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maintain anything of the kind. The purchase of a book here seems to have been merely an occasional transaction, like the purchase of a house; and the few books that were produced with a view to being sold were mostly prepared in the monasteries, as well as probably purchased only by those establishments. Perhaps the first books that got to any extent into the hands of the people in England (and even their dispersion must have been but to a very limited extent) were the religious treatises of the reformer Wycliffe, and some of his followers, in the fourteenth century. But, still, there is no mention of book-shops in London, we believe, till long after this date. Fitz-Stephen, of course, has no notice of any in his Description, written in the latter part of the twelfth century, in which he celebrates with so much gusto the wine-shops, the cook-shops, the fish-shops, the poultry-shops, the horse-markets, &c., of" the most noble city ;" and Dan John Lydgate's ballad of London, Lyckpenny,' which belongs to the fifteenth century, is equally silent as to the existence of any storehouses of food or furniture for the mind, while commemorating the activity and vociferation of the dealers in all other kinds of commodities.

Bookselling, no doubt, came in among us with printing; and, probably, our first printers were also our first booksellers. Memorable old William Caxton, who set up his press in the Almonry at Westminster, in the year 1474, not only himself sold the books he printed, but even wrote many of them: he was author, printer, and publisher, all in one. It was not long, however, before the merchandize in books, as in other commodities in extensive demand, came to be carried on by a class of persons distinct from both the intellectual and the mechanical manufacturers of the article.

The Stationers' Company was incorporated in 1557, in the reign of Philip and Mary, and comprehends stationers, booksellers, letter-founders, printers, and bookbinders. The booksellers, however, have always been by far the most numerous portion of the body, and also the most influential from other causes, as well as from their greater number. They are, from the nature of the case, the capitalists by whom the production of books is mainly promoted—the employers of the printers, and to some extent of the authors also—and, as they run the risks, so they enjoy the advantages, of that position. Accordingly, while nobody ever heard of any influence on literature being exerted by printers, the influence of booksellers on literature has at all times, and in all countries, been very considerable. We have the high authority of Horace for looking upon them as, in the department of poetry at least, one of the three supreme controlling powers:"Mediocribus esse poetis,

Non dii, non homines, non concessere columnæ"

that is, as the words may be translated, Mediocrity in poetry is a thing not suf fered by gods, by men, or by booksellers. The bookseller, indeed, it is intimated by the metonymy here used, judges by a rule or standard of criticism different from that referred to by the general public; he applies what may be called a pocket-rule to the matter; but it may be fairly questioned if any surer or better for ordinary occasions is to be found in Aristotle.

We have not much information about bookselling in London that is curious or interesting till we come to the middle of the seventeenth century. It was probably not till some time after this that book-shops (in the mo

dern sense) began to rise in what is now the great centre of the trade-Paternoster Row, or The Row, as it is styled by way of eminence (and also perhaps to get rid of an inconveniently polysyllabic designation). They seem to have been only beginning to make their appearance when Strype produced his edition of Stow, in 1720. "This street," we are told by Strype, in his solemn fashion of speech, "before the Fire of London, was taken up by eminent mercers, silkmen, and lacemen; and their shops were so resorted unto by the nobility and gentry, in their coaches, that oft times the street was so stopped up that there was no passage for foot passengers. But since the said fire, those eminent tradesmen have settled themselves in several other parts, especially in Covent Garden, in Bedford Street, Henrietta Street, and King Street. And the inhabitants in this street are now a mixture of tradespeople, and chiefly tire-women, for the sale of commodes, top-knots, and the like dressings for the females. There are also many shops of mercers and silkmen; and at the upper end some stationers, and large warehouses for booksellers; well situated for learned and studious men's access thither; being more retired and private."

At the time of the Great Fire, and probably for long before, the principal booksellers' shops were in St. Paul's Churchyard. Hither Pepys was commonly wont to resort when he wanted either a new or an old book. Thus, on the 31st of November, 1660, he notes, " In Paul's Churchyard I bought the play of Henry the Fourth, and so went to the new theatre and saw it acted; but, my expectation being too great, it did not please me, as otherwise I believe it would; and my having a book, I believe, did spoil it a little." Again, on the 10th of February, 1662, we find him recording as follows:-"To Paul's Churchyard, and there I met with Dr. Fuller's England's Worthies,' the first time that I ever saw it; and so I sat down reading in it; being much troubled that (though he had some discourse with me about my family and arms) he says nothing at all, nor mentions us either in Cambridgeshire or Norfolk. But I believe, indeed, our family were never considerable." Poor Pepys! never was inordinate vanity in any man so snubbed and checked at every movement by a still more inveterate principle of honesty: it is like the convulsive jerking and counter-jerking of a Supple Jack.

