University of Virginia Library

Lawton Gilliver: Pope's Bookseller
by
James McLaverty

In Authorship in the Days of Johnson, Arthur Collins describes Pope as 'the pioneer of literature as an honourable and remunerative profession,'[1] one who helped establish a new alliance between author and bookseller. In this article I am concerned with one of the booksellers he dealt with, Lawton Gilliver, who worked for him from 1729 to 1738. It was an important period for Pope in two ways: it saw the publication of most of his major poems (the Dunciad, the Essay on Man, and the epistles Warburton called Moral Essays); and it saw him encroaching on preserves that were usually the bookseller's. He sought maximum profit for his labours by selling his copyrights for short periods or by dealing directly with printers and distributors; and he controlled the presentation of his work to the public, even providing a context for his poems by promoting the work of his friends and protégés. Gilliver's career was dominated by his relations with Pope. Although he was a member of a Conger, Pope's poetry was the basis of his business, and it was through Pope that he became involved with other writers and enterprises. After he quarrelled with Pope over the profits of Works II (a quarrel which coincided with the break-up of the Conger), he concentrated on the retail side of his business; but he had little success and in 1742 he went bankrupt. I shall consider his career in five sections: apprenticeship; publishing for Pope; business connected with Pope; the Conger; retailing and bankruptcy.

Gilliver came from Pilsley in Derbyshire. The Stationers' Register shows that he was bound apprentice to Jonah Bowyer on 6 March 1721: 'Lawton Gilliver Son of John late of Pilsey in the County of Derby Gentln. Deced. to Jonah Bowyer West End St. Paul's Bookseller. 7 Years.

Cons. 80 li.'[2] The entry shows that Gilliver came from a good family (his father was a gentleman) which could afford the high premium of eighty pounds to have him bound to a prosperous London bookseller. I have found no record of Lawton Gilliver's birth in the Pilsley parish registers (in the custody of the Rector of North Wingfield), but it seems that the Gilliver family moved to Pilsley from Egginton in 1704, when Robert Gilliver, distinguished in the register by the prefix 'Mr,' moved there on his marriage to Rose More. The baptism of a Lawton Gilliver, son of Robert, is recorded in the register of Egginton Parish Church (at the Derbyshire County Record Office, Matlock) on 19 September 1703. This could be the man apprenticed to Bowyer: the name is unusual, the date of birth is appropriate, and the father may have been the man who moved to Pilsley. On the other hand, Lawton Gilliver's father is named John in the Stationers' Register, so the date of birth of Pope's bookseller must remain uncertain.

Jonah Bowyer, Gilliver's master, had built up his business on the same lines as that of his master, Thomas Bennet. Bennet had been patronised by High Church Tories such as Atterbury, South, and Smalridge, and had even been involved on Boyle's side in the controversy with Richard Bentley—later Pope's butt—over the Letters of Phalaris.[3] Bowyer inherited much of this trade and, with Bennet's other former apprentice, Henry Clements, shared in the distribution of the books from the Oxford Press. Bowyer died, however, while Gilliver was still serving his time, and the name of his widow, Christiana, appears in the Stationers' Register when Gilliver is freed on 7 May 1728. I am not sure how much Gilliver benefited from his association with the Bowyers. Mrs. Bowyer carried on the business until 1737, but she shared only one copyright with Gilliver, that to William Burscough's Apostolical Decree in 1734. On the other hand, I have found Gilliver advertising Oxford books, George Hickes's Thesaurus (1705), Henry Maundrell's A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem (1732), Xenophon's Anabasis (1735), and Junius's Etymologicum Anglicanum (1743), and he probably got these through Mrs. Bowyer. More important perhaps were the contacts he made while working for the Bowyers: Joseph Trapp, for example, transferred his business to Gilliver.

As R. H. Griffith noted in 1945,[4] Gilliver started to advertise books

on his own account before he was officially freed. Entry 35 in the Monthly Catalogue for March 1728 reads: As Gilliver actually finished his seven years as apprentice on 6 March 1728, he probably set up on his own account as soon as he could after that date, regardless of whether he was officially free. The advertisement shows that his shop was in Fleet Street. The records of the assessment for the land tax for the ward of Farringdon Without, the division of St. Dunstan's in the West (Guildhall Library MS 11,316/86), show that by 1728 he was occupying the premises between Faulcon Court and Hercules Pillars Alley which had been occupied the year before by Edward Watkins. David Foxon has suggested that the sign chosen for the shop, Homer's Head, is significant: Pope's fame at this time was as the translator of Homer and an engraving of Homer's head had appeared as a frontispiece to both the Iliad and the Odyssey;[5] it seems unlikely that Gilliver chose this name by chance, and probable that Pope helped or encouraged him to open his shop. Pope was, after all, at this time without a bookseller (he had quarrelled with Bernard Lintot over the Odyssey and vowed never to employ him again), and we know that on other occasions he set up members of the book trade: he established Henry Woodfall as master of his own printingshop,[6] and gave Robert Dodsley one hundred pounds to begin a career as a bookseller.[7] It is not certain that either Gilliver or John Wright (the printer of the Dunciad Variorum, who also entered new premises in 1728) were established in their businesses by Pope, but there is a strong possibility that they were.

The first publication which resulted from the alliance of Pope and Gilliver was the Dunciad Variorum. In many ways the problems it raised were typical of those found later in their relationship. Pope wanted his part in the work to be kept secret: he no longer minded its being known that he had written the poem, but the notes might be libellous, so every

attempt had to be made to disguise his hand in them. There was a danger that the bookseller might be arrested and reveal the name of the author; thus it was better not to give him an assignment of the copyright and thereby claim responsibility for the work. At the same time, Pope obviously wanted to make as much profit from the venture as possible. Gilliver, on the other hand, must have been concerned with his own profits and would have wanted an assignment to protect his interests. He must have been worried on three counts by Pope's unwillingness to assign the copy to him openly. First, there was the possibility that Pope might decide not to sell him the copy at all (but, unless he sold it to some other bookseller, that would have been to Pope's disadvantage because he would have lost the lump sum payment and would have found it difficult to get the work distributed). Second, Pope might not allow him to distribute the first edition. Third, the work might be pirated and profit thereby lost. All this indicates a possible conflict of interest between author and bookseller.

