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diff --git a/41580-0.txt b/41580-0.txt index 535c34c..2299f4a 100644 --- a/41580-0.txt +++ b/41580-0.txt @@ -1,41 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Haunted London, by Walter Thornbury - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Haunted London - -Author: Walter Thornbury - -Editor: Edward Walford - -Illustrator: F. W. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Haunted London - -Author: Walter Thornbury - -Editor: Edward Walford - -Illustrator: F. W. Fairholt - -Release Date: December 8, 2012 [EBook #41580] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAUNTED LONDON *** - - - - -Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive.) - - - - - - - - - -HAUNTED LONDON - - - - -DR. JOHNSON'S OPINIONS OF LONDON.--"It is not in the showy evolution of -buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations, that the -wonderful immensity of London consists.... The happiness of London is not -to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say -there is more learning and science within the circumference of where we -now sit than in all the rest of the kingdom.... A man stores his mind [in -London] better than anywhere else.... No place cures a man's vanity or -arrogance so well as London, for no man is either great or good, _per se_, -but as compared with others, not so good or great, and he is sure to find -in the metropolis many his equals and some his superiors.... No man of -letters leaves London without regret.... By seeing London I have seen as -much of life as the world can show.... When a man is tired of London he is -tired of life, for there is in London all life can afford, and [London] is -the fountain of intelligence and pleasure."--_Boswell's Life of Johnson._ - -BOSWELL'S OPINION OF LONDON.--"I have often amused myself with thinking -how different a place London is to different people. They whose narrow -minds are contracted to the consideration of some one particular pursuit, -view it only through that medium, a politician thinks of it merely as the -seat of government, etc.; but the intellectual man is struck with it _as -comprehending the whole of human life in all its variety, the -contemplation of which is inexhaustible_."--_Boswell's Life of Johnson_ -(Croker, 1848), p. 144. - - - - - HAUNTED LONDON - - - BY WALTER THORNBURY - - EDITED BY EDWARD WALFORD, M.A. - - - [Illustration: TEMPLE BAR, 1761.] - - - _ILLUSTRATED BY F. W. FAIRHOLT, F.S.A._ - - - London - CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY - 1880 - - - - -PREFACE. - - -This book deals less with the London of the ghost-stories, the scratching -impostor in Cock Lane, or the apparition of Parson Ford at the Hummums, -than with the London consecrated by manifold traditions--a city every -street and alley of which teems with interesting associations, every -paving-stone of which marks, as it were, the abiding-place of some ancient -legend or biographical story; in short, this London of the present haunted -by the memories of the past. - -The slow changes of time, the swifter destructions of improvement, and the -inevitable necessities of modern civilisation, are rapidly remodelling -London. - -It took centuries to turn the bright, swift little rivulet of the Fleet -into a foetid sewer, years to transform the palace at Bridewell into a -prison; but events now move faster: the alliance of money with enterprise, -and the absence of any organised resistance to needful though sometimes -reckless improvements, all combine to hurry forward modern changes. - -If an alderman of the last century could arise from his sleep, he would -shudder to see the scars and wounds from which London is now suffering. -Viaducts stalk over our chief roads; great square tubes of iron lie heavy -as nightmares on the breast of Ludgate Hill. In Finsbury and Blackfriars -there are now to be seen yawning chasms as large and ghastly as any that -breaching cannon ever effected in the walls of a besieged city. On every -hand legendary houses, great men's birthplaces, the haunts of poets, the -scenes of martyrdoms, and the battle-fields of old factions, heave and -totter around us. The tombs of great men, in the chinks of which the -nettles have grown undisturbed ever since the Great Fire, are now being -uprooted. Milton's house has become part of the _Punch_ office. A printing -machine clanks where Chatterton was buried. Almost every moment some -building worthy of record is shattered by the pickaxes of ruthless -labourers. The noise of falling houses and uprooted streets even now in my -ears tells me how busily Time, the Destroyer and the Improver, is working; -erasing tombstones, blotting out names on street-doors, battering down -narrow thoroughfares, and effacing one by one the memories of the good, -the bad, the illustrious, and the infamous. - -A sincere love of the subject, and a strong conviction of the importance -of the preservation of such facts as I have dredged up from the Sea of -Oblivion, have given me heart for my work. The gradual changes of Old -London, and the progress of civilisation westward, are worth noting by all -students of the social history of England. It will be found that many -traits of character, many anecdotes of interest, as illustrating -biography, are essentially connected with the habitations of the great men -who have either been born in London, or have resorted to it as the centre -of progress, art, commerce, government, learning, and culture. The fact of -the residence of a poet, a painter, a lawyer, or even a rogue, at any -definite date, will often serve to point out the social status he either -aimed at or had acquired. It helps also to show the exact relative -distinctions in fashion and popularity of different parts of London at -particular epochs, and contributes to form an illustrated history of -London, proceeding not by mere progression of time, and dealing with the -abstract city--the whole entity of London--but marching through street -after street, and detailing local history by districts at a time. - -A century after the martyrs of the Covenant had shed their blood for the -good old cause, an aged man, mounted on a little rough pony, used -periodically to make the tour of their graves; with a humble and pious -care he would scrape out the damp green moss that filled up the letters -once so sharp and clear, cut away the thorny arches of the brambles, tread -down the thick, prickly undergrowth of nettles, and leave the brave names -of the dead men open to the sunlight. It is something like this that I -have sought to do with London traditions. - -I have especially avoided, in every case, mixing truth with fiction. I -have never failed to give, where it was practicable, the actual words of -my authorities, rather than run the risk of warping or distorting a -quotation even by accident, or losing the flavour and charm of original -testimony. Aware of the paramount value of sound and verified facts, I -have not stopped to play with words and colours, nor to sketch imaginary -groups and processions. Such pictures are often false and only mislead; -but a fact proved, illustrated, and rendered accessible by index and -heading, is, however unpretentious, a contribution to history, and has -with certain inquirers a value that no time can lesson. - -In a comprehensive work, dealing with so many thousand dates, and -introducing on the stage so many human beings, it is almost impossible to -have escaped errors. I can only plead for myself that I have spared no -pains to discover the truth. I have had but one object in view, that of -rendering a walk through London a journey of interest and of pilgrimage to -many shrines. - -In some cases I have intentionally passed over, or all but passed over, -outlying streets that I thought belonged more especially to districts -alien to my present plan. Maiden Lane, for example, with its memories of -Voltaire, Marvell, and Turner, belongs rather to a chapter on Covent -Garden, of which it is a palpable appanage; and Chancery Lane I have left -till I come to Fleet Street. - -I should be ungrateful indeed if, in conclusion, I did not thank Mr. -Fairholt warmly for his careful and valuable drawings on wood. To that -accomplished antiquary I am indebted, as my readers will see, for several -original sketches of bygone places, and for many curious illustrations -which I should certainly not have obtained without the aid of his learning -and research. - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION pp. 1-3 - - - CHAPTER II. TEMPLE BAR. - - The Devil Tavern--London Bankers and Goldsmiths--A Whim - of John Bushnell, the Sculptor--Irritating Processions-- - The Bonfire at Inner Temple Gate--A Barbarous Custom-- - Called to the Bar--A Curious Old Print of 1746--The - White Cockades--An Execution on Kennington Common-- - Shenstone's "Jemmy Dawson"--Counsellor Layer--Dr. - Johnson in the Abbey--The Proclamation of the Peace of - Amiens--The Dispersion of the Armada--City Pageants and - Festivities--The Guildhall--The Guildhall Twin Giants-- - Proclamation of War--A Reflection pp. 4-24 - - - CHAPTER III. THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE). - - Essex Street--Beheading a Bishop--Exeter Place--The - Gipsy Earl--Running a-muck--Lettice Knollys--A Portrait - of Essex--Robert, Earl of Essex, the Parliamentary - General--The Poisoning of Overbury--An Epicurean - Doctor--Clubable Men--The Grecian--The Templar's - Lounge--Tom's Coffee-house--A Princely Collector--"The - Long Strand"--"Honest Shippen"--Boswell's Enthusiasm-- - Sale and the Koran--The Infamous Lord Mohun--A fine - Rebuke--Jacob Tonson pp. 25-55 - - - CHAPTER IV. SOMERSET HOUSE. - - The Protector Somerset--Denmark House--The Queen's - French Servants--The Lying-in-State of Cromwell--Scenes - at Somerset House--Sir Edmondbury Godfrey--Old Somerset - House--Erection of the Modern Building--Carlini's - Grandeur--A Hive of Red Tapists--Expensive Auditing--The - Royal Society--The Geological and the Antiquarian - Societies--A Legend of Somerset House--St. Martin's Lane - Academy--An Insult to Engravers--Rebecca's Practical - Jokes--A Fashionable Man actually Surprised--Lying in - State pp. 56-81 - - - CHAPTER V. THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE, CONTINUED). - - The Folly--Fountain Court and Tavern--The Coal-hole--The - Kit-cat Club--Coutts's Bank--The Eccentric Philosopher-- - Old Salisbury House--Robert the Devil--Little Salisbury - House--Toby Matthew--Ivy Bridge--The Strand Exchange-- - Durham House--Poor Lady Jane--The Parochial Mind--A - Strange Coalition--Garrick's Haunt--Shipley's School of - Art--Barry's Temper--The Celestial Bed--Sir William - Curtis pp. 82-105 - - - CHAPTER VI. THE SAVOY. - - The Earl of Savoy--John Wickliffe--A French King - Prisoner--The Kentish Rebellion--John of Gaunt--The - Hospital of St. John--Cowley's Regrets--Secret - Marriages--Conference between Church of England and - Presbyterian Divines--An Illegal Sanctuary--A Lampooned - General--A Fat Adonis--John Rennie--Waterloo Bridge--The - Duchy of Lancaster pp. 106-125 - - - CHAPTER VII. FROM THE SAVOY TO CHARING CROSS. - - York House--Lord Bacon--"To the Man with an Orchard give - an Apple"--"Steenie"--Buckingham Street--Zimri--York - Stairs--Pepys and Etty--Scenery on the Banks of the - Thames--The London Lodging of Peter the Great--The Czar - and the Quakers--The Hungerford Family--The Suspension - Bridge--Grinling Gibbons--The Two Smiths--Cross - Readings--Northumberland Street--Armed Clergymen pp. 126-145 - - - CHAPTER VIII. THE NORTH SIDE OF THE STRAND (FROM TEMPLE BAR TO CHARING - CROSS). - - Faithorne, the Engraver--The Stupendous Arch--The Murder - of Miss Ray--One of Wren's Churches--Thomas Rymer--Dr. - Johnson at Church--Shallow's Revelry--Low Comedy - Preachers--New Inn--Alas! poor Yorick!--The first - Hackney Coaches--Doyley--The Beef-steak Club--Beef and - Liberty--Madame Vestris--Old Thomson--Irene in a - Garret--Mathews at the Adelphi--The Bad Points of - Mathew's Acting--The Old Adelphi--A Riot in a Theatre-- - Dr. Johnson's Eccentricities pp. 146-189 - - - CHAPTER IX. CHARING CROSS. - - The Gunpowder Plot--Lord Herbert's Chivalry--A Schoolboy - Legend--Goldsmith's Audience--Dobson Buried in a - Garret--Charing--Queen Eleanor--A Brave Ending-- - Great-hearted Colonel Jones--King Charles at Charing - Cross--A Turncoat--A Trick of Curll's--The Cock Lane - Ghost--Savage the Poet--The Mews--The Nelson Column--The - Trafalgar Square Fountains--Want of Pictures of the - English School--Turner's Pictures--Mrs. Centlivre of - Spring Gardens--Maginn's Verses--The Hermitage at - Charing Cross--Ben Jonson's Grace--The Promised Land pp. 190-238 - - - CHAPTER X. ST. MARTIN'S LANE. - - A Certain Proof of Insanity--An Eccentric Character-- - Experimentum Crucis--St. Martin's-in-the-Fields--Gibb's - Opportunity--St. Martin's Church--Good Company--The - Thames Watermen--Copper Holmes--Old Slaughter's-- - Gardelle the Murderer--Hogarth's Quack--St. Martin's - Lane Academy--Hayman's Jokes--The Old Watch-house and - Stocks--Garrick's Tricks--An Encourager of Art--John - Wilkes--The Royal Society of Literature--The Artist - Quarter pp. 239-261 - - - CHAPTER XI. LONG ACRE AND ITS TRIBUTARIES. - - The Plague--Great Queen Street--Burning Panama--Lord - Herbert's Poetry--Kneller's Vanity--Conway House-- - Winchester House--Ryan the Actor--An Eminent Scholar and - Antiquary--Miss Pope--The Freemasons' Hall--Gentleman - Lewis--Franklin's Self-denial--The Gordon Riots--Colonel - Cromwell--An Eccentric Poetaster--Black Will's Rough - Repartee--Ned Ward--Prior's Humble Cell--Stothard--The - Mug-houses--Charles Lamb pp. 262-286 - - - CHAPTER XII. DRURY LANE. - - Drury House--Donne's Vision--Donne in his Shroud--The - Queen of Bohemia--Brave Lord Craven--An Anecdote of - Gondomar--Drury Lane Poets--Nell Gwynn--Zoffany--The - King's Company--Memoranda by Pepys--Anecdotes of Joe - Haines--Mrs. Oldfield's Good Sense--The Wonder of the - Town--Quin and Garrick--Barry and Garrick--The Bellamy-- - The Siddons--Dicky Suett--Liston's Hypochondria--The - First Play--Elliston's Tears--The End of a Man about - Town--Edmund Kean--Grimaldi--Kelly and Malibran--Keeley - and Harley--Scenes at Drury Lane--"Wicked Will - Whiston"--Henley's Butchers--"Il faut vivre"--Henley's - Sermons--The Leaden Seals pp. 287-348 - - - CHAPTER XIII. ST. GILES'S. - - The Lollards--Cobham's Death--The Lazar House--Holborn - First Paved--The Mud Deluge--French Protestants--The - Plague Cart--The Plague Time--Brought to his Knees--The - New Church--The Grave of Flaxman--The Thorntons--Hog - Lane--The Tyburn Bowl--The Swan on the Hop--The Irish - Deluge--Sham Abraham--Simon and his Dog--Hiring Babies-- - Pavement Chalkers--Monmouth Street pp. 349-386 - - - CHAPTER XIV. LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. - - The Earl of Lincoln's Garden--The Headless Chancellor-- - Spelman a late Ripener--Denham and Wither--Lord - Lyndhurst--Warburton and Heber--Ben Jonson the - Bricklayer--A Murder in Whetstone Park--The Dangers of - Lincoln's Inn Fields--Shelter in St. John's Wood--Lord - William Russell--A Brave Wife--Pelham--The Caricature of - a Duke--Wilde and Best--Lindsey House--The Dukes of - Ancaster--Skeletons--Lady Fanshawe--Lord Kenyon's - Latin--The Belzoni Sarcophagus--Sir John Soane--Worthy - Mrs. Chapone--The Duke's House--Betterton--Mrs. - Bracegirdle--A Riot--Rich's Pantomime--The Jump pp. 387-442 - - APPENDIX pp. 443-465 - - INDEX pp. 467-476 - - - - -DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. - - - TEMPLE BAR, 1761, from a drawing by S. Wale. The view is - taken from the City side of the Bar, looking through the - arch to Butcher Row and St. Clement's Church. The sign - projecting from the house to the spectator's left is that - of the famous Devil Tavern _Vignette on Title_ - - PAGE - - OLD HOUSES, SHIP YARD, TEMPLE BAR, circa 1761, from a plate - in Wilkinson's _Londina Illustrata_ 4 - - THE LORD MAYOR'S SHOW. From the picture by Hogarth 19 - - TEMPLE BAR, 1746, copied from an undated print published soon - after the execution of the rebel adherents of the young - Pretender. The view is surrounded by an emblematic framework, - and contains representations of the heads of Townley and - Fletcher, remarkable as the last so exposed; they remained - there till 1772 23 - - ST. CLEMENT'S CHURCH AND THE STRAND IN 1753, from a print by - I. Maurer 25 - - - TWO VIEWS OF ARUNDEL HOUSE, 1646, after Hollar. These views, - unique of their kind, are particularly valuable for the - clear idea they give of a noble London mansion of the period. - Arundel House retains many ancient features, particularly in - its dining-hall, which, with the brick residence for the - noble owner, is the only dignified portion of the building. - The rest has the character of an inn-yard--a mere collection - of ill-connected outhouses and stabling. The shed with the - tall square window in the roof was the depository of the - famous collection of pictures and antiques made by the - renowned Earl, part of which still forms the Arundel - Collection at Oxford 40, 41 - - PENN'S HOUSE, NORFOLK STREET, 1749, from a view by J. Buck. - The view is taken from the river, looking up Norfolk Street - to a range of old houses, still standing, in the Strand. - Penn's house was the last on the west side of the street (to - the spectator's left), overlooking the water 55 - - SOMERSET HOUSE FROM THE RIVER, 1746, from an engraving by I. - Knyff. Upon a barge moored in the river is seen the famous - coffee-house known as "The Folly," which, originally used as - a musical summer-house, ended in being the resort of depravity 56 - - STRAND FRONT OF SOMERSET HOUSE, 1777, from a large engraving - after I. Moss 80 - - JACOB TONSON'S BOOK-SHOP, 1742, from an etching by Benoist. - The shop of this famous bibliopole was opposite Catherine - Street. The view is obtained from the background of the - print representing a burlesque procession of Masons, got up - by some humourist in ridicule of the craft 82 - - OLD HOUSES IN THE STRAND, 1742, copied from the same print as - the preceding view. These houses stood on the site of the - present Wellington Street 104 - - THE SAVOY, FROM THE THAMES, IN 1650, after Hollar 106 - - THE SAVOY CHAPEL, from an original drawing 119 - - THE SAVOY PRISON, 1793, from an etching by J. T. Smith 125 - - DURHAM HOUSE, 1790, from an etching by J. T. Smith 126 - - THE WATER GATE, 1860, from a Sketch 133 - - YORK STAIRS AND SURROUNDING BUILDINGS, circa 1745, after an - original drawing by Canaletti in the British Museum. This is - one of the few interesting views of Old London sketched by - Canaletti during his short stay in England. It comprises the - famous water-gate designed by Inigo Jones, and the tall - wooden tower of the York Buildings Water Company. The large - mansion behind this (at the south-west corner of Buckingham - Street) was that inhabited by Pepys from 1684, and in which - he entertained the members of the Royal Society during his - presidency. The house at the opposite corner (seen above the - trees) is that in which the Czar Peter the Great resided for - some time, when he visited England for instruction in - shipbuilding 144 - - CROCKFORD'S FISH-SHOP, from an original sketch 146 - - THE OLD ROMAN BATH, from a drawing 169 - - EXETER CHANGE, 1821, from an etching by Cooke 188 - - TITUS OATES IN THE PILLORY, from an anonymous contemporary - Dutch engraving 190 - - THE KING'S MEWS, 1750, from a print by I. Maurer. This - building, erected in 1732 at the expense of King George II., - was pulled down in 1830. In the foreground of this view the - King is represented returning to his carriage after - inspecting his horses 238 - - BARRACK AND OLD HOUSES on the site of Trafalgar Square in - 1826, from an original sketch by F. W. Fairholt. The view is - taken from St. Martin's Church, looking toward Pall Mall; - the building in the distance, to the left, is the College of - Physicians 239 - - OLD SLAUGHTER'S COFFEE-HOUSE, 1826, from an original sketch - by F. W. Fairholt 260 - - SALISBURY AND WORCESTER HOUSES IN 1630, from a drawing by - Hollar in the Pepysian Library, Cambridge 262 - - LYON'S INN, 1804, from an engraving in Herbert's _History of - the Inns of Court_ 286 - - CRAVEN HOUSE, 1790, from an original drawing in the British - Museum 287 - - DRURY LANE THEATRE, 1806, from an original drawing by Pugin. - This was the _third_ theatre, succeeding Garrick's. It was - built by Henry Holland, opened March 12, 1794, and burnt down - Feb. 24, 1809. It was never properly finished on the side - toward Catherine Street, where this view was taken 347 - - CHURCH LANE AND DYOT STREET, from an original sketch by F. W. - Fairholt 349 - - THE SEVEN DIALS, from an original sketch by F. W. Fairholt 386 - - LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS THEATRE IN 1821, from an original sketch - by F. W. Fairholt 387 - - THE BLACK JACK, Portsmouth Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, from - an original sketch by F. W. Fairholt. This public-house was - the resort of the actors from the theatre, and among them Joe - Miller, who was buried in the graveyard close by, where the - hospital now stands. The house was also frequented by Jack - Sheppard, and was sometimes termed "The Jump," from the - circumstance of his having once jumped from one of the - first-floor windows to escape from officers of justice 441 - - - - -HAUNTED LONDON. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -INTRODUCTION. - - -One day when Fuseli and Haydon were walking together, they reached the -summit of a hill whence they could catch a glimpse of St. Paul's. - -There was the grey dome looming out by fits through rolling drifts of -murky smoke. The two little lion-like men stood watching "the sublime -canopy that shrouds the city of the world."