their house had done nearly forty years earlier for the first Charles when the latter came up to town from his apprenticeship at Coventry. But Nephew did not find it necessary to accept the loan.

The first book printed by Charles the younger, after getting into business for himself, was a dry little thing, unpretentious enough, and absolutely without interest. It was called "A Sunday Book," and was printed for Bowdery & Kirby, and made in two volumes. Although the imprint bears the date of 1829, the book was printed by the end of November, 1828. Soon after the establishment of his business at Took's Court, Whittingham the Nephew made the acquaintance of one Basil Montagu, who was then living in Bedford Square, and who ordered from the new press one hundred and fifty copies of a small book, or pamphlet, called "Letters to Mr. Sugden." It was through this acquaintance that the younger Whittingham came to know William Pickering, with whom his own name was to be so intimately associated in the production of beautiful editions. The two men, Whittingham and Pickering, speedily became friends, and they remained on terms of the greatest intimacy as long as life lasted.

William Pickering was one of the best-known men in the London book-trade of his day. He was, in his way, a remarkable man, if we are to take the word of folk who know fine books when

they see them. He was one of the very first publishers of his century to make the production of fine editions a particular branch of enterprise, and it was through him that by far the greater part of the best work of Whittingham Nephew was put before the world. Pickering had started in business in 1821 as a seller of old books, and he was a rare merchant in that line. In a little shop at 31 Lincoln's Inn Fields he established what he was pleased to call, and no doubt called with truth, a most distinguished connection. His patrons had high places and long purses, and he found it expedient to please them with "elegant reprints of the best literature." His taste for old books not unnaturally produced a kindred taste for the reproduction of them. He had a notion that if an old author were a good one he deserved to be dressed well, and he made it the particular business of his life to do this justice to the ancient stock. In Charles Whittingham the Second he found his coadjutor, and any collector will bear witness to the judgment of this incomparable pair. As Whittingham Uncle and John Sharpe had worked together, so did Whittingham Nephew and William Pickering form an alliance which enriched the world of books.

Nephew's associate, Pickering, was an abler man than Uncle's associate, Sharpe. He was, moreover, a person of some scholarship, as well

as good judgment, of excellent taste as well as business courage, and he had, into the bargain, some influential patrons who would always back him in any worthy venture, if help were needed. So it befell that, during the next quarter of a century, Nephew Whittingham made for William Pickering books which, without doubt, both in character and in beauty, composed the most distinctive list that any English printers or publishers had up to that time been jointly identified withal.

These alliances of the Uncle and the Nephew did little to endow the world with first editions, but they adorned it with most admirable reprints. The function of our printers was not to produce new literature, but to set forth the old in beauty. The best literature, whether in our own time or in that elder one, seldom makes its first appearance in fine clothes. It earns this raiment after a generation or so, by which time its authors have gone the way of all flesh, or their copyrights have expired.

Pickering was living and vending at No. 57 Chancery Lane, whither he had removed in 1825, when Nephew Whittingham set up his presses in Took's Court, hard by. To the bookseller entered Basil Montagu, one June day in 1829, presenting, with the gusto of a discoverer, "the most accomplished printer in the town." The book

not

seller, a short, fat man, addicted to maroon waistcoats whose elaborate embroideries were entirely concealed by the snuff which descended upon them in frequent showers, greeted his new acquaintance with the courtesy demanded by the occasion, and then fell to talking of title-pages. The printer had ideas worth cultivating, and the bookseller invited him to call again. Within three days the printer called. He saw what Pickering's plans were, and he threw out a hint or two concerning them. The bookseller was delighted. He had found a kindred spirit. He bade his new printer furnish him with an edition of the "Bijou, or Annual of Literature and the Arts," and then with an edition of Walton's "Angler," and then with the "Canterbury Tales," and then with a set of "Bacon's Works." These were followed by "The Works of George Peele: ' collected and edited, with some account of his life and writings, by the Rev. Alexander Dyce, B. A.," an edition of two volumes, followed by a third. This much accomplished, Nephew Whittingham was high in the favor of the man who was to become not only his best customer but his best friend.

The Whittingham of Took's Court did not seek fame as a printer of illustrated books. It may have been that he thought it bad policy to attempt competition in the line for which his uncle was

1 See page 245 for title-page of the "Works of George Peele."