Shadows of the Old Booksellers

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Bell and Daldy, 1865 - 320 pages

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Page 89 - now you talk of translators, what is your method of managing them ? ' ' Sir,' replied he, ' these are the saddest pack of rogues in the world : in a hungry fit, they'll swear they understand all the languages in the universe. I have known one of them take down a Greek book upon my counter and cry, "Ah, this is Hebrew, and must read it from the latter end.
Page 103 - On the day the book was first vended, a crowd of authors besieged the shop ; entreaties, advices, threats of law and battery, nay cries of treason, were all employed to hinder the coming out of the " Dunciad ; " on the other side, the booksellers and hawkers made as great efforts to procure it.
Page 215 - This person was no other than the philanthropic bookseller in St. Paul's Churchyard, who has written so many little books for children : he called himself their friend; but he was the friend of all mankind. He was no sooner alighted, but he was in haste to be gone; for he was ever on business of the utmost importance, and was at that time actually compiling materials for the history of on
Page 187 - Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help...
Page 169 - I am guilty, I own, of meannesses which poverty unavoidably brings with it, my reflections are filled with repentance for my imprudence, but not with any remorse for being a villain, that may be a character you unjustly charge me with.
Page 89 - Now damn them ! what if they should put it into the newspaper, how you and I went together to Oxford ? what would I care ? If I should go down into Sussex, they would say I was gone to the Speaker. But what of that ? If my son were but big enough to go on with the business, by G — d I would keep as good company as old Jacob.
Page 201 - I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation ; English, Scotch, and Irish, Whig and Tory, churchman and sectary, freethinker, and religionist, patriot and courtier, united in their rage against the man who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the earl of Strafford...
Page 202 - Strafford ; and after the first ebullitions of their fury were over, what was still more mortifying, the book seemed to sink into oblivion. Mr Millar told me, that in a twelvemonth he sold only forty-five copies of it. I scarcely, indeed, heard of one man in the three kingdoms, considerable for rank or letters, that could endure the book.
Page 123 - ... loves and honours: his eye always on the ladies; if they have very large hoops, he looks down and supercilious, and as if he would be thought wise, but perhaps the sillier for that: as he approaches a lady, his eye is never fixed first upon her face, but upon her feet, and thence he raises it up, pretty quickly for a dull eye; and one would think (if we thought him at all worthy of observation) that from her air and (the last beheld) her face, he sets her down in his mind as so or so, and then...

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