Booksellers' shops were then common as now in Fleet Street and the Strand, in Paternoster Row, and St. Paul's Churchyard. This is pleasant to think of; for change is not desirable without improvement. One feels gratified, where difference is not demanded of us, in being able to have the same association of ideas with such men as Pope and Dryden, even if it be upon no higher ground than the quantity of books in Paternoster Row, or the circumstance that Ludgate Hill still leads into Fleet Street. [Illustration: THE STONE IN PANYER ALLEY.] FOOTNOTES: [46] Brayley, vol. ii., p. 303. [47] In his Life, vol. iii., p. 98. Edit. 1827. [48] Unless, indeed, we are to suppose, as has been suggested, that _Sermon_ Lane is a corruption of _Sheremoniers_ Lane, that is, the lane of the money clippers, or such as cut and rounded the metal which was to be coined or stamped into money. There was anciently a place in this lane for melting silver, called the _Blackloft_--and the Mint was in the street now called Old Change, in the immediate neighbourhood. See Maitland, ii., 880 (edit. of 1756.) [49] Letters to Stella, in the duodecimo edition of his works, 1775, Letter vi., p. 43. [50] Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edition, vol. iv., p. 93. [51] History of London, vol. ii., p. 925. [52] The Tatler. With notes historical, biographical, and critical 8vo. 1797. Vol. iv., p. 206. [53] Pennant's London, p. 377. [54] Of William III. [55] The genius of Clarke, which, agreeably to his unhappy end, was tender and melancholy, was unsuited to the livelier intoxication of Dryden's feast, afterwards gloriously set by Handel. Clarke has been styled the musical Otway of his time. He was organist at St. Paul's, and shot himself at his house in St. Paul's Churchyard. Mr. John Reading, organist of St. Dunstan's, who was intimately acquainted with him, was going by at the moment the pistol went off, and upon entering the house "found his friend and fellow-student in the agonies of death." Another friend of his, one of the lay vicars of the cathedral, relates of him, that a few weeks before the catastrophe, Clarke had alighted from his horse in a sequestered spot in the country, where there was a pond surrounded by trees, and not knowing whether to hang or drown himself, tossed up a piece of money to see which. The money stuck in the earth edgeways. Of this new chance for life, poor Clarke, we see, was unable to avail himself. [56] See Maitland, vol. ii., p. 949. [57] Since this was written, the jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Court in Doctors' Commons on matters of divorce has been transferred to a new "Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes," sitting at Westminster. [58] Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 473. [59] On the authority of Langton, Johnson's friend. See Memoirs, Anecdotes, &c., by Letitia Matilda Hawkins, vol. i., p. 293. [60] Censura Literaria, vol. iii., p. 254.