Grub Street
Authorship in the Days of Johnson. By A. S. Collins. (Holden. 30s. net.)
III the ears of anyone with bookish tastes, the phrase "Crab Street" has a romantic sound. It recalls Johnson and Goldsmith and Gissing and other familiar names ; and we enjoy the stories of life in Grub Street because they are commonly told by those who have passed through its struggles and miseries into the affluence of successful authorship OT the comfort of retirement with a pension. Of those who live and die in Grub Street less is heard and nothing is remembered.
As to the eighteenth century, Mr. Collins refers, not unfairly, to the grossly exaggerated view of Grub Street conditions in that period for which Macaulay and Thackeray have been largely responsible. To Macaulay, Johnson was "the last survivor of the genuine race of Grub Street hacks," whose lot it was "to translate ten hours a day for the wages of a ditcher." Actually, Johnson, though miserable enough from a variety of causes, entered upon Grub Street life with- out illusions and without a whine. To write for bread can never be anything but a painful task, and the fundamental causes of literary wretchedness are common to every generation. But there are two main differences between the Grub Street of to-day and that of Johnson's time : first, the range of periodical literature was immeasurably smaller ; secondly, literature was hardly a respectable, and certainly not a gentlemanlike occupation. Sir John Hawkins was shocked and astonished at Johnson's becoming an "author by profession."
Mr. Collins's book is divided into four chapters. The first deals with "Author and Bookseller," and shows how the hack-writer was dependent almost entirely upon the book seller for a living. "It is wretched," wrote Roger North. "to consider what pickpocket work with the help of the press these demi-booksellers make," and the scene in such a " demi- bookseller's " office is vividly presented by Fielding in Tii( Author's Farce. But it was not the bookseller's fault. Readers were few and, as Johnson said more than once, the booksellers were on the whole, a generous set of men.
The second chapter (" The Copyright Struggle ") gives a detailed account of the piracy rampant at the beginning 0.! the century, of the Copyright Act of 1710, and of the valn struggle of the booksellers to secure perpetual copyright. The third chapter, on Patronage, traces the working of the system as it affected the careers of various authors of the period and provokes many interesting conjectures. What, for instance, would have been the effect upon English liter- ature if Goldsmith had been a man of means and Gray had been obliged to work for a living ? By 1140 the public WaS taking the place of the patron, and Mr. Collins's last chapter traces the growth of this public. Due credit is given to the influence of the Gentleman's Magazine,- of the Taller and Spectator, of the novel, and of the circulating library ; 50 Mr. Collins sanely concludes that "the reading public mot be brought up and will always largely continue to subsist on the everyday journey-work of letters."
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