The story of the publication of the Dunciad is complicated but it has been traced with great lucidity by Professor James Sutherland in his edition of the poem[8] and in his article, 'The Dunciad of 1729,' M.L.R., 31 (1936), 347-353. The evidence about the episode lies chiefly in Pope's correspondence and in two law suits: the first brought by Gilliver against James Watson, Thomas Astley, John Clarke, and John Stagg in 1729 to prevent them selling the 'Dob' edition of the Dunciad Variorum, and the second by Pope in 1743 to restrain Henry Lintot from selling his edition of the Dunciad. The chief difficulty is in discovering when Gilliver came to hold the copyright of the poem and when he was promised by Pope that he should have it. If Pope did set him up in business, there may have been an understanding from then on; but four different dates are offered for ownership of the copyright: December 1728, 31 March 1729, 12 April 1729, and 21 November 1729, and I shall look at them in turn.

December 1728. When Pope brought his suit against Lintot in 1743 he asserted that Gilliver's right to the copy (which had subsequently passed to Lintot) had expired in December 1742. This meant Pope was claiming that he had sold the copy in December 1728. There is no evidence to support this, and it is clear that Pope had earlier been very uncertain about when he had disposed of the copyright.[9]

31 March 1729. When Gilliver brought his suit against Stagg and the others on 6 May 1729 he claimed that he had acquired the copyright on or about 31 March, and that Stagg's edition was piratical. Stagg denied

it, saying that he had bought copies at five shillings each on 7 or 8 April and that Gilliver, who had bought some at the same price and made no claim to the copy, had asked him to keep the price to the trade at six shillings. It seems that Gilliver had a number of copies to wholesale (and, therefore, enjoyed some special status) but that copies had been released to the trade by someone else, probably Lord Bathurst (Correspondence, III, 31).

12 April 1729. Gilliver advertised the poem in the Daily Post on 10 April as 'Printed for Lawton Gilliver,' and on 12 April entered the poem in the Stationers' Register. This confirms one's impression that Gilliver had come to an agreement for the copyright of the poem by some time around the end of March at the latest; all his behaviour points to such an agreement. But Pope's name is not mentioned in the Register and it seems most unlikely that Gilliver had actually been given an assignment. When Gilliver's octavo edition appeared with his name on the imprint on 17 April and there was danger of action from the dunces, Pope seems to have persuaded Lords Oxford, Bathurst, and Burlington to accept responsibility for the edition. On 26 April, Gilliver's neighbour, Thomas Wotton, tells us, Gilliver denied that he had an assignment but said he should have one in a little time; yet on 6 May Gilliver entered his writ against Stagg. Arbuthnot tells us the consequences: 'Mr Pope is well. he had gott an injunction in chancery against the printers who had pyrated his dunciad; it was dissolv'd again because the printer could not prove any property nor did the Author appear' (Correspondence, III, 36-37).

21 November 1729. This is the date of Gilliver's second entry of the poem in the Stationers' Register. Pope had explained to Burlington in a letter of 29 October (Correspondence, III, 61) that Gilliver was refusing to publish the new edition until he could show that he had a right to the property. The Lords now signed a document conveying the copyright to Gilliver.

It seems most likely that Pope promised Gilliver the copyright of the Dunciad Variorum some time in 1728 (almost certainly by March 1729) but refused to give him an assignment until 21 November 1729. In this way Pope protected himself and Gilliver, but Gilliver lost some profit from the distribution of the first edition, and through the 'Dob' piracy. In view of this, the hundred pounds he paid for the copyright of the poem was a high price; but that seems typical of the relations between him and Pope.

The impression that Pope was the stronger party in his relations with Gilliver is confirmed by an agreement they made about Pope's essays and

epistles on 1 December 1732.[10] Pope planned the publication of the Dunciad very carefully, and the signs are that he took equal care over Works II and the essays and epistles which went into it. The first new poem to appear after the Dunciad Variorum was the Epistle to Burlington, later Of False Taste. It was published by Gilliver on 14 December 1731 and Griffith says that it 'begins the long series of pieces by Pope which were published first in a Large Paper folio format.'[11] The evidence is that Pope himself conceived of them as a series: his agreement with Gilliver begins, 'Whereas the said Alexander Pope intends to publish certain Poems or Epistles,' and goes on to deal with the way they are to be published. The agreement favours the poet. Gilliver was to arrange for the printing and publication of all the poems which were offered to him; he was to enter them in the Stationers' Register to secure the copyright for himself and, later, Pope; and he was to pay fifty pounds for each poem, receiving in return the copyright for one year only. At the end of the year Gilliver was to make over the copyright to Pope or his nominee and, it seems, stop selling the poem as well. Pope was not committed to offering each poem to Gilliver first, and there was nothing to stop him selling it to another bookseller at the end of the year. Gilliver's profits from these arrangements cannot have been large. Lintot paid only £32 5s. for Windsor Forest in 1713, and he was acquiring the rights for fourteen years. Gilliver must have relied on heavy demand for the folio editions printed in the first year to make the enterprise worth while.

