to this slight effort for something almost as agreeable
as the public recognition of his ability, and that was the acquaintance,
and almost immediately the warm personal friendship, of Mr. Pye. Mr. Pye
was the head of an ancient English family that figured in the
Parliaments and struggles of the Stuarts; he was member for the County
of Berkshire, where his ancestral seat of Faringdon was situate, and at
a later period (1790) became Poet Laureat. In those days, when literary
clubs did not exist, and when even political ones were extremely limited
and exclusive in their character, the booksellers' shops were social
rendezvous. Debrett's was the chief haunt of the Whigs; Hatchard's, I
believe, of the Tories. It was at the latter house that my father made
the acquaintance of Mr. Pye, then publishing his translation of
Aristotle's Poetics, and so strong was party feeling at that period,
that one day, walking together down Piccadilly, Mr. Pye, stopping at the
door of Debrett, requested his companion to go in and purchase a
particular pamphlet for him, adding that if he had the audacity to
enter, more than one person would tread upon his toes.

My father at last had a friend. Mr. Pye, though double his age, was
still a young man, and the literary sympathy between them was complete.
Unfortunately, the member for Berkshire was a man rather of an elegant
turn of mind, than one of that energy and vigour which a youth required
for a companion at that moment. Their tastes and pursuits were perhaps a
little too similar. They addressed poetical epistles to each other, and
were, reciprocally, too gentle critics. But Mr. Pye was a most amiable
and accomplished man, a fine classical scholar, and a master of correct
versification. He paid a visit to Enfield, and by his influence hastened
a conclusion at which my grandfather was just arriving, to wit, that he
would no longer persist in the fruitless effort of converting a poet
into a merchant, and that content with the independence he had realised,
he would abandon his dreams of founding a dynasty of financiers. From
this moment all disquietude ceased beneath this always well-meaning,
though often perplexed, roof, while my father, enabled amply to gratify
his darling passion of book-collecting, passed his days in tranquil
study, and in the society of congenial spirits.

His new friend introduced him almost immediately to Mr. James Pettit
Andrews, a Berkshire gentleman of literary pursuits,