umes, 'which will be sold
very cheap.' The Mews Gate was near St. Martin's Church, and probably
close to the bottom of the new thoroughfare, Charing Cross Road. It was
at this shop that all the book-collectors of the day most congregated,
for it was to Tom Payne's that the majority of libraries were
consigned--_e.g._, those of Ralph Thoresby, Sir John Barnard, Francis
Grose, Rev. S. Whisson, and many others whose names are now nothing but
names, but who were at the time well-known collectors. Tom Payne's
customers included all the bibliophiles of the period. 'Must I,' asks
Mathias in the 'Pursuits of Literature'--

'Must I, as a wit with learned air,
Like Doctor Dewlap, to Tom Payne's repair,
Meet Cyril Jackson and mild Cracherode,
'Mid literary gods myself a god?
There make folks wonder at th' extent of genius
In the Greek Aldus or the Dutch Frobenius,
And then, to edify their learned souls,
Quote pleasant sayings from _The Shippe of Foles_.'

[Illustration: _Honest Tom Payne._]

Mathias describes Tom Payne as 'that Trypho emeritus,' and as 'one of
the honestest men living, to whom, as a bookseller, learning is under
considerable obligations.' Beloe, in his 'Sexagenarian,' states that at
Tom Payne's and at Peter Elmsley's, in the Strand, 'a wandering scholar
in search of pabulum might be almost certain of meeting Cracherode,
George Steevens, Malone, Wyndham, Lord Stormont, Sir John Hawkins, Lord
Spencer, Porson, Burney, Thomas Grenville, Wakefield, Dean Dampier, King
of Mansfield Street, Towneley, Colonel Stanley,' and others. Savage
professed to have picked up his 'Author to Let' at 'the Mews Gate on my
way from Charing Cross to Hedge Lane.' Tom Payne (who was a native of
Brackley) came into possession of his famous shop at the Mews' Gate
through his marriage with Elizabeth Taylor, whose brother built and for
some time occupied it. About 1776 Tom Payne ('Bookseller Extraordinary
to the Prince Regent, and Bookseller to the University of Oxford') took
his son into partnership, to whom fourteen years later he relinquished
the business, and died in February, 1799, in his eighty-second year.
Thomas Payne the younger (to whom Dibdin dedicated his 'Library
Companion,' 1825) remained here until 1806, when he removed to Pall
Mall; in 1813 he took Henry Foss, who had been his apprentice, into
partnership. The former died in 1831, and was succeeded by his nephew,
John Payne, an