Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/103

75 THE BOOKSELLERS OF OLDEN TIMES. 7$ Bridge-water, Taunton, Wellington, and other places, I amused myself in calling on some of my masters^ with whom I had, about twenty years before, worked as a journeyman shoemaker. I addressed each with term made use of by journeymen in that useful occu- pation, when seeking employment. Most of these honest men had quite forgotten my person, as many of them had not seen me since I worked for them ; so that it is not easy for you to conceive with what sur- prize and astonishment they gazed on me. For you must know that I had the vanity (I call it humour) to do this in my chariot, attended by my servants ; and on telling them who I was all appeared to be very happy to see me." James Lackington died in his country house in Budleigh Lutterton, in Devonshire, in 1815. His life is an eminent example how a man of no attainments or advantages can conquer success by sheer hard work and perseverance. Lackington was not the only man of his time who perceived that the conditions of literature were dis- playing at least a chance of change ; that the circle of the book-buying public was incessantly enlarging, and that, by supplying the best books at the cheapest remunerative rates, not only would the progress of education be accelerated, but that the very speculation would bring fortune as well as honour to the innova- tors in the Trade. One of the first booksellers to adopt this principle was John Bell, whose name is still preserved in Bell's Weekly Messenger. His British Poets, British Theatre and Shakespeare, published in small pocket volumes, carried con- sternation into the trade, but scattered the English 52
 * Pray, sir, have you got any occasion ?' which is the