Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/459

-SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO. 419 the Ludgate Hill end, and leaving it in the direction of Cheapside. By the time that peace and quietude are restored to the neighbourhood, some two and a half millions of volumes and periodicals (Simpkin, Marshall and Company alone having probably despatched from six to eight hundred different parcels) are flying from London to all parts of the kingdom to be greedily devoured and depreciat- ingly criticised on the morrow. Not the least profitable portion of the business done by Simpkin, Marshall and Company lies in their Colonial trade, for in this branch, in common with other houses, they insist upon ready money payments, and consequently all bad and doubtful debts are avoided. Besides holding many valuable copyrights in edu- cational works, and publishing to a large extent upon commission, they, as we have previously shown, are the London agents for all works published by their country clients. Nothing, perhaps, is more curious among modern " literary curiosities " than the sudden and unparalleled popularity of a small pamphlet entitled " Dame Europa's School," written in a style and manner not unfamiliar to us in Swift's inimitable " Tale of a Tub ;" witty, certainly, and undeniably apropos to the times, this clever skit was taken by its author, Mr. Pullen, a minor canon of Salisbury Cathedral, through the usual round of the London publishers, and, as usual with pamphlets, they one and all declined even to read the manuscript. Mr. Pullen, in despair, gave it to Mr. Brown, a bookseller of Salisbury, to publish on commission that is, the author undertook all the risk, and the publisher charged merely a certain percentage on the sales and