While in this employment, he
devoted his leisure principally to perambulating the bookstalls,
where he read books by snatches which he could not buy, and thus
picked up a good deal of odd knowledge. Then he shifted to another
office, at the advanced wages of twenty shillings a week, still
reading and studying. At twenty-eight he was able to write a book,
which he published under the title of 'The Enterprising Adventures
of Pizarro;' and from that time until his death, during a period of
about fifty-five years, Britton was occupied in laborious literary
occupation. The number of his published works is not fewer than
eighty-seven; the most important being 'The Cathedral Antiquities
of England,' in fourteen volumes, a truly magnificent work; itself
the best monument of John Britton's indefatigable industry.
London, the landscape gardener, was a man of somewhat similar
character, possessed of an extraordinary working power. The son of
a farmer near Edinburgh, he was early inured to work. His skill in
drawing plans and making sketches of scenery induced his father to
train him for a landscape gardener. During his apprenticeship he
sat up two whole nights every week to study; yet he worked harder
during the day than any labourer. In the course of his night
studies he learnt French, and before he was eighteen he translated
a life of Abelard for an Encyclopaedia.
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