JOHN WILSON, HUME'S FIRST PRINTER

DAVID FATE NORTON

T H E first two volumes of David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature were published(anonymously) in January of 1739, by John Noon. The third and final volume waspublished (again anonymously) near the end of October, 1740, by Thomas Longman.None of the volumes includes the name of the printer, but, despite the fact that thework was issued over a period of nearly two years, and by two different booksellers,the three volumes are sufficiently alike in appearance to suggest that they were the workof a single printer, a fact first noted, I beheve, by J. M. Keynes and P. Sraffa; 'Thoughthe publisher [of the third volume] was different, nevertheless the printer was clearlythe same, as is shown by the identity of the ornaments.'^

Although it is very likely indeed that one printer was responsible for all three volumesof the Treatise^ the Keynes-Sraffa claim is in some respects misleading; even if it werenot it would rest on dubious grounds. There are thirteen different ornaments (see fig. i)in the Treatise: four head-pieces, five factotums, and four tail-pieces. The thirteenare printed a total of thirty-six times, but only six of the thirteen (nos. i, 2, 6, 7, 8 and10) appear in the separately issued portions of the work (in, that is, one of the first twovolumes and the third), while four (nos. 3, 5, 11 and 12) are found in only the earliervolumes, and three (nos. 4, 9 and 13) only in the last. Two items (nos. 8 and 10) arefound in all three volumes, while four (nos. 5, 9, 11 and 13) are printed only once, andhence are necessarily to be found in only one volume and one of the two separatelyissued portions of the work. In short, just under one half of the ornaments may be saidto be identical in the sense which concerns us here.

A further problem derives from the fact that it is now widely thought that printersof the hand-press period often lent or borrowed ornaments, a practice that wouldpresumably be common in London where there were many printers in close proximityto one another. In any event, some of the ornaments used in the Treatise are associatedwith the imprint of no less than five apparently different printing establishments: thoseof William Fenner and R. Beresford of Cambridge; and John Wilson, Samuel Idle,Mary Fenner, and James Waugh (sometimes with Joseph Fenner), all of London. Theyare even to be found in at least two entirely distinct works printed in 1737 and bearingthe imprints of Idle and Wilson, respectively. Consequently, the reappearance in volumethree of six of the ten ornaments used in volumes one and two may well suggest that

123

8

Fig. ia. Ornaments used in A Treatise of Human Nature,, 3 vols., London, 1739 40. (Reproducedactual size.) Headpieces and factotums.Locations: i. vol. I, p. [iiij; vol. I l l , pp. [iii], 201, 283. 2. vol. I, p. i; vol. I l l , p. [v]. 3. vol. I, pp. [11],53, 125, 315; vol. II, pp. [i], 95, 219. 4. vol. I l l , pp. [i], 37. 5. vol. I, p. [iii]. 6. vol. I, p. [i]; vol. II,p. []]; vol. I l l , p. [iii]. 7. vol. I, p. [11]; vol. I l l , p. [i]. 8. vol. I, pp. 53, 125, 315; vol. II, pp. 95, 219;

vol. I l l , p. 283. 9. vol. I l l , p. 37

10

Fig. ib. Ornaments . Tail-pieces.Locarions: io. vol. I, p. [iv]; vol. II, p. 93; vol. I l l , pp. [iv], 36. 11. vol. I, p. 124. 12. vol. II, pp. 217,

318. 13. vol. I l l , p. 281

the three volumes were the work of a single printer, but it is not the incontrovertibleevidence of this fact which Keynes and Sraffa took it to be. To establish the probabilityof their conclusion, we must look beyond the ornaments to letter forms and othertypographical evidence.