A few years after this, however, the booksellers were for a time driven from this quarter by the effects of the great fire. "By Mr. Dugdale," writes Pepys, under date of September 26th, 1666, "I hear the great loss of books in St. Paul's Churchyard, and at their Hall also, which they value at about 150,000l.; some booksellers being wholly undone, and, among others, they say, my poor Kirton." And on the 5th of October he adds, "Mr. Kirton's kinsman, my bookseller, come in my way; and so I am told by him that Mr. Kirton is utterly undone, and made 20007. or 30007. worse than nothing, from being worth 70007. or 8000l. That the goods laid in the Churchyard fired through the windows those in St. Faith's church; and those, coming to the warehouses' doors, fired them, and burned all the books and the pillars of the church, which is alike pillared (which I knew not before); but, being not burned, they stood still. He do believe there is above 150,000. of books burned; all the great booksellers almost undone; not only them, but their warehouses at their Hall and under Christ-church, and elsewhere, being all burned. A great want thereof there will

be of books, specially Latin books and foreign books; and, among others, the Polyglott and new Bible, which he believes will be presently worth 401. a-piece." Walton's, or the London Polyglott, here mentioned, is in six folio volumes, the first of which had been published in 1654, and the fourth, fifth, and sixth in 1657. Evelyn also records the immense destruction of books by this terrible conflagration. In his Diary' he states that the magazines or stores of books belonging to the stationers, which had been deposited for safety in the vaulted church of St. Faith's under St. Paul's, continued to burn for a week.

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The history of one of Pepys's purchases affords an instance of the extent to which the fire raised the price of certain books. "It is strange," he observes, on the 20th of March, 1667, "how Rycaut's Discourse of Turkey, which before the fire I was asked but 8s. for, there being all but twenty-two or thereabouts burned, I did now offer 20s., and he demands 50s., and I think I shall give it him, though it be only as a monument of the fire." Accordingly he bought the book, which is now in the Pepysian Library at Cambridge. "Away to the Temple," he writes on the 8th of April, "to my new bookseller's; and there I did agree for Rycaut's late History of the Turkish Policy, which cost me 55s., whereas it was sold plain before the late fire for 8s., and bound and coloured as this is for 20s. ; for I have bought it finely bound and truly coloured all the figures, of which there was but six books done so, whereof the King, and Duke of York, and Duke of Monmouth, and Lord Arlington had four. The fifth was sold, and I have bought the sixth."

Pepys's new bookseller, as we see, was stationed in or near the Temple. Westminster Hall, the other more noisy temple of the laws, was also in those days a great place for the sale of books, and as such was frequently visited by Pepys. "To Westminster Hall," is one of his memoranda on the 26th of October, 1660," and bought, among other books, one of the Life of our Queen, which I read at home to my wife; but it was so sillily writ that we did nothing but laugh at it." And if the book kept his wife and him laughing for a whole evening, what more or better would he have had for his money? They are rare tomes of which anything so commendatory can be said. Some doubt, it is true, may be raised by other entries if Pepys's sense of the ludicrous was the justest in the world. Possibly he found matter of laughter where nobody else would have seen anything of the kind, as it is certain that he would sometimes find none in what was the richest wit and humour to other people. "To the Wardrobe," he writes on the 26th of December, 1662: "hither come Mr. Battersby; and, we falling into discourse of a new book of drollery in use, called Hudibras, I would needs go find it out, and met with it at the Temple: cost me 2s. 6d. But, when I come to read it, it is so silly an abuse of the Presbyter Knight going to the wars that I am ashamed of it; and by and by, meeting at Mr. Townsend's at dinner, I sold it to him for 18d." But this turned out to be a precipitate proceeding. To Pepys's infinite amazement, the "new book of drollery" continued to be the rage. "And so," he tells us, under date of the 6th of February thereafter, "to a bookseller's in the Strand, and there bought Hudibras again, it being certainly some ill humour to be so against that which all the world cries up to be the example of wit; for which I am resolved once more to read him, and see whether I can find it or no." With this praiseworthy resolution (much