It would be wrong, however, to look at this agreement in isolation: the publication of the essays and epistles was probably seen by both Pope and Gilliver as a prelude to Works II which came out in 1735. In the British Library there is an undated declaration by Pope which makes this clear.[12] Pope says that in the event of his death he wants his executors to arrange that 'Mr. Gilliver may have the Refusal of all such Epistles as I leave fit for the Press, in order to publish them all together with what were before printed, and with the Dunciad.' If Gilliver does not buy the perpetuity of the epistles, Pope says, whoever does so should agree to have them printed so they can be bound with the other material in one volume. Pope doubtless made this declaration with a view to his stature as a poet: he wanted Works II to appear even if he should die before it was completed. We can see now, too, why Pope sold the epistles to Gilliver for one year only: by the time Works II came out he owned the copyright to most of the material in it outside the Dunciad and he and

Gilliver held half of the copy each. From Gilliver's point of view the declaration was reassuring. He had a valuable property in the Dunciad, which would be a major part of any collected works, and he could expect a considerable profit from such a venture. The agreement for the epistles was worth while in view of the collected works which was to come from them.

R. W. Rogers (p. 118) prints a list of the essays and epistles which Gilliver received as a result of his agreement with Pope: Of the Use of Riches, First Satire of the Second Book of Horace, Essay on Man, Of the Knowledge and Characters of Men, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, and Epistle to a Lady. The Essay on Man is a special case because it was entered in the Stationers' Register not by Gilliver but by John Wilford (on 10 March 1733); it is worth pausing to consider it. Professor Maynard Mack points out that the anonymous publication of the Essay on Man was all the more effective because 'between January 1733 and January 1734, Pope issued through his regular booksellers three important poems bearing his name' (Twickenham Pope, III, i, xv). The relationship between Pope, Gilliver, and John Wright was so well established that critics would not expect Pope's poems to be published from another quarter. I suspect that Wilford was chosen to be the ostensible publisher of the poem because of his connection with Gilliver through the Grubstreet Journal. Gilliver had been involved with the Journal from the start and I shall deal with his role in it later; Wilford had obtained shares in the Journal by 7 September 1732 and became increasingly important, taking over as publisher on 3 July 1735. Confirmation that this was the link between Wilford and the Essay on Man seems to come from identification of John Huggonson as the first printer of the poem (Griffith 294, the first appearance of any part). Huggonson had held a share in the Journal from the time the records begin and he became its printer in October 1733. Both men must have been well-known to Gilliver; they may have been known to Pope as well.

The first sign of deterioration in the relations between Pope and Gilliver comes with the publication of the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot and the Epistle to a Lady. In a letter to Oxford on 30 December 1734 Pope says that he had hoped 'to have had Interest enough with my negligent Bookseller to have procur'd a Copy of the Epistle to Dr. A. to accompany my Letter. I doubt whether I shall do it yet?' (Correspondence, III, 446). Gilliver cannot have been as anxious to please as the poet wished; he seems to have been reluctant to give pre-publication copies and Pope explains to Caryll in a letter of 8 February 1735 that he has delayed posting for a fortnight because he intended to send a copy of the Epistle to a Lady with the letter (Correspondence, III, 450).

These small annoyances to Pope were, however, nothing compared with Gilliver's offence over Works II. The entry in the Stationers' Register, made by John Wright, shows that the copyright was to be divided equally between Pope and Gilliver. Gilliver had the rights to the Dunciad and, at the time of entry, 11 April 1735, he also held the rights to the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot and Epistle to a Lady, though these would expire in a few months. Pope held the copyright to the rest of the material. As a result of this arrangement Pope had to pay for the printing of half the edition and dispose of half the copies himself. In fact all the expenditure at that time was probably his, because the British Library declaration tells us that Gilliver already had copies of the Dunciad in quarto and folio 'lying by.' The obvious way for Pope to dispose of his copies was through his bookseller, Gilliver, but that is not what happened. On 9 April 1735 we find Pope writing to Samuel Buckley:

Gilliver is surely 'my Bookseller' and the man who has been favoured by Pope but has offered only thirteen shillings. The other man, offering seventeen, could be Brindley or Dodsley. Another letter shows that at that time Dodsley stood high in Pope's estimation; he tells William Duncombe that Dodsley had 'just set up a Bookseller' and suggests that 'as he has more Sense, so will have more Honesty, than most of that Profession (Correspondence, III, 454). Pope had probably come to feel that Gilliver was not honest; he had just given Dodsley one hundred pounds to help him start his business, and Dodsley was shortly to take Gilliver's place as Pope's bookseller.

The comparison Pope makes between the offer of 13s. (Gilliver's) and that of 17s. is unfair and tells us something about Pope's attitude to the book trade. Gilliver was, like most of his London colleagues, a retailer and a wholesaler, and he must have made his offer in his capacity as a wholesaler (after all, he had half the edition to dispose of already). The other bookseller must have hoped to retail a good proportion of his copies himself. At the simplest level a book had three prices: the price of paper and printing which was paid to the printer, the price at which the book was sold to the trade, and the price at which it was retailed. Hodgson and Blagden (p. 73) say that 'it was the trade price from which

