Faulkner, George

, a worthy printer of no mean celebrity, is rather recorded in this work for the goodness of his heart, than from his excellence as an author. It is, however, no small degree of praise to say of him, that he was the first man who carried his profession to a high degree of credit in Ireland. He was the confidential printer of dean Swift; and enjoyed the friendship and patronage of the earl of Chesterfield, whose ironical letters to Faulkner, comparing him to Atticus, are perhaps the finest parts of his writings. He settled at Dublin as a printer and bookseller, soon after 1726 (in which year we find him in London under the tuition of the celebrated Bowyer), &nd raised there a very comfortable fortune by his well-known 44 Journal,“and other laudable undertakings. In 1735, he | was ordered into custody by the house of commons in Ireland, for having published” A proposal for the better regulation and improvement of quadrille;“an ingenious treatise by bishop Hort; which produced from Swift” The 4egion club.“Having had the misfortune to break his leg, he was satirically introduced by Foote, who spared nobody, in the character of” Peter Paragraph,“in” The Orators, 1762.“He commenced a suit against the mimic; and had the honour of lord Townshend’s interference to arbitrate the difference. He died an alderman of Dublin, Aug. 28, 1775. His style and manner were finely ridiculed in” An Epistle to Gorges Edmund Howard, esq. with notes, explanatory, critical, and historical, by George Faulkner, esq. and alderman,“reprinted in Dilly’s” Reppsitory,“vol. IV. p. 175. But a fairer specimen of his real talents at epistle-writing may be seen in the” Anecdotes of Mr. Bowyer,“or in the second volume of the” Supplement to Swift;" whence it appears that, if vanity was a prominent feature in his character, his gratitude was no less conspicuous. ¹