[1] Now it spread and seethed -like the incense from Moloch's furnace; now it lifted and thinned into the -purer blue, like the waft of some great sacrifice, or settled down to -deeper and gloomier grandeur over "the vastness of modern Babylon." That -brown cloud hid a huge ants' nest teeming with three millions of people. -That dome, with its golden coronet and cross, rose like the globe in an -emperor's hand--a type of the civilisation, and power, and Christianity of -England. - -The hearts of the two men beat faster at the great sight. - -"Be George!" said Fuseli, shaking his white hair and stamping his little -foot, "be George! sir, it's like the smoke of the Israelites making bricks -for the Egyptians." - -"It is grander, Fuseli," said Haydon, "for it is the smoke of a people who -would _have made the Egyptians make bricks for them_." - -It is of the multitudinous streets of this more than Egyptian city, their -traditions, and their past and present inhabitants, that I would now -write. I shall not pass by many houses where any eminent men dwell or -dwelt, without some biographical anecdote, some epigram, some -illustration; yet I will not stop long at any door, because so many others -await me. I have "set down," I hope, "nought in malice." Truth I trust has -been, and truth alone shall be, my object. I shall stay at Charing Cross -to point out the heroism of the dying regicides; I shall pause at -Whitehall to narrate some redeeming traits even in the character of a -wilful king. - -The growth of London, and its conquest of suburb after suburb, has roused -the imagination of poets and essayists ever since the days of Queen -Elizabeth. - -When James I. forbade the building of fresh houses outside London walls, -he little foresaw the time when the City would become almost impassable; -when practical men would burrow roads under ground, or make subterranean -railways to drain off the choking traffic; when cool-headed people would -seriously propose to have flying bridges thrown over the chief -thoroughfares; when new manners and customs, new diseases, new follies, -new social complications would arise, from the fact of three millions of -men silently agreeing to live together on only eleven square miles of -land; when fish would cease to inhabit the poisoned river; when the roar -of the traffic would render it almost impossible to converse; when, in -fact, London would grow too large for comfort, safety, pleasure, or even -social intercourse. - -It is difficult to select from what centre to commence a pilgrimage. For -old Roman London we might start from the Exchange or the Tower; for -mediæval London from Chepe or Aldermanbury; for fashionable London from -Charing Cross; for Shaksperean London from the Globe or Blackfriars. Even -then our tours would be circuitous, and sometimes retrograde, and we -should turn and double like hares before the hounds. - -I have for several reasons, therefore, and after some consideration, -decided to start from Temple Bar, and walk westward along the Strand to -Charing Cross; then to turn up St. Martin's Lane, and return by Longacre -and Drury Lane to Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. - -That walk embraces the long line of palaces which once adorned the Strand, -or river-bank street, the countless haunts of artists in St. Martin's -Lane, the legends of Longacre, the theatrical reminiscences of Drury Lane, -and the old noblemen's houses in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. It comprises a -period not so remote as East London, and not so modern as that of the West -End. It brings us acquainted not only with many of the contemporaries of -Shakspere and Dryden, but also with many celebrities of Garrick's time and -of Dr. Johnson's age. - -If this is not the best point of departure, it has at least much to be -said in its favour, as the loop I have drawn includes nothing intramural, -and comprises a part of London inhabited by persons who lived more within -the times of memoir-writing than those in the farther East,--a district, -too, more within the range of the antiquary than the newer region of the -West. - -I trust that in these remarks I have in some degree explained why I have -spent so much time in pouring "old wine into new bottles." - -A preface is too often a pillory made by an author, in which he exposes -himself to a shower of the most unsavoury missiles. I trust that mine may -be considered only as a wayside stone on which I stand to offer a fitting -apology for what I trust is a venial fault. - -It is the glory of my old foster-mother, London, I would celebrate; it is -her virtues and her crimes I would record. Her miles of red-tiled roofs, -her quiet green squares, her vast black mountain of a cathedral, her -silver belt of a river, her acres and acres of stony terraces, her -beautiful parks, her tributary fleets, seem to me as so many episodes in -one great epic, the true delineation of which would form a new chapter in -the HISTORY OF MANKIND. - - - - -[Illustration: SHIP YARD, TEMPLE BAR, 1761.] - - -CHAPTER II. - -TEMPLE BAR. - - -Temple Bar, that old dingy gateway of blackened Portland stone which -separates the Strand from Fleet Street, the City from the Shire, and the -Freedom of the City of London from the Liberty of the City of Westminster, -was built by Sir Christopher Wren in the year 1670, four years after the -Great Fire, and ten after the Restoration. - -In earlier days there were at this spot only posts, rails, and a chain, as -at Holborn, Smithfield, and Whitechapel. In later times, however, a house -of timber was erected, with a narrow gateway and one passage on the south -side.[2] - -The original Bar seems to have crossed Fleet Street, several yards farther -to the east of its successor. In the time of James I. it consisted of an -iron railing with a gate in the middle. A man sat on the spot for many -years after the erection of the new gate, to take toll from all carts -which had not the City arms painted on them. - -Temple Bar, if described now in an architect's catalogue, would be noted -as pierced with two side posterns for foot passengers, and having a -central flattened archway for carriages. In the upper story is an -apartment with semicircular arched windows on the eastern and western -sides, and the whole is crowned with a sweeping pediment. - -On the western or Westminster side there are two niches, in which are -placed mean statues of Charles I. and Charles II. in fluttering Roman -robes, and on the east or Fleet Street side there are statues of James I. -and Queen Elizabeth. They are all remarkable for their small feeble heads, -their affected and crinkled drapery, and the piebald look produced by -their projecting hands and feet being washed white by years of rain, while -the rest of their bodies remains a sooty black. - -The upper room is held of the City by the partners of the very ancient -firm of Messrs. Child, bankers. There they store their books and records, -as in an old muniment-chamber. The north side ground floor, next to Shire -Lane, was occupied as a barber's shop from the days of Steele and the -_Tatler_. - -The centre slab on the east side of Temple Bar once contained the -following inscription, now all but obliterated:--"Erected in the year -1670, Sir Samuel Sterling, Mayor; continued in the year 1671, Sir Richard -Ford, Lord Mayor; and finished in the year 1672, Sir George Waterman, -Lord Mayor." It is probable that the corresponding western slab, and also -the smaller one over the postern, once bore inscriptions. - -Temple Bar was doomed to destruction by the City as early as 1790, through -the exertions of Alderman Picket. "Threatened men live long," says an old -Italian proverb. Temple Bar still stands[3] a narrow neck to an immense -decanter; an impeder of traffic, a venerable nuisance, with nothing -interesting but its associations and its dirt. But then let us remember -that as Holborn Hill has tormented horses and drivers ever since the -Conquest, and its steepness is not yet in any way mitigated,[4] we must -not expect hasty reforms in London. - -It does not enter into my purpose (unless I walked like a crab, backwards) -to give the history of Child's bank. Suffice it for me to say that it -stands on part of the site of the old Devil Tavern, kept by old Simon -Wadloe, where Ben Jonson held his club. It was taken down in 1788, and -Child's Place built in its stead.[5] Alderman Backwell, who was ruined by -the shutting up of the Exchequer in the reign of Charles II., and became a -partner in this, the oldest banking-house in London, was the agent for -Government in the sale of Dunkirk to the French. - -Pepys makes frequent allusions to his friend Child, probably one of the -founders of this bank. The Duke of York opposed his interference in -Admiralty matters, and had a quarrel with a gentleman who declared that -whoever impugned Child's honesty must be a knave. Child wrote an -enlightened work on Indian trade, supporting the interests of the East -India Company. - -Apollo Court, exactly opposite the bank, marks a passage that once faced -the Apollo room, from whose windows Ben Jonson must have often glowered -and Herrick laughed. - -Archenholz says that in his day there were forty-eight bankers in London. -"The Duke of Marlborough," writes the Prussian traveller, "had some years -ago in the hands of Child the banker, a fund of ten, fifteen, or twenty -thousand pounds. Drummond had often in his hands several hundred thousand -pounds at one time belonging to the Government."[6] - -In the earliest London Directory (1677),[7] among "the goldsmiths that -keep running cashes," we find "Richard Blanchard and Child, at the -Marygold in Fleet Street." The huge marigold (really a sun in full shine), -above four feet high, the original street-sign of the old goldsmiths at -Temple Bar, is still preserved in one of the rooms of Child's bank. - -John Bushnell, the sculptor who executed the statues on Temple Bar, being -compelled by his master, Burman, of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, to marry a -discarded servant-maid, went to Italy, and resided in Rome and Venice, and -in the latter place executed a monument to a Procuratore, representing a -naval engagement between the Venetians and the Turks. His best works are -Cowley's monument, that of Sir Palmes Fairborne in Westminster Abbey, and -Lord Mordaunt's statue in Fulham church. He also executed the statues of -Charles I., Charles II., and Sir Thomas Gresham for the Royal Exchange. He -had agreed to complete the set of kings, but Cibber being also engaged, -Bushnell would not finish the six or seven he had begun. Being told by -rival sculptors that he could carve only drapery, and not the naked -figure, he produced a very despicable Alexander the Great. - -The next whim of this vain, fantastic, and crazy man, was to prove that -the Trojan Horse could really have been constructed.[8] He therefore had a -wooden horse built with huge timbers, which he proposed to cover with -stucco. The head held twelve men and a table; the eyes served as windows. -Before it was half completed, however, it was demolished by a storm of -wind, and no entreaties of the two vintners who had contracted to use the -horse for a drinking booth could induce the mortified projector to rebuild -the monster, which had already cost him £500. A wiser plan of his, that of -bringing coal to London by sea, also miscarried; and the loss of an estate -in Kent, through an unsuccessful lawsuit, completed the overthrow of -Bushnell's never very well-balanced brain. He died in 1701, and was buried -at Paddington. His two sons (to one of whom he left £100 a year, and to -the other £60) became recluses, moping in an unfinished house of their -father's, facing Hyde Park, in the lane leading from Piccadilly to Tyburn, -now Park Lane. This strange abode had neither staircase nor doors, but -there they brooded, sordid and impracticable, saying that the world had -not been worthy of their father. Vertue, in 1728, describes a visit to the -house, which was then choked with unfinished statues and pictures. There -was a ruined cast of an intended brass equestrian statue of Charles II.: -an Alexander and other unfinished kings completed the disconsolate -brotherhood. Against the wall leant a great picture of a classic triumph, -almost obliterated; and on the floor lay a bar of iron, as thick as a -man's wrist, that had been broken by some forgotten invention of -Bushnell's. - -After the discovery of the absurd Meal-Tub Plot, in 1679, the 17th of -November, the anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth was kept, -according to custom, as a high Protestant festival, and celebrated by an -extraordinary procession, at the expense of the Green-Ribbon Club, a few -citizens, and some gentlemen of the Temple. The bells began to ring out at -three o'clock in the morning; at dusk the procession began at Moorgate, -and passed through Cheapside and Fleet Street, where it ended with a huge -bonfire, "just over against the Inner Temple gate."[9] - -The stormy procession was thus constituted:-- - -1. Six whifflers, in pioneer caps and red waistcoats, who cleared the -way. 2. A bellman, ringing his bell, and with a doleful voice crying, -"Remember Justice Godfrey." 3. A dead body, representing the wood-merchant -of Hartshorne Lane (Sir E. Godfrey), in a decent black habit, white -gloves, and the cravat wherewith he was murdered about his neck, with -spots of blood on his wrists, breast, and shirt. This figure was held on a -white horse by a man representing one of the murderers. 4. A priest in a -surplice and cope, embroidered with bones, skulls, and skeletons. He -handed pardons to all who would meritoriously murder Protestants. 5. A -priest, bearing a great silver cross. 6. Four Carmelite friars, in white -and black robes. 7. Four Grey Friars. 8. Six Jesuits with bloody daggers. -9. The waits, playing all the way. 10. Four bishops in purple, with lawn -sleeves, golden crosses on their breasts, and croziers in their hands. 11. -Four other bishops, in full pontificals (copes and surplices), wearing -gilt mitres. 12. Six cardinals, in scarlet robes and caps. 13. The Pope's -chief physician, with Jesuits' powder and other still more grotesque -badges of his office. 14. Two priests in surplices, bearing golden -crosses. 15. Then came the centre of all this pageant, the Pope himself, -sitting in a scarlet and gilt fringed chair of state. His feet were on a -cushion, supported by two boys in surplices, with censers and white silk -banners, painted with red crosses and bloody consecrated daggers. His -Holiness wore a scarlet gown, lined with ermine and daubed with gold and -silver lace. On his head he had the triple tiara, and round his neck a -gilt collar, strung with precious stones, beads, Agnus Dei's, and St. -Peter's keys. At the back of his chair climbed and whispered the devil, -who hugged and caressed him, and sometimes urged him aloud to kill King -Charles, or to forge a Protestant plot and to fire the city again, for -which purpose he kept a torch ready lit. - -The number of spectators in the balconies and windows was computed at two -hundred thousand. A hundred and fifty flambeaux followed the procession by -order, and as many more came as volunteers. - -Roger North also describes a fellow with a stentorophonic tube (a -speaking-trumpet), who kept bellowing out--"Abhorrers! abhorrers!"[10] - -Lastly came a complaisant, civil gentleman, who was meant to represent -either Sir Roger l'Estrange, or the King of France, or the Duke of York. -"Taking all in good part, he went on his way to the fire." - -At Temple Bar some of the mob had crowned the statue of Elizabeth with -gilt laurel, and placed in her hand a gilt shield with the motto, "The -Protestant Religion and Magna Charta." A spear leant against her arm, and -the niche was lit with candles and flambeaux, so that, as North said, she -looked like the goddess Pallas, the object of some solemn worship and -sacrifice. - -All this time perpetual battles and skirmishes went on between the Whigs -and Tories at the different windows, and thousands of volleys of squibs -were discharged. - -When the pope was at last toppled into the fire a prodigious shout was -raised, that spread as far as Somerset House, where the queen then was, -and, as a pamphleteer of the time says, before it ceased, reached -Scotland, France, and even Rome. - -From these processions the word MOB (_mobile vulgus_) became introduced -into our language.[11] In 1682, Charles II. tried to prohibit this annual -festival, but it continued nevertheless till the reign of Queen Anne, or -even later.[12] - -At Temple Bar, where the houses seemed turned into mountains of heads, and -many fireworks were let off, a man representing the English cardinal -(Philip Howard, brother of the Duke of Norfolk) sang a rude part-song with -other men who personated the people of England. The cardinal first -began:-- - - "From York to London town we come - To talk of Popish ire, - To reconcile you all to Rome, - And prevent Smithfield fire." - -To which the people replied, valorously:-- - - "Cease, cease, thou Norfolk cardinal, - See! yonder stands Queen Bess, - Who saved our souls from Popish thrall: - Oh, Bess! Queen Bess! Queen Bess! - - "Your Popish plot, and Smithfield threat, - We do not fear at all, - For, lo! beneath Queen Bess's feet, - You fall! you fall! you fall! - - "'Tis true our king's on t'other side, - A looking t'wards Whitehall, - But could we bring him round about, - He'd counterplot you all. - - "Then down with James and up with Charles, - On good Queen Bess's side, - That all true commons, lords, and earls - May wish him a fruitful bride. - - "Now God preserve great Charles our king, - And eke all honest men, - And traitors all to justice bring: - Amen! Amen! Amen!" - -It was formerly the barbarous and brutal custom to place the heads and -quarters of traitors upon Temple Bar as scarecrows to all persons who did -not consider William of Orange, or the Elector of Hanover, the rightful -possessors of the English crown. - -Sir Thomas Armstrong was the first to help to deck Wren's new arch. When -Shaftesbury fled in 1683, and the Court had partly discovered his -intrigues with Monmouth and the Duke of Argyle, the more desperate men of -the Exclusion Party plotted to stop the king's coach as he returned from -Newmarket to London, at the Rye House, a lonely mansion near Hoddesden. -The plot was discovered, and Monmouth escaped to Holland. In the meantime -the informers dragged Russell and Sydney into the scheme, for which they -were falsely put to death. Sir Thomas Armstrong, who had been taken at -Leyden and delivered up to the English Ambassador at the Hague, claimed a -trial as a surrendered outlaw, according to the 6th Edward VI. But Judge -Jeffreys refused him his request, as he had not surrendered voluntarily, -but had been brought by force. Armstrong still claiming the benefit of the -law, the brutal judge replied:--"And the benefit of the law you shall -have, by the grace of God. See that execution be done on Friday next, -according to law." - -Armstrong had sinned deeply against the king. He had sold himself to the -French ambassador, he had urged Monmouth on in his undutiful conduct to -his father, and he had been an active agent in the Rye House Plot. Charles -would listen to no voice in his favour. On the scaffold he denied any -intention of assassinating the king or changing the form of -government.[13] - -Sir William Perkins and Sir John Friend were the next unfortunate -gentlemen who lent their heads to crown the Bar. They were rash, -hot-headed Jacobites, who, too eagerly adopting the "ultima ratio" of -political partisans, had planned, in 1696, to stop King William's coach in -a deep lane between Brentford and Turnham Green, as he returned from -hunting at Richmond. Sir John Friend was a person who had acquired wealth -and credit from mean beginnings, but Perkins was a man of fortune, -violently attached to King James, though as one of the six clerks of -Chancery he had taken the oath to the new Government. Friend owned that he -had been at a treasonable meeting at the King's Head Tavern in Leadenhall -Street, but denied connivance in the assassination-plot. Perkins made an -artful and vigorous defence, but the judge acted as counsel for the Crown -and guided the jury. They both suffered at Tyburn, three nonjuring -clergymen absolving them, much to the indignation of the loyal -bystanders.[14] - -John Evelyn calls the sight of Temple Bar "a dismal sight."[15] Thank God, -this revolting spectacle of traitors' heads will never be seen here again. - -In 1716 Colonel Henry Oxburgh's head was added to the quarters of Sir -John Friend (a brewer) and the skull of Sir William Perkins. Oxburgh was a -Lancashire gentleman, who had served in the French army. General Foster -(who escaped from Newgate, in 1716) had made him colonel directly he -joined the Pretender's army. To him, too, had been entrusted the -humiliating task of proposing capitulation to the king's troops at -Preston, when the Highlanders, frenzied with despair, were eager to sally -out and cut their way through the enemy's dragoons. He met death with a -serene temper. A fellow-prisoner described his words as coming "like a -gleam from God. You received comfort," he says, "from the man you came to -comfort." Oxburgh was executed at Tyburn, May 14; his body was buried at -St. Giles', all but his head, and that was placed on Temple Bar two days -afterwards. - -A curious print of 1746 represents Temple Bar with the three heads raised -on tall poles or iron rods. The devil looks down in triumph and waves the -rebel banner, on which are three crowns and a coffin, with the motto, "A -crown or a grave." Underneath are written these wretched verses: - - "Observe the banner which would all enslave, - Which ruined traytors did so proudly wave. - The devil seems the project to despise; - A fiend confused from off the trophy flies. - - "While trembling rebels at the fabrick gaze, - And dread their fate with horror and amaze, - Let Briton's sons the _emblematick_ view, - And plainly see what to rebellion's due." - -A curious little book "by a member of the Inner Temple," which has -preserved this print, has also embalmed the following stupid and -cold-blooded impromptu on the heads of Oxburgh, Townley, and Fletcher:-- - - "Three heads here I spy, - Which the glass did draw nigh, - The better to have a good sight; - Triangle they're placed, - Old, bald, and barefaced, - Not one of them e'er was upright."