The step from fifth-rate book-making to second-hand bookselling is not a great one, and just as Holywell Street sheltered the Grub-writers of half a century ago, so Drury Lane and its immediate vicinity was their recognised locality in the earlier part of the last century. It is impossible to associate respectability, to say nothing of fashion, with this evil-smelling, squalid thoroughfare. And yet there can be no question about its having been at one time an aristocratic quarter. Until within the last few years, the Lane itself, and its numerous tributaries, contained many second-hand bookshops. The most celebrated, and, indeed, almost the only one of any interest, was Andrew Jackson, who made a speciality of old and black-letter books. Nichols tells us that for more than forty years he kept a shop in Clare Market, and here, 'like another Magliabecchi, midst dust and cobwebs, he indulged his appetite for reading; legends and romances, history and poetry, were indiscriminately his favourite pursuits.' In 1740 he published the first book of 'Paradise Lost' in rhyme, and ten years afterwards a number of modernizations from Chaucer. The contents of his catalogues of the years 1756, 1757, 1759, and one without date, were in rhyme. He retired in 1777, and died in July, 1778, in the eighty-fourth year of his age. Charles Marsh, another literary bookseller, was for some time a friend and neighbour of Jackson's. Marsh (who afterwards removed to a shop now swallowed by the improvements in Northumberland Avenue, Charing Cross) was situated at Cicero's Head, in New Round Court, off the Strand, and is described by one who knew him as being afflicted with 'a very unhappy temper, and withal very proud and insolent, with a plentiful share of conceit.' He wrote a poem entitled 'The Library, an Epistle from a Bookseller to a Gentleman, his Customer; desiring him to discharge his bill,' 1766. He was originally a church-clerk. The only catalogue of this celebrity which we have seen is a bulky one, over 100 pages octavo, enumerating 3,000 books, 'among which are included the libraries of the Rev. Mr. Gilbert Burnet, Minister of Clerkenwell, and an eminent apothecary, both lately deceased.' The date is May 7, 1747. Some of the prices in this catalogue can only be described as absurd; for example, Lydgate's 'Bochas; or, The Fall of Princes,' 1517, 5s.; a collection of old plays and poems, two volumes, 1592, 6s.; Tusser's 'Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry,' 1574, 2s. 6d.; and black-letter books by the score are here offered at sums from one to three or four shillings each. The neighbourhood has for many years ceased to be a bookselling locality, for although book-hunters prefer side-streets and quiet thoroughfares for the prosecution of their hobby, the pestiferous vapours of Drury Lane would kill any bibliopolic growth more vigorous than a newsvendor's shop. [Illustration: _Messrs. Sotheran's Shop in Piccadilly._]