However, what he heard “made me think they knew many matters of which I was totally ignorant,” and he set to work arduously at night to learn his letters, and when he was able to read, he bought Hobbe’s _Homer_ at a bookstall, and found that his letters did but little in assisting his comprehension; however, in his zeal for knowledge he allowed himself “but three hours’ sleep in the twenty-four.” The art of writing was acquired in a similar manner, and then he started on a working tour, making shoes on the road for sustenance, but suffering many hardships and miseries. To make matters worse, at Bristol he married a young girl of his own class, whose ill-health, though he was passionately fond of her, added no little to his troubles. Accordingly he went to London, that for her sake he might earn higher wages, and not altogether unhopeful of the fortunes he had heard were to be gained there by dogged hard work and endurance. They arrived with the typical half-crown in their pockets, and then Lackington, anxious to obtain the small legacy of £10 he had left at home, went for it personally; “it being such a prodigious sum that the greatest caution was used on both sides, so that it cost me about half the money in going down for it, and in returning to town again.” After working some time as a journeyman bookseller he opened a little cobbler’s shop; and, thinking he knew as much about books as the keeper of an old bookstall in the neighbourhood, wishing also to have opportunity for study, he invested a guinea in a bagful of old books. To increase his stock he borrowed £5 from a fund “Mr. Wesley’s people kept to lend out, for three months, without interest, to such of their society whose characters were good, and who wanted a temporary relief.... In our new situation we lived in a very frugal manner, often dining on potatoes and quenching our thirst with water; being absolutely determined, if possible, to make some provision for such dismal times as sickness, shortness of work, &c., which we had frequently been involved in before, and could scarcely help expecting not to be our fate again.” He soon found customers, and “as ‘soon laid out the money’ in other old trash which was daily brought for sale.” [Illustration: James Lackington, Bookseller. 1746-1816.]