William West, a bookseller’s assistant, who died at a great age at the Charter House, in 1855, has left in his _Fifty Years’ Reminiscences_, and in the pages of the _Aldine Magazine_, a number of garrulous, amusing, but sometimes incoherent stories of the old booksellers. West says he knew all the members of the club, and bears witness that “Longman was a man of the most exemplary character both in his profession and in his private life, and as universally esteemed for his benevolence as for his integrity.” He mentions in particular Longman’s generosity in offering George Robinson any sum he wished on credit, when his business was in a critical condition. West adds, “I was in the habit of going to Mr. Longman’s almost daily from the years 1785 to 1787 or 1788, for various books for country orders, being what is termed in all wholesale booksellers’ shops ‘a collector.’ Mr. Norton Longman had been caused by his father wisely to go through this same wholesome routine of his profession; and I am informed that the present Mr. L. (Thomas Norton Longman), although at the very head of the book trade, has pursued a similar course with his sons.” Longman--and this brings us to the subject--had married a sister of Harris, the patentee, and long the manager of Covent Garden Theatre. By her he had three sons, and of these Thomas Norton Longman, born in 1771, about 1792 began to take his father’s place in the publishing establishment; and about this time Thomas Brown entered the office as an apprentice. In 1794, Mr. Owen Rees was admitted a member, and the firm’s title was altered to “Longman and Co.;” and at this time, too, the younger Evans, “rating,” we are told, “only as third wholesale bookseller in England,” became bankrupt, and the whole of his picked stock was transferred to 39, Paternoster Row. The stock was further increased by a legacy from the elder Evans to Brown’s father in 1803. This elder Evans, as the publisher of the _Morning Chronicle_, had incurred the displeasure of Goldsmith, who, mindful of Johnson’s former valour, “went to the shop,” says Nichols, “cane in hand, and fell upon him in a most unmerciful manner. This Mr. Evans resented in a truly pugilistic method, and in a few moments the author of the _Vicar of Wakefield_ was disarmed and stretched on the floor, to the no small diversion of the bystanders.” [Illustration: Thomas Longman. 1771-1842.] Seven years, however, before this, Thomas Longman the second died, on the 5th February, 1797. Of the position to which he had attained it is sufficient to mention that when the Government were about to impose an additional duty on paper, subsequent to that of 1794, the firm of Longman urged such strong and unanswerable arguments against it and its impolicy that the idea was relinquished; and at this time the house had nearly £100,000 embarked in various publications.