The student of the first editions of the Treatise will very likely be impressed fromthe beginning by the similar appearance of the title-pages (figs. 2, 5). Of course, thethree volumes have separate subtitles, and the title-page of volume three is somewhatmore crowded as well as having both a different imprint and a different motto, but thethree pages are typographically similar. Two of the fonts used on each of these pagesare from the Caslon foundry, and hence were in common use in London by 1739-40.According to Mr James Mosley of the St Bride Printing Library, two of the other typesfound on all three titles are unusual, and all the more so in combination, and hencedo suggest that the three titles were set by the same compositor. The two unusualtypes are (i) that used to print the principal words of the title, 'Treatise of HumanNature', and (2) that used to print the words *moral subjects', 'Vol', and the associated(roman) volume numbers that appear on each title, the word 'passions' on the title of

125

Hs

0

w

inH-i

1

nB m_t3 u o

Q -fi z

U H

O

V}

OH

a<5

.s

lain

'

a.u

c

u

a

ill

u

B

o

o

.5

E3

w

H

Ui

U

ri

H

0

cq

I

V(U

p

c:o+-'

a-

h

<

ca

o-do-i-j

n 1

rim<

QJO H

c/5

mOQ

O

Ho

o

>

volume two, and the words 'appendix' and 'morals' on that of volume three. The firstof these unusual types is probably the Two-line English Roman found in the BowyerSpecimen of 1740, or possibly the very similar Two-line English No. 2, type 103, foundin the James Specimen of 1782. The second of these two types is type 109 of the JamesSpecimen, a Double Pica Roman from the Walpergen foundry.^

3 64 A Treatife of Human Nature.

4 A l^reatife of Human Nature.

16 A Treatife of Human Nature.Fig. J. Damaged upper case italic H (enlarged) found in the running heads of all three volumes

of Hume's Treatise. Examples from vol. I, p. 364, vol. II, p. 4, and vol. I l l , p. 16

There is additional evidence indicating that all three volumes were set in the sameshop: broken or idiosyncratic types that are to be found in at least one of the first twovolumes are also found in volume three. Some running titles of all three volumes wereprinted from what appears to be the same broken upper case H (fig. 3). That they didin fact derive from such a single broken letter cannot be claimed with certainty, butthat this was so seems at least as likely as the alternative possibility—that two sorts,from what would have been a modest supply of this particular type, were damaged inexactly the same place and in an indistinguishable fashion. Even more compelling,however, is the use, in all three volumes of the work, of several idiosyncratic braces(fig. 4), including one which is clearly damaged, and another which is unusual andwhich also shows unique damage when viewed through a magnifying lens.^

Finally, there is evidence of continuity between the separately issued portions of thework that might be overlooked or discounted were it not for the features alreadymentioned: a similarity in the general layout of the entire text, including the twoseparate sets of Advertisements, Contents, and Errata, and the consistent printing ofsubstantives with lower-case first letters, a relatively unusual practice, I suggest, for1739 40, and especially so given that one can be confident that the manuscript of thework had capitalized substantives."^ Against these similarities one must balance somedifferences: notes in the first two volumes are marked by symbols, but numbered involume three, and one very rare (and as yet unidentified) type used in this last volumeis not to be found in the former two. Thus, the case for claiming that one printer was

127

responsible for all three volumes is not perfect, but the evidence so far reviewed makesthis claim highly probable, and the case may be strengthened by the considerations thatrollow.

238^ PART

SECT. rir

Ofknonv-Of great- ledge mdnefs of p-ohabi-mind.

Fig. 4. Marginal braces (enlarged) found in all three volumes of Hume's Treatise. Examplesfrom vol. Ill, p. n o , vol. I l l , p. 245, and vol. I, p. 238

The same evidence which leads to the suggestion that the three volumes of the Treatisehad only one printer should in principle make it possible to determine who that printerwas. Of course, the simplest means of establishing such an identity would be to finddirect evidence in the form of a written record: an entry in a printer's ledger survivingfrom the period. It is precisely this kind of evidence that informs us that WilliamStrahan was the printer of Hume's second known publication. An Abstract of . . .A Treatise of Human Nature.^ Unfortunately the extant ledgers of which I haveknowledge—those of Charles Ackers and William Bowyers, in addition to Strahan's—include no references to the Treatise itself, and I have found no other direct evidencethat links the work to a particular printer. For the present, then, any conjecturesregarding this matter will necessarily rest on evidence of a different sort.

