This occasion for the above interesting letter, was an application made by { 281} Baskerville in 1760 to his friend, Dr. Franklin, to assist him in London to sound the literati there respecting the purchase of his types. This attempt failing, a few years later Dr. Franklin undertook a similar good office in Paris,[571] and with a similar result. “The French,” he wrote in 1767, “reduced by the war of 1756 were so far from being able to pursue schemes of taste, that they were unable to repair their public buildings, and suffered the scaffolding to rot before them.”
Having lost all spirit for the printing business, Baskerville, about 1766, declined to pursue it except through the medium of a confidential agent, and the following notice, issued about this period, announced this decision to the public:―
“Robert Martin has agreed with Mr. Baskerville for the use of his whole printing apparatus, with whom he has wrought as a journeyman for ten years past. He therefore offers his services to print at Birmingham for Gentlemen or Booksellers, on the most moderate terms, who may depend on all possible care and elegance in the execution. Samples, if necessary, may be seen on sending a line to John Baskerville or Robert Martin.”[572]
After a retirement of three years, Baskerville resumed work in 1769, completing between that period and the time of his death his fine series of the 4to classics, which bear the marks of unabated genius even in declining days; and suffice, had he printed nothing else, to distinguish him as the first typographer of his time.
It would appear from a passage in a letter of Franklin’s in reference to the fine edition of _Shaftesbury’s Characteristics_, published in 1773 (4to), that, in that year, Baskerville contemplated some further development of his type-founding business.[573] His press, at any rate, seems to have continued active till that date, and even later; although it is doubtful whether the latest works bearing his imprint received his personal oversight.
He died on January 8, 1775. Notwithstanding the poor success of his printing enterprise, he left behind him a fortune of £12,000, which, as he had no heir, went, together with the stock and goodwill of his business, to his widow.[574] { 282}