LONGMAN’S £20,000 CHEQUE.

Kumara Times, Issue 469, 28 March 1878, Page 2

LONGMAN’S £20,000 CHEQUE.

In remembering that the firm of which the late Mr William Longman was a member paid Lord Macaulay the sum of £20.000 in one celebrated cheque, the publisher of the presant day sighs not only after a departed worthy, but after departed glories of the trade. Certainly not to us in the present year of grace is there a Macaulay’s “ History” given to resuscitate the trade. The question is, however, as between the egg and the hen, as propounded by ancient philosophers and modern jesters and positivists : which had the first inception, publisher or author 1 There can be no doubt, says the Publishers’ Circular, but that the Paternoster Row firm made a very handsome profit on Macaulay's Hi dory, and that for years it will still be a fine

property • but there can be even less doubt that but for the generous impulse of the published, and the determination to make the book “go,” it never would have had half its success. The very fact of so large a sura having been paid “in one cheque” caused the orders for so picturesque a history to flow in. Everybody took their cue from the courageous publisher who could bafck his own opinion to that extent, and so immediate and thorough was the success, Mudie’s libraiy alone taking 3000 copies, that the scathing, and in many instances very jnst, objections of the Quarterly and the Westminster, and the subsequent strictures of Miss Harriet Martineau, have had little effect on the popularity of the work. Of course, Lord Macaulay had a brilliant reputation, and was a brilliant talker if he never listened to anybody; “I don’t think, * said Sydney Smith, the most delightful conversationalist that ever lived, “ Macaulay ever heard my voice, and yet we were all day conversing j poor Macaulay, he’ll be sorry for it some day.” But he impressed everbody who listened to him, and upon that reputation the publisher ventured.