In about the following year Dodsley proposed to Johnson that he should write a dictionary of the English language, and after some hesitation on the author’s part, the proposal was accepted. The dictionary was to be the joint property--as was then beginning to be the case with all works of importance--of several booksellers, viz.: Robert Dodsley, Charles Hitch, Andrew Millar, Messrs. Longman, and Messrs. Knapton; the management of it during publication being confided to Andrew Millar. The work took eight years, instead of the three on which Johnson had calculated, of very severe study and labour, and the £1575 which was then considered a very handsome _honorarium_, was all drawn out in drafts, for at the dinner given in honour of the completion of the great work, when the receipts were produced it was found that he had nothing more to receive. Johnson, after sending his last “copy” to Millar, inquired of the messenger what the bookseller said. “He said, ‘Thank God I have done with him.’” “I am glad,” said the Doctor smiling, “that he thanks God for anything.”
Andrew Millar was by this time the proprietor of Tonson’s shop in Fleet Street, and was a man of great enterprise. He was the publisher, among other authors, of Thomson, Fielding, and Hume, and Johnson invariably speaks well of him. “I respect Millar, sir; he has raised the price of literature:” “and,” writes John Nichols, “Jacob Tonson and Andrew Millar were the best _patrons_ of literature, a fact rendered unquestionable by the valuable works produced under their fostering and genial hands.” Literature now was rapidly changing its condition. Johnson had discovered that the subscription system was essentially a rotten one, and that the real reading public, the author’s legitimate patrons, were reached of course through the medium of the booksellers: “He that asks for subscriptions soon finds that he has enemies. All who do not encourage him defame him:” and then again--“Now learning is a trade; a man goes to a bookseller and gets what he can. We have done with patronage. In the infancy of learning we find some great men praised for it. This diffused it among others. When it becomes general an author leaves the great and applies to the multitude.” As to what the booksellers of the eighteenth century were, and as to how they compare with the publishers of the nineteenth century, we will quote from an unedited letter of Mr. Thomas Carlyle, dated 3rd May, 1852, addressed to Mr. John Chapman, bookseller (Emerson’s first English publisher, we believe), now Dr. Chapman:--