During that period the society had printed only four books; and then, deeming the assistance of booksellers necessary, they entered into a contract for three years with A. Millar, J. Gray, and J. Nourse; afterwards they contracted with six other booksellers, whose profits they retrenched: then they became their own booksellers; then they once more had recourse to three other booksellers; and finally, finding their finances almost exhausted, they laid before the public a memorial of the Present State of Affairs of the Society, April 17, 1748,” whereby it appeared that they had incurred so considerable a debt they could proceed no further.[21] Less than fifty years ago another society existed, under the very title of the Joint Stock Society proposed in 1825. Mr. Tyson, in a letter of June 21, 1779, to his friend Mr. Gough, the antiquary, mentions that a bequest of £5. was “left at the disposal of the _Society for the Encouragement of Literature_.”[22] If the literature of the present day owes its existence to that society, its offspring is most ungrateful; the foster-parent is not even remembered, nor is the time of its birth or death recorded in any public register. That it survived the bequest alluded to, only a very short period, appears certain; for in the very next year, 1780, Dr. Lettsom issued “Hints for establishing a Society for promoting useful Literature.” The doctor, a most benevolent man, and a good physician, dispensed much charity in private as well as in public, and patronized almost every humane institution for the relief and cure of human infirmity; and hence his eye was as microscopic in discernment, as his hand was experimental in the healing of griefs. Literature seems to have been to him as a gentle river that he rilled into, and which he thought could be diverted, or regulated by new channels and sluices; he appeared not to know, that it is an ocean of mighty waters, with countless currents and varying tides. He proposed largesses to indigent writers, and their widows and orphans, and “honorary rewards” to successful ones. Robertson, Bryant, Melmoth, Johnson, Gibbon, and many other “useful and accomplished writers,” were to have had the “honorary rewards” of the encouraging society. Such honours, such a society was to have forced on such men! The doctor’s “hints” were not adopted, except that to relieve the casualties of minor literary men, and their dependents, there now exists the _Literary Fund_.