e sold the libraries of Lord Willoughby, president of the
Society of Antiquaries, and in 1774 of Cudworth Bruck, another
antiquary. Cater was succeeded in 1786 by John Deighton, of Cambridge.
In the person of Henry Dell we get a literary bookseller, who had
established himself first in Tower Street, and in or about 1765 in
Holborn, where, Nichols tells us, he died very poor. He wrote 'The
Booksellers, a Poem,' 1766, which has been pronounced 'a wretched,
rhyming list of booksellers in London, and Westminster, with silly
commendations of some and stupid abuse of others.' Other Holborn
booksellers were: William Fox, 1773-1777; John Hayes, who died November
12, 1811, aged seventy-four, and 'whose abilities were of no ordinary
class, and his erudition very considerable'; John Anderson, of Holborn
Hill, 1787-1792, who sold the library of the Hon. John Scott, of Gray's
Inn; Francis Noble, who, besides being a bookseller, kept for many years
an extensive circulating library in Holborn, but who, in consequence of
his daughter's obtaining a share in the first L30,000 prize in the
lottery, retired from business, and died at an advanced age in June,
1792; Joseph White, 1779-1791; and William Flexney, who died January 7,
1808, aged seventy-seven, and who was the original publisher of
Churchill's 'Poems,' and is thus immortalized by that versatile 'poet':

'Let those who energy of diction prize,
For Billingsgate, quit Flexney, and be wise.'

Percival Stockdale, in his 'Memoirs,' speaks highly of his 'old friend'
Flexney, 'with whom I have passed many convivial and jovial hours.'

J. H. Prince, of Old North Street, Red Lion Square, Holborn, who wrote
and published his own eccentric 'Life' in 1806, and who, trying and
failing in nearly everything else, took to bookselling and book-writing,
evidently, like many other authors before and since, found soliciting
subscriptions for his book 'a most painful undertaking to a susceptible
mind.' His motto was, 'I evil ni etips,' or 'I live in spite.' A much
more important bookseller of Holborn was John Petheram, who lived at 94,
High Holborn in the fifties, and whose catalogues were styled 'The
Bibliographical Miscellany'; for some time, with each of his catalogues
he issued an eight-page supplement, which consisted of a reprint of some
very rare tract; the selection of some of these was in the hands of Dr.
E. F. Rimbault. A complete set of these catalogues would be extremely
inter