[16] - -The heads of Fletcher and Townley were put up on Temple Bar August 2, -1746. On August 16, Walpole writes to Montague to say that he had "passed -under the new heads at Temple Bar, where people made a trade of letting -spying-glasses at a halfpenny a look." - -Townley was a young officer about thirty-eight years of age, born at -Wigan, and of a good family. His uncle had been out in 1715, but was -acquitted on his trial. Townley had been fifteen years abroad in the -French army, and was close to the Duke of Berwick when the duke's head was -shot off at the siege of Philipsburgh. When the Highlanders came into -England he met them near Preston, and received from the young Pretender a -commission to raise a regiment of foot. He had been also commandant at -Carlisle, and directed the sallies from thence. - -Fletcher, a young linen chapman at Salford, had been seen pulling off his -hat and shouting when a sergeant and a drummer were beating up for -volunteers at the Manchester Exchange. He had been seen also at Carlisle, -dressed as an officer, with a white cockade in his hat and a plaid sash -round his waist.[17] - -Seven other Jacobites were executed on Kennington Common with Fletcher and -Townley. They were unchained from the floor of their room in Southwark new -gaol early in the morning, and having taken coffee, had their irons -knocked off. They were then, at about ten o'clock, put into three sledges, -each drawn by three horses. The executioner, with a drawn scimitar, sat in -the first sledge with Townley; a party of dragoons and a detachment of -foot-guards conducted him to the gallows, near which a pile of faggots and -a block had been placed. While the prisoners were stepping from their -sledges into a cart drawn up beneath a tree, the wood was set on fire, and -the guards formed a circle round the place of execution. The prisoners had -no clergyman, but Mr. Morgan, one of their number, put on his spectacles -and read prayers to them, which they listened and responded to with -devoutness. This lasted above an hour. Each one then threw his -prayer-book and some written papers among the spectators; they also -delivered notes to the sheriff, and then flung their hats into the crowd. -"Six of the hats," says the quaint contemporary account, "were laced with -gold,--all of these prisoners having been genteelly dressed." Immediately -after, the executioner took a white cap from each man's pocket and drew it -over his eyes; then they were turned off. When they had hung about three -minutes, the executioner pulled off their shoes, white stockings, and -breeches, a butcher removing their other clothes. The body of Mr. Townley -was then cut down and laid upon a block, and the butcher seeing some signs -of life remaining, struck it on the breast, then took out the bowels and -the heart, and threw them into the fire. Afterwards, with a cleaver, they -severed the head and placed it with the body in the coffin. When the last -heart, which was Mr. Dawson's, was tossed into the fire, the executioner -cried, "God save King George!" and the immense multitude gave a great -shout. The heads and bodies were then removed to Southwark gaol to await -the king's pleasure. - -According to another account the bodies were cloven into quarters; and as -the butcher held up each heart he cried, "Behold the heart of a traitor!" - -Mr. James Dawson, one of the unhappy men thus cruelly punished, was a -young Lancashire gentleman of fortune, just engaged to be married. The -unhappy lady followed his sledge to the place of execution, and approached -near enough to see the fire kindled and all the other dreadful -preparations. She bore it well till she heard her lover was no more, but -then drew her head back into the coach, and crying out, "My dear, I follow -thee!--I follow thee! Sweet Jesus, receive our souls together!" fell on -the neck of a companion and expired. Shenstone commemorated this -occurrence in a plaintive ballad called "Jemmy Dawson." - -Mr. Dawson is described as "a mighty gay gentleman, who frequented much -the company of the ladies, and was well respected by all his acquaintance -of either sex for his genteel deportment. He was as strenuous for their -vile cause as any one in the rebel army. When he was condemned and double -fettered, he said he did not care if they were to put a ton weight of iron -on him; it would not in the least daunt his resolution."[18] - -On January 20 (between 2 and 3 A.M.), 1766, a man was taken up for -discharging musket-bullets from a steel crossbow at the two remaining -heads upon Temple Bar. On being examined he affected a disorder in his -senses, and said his reason for doing so was "his strong attachment to the -present Government, and that he thought it was not sufficient that a -traitor should merely suffer death; that this provoked his indignation, -and that it had been his constant practice for three nights past to amuse -himself in the same manner. And it is much to be feared," says the -recorder of the event, "that he is a near relation to one of the unhappy -sufferers."[19] Upon searching this man, about fifty musket-bullets were -found on him, wrapped up in a paper with a motto--"Eripuit ille vitam." - -"Yesterday," says a news-writer of the 1st of April, 1772, "one of the -rebel heads on Temple Bar fell down. There is only one head now -remaining." - -The head that fell was probably that of Councillor Layer, executed for -high treason in 1723. The blackened head was blown off the spike during a -violent storm. It was picked up by Mr. John Pearce, an attorney, one of -the Nonjurors of the neighbourhood, who showed it to some friends at a -public-house, under the floor of which it was buried. In the meanwhile Dr. -Rawlinson, a Jacobite antiquarian, having begged for the relic, was -imposed on with another. In his will the doctor desired to be buried with -this head in his right hand,[20] and the request was complied with. - -This Dr. Rawlinson, one of the first promoters of the Society of -Antiquaries, and son of a lord mayor of London, died in 1755. His body was -buried in St. Giles' churchyard, Oxford, and his heart in St. John's -College. The sale of his effects lasted several days, and produced £1164. -He left upwards of 20,000 pamphlets; his coins he bequeathed to Oxford. - -The last of the iron poles or spikes on which the heads of the unfortunate -Jacobite gentlemen were fixed, was removed only at the commencement of the -present century.[21] - -The above-named Christopher Layer was a barrister, living in Old -Southampton Buildings, who had engaged in a plot to seize the Bank and the -Tower, to arm the Minters in Southwark, to seize the king, Walpole, and -Lord Cadogan, to place cannon on the terrace of Lincoln's-Inn-Fields -gardens, and to draw a force of armed men together at the Exchange. The -prisoner had received blank promissory-notes signed in the Pretender's own -hand, and also treasonable letters full of cant words of the party in -disguised names--such as Mr. Atkins for the Pretender, Mrs. Barbara Smith -for the army, and Mr. Fountaine for himself. - -It was proved that, at an audience in Rome, Layer had assured the -Pretender that the South Sea losses had done good to his cause; and the -Pretender and the Pretender's wife (through their proxies, Lord North and -Grey, and the Duchess of Ormond) had stood as godfather and godmother to -his (Layer's) daughter's child. - -He was executed at Tyburn in May 1723, and avowed his principles even -under the gallows. His head was taken to Newgate, and the next day fixed -upon Temple Bar; but his quarters were delivered to his relations to be -decently interred. - -In April 1773 Boswell dined at Mr. Beauclerk's with Dr. Johnson, Lord -Charlemont, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and some other members of the Literary -Club--it being the evening when Boswell was to be balloted for as -candidate for admission into that distinguished society.[22] The -conversation turned on Westminster Abbey, and on the new and commendable -practice of erecting monuments to great men in St. Paul's; upon which the -doctor observed-- - -"I remember once being with Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. While we -surveyed the Poets' Corner, I said to him-- - - 'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur illis.' - -When we got to Temple Bar he stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it, and -slily whispered-- - - 'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur _istis_.'"[23] - -This walk must have taken place a year or two before 1773, for in 1772, as -we have seen, the last head but one fell. - -O'Keefe, the dramatist, who arrived in England on August 12, 1762, the day -on which the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.) was born, describes -the heads of poor Townley and Fletcher as stuck up on high poles, not over -the central archway, but over the side posterns. Parenthetically he -mentions that he had also seen the walls of Cork gaol garnished with -heads, like the ramparts of the seraglio at Constantinople.[24] - -O'Keefe tells us that he heard the unpopular peace of 1763 proclaimed at -Temple Bar, and witnessed the heralds in the Strand knock at the city -gate. The duke of Nivernois, the French ambassador on that occasion, was a -very little man, who wore a coat of richly-embroidered blue velvet, and a -small _chapeau_, which set the fashion of the Nivernois hat.[25] - -At the proclamation of the short peace of Amiens, the king's marshal, with -his officers, having ridden down the Strand from Westminster, stopped at -Temple Bar, which was kept shut to show that there commenced the Lord -Mayor's jurisdiction. The herald's trumpets were blown thrice; the junior -officer then tapped at the gate with his cane, upon which the City -marshal, in the most unconscious way possible, answered, "Who is there?" -The herald replied, "The officers-of-arms, who seek entrance into the City -to publish his majesty's proclamation of peace." On this the gates were -flung open, and the herald alone was admitted, and conducted to the Lord -Mayor. The latter then read the royal warrant, and returning it to the -bearer, ordered the City marshal to open the gate for the whole -procession. The Lord Mayor and aldermen then joined it, and proceeded to -the Royal Exchange, where the proclamation, that was to bid the cannon -cease and chain up the dogs of war, was read for the last time. - -[Illustration: THE LORD MAYOR'S SHOW. AFTER HOGARTH.] - -The timber work and doors of Temple Bar have been often renewed since -1672. New doors were hung for Nelson's funeral, when the Bar was to be -closed; and again at the funeral of Wellington, when the plumes and -trophies had to be removed in order that the car might pass through the -gate, which was covered with dull theatrical finery.[26] - -The old, black, mud-splashed gates of Temple Bar are also shut whenever -the sovereign has occasion to enter the City. This is an old custom, a -tradition of the times when the city was proud of its privileges, and -sometimes even jealous of royalty. When the cavalcade approaches, a -herald, in his tabard of crimson and gold lace, sounds a trumpet before -the portal of the City; another herald knocks; a parley ensues; the gates -are then thrown open, and the Lord Mayor appearing, kneels and hands the -sword of the city to his sovereign, who graciously returns it. - -Stow describes a scene like this in the old days of the "timber house," -when Queen Elizabeth was on her way to old St. Paul's to return thanks to -God for the discomfiture of the Armada. The City waits fluted, trumpeted, -and fiddled from the roof of the gate; while below, the Lord Mayor and his -brethren, in scarlet gowns, received and welcomed their brave queen, -delivering up the sword which, after certain speeches, she re-delivered to -the mayor, who, then taking horse, rode onward to St. Paul's bearing it in -its shining sheath before her.[27] - -In the June after the execution of Charles I., when Cromwell had dispersed -the mutinous regiments with his horse, and pistolled or hanged their -leaders, a day of thanksgiving was appointed, and the Parliament, the -Council of State, and the Council of the Army, after endless sermons, -dined together at Grocers' Hall; on that day Lenthall, the Speaker, -received the sword of state from the mayor at the Bar, and assumed the -functions of royalty. - -The same ceremony took place when Queen Anne went to St. Paul's to return -thanks for the Duke of Marlborough's victories, and again when George III. -came to return thanks for a recovery from his fit of insanity, and when -Queen Victoria passed on her way to Cornhill to open the Royal Exchange. - -Temple Bar naturally does not figure much in the early City pageants, -because, after proceeding to Westminster by water, the mayor and aldermen -usually landed at St. Paul's Stairs. - -It is, we believe, first mentioned in the great festivities when the City -brought poor Anne Boleyn, in 1533, from Greenwich to the Tower, and on the -second day after conducted her through the chief streets and honoured her -with shows. On that day the Fleet Street conduit ran claret, and Temple -Bar was newly painted and repaired; there also stood singing men and -children, till the company rode on to Westminster Hall. The next day was -the coronation.[28] - -On the 19th of February 1546-7 the young King Edward VI. passed through -London, the day before his coronation. At the Fleet Street conduit two -hogsheads of wine were given to the people. The gate at Temple Bar was -also painted and fashioned with varicoloured battlements and buttresses, -richly hung with cloth of arras, and garnished with fourteen standards. -There were eight French trumpeters blowing their best, besides a pair of -"regals," with children singing to the same.[29] - -In September 1553 Queen Mary rode through London, the day before her -coronation, in a chariot covered with cloth of tissue, and drawn by six -horses draped with the same. Minstrels played at Ludgate, and the Temple -Bar was newly painted and hung.[30] - -But even a greater time came for the old City boundary in January 1558-9, -when Queen Elizabeth went from the Tower to Westminster. Temple Bar was -"finely dressed" up with the two giants--Gog and Magog (now in the -Guildhall)--who held between them a poetical recapitulation of all the -other pageantries, both in Latin and English. On the south side was a -noise of singing children, one of whom, richly attired as a poet, gave the -queen farewell in the name of the whole city.[31] - -In 1603 King James, Queen Anne of Denmark, and Prince Henry Frederick -passed through "the honourable City and Chamber" of London, and were -welcomed with pageants. The last arch, that of Temple Bar, represented a -temple of Janus. The principal character was Peace, with War grovelling at -her feet; by her stood Wealth; below sat the four handmaids of -Peace,--Quiet treading on Tumult, Liberty on Servitude, Safety on Danger, -and Felicity on Unhappiness. There was then recited a poetical dialogue by -the Flamen Martialis and the Genius Urbis, written by Ben Jonson. - -Here, hitherto, the pageantry had always ceased, but the Strand suburbs -having now greatly increased, there was an additional pageant beyond -Temple Bar, which had been thought of and perfected in only twelve days. -The invention was a rainbow; and the moon, sun, and pleiades advanced -between two magnificent pyramids seventy feet high, on which were drawn -out the king's pedigrees through both the English and the Scottish -monarchs. A speech composed by Ben Jonson was delivered by Electra.[32] - -When Charles II. came through London, according to custom, the day before -his coronation, I suspect that "the fourth arch in Fleet Street" was close -to Temple Bar. It was of the Doric and Ionic orders, and was dedicated to -Plenty, who made a speech, surrounded by Bacchus, Ceres, Flora, Pomona, -and the Winds; but whether the latter were alive or only dummies, I cannot -say. - -The _London Gazette_ of February 8, 1665-6, announces the proclamation of -war against France; and Pepys mentions this as also the day on which they -went into mourning at court for the King of Spain. War was proclaimed by -the herald-at-arms and two of his brethren, his majesty's -sergeants-at-arms, and trumpeters, with the other usual officers before -Whitehall, and afterwards (the Lord Mayor and his brethren assisting) at -Temple Bar, and in other usual parts of the City. - -James II., in 1687, honoured Sir John Shorter as Lord Mayor with his -presence at an inaugurative banquet at Guildhall. The king was accompanied -by Prince George of Denmark, and was met by the two sheriffs at Temple -Bar. - -[Illustration: TEMPLE BAR, 1746.] - -On Lord Mayor's Day, 1689, when King William and Queen Mary came to the -City to see the show, the City militia regiments lined the street as far -as Temple Bar, and beyond came the red and blue regiments of Middlesex and -Westminster; the soldiers, at regulated distances, holding lighted -flambeaux in their hands, and all the houses being illuminated.[33] - -In 1697, when Macaulay's hero, William III., made a triumphant entry into -London to celebrate the conclusion of the peace of Ryswick, the procession -included fourscore state coaches, each with six horses; the three City -regiments guarded Temple Bar, and beyond them came the liveries of the -several companies, with their banners and ensigns displayed.[34] - -George III. in his day, and Queen Victoria in her and our own, passed -through Temple Bar in state more than once, on their way into the City; -the last occasion was on February 1872, when the Queen proceeded to St. -Paul's to offer thanks for the recovery of her son the Prince of Wales. -Through it also the bodies of Nelson and of Wellington were borne to their -last resting place in St. Paul's. - -On the auspicious entrance into London of the fair Princess Alexandra, the -old gate was hung with tapestry of gold tissue, powdered with crimson -hearts; and very mediæval and gorgeous it looked; but the real days of -pageants are gone by. We shall never again see fountains running wine, nor -maidens blowing gold-leaf into the air, as in the luxurious days of our -Plantagenet kings. - -There are many portals in the world loftier and more beautiful than our -dull, black arch of Temple Bar. The Vatican has grander doorways, the -Louvre more stately entrances, but through no gateway in the world have -surely passed onwards to death so many millions of wise and brave men, or -so many thinkers who have urged forward learning and civilisation, and -carried the standard of struggling humanity farther into space. - - - - -[Illustration: ST. CLEMENT'S CHURCH IN THE STRAND, 1753.] - - -CHAPTER III. - -THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE). - - -Essex Street was formerly part of the Outer Temple, the western wing of -the Knight Templars' quarter. The outer district of these proud and -wealthy Crusaders stretched as far as the present Devereux Court; those -gentler spoilers, the mediæval lawyers, having extended their frontiers -quite as far as their rooted-out predecessors. From the Prior and Canons -of the Holy Sepulchre[35] it was transferred, in the reign of Edward II. -to the Bishops of Exeter, who built a palace here and occupied it till the -reign of Henry VII. or Henry VIII. - -The first tenant of Exeter House was the ill-fated Walter Stapleton, Lord -Treasurer of England, a firm adherent to the luckless Edward II., against -his queen and the turbulent barons. In 1326, when Isabella landed from -France to chase the Spensers from her husband's side, and advanced on -London, the weak king and his evil counsellors fled to the Welsh frontier; -but the bishop held out stoutly for his king, and, as custos of the City -of London, demanded the keys from the Lord Mayor, Hammond Chickwell, to -prevent the treachery of the disaffected city. The watchful populace, -roused by Isabella's proclamation that had been hung on the new cross in -Cheapside, rose in arms, seized the vacillating mayor, and took the keys. -They next ran to Exeter House, then newly erected, fired the gates, and -burnt all the plate, jewels, money, and goods. The bishop, at that time in -the fields, being almost too proud to show fear, rode straight to the -northern door of St. Paul's to take sanctuary. There the mob tore him from -his horse, stripped him of his armour, and dragging him to Cheapside, -proclaimed him a traitor, a seducer of the king, and an enemy of their -liberties, and lopping off his head, set it on a pole. The corpse was -buried without funeral service in an old churchyard of the Pied -Friars.[36] His brother and some servants were also beheaded, and their -bleeding and naked bodies thrown on a heap of rubbish by the river side. - -Exeter Place was shortly afterwards rebuilt, but the new house seemed a -doomed place, and brought no better fortune to its new owners. Lord Paget, -who changed its name to Paget House, fought at Boulogne under the poet -Earl of Surrey, was ambassador at the court of Charles V., and on his -return obtained a peerage and the garter. He fell with the Protector -Somerset, being accused of having planned the assassination of the Duke of -Northumberland at Paget House. Released from the Tower, he was deprived of -the garter upon the malicious pretence that he was not a gentleman by -blood. Queen Mary, however, restored the fallen man to honour, made him -Lord Privy Seal, and sent him on an embassy. - -The next occupier of the unlucky house, Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of -Norfolk, and son of the poet Earl of Surrey, maintained in its chambers an -almost royal magnificence. It was here he was arrested for conspiring, -with the aid of Mary Queen of Scots, the Pope, and the King of Spain, to -marry Mary and restore the Popish religion. - -The duke's ambition and treason were fully proved by his own intercepted -letters; indeed, he himself confessed his guilt, though he had denounced -Mary to Elizabeth as a "notorious adulteress and murderer." To crown his -rashness, meanness, and treason, he wrote from the Tower the most abject -letters to Elizabeth, imploring her clemency. He was privately beheaded in -1572, but his estates were restored to his children.