Lag's Elegy and Other Chap Books. 205 



was almost unknown in England previous to the eighteenth cen- 

 tury. Next to London, Newcastle-on-Tyne was the English 

 town in which chap-books were most largely printed. Two of 

 the Cumberland towns — Penrith and Whitehaven — had a good 

 share of the trade in cheap books, as no one who has examined 

 the collection of tracts in the Bibliotheca Jacksoniana in Tullie 

 House, Carlisle, can doubt. Probably owing to the fact that the 

 agricultural labourers of the North of England had more curiosity 

 than their brethren in the South, the literary wares of the chap- 

 men were most readily disposed of in the Northern counties. 



" The chap literature of England consisted mainly of religious 

 discourses, new versions of old romances, lives of criminals, tales 

 of the supernatural, and humorous stories. The attractiveness of 

 the booklets was much enhanced in the eyes of rustics by their 

 illustrations. These were generally printed from wood blocks, 

 which had been used again and again, sometimes with a ludicrous 

 disregard of appropriateness. Most chap-book illustrations are 

 very poor, but occasionally the collector sees a good cut. It 

 must not be forgotten that Thomas Bewick, at the commence- 

 ment of his career, did some work for a Newcastle publisher of 

 popular books. 



" Though the chap-book or ' penny history ' scarcely existed 

 in England at an earlier date than the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century, it seems to have been well known north of the Tweed in 

 the last decade of the seventeenth century. A glance at Halli- 

 well's ' Glasgow Merriments,' an account of a unique collection of 

 ' penny merriments and histories,' printed by Robert Sanders at 

 Glasgow, 1695-8, will shew how varied in character and excellent 

 in quality was the cheap literature sold in the west of Scotland in 

 the time of William IIL (1). 



" The chap-books of Scotland belong chiefly to two classes — 

 the religious, including biographical sketches of eminent Cove- 

 nanters and similar works, and the humorous. Tales of the 

 supernatural and lives of noted criminals form a highly interesting 

 if comparatively small part of Scottish chap literature. 



" Prominent among the Scottish tracts of the religious class 

 are the writings of Patrick Walker, commonly styled ' The 

 Cameronian Pedlar,' though, as Mr Ilay Fleming has shewn, it 



1. Halliwell's tract is dated 1864. Onlj- 25 copies were printed. 



