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��the famous bookseller, in Little Britain x. I always retained some memory of this journey, though I was then but thirty months old. I remembered a little dark room behind the kitchen, where the jack-weight fell through a hole in the floor, into which I once slipped my leg 2.

I remember a boy crying at the palace when I went to be touched. Being asked 'on which side of the shop was the counter?' I answered, 'on the left from the entrance,' many years after, and spoke, not by guess, but by memory. We went in the stage-coach, and returned in the waggon 3, as my mother said, because my cough was violent. The hope of saving a few shillings was no slight motive ; for she, not having been accustomed to money, was afraid of such expenses as now seem very small. She sewed two guineas in her petticoat, lest she should be robbed.

��hath constantly wore the piece of gold about his neck that he received of the King, and he had it on yester day when I met him.' Remains of Hearne, ed. 1869, iii. 12.

Peter Wentworth wrote on April 23, 1714 : ' The best news I can tell you in this is that the Queen is well, and grows better and better every day, has touch't twice a week.' Wentworth Papers, p. 375.

H ume says : 'The practice was first dropped by the present royal family, who observed that it could no longer give amazement even to the populace, and was attended with ridicule in the eyes of all men of understanding.' History of England, ed. 1773, i. 178.

Sully, writing of a letter which he had received from Henry IV, says : ' II me mande, dans celle-ci, d'en- voyer deux cents ecus pour chacun des malades des ecrouelles, que sa maladie avait empeche qu'il ne tou- chat, et qu'il n'avait pourtant pas voulu qu'on renvoyat.' Mtmoires de Sully, ed. 1788, iv. 200.

1 My mother, then with child, concealed her pregnancy, that she might not be hindered from the

��journey. Note by Johnson.

'Little Britain extends from Al- dersgate Street to Duck Lane.' Dods- ley's London, iii. 316. Roger North, writing of Little Britain soon after the Restoration, says : ' Then Little Britain was a plentiful and perpetual emporium of learned au thors, and men went thither as to a market. This drew to the place a mighty trade, the rather because the shops were spacious, and the learned gladly resorted to them, where they seldom failed to meet with agreeable conversation. And the booksellers themselves were knowing and con- versible men.' Lives of the Norths, ed. 1826, iii. 294.

2 I seem to remember, that I played with a string and a bell, which my cousin Isaac Johnson gave me ; and that there was a cat with a white collar, and a dog, called Chops, that leaped over a stick : but I know not whether I remember the thing, or the talk of it. Note by Johnson.

3 In Roderick Random, chaps, xi- xiii, an account is given of a journey in the London and Newcastle wagon.

We

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