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evening. He knows Mr.'s opinion of Lord's speech, sooner than any man in town. He has the best information upon all the in futuros of the world of letters; he has already had one or two peeps of the first canto of a poem not yet advertised-he has a proof sheet of the next new novel in his pocket; and if you will but promise to be discreet, you may "walk backwards," or walk up stairs for a moment, and he will show it you. Are these things of no value? They may seem so to you among the green hills of Cardigan; but they are very much the reverse to me among the dusty streets of London-or here in Edinburgh. I do love, from my soul, to catch even the droppings of the precious cup of knowledge.

To read books when they are upon every table, and to talk of them when nobody is silent about them, are rather vulgar accomplishments, and objects of vulgar ambition. I like to be beforehand with the world-I like both to see sooner and to see farther than my neighbours. While others are contented to sit in the pit, and gape and listen in wonder upon whatever is shown or uttered, I cannot be satisfied unless I am permitted to go behind the scenes-to see the actors before they walk upon the stage, and examine the machinery of the thunder before its springs are set in motion.

In my next I shall introduce you to the bookseller's shops of Edinburgh.

LETTER XLIII.

TO THE SAME.

P. M.

DEAR WILLIAMS,

THE importance of the Whigs in Edinburgh, and the Edinburgh Review, added to the great enterprize and extensive general business of Mr. Constable, have, as might have

been expected, rendered the shop of this bookseller by far the most busy scene in the Bibliopolic world of the North. It is situated in the High-Street, in the midst of the Old Town, where, indeed, the greater part of the Edinburgh Booksellers are still to be found lingering (as the majority of their London brethren also do) in the neighbourhood of the same old haunts to which long custom has attached their predilections. On entering, one sees a place by no means answering, either in point of dimensions, or in point of ornament, to the notion one might have been apt to form of the shop from which so many mighty works are every day issuing-a low dusky chamber, inhabited by a few clerks, and lined with an assortment of unbound books and stationery-entirely devoid of all those luxurious attractions of sofas and sofa-tables, and books of prints, &c. &c. which one meets with in the superb nursery of the Quarterly Review in Albemarle-Street. The Bookseller himself is seldom to be seen in this part of his premises; he prefers to sit in a chamber immediately above, where he can proceed in his own work without being disturbed by the incessant cackle of the young Whigs who lounge below; and where few casual visiters are admitted to enter his presence, except the more important members of the great Whig corporation-Reviewers either in esse, or, at least, supposed to be so in posse-contributors to the Supplement of the Encyclopædia Britannica-and the more obscure editors and supporters of the innumerable and more obscure periodical works, of which Mr. Constable is the publisher. The bookseller is himself a good-looking man, apparently about forty-very fat in his person, but with a face with good lines, and a fine healthy complexion. He is one of the most jollylooking members of the trade I ever saw; and moreover, one of the most pleasing and courtly in his address. One thing that is remarkable about him, and indeed very distinguishingly so, is-his total want of that sort of critical jabber, of which most of his brethren are so profuse, and of which custom has rendered me rather fond than otherwise. Mr. Constable is too much of a bookseller, to think it at all necessary

that he should appear to be knowing in the merits of books. His business is to publish books, and to sell them; he leaves the work of examining them before they are published, and criticising them afterwards, to others, who have more leisure on their hands than he has. One sees in a moment that he has reduced his business to a most strictly business-like regularity of system; and that of this the usual cant of bookshop disquisition forms no part-like a great wholesale merchant, who does not by any means think it necessary to be the taster of his own wines. I am of opinion, that this may, perhaps, be in the end the wisest course a great publisher can pursue. Here, at least, is one sufficiently striking instance of its success.

