NOTE.

The following lists of names are those which appear as the associated publishers of the first and second editions of Johnson's Poets. They furnish a curious record of the ruling sovereigns in the realms of print in 1779, and of the dynastic changes that the lapse of eleven years had produced.

T. DAVIES.

T. PAYNE.

L. DAVIS.

W. OWEN.
B. WHITE.

S. CROWDER.

T. CASLON.

T. LONGMAN.

B. LAW.

E. & C. DILLY.

J. DODSLEY.

H. BALDWIN.

J. WILKIE.
J. ROBSON.

J. JOHNSON.

T. LOWNDES.
T. BECKET.

G. ROBINSON.
T. CADELL.
W. DAVIS.
J. NICHOLS.

J. NEWBERY.

T. EVANS.

J. RIDLEY.

R. BALDWIN.

J. RIVINGTON & SONS.

T. PAYNE & SONS.

S. DAVIS.

B. WHITE & SON.

T. LONGMAN.

B. LAW.

C. DILLY.

J. DODSLEY.
H. BALDWIN.

J. ROBSON.
J. JOHNSON.

WILLIAM LOWNDES.

G. G. J. & J. ROBINSON.
T. CADELL.

J. NICHOLS.

J. NEWBERY.
T. EVANS.

R. BALDWIN.

CHAPTER XIV.

W

JAMES LACKINGTON.

HEN I was about ten years old, my father took me to London for a short holiday. He had business to transact with booksellers, of whom I remember Messrs. Robinson, of Paternoster Row, and Mr. Wingrave, of the Strand, for whom he printed the French Grammar,' and other works of M. Porny. The dingy warehouses of the great marts of literature did not attract much of my curiosity. But my father had a sight in reserve for me, almost as remarkable as Saint Paul's or Mrs. Salmon's waxwork. I went with him to "The Temple of the Muses." The building was burnt down some years ago, but I have engravings which assist my recollection of what I saw in 1801.

At one of the corners of Finsbury Square, which was built in 1789, there was a block of houses which had been adapted to the purposes of a great shop or warehouse, and presented an imposing frontage. A dome rises from the centre, on the top of which a flag is flying. This royal manifestation (now become common to suburban public-houses), proclaims that this is no ordinary commercial establishment. Over the principal entrance is inscribed, "Cheapest Booksellers in the World." It is the famous shop of

Lackington, Allen, and Co., "where above Half a Million of Volumes are constantly on Sale." We enter the vast area, whose dimensions are to be measured by the assertion that a coach and six might be driven round it. In the centre is an enormous circular counter, within which stand the dispensers of knowledge, ready to wait upon the country clergyman, in his wig and shovel-hat; upon the fine ladies, in feathers and trains; or upon the bookseller's collector, with his dirty bag. If there is any chaffering about the cost of a work, the shopman points to the following inscription: "The lowest price is marked on every Book, and no abatement made on any article." We ascend a broad staircase, which leads to "The Lounging Rooms," and to the first of a series of circular galleries, lighted from the lantern of the dome, which also lights the ground floor. Hundreds, even thousands, of volumes are displayed on the shelves running round their walls. As we mount higher and higher, we find commoner books, in shabbier bindings; but there is still the same order preserved, each book being numbered according to a printed catalogue. This is larger than that of any other bookseller's, and it comes out yearly. The formation of such an establishment as this assumes a remarkable power of organization, as well as a large command of capital. I daresay I wearied my father with questions about this wonderful Mr. Lackington, marvelling how rich he must have been; how learned! He might have answered my enquiries by showing me a very common print with this inscription: "J. Lackington, who a few years since began Book

selling with five pounds, now sells one hundred thousand volumes yearly; or, the Cobbler turned Bookseller." A year or two later, my desire for information was abundantly satisfied by the perusal of a book entitled 'Memoirs of the forty-five first years of the Life of James Lackington, the present Bookseller in Chiswell Street, Moorfields, London, written by himself, in Forty-seven Letters to a Friend.' This autobiography was originally published in 1791, before "The Temple of the Muses" had been inaugurated. I perhaps did a little injustice to the character of this book in once describing it as "that farrago of sense and absurdity." There is certainly a good deal of nonsense to be found in it, but the real information which it contains, and the curious picture which it presents of the struggles of a young man, almost without the rudiments of knowledge, and miserably poor, to become rich and famous in the annals of bookselling, require a careful and candid exposition.

James Lackington was born at Wellington, in Somersetshire, in 1746. His father, George Lackington, was a journeyman shoemaker. The name, I am informed, is not yet extinct in that town and neighbourhood. His mother was an honest and industrious woman; his father an habitual drunkard. Their poverty was such, under the father's idleness and improvidence, that the mother could not afford to pay two pence a week for the little boy's schooling. His superfluous energy expended itself in all sorts of mischief, till his commercial talent was developed in his employment by a baker, to cry and sell apple