Robert Dodsley, Poet, Publisher & Playwright
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NIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN D EGO 3 1822 01602 ( I UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. SAN DIEGO 3 1822016020117 Central University Library University of California, San Diego Note: This item is subject to recall after two weeks. Date Due UCT 14 SEP 2? Cl 39 (1/91) UCSDLib. ROBERT DODSLEY BY THE SAME AUTHOR JOHN BASKERVILLE : A MEMOIR (With ROBERT K. DENT) THE MAN APART THE LITTLE GOD'S DRUM THE SCANDALOUS MR WALDO THE DUST WHICH IS GOD <?rf?* ROBERT DODSLEY POET, PUBLISHER & PLAYWRIGHT BY RALPH STRAUS <& & WITH A PHOTOGRAVURE PORTRAIT AND TWELVE OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMX Turnbull & Spears, Printers, Edinburgh TO AUSTIN DOBSON WHO OF ALL WRITERS HAS MOST SURELY TOUCHED THE ATMOSPHERE OF DODSLEY'S TIMES I AM PERMITTED TO DEDICATE THIS BOOK PREFACE of eighteenth century wor- thies multiply exceedingly at the present BIOGRAPHIESday, and it might seem that the appearance of a life of Robert Dodsley should be heralded by an apology. Instead I prefer to quote a sentence from Isaac Reed's eulogy of the publisher- poet, which explains the attractiveness of such a ' ' subject. It was his happiness,' he says, to pass the greater part of his life with those whose names will be revered by posterity.' Dodsley, indeed, seems most unjustly to have escaped the historian's notice. Beyond Mr Tedder's article in the Dictionary of National Biography, Mr Austin Dobson's entertaining ' vignette At Tully's Head,' and scattered, though useful, notes in various volumes of Notes and Queries, little if anything has of late been written about him. In his own century a few short and incorrect notices occur in the magazines, but that is all. Yet in his day he was a man who rose to considerable literary eminence, and introduced a dozen or more men of front to the rank public ; andlthe following pages embrace the attempt to give a deserved prominence vii viii ROBERT DODSLEY to the man who was a protege of Defoe and Pope, Dr ' the for Johnson's friend and patron,' and publisher Gray, Sterne, and Edmund Burke. New material in some abundance has come to hand. The British Museum possesses the volume of Dodsley's letters to William Shenstone (Add. MSS. 28,959), which was bound by the poet in 1759, besides other collections of contemporary letters in which frequent mention is made of the publisher and his various schemes. With one exception (Add. MSS. 28,221, which my friend Professor Hans Hecht of the University of Basle has printed under the title of Thomas Percy und William Shenstone ein Briefwechsel aus der Entste- hungszeit der Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Strassburg, 1909), none of these have been published. An even more interesting collection of Dodsley's letters (as originally composed by him in a letter- book) is in the Birmingham Free Libraries. Altogether nearly two hundred letters to or from him have passed through my hands. I wish to express my warmest thanks to the follow- ing persons : To Mr Austin Dobson and Mr Edmund Gosse for their assistance to H. ; Mr Yates Thompson for permission to reproduce Dodsley's portrait by Sir in his Joshua Reynolds, now possession ; to Mr A. Buxton of Mansfield for particulars of the Free School there to Mr A. for ; M. Broadley permission to print two letters in his collection to ; Mr Charles Dodsley PREFACE ix of Birkenhead for lending me certain documents, the of formerly property Dodsley's father ; to Mrs Dodsley of the Hall Farm, Stoney Houghton, for to permission reproduce Dodsley's clock ; to Mr A. Stapleton of Nottingham, for assistance in the first to chapter ; Messrs Sotheran & Sons for their kindness in allowing me to print for the first time the original agreement between Edmund Burke and the Dodsleys for the Annual to Register ; Mr G. W. Harris for help with the text ; to Mr Robert A. Peddie, of the St Bride Technical Library, for great assistance in the to bibliography ; and, above all, Mrs Robert Dodsley of Skegby Hall, Mansfield, a great grand-niece by marriage of Dodsley's, who has assisted me in every to her possible way ; patient researches, indeed, carried on during a number of years, I am indebted for almost every one of the facts relating to Dodsley's birth and family. RALPH STRAUS. LONDON, March 1910. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE PREFACE vii I. BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS TO 1735 . 3 II. AT TULLY'S HEAD, 1735-1739 .... 36 III. THEATRICAL WORK, 1737-1749 .... 57 IV. SOME PUBLICATIONS AND THEIR AUTHORS, 1741-1747 . 67 V. DODSLEY AND DR JOHNSON .... 88 VI. DODSLEY'S BAND OF POETS AND THE COLLECTION OF POEMS 101 VII. DODSLEY, GRAY, AND HORACE WALPOLE . -153 VIII. THE OECONOMY OF HUMAN LIFE . 