He was first placed with a collector of the excise.  He used 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 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, that accident brought into his hands, of which it would be very difficult to recover the memory.  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.