[37] It was under the -mat, hard by a window in the entry towards the duke's bedchamber, that the -celebrated alphabet in cipher[38] was hidden, which the duke afterwards -concealed under a roof tile, where it was found, unmasking all his plans. - -In the Tower the unhappy plotter had written affecting letters to his son -Philip, bidding him worship God, avoid courts, and beware of ambition.[39] -The warning of the man whose eyes had been opened too late is touching. -The writer, speaking of court life, remarks, "It hath no certainty. Either -a man, by following thereof, hath too much worldly pomp, which in the end -throws him down headlong, or else he liveth there unsatisfied, either that -he cannot obtain to himself that he would, or else that he cannot do for -his friends as his heart desireth." - -Poor Philip did not benefit much by these lessons, but remained simple -Earl of Arundel, was repeatedly committed to the Tower, as by necessity an -ill-wisher to Elizabeth, and eventually died there after ten weary years -of imprisonment. His initials are still to be found on the walls of one of -the chambers in the Beauchamp Tower. - -Fools never learn the lessons which Time tries so hard to beat into them. -Plotter succeeds plotter, and the rough lesson of the headsman seldom -teaches the conspirator's successor to cease from conspiring. - -To the Norfolks succeeded Dudley, the false Earl of Leicester, the black -or gipsy earl, as he was called from his swarthy Italian complexion. -Leicester, like the duke before him, plotted with Mary's Jesuits and -assassins, and at the same time contrived to keep in favour with his own -jealous queen, in spite of all his failures and schemings in Holland, and -his suspected assassinations of his enemies in England. Leicester died of -fever the year of the Armada (1588), on his return from the camp at -Tilbury, leaving Leicester Place to Robert Devereux, his step-son, the -Earl of Essex,[40] who succeeded to his favour at court, but was doomed to -an untimely death. - -It was to the great Lord of Kenilworth--that dark, mysterious man, who -perhaps deserved more praise than historians usually give him--that -Spenser dedicated his poem of "Virgil's Gnat." In his beautiful -"Prothalamion" on the marriage of Lady Elizabeth and Lady Catherine -Somerset, he speaks somewhat abjectly of Leicester, ingeniously contriving -to remind Essex of his father-in-law's bounty. "Near to the Temple," the -needy poet says, - - "Stands a stately place, - _Where I gayned giftes_ and the goodly grace - Of that great lord who there was wont to dwell, - Whose want too well now feels my friendless case; - But, ah! here fits not well - Old woes." - -Then the poet goes on to eulogise Essex, who, however, it is supposed, -after all allowed him to die in want. But there is a mystery about -Spenser's death. He returned from Ireland, beggared and almost -broken-hearted, in October or November 1599, and died in the January -following, just as Essex was preparing to start to Ireland. In that whirl -of ambition, the poor poet may perhaps have been rather overlooked than -wilfully slighted. This at least is certain, that he was buried in -Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer's tomb, the Earl of Essex defraying the -expenses of his public funeral. - -It was in his prison-house near the Temple that the hair-brained Earl of -Essex shut himself sulkily up, when Queen Elizabeth had given him a box on -the ears, after a dispute about the new deputy for Ireland, in which the -earl had shown a petulant violence unworthy of the pupil of Burleigh. - -Far too much sympathy has been shown with this rash, imperious, and -unbearable young noble. He was sent to Ireland, and there concluded a -disgraceful, wilful, and traitorous treaty with one of England's most -inveterate and dangerous enemies. He returned from that "cursedest of all -islands," as he called it, against express command, and was with -difficulty dissuaded from landing in open rebellion. Generous and frank he -may have been, but his submission to the mild and well-deserved punishment -of confinement to his own house was as base and abject as it was false and -hypocritical. - -Alarmed, mortified, and enraged at the duration of his banishment from -court, and at the refusal of a renewed grant for the monopoly of sweet -wines, Essex betook himself to open rebellion, urged on by ill-advisers -and his own reckless impatient spirit. He invited the Puritan preachers to -prayers and sermons; he plotted with the King of Scotland. It was arranged -at secret meetings at Drury House (then Sir Charles Daver's) to seize -Whitehall and compel the queen to dismiss Cecil and other ministers -hostile to Essex. - -Sir Christopher Blount was to seize the palace gates, Davies the hall, -Davers the guard-room and presence-chamber, while Essex, rushing in from -the Mews with some hundred and twenty adherents, was to compel the queen -to assemble a parliament to dismiss his enemies, and to fix the -succession. All these plans were proposed to Essex in writing--the -arch-conspirator was never himself present. - -The delay of letters from Scotland led to the premature outbreak of the -plot. An order was at once sent summoning Essex to the council, and the -palace guards were doubled. - -On Sunday, February 7, 1601, Essex, fearing instant arrest, assembled his -friends, and determined to arm and sally forth to St. Paul's Cross, where -the Lord Mayor and aldermen were hearing the sermon, and urge them to -follow him to the palace. On the Lord Keeper and other noblemen coming to -the house to know the cause of the assembly, Essex locked them into a back -parlour, guarded by musketeers, and followed by two hundred gentlemen, -drew his sword and rushed into the street like a madman "running a-muck." - -Temple Bar was opened for him; but at St. Paul's Cross he found no -meeting. The citizens crowded round him, but did not join his band. When -he reached the house of Sheriff Smith, the crafty Sheriff had stolen away. - -In the meantime Lord Burleigh and the Earl of Cumberland, with a herald, -had entered the City and proclaimed Essex a traitor; a thousand pounds -being offered for his apprehension. Despairing of success, the mad earl -then turned towards his own house, and finding Ludgate barricaded by a -strong party of citizens under Sir John Levison, attempted to force his -way, killing two or three citizens, and losing Tracy, a young friend of -his own. Then striking down to Queenhithe, the earl and some fifty -followers who were left took boat for Essex Gardens. - -On entering his house, he found that his treacherous confidant, Sir -Ferdinand Gorges, had made terms with the court and released the hostages. -Essex then, by the advice of Lord Sandys, resolved to fortify the place, -hold out to the last extremity, and die sword in hand. In a few minutes, -however, the Lord Admiral's troops surrounded the building. A parley -ensued between Sir Robert Sidney in the garden, and Essex and his rash -ally, Shakspere's patron, the Earl of Southampton, who were on the roof. -The earl's demands were proudly refused, but a respite of two hours was -given him, that the ladies and female servants might retire. About six -the battering train arrived from the Tower, and Essex then wisely -surrendered at discretion.[41] - -The night being very dark, and the tide not serving to pass the dangers of -London Bridge, Essex and Southampton were taken by boat to Lambeth Palace, -and the next morning to the Tower. - -Essex had fully deserved death. He was executed privately, by his own -request, at the Tower, February 25, 1601. Meyrick, his steward, and Cuffe, -his secretary, were hanged and quartered at Tyburn. Sir Charles Davers and -Sir Christopher Blount perished on Tower Hill. Other prisoners were fined -and imprisoned, and the Earl of Southampton pined in durance till the -accession of James I. (1603). - -Among the even older tenants of Essex House, we must not forget that -unhappy woman, the earl's mother, who, first as Lettice Knollys, then as -Countess of Essex, afterwards as Lady Leicester, and next as wife of Sir -Christopher Blount, was a barb in Elizabeth's side for thirty years. -Married as a girl to a noble husband, she gave up her honour to a seducer, -and there is reason to think that she consented to the taking of his life. -While Devereux lived, she deceived the queen by a scandalous amour, and, -after his death, by a clandestine marriage with the Earl of Leicester. -While Dudley lived, she wallowed in licentious love with Christopher -Blount, his groom of the horse. When her second husband expired in agony -at Cornbury, not an hour's gallop from the place in which Amy Robsart -died, she again mortified the queen by a secret union with her last -seducer, Blount. Her children rioted in the same vices. Essex himself, -with his ring of favourites, was not more profligate than his sister -Penelope, Lady Rich.[42] - -This sister was the (Platonic?) mistress of Sydney, whose stolen love for -her is pictured in his most voluptuous verse. On his death at Zütphen, she -lived with Lord Montjoy, though her husband, Lord Rich, was still alive. -Nor was her sister Dorothy one whit better. After marrying one husband -secretly and against the canon, she wedded Percy, the wizard Earl of -Northumberland, whom she led the life of a dog, until he indignantly -turned her out of doors.[43] It is not easy, observes Mr. Dixon, except in -Italian story, to find a group of women so depraved and so detestable as -the mother and sisters of the Earl of Essex. - -Essex, the rash noble, who died at the untimely age of thirty-three, had a -dangerous, ill-tempered face, if we may judge by More's portrait of him. -He stooped in walking, danced badly, and was slovenly in his dress;[44] -yet being a generous, frank friend, an impetuous and chivalrous if not -wise soldier, and an enemy of Spain and the Cecils, he became a favourite -of the people. The legend of the ring sent by Essex to the queen,[45] and -maliciously detained by the Countess of Nottingham, we shall presently -discuss. No applications for mercy by Essex (and he made many during his -trial) affect the question of his deserving death. That the queen -consented with regret to the death of Essex, on the other hand, needs no -doubtful legend to serve as proof. - -Elizabeth had forgiven the earl's joining the Cadiz fleet against her -wish, she forgave his secret marriage, she forgave his shameful -abandonment of his Irish command and even his dishonourable treaty with -Tyrone, but she could not forgive an open and flagrant rebellion at a time -when she was so surrounded by enemies. - -An historical writer, gifted with an eminently analytical mind, Mr. -Hepworth Dixon, has lately, with great ingenuity, endeavoured to refute -the charges of ingratitude brought against Bacon for his time serving and -(to say the least) undue eagerness in aggravating the crimes of his old -and generous friend. There can be, however, no doubt that Bacon too soon -abandoned the unfortunate Essex, and, moreover, threw the weight of much -misapplied learning into the scale against the prisoner. No minimising of -the favours received by him from Essex can in my mind remove this stain -from Bacon's reputation. - -In Essex House was born a less brilliant but a happier and a more prudent -man--Robert, Earl of Essex, afterwards the well-known Parliamentary -general. A child when his father died on the scaffold, he was placed under -the care of his grandmother, Lady Walsingham, and was afterwards at Eton -under the severe Saville. A good, worthy, heavy lad, brought up a -Presbyterian, he was betrothed when only fourteen to Lady Frances Howard, -daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, who was herself only thirteen. - -The earl travelled on the Continent for four years, and on his return was -married at Essex House. It was for this inauspicious marriage that Ben -Jonson wrote one of his most beautiful and gorgeous masques, Inigo Jones -contributing the machinery, and Ferrabosco the music. The rough-grained -poet seems to have been delighted with the success of the entertainment, -for he says, "Nor was there wanting whatsoever might give to the furniture -a complement, either in riches or strangeness of the habits, delicacy of -dances, magnificence of the scene, or divine rapture of music."[46] - -The countess was already, even at this time, the mistress of Robert Carr, -the handsome minion of James I. She obtained a divorce from her husband in -1613, and espoused her infamous lover. The cruel poisoning of Sir Thomas -Overbury for opposing the new marriage followed; and the earl and -countess, found guilty, but spared by the weak king, lingered out their -lives in mutual reproaches and contempt, loathed and neglected by all. -Fate often runs in sequences--the earl was unhappy with his second wife, -from whom he also was divorced. - -Essex emerged from a country retirement to turn general for the -Parliament. Just, affable, and prudent, he was a popular man till he -became marked as a moderatist desirous for peace, and was ousted by the -artful "Self-denying Ordinance." If he had lived it is probable he would -either have lost his head or have fled to France and turned cavalier. His -death during the time that Charles I. remained a prisoner with the Scotch -army at Newcastle saved him from either fate. With him the Presbyterian -moderatists and the House of Peers finally lost even their little -remaining power. - -When the earl resigned his commission, the House of Commons went to Essex -House to return their ex-general thanks for his great services. A year -later they followed him to the grave (1646), little perhaps thinking how -bitterly the earl had reproached them for ingratitude, and what plans he -had devised to reform the army and to check Cromwell and Fairfax.[47] - -On the earl's death, his Royalist brother-in-law, the Marquis of Hertford, -attempted to seize his ready money and papers, but was frustrated by the -Parliament.[48] - -Whether the next earl, who on being arrested for sharing in the Rye-House -plot destroyed himself at the Tower, lived in his father's house, I do not -know, but the mansion, so unlucky to its owners, was occupied by families -of rank for some time after the Restoration, and then falling into neglect -and ruin, as fashion began to flow westward, was subdivided, and a street, -called Essex Street, was built on part of its site. - -Samuel Patterson, the bookseller and auctioneer, lived in Essex Street, in -1775, in rooms formerly the residence of Sir Orlando Bridgeman. He was -originally a bag-maker. Afterwards Charles Dibdin commenced his -entertainments in these rooms, and here his fine song of "Poor Jack" -became famous.[49] Patterson's youngest child was Dr. Johnson's godson, -and became a pupil of Ozias Humphrey.[50] Patterson wrote a book of -travels in Sterne's manner, but claimed a priority to that strange writer. - -George Fordyce, a celebrated epicurean doctor of the eighteenth century, -lived in the same street. For twenty years he dined daily at Dolly's -Chop-house, and at his solitary meal he always took a tankard of strong -ale, a quarter of a pint of brandy, and a bottle of port. After these -potations, he walked to his house and gave a lecture to his pupils.[51] - -Dr. Johnson, the year before he died, formed a club in Essex Street, at -the Essex Head, a tavern kept by an old servant of his friend, Thrale, the -brewer. It was less select than the Literary Club, but cheaper. Johnson, -writing to Sir Joshua Reynolds to join it, says, "the terms are lax and -the expences light--we meet thrice a week, and he who misses forfeits -twopence."[52] Sir John Hawkins spitefully calls it "a low ale-house -association;" but Windham, Daines Barrington, Horsley, Boswell, and -Brocklesby were members of it; for rich men were less luxurious than they -are now, and enjoyed the sociable freedom of a tavern. Sir Joshua refused -to join, probably because Barry, who had insulted him, and was very -pugnacious, had become a member.[53] It went on happily for many years, -says Boswell, whom Johnson, when he proposed him for election, called "a -clubable man." Towards the end of his life the great lexicographer grew -more and more afraid of solitude, and a club so near his home was probably -a great convenience to him. - -Near Devereux Court are the premises of the well-known tea-dealers, -Messrs. Twining. The graceful recumbent stone figures of Chinamen over the -Strand front have much elegance, and must have come from some good hand. -One of this family was a Colchester rector, and a translator of -Aristotle's _Poetics_. He was an excellent man, a good linguist and -musician, and a witty companion. He was contemporary with Gray and Mason, -the poets, at Cambridge. In the back parlour is a portrait of the founder -of the house. A century and a half ago ladies used to drive to the door of -Twining's and drink tiny cups of the new and fashionable beverage as they -sat in their coaches. There is an epigram extant, written either by -Theodore Hook or one of the Smiths; the point of it is, that if you took -away his T, Twining would be Wining. - -In 1652 Constantine, the Greek servant of a Levant merchant, opened in -Devereux Court a coffee-house, which became known as "The Grecian." In -1664-5 advertised his Turkey "coffee bery," chocolate, "sherbet," and tea, -as good and cheap, and announced his readiness to give gratuitous -instructions in the art of preparing the said liquors.[54] - -In the same year, a Greek named Pasqua Rosee had also established a house -in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, for the sale of "the coffee drink."[55] - -John Evelyn describes a Greek fellow-student, afterwards Bishop of Smyrna, -drinking coffee when he was at college in about 1637.[56] - -In April 1709 Steele, in No. 1 of the _Tatler_, announces that he shall -date all learned articles from the "Grecian," all gallantry from -"White's," all poetry from "Wills's," all foreign and domestic news from -"St. James's." - -In 1710-11 Addison, starting the "_Spectator_ along with Steele," tells us -his own grave face was well known at the Grecian; and in No. 49 (April -1711), the _Spectator_ describes the spleen and inward laughter with which -he views at the Grecian the young Templars come in, about 8 A.M., either -dressed for Westminster, and with the preoccupied air of assumed business, -or in gay cap, slippers, and particoloured dressing-gowns, rising early to -publish their laziness, and being displaced by busier men towards noon. -Dr. King relates a story of two hot-blooded young gentlemen quarrelling -one evening at this coffee-house about the accent of a Greek word. -Stepping out into Devereux Court, they fought, and one of them being run -through the body, died on the spot.[57] This Dr. King was principal of St. -Mary's Hall, Oxford, and a staunch Tory. It is he who relates the secret -visit of the Pretender to London. He died in 1763. - -Ralph Thoresby, the Leeds topographer, met Dr. Sloane, the secretary of -the Royal Society, by appointment at the Grecian in May 1712; and again in -June he describes retiring to the Grecian after a meeting of the Royal -Society, of which he was a fellow, with the president, Sir Isaac -Newton,[58] Dr. Halley, who published the _Principia_ for Newton, and -Keill, who opposed Leibnitz about the invention of Fluxions, and defended -Newton's doctrines against the Cartesians. (The Royal Society held its -meetings at this time in Crane Court, Fleet Street.) Roger North, -Attorney-General under James II., who died in 1733, describes in his -_Examen_ the Privy Council Board, as held at the Grecian coffee-house. The -Grecian was closed in 1843, and has been since turned into the Grecian -Chambers. On what was once the front of the coffee-house frequented by -Steele and Addison, there is a bust of Essex, with the date 1676. - -In this court, at the house of one Kedder, in 1678, died Marchmont -Needham, a vigorous but unprincipled turncoat and newspaper writer, who -three times during the civil wars changed his principles to save his -worthless neck. He was alternately the author of the _Mercurius -Britannicus_ for the Presbyterians, _Mercurius Pragmaticus_ for the king, -and _Mercurius Politicus_ for the Independents. The great champion of the -late usurper, as the Cavaliers called him, "whose pen, compared with -others', was as a weaver's beam," latterly practised as a physician, but -with small success.[59] - -There is a letter of Pope addressed to Fortescue, his "counsel learned in -the law," at Tom's coffee-house, in Devereux Court. Fortescue, the poet's -kind, unpaid lawyer, was afterwards (in 1738) Master of the Rolls. Pope's -imitation of the first satire of Horace, suggested by Bolingbroke, was -addressed to Mr. Fortescue, and published in 1733. This lawyer was the -author of the droll report in _Scriblerus_ of "Stradling _versus_ Styles," -wherein Sir John Swale leaves all his black and white horses to one -Stradling, but the question is whether this bequest includes Swale's -piebald horses. It is finally proved that the horses are all mares.[60] - -Dr. Birch, the antiquary, the dull writer but good talker, frequented -Tom's; and there Akenside--short, thin, pale, strumous, and lame, -scrupulously neat, and somewhat petulant, vain, and irritable--spent his -winter evenings, entangled in disputes and altercations, chiefly on -subjects of literature and politics, that fixed on his character the stamp -of haughtiness and self-conceit, and drew him into disagreeable -situations.[61] Akenside was a contradictory man. By turns he was placid, -irritable; simple, affected; gracious, haughty; magnanimous, mean; -benevolent, yet harsh, and sometimes even brutal. At times he manifested a -childlike docility, and at other times his vanity and arrogance made him -seem almost a madman.