the retail price was calculated, the latter being in a large number of cases a third more than the former'; Dr. Johnson tells us that a profit of ten per cent was expected in the wholesale trade.[13] If we take these profit margins as the norm and accept that Works II was to retail at 21s., we can see that the price the wholesaler would expect to pay would be 14s. 4d., and the retailer would expect to pay 15s. 9d.. The terms Pope insists on cut down the margin of profit for both wholesaler and retailer: the wholesaler would have made a profit of less than six per cent rather than ten; the retailer would have made a profit of one sixth rather than the third Blagden suggests. The price Gilliver offered, 13s., was low, but the difference between him and Pope did not spring from Gilliver's attempt to gain a little extra profit: Pope wanted 17s. a copy not 14s. 4d. and he does not seem to have given much regard to the usual arrangements in the book trade. He was aware that by marketing his products in the usual way he was paying for services which might be dispensed with and was accepting a smaller share in the profits than he might have had. One way of tackling the problem was to deal with inexperienced men like Gilliver and Dodsley who might allow more money to the author: when Gilliver paid Pope fifty pounds for each of his epistles for one year only, he must have realised that he would not only be confined to a small profit himself, but would also have to offer the works to the trade at a price which would leave less profit than usual; similarly, the Dunciad Variorum was offered to retailers at 6s. but was expected to sell at 6s. 6d.. Works II was the next step in the process: Pope had already obtained large payments for the copyright to several of the poems, but the rights had reverted to him; as a result he paid for the printing of half the edition and found himself in a position of a bookseller selling to the trade. Gilliver had refused to act as wholesaler on the terms Pope wanted; hence, as the letter to Buckley shows, Pope began to act as wholesaler himself. He seems to have met with some success, for Griffith (II, 282) says that by 13 May advertisements for Works II were carrying the names of Gilliver, Dodsley, Brindley, J. J. and P. Knapton, J. and J. Brotherton, and W. Meadows.

Gilliver's refusal to play the role allotted to him on this occasion seems to have lost him his position as Pope's bookseller. His name continued to appear on the title-page of collections he had a share in (notably the relevant volumes of the octavo Works published in co-operation with Henry Lintot), but he obtained no more copyrights from Pope and his name appears on the title-page of only two new Pope works. The first and more important of these was Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope, and Several of his Friends, published on 19 May 1737. The story of the publication

of Pope's letters is well-known,[14] and it is not necessary to consider it all here. Gilliver seems to have been involved from the earliest stage, the publication of the letters in the Posthumous Works of William Wycherley II in 1729. When Pope tricked Curll into publishing an edition of the letters in 1735, the sheets he sent him included some from the 1729 work; Curll told his readers: Gilliver's early involvement probably meant that his name had to appear in connection with subsequent editions, and he certainly had some interest in the 1735 edition (entered in the Register by Cooper), because Pope intended to use him as his agent in an attempt to seize Curll's volumes (Correspondence, III, 472-473). Gilliver's disclosure about the Wycherley letters can only have lowered him further in Pope's esteem at a time when there was already disagreement about Works II, and the entry of the authorised edition of the Letters in 1737 was made by Dodsley. It seems Gilliver was still loyal to Pope at this time, for he told him about Jacob Robinson's attempt to sell him James Watson's piracy of the authorised edition (Correspondence, IV, 87).

The second new work after 1735 to bear Gilliver's name was the Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace, which was entered to Pope himself in the Stationers' Register on 14 January 1738, with the additional note, 'Be it remembered that I Alexander Pope have authorised Lawton Gilliver to Print and Publish an Edition in folio and Quarto of the said Epistle, being the first Edition thereof.' This was probably the result of an agreement similar to that for the epistles for Works II; Pope was to control subsequent editions of the poem.

Contact between Pope and Gilliver after this publication seems to have been slight. The remaining connection between them was Gilliver's ownership of the Dunciad copyright. Eventually he acted against Pope's interests by selling the copy so that it fell into the hands of Henry Lintot. Howard Vincent explains that Gilliver first offered the copy, to Thomas Cooper, in the middle of 1739: 'Cooper, seeing the copyright grant had but few of the fourteen years yet to run, declined the opportunity, but some time before August of that year Gilliver sold one-third of the rights

to a printer, J. Clarke. For no stated reason Clarke on August 23 resold his share to John Osborne, bookseller, who in turn passed it on to Henry Lintot, January 18, 1739/40. Lintot later purchased the rest of the right. . . .'[16] Lintot was thus able to bring out an edition of the Dunciad at a time when Pope was planning an edition of his own, containing Book IV; it was in his action to prevent Lintot selling his edition that Pope claimed Gilliver's copyright had expired in December 1742.

Gilliver, then, takes his place in the story of Pope's relations with the book trade as the bookseller for the Dunciad and the epistles which went into the 1735 Works, a man who was at first willing to allow Pope more profit than he could have obtained elsewhere, but later resisted and was replaced. But Pope's patronage meant more to Gilliver than the profit he could make from selling his poetry: much of his business seems to have been based on his connection with Pope. A glance at a list of authors whose books were published by Gilliver will show that many of them were allies of Pope in some way. Some, such as Lyttelton and West, seem to have been personal friends, others shared his contempt for the dunces or his political and social attitudes. I shall begin the discussion of this side of Gilliver's business with a consideration of the Dunciad controversy and the Grubstreet Journal, and then go on to consider his publication of other minor poets and his work for Swift.

The Dunciad Variorum was greeted by a barrage of pamphlets attacking Pope, an attack which continued into 1730 and 1731.[17] Pope was not the man to leave these attacks unanswered, but it was obviously to his advantage if he could remain aloof and leave the reply to others. Gilliver must have been happy to see battle engaged: he had published a controversial poem, and the longer the controversy raged the more it would sell. He must also have hoped to profit by publishing works supporting Pope. As a result, there was a campaign in support of Pope; it had two parts, individual poems and the Grubstreet Journal.

It seems that the poems in Pope's defence did not sell well, because Gilliver eventually collected the unsold sheets to form A Collection of Pieces in Verse and Prose, Which Have Been Publish'd on Occasion of the Dunciad. The content of the Collection seems to have varied some-what, but the poems usually included were: Two Epistles to Mr. Pope, Concerning the Authors of the Age by Edward Young; An Essay on

Satire; Particularly on the Dunciad by Walter Harte; Harlequin-Horace or, the Art of Modern Poetry by James Miller; An Epistle to Mr Pope from a Young Gentleman at Rome by George Lyttelton; An Author to be Let by Richard Savage; Certain Epigrams; and Essays, Letters . . . . The Collection is preceded by a dedication to the Earl of Middlesex which bears the name of Richard Savage. James Sutherland (Twickenham Pope, V, xxv-xxvii) suggests that a lot of Pope's contact with the London literary scene was through Savage, who was widely believed to have been the chief source of information for the Dunciad Variorum. Little correspondence between the two survives, but we do find that Savage knew Gilliver and that he occasionally sent Pope information about Gilliver's authors (Correspondence, III, 66, 170, 232, 238). The Collection would seem, therefore, to be the joint production of Pope's two London agents; but Johnson tells us that the dedication was written by Pope (Lives of the Poets, III, 147) and that Savage 'was prevailed upon to sign, though he did not write it' (Lives, II, 360). If Pope was responsible for the dedication, we have some indication of his involvement in this side of Gilliver's activities.