Although the imprints of the Treatise mention no printer, other works published byJohn Noon and Thomas Longman do sometimes include this information. Knowingthis, and that Noon and Longman each published hundreds of titles during their lengthycareers, I undertook, with the help of Mr Michael Crump, on-line searches of theEighteenth Century Short Title Catalogue for those works published by Noon whichinclude in the imprint the words 'Printed by'. To limit my findings to the relevantperiod, I restricted the search to items pubhshed during the 1730s and 1740s. Thissearch provided me with the names of eight London printers: J. Downing, Samuel Idle,

128

James Purser, John Wilson, and T. Wood, as well as Ackers, Bowyers, and Strahan,who had already been eliminated as possibilities. A similar search for items publishedby Longman provided me with the names of eight additional London printing firms:John Baskett, Thomas Baskett, Daniel Browne, S. Buckley and T. Longman, J. Darbyand T. Browne, Henry Lintot, E. and R. Nutt, and S. Richardson.^ Because Humefirst published with Noon, my next step was to request the full ESTC record for eachof the titles located by the first search, and then to examine those examples of theseworks which are to be found in the British Library. This initial examination revealedthat one of the ornaments (no. 13) found in the Treatise was to be found in the firstedition of Benjamin Martin's Bibliotheca Technologica (1737) printed by Samuel Idlefor John Noon. However, this book is of a very different appearance from the Treatise^and none of the additional four titles bearing Idle's imprint makes use of the ornamentsfound therein, nor does their general appearance remind one of the Treatise.

It was at about this time that, while reading Edmund Law's Enquiry into the Ideasof Space, Time, Immensity and Eternity (1734), I was fortunate to find among the fiveornaments used there, three (nos. 6, 11, 12) which are found in the Treatise. The title-page of this work is perhaps vaguely reminiscent of those of the Treatise, and, inaddition to the ornaments mentioned, the compositor used some of the same metalflowers and braces that are found in Hume's work. The interesting thing about thisdiscovery is that the imprint of Law's work reads 'Cambridge: Printed by W. Fennerand R. Beresford . . . MDCCXXXIV. How did three ornaments in use at Cambridgein 1734 come to be in use in London five years later? Were they borrowed, or perhapsmore likely, sold. Neither, I have subsequently concluded. Moreover, I believe thatLaw's work, despite the Cambridge imprint, may have been printed in London, a pointto which I shall return below.

Of the remaining printers the ESTC search showed to have printed for Noon, one,John Wilson, also appeared promising. Wilson's name appears as printer of three workspublished by Noon, and of the two of these that I was able to examine in the BritishLibrary, one, an anonymous Paraphrase on the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters ofMatthew (173'])^ contains one of the Treatise ornaments (no. 10). The second of thetwo works, Thomas Amory's The nature of sound doctrine, and the encouragements topreach it (1741), contains no ornamentation of any kind, but the title-page includesboth of the unusual types mentioned above. With this encouragement I requested anESTC search for all titles bearing Wilson's imprint, and was pleased to be offered alist of twenty-four items, twenty of which are in the British Library, and eighteen ofwhich were available for examination.

