'"And never buys?" said Mr. Norreys.
'"Sir," said the shopman, with a good-natured smile, "they who buy seldom read. The poor boy pays me twopence a day to read as long as he pleases. I would not take it, but he is proud."'
[202:A] It was in one of these alleys or tributaries that a lawyer's clerk, returning from his office, carried home in triumph to Camden Town a copy of Marlowe's 'Tragical History of Doctor Faustus,' 1663, which he bought for 1s.
[217:A] Concerning the Hande and Starre, Fleet Street, and the renowned Richard Tottell, 'printer by special Patentes of the bokes of the Common Lawe in the several Reigns of King Edw. VI. and of the quenes Marye and Elizabeth,' it may be pointed out that this house, 7, Fleet Street, exists as before, the only modern addition being the half-brick front which was placed there more than a hundred years ago. Jaggard, the bookseller, lived there after Tottell, and from thence he issued the first edition of Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet,' actually printed in the rear (now Dick's Coffee-house), and the possibility of Shakespeare having often called to correct the proof-sheets is conjured up. The house was in turn occupied by many eminent law publishers and booksellers, and of late years by the late Mr. Henry Butterworth, who became himself the Queen's law publisher.
[237:A] One of the reviewers of Nichols' 'Literary Anecdotes' says: 'How often have we seen him standing betwixt these, bidding "his friends good-morrow with a cheerful face," and pulling down his ruffles, already too long, till they covered his fingers. Davies had, even while in common conversation, as much of the old school of acting in his manner as his friend Gibson had upon the stage; though he is said not to have been so pompous as Berry, to whose parts he succeeded; and Berry, in this respect, was thought to have declined from Bridgewater.'
[237:B] Now covered by Charing Cross Hospital. At the commencement of the third quarter of the sixteenth century, Thomas Colwell, a bookseller, had a shop at the sign of 'St. John the Evangelist,' in St. Martin's parish, near Charing-Cross, and a shop with the same sign in Fleet Street, near the Conduit. It must be remembered that at this period Holborn and Charing Cross were quite suburban villages, the former noteworthy as the thoroughfare from Newgate to Tyburn, and the latter as a sort of halfway place of stoppage between the City and Westminster.
[241:A] Not quite so unprecedented as Mr. Dibdin thought. The Grub Street Journal of February 3, 1731, contained an entire page devoted to the books advertisement of Tom Osborne, a much more remarkable feat, all things considered, than Thorpe's.
