CAVE, any large subterranean hollow. Cases were probably the primitive habitations, before men began to build edifices above ground. The primitive method of burial was also to deposit the bodies in caves; which seems to have been the origin of catacombs. Caves long continued the proper habitations of shepherds. Among the Romans, the antra used to be consecrated to nymphs, who were worshipped in caves, as other gods were in temples. The Persians also worshipped their god Mithras in a natural cave consecrated for the purpose by Zoroaster. The cave of the nymph Egeria is still shown at Rome.

Cave, Dr William, a learned English divine, born in 1637, educated in St John’s College, Cambridge, and successively minister of Hasely in Oxfordshire, of All-hallows the Great in London, and of Islington. He became chaplain to Charles IL, and in 1684 was installed as a canon of Windsor. He compiled The Lives of the Primitive Bathers in the three first Centuries of the Church, which is esteemed a very useful work; and Historia Literaria, in which he gives an exact account of all who had written for or against Christianity from the time of Christ to the fourteenth century; works which produced a very warm dispute between Dr Cave and M. le Clerc, who was then writing his Bibliothèque Universelle in Holland, and who charged the doctor with partiality. Dr Cave died in 1713.

Cave, Edward, printer, celebrated as the projector of the Gentleman s Magazine (the first publication of the [7:6:259]kind, and since “the fruitful mother of a thousand more”), was born in 1691. His father being disappointed of some small family expectations, was reduced to follow the trade of a shoemaker at Rugby in Warwickshire. The free school of this place, in which his son had, by the rules of its foundation, a right to be instructed, was then in high reputation, under the reverend Mr Holyock, to whose care most of the neighbouring families, even of the highest rank, intrusted their sons. He had judgment to discover, and for some time generosity to encourage, the talents of young Cave; and was so well pleased with his quick progress in the school, that he declared his resolution to breed him for the university, and recommend him as a servitor to some of his scholars of high rank. But prosperity which depends upon the caprice of others, is of short duration. Cave’s superiority in literature exalted him to an invidious familiarity with boys who were far above him in rank and expectations; and, as always happens in unequal associations, whatever unlucky prank was played was imputed to Cave. When any mischief, great or small, was done, though perhaps others boasted of the stratagem when it was successful, yet upon detection or miscarriage, the blame was certain to fall upon poor Cave. The harsh treatment he experienced on this account, although he bore it for a time, forced him at last to leave the school and abandon the hope of a literary education, in order to seek some other means of gaining a livelihood.

He was first placed under a collector of the excise; 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 trial, is said to have given promise of great mercantile abilities; but this place he soon quitted 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 scholastic 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 inconveniences of these domestic tumults he was soon released, having in two years attained so much skill in his art, and gained so much the confidence of his master, that he was sent without any superintendent to conduct a printing-house at Norwich, and publish a weekly paper. In this undertaking he met with some opposition, which produced a public controversy, and procured young Cave the reputation of a writer.

His master died before his apprenticeship had 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 had lived at Bow. When his apprenticeship terminated he worked as a journeyman at the printing-house of Mr Barbar, a man much distinguished and employed by the Tories, whose principles had at that time so much influence with Cave, that he was for some years a writer in Mist’s Journal. He afterwards obtained by his wife’s interest a small place in the post-office; but he still continued, during the intervals of attendance, to exercise his trade, or to employ himself in some typographical business. He corrected the Gradus ad Parnassum, and was liberally rewarded by the Company of Stationers. He wrote an Account of the Criminals, which had for some time a considerable sale; and published many little pamphlets which accident brought into his hands, of which it would be difficult to recover the titles. By the correspondence which his place in the post-office facilitated, he procured country newspapers, and sold their intelligence to a journalist in London for a guinea a week. He was afterwards raised to the office of clerk of the franks, in which he acted with great spirit and firmness, and often stopped franks which had been given by members of parliament to their friends, because he thought such extension of a peculiar right illegal. This raised many complaints; and the influence which was exerted against him procured his ejectment from office. He had now, however, collected a sum sufficient for the purchase of a small printing-office, and began the Gentleman s Magazine ; an undertaking to which lie owed the affluence in which he passed the last twenty years of his life, and the large fortune which he left behind him. When he formed the project he was far from expecting the success which he met with; and others had so little prospect of such a result, that though he had for several years talked of his plan among printers and booksellers, none of them thought it worth the trial. That they were not, says Dr Johnson, restrained by their virtue from the execution of another man’s design, was sufficiently apparent as soon as that design began to be gainful; for in a few years a multitude of magazines arose and perished; and the London Magazine, supported by a powerful association of booksellers, and circulated with all the art and all the cunning of trade, alone exempted itself from the general fate of Cave’s invaders, and obtained a considerable, though by no means an equal sale.

Cave now began to aspire to popularity; and being a great lover of poetry, he sometimes proposed subjects for poems, and offered prizes for the best productions which might be thus elicited. The first prize was fifty pounds, for which, being but newly acquainted with wealth, and thinking the influence of fifty pounds extremely great, he expected the first authors of the kingdom to appear as competitors, and accordingly offered the allotment of the prize to the universities. But when the time of decision arrived, no name appeared in the list of writers that had ever been seen before; while the universities and several private individuals declined the task of awarding the prize. The determination was then left to Dr Cromwell Mortimer and Dr Birch; and by the latter the award was made, which may be seen in Gent. Mag. vol. vi. p. 59.

Mr Cave continued to improve his magazine, and had the satisfaction of seeing its success proportionate to his diligence, till 1751, when his wife died of an asthma. He seemed at first not much affected by her death; but in a few days he became feverish, and lost his appetite, which he never afterwards recovered. After having lingered for about two years, experiencing many vicissitudes of amendment and relapse, he was seized with a diarrhoea by drinking acid liquors; and afterwards falling into a kind of lethargic insensibility, he died on the 10th of January 1754, having just concluded the twenty-third annual collection of his magazine.