The entire sample of Wilson imprints was produced between 1736 and 1741,'' withthe distribution of the twenty-four recorded items as follows:

1736 4 titles 1739 2 titles1737 I title 1740 8 titles1738 2 titles 1741 7 titles

129

So far as evidence provided by ornaments can be relied upon, the eighteen titlesexamined provide substantial grounds for supposing that Wilson had regular access tothe ornaments found in the Treatise. Of the eighteen titles, fourteen have one or moreornaments, and twelve of these fourteen have ornaments that are also found in theTreatise. One of these twelve works, a four-volume work published in 1740 (HenryGrove's Sermons and Tracts) makes use of ten of the thirteen ornaments, but most ofthe titles bearing Wilson's name are more modestly produced than was the Treatise orSermons and Tracts. Overall, the thirteen ornaments found in the Treatise are usedforty-six times in these twelve Wilson-printed works, while several other ornaments areused slightly less frequently.^ In other words, about half the time that Wilson decidedto use any ornament, he decided in favour of one of the thirteen Treatise ornaments.Given that he regularly decorated works with these particular ornaments over a six-year period, it seems highly unlikely that he was borrowing them, least of all so forsome of the brief and relatively plain pamphlets and sermons in which they are found.^The same line of reasoning leads one to conclude that Wilson had these ornaments inhis shop during the separate times when the Treatise was printed, and, in consequence,that he was the printer of this work.

There is additional evidence to support this conclusion. Fig. 2 shows the similarityof the title-pages of volumes one and three of the Treatise. Fig. 5 displays the title-pageof volume two alongside that of a work bearing the Wilson imprint, Daniel Williams'sPractical Discourses on Several Subjects (1738). The similarity of style and types,including the use of the Two-line English No. 2 and the Double Pica Roman mentionedearlier, is striking. Fig. 6 displays braces used in both works and a sample of brokentype found in the running head of both volume two of the Treatise and volume two ofthe Williams work. These appear to be identical. If they are, then we have solidtypographical evidence for my claim that John Wilson printed all three volumes of theTreatise.

Very little has been written about John Wilson. He does not appear to be one of theseveral Wilsons somewhat vaguely mentioned by Henry Plomer, but he is clearlyincluded as a master, and probably listed as an apprentice as well, in D. F. McKenzie'scompilation of the Stationers' Company apprentices of the period.^'' Entry 2304 of thelatter reports that a John Wilson was apprenticed to John Darby II, a printer, on 13June 1715, and freed on 2 July 1722. John Wilson, a master, is reported to have beena printer in Gracechurch Street after 1738, and to have had six apprentices betweenJune 1733 and July 1747. That one of these apprentices, John Richardson, was firstbound to John Darby II, and then turned over to Wilson, increases the likelihood thatwe are speaking here of the same individual.

It is likely, then, that the John Wilson with whom we are concerned was freed inthe early 1720s, set up in business for himself in 1733, and by 1740 was not only busywith his printing, but also actively engaged in bookselling. However, further research

130

c/5

CO

u

hu H

CO

u ri

ES.

o>o

o

Pi:h

e L

at

Q

c

d

en

>-?>^

bD5

-du

f3

O4-"

G

mt

oex,r~i.

< ^

f -•£

OI B«J

Q

ich

M• H

O

ox)c -

s

o

Jo* ^

IoOO

• \ '

\ /

h i

o

X Co • -

JD

00

coco

• I-I

cQ

CO

H

HMH

O

w

(L> b O

• < •

cBnOH

Siu

w

CO

O - c

.5

XX

Qu3U

enUbJ!)

129SERM. SERM.

in. n.fig. 6a. Marginal braces (enlarged) found in Daniel Williams, Practical Discourses. Examples

from vol. I, pp. 52, 129, 66

BOOK II. Of tie PaJ/iom.

of Frotejla7it DiJJ'e72ters. 409Fig. 6b. Damaged upper case italic P (enlarged), from the running heads of vol. II, p. 3 of

Hume's Treatise, and vol. II, p. 409 of Williams's Practical Discourses

places the date of Wilson's move to Gracechurch Street in 1736 rather than 1738.Gracechurch Street itself lay in more than one parish, but Wilson is to be found listedamong *the several Inhabitants and occupyers of Houses and Tenements and Shops'in the Parish of All Hallows, Lombard Street, London. The entry which lists him wasprepared in May 1743 by a Mr Major, curate of that parish, who sought to establishthe 'Seniority's or times of Entering or coming' into the parish of the inhabitants.According to Major, John Wilson, Partner with Mrs Parsons & Mrs Fenner' enteredthe parish at Michaelmas, 1737. The parish records also show that 'M** Wilson, Station^'was present 'At a Vestry Holden for the said Parish on Fryday the 4th of May 1739*. ^

