Nevertheless, it was not so much of a re-betrayal. For less than what a publisher of this day would call one fair-sized edition of "The Square of Sevens," printed for Antrobus by the great John Gowne, of The Mask book-shop, has ever appeared. And, to account for the semi-privacy surrounding the little work, must be set forth the dolesome incident of a printing-house fire burning, "all except about a dozen or so of copies," before there had been any "distribution of the Book" among the author's "Friends, Male or, Female, or to the Publick." By some sudden change of his own mind or his conscience, Mr. Antrobus did not order any new edition. The prefatory "Afterthought" mentioned may be found, only if stuck in some of the copies of the volume--doubtless by quick and clumsy after-pastings.
Why Antrobus did not give the volume real currency is not known. That he was urged to do so is certain. It is likely, however, that about this same time some pecuniary losses withheld him from such expensive bobbies as printing books. He returned to Bath, and died there in 1740. We have no particulars of the event, nor are there more than allusions to it in the journal of the date or in the letters of contemporaries. Lady Lavinia Pitt, however, mentions the disease as the smallpox, then so much dreaded.
He left no family--except his young ward, the mysterious daughter of "Mr. George"--of the Tretelly Inn. To her Antrobus had given his name, and she inherited half his estate. Shortly after her kind guardian's death she married an Exeter gentleman of high family. Her father, "Mr. George," died in the course of Mr. Antrobus's stay at Tretelly.
To some beaux and belles of the reigns of George II. and George III. this book, originating in the conversation of another George-- George the Unknown--could well seem an interesting matter. All the more might it be so in view of its scarceness, from the first. There are no more copies of it, despite the fact that fashionable dilettanti in things occult have borne it in mind. Could anything be more characteristic of Horace Walpole than to find him in a letter, from serene Strawberry Hill, confessing--to no purpose--that he is "desirous of getting hold of that damned queer old woman's fortune-telling book, by Bob Antrobus." In the Diary of the sprightly Louisa Josepha Adelaide, Countess of Bute (afterward so unfortunate a wife and an even more unfortunate mother), she describes a droll scene at a Scotch castle one evening, in which the unexpected statements of "The Square of Sevens" as to the lives and characters of the company "put to the blush several persons of distinction" who rashly tempted its wisdom--especially including the aged Earl of Lothian. For what Lady Morgan thought of it, and the characteristic story of the peculiar terms on which she offered "to sell her copy to Archbishop Dacre," the reader is referred to the Bentijack Correspondence.