Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/88

This page needs to be proofread.
  • / 6 PRIVATE PRESSES IN SUSSEX.

a letter of Davies Gilbert to Nichols written in 1 825-6, preserved in the Bodleian Library, in which he orders types for use at his private press. Nothing of much consequence was printed, his productions being confined to short miscellaneous pieces, usually on single sheets. He is reputed to have issued over two hundred such pieces, but there is no record of any book having been issued by him. An account of these productions will be found in Boase's ' Colleftanea Cornubiensia.' The following anec- dote relating to this little press is interesting : Hawker, the well-known Cornish poet, published his fine ballad c And shall Trelawny die ? ' anony- mously in a Plymouth paper, where it attracted the attention of Davies Gilbert, who immediately re- printed it at his own press, being under the avowed impression that it was the original ballad ! GLYNDE PRESS. A private press was established, probably by Lord Hampden, at that nobleman's seat at Glynde, near Lewes, about 1770. Nothing is now known about this press except that the Bodleian Library possesses a portion of a work printed there in 1770. This is the first sheet of a poem, the title-page of which reads : c The Summer Day, a Descriptive Pastoral. Glynd, 1770.' HAYWARDS HEATH PRESS. I have been told by two persons, neither of whom, however, can give any further information, that a Bible was printed at a private press at Hay-