lived in familiar intimacy with some of the most considerable persons of the early part of this century.' By his success in trade he had acquired a sufficient sum to purchase, about that time,

Even the proud. Duke of Somerset, Thomas Pelham Duke of Newcastle, and many other noblemen, corresponded with Jacob Tonson, and wrote to him with great familiarity and kindness. He appears to have been' the keystone of the Kit-Kat Club, as may be collected from the following extracts from letters addressed to him. June 224, 1703, the Duke of Somerset tells him-" Our Club is dissolved, till you revive it again; which we are impatient of." In the same month and year, Vanbrugh, who appears to have had great kindness for Tonson, and corresponded with him for above twenty years, writing to him at Amsterdam, says,-" In short, the Kitt-Catt wants you much more than you ever can do them. Those who remain in town are in great desire of waiting on you at Barn-Elmes; not that they have finished their pictures neither; though, to excuse them as well as myself, Sir Godfrey has been most in fault. The fool has got a country-house near Hampton-Court, and is so busy in fitting it up, (to receive no body,) that there's no getting. him to work." Again, July 10, 1703:-" The Kitt-Catt too will never meet without you: so you see, here's a general stagnation for want of you."

Vanbrugh wrote to him with great kindness, Nov. 5, 1719 (a Mon Mon' Tonson, chez Mon' Coustelier, Libraire, a Paris): "I went the next day to Claremont, where you may imagine there was much talk about you; and I do assure you, with no small regard and affection from every body. Mr. Spence was there, who gave me a very agreeable and friendly account of you, and join'd

an estate near Ledbury, in Herefordshire. In the year 1703 he went to Holland, for the purpose of

very heartily in clinking round your health and your

return."

So again, Nov. 29, 1719:-"One seldome hears you named, since the good fortune that has attended you there, [at Paris,] but the question is started, how it will operate upon you in your way of living; and various opinions I observe about it. What my own has been, you'll hear when you come over; but I observe in your letter one strong symptome of my being right; since you are so far from forgetting your old mistress, Barnes, that you are inclined to compliment her in the spring with £500. for a new petticoat. For my part, I think she deserves it, for the pleasures she has given you; and I heartily wish her well, for those she has spared me."

Again, Feb. 18, 1719-20:-" Though your nephew tells me, you'll be soon here, I take it for granted you may meet with such delays as may give you time to receive an answer to the last letter I had from you; which so pleased the Duke of Newcastle, that he took it from me to shew the Duchess, Mrs. Pelham, &c. and said, he would write three sides of a sheet in answer to it, and then give it to me, to fill up the fourth."

Again, August 12, 1725" From Woodstock we went to Lord Cobham's, seeing Middleton-Stony by the way, and eating a cheerful cold loaf at a very humble ale-house: I think the best meal I ever eat, except the first supper in the kitchen at Barnes."

Some years before, this Club seems to have been dis. solved, or died away. "You may believe me, (says Vanbrugh in the same letter,) when I tell you, you were often talked of, both during the journey and at Stowe; and our former Kitt-Katt days were remember'd with pleasure we were one night reckoning who were left;

procuring paper and getting engravings made for the splendid edition of Cæsar's Commentaries, which he published under the care of Dr. Clarke in 1712 perhaps the most magnificent work that has been issued from the English press. Before he went abroad, he had acquired a villa at Barn-elms, in Surrey, about six miles from London; which he adorned with the portraits of the Kit-Kat Club, painted by Kneller,' on canvas somewhat larger

and both Lord Carlisle and Cobham expressed a great desire of having one meeting next winter, if you came to towne, not as a Club, but old friends that have been of a Club, and the best Club that ever met."

A paragraph in a letter from G. Stepney to Tonson, dated Vienna, March 24, 1703, ascertains the hours they kept: "My hearty affections to the Kit-Cat: I often wish it were in my power to make one with you at three in the morning."

4 It consisted only of a house and garden, held by lease from the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's.

The room where these portraits were intended to be hung, (in which the Club often dined,) not being suf. ficiently lofty for half-length pictures, that circumstance is said to have been the occasion of a shorter canvas being used, which is now denominated a Kit-kat, and is sufficiently long to admit a hand. The canvas for a Kit-kat is thirty-six inches long, and twenty-eight wide. It appears from the will of the younger Jacob Tonson, which was made Aug. 16th, and proved Dec. 6th, 1735, (PRE. OFF. Ducic, qu. 257.) that he was then by the grant and assignment of his uncle entitled to this Collection of Pictures, after his uncle's death; and that the testator had not long before erected a new room at Barn-clms, in which

than a three-quarters, and less than a half-length : a size which has ever since been denominated a Kit-kat from this circumstance. In 1719 he made an excursion to Paris, where he spent several months, and was fortunate enough to gain a considerable sum by adventuring in the Mississippi scheme. In consequence of his attachment to the Whigs, he obtained in January 1719-20, probably by the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle and Secretary Craggs, a grant to himself and his nephew, Jacob Tonson, junior, (who was the son of his elder brother, Richard,) of the office of Stationer, Bookbinder, Bookseller, and Printer, to some of the principal publick Boards and great Offices, for the term of forty years; and not long afterwards (1722) he assigned and made over the

8

6

the Kit-kat portraits were then hung. They were painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller, chiefly in the reign of Queen Anne, and are all of the same size, except that of the painter. Tonson's portrait is one of the set. Between 1732 1736, Faber made mezzotinto prints of the whole Col. lection.

and

6 Vanbrugh, in a letter to Jacob Tonson, written, Nov. 29, 1719, (two months only before this grant,) says, "I shewed Mr. Secretary Craggs what you writ to him. He returns you his compliments, and seems much disposed to be your friend and servant." Mr. Craggs had been made Secretary of State about eight months before the date of this letter.

7 Pat. 6 Geo. I. p. 3. n. 17.

The Post-Office, and War-Office, the offices of the Treasurer of the Navy, and the Commissioners for Stampduties, &c.

whole benefit of this grant to his nephew; who, in 1733, obtained from Sir Robert Walpole a further grant of the same employment for forty years more, to commence at the expiration of the former term: a very lucrative appointment, which was enjoyed by the Tonson family, or their assigns, till the month of January, 1800. From about the year 1720, the elder Tonson seems to have transferred his business to his nephew; and lived principally on his estate in Herefordshire, till 1736, when he died, probably about eighty years old.' On his

9 Pat. 6 Geo. II. p. 2. n. 4.

' March 18, 1735-6.-In one of the Stationers' Books I found the following entry :-" 5° Junii, 1670. Jacob Tonson, sonne of Jacob Tonson, late of Holborne, Barber Chyrurgeon, deceased, hath put him selfe an apprentice to Thomas Basset, for eight years from this day."-As, by his father's will, his mother was directed to bind him an apprentice to some trade at the age of fourteen, it may be presumed that he was born in 1656.-In THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE he is stated to have died worth only forty thousand pounds: but he probably possessed double that sum.-Soon after his successful adventure in the Mississippi scheme, he wrote to his friend, Sir John Vanbrugh, to look out for a purchase for him; and Sir John proposed one to him, for which thirty thousand pounds were to have been paid. From his will, which was made Dec. 2, 1735, and proved April 9, 1736, (PRE. OFF. Derby, qu. 91.) it appears that he had estates in Glocestershire and Herefordshire. Even supposing him to have quitted business about 1720,-by near fifty years traffick, with a great accession from the French funds, he must have acquired a much larger sum than that attributed to him soon after his death.