FOOTNOTE:

[316] Of that popular historian’s way of writing history one instance will suffice. He cites Roger North’s Life of his brother John as evidence that the booksellers’ shops in Little Britain were crowded by readers who could not afford to purchase books (History of England, 4th ed. vol. i. p. 392). In point of fact, what North says is that scholars went to Little Britain, “a plentiful and perpetual Emporium of learned Authors,” 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 conversible Men, with whom, for the sake of bookish Knowledge, the greatest Wits were pleased to converse.” (Life of the Hon. and Rev. Dr. John North, 1742, p. 241.) North’s whole intention is to draw a picture of the abundance and diffusion of books at the time, in contrast with the opposite state of things which, he asserts, prevailed at a later period, when the bookselling trade had “contracted into the Hands of two or three Persons,” with the result that bookshops diminished in number, deteriorated in quality, and, as places of resort, were superseded by the tavern or the coffee-house.