The wider question of responsibility for the publication of the poems remains: for example, did the authors send them to Gilliver to be published, or to Pope? In one case we know the poem reached Pope first. George Lyttelton sent his Epistle to Mr Pope to his father with the request,

The poem was printed by John Wright and appeared with the imprint, 'printed for J. Roberts,' but, as it is included in Gilliver's Collection, it was probably really published by him. It is possible that other poems may have come to Gilliver in this way. In a letter to Caryll of 6 February 1731, Pope shows a close knowledge of Gilliver's publications, and reveals that he had seen another poem, the Art of Politicks, in manuscript. Caryll had asked him for his opinion of Mount Caburn, but Pope recommended Gilliver's authors instead: Pope knew of Gilliver's activities and approved of them—he seems to be advertising the works to Caryll—and it is possible that he supplied the material for the campaign.

A more important element in that campaign than the Collection was the Grubstreet Journal. The qualified praise of the Journal in the letter to Caryll is not any proof of Pope's involvement in it, but it probably shows that it was a part of Gilliver's business known to Pope and approved by him. Discussions of Pope's relations with the Journal have been hampered by neglect of Gilliver's role in the venture and of the Journal's link with the rest of the pro-Pope campaign. There has been a wide range of views. At one extreme we find Courthope, who believed that Pope had started the Journal, reviving the Scriblerus project, 'The works of the unlearned.'[19] J. T. Hillhouse, in his book The Grub-street Journal (1928), p. v, adopted a more moderate view, saying that it was impossible to show that Pope was the Journal's originator, or to know what he had to do with it after it got underway. He thought that it later became quite independent of Pope. Even this conclusion was rejected, however, by George Sherburn in his review of Hillhouse's book:

Sherburn ignores powerful evidence against his alternative (b), in, for example, the account of Mrs. Pope's death which appears in No. 181 and seems to have been written by the poet; but one can see why he thinks positing some vague connection with the Journal is unsatisfactory. Richard Russel, for most of its years the Journal's editor, gives a long and ambiguous discussion of Pope's relationship with the periodical in Memoirs of the Society of Grub-street, pp. xxvii-xxviii, and then declares that the editors had done justice to 'this Gentleman and his particular friends, in relation to the few Pieces imagined to come from their hand, which are distinguished by the letter A . . .' One's first reaction is the same as Sherburn's: either Pope and his friends had written the pieces or Russel was trying to deceive the reader into thinking they had. But I think there is a possibility that Russel was being honest and did not know himself who had written them; he may have got them from Gilliver.

The minute book of the partners in the Grubstreet Journal, in the library of the Queen's College, Oxford, shows that at the first recorded

meeting on 28 August 1730 (the first number of the Journal is dated 8 January 1730) the shares were distributed like this:      

F. Cogan, S. Palmer, J. Brotherton and W. Bickerton	one share each
J. Huggonson	two shares
L. Gilliver	six shares[21]

Gilliver was the Journal's leading figure: he possessed half the shares; he had been the treasurer for the first six months of its existence; the articles signed at the setting up of the paper were in his possession; and it was his duty to correct the press. So Pope was at least indirectly connected with the Journal through his bookseller; the first editor, according to Johnson, was to be Savage, but he declined ( Lives, II, 360, n. 2). The connection of these two figures with the Journal points to its starting with Pope's blessing, and there is evidence in the minute book which suggests Pope may have had a continued influence on the Journal. At the meeting of 25 June 1731, we find Gilliver acknowledging that he has 'Receiv'd at the Same Time Two Guineas for my Own share & 4 Guineas for D. M. & another.' D. M. is perhaps Doctor Martyn, Russel's co-editor, but we do not know the identity of the other man. It was someone who knew Gilliver better than he did the other partners, and who wished to keep his identity secret. Pope might well have been such a man. A more significant entry is to be found on 4 August 1737. At that time the partners were looking back over past expenditure in an attempt to recover some of their losses. They recommended: The partners obviously considered the encouragement to have had sufficient weight with them as to give the gentleman the moral responsibility of recompensing them. Pope was at that time still in contact with Gilliver and, of course, his animus towards More-Smythe is well-documented.[22] It is difficult to believe the Gentleman was anyone but him.

Of course, Pope did deny having a hand in the Grubstreet Journal, or seemed to deny it. In the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, he included the following note on the line, 'Let Budgel charge low Grubstreet on his quill':

This is not a very clear denial: 'Paper' may mean the specific essay rather than the Journal as a whole, and 'author' suggests it is right to read the note in this way. But even if we do not regard the denial as conclusive, we have no evidence that Pope was involved in the way contemporaries such as Curll[23] and Burnet[24] believed he was. We are, however, in a position to make an informed guess about his involvement and about Russel's ambiguous discussion of the question in the Memoirs of the Society of Grub-street. If Pope founded and influenced the Journal, he surely did so through Gilliver; there was no need for him to take risks when he had an agent to act for him. Russel was probably in genuine doubt about the pieces marked 'A': he thought they were by Pope or his friends, but he did not know, because he had been given them, not directly by Pope, but by Gilliver.