[62] - -Gay, in his _Trivia_, describes Milford Lane so faithfully that it might -pass for a yesterday's sketch of the same place. He writes-- - - "Where the fair columns of St. Clement stand, - Whose straitened bounds incroach upon the Strand; - Where the low pent-house bows the walker's head, - And the rough pavement wounds the yielding tread; - Where not a post protects the narrow space, - And strung in twines combs dangle in thy face. - Summon at once thy courage--rouse thy care; - Stand firm, look back, be resolute, beware! - Forth issuing from steep lanes, the collier's steeds - Drag the black load; another cart succeeds; - Team follows team, crowds heap'd on crowds appear." - -Stow mentions Milford Lane, but gives no derivation for its name.[63] The -coarse poem by Henry Savill, commonly attributed to the witty Earl of -Dorset, beginning-- - - "In Milford Lane, near to St. Clement's steeple."[64] - -gave the street for a time such a disagreeable notoriety as the pillory -gives to a rogue. - -Arundel House, in the Strand, was the old inn or town-house of the Bishops -of Bath, stolen by force in the rough, greedy times of Edward VI., by the -bad Lord Thomas Seymour, the admiral, and the brother of the Protector; -from him it derived the name of Seymour Place, and must have been -conveniently near to the ambitious kinsman who afterwards beheaded him. -This Admiral had married Henry VIII.'s widow, Catherine Parr; and she -dying in childbed, he began to woo, in his coarse boisterous way, the -young Princess Elizabeth, who had been living under the protection of her -mother-in-law, who was indeed generally supposed to have been poisoned by -the admiral. His marriage with Elizabeth would have smoothed his way to -the throne in spite of her father's cautious will. It was said that -Elizabeth always blushed when she heard his name. He died on the scaffold. -Old Bishop Latimer, in a sermon, declared "he was a wicked man, and the -realm is well rid of him."[65] It is certain that, whatever were his -plots, he had projected a marriage between Lady Jane Grey and the young -king. - -The admiral's house was bought, on its owner's fall, by Henry Fitz-Alan, -Earl of Arundel, for the nominal sum of £41: 6: 8, with several other -messuages and lands adjoining.[66] The earl dying in 1579, was succeeded -by his grandson, Philip Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk, the owner of -Essex House adjoining, who was beheaded for his intrigues with Mary of -Scotland. He died in the Tower in 1598. The house then passed into the -keeping of Robert Cary, Earl of Monmouth,[67] during the minority of -Thomas Howard, Philip's son. - -In Arundel Palace, in 1603, died the Countess of Nottingham, sister of Sir -Robert Cary;[68] she was buried at Chelsea. It is of this countess that -Lady Spelman, a granddaughter of Sir Robert Cary, used to tell the -doubtful legend of the ring[69] given by Queen Elizabeth to Lord Essex, -which an acute writer of the present day believes to be a pure fabrication -of the times of James I. - -[Illustration: ARUNDEL HOUSE, 1646.] - -The story runs thus:--When the Countess Catherine was dying, she sent to -the Queen to tell her that she had a secret to reveal, without disclosing -which she could not die in peace. The Queen came, and the countess then -told her that when Essex was in the Tower, under sentence of death, he one -morning threw a ring from his window to a boy passing underneath, hiring -him to carry it to his friend Lady Scrope, the countess's sister, and beg -of her to present it in his name to the queen, who had promised to protect -him whenever he sent her that keepsake, and who was then waiting for some -such sign of his submission. The boy not clearly understanding the -message, brought the ring to the countess, who showed it to her husband, -and he insisted on her keeping it. The countess, having made this -disclosure, begged her majesty's forgiveness; but the queen answered, -"God may forgive you, but I never can!" and burst from the room in a -paroxysm of rage and grief. From that time Elizabeth became perturbed in -mind, refused to eat or sleep, and died a fortnight after the countess. -Now this is absurd. The queen never repented the death of that wrongheaded -traitor, and really died of a long-standing disease which had well-defined -symptoms.[70] - -At Arundel House lodged that grave, wise minister of Henry IV. of France, -the Duc de Sully, then only the Marquis de Rosny. He describes the house -with complacency as fine and commodious, and having a great number of -apartments on the same floor. It was really a mean and low building, but -commanding a fine prospect of the river and Westminster, so fine, indeed, -that Hollar took a view of London from the roof. The first night of his -arrival Sully slept at the French ambassador's house in Butcher Row -adjoining, a poor house with low rooms, a well staircase lit by a -skylight, and small casements.[71] - -[Illustration: ARUNDEL HOUSE, 1646.] - -In the time of James I., in whose reign the earldom was restored to Thomas -Howard, Arundel House became a treasury of art. The travelled earl's -collection comprised thirty-seven statues, one hundred and twenty-eight -busts, and two-hundred and fifty inscribed marbles, exclusive of -sarcophagi, altars, medals, gems, and fragments. Some of his noblest -relics, however, he was not allowed to remove from Rome. Of this proud and -princely amateur of art Lord Clarendon speaks with too obvious prejudice. -He describes him as living in a world of his own, surrounded by strangers, -and though illiterate, willing to be thought a scholar because he was a -collector of works of art. Yet the historian admits that he had an air of -gravity and greatness in his face and bearing. He affected an ancient and -grave dress; but Clarendon asserts that this was all outside, and that his -real disposition was "one of levity," as he was fond of childish and -despicable amusements. Vansomer's portraits of the earl and countess -contain views of the statue and picture galleries.[72] This illustrious -nobleman, whom the excellent Evelyn calls "my noble friend," died in 1646. -At the Restoration his house and marbles were restored to his grandson, -Mr. Henry Howard; the antiquities were then lying scattered about Arundel -Gardens, and were neglected and corroding, blanching with rain, and green -with damp, much to the horror of Evelyn and other antiquaries, who -regarded their fate with alarm and pity. - -The old Earl of Arundel (whom Clarendon disliked) had been a collector of -art in a magnificent and princely way. He despatched artist-agents to -Italy, and even to Asia Minor, to buy pictures, drawings, statues, votive -slabs, and gems. William Petty collected sculpture for him at Paros and -Delos, but the collections were lost off Samos in a storm. He collected -Holbein's and Albert Dürer's drawings, discovered the genius of Inigo -Jones, and brought Hollar from Prague. He left England just before the -troubles, having received many affronts from Charles's ministers, who had -neglected to restore his ancient titles, went to Padua, and there died. -The marbles Mr. Evelyn induced Mr. Howard, in 1667, to send to the -University of Oxford; the statues were also given to Oxford by a later -descendant; and the earl's library (originally part of that of the King of -Hungary) Mr. Evelyn persuaded the Duke of Norfolk to bestow on the Royal -Society.[73] - -The old earl was, I suspect, a proud, soured, and a rather arrogant, -formal person. In a certain dispute about a rectory, he once said to King -Charles I.: "Sir, this rectory was an appendant and a manour of mine until -my grandfather unfortunately lost both his life and seven lordships, for -the love he bore to your grandmother."[74] - -After the Great Fire of London, Mr. Howard lent the Royal Society rooms in -his house. In 1678 the palace was taken down, and the present Arundel, -Surrey, Howard, and Norfolk streets were erected in its stead. The few -marbles that remained were removed to Tart Hall, Westminster, and to -Cuper's Gardens across the river.[75] Tart Hall was the residence of the -Countess of Arundel: Cuper's Gardens belonged to a gardener of the Earl of -Arundel. The Duke of Norfolk originally intended to build a more -magnificent house on the old site, and even obtained an act of Parliament -for the purpose; but fashion was already setting westward, and the design -was abandoned.[76] - -In Arundel Street lived Rymer, the historical antiquary, who died here in -1715; John Anstis, the Garter king-at-arms, resided here in 1715-16;[77] -also Mrs. Porter, the actress, "over against the Blue Ball." - -Gay, in his delightful _Trivia_ sketches the "long Strand," and pauses to -mourn over the glories of Arundel House. His walk is from "the Temple's -silent walls," and he stays to look down at the site of the earl's -mansion-- - - ----"That narrow street, which steep descends, - Whose building to the shining shore extends; - Here Arundel's famed structure rear'd its frame-- - The street alone retains an empty name; - Where Titian's glowing paint the canvas warm'd, - And Raphael's fair design with judgment charm'd, - Now hangs the bellman's song, and pasted here - The coloured prints of Overton appear; - Where statues breathed, the work of Phidias' hands, - A wooden pump or lonely watch-house stands; - There Essex' stately pile adorned the shore; - There Cecil's, Bedford's, Villiers'--now no more." - -In the Strand, between Arundel and Norfolk Streets, in the year 1698, -lived Sir Thomas Lyttelton, Speaker of the House of Commons, and father of -Pope's friend, and the author of the _History of Henry the Second_, a -ponderous and pompous work. - -Next door to him lived the father of Bishop Burnet--a remarkable person, -for he was a poor but honest lawyer, born at Edinburgh in 1643. A -bookseller of the same name--a collateral descendant of the bishop whom -Swift hated so cordially--afterwards occupied the house. - -At the south-west corner of Norfolk Street, near the river, in his wild -days lodged the Quaker Penn, son of Cromwell's stout Bristol admiral. He -had been twice beaten and turned out of doors by his father for his -fondness for Nonconformist society and prayer-meetings, and for refusing -to stand uncovered in the presence of Charles II. or of the Duke of York, -of whom later he became the suspected favourite. We do not generally -associate the grave and fanatic Penn with a gay and licentious court, nor -do we portray him to ourselves as slinking away from hawk-eyed bailiffs; -and yet the venerated founder of repudiating Pennsylvania chose this house -when he was sued for debts, as being convenient for slipping unobserved -into a boat. In the eastern entrance he had a peep-hole, through which he -could reconnoitre any suspicious visitor. On one occasion a dun, having -sent in his name and waited an unconscionable time, knocked again. "Will -not thy master see me?" he said to the servant. The knave was at least -candid, for he replied: "Friend, he _has_ seen thee, and he does not like -thee."[78] - -In Norfolk Street, in Penn's old house, afterwards resided for thirty -years that truly good man, Dr. Richard Brocklesby, who in early life, -during the Seven Years' War, had practised as an army surgeon. He was a -friend of Burke and Dr. Johnson. To the former he left, or rather gave, a -thousand pounds, and to the latter he offered an annuity of a hundred -pounds a year, to enable him to travel for his health, and also apartments -in his own house for the sake of medical advice, which Johnson -affectionately and gratefully declined. The doctor was one of the most -generous and amiable of men; he attended the poor for nothing, and had -many pensioners. He died the day after returning from a visit to Burke at -Beaconsfield. He had been warned against the fatigue of this journey, but -had replied with true Christian philosophy, "My good friend, where's the -difference whether I die at a friend's house, at an inn, or in a -post-chaise? I hope I am prepared for such an event, and perhaps it would -be as well to elude the anticipation of it." - -Dr. Brocklesby was ridiculed by Foote, but Foote attacked virtue quite as -often as vice. He was the physician who had attended Lord Chatham when he -was struck down by illness in the House of Lords, a short time before his -death. - -In January 1698 Peter the Great arrived from Holland, and went straight to -a house prepared for him in Norfolk Street, near the water side. On the -following day he was visited by King William and the principal nobility. -Incommoded here by visitors, the Czar removed to Admiral Benbow's house at -Deptford, where he could live more retired. This Deptford house was Sayes -Place, afterwards the Victualling Office, and had once belonged to the -celebrated John Evelyn. - -The "Honest Shippen" of Pope--William Shippen, M.P.--lived also in Norfolk -Street: a brave, honest man, in an age when nearly every politician had -his price. It was of him Sir Robert Walpole remarked "that he would not -say who was corrupted, but he would say who was not corruptible, and that -was Shippen." - -Mortimer, a rough, picturesque painter, who was called "the English -Salvator Rosa," and imitated that unsatisfactory artist in a coarse, -sketchy kind of way, dwelt in this street. - -At No. 21 lived Albany Wallis, a friend and executor of Garrick. In this -street also Addison makes that delightful old country gentleman, Sir Roger -de Coverley, put up before he goes to Soho Square.[79] - -At No. 8, in 1795, lived Samuel Ireland, the father of the celebrated -literary impostor; and here were shown to George Chalmers, John Kemble, -and other Shaksperian scholars, the forged plays which the public -ultimately scented out as ridiculous. - -In 1796 Mr. W. H. Ireland published a full confession of his forgeries, -fully exonerating his father from all connivance in his foolish fraud, -claiming forgiveness for a boyish deception begun without evil intention -and without any thought of danger. "I should never have gone so far," he -says, "but that the world praised the papers too much, and thereby -flattered my vanity."[80] After the failure of "Vortigern," the father, -Mr. S. Ireland, still credulous, had written a pamphlet, accusing Malone, -his son's chief assailant, of mean malice and unbearable arrogance. - -The true story of the forgery is this. W. H. Ireland, then only eighteen, -was articled to a solicitor in New Inn, where he practised Elizabethan -handwriting for the sake of deceiving credulous antiquaries. A forged deed -exciting the admiration of his father, who was a collector of old tracts -and a worshipper of Shakspere, led him to continue his deceptions, and to -pretend to have discovered a hoard of Shaksperian MSS. A fellow clerk, one -Talbot, afterwards an actor, discovering the forgeries, Ireland made him -an accomplice. They then produced a "Profession of Faith," signed by -Shakspere, which Dr. Parr and Dr. Warton (brother of the poet) declared -contained "finer things" than all the Church Service. This foolish praise -set the secretive lawyer's clerk on writing original verse,--a poem to -Anne Hathaway, and the play of "Vortigern," the most recklessly impudent -of all his impostures. Boswell was the first to propose a certificate to -be signed by all believers in the productions. Dr. Parr, thinking -Boswell's writing too feeble, drew up another, which was signed by -twenty-one noblemen, authors, and "celebrated literary characters." -Boswell, characteristically enough, previous to signing his name, fell on -his knees, and, "in a tone of enthusiasm and exultation, thanked God that -he had lived to witness this discovery, and exclaimed that he could now -die in peace."[81] Lords Kinnaird, Somerset, and Lauderdale were the -noblemen. There were also present Bindley, Valpy, Pinkerton, Pye the poet -laureate, Matthew Wyatt, and the present author's grandfather, the Rev. -Nathaniel Thornbury, an intimate friend of Jenner and of Dr. Johnson, who -had at this time been twelve years dead. The elder Ireland, in his -pamphlet, alludes to the solemn and awful manner in which, before crowds -of eminent characters, his son attested the genuineness of his forgeries. -"I could not," says the honest fellow, "suffer myself to cherish the -slightest suspicion of his veracity."[82] - -Singularly enough Mr. Albany Wallis--(a solicitor, I believe), of Norfolk -Street,--who had given to Garrick a mortgage deed bearing Shakspere's -signature, became the most ardent believer in the unprincipled young -clerk's deceptions. - -The terms agreed upon for Ireland's forgery of "Vortigern" was £300 down, -and a division of the receipts, deducting charges, for sixty nights. The -play, however, lived only one night, for which the Irelands received their -half, £103. The commentators Malone and Steevens remained sceptical, and -Kemble was suspicious and cold in the cause, though he was to be the hero; -but the gulls and quidnuncs were numerous enough to cram the house, and -that most commonplace of poets, Sir James Bland Burges, wrote the -prologue. The final damnation of the play was secured by a rhapsody of -Vortigern's, a patch-work thing from "Richard II." and "Henry IV." The -fatal line-- - - "And when the solemn mockery is o'er," - -convulsed the house.[83] Mr. W. H. Ireland in later life was editor of the -_York Herald_, and died in 1835.[84] - -Another eminent historical antiquary, Dr. Birch, lived in Norfolk Street. -The son of a Quaker tradesman at Clerkenwell, he became a London clergyman -and an historian, famous for his Sunday evenings' conversaziones, and was -killed by a fall from his horse in 1766. He seems to have been a most -pleasant, generous, and honest man. He edited Bacon's _Letters and -Speeches_, and Thurloe's _State Papers_, etc. His chief work was his -_Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth_. He left books, manuscripts, and -money to the British Museum, for which let all scholars bless the good -man's memory. He appears to have been a student of boundless industry, as -from the Lambeth Library alone he transcribed with his own hand sixteen -quarto volumes. He was rector of St. Margaret Pattens in Fenchurch Street. -Dr. Birch must have been a kind husband, for his wife on her deathbed -wrote him the following tender letter:-- - - "This day I return you, my dearest life, my sincere, hearty thanks for - every favour bestowed on your most faithful and obedient wife, - - HANNAH BIRCH." - -We leave it to the watchful cynic to remark that the doctor had been -married only one year. It was of this worthy book-worm that Johnson -said--"Yes, sir, he is brisk in conversation, but when he takes up the pen -it benumbs him like a torpedo." - -Strype describes Surrey Street as replenished with good buildings, -especially that of Nevison Fox, Esq., towards the Strand, "which is a -fine, large, and curious house of his own building," and the two houses -that front the Thames, that on the east side being the Hon. Charles -Howard's, brother to the Duke of Norfolk. Both of these houses had -pleasant though small gardens towards the Thames.[85] - -In 1736 died here George Sale, the useful translator of the Mohammedan -Bible, the Koran, that strange compound of pure prayers and impure -plagiarisms from the laws of Moses. Sale had published his Koran in 1734, -and in the year of his death he joined Paul Whitehead, Dr. Birch, and Mr. -Strutt, in founding a "Society for the Encouragement of Learning." He -spent many years in writing for the _Universal History_, in which Bayle's -ten folio volumes were included. - -Edward Pierce, a sculptor, son of a painter of altar-pieces and -church-ceilings, and a pupil of Vandyke, lived at the corner of Surrey -Street, and was buried in the Savoy. He helped Sir Christopher Wren to -build St. Clement's church, and carved the four guardian dragons on the -Monument of London. The statue of Sir William Walworth at the fishmongers' -Hall is from his hand, and so is the bust of Thomas Evans in the hall of -the painters and stainers. He executed also busts of Cromwell, Wren, and -Milton.[86] - -The charming actress, Mrs. Bracegirdle, lived in Howard Street. She was -the belle and toast of London; every young man of mode was, or pretended -to be, in love with her; and the wits wrote verses upon her beauty, in -imitation of Sedley and Waller. Congreve tells us that it was the fashion -to avow a tenderness for her. Rowe, in an imitation of an ode of Horace, -urges the Earl of Scarsdale to marry her (though he had a wife living) and -set the town at defiance. - -Among this crowd of admirers was a Captain Hill, a half-cracked -man-about-town, a drunken, profligate bully, of low character, and a -friend of the infamous duellist, Lord Mohun. One of Mrs. Bracegirdle's -favourite parts was Statira, her lover Alexander being her friend and -neighbour, the eminent actor Mountfort. Cibber describes him in this -character as "great, tender, persistent, despairing, transported, -amiable." Hill, "that dark-souled fellow in the pit," as Leigh Hunt calls -him, mistook the frantic extravagance of stage-passion for real love, and -in a fit of mad jealousy swore to be revenged on Mountfort, and to carry -off the lady by force. Lord Mohun, always ready for any desperate -mischief, agreed to help him in his design. On the night appointed the -friends dined together, and having changed clothes, went to Drury Lane -Theatre at six o'clock; but as Mrs. Bracegirdle did not act that night, -they next took a coach and drove to her lodgings in Howard Street. They -then, finding that she had gone to supper with a Mr. Page, in Princes -Street, Drury Lane, went to his house and waited till she came out. She -appeared at last at the door, with her mother and brother, Mr. Page -lighting them out. - -Hill immediately seized her, and endeavoured, with the aid of some hired -ruffians, to drag her into the coach, where Lord Mohun sat with a loaded -pistol in each hand; but her brother and Mr. Page rushing to the rescue, -and an angry crowd gathering, Hill was forced to let go his hold and -decamp. Mrs. Bracegirdle and her escort then proceeded to her lodgings in -Howard Street, followed by Captain Hill and Lord Mohun on foot. On -knocking at the door, as it was said, to beg Mrs. Bracegirdle's pardon, -they were refused admittance; upon which they sent for a bottle of wine to -a neighbouring tavern, which they drank in the street, and then began to -patrol up and down with swords drawn, declaring they were waiting to be -revenged on Mountfort the actor. Messengers were instantly despatched to -warn Mountfort, both by Mrs. Bracegirdle's landlady and his own wife, but -he could not be found. The watch were also sent for, and they begged the -two ruffians to depart peaceably. Lord Mohun replied, "He was a peer of -the realm, that he had been drinking a bottle of wine, but that he was -ready to put up his sword if they particularly desired it: but as for his -friend, he had lost his scabbard." The cautious watch then went away. - -In the meantime the unlucky Mountfort, suspecting no evil, passed down the -street on his way home, heedless of warnings. On coming up to the -swordsmen, a female servant heard the following conversation:-- - -Lord Mohun embraced Mountfort, and said-- - -"Mr. Mountfort, your humble servant. I am glad to see you." - -"Who is this?