169 ' ' IX. THE WORLD 184 X. THE PRODUCTION OF CLEONE : DODSLEY AND GARRICK ....... 200 XI. AT THE TIME OF RETIREMENT : BURKE, GOLD- SMITH, AND STERNE 252 xi xii ROBERT DODSLEY PAQB CIAP. 266 XII. DODSLEY AND THE TRADE . 282 XIII. DODSLEY'S FABLES . XIV. LAST DAYS ... .293 BIBLIOGRAPHY ... 3 11 APPENDICES I. DODSLEY'S PORTRAITS 385 II. DODSLEY'S OPINION OF SERVANTS . .388 III. DODSLEY'S DEATH AND WILL . .391 IV. NOTE ON THE POSITION OF A TULLYS HEAD . 394 INDEX 395 ILLUSTRATIONS ROBERT DODSLEY .... (Photogravure) Frontispiece Front the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, now in the possession oj H. Yates Thompson, Esq. Facing Page PAGE FROM ' JOHN LODE'S BOOK,' SHOWING ENTRY OF ROBERT DODSLEY'S BIRTH .... 4 THE OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL AT MANSFIELD . 4 From Photographs, EFFIGIES AUCTORIS.' FRONTISPIECE TO ' A MUSE IN LIVERY,' BY P. FOURDRINIER, 1732 . .20 ROBERT DODSLEY'S CLOCK, NOW THE PROPERTY OF MRS DODSLEY, THE HALL FARM, STONEY HOUGHTON . 38 DODSLEY'S TRADE MARK . .38 TITLE-PAGE (WITH HEAD OF POPE) FROM ONE OF THE 'AUTHENTIC' VOLUMES OF THE POET'S LETTERS, 1737. 48 REV. JOSEPH SPENCE, AUTHOR OF THE WELL-KNOWN 'ANECDOTES,' AND DODSLEY'S PATRON AND LIFE-LONG FRIEND ....... 86 From a. mezzotint after I. Whood. LETTER FROM ROBERT DODSLEY TO WILLIAM STRAHAN, THE PRINTER, RELINQUISHING HIS SHARE IN THE LONDON ClfKONICU-, 1757 . .98 Front the original in the author s possession. WILLIAM SHENSTONE . .130 From the picture by Edward Alcock, now in the National Portrait Gallery. ziii xiv ROBERT DODSLEY Facing Page . ROBERT DODSLEY . .192 from the picture by William Akock, now in the National Portrait Gallery. RICHARD GRAVES, FRIEND OF SHENSTONE AND DODSLEY . 206 From an old print. DAVID GARRICK ...... 220 Front a rare print published in 1779. JOHN BASKERVILLE, THE BIRMINGHAM TYPEFOUNDER AND ; PRINTER . .. 272 From an old engraving by Ravenet. ROBERT DODSLEY' s GRAVE IN THE CATHEDRAL BURYING GROUND AT DURHAM ..... 302 From a photograph. ROBERT DODSLEY ON TULLY'S HEAD IN PALL MALL To Mr R. Dodsley, on his writing Cleone, 1756 i. name Where Tally's bust and honour'd Point out the venal page, There Dodsley consecrates to fame The classics of his age. 2. In vain the poets, from their mine, Extract the shining mass, Till Dodsley's mint has stamp'd the coin, And bid the sterling pass. 3- Yet he, I ween, in Casar's days, A nobler fate had found ; Dodsley himself with verdant bays Had been by Ceesar crown'd. 4- His bust near Tully's had been plac'd, Himself a classic bard ; His works Apollo's temple grac'd, And met their just reward. 5- But still, my friend, be virtue, sense, share And competence thy ; And think each boon, that courts dispense, Beneath a poet's care. 6. Persist to this grace humbler post ; Be head the Tully's sign ; Till future booksellers shall boast To vend their tomes at thine. RICHARD GRAVES. ROBERT DODSLEY CHAPTER I BIRTH AND EARLY YEARS TO 1735 enough the birth of Robert Dodsley was surrounded, until a few months ago, by a certain mystery which seemed CURIOUSLYlikely to remain unsolved for all time. Most of the biographers have supposed that he was born at or near Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, in 1703, but they give no particulars. Dodsley himself in ' one of his poems speaks of his native Sherwood/ and throughout his life shows an interest in Mansfield, but, like his biographers, makes no definite statement. On the other hand Laird, in his Topography of Notts, has no hesitation in saying that he was born over the Yorkshire border, in point of fact in the village of but like the Anston ; Laird, others, gives no evidence. There is, indeed, no mention of Dodsley's birth in any parish register. It has long been known, however, that his next two brothers were born at Mansfield, and so, not unnaturally, that town was supposed to be his actual birthplace. And, indeed, this would seem to be the truth. Very fortunately there is still in existence an old manuscript-book which formerly belonged to one John Lode, a bygone parish clerk DODSLEY 4 ROBERT his from to of Mansfield. This Lode held post 1698 to have taken a large measure of 1718, and seems his town. He a interest in the social events of kept fact of book for the purpose of setting down every notice. Several local interest which came to his ' Lode's Book/ as it has come to pages of this John ' of and other be called, contain a Register Quakers definite Dissenters/ and in this register occurs a statement of Dodsley's birth. At the end of the year be seen the : 1703 (o.s.) may following entry ' ' ffeb. 13 Robert the Son of R. Dodsley born This, then, is the only evidence of the date of Dodsley's birth, but it may be taken to be correct.