonson started with a capital of £100, left him by his father, a barber-sturgeon in Holborn. He is reported to have said when he died, “I wish I could have the world to begin again, because then I should have died worth £100,000, whereas I am now only worth £80,000.”—Lintott, the great rival of Tonson, left his daughter £55,000, and his son became high sheriff of Sussex.—Edmund Curll, who was born in the West of England, after passing through several menial capacities, became a bookseller’s assistant, and then kept a stall in the purlieus of Covent Garden.—Thomas Guy, whose name is still held in veneration as the founder of Guy’s Hospital, was the son of a coalheaver and lighterman. Very early he seems to have contracted most frugal habits. According to Nichols, he dined every day at his counter, with no other table-cloth than an old newspaper; and he was quite as economical in his dress. In order to get a frugal helpmate, he asked his servant-maid to become his wife. The girl, of course, was delighted, but presumed too much on her influence over her careful lover. One day, seeing that the paviers, repairing the street in front of the house, had neglected a broken place, she called their attention to it; but they told her that Guy had carefully marked a particular stone, beyond which they were not to go. “Well,” said the girl, “do you mend it; tell him I bade you, and I know he will not be angry.” However, Guy was, and the marriage did not take place. As a bachelor, Guy lived to a ripe old age. The cost of building Guy’s Hospital was £18,793, end he left £219,499 as an endowment. He left also money to Tamworth, his mother’s birthplace, which he represented in parliament for many years; £400 a-year to Christ’s Hospital, and £8,000 to his relative.—Robert Dodsley, who made a handsome fortune as a publisher, commenced life as a footman.—The far-famed Lackington was the son of a drunken cobbler at Wellington, and had no education at all. Loafing about the streets all day as a child, he thought he might turn his talents to account by crying pies, and as a pie-boy he acquired such a pre-eminence that he was soon engaged to vend almanacs. At fourteen he left this vagrant life to be apprenticed to a shoemaker. He came to London with half-a-crown and a wife; but in time he scraped together £25, and started in business in Chiswell Street. His plan was to sell for ready money, and at low prices. He then bought remainders of books which were generally destroyed, and thus he made a fortune. On his chariot, when he started one, he put for his motto,