--Lord Mohun?" said Mountfort. - -"Yes, it is." - -"What brings your lordship here at this time of night?" - -Lord Mohun replied-- - -"I suppose you were sent for, Mr. Mountfort?" - -"No, indeed, I came by chance." - -"Have you not heard of the business of Mrs. Bracegirdle?" - -"Pray, my lord," said Hill, breaking in, "hold your tongue. This is not a -convenient time to discuss this business." - -Hill seemed desirous to go away, and pulled Lord Mohun's sleeve; but -Mountfort, taking no notice of Hill, continued to address Lord Mohun, -saying he was sorry to see him assisting Captain Hill in such an evil -action, and begging him to forbear. - -Hill instantly gave the actor a box on the ear, and on Mountfort demanding -what that was for, attacked him sword in hand, and ran him through before -he had time to draw his weapon. Mountfort died the next day of the wound, -declaring with his last breath that Lord Mohun had offered him no -violence. Hill fled from justice, and Lord Mohun was tried for murder, but -unfortunately acquitted for want of evidence. - -That fortunate poet, Congreve, whom Pope declared to be one of the three -most honest-hearted and really good men in the Kit-cat Club, lived for -some time in Howard Street, where he was a neighbour and frequent guest of -Mrs. Bracegirdle. - -Congreve, on becoming acquainted with the Duchess of Marlborough, removed -from Howard Street to a better house in Surrey Street, where he died, -January 19, 1729. The career of this son of a Yorkshire officer had been -one long undisturbed triumph. His first play had been revised by Dryden -and praised by Southerne. Besides being commissioner of hackney-coach and -wine licences, he also held a place in the Pipe Office, a post in the -Custom House, and a secretaryship in Jamaica. He never quarrelled with the -wits: both Addison and Steele admired and praised him, and Voltaire -eulogises his comedies. - -It was here that Voltaire, while lodging in Maiden Lane, visited the gouty -and nearly blind dramatist, then infirm and on the verge of life. "Mr. -Congreve," he says, "had one defect, which was his entertaining too mean -an idea of his profession--that of a writer--though it was to this he owed -his fame and fortune. He spoke of his works as of trifles that were -beneath him, and hinted to me in our first conversation that I should -visit him upon no other footing than that of a gentleman who led a life of -plainness and simplicity. I answered, that _had he been so unfortunate as -to be a mere gentleman_ I should never have come to see him; and I was -very much disgusted at so unseasonable a piece of vanity." - -The body of Congreve lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and was -afterwards interred with great solemnity in Henry VII.'s Chapel. The Duke -of Bridgewater and the Earl of Godolphin were amongst those who bore the -pall. The monument was erected by the Duchess of Marlborough, to whom the -favoured poet had left £10,000. Above his body-- - - "The ancient pillars rear their marble heads - To bear aloft the arch'd and pond'rous roof, - By its own weight made steadfast and immoveable."[87] - -Congreve's bequest to the duchess of all his property, except £1000, -including £200 to Mrs. Bracegirdle (a legacy afterwards cancelled), -created much scandal. The shameless bookseller, Curll, instantly launched -forth a life of Congreve, professing to be written by one Charles Wilson, -Esq., but generally attributed to Oldmixon. The duchess's friends were -alarmed, and Arbuthnot interfered. Upon being told that some genuine -letters and essays were to be published in the work, Mrs. Bracegirdle or -the duchess[88] cried out with defiant affectation and a dramatic drawl, -"Not one single sheet of paper, I dare to swear." - -The duchess, who raised a monument in the Abbey to her brilliant but -artificial friend, is said to have had a wax image of him made to place on -her toilette table. "To this she would talk as to the living Mr. Congreve, -with all the freedom of the most _polite_ and unreserved -conversation."[89] - -Strand Lane used formerly to lead to a small landing-pier for wherries, -called Strand Bridge. In Stow's time the lane passed under a bridge down -to the landing-place.[90] A writer in the _Spectator_ describes how he -landed here on a summer morning, arriving with ten sail of apricot boats, -consigned to Covent Garden,[91] after having first touched at Nine Elms -for melons. In this lane there is a fine Roman bath which, if indeed -Roman, is the most western relic of Roman London, the centre of which was -on the east end of the Royal Exchange. - -No. 165 has been long used as a warehouse for the sale of Dr. Anderson's -pills. Dr. Patrick Anderson was physician to Charles I., and as early as -1649 a man named Inglis sold these quack pills at the Golden Unicorn, over -against the Maypole in the Strand. Tom Brown says, "There are at least a -score of pretenders to Anderson's Scotch pills, and the Lord knows who has -the true preparation." Brown died in 1704. Sir Walter Scott used to tell -one of his best stories about these pills. It dwelt on the passion for -them entertained by a certain hypochondriacal Lowland laird. Bland or -rough, old or young, no visitor at his house escaped a dose--"joost ane -leetle Anderson;" and his toady "the doer" used always to swallow a -brace.[92] - -The Turk's Head Coffee-house stood on the site of No. 142 Strand. Dr. -Johnson used to sup at this house to encourage the hostess, who was a -good civil woman, and had not too much business. July 28, 1763, Boswell -mentions supping there with Dr. Johnson; and again, on August 3, in the -same year, just before he set out for his wildgoose chase in Corsica.[93] -No. 132 was the shop of a bookseller named Bathoe. The first circulating -library in London was established here in 1740. - -Jacob Tonson, Dryden's grinding publisher and bookseller, lived at the -Shakspere's Head, over against Catherine Street, now No. 141 Strand, from -about 1712 till he died, in 1735-6. Tonson seems to have been rough, hard, -and penurious. The poet and publisher were perpetually squabbling, and -Dryden was especially vexed at his trying to force him to dedicate his -translation of Virgil to King William, and when he refused, making the -engraver of the frontispiece aggravate the nose of Æneas till it became "a -hooked promontory," like that of the Protestant king. It was to Tonson's -shop at Gray's Inn, however, that Dryden, on being refused money, probably -sent that terrible triplet to the obdurate bibliopole:-- - - "With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair, - With two left legs, and Judas-colour'd hair, - And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air."[94] - -"Tell the dog," said Dryden to his messenger, "that he who wrote those can -write more." But Tonson was perfectly satisfied with this first shot, and -surrendered at discretion. The irascible poet afterwards accused him of -intercepting his letters to his sons at Rome, and he confessed to -Bolingbroke on one occasion that he was afraid of Tonson's tongue.[95] - -Tonson's house, since rebuilt, was afterwards occupied by Andrew Millar, -the publisher and friend of Thomson, Fielding, Hume, and Robertson, and -after his death by Thomas Cadell, his apprentice, and the friend and -publisher of Gibbon the historian. The _Seasons_, _Tom Jones_, and the -Histories of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon were first published at this -house. Millar was a Scotchman, and distinguished his shop by the sign of -Buchanan's Head, afterwards the badge of Messrs. Blackwood. - -The _Illustrated London News_, whose office is near Somerset House, was -started in 1842 by Mr. Herbert Ingram, originally a humble newsvendor at -Northampton; an industrious man, who would run five miles with a newspaper -to oblige an old customer. In the first year he sold a million copies; in -the second, two; and in 1848, three millions. Dr. Mackay, the song-writer, -wrote leaders; Mr. Mark Lemon aided him; Mr. Peter Cunningham collected -his column of weekly chat; Thomas Miller, the basket-maker poet, was also -on his staff. Mr. Ingram obtained a seat in Parliament, and was eventually -drowned in a steamboat collision on Lake Michigan. - -[Illustration: PENN'S HOUSE, NORFOLK STREET, 1749.] - - - - -[Illustration: SOMERSET HOUSE FROM THE RIVER, 1746.] - - -CHAPTER IV. - -SOMERSET HOUSE. - - "And every day there passes by my side, - Up to its western reach, the London tide-- - The spring tides of the term. My front looks down - On all the pride and business of the town; - My other fair and more majestic face - For ever gazes on itself below, - In the best mirror that the world can show." - COWLEY. - - -That ambitious and rapacious noble the Protector Somerset, brother of -Queen Jane Seymour, and maternal uncle of Edward VI., the owner of more -than two hundred manors,[96] and who boasted that his own friends and -retainers made up an army of ten thousand men, determined to build a -palace in the Strand. For this purpose he demolished the parish church of -St. Mary, and pulled down the houses of the Bishops of Worcester, -Llandaff, and Lichfield. He also began to remove St. Margaret's, at -Westminster, for building materials, till his masons were driven away by -rioters. He destroyed a chapel in St. Paul's Churchyard, with a cloister -containing the "Dance of Death," and a charnel-house, the bones of which -he buried in unconsecrated ground,[97] and finally stole the stones of the -church of St. John of Jerusalem, near Smithfield,[98] and those of Strand -Inn (belonging to the Temple), where Occleve the poet, a contemporary of -Gower and Chaucer, had studied law. - -The unwise Protector determined in this building to rival Whitehall and -Hampton Court. It was begun probably about 1549, and no doubt remained -unfinished at his death. He had at that time lavished on it £50,000 of our -present money. - -The architect was John of Padua,[99] Henry VIII.'s architect, who built -Longleat, in Wiltshire, the seat of the Marquis of Bath, a magnificent -specimen of the Italian-Elizabethan style, and also the gates of Caius -College, at Cambridge. The Protector is said to have spent at one time -£100 a day in building, every stone he laid bringing him nearer to his own -narrow home. A plan of the house is still preserved in the Soane -Museum.[100] - -After the attainder of the duke, when the new palace became the property -of the crown, little was done to complete the building. The screen -prepared for the hall was bought for St. Bride's, where it was probably -destroyed in the Great Fire.[101] The Protector was a good friend to the -people, but he was weak and ambitious, and the plotters of Ely House had -no difficulty in dragging him to the scaffold. The minority of Edward -brought many of the Strand noblemen to the axe, but the fate of the -admiral and his brother did not deter their neighbours Northumberland, -Raleigh, Norfolk, and Essex. - -Elizabeth granted the keeping of Somerset House to her faithful cousin -Lord Hunsdon, for life,[102] and here she frequently would visit him, in a -jewelled farthingale, with Raleigh and Essex in her train. - -In 1616 that Scotch Solomon, James I., commanded the place to be called -Denmark House; and his queen kept her gay and not very decent court here, -so that Ben Jonson must have often seen his glorious masques acted in this -palace, to which his coadjutor Inigo Jones built a chapel, and made other -additions. Anne of Denmark and her maids-of-honour kept up here a -continual masquerade,[103] appearing in various dresses, and transforming -themselves to the delight of all whose interest it was to be delighted. - -Here too that impetuous queen, Henrietta Maria, resided with her wilful -and extravagant French household, whose insolence irritated and disgusted -the people and offended Charles the First. The king at last, losing -patience, summoned them together one evening and dismissed them all. They -behaved like sutlers at the sack of a town. They claimed fictitious debts; -they invented exorbitant bills; they greedily divided among each other the -queen's wardrobe and jewels, scarcely leaving her a change of linen. The -king paid nearly £50,000 to get rid of them; Madame St. George alone -claiming several thousand pounds besides jewels.[104] They still delayed -their departure; on which the king, at last roused, wrote the following -imperative letter to Buckingham:-- - - "STEENIE--I have received your letter by Dick Greame. This is my - answer. I command you to send all the French away to-morrow out of the - town, if you can by fair means (but stick not long in disputing), - otherways force them away--driving them away like so many wild beasts - until ye have shipped them; and the devil go with them. Let me hear no - answer, but of the performance of my command. So I rest - - "Your faithful, constant, loving friend, - "C. R. - - "Oaking, the seventh of August, 1626." - -As the French invented all sorts of vexatious delays, the yeomen of the -guard at last jostled them out, carting them off in nearly forty coaches. -They arrived at Dover after four days' tedious travelling, wrangling, and -bewailing. The squib did not burn out without one final detonation. As the -vivacious Madame St. George stepped into the boat, with perhaps some -insolent gesture of adieu, a man in the mob flung a stone at her French -cap. A gallant Englishman who was escorting her instantly quitted his -charge, ran the fellow through the body, and returned to the boat. The man -died on the spot, but no notice, it appears, was taken of the murderer. - -In Somerset House, at the Christmas masque of 1632-3, Charles's -high-spirited queen took part for the last time in a masque. Unfortunately -for Prynne, the next day out came his _Histriomastix_, with a scurrilous -marginal note, "Women actors notorious whores!" for which the stubborn -fanatic lost his ears. - -Queen Henrietta had, in Somerset House, an ostentatiously magnificent -Catholic chapel built by Inigo Jones, which became the scene of spectacles -that were gall and wormwood to the Puritans, who were already couching for -their spring. - -Their time came in March 1643, when Roundheads, grimly rejoicing, burnt -all the pictures, images, Jesuitical books, and tapestry.[105] - -Five of the unhappy queen's French Roman Catholic servants are entombed in -the cellars of the present building, under the great quiet square.[106] - -Here, close to his own handiwork, that distinguished architect, Inigo -Jones, who had lodgings in the palace, died in 1652. - -About the same time the House of Peers permitted the Protestant service to -be held in Somerset House instead of in Durham House. This drove out the -Quakers and Anabaptists, and prevented the pulling down of the palace and -the making of a street from the garden through the chapel and back-yard up -into the Strand.[107] - -The Protector's palace was the scene of a great and sad event in November -1658; for the body of Cromwell, who had died at Whitehall, lay in state -here for several days. He lay in effigy on a bed of royal crimson velvet, -covered with a velvet gown, a sceptre in his hand, and a crown upon his -head. The Cavaliers, whose spirits were recovering, were very angry at -this foolish display,[108] forgetting that it was not poor Oliver's own -doing; and the baser people, who follow any impulse of the day, threw dirt -in the night upon the blazoned escutcheon that was displayed over the -great gate of Somerset House. - -The year after, an Act was passed to sell all royal property, and Somerset -House was disposed of for £10,000. The Restoration soon stepped in and -annulled the bargain. After the return of the son who so completely -revenged upon us the death of his father, the luckless palace became the -residence of its former inhabitant, now older and gentler--the -queen-mother. She improved and beautified it. The old courtier, Waller, -only fifty-seven at the time, wrote some fulsome verses on the occasion. -He talks of her adorning the town as with a brave revenge, to show-- - - "That glory came and went with you." - -He mentions also the view from the palace:-- - - "The fair view her window yields, - The town, the river, and the fields." - -Cowley, the son of a Fleet Street grocer, flew still higher, larded his -flattery with perverted texts, like a Puritanised Cavalier time-server, -and wrote-- - - "On either side dwells Safety and Delight; - Wealth on the left and Power sits on the right." - -In May 1665, when the queen-mother, who had lived in Somerset House with -her supposed husband, the Earl of St. Albans, took her farewell of England -for a gayer court, Cowley wrote these verses to the setting sun, in hopes -to propitiate the rising sun; for here, too, lived Catherine of Braganza, -the unhappy wife of Charles II. - -There were strange scenes at Somerset House even during the queen-mother's -residence, for the old court gossip Pepys describes being taken one day to -the Presence-chamber.[109] He found the queen not very charming, but still -modest and engaging. Lady Castlemaine was there, Mr. Crofts, a pretty -young spark of fifteen (her illegitimate child), and many great ladies. By -and by in came the king and the Duke and Duchess of York. The conversation -was not a very decorous one; and the young queen said to Charles, "You -lie!" which made good sport, as the chuckling and delighted Pepys remarks, -those being the first English words he had heard her say; and the king -then tried to make her reply, "Confess and be hanged." - -In another place Pepys indignantly describes "a little proud, ugly, -talkative lady crying up the queen-mother's court as more decorous than -the king's;" yet the diary-keeper confesses that the former was the better -attended, the old nobility dreading, I suppose, the scandal of -Whitehall.[110] - -In 1670 Monk, Duke of Albemarle, having died at his lodgings in the -Cockpit, at Whitehall, lay in state in Somerset House, and was afterwards -buried with almost regal pomp in Henry VII.'s Chapel. - -In October 1678, the infamous devisers of the Popish plot connected -Somerset House and the attendants in the Queen's Chapel with the murder of -a City magistrate, the supposed Protestant martyr, Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, -who was found murdered in a field near Primrose Hill, "between Kilburn and -Hampstead," as it was then thought necessary to specify. The lying -witnesses, Prance and Bedloe, swore that the justice had been inveigled -into Somerset House under pretence of being wanted to keep the peace -between two servants who were fighting in the yard; that he was then -strangled, his neck broken, and his own sword run through his body. The -corpse was kept four days, then carried in a sedan-chair to Soho, and -afterwards on a horse to Primrose Hill, nearly three miles off. The -secrecy and convenient neighbourhood of the river for hiding a murdered -man seem never to have struck the rogues, who forgot even to "lie like -truth," so credulous and excited was the multitude. - -Waller, says Aubrey, though usually very temperate, was once made drunk at -Somerset House by some courtiers, and had a cruel fall when taking boat at -the water stairs, "'Twas a pity to use such a sweet man so -inhumanly."[111] Saville used to say that "nobody should keep him company -without drinking but Mr. Waller." - -In 1692 that poor ill-used woman and unhappy wife, Catherine of Braganza, -left Somerset House, and returned thence to Portugal, the home of her -happy childhood and happier youth. - -The palace, never the home of very happy inmates, then became a lodging -for foreign kings and ambassadors, and a home for a few noblemen and poor -retainers of the court, much as Hampton Court is now. Lewis de Duras, Earl -of Feversham, the incompetent commander at Sedgemoor, who lies buried at -the Savoy, lived here in 1708; and so did Lady Arlington, the widow of -Secretary Bennet, that butt of Killigrew and Rochester. In the reign of -George III., Charlotte Lennox, the authoress of the _Female Quixote_, had -apartments in Somerset House. - -Houses, like men, run their allotted courses. In 1775 the old palace, -which had been settled on the queen-consort in the event of her surviving -the king, was exchanged for Buckingham House; and the Government instantly -began to pull down the river-side palace, and erect new public offices -designed by Sir William Chambers, a Scotch architect, who had given -instruction in his art to George III., when Prince of Wales. - -In 1630, a row of fishmongers' stalls, in the middle of the street, over -against Denmark House (Somerset House), was broken down by order of -Government to prevent stalls from growing into sheds, and sheds into -dwelling houses, as had been the case in Old Fish Street, Saint Nicholas -Shambles, and other places.