Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/422

382 382 THOMAS TEGG. paid the requisite eighteenpence a week which de- frayed the cost of lodging, bread-making, and a weekly clean shirt. Here he was engaged by Mr. Gale, the proprietor of the Sheffield Register, at seven shillings a week, a wretched pittance, but sufficient for his small wants, even enabling him to purchase new clothes. At the Register office he met some men of note, among others, Tom Paine and Dibdin. Paine was " a tall, thin, ill-looking man. He had a fiend-like countenance, and frequently indulged in oaths and blasphemy." After a nine months' sojourn, Tegg left Sheffield, and having visited Ireland and North Wales, entered the service of a Mr. Marshall, at Lynn, where he remained for three or four years. Early in 1796, however, he mounted the London and Cambridge coach, and, with a few shillings in his pockets, with a light heart in his breast, he bade good- bye to friends, telling them that he would never come back till he could drive down in his carriage. On the coach he met some other young men, who, like himself, were going up to London in search of employment, but who intended to spend the first few days in sight-seeing, and asked him to join their party. But Tegg resisted the temptation, and when London, the London of his dreams but how tolack, smoke-filled, and inhospitable ! was really reached, he alighted at the Green Dragon in Bishopsgate Street, and, struggling through the busy stream of men who filled the city streets, he went straightway in search of employment, to the first book-shop that met his eyes. This happened to be Mr. Lane's " Minerva Library," in Leadenhall Street. "What can you do ?" asked Lane. " My best," rejoined Tegg. " Do you wear an apron ?" Tegg produced