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resembling that of the ingenious individual who, not knowing how to read, sought to cure that defect by procuring a proper pair of spectacles one of the most touching examples of the Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties) Pepys set to work; but we fear his success was not considerable. "To Paul's Churchyard," he writes in his account of his doings on the 28th of November in this same year," and there looked upon the second part of Hudibras, which I buy not, but borrow to read, to see if it be as good as the first, which the world cried so mightily up, though it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried but [by?] twice or three times' reading to bring myself to think it witty." He did buy the book, however, a few days after this. "To St. Paul's Churchyard, to bookseller's," is his naïve and curious record on the 10th of December, “and could not tell whether to lay out my money for books of pleasure, as plays, which my nature was most earnest in; but at last, after seeing Chaucer, Dugdale's History of Paul's, Stow's London, Gesner, History of Trent, besides Shakspeare, Jonson, and Beaumont's plays, I at last chose Dr. Fuller's Worthies, the Cabbala, or Collections of Letters of State, and a little book, Delices de Hollande, with another little book or two, all of good use or serious pleasure; and Hudibras, both parts, the book now in greatest fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies." So he seems to have laid out his money in this last instance in the way of duty, or of penance, rather than for either pleasure or use. No doubt, if he found any pleasure in Hudibras, it must have been, in his own phraseology, serious enough-entirely of the order of those very " calm pleasures" which the poet has coupled and by implication almost identified with "majestic pains." The only other mention we find of Butler's poem in the Diary' is in the entry dated 11th October, 1665, where, in a notice of an interview with Mr. Seamour, or Seymour, it is written, "I could not but think it odd that a parliament-man, in a serious discourse before such persons as we [me?], and my Lord Brouncker, and Sir John Minnes, should quote Hudibras, as being the book I doubt he hath read most." From his thus taking it as a sort of insult that a person should quote the book in his presence, we might almost suspect that his ineffectual endeavours to comprehend the wit of Hudibras had come to be a standing joke against Pepys.

On the rebuilding of the City after the fire, the booksellers, who had formerly carried on business in St. Paul's Churchyard, or such of them as were not reduced to absolute ruin, seem to have generally returned to their old quarters. Pepys's friend Kirton, however, appears never to have recovered from the losses he sustained by that catastrophe. In Pepys's latter days, when he was probably a larger collector than ever of rare books, the bookseller with whom he chiefly dealt appears to have been Mr. Robert Scott. Scott was the prince of London booksellers in his day. It was with him, too, Roger North tells us, that his brother Dr. John North dealt, in laying the foundation of his library. Scott's sister was North's grandmother's woman; " and, upon that acquaintance," says Roger," he expected, and really had from him, useful information of books and the editions." "This Mr. Scott," the graphic and cordial biographer goes on, was, in his time, the greatest librarian in Europe; for, besides his stock in England, he had warehouses at Frankfort, Paris, and other places, and dealt by factors. After he was grown old, and much worn by multiplicity of business, he began to think of his

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ease, and to leave off. Whereupon he contracted with one Mills, of St. Paul's Churchyard, near 10,000l. deep, and articled not to open his shop any more. But Mills, with his auctioneering, atlases, and projects, failed, whereby poor Scott lost above half his means. But he held to his contract of not opening his shop, and, when he was in London, for he had a country-house, passed most of his time at his house amongst the rest of his books; and his reading (for he was no mean scholar) was the chief entertainment of his time. He was not only an expert bookseller, but a very conscientious good man; and, when he threw up his trade, Europe had no small loss of him. Our doctor, at one lift, bought of him a whole set of Greek classics, in folio, of the best editions."

Scott kept shop in Little Britain, probably in the part of that zigzag street adjacent to Duck Lane, or, as it is now called, Duke Street, in Smithfield. This portion of Little Britain and the whole of Duck Lane, in the latter half of the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth century, were mainly inhabited by booksellers and publishers. It was, Roger North tells us, "a plentiful and perpetual emporium of learned authors; and men went thither as to a market." "This," he continues, "drew to the place a mighty trade; the rather because the shops were spacious, and the learned gladly resorted to them, where they seldom failed to meet with agreeable conversation. And the booksellers themselves were knowing and conversible men, with whom, for the sake of bookish knowledge, the greatest wits were pleased to converse." Strype, in his edition of Stow, published in 1720, describes Little Britain as “well built, and much inhabited by booksellers, especially from the Pump to Duck Lane;"-" which," he adds, "is also taken up by booksellers for old books." Afterwards, he describes the part of Little Britain occupied by the booksellers as extending from St. Bartholomew Close southward towards the Pump, and so bending eastward to Aldersgate Street. The booksellers here, he says, "formerly were much resorted to by learned men for Greek and Latin books; but now the station of such booksellers is removed into Paternoster Row and Paul's Churchyard." Maitland, writing in 1756, tells us that the booksellers' part of Little Britain was then much deserted and had little trade; and Duck Lane he describes as "a place once noted for dealers in old books, but at present quite forsaken by all sorts of dealers."

When Benjamin Franklin and his friend James Ralph (who also became in after years a person of some note, making a considerable figure as a political writer in the latter part of the reign of George II., and having besides got himself immortalized in the Dunciad') came over together from Philadelphia to London in the end of the year 1724, they took a lodging in Little Britain at 3s. 6d. per week; "as much," says Franklin," as we could then afford." He has commemorated one of the dealers in old books by whom the street was then inhabited. "While I lodged in Little Britain," he relates, "I made an acquaintance with one Wilcox, a bookseller, whose shop was next door. He had an immense collection of second-hand books. Circulating libraries were not then in use; but we agreed that, on certain reasonable terms (which I have now forgotten), I might take, read, and return any of his books: this I esteemed a great advantage, and I made as much use of it as I could."

But by far the most curious and complete account that we have of the book

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