ed to
recount, with some pleasure, a journey or two which he rode with him
as his clerk, and relate the victories that he gained over the
excisemen in grammatical disputations. But the insolence of his
mistress, who employed him in servile drudgery, quickly disgusted him,
and he went up to London in quest of more suitable employment.

He was recommended to a timber-merchant at the Bankside, and, while he
was there on liking, is said to have given hopes of great mercantile
abilities; but this place he soon left, I know not for what reason,
and was bound apprentice to Mr. Collins, a printer of some reputation,
and deputy alderman.

This was a trade for which men were formerly qualified by a literary
education, and which was pleasing to Cave, because it furnished some
employment for his scholastick attainments. Here, therefore, he
resolved to settle, though his master and mistress lived in perpetual
discord, and their house was, therefore, no comfortable habitation.
From the inconveniencies of these domestick tumults he was soon
released, having, in only two years, attained so much skill in his
art, and gained so much the confidence of his master, that he was
sent, without any superintendant, to conduct a printing-office at
Norwich, and publish a weekly paper. In this undertaking he met with
some opposition, which produced a publick controversy, and procured
young Cave the reputation of a writer.

His master died before his apprenticeship was expired, and he was not
able to bear the perverseness of his mistress. He, therefore, quitted
her house upon a stipulated allowance, and married a young widow, with
whom he lived at Bow. When his apprenticeship was over, he worked, as
a journeyman, at the printing-house of Mr. Barber, a man much
distinguished, and employed by the tories, whose principles had, at
that time, so much prevalence with Cave, that he was, for some years,
a writer in Mist's Journal; which, though he afterwards obtained, by
his wife's interest, a small place in the post-office, he for some
time continued. But, as interest is powerful, and conversation,
however mean, in time persuasive, he, by degrees, inclined to another
party; in which, however, he was always moderate, though steady and
determined.

When he was admitted into the post-office, he still continued, at his
intervals of attendance, to exercise his trade, or to employ himself
with some typographical business. He corrected the Gradus ad
Parnass