"One day, we go to the square in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, where the booksellers are. To our surprise, we find none of the quiet reverence one associates with reading.
The shops are adorned with brightly coloured signs that enchant me: ships, water nymphs, Moors' faces, bishops' mitres, snarling dragons and Saracens' heads. As for the shopkeepers, they have the same stentorian voices as the vendors at Cheapside or Leadenhall. You'd think you were at the vegetable market, save for the Latin mixed in here with the English.
'What do you require, my good sir?'
'The Mirror for Magistrates! New illustrated edition!'
'Freshly printed! Never before published!'
'Buy my map of the New World!'
'Chronicles and homilies!'
'Come on! Come on! Take a look at my book! All you need to conjure the perils and pitfalls of the sea!
'Read my Book of the Courtier! With engravings! Custom and decorum, all explained!'
It is the same at the Royal Exchange, between Cornhill and Threadneedle Street, where all the world's merchants meet to discuss their business. On the first floor there is a row of shops: apothecaries, armourers, bookshops, jewellers, mercers and haberdashers, all vaunting their wares - a fashionable garment here, a love potion there, wigs and fragrant musks; one sells beard brushes, another handbells; there are coat linings, purses, the finest Toledo blades ... I forget.
The place I find most entertaining is the area around the Exchange. Here is a mosaic of fruit sellers, hawkers and chimney sweepers, apprentices dallying gaily with housemaids, and clerks scurrying hither and thither, all in a commotion, a monstrous choir of carters thundering past, their singing often audible above the racket, shouts from tavern gardens, farriers' hammers, carpenters' mallets, the din of smithies, barking dogs and the laughter of all those who, like myself, feel infinite pleasure at this monumental symphony."
From the wonderful Tregian's Ground by Anne Cuneo, out on 7th. April.
Edited to add: here is Francis Tregian on writing.