Banbury Chap Books | Page 2

added to it a Standard edition of Goldsmith's Works,
edited by Mr. Gibbs. I had the pleasure of making many researches
respecting the old London publisher (Goldsmith's friend), John
Newbery, respecting his Lilliputian Classics, and I have been enabled
to introduce several of the Quarto early editions to the firm, and have
had great pleasure in writing and placing on record numerous facts and
data, since utilized in the very interesting "Life of John Newbery, a last

century bookseller." The connection of Oliver Goldsmith's name is
indissolubly associated with the juvenile classics industriously issued
by Newbery. Dr. Johnson himself edited and prefaced several children's
books which I have seen in the Jupp and Hugo Collections. The weary
hours of adversity, through which "Goldie" passed at Green Arbour
Court, top of Break Neck Steps and Turn Again Lane--I remember
them all well, and the Fleet prison walls too, when I was a boy--and in
refuge at Canonbury Tower, near the village of Islington, these are the
places where Goldsmith wrote for children. Sir Joshua Reynolds tells
how, when he called on the poet at Green Arbour Court, he found the
couplet:--
"By sports like these are all their cares beguiled, The sports of children
satisfy the child."
see "The Traveller." He was surrounded by children in this unsavoury
neighbourhood, where he had his humble domicile: a woodcut in
Lumburd's Mirror depicts it very correctly. Bishop Percy, author of the
"Reliques," called on him, and during the interview the oft repeated
incident occurred of a little child of an adjacent neighbour, "Would Mr.
Goldsmith oblige her mother with a chamber pot full of coals!" Truly
these were hours of ill-at-ease. The largest collection of the various
relics of woodcuts used in the chap book literature, "printed for the
Company of Flying Stationers, also Walking Stationers,"--for such is a
portion of the imprint to be found on several of the early Chap Books
printed at Banbury--is to be seen in the Library of the British Museum;
but the richest collection of these celebrated little rarities of Toy Books
is in the venerable Bodleian Library. Among the very interesting block
relics of the past are the pretty cuts to Mrs. Trimmer's "Fabulous
Histories, or The Robins:" these were designed by Thomas Bewick, and
engraved by John Thompson, his pupil, who enriched Whittingham's
celebrated Chiswick Press with his fine and tasteful work. A numerous
series of little fable cuts by the same artist are to be found in this
volume. One of the quaintest sets engraved at an early period by John
Bewick (the Hogarth of Newcastle), are to "The Hermit, or Adventures
of Edward Dorrington," or "Philip Quarll," as it was most popularly
known by that title a century ago. The earliest edition I have seen of

Philip Quarll is as follows: "The Hermit, or the unparalleled sufferings
and surprising adventures of Mr. Philip Quarll, an Englishman who was
lately discovered by Mr. Dorrington, a Bristol merchant, upon an
uninhabited island in the South Sea, where he lived above fifty years
without any human assistance, still continues to reside, and will not
come away," etc. Westminster: Printed by J. Cluer and A. Campbell,
for T. Warner in Paternoster Row, and B. Creape at The Bible in
Jermyn Street, St. James's, 1727. 8vo, xii pp., map and explanation, 2
pp., and 1 to 26 appendix, with full page copper plate engravings. He
was born in St. Giles', left his master a locksmith, went to sea, married
a famous w----e, listed for a soldier, married three wives, condemned at
the Old Bailey, pardoned by King Charles II., turned merchant, and was
shipwrecked on a desolate island on the coast of Mexico, etc. Other
editions in the British Museum are 1750; 1759 (third); 1780 (twelfth);
1786 (first American edition, from the 6th English edition, Boston,
U.S.A.); 1787 (in French); 1795 (seventeenth); 1807; and also in a
"Storehouse of Stories," edited by Miss C. M. Yonge, 2 vols, 8vo
(Macmillan, 1870-2), Philip Quarll (also Perambulations of a Mouse,
Little Jack, Goody Two Shoes, Blossoms of Morality, Puzzle for a
curious Girl), and others are given. The text is useful to refer to, as the
originals are rare: the woodcuts of several of them are in this volume.
"Philip Quarll," Miss Yonge says, "comes to us with the reputation of
being by Daniel Defoe; but we have never found anything to warrant
the supposition. It must have been written during the period preceding
the first French Revolution." There is also in the Museum an edition
printed in Dutch in 1805.
In 1869, Mr. Wm. Tegg reprinted the Surprising Adventures of Philip
Quarll, entirely re-edited and modernized, with only a frontispiece and
vignette on title as illustrations. The quaint old cuts on next page
probably illustrated an early Newcastle, then York, and