ed here for about fifteen years. Messrs. Myers, who
also occupy three bookshops in this street, were for some years with
Mrs. Lazarus; and Mr. W. R. Hill acquired a great deal of his
book-knowledge at Reeves and Turner's. Mr. Charles Hindley has been long
established in this street.

[Illustration: _Messrs. Hill and Son's Shop in Holywell Street._]

The step from fifth-rate book-making to second-hand bookselling is not a
great one, and just as Holywell Street sheltered the Grub-writers of
half a century ago, so Drury Lane and its immediate vicinity was their
recognised locality in the earlier part of the last century. It is
impossible to associate respectability, to say nothing of fashion, with
this evil-smelling, squalid thoroughfare. And yet there can be no
question about its having been at one time an aristocratic quarter.
Until within the last few years, the Lane itself, and its numerous
tributaries, contained many second-hand bookshops. The most celebrated,
and, indeed, almost the only one of any interest, was Andrew Jackson,
who made a speciality of old and black-letter books. Nichols tells us
that for more than forty years he kept a shop in Clare Market, and here,
'like another Magliabecchi, midst dust and cobwebs, he indulged his
appetite for reading; legends and romances, history and poetry, were
indiscriminately his favourite pursuits.' In 1740 he published the first
book of 'Paradise Lost' in rhyme, and ten years afterwards a number of
modernizations from Chaucer. The contents of his catalogues of the years
1756, 1757, 1759, and one without date, were in rhyme. He retired in
1777, and died in July, 1778, in the eighty-fourth year of his age.
Charles Marsh, another literary bookseller, was for some time a friend
and neighbour of Jackson's. Marsh (who afterwards removed to a shop now
swallowed by the improvements in Northumberland Avenue, Charing Cross)
was situated at Cicero's Head, in New Round Court, off the Strand, and
is described by one who knew him as being afflicted with 'a very unhappy
temper, and withal very proud and insolent, with a plentiful share of
conceit.' He wrote a poem entitled 'The Library, an Epistle from a
Bookseller to a Gentleman, his Customer; desiring him to discharge his
bill,' 1766. He was originally a church-clerk. The only catalogue of
this celebrity which we have seen is a bulky one, over 100 pages octavo,
enumerating 3,000 books, 'among which are included the libraries of the
R