which, the writer of the note stated, had been given him by the
poet Pope.

The late Cornelius Walford related an interesting incident, the 'only
one of any special significance which has occurred to me during
thirty-five years of industrious book-hunting': 'When living at Enfield,
I used generally to walk to the Temple by way of Finsbury, Moorgate,
Cheapside, and Fleet Street. Every bookshop on the way I was familiar
with. On one occasion I thought I would vary the route by way of Long
Lane and Smithfield (as, indeed, I had occasionally done before). I was
at the time sadly in want of a copy of "Weskett on Insurances," 1781, a
folio work of some 600 pages. I had searched and inquired for it for
years; no bookseller had ever seen it. I had visited every bookshop in
Dublin, in the hope of finding a copy of the pirated (octavo) edition
printed there; and but for having seen a copy in a public library,
should have come to the conclusion that the book never existed. Some
temporary sheds had been erected over the Metropolitan Railway in Long
Lane. One, devoted to a meagre stock of old books, _was opened that
morning_. The first book I saw on the rough shelves was Weskett,
original edition, price a few shillings. I need hardly say I carried it
away. . . . I have never seen or heard of another of the original
edition exposed or reported for sale.'

[Illustration: _Cornelius Walford, Book-collector._]

Mr. Shandy _pere_ was a bookstaller also, and if Bruscambille's
'Prologue upon Long Noses,' even when obtainable 'almost for nothing,'
would fail to excite in every collector the enthusiasm experienced by
Mr. Shandy, we can at all events sympathize with him. '"There are not
three Bruscambilles in Christendom," said the stall-man, who, like many
stall-men of to-day, did not hesitate to make a leap in the dark,
"except what are chained up in the libraries of the curious." My father
flung down the money as quick as lightning, took Bruscambille into his
bosom, hied home from Piccadilly to Coleman Street with it, as he would
have hied home with a treasure, without taking his hand once off from
Bruscambille all the way.'

[Illustration: _The South Side of Holywell Street._]

We have already seen that there were bookstalls as well as bookshops in
and about the neighbourhood of Little Britain during the latter part of
the seventeenth century. There were bookstalls or booths also in St.
Paul's Churchyard long before this period; but