[112] - -On the 2d of February, 1659-60, Pepys tells us in his diary, that having -£60 with him of his lord's money, on his way from London Bridge, and -hearing the noise of guns, he landed at Somerset House, and found the -Strand full of soldiers. Going upstairs to a window, Pepys looked out and -saw the foot face the horse and beat them back, all the while bawling for -a free parliament and money. By and by a drum was heard to sound a march -towards them, and they all got ready again, but the new comers proving of -the same mind, they "made a great deal of joy to see one another."[113] -This was the beginning of Monk's change, for the king returned in the -following May. On the 18th of February two soldiers were hanged opposite -Somerset House for a mutiny, of which Pepys was an eye-witness. - -The prints of old Somerset House show a long line of battlemented wall -facing the river, and a turreted and partially arcaded front. There is -also a scarce view of the place by Hollar.[114] The river front has two -porticos. The chapel is to the left, and near it are the cloisters of the -Capuchins. The bowling-green seems to be to the right, between the two -rows of trees. The garden is formal. The royal apartments were on the -river side. The only memorial left of the outhouses of the old palace was -the sign of a lion in the wall of a house in the Strand, that is mentioned -in old records.[115] - -Dryden describes his two friends, Eugenius and Neander, landing at -Somerset Stairs, and gives us a pleasant picture of the summer evening, -the water on which the moonbeams played looked like floating quicksilver, -and some French people dancing merrily in the open air as the friends walk -onwards to the Piazza.[116] - -Of the old views of Somerset House, that of Moss is considered the best. -There is also an early and curious one by Knyff. A picture in Dulwich -Gallery (engraved by Wilkinson) represents the river front before Inigo -Jones had added a chapel for the queen of Charles I.[117] - -Sir William Chambers built the present Somerset House. The old palace, -when the clearance for the demolition began, presented a singular -spectacle.[118] At the extremity of the royal apartments two large -folding-doors joined Inigo Jones's additions to John of Padua's work. They -opened into a long gallery on the first floor of the water garden wing, at -the lower end of which was another gallery, making an angle which formed -the original river front, and extended to Strand Lane. This old part had -been long shut up, and was supposed to be haunted. The gallery was -panelled and floored with oak. The chandelier chains still hung from the -stucco ceilings. The furniture of the royal apartment was removed into -lumber-rooms by the Royal Academy. There were relics of a throne and -canopy; the crimson velvet curtains for the audience-chamber had faded to -olive colour; and the fringe and lace were there, but a few threads and -spangles had been peeled off them. There were also scattered about in -disorder, broken chairs, stools, couches, screens, and fire-dogs. - -In the older apartments much of Edward VI.'s furniture still remained. The -silk hangings of the audience-chamber were in tatters, and so were the -curtains, gilt-leather covers, and painted screens; one gilt chandelier -also remained, and so did the sconces. A door beyond, with difficulty -opened, led into a small tower on the first floor, built by Inigo Jones, -and used as a breakfast-room or dressing-room by Queen Catherine. It was a -beautiful octagonal domed apartment, with a tasteful cornice. The walls -were frescoed, and there were pictures on the ceiling. A door from this -place opened on the staircase and led to a bath-room, lined with marble, -on the ground floor. - -The painters of the day compared the ruined palace, characteristically -enough, to the gloomy precincts of the dilapidated castles in Mrs. -Radcliffe's wax-work romances. - -Sir William Chambers completed his work in about five years, clearing two -thousand a year. It cost more than half a million of money. The Strand -front is 135 feet long; the quadrangle 210 feet wide and 296 feet deep. -The main buildings are 54 feet deep and six stories high. They are faced -with Portland stone, now partly sooty black, partly blanched white with -the weather. The basement is adorned with rustic work, Corinthian -pilasters, balustrades, statues, masks, and medallions. The river terrace -was intended in anticipation of the possible embankment of the Thames. -Some critics think Chambers's great work heavy, others elegant but timid. -There is too much rustic work, and the whole is rather "cut up." The vases -and niches are unmeaning, and it was a great structural fault to make the -portico columns of the fine river side stand on a brittle-looking arch. - -It was to Somerset House that the Royal Academy came after the split in -the St. Martin's Lane Society. Here West exhibited his respectable -platitudes, Reynolds his grand portraits, and Lawrence his graceful, -brilliant, but meretricious pictures. In the great room of the Academy, at -the top of the building, Reynolds, Opie, Barrie, and Fuseli lectured. -Through the doorway to the right of the vestibule, Reynolds, Wilkie, -Turner, Flaxman, and Chantrey have often stepped. Under that bust of -Michael Angelo almost all our great men from Johnson to Scott must have -passed. - -Carlini, an Italian friend of Cipriani, executed the two central statues -on the Strand front of Somerset House, and also three of the nine colossal -key-stone masks--the rivers Dee, Tyne, and Severn. Carlini was one of the -unsuccessful candidates for the Beckford monument in Guildhall. When -Carlini was keeper of the Academy, he used to walk from his house in Soho -to Somerset Place, dressed in a deplorable greatcoat, and with a broken -tobacco pipe in his mouth; but when he went to the great annual Academy -dinner, he would make his way into a chair, full dressed in a purple silk -coat, and scarlet gold-laced waistcoat, with point-lace ruffles, and a -sword and bag.[119] Wilton, the sculptor, executed the two outer figures. - -Giuseppe Ceracchi, who carved some of the heads of the river gods for the -key-stones of the windows of the Strand front of Somerset House, was an -Italian, but it is uncertain whether he was born at Rome or in Corsica. He -gave the accomplished Mrs. Damer (General Conway's daughter) her first -lessons in sculpture, an art which she afterwards perfected in the studio -of the elder Bacon. Ceracchi executed the only bust in marble that -Reynolds ever sat for. A statue of Mrs. Damer, from a model by him, is now -in the British Museum. This sculptor was guillotined in 1801, for a plot -against Napoleon.[120] He is said to have lost his wits in prison, and to -have mounted the scaffold dressed as a Roman emperor. It was to Mrs. Damer -(the daughter of his old friend) that Horace Walpole, our most French of -memoir-writers, bequeathed his fantastic villa at Strawberry Hill, and its -incongruous but valuable curiosities. She is said to have sent a bust of -Nelson to the Rajah of Tanjore, who wished to spread a taste for English -art in India. - -The rooms round the quadrangle are hives of red-tapists. There are about -nine hundred Government clerks nestled away in them, and maintained at an -annual cost to us of about £275,000. There is the office of the Duchy of -Cornwall, and there are the Legacy Duty, the Stamps, Taxes, and Excise -Offices, the Inland Revenue Office, the Registrar General's Office -(created pursuant to 6 and 7 Will. IV., c. 86), part of the Admiralty and -the Audit Office, and lastly the Will Office. - -The east wing of Somerset House, used as King's College, was built in -1829. The bronze statue of George III., and the fine recumbent figure of -Father Thames, in the chief court, were cast by John Bacon, R.A. - -The office for auditing the public accounts existed, under the name of the -Office of the Auditors of the Imprests, as far back as the time of Henry -VIII. The present commission was established in 1785, and the salaries -formerly paid for the passing of accounts are now paid out of the Civil -List, all fees being abolished. The average annual cost of the office for -auditing some three hundred and fifty accounts is £50,000. There are six -commissioners, a secretary, and upwards of a hundred clerks. Almost all -the home and colonial expenditure is examined at this office. Edward -Harley and Arthur Maynwaring (the wit of the Kit-Cat Club) were the two -Auditors of the Imprests in the reign of Queen Anne. The Earl of Oxford, -the collector of MSS., obtained many curious public documents from his -brother. If he had taken the whole the nation would have been a gainer; -for the Government bought his collection for the British Museum, and all -that he left (except what Sir William Musgrave, a commissioner, scraped -together and gave to the British Museum) were barbarously destroyed by -Government, heedless of their historical value. Maynwaring's fees were -about £2000 a year. The present salary of a commissioner is £1200; the -chairman's salary is £500. In 1867 the western front of Somerset House was -added; it is from the designs of Pennethorne, to accommodate the clerks of -the Inland Revenue Department. - -The Astronomical Society, Geographical Society, and Geological Society, -were for many years sheltered in Somerset House, before removing -westwards. - -Hither, in 1782, from Crane Court, came the Royal Society. The entrance -door to the society's rooms, to the left of the vestibule, is marked out -by the bust of Sir Isaac Newton; Herschel, Davy, and Wollaston, as well as -Walpole and Hallam, must have passed here, for the same door leads to the -apartments of the Society of Antiquaries. - -This society, when burnt out of Aldersgate Street by the Great Fire, held -its meetings for a time in Arundel House. At first its doings were -trifling and sometimes absurd. Enthusiasts and pedants often made the -society ludicrous by their aberrations. Charles II. pretended to admire -their Baconic inductions, but must have laughed at Boyle's essays and -platitudes, and the hope of Wilkins, the Bishop of Chester, of flying to -the moon. Evelyn's suggestions were unpractical and dilettantish, and -Pepys's ramblings not over wise. We may be sure that there was food for -laughter, when Butler could thus sketch the occupations of these -philosophers:-- - - "To measure wind and weigh the air, - To turn a circle to a square, - And in the braying of an ass - Find out the treble and the bass, - If mares neigh _alto_, and a cow - In double diapason low." - -Yet how can we wonder that in the vast gold mines of the new philosophy -our wise men hesitated where first to sink their shafts? Cowley -chivalrously sprang forward to ward off from them the laughter and scorn -of the Rochesters and the Killigrews of the day, and to prove that these -initiative studies were not "impertinent and vain and small," nothing in -nature being worthless. He ends his fine, rambling ode with the following -noble simile:-- - - "Lo! when by various turns of the celestial dance, - In many thousand years, - A star so long unknown appears, - Though Heaven itself more beauteous by it grow, - It troubles and alarms the world below; - Does to the wise a star, to fools a meteor show."[121] - -The Royal Society's traditions belong more to Gresham College than to -Somerset House, the later home of our wise men. It originated in 1645, in -meetings held in Wood Street and Gresham College, suggested by Theodore -Hank, a German of the Palatinate. During the Civil War its discussions -were continued at Oxford. The present entrance-money is £10, and the -annual subscription is £4. The society consists at present of between 700 -and 800 fellows, and the anniversary is held every 30th of November, being -St. Andrew's Day. The Transactions of the society fill upwards of 150 -quarto volumes. The first president was Viscount Brouncker, and the -second Sir Joseph Williamson. Mr. William Spottiswoode is the present -president. The society possesses some valuable pictures, including three -portraits of Sir Isaac Newton--one by C. Jervas, presented by the great -philosopher himself, and hung over the president's chair; a second by D. -C. Marchand, and a third by Vanderbank; two portraits of Halley, by Thomas -Murray and Dahl; two of Hobbes, the great advocate of despotism--one taken -in 1663 (three years after the Restoration), and the other by Gaspars, -presented by Aubrey; Sir Christopher Wren, by Kneller; Wallis, by West; -Flamstead, by Gibson; Robert Boyle, by F. Kerseboom (a good likeness, says -Boyle); Pepys, the cruel expositor of his own weaknesses, by Kneller; Sir -A. Southwell, by the same portrait-painter; Dr. Birch, the great -historical compiler, by Wills (the original of the mezzotint done by Faber -in 1741, and bequeathed by Dr. Birch); Martin Folkes, the great -antiquarian, by Hogarth; Dr. Wollaston, the eccentric discoverer, by -Jackson; and Sir Humphrey Davy, by Sir Thomas Lawrence. - -Amongst the curiosities of the society are the silver-gilt mace presented -to the society by Charles II. in 1662--(long supposed to be the bauble -which Cromwell treated with such contempt); a solar dial, made by Sir -Isaac Newton himself when a boy; a reflecting telescope, made by Newton in -1671; the precious MS. of the _Principia_ in Newton's handwriting; a -silvery lock of Newton's hair; the MS. of the _Parentalia, or Memoirs of -the Family of the Wrens_, written by young Wren; the charter-book of the -society, bound in crimson velvet, and containing the signatures of the -founder and fellows; a Rumford fireplace, one of the earliest in use; and -a marble bust of Mrs. Somerville, the great mathematician and philosopher, -by Chantrey. The society gives annually two gold medals--one the Rumford, -the other the Copley medal, called by Sir Humphrey Davy "the ancient olive -crown of the Royal Society." - -The Geological Society has a museum of specimens and fossils from all -quarters of the globe. The number of its fellows is about 875, and the -time of meeting alternate Wednesday evenings from November till June. It -also publishes a quarterly journal. The entrance-money is six guineas, the -annual subscription two. - -The Society of Antiquaries was fairly started in 1707, by Wanley, Bagford, -and Talman, who agreed to meet together every Friday under penalty of -sixpence. It had originated about 1580, when it held its first sittings in -the Heralds' College; but it did not obtain a charter till 1751, both -Elizabeth and James being afraid of its meddling with royal prerogatives -and illustrious genealogies, and the Civil War having interrupted its -proceedings. Its first meeting was at the Bear Tavern, in the Strand. In -1739 the members were limited to one hundred, and the terms were one -guinea entrance and twelve shillings annually. The society agreed to -discuss antiquarian subjects, and chiefly those relating to English -history prior to James I. In 1751 George II. granted its members a -charter, and in 1777 George III. gave them apartments in Somerset House, -where they continued till their recent removal to Burlington House. The -terms now are eight guineas admission, and four guineas annually. The -_Archæologia_, a journal of the society's proceedings, commenced in 1770. -The meetings are every Thursday evening from November to June, and the -anniversary meeting is the 23d of April. - -The museum of this society contains, among other treasures, the _Household -Book_ of the Duke of Norfolk; a large and valuable collection of early -proclamations and ballads; T. Porter's unique map of London (Charles I.); -a folding picture in panel, of the "Preaching at Old St. Paul's in 1616;" -early portraits of Edward IV. and Richard III., engraved for the third -series of _Ellis's Letters_; a three-quarter portrait of Mary I. with the -monogram of Lucas de Heere, and the date 1546; a curious portrait of the -Marquis of Winchester (who died 1571); the portrait by Sir Antonio More, -of Schorel, a Dutch painter; portraits of antiquaries--Burton, the -Leicestershire antiquary, Peter le Neve, Humphrey Wanley Baker, of St. -John's College, William Stukeley, George Vertue, and Edward, Earl of -Oxford, presented by Vertue; a Bohemian astronomical clock of gilt brass, -made in 1525 for Sigismund, King of Poland, and bought at the sale of the -effects of James Ferguson, the astronomer; and a spur of gilt brass, found -on Towton field, the scene of the bloody conflict between Edward IV. and -the Lancastrian forces. Upon the shank is engraved the following -posey--"En loial amour tout mon coer."[122] - -The Astronomical Society was instituted in 1820, and received the royal -charter in 1st William IV. The entrance-money is two guineas, and the -annual subscription the same amount. The annual general meeting is the -second Friday in February. A medal is awarded every year. The society has -a small but good mathematical library, and a few astronomical instruments. - -A little above the entrance door to "the Stamps and Taxes" there is a -white watch-face let into the wall. Local tradition declares it was left -there in votive gratitude by a labourer who fell from a scaffolding and -was saved by the ribbon of his watch catching in some ornament. It was -really placed there by the Royal Society as a meridian mark for a portable -transit instrument in a window of an ante-room.[123] - -A tradition of Nelson belongs to this quiet square. An old clerk at -Somerset House used to describe seeing the hero of the Nile pass on his -way to the Admiralty. Thin and frail, with only one arm, he would enter -the vestibule at a smart pace, and make direct for his goal, pushing -across the rough round stones of the quadrangle, instead of taking, like -others, the smooth pavement. Nelson always took the nearest way to the -object he wished to attain.[124] - -The Royal Academy soon found a home in Somerset House. Germs of this -institution are to be found as early as the reign of Charles I., when Sir -Francis Kynaston, a translator of Chaucer into Latin (_circa_ 1636), was -chosen regent of an academy in Covent Garden.[125] - -In 1643 that shifty adventurer, Sir Balthazar Gerbier, who had been fellow -ambassador with Rubens in Spain, started some quack establishment of the -same kind at Bethnal Green. He afterwards went to Surinam, was turned out -by the Dutch, came back, designed an ugly house at Hampstead Marshal, in -Berks, and died in 1667. - -In 1711 Sir Godfrey Kneller instituted a private art academy, of which he -became president. Hogarth, writing about 1760, says, that sixty years -before some artists had started an academy, but their leaders assuming too -much pomposity, a caricature procession was drawn on the walls of the -studio, upon which the society broke up in dudgeon. Sir James Thornhill, -in 1724, then set up an academy at his own house in Covent Garden, while -others, under Vanderbank, turned a neighbouring meeting-house into a -studio; but these rival confederations broke up at Sir James's death in -1734. - -Hogarth, his son-in-law, opened an academy, under the direction of Mr. -Moser, at the house of a painter named Peter Hyde, in Greyhound Court, -Arundel Street. In 1739 these artists removed to a more commodious house -in Peter's Court, St. Martin's Lane, where they continued till 1767, when -they removed to Pall Mall. - -In 1738 the Duke of Richmond threw open to art-students his gallery at -Whitehall, closed it again when his absence in the German war prevented -the paying of the premiums, was laughed at, and then re-opened it again. -It lasted some years, and Edwards, author of the _Anecdotes_, studied -there. - -In 1753 some artists meeting at the Turk's Head, Gerrard Street, Soho, -tried ineffectually to organise an academy; but in 1765 they obtained a -charter, and appointed Mr. Lambert president. - -In 1760 their first exhibition of pictures was held in the rooms of the -Society of Arts, and in 1761 there were two exhibitions, one at Spring -Gardens: for the latter Hogarth illustrated a catalogue, with a compliment -to the young king and a caricature of rich connoisseurs. - -In 1768 eight of the directors of the Spring Gardens Society, indignant at -Mr. Kirby being made president of the society in the place of Mr. Hayman, -resigned; and, co-operating with sixteen others who had been ejected, -secretly founded a new society. Wilton, Chambers, West, Cotes, and Moser, -were the leaders in this scheme, and Reynolds soon joined them, tempted, -it is supposed, by a promise of knighthood. - -West was the chief mover in this intrigue. The Archbishop of York, who had -tried to raise £3000 to enable the American artist to abandon -portrait-painting, had gained the royal ear, and West was painting the -"Departure of Regulus" for the king, who was even persuaded and flattered -into drawing up several of the laws of the new society with his own -hand.[126] The king, in the meantime, with unworthy dissimulation, -affected outwardly a complete neutrality between the two camps, presented -the Spring Gardens Society with £100, and even attended their exhibition. - -The king's patronage of the new society was disclosed to honest Mr. Kirby -(father of Mrs. Trimmer, and the artist who had taught the king -perspective) in a very malicious and mortifying manner, and the story was -related to Mr. Galt by West, with a quiet, cold spite, peculiarly his own. -Mr. Kirby came to the palace just as West was submitting his sketch for -"Regulus" to the king. West was a true courtier, and knew well how to make -a patron suggest his own subject. Kirby praised the picture, and hoped Mr. -West intended to exhibit it. The Quaker slily replied that that depended -on his majesty's pleasure. The king, like a true confederate, immediately -said, "Assuredly I shall be happy to let the work be shown to the public." -"Then, Mr. West," said the perhaps too arrogant president, "you will send -it to my exhibition?" "No!" said the king, and the words must have been -thunderbolts to poor Kirby; "it must go to _my_ exhibition."