and knock-knees. His translators lay three in a bed at the
"Pewter Platter Inn" at Holborn. He published the most disgraceful books
and forged letters. Curll, in his revengeful spite, accused Pope of
pouring an emetic into his half-pint of canary when he and Curll and
Lintot met by appointment at the "Swan Tavern," Fleet Street. By St.
Dunstan's, at the "Homer's Head," also lived the publisher of the first
correct edition of "The Dunciad."

[Illustration: ST. DUNSTAN'S CLOCK (_see page 47_).]

Among the booksellers who crowded round old St. Dunstan's were Thomas
Marsh, of the "Prince's Arms," who printed Stow's "Chronicles;" and
William Griffith, of the "Falcon," in St. Dunstan's Churchyard, who, in
the year 1565, issued, without the authors' consent, _Gorboduc_, written
by Thomas Norton and Lord Buckhurst, the first real English tragedy and
the first play written in English blank verse. John Smethwicke, a still
more honoured name, "under the diall" of St. Dunstan's Church, published
"Hamlet" and "Romeo and Juliet." Richard Marriot, another St. Dunstan's
bookseller, published Quarle's "Emblems," Dr. Donne's "Sermons," that
delightful, simple-hearted book, Isaak Walton's "Complete Angler," and
Butler's "Hudibras," that wonderful mass of puns and quibbles, pressed
close as potted meat. Matthias Walker, a St. Dunstan's bookseller, was
one of the three timid publishers who ventured on a certain poem,
called "The Paradise Lost," giving John Milton, the blind poet, the
enormous sum of L5 down, L5 on the sale of 1,300 copies of the first,
second, and third impressions, in all the munificent recompense of L20;
the agreement was given to the British Museum in 1852, by Samuel Rogers,
the banker poet.

Nor in this list of Fleet Street printers must we forget to insert
Richard Pynson, from Normandy, who had worked at Caxton's press, and was
a contemporary of De Worde. According to Mr. Noble (to whose work we are
so deeply indebted), Pynson printed in Fleet Street, at his office, the
"George" (first in the Strand, and afterwards beside St. Dunstan's
Church), no less than 215 works. The first of these, completed in the
year 1483, was probably the first book printed in Fleet Street,
afterwards a gathering-place for the ink-stained craft. A copy of this
book, "Dives and Pauper," was sold a few years since for no less than
L49. In 1497 the same busy Frenchman published an edition of "Terence,"
the first Latin classic printed in Engla