If one be inclined, however, for an elegant shop, and abundance of gossip, it is only necessary to cross the street, and enter the shop of Messrs. Manners and Miller—the true lounging-place of the blue-stockings, and literary beaumonde of the Northern metropolis. Nothing, indeed, can be more inviting than the external appearance of this shop, or more amusing, if one is in the proper lounging humour, than the scene of elegant trifling which is exhibited within. At the door you are received by one or other of the partners, probably the second mentioned, who has perhaps been handing some fine lady to her carriage, or is engaged in conversation with some fiue geutleman, about to leave the shop after his daily half-hour's visit. You are then conducted through a light and spacious anti-room, full of clerks and apprentices, and adorned with a few busts and prints, into the back-shop, which is a perfect bijou. Its walls are covered with all the most elegant books in fashionable request, arrayed in the most luxurious clothing of Turkey and Russia leather, red, blue, and green-and protected by glass folding doors, from the intrusion even of the little dust which might be supposed to threaten them, in a place kept so delicately trim. The grate exhibits either a fine blazing fire, or, in its place, a beautiful fresh bush of hawthorn, stuck all over with roses and lilies, as gay as a Maypole. The centre

of the room is occupied by a table, covered with the Magazines and Reviews of the month, the papers of the day, the last books of Voyages and Travels, and innumerable books of scenery-those beautiful books which transport one's eye in a moment into the heart of Savoy or Italy-or that still more beautiful one, which presents us with exquisite representations of the old castles and romantic skies of Scotland, over whose forms and hues of native majesty, a new atmosphere of magical interest has just been diffused by the poetical pencil of Turner-Thomson-or Williams. Upon the leaves of these books, or such as these, a groupe of the most elegant young ladies and gentlemen of the place may probably be seen feasting, or seeming to feast their eyes; while encomiums due to their beauties are mingled up in the same whisper with compliments still more interesting to beauties, no doubt, still more divine. In one corner, perhaps, some haughty blue-stocking, with a volume of Campbell's Specimens, or Dr. Clarke's Scandinavia, or the last number of the Edinburgh Review, or Blackwood's Magazine in her hand, may be observed launching ever and anon a look of ineffable disdain upon the less intellectual occupation of her neighbours, and then returning with a new knitting of her brows to her own paullo majora. In the midst of all this, the Bookseller himself moves about doing the honours of the place, with the same unwearied gallantry and politeness— now mingling his smiles with those of the triflers, and now listening with earnest civility to the dissertation, commendatory or reprobatory, of the more philosophic fair. One sees, in a moment, that this is not a great publishing shop; such weighty and laborious business would put to flight all the loves and graces that hover in the perfumed atmosphere of the place. A novel, or a volume of pathetic sermons, or pretty poems, might be tolerated, but that is the utmost. To select the most delicate viands from the great feast of the Cadells, Murrays, Baldwins, Constables, and Blackwoods, and arrange and dispose them so as to excite the delicate appetite of the fine fastidious few-such is the object and such

the art of the great Hatchard of Edinburgh. This shop seems to have a prodigious flow of retail business, and is, no doubt, not less lucrative to the bookseller than delightful to his guests. Mr. Miller is the successor of Provost Creech, in something of his wit, and many of his stories, and in all his love of good cheer and good humour, and may certainly be looked upon as the favourite bibliopole of almost all but the writers of books. He ought, however, to look to his dignity, for I can perceive that he is likely to have ere long a dangerous rival in a more juvenile bookseller, whose shop is almost close to his own-Mr. Peter Hill. This young gentleman inhabits at present a long and dreary shop, where it is impossible to imagine any groupe of fine ladies or gentlemen could assemble, selon les regles; but he talks of removing to the New Town, and hints, not obscurely, that Mr. Miller may soon see all the elegancies of his boudoir thrown into shade by an equally elegant salon.

Mr. Hill and you, my good fellow, would hit it to a hair; for, while his forenoons are past in the most sedulous attention to the business of a flourishing concern, his genteel and agreeable manners have made him a universal favourite with every body, so that one frequently meets with him at evening parties, when "it is good to be merry and wise;" and I declare to you, that you never heard a sweeter pipe. Our friend Tom Moore himself is no whit his superior.

As for shops of old books, classics, black-letter, foreign literature, and the like, I was never in any great town which possesses so few of them as this. It might indeed be guessed, that her riches in this way would not be great, after the account I have given you of the state of scholarship among the literateurs of the North. There is, however, one shop of this sort, which might cut a very respectable figure, even in places where attainments of another kind are more in request; and I confess I have visited this shop more frequently, and with more pleasure, than any of its more fashionable neighbours in Edinburgh. It is situated, as it ought to be, in the immediate vicinity of the College, and consequently quite out of

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