Samuel Butler, and Southcy are among the best of them. Even the bookseller's shop under Holborn Gateway has had an eventful history. Bacon's publisher occupied it for a time. Osborne, chiefly notable for the thrashing he received at the hands of Dr. Johnson, is its next famous tenant. Lastly, Jacob Tonson — Pope's " left-legged Jacob" and Dryden's worst enemy — lived and thrived there, and brought an army of literary giants to his little back-shop. Not every one is agreed as to the present attractions of the Inn. Dickens calls it " one
of the most depressing institutions known to the children of men." But we prefer to end with Hawthorne's words in mind. Strange it is, he says, " to pass under one of these archways, and find yourself transported from the jumble, rush, tumult, uproar, as of an age of week-days condensed into the present hour, into what seems an eternal Sabbath. It is very strange to find so much of ancient quietude right in the monster city's very jaws, . . . which, yet in all these ages, it shall not digest and convert into the same substance as the rest of its busy streets."
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