Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VIII. EDWARD CAVE; RALPH GRIFFITHS. F Samuel Johnson were the Jupiter of Literature during fifty years of the eighteenth century, the booksellers of that period, with whom he had familiar intercourse, literary and social, were his satellites. Far " less than Jove," they had a light of their own, which may guide me a little onward in my voyage through those occasionally obscure regions. The brightest of them are double the number of the attendant stars of the king of planets. There are half a score more of minor lights in the inky way. But I see the great luminary in constant association with his chief satellites; in their front shops, in their back shops, in their parlours beyond the shop, in their dining-rooms and drawing-rooms, and sometimes receiving homage in his own residence, whether in Gough Square, Staple's Inn, Gray's Inn, Inner Temple, Johnson Court, or Bolt Court. I shall occasionally glance at their shadows as they flit by me in the pages of the most amusing of biographers. Some of the most eminent of the old booksellers, after the days of Pope to those of Cowper, belong to the period which may be justly called the Johnsonian era. Early in the eighteenth century there was a boy of marked ability in the endowed grammar-school of Rugby, who was the son of a shoemaker in that town. Edward Cave had probably to endure much contumely from his richer companions. A London shopkeeper had founded Rugby school; but nevertheless the presence of the son of one who mended shoes close by the school-gate—one of the " rude mechanicals who work for bread"—was a blot upon the dignity of the foundation. The clever and diligent boy had of course a nickname. In his prosperous latter years he used to travel on horseback, and had relays of horses at his command. Arriving at t...