The Journal was doubtless at first profitable and useful to Gilliver, and his connection with it was soon made public. No. 15 of the Journal, for 16 April 1730, reports that there had been an election for the position of bookseller to the Grubstreet Society. Only two candidates present themselves, Kirleus (Curll) and

Captain Gulliver is, as one might expect, elected, and from that issue onwards his name appears in the Journal's imprint. Although he appears as the Journal's representative in some of its quarrels (with Henley, for example), there is not much sign that Gilliver greatly influenced the content of the paper; the day-to-day policy was probably left to the editor, Richard Russel, a non-juring clergyman connected with Westminster School. Gilliver's relations with him seem to have been good, for on 3 June 1735, Russel's eldest son, William, was bound apprentice to him for fifty pounds.

The Grubstreet Journal leads us to consider the rest of Gilliver's business because it gave him the opportunity to advertise, and sometimes to 'puff' his own publications. Walter Harte and James Miller are, for example, praised at some length, and others whose works are commended or defended include Henry Carey, David Mallet, and Joseph Trapp. The advertisements are valuable in giving us some idea of the range of

Gilliver's publications, but what is most interesting is how often these publications are connected directly or indirectly with Pope.

The most striking cases in this area of Gilliver's business are those where Pope directly provided Gilliver with material for publication. We have already noted one example of this, Lyttelton's Epistle to Mr Pope, and we find another in the same author's Progress of Love. Pope wrote to Tonson on 14 November 1731, 'I have a very pretty Poem to show you of a near Relation of Lord Cobhams, which he has inscribed to me & some others' (Correspondence, III, 244). He must have given the poem to Gilliver, who published it in March 1732. Harte's Essay on Reason seems a similar case, though this time Pope was much more thoroughly involved (Warton tells us that 'Pope inserted many good lines in Harte's 'Essay on Reason').[25] A letter to Mallet makes it clear that Pope was not only encouraging work to which he was sympathetic; he was quite content that it should be taken for his own:

Gilliver also published Aaron Hill's Athelwold through Pope's influence. Pope made some suggestions to Hill about the play and later recommended Gilliver to him as a bookseller: '. . . this Man I really think honest, and capable in his Business' (Correspondence, III, 238).

These are the only works that we know came to Gilliver from Pope, but several others were seen by the poet before publication and this is strange in itself. Either the writers were sending their work to Pope, who passed it on to Gilliver, or Gilliver was sending material to Pope to be inspected, and perhaps corrected; in either case, Pope was taking an unusual role in the business. We have already noted that Bramston's Art of Politicks was seen by Pope 'before 'twas printed,' the same seems to be true of George Jeffreys' Father Francis and Sister Constance. Jeffreys talks in his preface of the blemishes which have been removed 'upon the authority of so unquestion'd a Judge and Master.' Henry Brooke was similarly grateful: '. . . I wanted to thank you once for all, for much good you have done me, and more particularly for revising

and passing your friendly judgment upon some lines of mine that, indeed, were scarcely worth your reading' (Correspondence, IV, 198). David Mallet, on the other hand, seems to want to deny Pope's involvement in his Of Verbal Criticism, telling us that 'this Poem was undertaken and written entirely without the knowledge of the gentleman to whom it is addressed.' But it is clear from the Correspondence that it is very like the others. Pope wrote to Mallet: 'The Epistle I have read over & over, with great & just Delight; I think it correct throughout, except one or two small things that savor of Repetition toward the latter End' (III, 330). One wonders whether Pope was able to leave the 'small things' alone. D.N.B. (XII, 871) may be naive in saying, 'At times his lines show the cadence of Pope's verse (e.g. 'Verbal Criticism').'

There is indeed a similarity in theme and style between Pope's work and that of several of Gilliver's authors. This must partly be a result of the imitation of a great writer by his contemporaries, but it could also be the result of some form of collaboration. If Pope corrected the work of Gilliver's poets and sometimes added to it, one could easily explain the way in which he echoes it in some of his verse. For example, Peter Dixon has noted that the Essay on Man's

seems to have been indebted to Harlequin-Horace's And there is a striking similarity between Dunciad IV's discussion of those who and a passage in Bramston's earlier Man of Taste, There are many examples of this sort of thing noted by the Twickenham editors,[28] and they at least confirm that Pope knew some of Gilliver's publications very well. In addition to those already mentioned, so many of Gilliver's authors (Burscough, Young, Dodsley, Lockman, Brownsword) had connections with Pope, that it must be acknowledged that Gilliver's business in copyrights was based on his contact with Pope. It seems too that Pope spent sufficient time correcting others' work to justify his complaints in the first seventy lines of the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.

Pope obtained little work for Gilliver from his most distinguished ally, Swift. The Grubstreet Journal, No. 15, suggests by the use of the name 'Captain Gulliver' and references to 'friends at Dublin' that Gilliver was indeed guilty of 'bringing to light the works of our most inveterate enemies, Pope, Swift &c.' But Gilliver published only Miscellanies, An Epistle to a Lady, and A Libel on Dr. D---ny. Two of these, Miscellanies. The Third Volume and An Epistle to a Lady, caused him considerable difficulty; in both cases Matthew Pilkington and Benjamin Motte were involved.

The case of the Miscellanies shows Pope torn between his liking for involvement in the book trade (devising profit-making ventures, controlling the publication of literary works) and his sense of his position as a major writer, above the fray of business. Benjamin Motte had published the first three volumes of Swift-Pope miscellanies (the first, second, and 'last' volumes); but in May 1729 he still owed Pope £25 for the 'last' volume, and he came to an agreement with him by which the debt was cancelled but Motte lost his rights to the next volume of miscellanies.[29] The agreement was finalised on 1 July 1729. At that time Gilliver was emerging as Pope's bookseller, and it was probably Pope's influence which led to Gilliver's name appearing on the title-page of the reprinted volumes in October 1730. When it came to a new volume, Miscellanies. The Third Volume, Pope sold the copyright to Gilliver, probably some time early in 1732. At this point, however, Motte decided he wanted to be involved in the project after all. He appealed to Swift, who supported his claim to be bookseller, and Pope had little choice but to give way:

Doubtless Gilliver's willingness to pay Pope's terms at the first word was one of the factors which placed him high in the poet's favour.