Major was obviously relying on his memory to date Wilson's arrival in All Hallows,Lombard Street. Land Tax assessments for the period show that John Wilson took upresidence on lower Gracechurch Street ('Bridge Ward, the Precinct of AUhallows:Lombard Street') in time to pay tax for 1736. ^ Moreover, he seems at about the sametime to have joined in partnership with Mrs Fenner and Mrs Parsons, for the 1736records mention 'Widow Fenner & Co', while those for 1735 simply report 'M''Fenner'. Looking back to the records for 1732 we find only 'Widow Parsons & Co2 houses I Empty', but for 1733 this becomes 'William Fenner & Co 2 houses', andcontinues in exactly the same form for 1734. It seems clear that William Fenner hadmoved to Gracechurch Street in order to take up a partnership with Mrs Parsons, the

132

widow of Henry Parsons, a stationer who kept a shop at the Turk's Head.^^ But by1735 Fenner himself was dead, and Mrs Fenner was in turn looking for a partner.That she settled on John Wilson is made likely by his appearance in the neighbourhood,and taken beyond doubt by the tax assessments for 1739 ('Parsons, Fenner & Wilson'),1740 ('Fenner & Wilson'), and 1741 ('Joseph Fenner [Mary Fenner's son] & JohnWilson').

But what are we to make of the assessment for 1742: 'Widow Fenner & Co', and ofthe fact that the house that Wilson had occupied since 1736 is reported empty in 1741and 1742? The likely answer is found in the helpful note of the records for 1743:'Empty—Late Wilson', and can be confirmed in the Court Book of the Stationers'Company. John Wilson's promising career as a printer was cut short by a relativelyearly death during the summer of 1741. At the Stationers' Court held Thursday 26March 1741, 'the Court proceeded to the Choice of another Renter Warden of thisCompany for the year ensuing and Mr. John Wilson was duly elected . . .'. On 5 Mayof the same year the Court 'Ordered that M'' Henry Woodfall Junior and M^ JohnWilson the Renter Wardens for the Year ensuing be summoned to attend at the nextmonthly Court to receive their Charge'. On 2 June 1741, 'M'" Henry Woodfall Juniorand M*" John Wilson the Renter Wardens for the year ensuing' attended the Court andreceived their charge. But 'At a Court held Tuesday the i * day of September 1741 M^Roberts acquainted the Court that M'" John Wilson late one of the Renter Wardenswas dead'. "*

If, before, we saw how John Wilson came to be associated with certain printers'ornaments which had apparently belonged to William Fenner, we can now easilyunderstand how Mary Fenner, James Waugh, and Joseph Fenner came to be associatedwith these same ornaments. Mary Fenner was Wilson's partner, and on his deathcontinued the firm's business in the time-honoured way: she substituted her name forhis, as is seen from the second edition of Grove's Sermons and Tracts, the first fourvolumes of which were published by Wilson, the final two by Mary Fenner. Then indue course Mary Fenner found another partner, her new husband, James Waugh, aglass seller who unsuccessfully applied for membership in the Stationers' Company,but who none the less carried on as a stationer. And Waugh in due course joined forceswith his step-son, Joseph Fenner, and the two carried on together until the late 1750s,when Fenner removed to the Angel and Bible in Paternoster Row. According to Plomer,Joseph Fenner 'retired from business' soon after; what he did until his death in 1809is not, apparently, known.

