lowing
picture of Millan's shop in March, 1772: 'On my return from Westminster
last night, I penetrated the utmost recesses of Millan's shop, which, if
I may borrow an idea from natural history, is incrusted with literature
and curiosities like so many stalactitical exudations. Through a narrow
alley, between piles of books, I reached a cell, or _adytum_, whose
sides were so completely cased with the same _supellex_ that the
fireplace was literally _enchasse dans la muraille_. In this cell sat
the deity of the place, at the head of a whist party, which was
interrupted by my inquiry after _Dillenius_ in sheets. The answer was,
he "had none in sheets or blankets." . . . I emerged from this shop,
which I consider as a future Herculaneum, where we shall hereafter root
out many scarce things now rotting on the floor, considerably sunk below
the level of the new pavement.' Millan was succeeded by Thomas and John
Egerton, the latter being 'a bookseller of great eminence'--the
Black-letter Bookseller of Beloe--whose death occurred in 1795. 'It was
in his time,' says Beloe, 'that Old English books, of a particular
description both in prose and verse, were, for some cause or
other--principally, perhaps, as they were of use in the illustration of
Shakespeare--beginning to assume a new dignity and importance, and to
increase in value at the rate of 500 per cent.' Another Charing Cross
bookseller, Samuel Leacroft (who succeeded Charles Marsh), died in 1795,
and it is rather curious that John Egerton was a son-in-law of Lockyer
Davis, whilst his neighbour was an apprentice.

Of Samuel Baker, whose shop was in Russell Street, Covent Garden, we
have already spoken in our account of book-auctioneers. One of his
early--May, 1747--catalogues (not auction) comprises the libraries of
Dr. Robert Uvedale, and of this divine's son and namesake, also a D.D.,
of Enfield; it enumerates over 3,000 items. Thomas Becket (an apprentice
of Millar, and Sterne's first publisher) and P. De Hondt were successful
Strand booksellers; the former finally settled himself in Pall Mall, and
was one of the first to make a speciality of foreign books, of which he
imported large quantities between 1761 and 1766. C. Heydinger, of the
Strand, was a German bookseller who issued catalogues from 1771 to 1773,
and who died in distressed circumstances about 1778. Henry Lasher
Gardner, who died at a very advanced age in 1808, was a venerable
bookseller, whose shop was oppo