The affair was not concluded there, because of an intervention by Matthew Pilkington. Swift did not usually claim copyright in his controversial works, but on 22 July 1732 he made a sort of assignment of the Miscellanies material to Pilkington, who then sold the rights to Bowyer 'for a valuable consideration.' The two men then claimed the pieces which Pope had intended for Miscellanies. The Third Volume. Pope was angry. 'Surely I should be a properer person to trust the distribution of his works with than to a common bookseller,'[30] but he tried to come to an agreement with Bowyer by which Bowyer should have the serious or political pieces only. When Bowyer refused his compromise, he retired from the fray: 'I find he [Bowyer] is a true Bookseller, & therfore shall leave it to himself & Gilliver. . . . Since he has no other Sense of my complying with his Plea, than to suppose he is arguing with me instead of Gilliver, pray assure him I will not take upon me to limit his Pretentions or to enlarge them, but leave the matter between the Booksellers . . .' (Correspondence, III, 324). Gilliver must have had some success because the volume appeared on 4 October 1732, 'printed for Benjamin Motte . . . and Lawton Gilliver.'

The difficulties over An Epistle to a Lady Who Desired the Author to Make Verses on Her, in the Heroick Style were of a different kind: the poem offended the government. In August 1733, Mary Barber had come from Dublin to London with a number of Swift's poems and asked Pilkington to arrange for their publication. Pilkington first offered them to Motte, but Motte refused to publish the Epistle to a Lady, probably suggesting Gilliver instead, and making the arrangements with him himself. The poem was published in November 1733, and on 11 December Harrington sent a copy of the poem to the Attorney General with a request that he consider prosecution (P.R.O. SP 44/88, p. 123). On Friday, 11 January, John Wilford, whose name appeared on the title-page, was arrested; he was at most the distributor, and it seems likely Gilliver was using him as a front (as he did for the Essay on Man). He must have given information, because on Wednesday, 16 January, the printer, Samuel Aris, was arrested, and the following Monday, 21 January, Gilliver was taken into custody. He was released the following day and a short period of inactivity ensued; but on Wednesday, 30 January, Mary Barber was taken into custody on the information of Matthew Pilkington. Pilkington was widely blamed for betraying Swift, but all those involved seem to have blamed one another. In a letter to Swift, Motte is very critical of Gilliver's conduct. He explains that Gilliver was arrested before he (Motte) could adequately advise him:

Motte must have been more involved, at least in selling the copy to Gilliver, than he admits here, or he would not have offered to bear half Gilliver's expenses. Nevertheless, Gilliver seems to have acted in a way likely to make him unpopular, giving more information than was necessary, through, Motte suggests, hostility to his partners in the enterprise. It is interesting that Motte says Gilliver bore the character of a wealthy man; at this stage in his career, with his place in Pope's favour and the business that led to, he may have given the impression of a man launched on a very successful career.

One aspect of this more successful period in Gilliver's career remains to be considered, his membership of Conger 4. Hodgson and Blagden (p. 68) say that Gilliver belonged to a copyright-owning conger, conforming to Bailey's definition in 1730: '. . . a Society of booksellers to the number of 10 or more, who unite into a sort of company, or contribute a joint stock for the printing of books' (p. 86). The Conger bought copyrights, paid for printing, and sold books to the trade at an agreed price. The members of Conger 4 were John Brotherton, Joseph Hazard, William Meadows, Thomas Cox, William Hinchliffe, Ralph Weaver Bickerton, Thomas Astley, Stephen Austen, Lawton Gilliver, and Robert Willock. The first book they advertised together was Jenkin Thomas Phillipps's Rational Grammar in January 1731, and this was followed shortly by advertisements for Joseph Trapp's Works of Virgil. Gilliver had probably arranged for the purchase of Trapp's Virgil, and there is no reason to believe his contribution to the Conger was unimportant. He had established contacts with some of the other Conger members well in advance of 1731: his name appears with those of Cox, Astley, and Austen in March 1728 in advertisements for the History of the Council of Constance; in June of that year he and Meadows were among book-sellers advertising Fresnoy's New Method of Studying History; in February 1729 we find him associated with Willock in Doughty's Crown and Church; and in March 1730 he and Brotherton published the Nurse's Guide. The Conger was not, therefore, a move into fresh territory for

Gilliver, but the creation of a stable arrangement with booksellers he had been dealing with for some time. The Conger dealt mainly in instructional and educational books, but it published two popular works, Eight Volumes of Letters Written by a Turkish Spy and La Belle Assemblée by Madeleine Angélique Poisson de Gomez.

The Conger broke up towards the end of 1735 (there was a trade sale of copies belonging to Mr Astley and Conger on 11 November 1735), and this coincided, unhappily for Gilliver, with the deterioration in his relations with Pope. In addition, the Grubstreet Journal was in decline; its last number appeared on 29 December 1737. The first half of Gilliver's career, based on Pope's patronage and extensive dealings in copyrights, was over.

