Annals of industry and genius . uilt amoving laboratory, in which, if Hearne may be cre-dited, he performed with Httle expense and troublesuch things as had never been done before. Beside his great skill in chemistry, he became apractical, and, as was thought, a theoretical is related that he was very fond of music, andthat he was able to perform on the vial da gamba, athis own concerts, which he at first established gratisin his miserable house, which was an old, meanbuilding, the ground floor of which was a repositoryfor his small coal ; over this was his concert room,lonof, low,
Annals of industry and genius . uilt amoving laboratory, in which, if Hearne may be cre-dited, he performed with Httle expense and troublesuch things as had never been done before. Beside his great skill in chemistry, he became apractical, and, as was thought, a theoretical is related that he was very fond of music, andthat he was able to perform on the vial da gamba, athis own concerts, which he at first established gratisin his miserable house, which was an old, meanbuilding, the ground floor of which was a repositoryfor his small coal ; over this was his concert room,lonof, low, and narrow, to which there was no ascentbut by a pair of stairs outside, so perpendicular andnarrow as scarcely to be mounted without crawling. Hearne states him to have been a very diligentcollector of old books of all kinds, which, in his coursesthrough the town, crying his small-coal, he had agood opportunity of finding at stalls, where he usedto stop, and select for purchase whatever was ancient, ROSICRUCIAN MYSTERIES. 9fj. BRITTO?^ AT A BOOK-STALI,. particularly on his two favourite subjects of Chemistrjand Music. Of the former, it has been suggestedthat he had picked up books on the Rosicrucianmysteries; and it is not impossible but that hewasted some of his small-coals in the great secretsof alchemy and the transmutation of metals. Of the latter, he procured all the elementar}- books no ANCIENT CONCKKTS. in Enolish, which were then extant, and, besides hisvast collection of printed music, tise catalogue ofwhich fills eight pages in quarto of Sir J. HawkinssHistoiy of Music, he seems to have been such anindefatigable copyist, that he is said to have tran-scribed with his own hands, very neatly and accu-rately, a collection of music, which sold, after hisdecease, for nearly £100. Brittons reputation was so great, that Steele,speaking, in the Guardian, of a variety of originaland odd characters, added : We have now a small-coal man, who, beginning with two plain notes,whi
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