that time which could answer the description, so I suspect the well-laid
plan came to naught. The specimens of local and ephemeral poetry that
were printed in the colonial press in succeeding years make it easy to
comprehend the failure of the project: the villanously rhymed effusions
fairly imposthumate all the ribald vulgarity of the times; coarseness
and dulness of subject and thought being rivalled only by the
super-coarseness of the verbiage. I do not say that the newspapers
provoked these stupid rhymes, which are about as much poetry as is a
game of crambo; but I do not find them until "newspaper-time," and fear
the extra circulation through the weekly press may be held partly
responsible.

A book called "A Collection of Poems by Several Hands" apparently was
gathered by methods similar to the one shown by the advertisement just
quoted. It was printed in 1744, and was a puerile and banal collection
containing but few good verses, and was apparently made expressly to
show off the literary accomplishments of Mather Byles, who was what
Carlyle would call an intellectual dapperling.

Book-auctions, held first in England in 1676, formed one of the rare
diversions in the provinces, and were apparently largely attended by
"sentimentalists," as one book-dealer called book-buyers. The business
of book-auctioneering was called, in the bombastic language of the
times, "the sublimest Auxiliary which Science Commerce and Arts either
has or perhaps ever will possess," while the bookseller was called
"Provedore to the Sentimentalists and Professor of Book Auctioneering."
These sales or vendues were frequently held at taverns.

At a very early day intelligent and progressive Bostonians established a
public library. By the year 1673 bequests had been made to such an
institution, and consignments deemed suitable for it had been sent to
Boston by London booksellers. All these books were properly sober and
pious. The Prince library, that first large American book collection,
which was conceived and started by Thomas Prince in 1703, was nobly
planned and nobly carried out, and deserved more gratitude and more care
than it received at modern hands.

But many towns had no public library, hence much friendly exchange and
lending of books took place between book-owners and neighbors, sometimes
apparently without the owner's consent or knowledge. The newspapers,
among their sparse advertisements, have many such as this simply naive
o