334- Book Production and Distribution [CH.
in 3763, at length had the gratification of being introduced to
Johnson.
The book-collector in search of fine editions, and the reader
with literary tastes enquiring for the latest hit in belles lettres,
would, naturally, go to Tonson's, Payne's, Dodsley's, or one of the
other leading shops, such as that of Samuel Smith, bookseller to
the Royal society, who spoke with fluency both French and Latin,
and specialised in foreign literature. But, among the wider and
less cultivated class of readers, there was a large demand for
small and cheap books in what is commonly known as practical
divinity, and this literature formed an important feature in the
stock-in-trade of the smaller booksellers. In the seventeenth
century, James Crump, who had his shop in Little Bartholomew's
Well-yard, was one of the publishers who made a speciality of
providing this class of book, and Richard Young, of Roxwell in
Kssex, a voluminous writer of such matter, furnished him with
A short and mire way to Grace and Salvation, The Seduced Soul
reduced, and rescued from tJie SubtUty and Slavery of Satan,
together with some thirty other tracts with similar compelling
titles; and these, consisting severally of eight or a dozen pages,
were sold at a penny each. More substantial examples of this class
of popular literature are the * practical' works of Richard Baxter
and The Pilgrim's Progress, of which eleven editions appeared
within ten years of its first publication. John Dunton, who,
with wide experience in catering for the popular taste, had great
faith in the commercial value of such books, printed ten thousand
copies of Lukin's Practice of Godliness, and, concerning Reach's
War with the Devil and Travels of True Godliness, of which the
same number were printed, he ventured the opinion that they
would sell to the end of time.
But practical divinity, though immensely popular, was not the
whole of the literature which the lower reading classes affected.
Cheap quarto 'histories1—Reynard the Fox9 Tom a Lincoln, or
the Red Rose Knight, The Life and Death of Mother Shipton,
Scoffin's Jests, with many others of that genus—had a ready sale
at sixpence or a shilling, while the smaller chapbooks—the
'Penny Merriments* and 'Penny Godlinesses' which Pepys, with
an eye ever alert for the broad humours of the populace, found
amusement in collecting—were printed vilely and sold in
thousands. These latter consisted of old popular favourites, such
as The Friar and the Boy, The King and the Cobbler, Jack of
Newbery, with Cupids Court of Salutations, garlands of songs,