A florist's close by suggested a charming commonplace way of filling the
time. He would buy some flowers and carry them to Goldsmith's grave. Why
Goldsmith's grave should thus be specially honoured, he a little
wondered. He was conscious of loving several writers quite as well. But
it was a Johnsonian tradition to love Goldy, and the accessibility of
his resting-place made sentiment easy.
He repented this momentary flippancy of thought as he stood in the
cloistered corner where Goldsmith sleeps under the eye of the law; and,
when he laid his little wreath on the worn stone, it was a genuine
offering. From it he turned away to his own personal dreams.
By eleven he had found his friend the publisher, in a dainty little
place of business crammed with pottery, Rowlandsons, and books, and
more like a curiosity-shop than a publishing-house, for the publisher
proved an enthusiast in everything that was beautiful or curious, and
had indeed taken to publishing from that rare motive in a
publisher,--the love of books, rather than the love of money. He was
aiming to make his little shop the rallying-point of all the young
talent of the day, and as young talent has never too many publishers on
the look-out for it, his task was not difficult, though it was one of
those real services to literature which such publishers and booksellers
have occasionally done in our literary history, with but scant
acknowledgment.
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