John Wilson's untimely death brought to an end a genuinely promising career.Following the publication of volumes one and two of the Treatise, John Noon advertisedthe work, with some justification, as ^beautifully printed'. It would be an exaggerationto suggest that the work is in a class with that of a great private press, or even that itis among the finest pieces of commercial printing of its age. But the Treatise is clearlya better than average piece of printing: on quality paper, printed with good type,pleasantly and openly set out, a pleasure to handle and read, quite independently of its

133

content. Hume was generally unlucky with the Treatise—he describes it as having fallen'dead-horn from the Press'^^~but no hitherto unknown author would have had groundsto complain about the standard of production maintained by Wilson, nor would Humesee any of his work printed in better form until well after he had become famous. Andit is some compliment to Wilson's eye for design that his successors at Fenner and Co.continued for some years to produce books according to the standard of appearance hehad set.

One further point: we already know, from the three imprints discussed above, thatJohn Wilson undertook printing for John Noon. A preliminary survey of Noon'spublications for this same period suggests that, by using the evidence of ornaments andtype, it would be possible to compile a reasonably reliable longer list of Wilson Noontitles, and a further list of Wilson's work for several booksellers whose publications linkthem to the nonconformists.^^ Wilson's close connections with booksellers with thislink is illustrated by an advertisement from The London Evening Post for 15-17 April1740:

This is to give NOTICE,THAT the four Volumes of the Rev. Mr. Grove's Posthumous Works are gone to the Press,and will be publish'd with the utmost Expedition. As there are but very few printed more thanarc subscribed for, such Gentlemen who are willing to encourage this Undertaking, are desir'dto send in their Names to Mr. John Noon in Cheapside; Mess. Hett and Davidson in thePoultry; and John Wilson, Printer, at the Turk's-Head in Gracechurch-street; of whom Proposalsmay be had, with the Contents of the four Volumes.

Beyond the fact that he apparently printed David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature,Wilson's significance lies, I suggest, in the part he took in the printing and publishingactivities of eighteenth-century dissenters—of the work he did for Grove's literaryexecutors, for Noon, and for Dodd, Hett, Ward, and other dissenting booksellers ofthe period. A study of the personal, cultural, and economic ties within this particularliterary community could well be of interest.

1 Keynes and Sraffa (eds), An Abstract of ATreatise of Human Nature 1740: A Pamphlethitherto unknown by David Hume (Cambridge,1938), p. xix. The authors continue by suggest-ing that 'It may be, therefore, that the thirdvolume had been partly set up before Hume hadinsisted on parting from Noon'.

2 The remaining types are {3) the Caslon GreatPrimer Roman {'Being An Attempt to introducethe experimental Method of Reasoning') foundin the 1734 Specimen, used as early as 1728 inPemberton's work on Newton; (4) the CaslonSmall Pica (used for the mottoes and the imprintlines); and (5) the Caslon English Roman No.2, found only on the title of volume three('Wherein sonne Passages of the foregoing Vol-

umes are illustrated and explain'd'). These typesare illustrated in 'A specimen of printing typesby William Caslon, Eondon, 1766', introductionand notes by James Mosley, Journal of thePrinting Historical Society., no. 16 (1981-2). Iam indebted to Mr Mosley for his considerableassistance in identifying each of the five typeshere discussed.

3 There may well be other examples of suchapparently identical broken sorts occurring inboth of the separately issued portions of thework, but I have not found these.

4 Hume was still capitalizing most substantivesduring the last year of his life, as is shown bythe manuscript of his 'My Own Eife\ Thefragment of Treatise manuscript extant, of the

134

concluding section of volume three, is almostcertainly not the manuscript from which theprinter worked, but it does reflect this habit, asdo the several other works Hume publishedduring the 1740s and early 1750s. The manu-scripts here mentioned are among the HumeManuscripts of the Royal Society of Edinburgh,now located in the National Eibrary of Scotland.See NES MSS. 23,159/15 and 23.

5 Eedgers of William Strahan, BE, Add. MS.48800. Although Charles Corbet's name (mis-printed Borbet) appears on the imprint of theAbstract, the ledger entry charges John Noonfor the cost of printing. The work was issuedanonymously, doubtless at Hume's request, andprobably at his expense.