Dr Terry Belanger has suggested to me that Gilliver's response to the new situation was to leave copyrights pretty much alone and concentrate on the retailing side of his business; there is every evidence to support his opinion. Some time in 1736 Gilliver went into partnership with John Clarke, whom Belanger first identified as Gilliver's apprentice. The son of John Clarke of Northampton, he had been bound to Gilliver for £50 on 4 March 1729 and obtained his freedom on 6 April 1736.[32] We first find his name linked with Gilliver's in advertisements for Henry Carey's Honest Yorkshireman in January 1736, but his partnership is more likely to date officially from some time after his freedom. The first copy we know he had a share in was The Intelligencer or Merchant's Assistant, entered to Clarke, Gilliver, and Meadows on 30 March 1738. This was followed by three more copies shared with Gilliver: James Miller's Of Politeness on 24 April 1738, Solitude on 12 December 1738, and (with S. Austen) Joseph Trapp's The Nature, Folly, Sin, and Danger of Being Righteous Over Much on 5 June 1739. This amounts to only four copies entered in three years and marks the shift in emphasis in Gilliver's business. In the three months before June 1736, when the change seems to have begun, Gilliver entered six copies in the Register; in the six years following that date, he entered only seven.

The shop in Fleet Street must have seemed inadequate in the face of this change of emphasis, for Gilliver opened another shop, in Westminster Hall, probably some time in 1737. John Davys's Essay on the Art of Decyphering, advertised in February 1737, bears the imprint, 'London: printed for L. Gilliver and J. Clarke, at Homer's Head, in Fleet-street,

and at their shop in Westminster-hall.' Perhaps Clarke was to take charge of the new shop. The law courts were in Westminster Hall and Gilliver seems to have dealt in law books to some degree. At his sales on 25 February and 16 March 1742,[33] there were shares on Bohun's Law of Tithes and Tithing Table, the Universal Officer of Justice, and Coke's Reports and State Trials on offer; while there were copies of over sixty separate works on law for sale.

There is relatively little evidence available on this phase of Gilliver's career, but it was clearly a failure. The shop in Westminster Hall did not last long. It is last mentioned in the imprint of An Essay towards the Character of the Late Chimpanzee in April 1739. His partnership with Clarke seems to have ended in the same year: both their names appear in the imprint of Trapp's The Nature, Folly, Sin and Danger of Being Righteous Over Much in June 1739, but Clarke's is not on that of William Brownsword's Laugh and Lie Down in July of that same year. Gilliver prospered ill after the departure of his partner, and on 25 February 1742 there was a trade sale of 'the stock of a bookseller, lately left off trade' which seems to have been Gilliver's because his name is written on the copy in the John Johnson Collection in the Bodleian Library. None of the copies sold was entirely his own; he had acquired shares in them through the Conger or in association with other booksellers.

Gilliver gave up his shop in the year of the sale;[34] he must have stopped trading and sold his stock in an attempt to pay his debts. On 3 December 1742 a Commission of Bankruptcy was awarded against him (P.R.O. B4/10, p. 215). I have not discovered who brought proceedings against him, but it is clear from a separate action that he owed something like £400 to his former partner, John Clarke. Clarke had filed a bill against Gilliver before the commission of bankruptcy was awarded and had to be given special permission to be numbered with the other creditors (P.R.O. B1/17, p. 146). When a bankrupt had 'made full discovery of his effects, and in all things conformed to the directions of the act'[35] he was issued with a certificate which secured him from further harassment. An advertisement appeared in the London Gazette for Tuesday 28 June to Saturday 2 July 1743, which said that Gilliver's certificate would be allowed unless reasons to the contrary were given by 23 July. Some objections

must have been made, because his certificate was not allowed until 19 November 1743.[36]

Gilliver's bankruptcy meant he lost some of the benefit which he would have gained from membership of the Stationers' Company. He had been admitted to the livery of the Company on 7 May 1728, and this gave him the opportunity of becoming a shareholder in the English Stock. He obtained a £40 share on 6 June 1738, but the Court decreed on 6 December 1743 that his share should be assigned to Daniel Midwinter by way of mortgage under the commission of bankruptcy. He was chosen to receive Knapton's £80 share on 7 July 1747, but on 6 October that too was assigned to Midwinter.

By this time Gilliver had started to do business again. He had obtained his certificate, and in 1744 we find him publishing An Elegy on Mr. Pope. By 1747 he had moved into a shop in the Oxford Arms Passage, Warwick Lane,[37] only seven doors away from James Roberts, the former distributor of the Grubstreet Journal, who seems to have distributed the Elegy on Mr. Pope for him. Gilliver's business must have been based on retailing because we find his name on only four more books during this period: Andrew Trebeck's Sermon . . . before . . . the House of Commons, James Drummond's The Female Rebels, Dr. Houstoun's Memoirs of his own Life-Time, and Truth but no Treason. Two of these are Jacobite in tone, and it it possible that he published them, as he had done the Elegy on Mr. Pope, because of personal interest.

Gilliver remained in his new premises only a short time. His burial is recorded in the register of Christ Church, Newgate, on 8 August 1748. An Elizabeth Gilliver, possibly his wife, had been buried on 12 April.[38] The death is confirmed by the records of the Court of the Stationers' Company for 6 September 1748: 'Mr. Roberts acquainted the Court that Mr. Lawton Gilliver who was possessed of an 80 1. Share was dead and that the share was therefore to be disposed of. . . .'

Gilliver's story is, therefore, one of failure. He came to London with capital to support him and he made a good beginning. He had Pope's patronage and the contacts that afforded him, and he joined other relatively young booksellers to form 'Conger 4.' But his position as Pope's bookseller was probably less advantageous and less assured than he believed. He had to pay a very high price for Pope's copies, and there may

have been difficulties with his fellow booksellers as a result. The poems of Pope's protégés did not always sell well and the Grubstreet Journal encountered difficulties, some of them perhaps due to Pope's promptings. It seems probable that he neglected the ordinary business which would have given his trade a sound basis, and suffered in consequence. In some ways he obtained the worst of both worlds: for although he allowed Pope to shape his business, he did not accommodate him enough to maintain his favour and the support that would have provided.

Notes