Which, when the stall-man did espy,
Soon to the boy I heard him call
‘You, sir, you never buy a book.
Therefore in one you shall not look.’
The boy pass’d slowly on, and with a sigh
He wish’d he never had been taught to read,
Then of the old churl’s books he should have had no need.”
This is an unexpected link with Stevenson; the proprietor of the shop “which was dark and smelt of Bibles” (that quaint store-house of romance)[202] is a reincarnation of this bookstall man; he repeats the old growl in prose:
“I do not believe, child, that you are an intending purchaser at all!”