CHAP. VI.J INTRODUCTIONS AT TOM DAVIES's.
not unusual, in the bookseller's parlour, and he began to blow, 1762.
and too-too, and mutter prayers to be delivered from tempta- Mt.si
tion, Davies would whisper his wife with waggish humour,
" You, rny dear, are the cause of this." But be the cause
what it might, the pompous little bibliopole never after-
wards lost favour; and it became as natural for men
interested in Johnson, or those who clustered round him,
to repair to Davies's the bookseller in Russell-street, as for
those who wanted to hear of George Selwyn, Lord March,
or Lord Carlisle, to call at Betty's the fruiterer in
St. James's-street.
A. frequent visitor was Goldsmith ; his thick, short, clumsy
figure, and his awkward though, genial manners, oddly con-
trasting with Mr. Percy's, precise, reserved, and stately. The
high-bred and courtly Beauclerc might deign to saunter in.
Often would be seen there, the broad fat face of Foote, with
wicked humour flashing from the eye ; and sometimes the
mild long face of Bennet Langton, filled with humanity and
gentleness. There had Goldsmith met a rarer visitor, the
bland and gracious Eeynolds, soon after Ms first introduction
to bim., a few months back, in Johnson's chambers; and there
would even Warburton drive on some proud business of
his own, in Ms equipage " besprinkled with mitres," after
calling on Garrick in Southampton-street. For Garrick
himself, it was perhaps the only place of meeting he cared to
avoid, in that neighbourhood which had so profited and been
gladdened by his genius; in which his name was oftener
resounded than that of any other human being; and through-
out which, we are told, there was a fondness for him, that, as
his sprightly figure passed along, " darted electrically from
" shop to shop." What the great actor said some years later,
indeed, he already seems to have fancied: that " he believed