e relied on we infer
from an amusing anecdote in the Harleian manuscripts, related by Sir
Nicholas L'Estrange, to the effect that 'Dr. Us[s]her, Bishop of Armath,
having to preach at Paules Crosse, and passing hastily by one of the
stationers, called for a Bible, and had a little one of the London
edition given him out, but when he came to looke for his text, that very
verse was omitted in the print.'

[Illustration: _John Evelyn, Book-collector._]

Mr. Pepys' bookseller, Joshua Kirton, was at the sign of the King's
Arms. Writing under date November 2, 1660, Pepys chronicles: 'In Paul's
Churchyard I called at Kirton's, and there they had got a masse book for
me, which I bought, and cost me 12s., and, when I come home, sat up late
and read in it with great pleasure to my wife, to hear that she was long
ago acquainted with it.' Kirton was one of the most extensive sufferers
of the bookselling fraternity in the Great Fire; from being a
substantial tradesman with about L8,000 to the good, he was made L2,000
or L3,000 'worse than nothing.' The destruction of books and literary
property generally, in and around St. Paul's, in this fire was enormous,
Pepys calculating it at about L150,000, and Evelyn putting it at
L200,000, or, in other words, about one million sterling as represented
by our money of to-day. Evelyn tells us that soon after the fire had
subsided the other trades went on as merrily as before, 'only the poor
booksellers have been indeed ill-treated by Vulcan; so many noble
impressions consumed by their trusting them to y{e} churches.'

[Illustration: _Newbery's Shop in St. Paul's Churchyard._

From an old woodcut.]

One of the most considerable of the Churchyard booksellers after the
Great Fire was Richard Chiswell, the father or progenitor of a numerous
family of bibliopoles. John Dunton, indeed, describes him as well
deserving of the title of 'Metropolitan Bookseller of England, if not of
all the world.' He was born in 1639, and died in 1711. In 1678 he sold,
in conjunction with John Dunmore, another bookseller, the libraries of
Dr. Benjamin Worsley and two other eminent men. At St. Paul's
Coffee-house, which stood at the corner of the entrance from St. Paul's
Churchyard to Doctors' Commons, the library of Dr. Rawlinson was, in
1711, sold--'at a prodigious rate,' according to Thoresby--in the
evening after dinner. Although not quite _a propos_ of our subject, we
can scarcely help mentioning the name of so