6 Only T. Wood appears on both lists. As thereare independent grounds (Hume's letters, forexample) for supposing the Treatise was pub-lished in Eondon, I have not enquired into thework of the several provincial printers whoare represented among Noon and Eongmanimprints of the period, and, for reasons whichbecome apparent below, I have carried out nocomprehensive examination of the work of theeight printers whose names appear only onworks published by Eongman.

7 The most common bookseller's imprint on thetwenty-four works examined is Wilson's own,which appears eleven times. I assume, however,that this is disproportionate, and that Wilsonprinted much more for others than for himself.

8 By *used in a work' I here mean that an ornamentappears at least once in that work. I have madeno effort to keep a careful tally of the numberof times any given ornament appears in aparticular work, but it may be pointed out thatornament no. 3 is used seven times in theTreatise, while in the four-volume Sermons andTracts Wilson used one head-piece more thantwenty-five times. In my terminology, thesemultiple appearances in several volumes countas one 'use'.

9 Of the Wilson printings examined, about two-thirds (seventeen of twenty-four) fall into theclass of pamphlets and sermons.

10 Henry R. Plomer et at., A Dictionary of thePrinters and Booksellers of England . . . 1726-^77S (Eondon, 1968); D. F. McKenzie (ed.).Stationers^ Company Apprentices., 1701-1800(Oxford, 1978).

11 Guildhall Eibrary, MS. 4049/4, 5, vestry books

of the parish of All Hallows, Eombard Street.12 Guildhall Eibrary, MS. 11,316, Eand Tax as-

sessment books, vol. I I I . In preparing thisparagraph I have also consulted volumes 93, 96,99, 102, 105, 108, 114, 117, 120, 123, 126, 129,and 132. These fourteen volumes contain therecords of Eand Tax assessments for BridgeWard, Precinct of All Hallows, Eombard Street,I730-I to 1743-4-

13 If William Fenner had become Mrs Parsons'spartner and a resident of Gracechurch Street by1733, the year before he and Beresford publishedEdmund Eaw's Enquiry into the Ideas of Space.,Time., Immensity and Eternity in Cambridge,there is some reason to suppose that this workwas actually printed in Eondon. Major, in thevestry book (n. 11 above) dates Fenner's arrivalin the parish to Midsummer, 1731.

14 I am grateful to Miss Robin Myers, Hon.Archivist, Stationers' Hall, for guiding me tothese entries in the Court Book of the Stationers'Company. While this article was in press Iobtained a copy of John Wilson's will. Thisdocument, dated 15 October 1739, was probated20 August 1741. Wilson bequeathed all of hispossessions, including his 'printing materials',to his 'dearest and most kind friend, M^^ MaryFenner'. PRO, Prob.11.711, p. 187.

15 'My own Eife', n. 4 above. The Treatise didattract several generally negative reviews, andfrom the mid-1740s was the target of unfavour-able (and often uncomprehending) criticism, andso one might challenge Hume's assessment ofits fate. It is clear, however, that despite Noon'scontinuing efforts to make the work known, itsold very slowly, and thus Hume never had theopportunity, as he clearly once hoped he would,of publishing a revised second edition. SeeJ. Y. T. Greig (ed.). The Letters of David Hume(Oxford, 1932), vol. i, p. 40 (letter to FrancisHutcheson, 16 March 1740).

16 Wilson's imprint also appears on works sold by,inter alios, A. Dodd, R. Hett, E. Nutt, andAaron Ward, booksellers whose publicationslink them closely to the dissenters. It alsoappears on works printed by his GracechurchStreet neighbour, James Hodges, for whomWilson almost certainly printed the secondedition of Benjamin Martin's Bibliotheca Techno-logica. Perhaps this helps to explain how SamuelIdle came to use Wilson's ornament (no. 13) inthe first edition of this same work.

135