[127] "Poor -Kirby," says West, "only two nights before, had declared that the design -of forming such an institution was not contemplated. His colour forsook -him--his countenance became yellow with mortification--he bowed with -profound humility, and instantly retired, _nor did he long survive the -shock_!" - -Mr. West is wrong, however, in the last statement, for his rival did not -die till 1774. Mr. Kirby, a most estimable man, was originally a -house-painter at Ipswich. He became acquainted with Gainsborough, was -introduced by Lord Bute to the king, and wrote and edited some valuable -works on perspective, to one of which Hogarth contributed an inimitable -frontispiece. - -Sir Robert Strange says that much of this intrigue was carried out by Mr. -Dalton,[128] a print seller in Pall Mall, and the king's librarian, in -whose rooms the exhibition was held in 1767 and 1768. - -Thus an American Quaker, a Swiss, and a Swede--(a gold-chaser, a -coach-painter, an architect, and a third-rate painter, West)--ignobly -established the Royal Academy. Many eminent men refused to join the new -society. Allan Ramsay, Hudson, Scott the marine-painter, and Romney were -opposed to it. Engravers (much to the disgrace of the Academy) were -excluded; and worst of all, one of the new laws forbade any artist to be -eligible to academic honours who did not exhibit his works in the -Academy's rooms: thus depriving for ever every English artist of the right -to earn money by exhibiting his own works.[129] - -The proportion of foreigners in the Academy was very large. The two ladies -who became members (Angelica Kauffmann and Mrs. Moser) were both -Swiss.[130] - -The other unlucky society, deprived of its share of the St. Martin's Lane -casts, etc., and shut out from the Academy, furnished a studio over the -Cyder Cellars in Maiden Lane, struggled on till 1807, and then ceased to -exist.[131] - -The Academy, with all its tyranny and injustice, has still been useful to -English art in perpetuating annual exhibitions which attract purchasers. -But what did more good to English art than twenty academies was the king's -patronage of West, the spread of engraving, and the rise of middle-class -purchasers, who rendered it no longer necessary for artists to depend on -the caprice and folly of rich aristocratic patrons. - -One word more about the art oligarchy. The first officers of the new -society were--Reynolds, president; Moser, keeper; Newton, secretary; -Penny, professor of painting; Sandby, professor of architecture; Wale, -professor of perspective; W. Hunter, professor of anatomy; Chambers, -treasurer; and Wilson, librarian. Goldsmith was chosen professor of -history at a later period. - -The catalogue of the first exhibition of the Royal Academy contains the -names of only one hundred and thirty pictures: Hayman exhibited scenes -from _Don Quixote_; Rooker some Liverpool views; Reynolds some allegorised -portraits; Miss Kauffmann some of her tame Homeric figures; West his -"Regulus" (that killed Kirby), and a Venus and Adonis; Zuccarelli two -landscapes. - -In 1838, the first year after the opening of the National Gallery, 1382 -works of art, including busts and architectural designs, were exhibited. -Among the pictures then shown were--Stanfield's "Chasse Marée off the -Gulf-stream Light," "The Privy Council," by Wilkie; portraits of men and -dogs, by Landseer; "The Pifferari," "Phryne," and "Banishment of Ovid," by -Turner; "A Bacchante," by Etty; "Gaston de Foix," by Eastlake; Allan's -"Slave Market," Leslie's "Dinner Scene from the Merry Wives of Windsor;" -"A View on the Rhine," by Callcott; Shee's portrait of Sir Francis -Burdett; portraits by Pickersgill; Maclise's "Christmas in the Olden -Time," and "Olivia and Sophia fitting out Moses for the Fair;" "The -Massacre of the Innocents," by Hilton; and a picture by Uwins.[132] - -Angelica Kauffmann and Biaggio Rebecca helped to decorate the Academy's -old council-chamber at Somerset House. The paintings still exist. Rebecca -was an eccentric, conceited Italian artist, who decorated several rooms at -Windsor, and offended the worthy precise old king by his practical jokes. -On one occasion, knowing he would meet the king on his way to Windsor with -West, he stuck a paper star on his coat. The next time West came, the king -was curious to know who the foreign nobleman was he had seen--"Person of -distinction, eh? eh?"--and was doubtless vexed at the joke. - -Rebecca's favourite trick was to draw a half-crown on paper, and place it -on the floor of one of the ante-rooms at Windsor, laughing immoderately at -the eagerness with which some fat courtier in full dress, sword and bag, -would run and scuffle to pick it up.[133] - -Fuseli took his place as Keeper of the Academy in 1805. Smirke had been -elected, but George III., hearing that he was a democrat, refused to -confirm the appointment. Haydon, who called on Fuseli in Berners Street in -1805, when he had left his father the bookseller at Plymouth, describes -him as "a little white-headed, lion-faced man, in an old flannel -dressing-gown tied round his waist with a piece of rope, and upon his head -the bottom of Mrs. Fuseli's work-basket." His gallery was full of -galvanised devils, malicious witches brewing incantations, Satan bridging -chaos or springing upwards like a pyramid of fire, Lady Macbeth, Paolo and -Francesca, Falstaff and Mrs. Quickly. - -Elsewhere the impetuous Haydon sketches him vigorously. Fuseli was about -five feet five inches high, had a compact little form, stood firmly at his -easel, painted with his left hand, never held his palette upon his thumb, -but kept it upon his stone slab, and being very near-sighted and too vain -to wear glasses, used to dab his beastly brush into the oil, and sweeping -round the palette in the dark, take up a great lump of white, red, or -blue, and plaster it over a shoulder or a face; then prying close in, he -would turn round and say, "By Gode! dat's a fine purple! it's very like -Correggio, by Gode!" and then all of a sudden burst out with a quotation -from Homer, Tasso, Dante, Ovid, Virgil, or the Niebelungen, and say, -"Paint dat!" "I found him," says Haydon, "a most grotesque mixture of -literature, art, scepticism, indelicacy, profanity, and kindness. He put -me in mind of Archimago in Spenser."[134] - -When Haydon came first to town from Plymouth, he lodged at 342 -Strand,[135] near Charing Cross, and close to his fellow-student, the -good-natured, indolent, clever Jackson. The very morning he arrived he -hurried off to the Exhibition, and mistaking the new church in the Strand -for Somerset House, ran up the steps and offered his shilling to a beadle. -When he at last found the right house, Opie's _Gil Blas_ and Westall's -_Shipwrecked Sailor Boy_ were all the historical pictures he could find. - -Sir Joshua read his first discourse before the Academy in 1769. Barry -commenced his lectures in 1784, ended them in 1798, and was expelled the -Academy in 1799. Opie delivered his lectures in 1807, the year in which he -died. Fuseli began in 1801, and delivered but twelve lectures in all. - -It was on St. George's Day, 1771, that Sir Joshua Reynolds took the chair -at the first annual dinner of the Royal Academy. Dr. Johnson was there, -with Goldsmith and Horace Walpole. Goldsmith got the ear of the company, -but was laughed at by Johnson for professing his enthusiastic belief in -Chatterton's discovery of ancient poems. Walpole, who had believed in the -poet of Bristol till he was laughed at by Mason and Gray, began to banter -Goldsmith on his opinions, when, as he says, to his surprise and concern, -and the dashing of his mirth, he first heard that the poor lad had been to -London and had destroyed himself. Goldsmith had afterwards a quarrel with -Dr. Percy on the same subject. - -One day, while Reynolds was lecturing at Somerset House, the floor -suddenly began to give way. Turner, then a boy, was standing near the -lecturer. Reynolds remained calm, and said afterwards that his only -thought was what a loss to English art the death of that roomful would -have been. - -On the death of Mr. Wale, the Professor of Perspective, Sir Joshua was -anxious to have Mr. Bonomi elected to the post, but he was treated with -great disrespect by Mr. Copley and others, who refused to look at Bonomi's -drawings, which Sir Joshua (as some maintained, contrary to rule) had -produced at Fuseli's election as Academician. Reynolds at first threatened -to resign the presidency; but thought better of it afterwards. - -In the catalogues in 1808 Turner's name first appeared with the title of -Professor of Perspective attached to it. His lectures were bad, from his -utter want of language, but he took great pains with his diagrams, and his -ideas were often original. On one celebrated occasion Turner arrived in -the lecture-room late, and much perturbed. He dived first into one pocket, -and then into another; at last he ejaculated these memorable words: -"Gentlemen, I've been and left my lecture in the hackney-coach!"[136] - -In 1779 O'Keefe describes a visit paid to Somerset House to hear Dr. -William Hunter lecture on anatomy. He describes him as a jocose little -man, in "a handsome modest" wig. A skeleton hung on a pivot by his side, -and on his other hand stood a young man half stripped. Every now and then -he paused, to turn to the dead or the living example.[137] - -In 1765, when Fuseli was living humbly in Cranbourn Alley, and translating -Winckelmann, he used to visit Smollett, whose _Peregrine Pickle_ he was -then illustrating; and also Falconer, the author of _The Shipwreck_, who, -being poor, was allowed to occupy apartments in Somerset House.[138] The -poet was a mild, inoffensive man, the son of an Edinburgh barber. He had -been apprenticed on board a merchant vessel, after which he entered the -royal navy. In 1762 he published his well-known poem. He went out to India -in 1769, in the _Aurora_, which is supposed to have foundered in the -Mozambique Channel.[139] Falconer was a short thin man, with a -hard-featured, weather-beaten face and a forbidding manner; but he was -cheerful and generous, and much liked by his messmates. That hearty -sea-song, "Cease, rude Boreas," has been attributed to him. - -Fuseli succeeded Barry as Lecturer on Painting in 1799, and became Keeper -on the death of Wilton, the sculptor, in 1803. He died in 1825, aged -eighty-four, and was buried in St. Paul's, between Reynolds and Opie. -Lawrence, Beechey, Reinagle, Chalon, Jones, and Mulready followed him to -his stately grave. The body had previously been laid in state in Somerset -House, his pictures of "The Lazar House" and "The Bridging of Chaos" being -hung over the coffin. - -When Sir Joshua died, in 1792, his body lay in state in a velvet coffin, -in a room hung with sable, in Somerset House. Burke and Barry, Boswell and -Langton, Kemble and John Hunter, Towneley and Angerstein came to witness -the ceremony. - -Where events are so interwoven as they are in topographical history, I -hope to be pardoned if I am not always chronological in my arrangement, -for it must be remembered that I have anecdotes to attend to as well as -dates. Let me here, then, dilate on a cruel instance of misused academic -power. My story relates to a young genius as unfortunate as Chatterton, -yet guiltless of his lies and forgeries, who died heart-broken by neglect -more than half a century ago. - -[Illustration: SOMERSET HOUSE FROM THE STRAND, 1777.] - -Procter, a young Yorkshire clerk, came up to London in 1777, and became a -student of the Royal Academy. In 1783 he carried off a silver medal, and -the next year won the gold medal for an historical picture. When Procter -gained this last prize, his fellow-students, raising him on their -shoulders, bore him downstairs, and then round the quadrangle of Somerset -House, shouting out, "Procter! Procter!" Barry was delighted at this, and -exclaimed with an oath, "Bedad! the lads have caught the true spirit of -the ould Greeks." Sir Abraham Hume bought Procter's "Ixion," which was -praised by Reynolds. His colossal "Diomede" the poor fellow had to break -up, as he had no place to keep it in, and no one would buy it. In 1794 Mr. -West, wishing that Procter should go to Rome as the travelling student, -discovered him, after much inquiry, in poor lodgings in Maiden Lane. A day -or two afterwards he was found dead in his bed. The Academicians had been, -perhaps, just a little too late with their patronage.[140] - -And now, when through grey twilight glooms I steal a glance as I pass by -at that grave black figure of the river god, presiding solemn as -Rhadamanthus over the central quadrangle of Somerset House, I sometimes -dream I see little leonine Fuseli, stormy Barry, and courtly Reynolds -pacing together the dim quadrangle that on these autumnal evenings, when -the rifle drills are over, wears so lonely and purgatorial an aspect; and -far away from them, in murky corners, I fancy I hear muttering the ghosts -of Portuguese monks, while scowling at them, stalks by pale Sir -Edmondbury, with a sword run through his shadowy body. - - - - -[Illustration: JACOB TONSON'S BOOK-SHOP, 1742.] - - -CHAPTER V. - -THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE, CONTINUED). - - -On the Thames, off Somerset House, was a timber shed built on a strong -barge, and called "the Folly." In William III.'s reign it was anchored -higher up the stream, near the Savoy. Tom Brown calls it "a musical -summer-house." Its real name was "The Royal Diversion." Queen Mary -honoured it with her presence.[141] It was at first frequented by "persons -of quality," but latterly it became disreputable, and its orchestra and -refreshment alcoves were haunted by thieves, gamesters, and courtesans. - -Near the Savoy stood the palace of the bishops of Carlisle, which was -obtained by exchange with Henry VIII. for Rochester Place at Lambeth. The -English sultan gave it to his lucky favourite, Bedford, who took it as his -residence. In the reign of James I. the Earl of Worcester bought it; and -in 1627 the Duke of Beaufort let it to Lord Clarendon, while his ill-fated -house was building in Piccadilly. It was then rebuilt on a smaller scale -by the duke, and eventually burnt down in 1695.[142] The present Beaufort -Buildings were then erected. Beaufort House, which occupies the site of -one in which Cardinal Beaufort died, is now a printing-office. - -Blake, the mystical painter, died in 1828, at No. 3 Fountain Court, after -five years' residence there. In these dim rooms he believed he saw the -ghost of a flea, Satan himself looking through the bars of the staircase -window, to say nothing of hosts of saints, angels, evil spirits, and -fairies. Here also he wrote verse passionate as Shelley's and pure and -simple-hearted as Wordsworth's. Here he engraved, tinted, railed at -Woollett, and raved over his Dante illustrations; for though poor and -unknown, he was yet regal in his exulting self-confidence. Here, just -before his death, the old man sat up in bed, painting, singing, and -rejoicing. He died without a struggle.[143] - -The office of the _Sun_ is on this side the Strand. This paper was -established in 1792. Mr. Jerdan left the _Sun_ in 1816, selling his share -for £300. He had quarrelled with the co-proprietor, Mr. John Taylor, who -aspired to a control over him. In 1817 he set up the _Literary Gazette_, -the first exclusive organ of literary men.[144] The first editor of the -_Sun_ got an appointment in the West Indies. The paper was then edited by -Robert Clark, printer of the _London Gazette_, and afterwards by Jerdan, -assisted by Fladgate the facetious lawyer, Mulloch, and John Taylor. After -getting his sop in the pan of £300 a year from Government, that -low-principled satirist, Dr. Wolcot (Peter Pindar), wrote epigrams for it. - -Fountain Court was in Strype's time famous for an adjacent tavern from -which it derived its name. It was well paved, and its houses were -respectably inhabited.[145] The Fountain Tavern was renowned for its good -rooms, excellent vaults, "curious kitchen," and old wine. The Fountain -Club, of which Pulteney was a member (circa 1737), held its meetings in -this tavern, to oppose that fine old Whig gentleman Sir Robert -Walpole.[146] Sir Charles Hanbury Williams thus mentions it in one of his -lampoons:-- - - "Then enlarge on his cunning and wit, - Say how he harangued at the Fountain, - Say how the old patriots were bit, - And a mouse was produced by a mountain." - -Here Pulteney may have planned the _Craftsman_ with Bolingbroke, and -perhaps have arranged his duel with Lord Hervey, the "Sporus" of Pope. - -Dennis, the critic, mentions in his _Letters_ dining here with Loggen, the -painter, and Wilson, a writer praised by poor Otway in Tonson's first -_Miscellany_. "After supper," he says, "we drank Mr. Wycherly's health by -the name of Captain Wycherly."[147] This was the dramatist, the celebrated -author of _The Plain Dealer_ and _The Country Wife_. - -The great room of the Fountain Tavern was afterwards Akermann's well-known -picture shop; and is now Simpson's cigar divan. - -Charles Lillie, the perfumer recommended by Steele in the _Tatler_ (Nos. -92, 94), lived next door to the Fountain Tavern. He was burnt out and went -to the east corner of Beaufort Buildings in 1709. Good-natured Steele, -pitying him probably for his losses, praised his Barcelona snuff, and his -orange-flower water prepared according to the Royal Society's receipt. - -The Coal Hole, in this court, was so named by Rhodes, its first landlord, -from its having been originally the resort of coal-heavers. In his and -Edmund Kean's time it was respectably frequented. It was once the -"Evans's" of London, famous for steaks and ale; afterwards it sank to a -low den with _poses plastiques_ and ribald sham trials, that used to be -conducted by "Baron" Nicholson, a fat gross man, but not without a certain -unctuous humour, who is now dead. - -Edmund Kean, always low in his tastes, used to fly the society of men like -Lord Byron to come hither and smoke and drink. The dress, the ceremony, -and the compulsory good behaviour of respectable society made him silent -and melancholy.[148] He used to say that noblemen talked such nonsense -about the stage, and that only literary men understood the subject. - -The Kit-Cat Club was instituted in 1700, and died away about the year -1720. There were originally thirty-nine members, and they increased -gradually to the forty-eight whose portraits Kneller painted for their -secretary, Jacob Tonson, Dryden's bookseller. Their earliest rendezvous -was at the house of a pastry-cook, one Christopher Cat, in Shire Lane, -near Temple Bar. When he grew wealthier, the club removed with him to the -Fountain Tavern in the Strand. The club derived its name from the -celebrated mutton pie,[149] which had been christened after its -maker.[150] The first members were those Whig patriots who brought about -the Revolution and drove out King James. Their object was the -encouragement of literature and the fine arts, and the diffusion of -loyalty to the House of Hanover. They elected their "toast" for the year -by ballot. The lady's name, when chosen, was written on the club -drinking-glasses with a diamond. Among the more celebrated of the members -of this club were Kneller, Vanbrugh, Congreve, Addison, Garth, Steele, -Lord Mohun, the Duke of Wharton, Sir Robert Walpole, the Earl of -Burlington, the Earl of Bath, the Earl of Dorset, the Earl of Halifax, the -proud Duke of Somerset, and the Duke of Newcastle. - -In summer the Club met at Tonson's house at Barn Elms in Surrey, or at the -Upper Flask Tavern at Hampstead.[151] There seems to have been always some -doubt about the derivation of the name of the club; for an epigram still -extant, written either by Pope or Arbuthnot, attributes the name to the -fact of the members toasting "old Cats and young kits." Mr. Defoe mentions -the landlord's name as Christopher Catt,[152] while Ned Ward says that -though his name was Christopher, he lived at the sign of the Cat and -Fiddle. - -Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was once brought by her father to this club when -a child, and made the toast for the year. "Petted, praised, fondled, and -fed with sweetmeats," she used to say in her old age that it was the -happiest day of her life![153] - -No. 59 is Coutts's Bank. It was built for Mr. Coutts, in 1768, by the Adam -brothers--to whom we are indebted for the Adelphi. The old house of the -firm, of the date of Queen Anne, was situated in St. Martin's Lane. The -present house contains some fine marble chimney-pieces of the Cipriani and -Bacon school. The dining-room is hung with quaint Chinese subjects on -paper, sent to Mr. Coutts by Lord Macartney, while on his embassy to -China, in 1792-95. In another room hang portraits of some early friends of -this son of Mammon, including Dr. Armstrong, the poet and physician, -Fuseli's friend, by Reynolds. The strong rooms consist of cloistered -vaults, wherein the noblemen and rich commoners who bank in the house -deposit patents, title-deeds, and plate of fabulous value. - -Mr. Coutts was the son of a Dundee merchant. His first wife was a servant, -a Lancashire labourer's offspring. He had three daughters, one of whom -became the wife of Sir Francis Burdett, a second Countess of Guilford, and -a third Marchioness of Bute. On becoming acquainted with Miss Mellon, and -inducing her to leave the stage to avoid perpetual insults, Mr. Coutts -bought for her of Sir W. Vane Tempest, a small villa called Holly Lodge, -at the foot of Highgate Hill, for which he gave £25,000. His banking-house -strong rooms alone cost £10,000 building. The first deposit in the -enlarged house was the diamond aigrette that the Grand Signor had placed -in Nelson's hat. Mr. Coutts, though very charitable, was precise and -exact. On one occasion, there being a deficit of 2s. 10d. in the day's -accounts, the clerks were detained for hours, or, as is said, all night. -One of Coutts's clerks, who took the western walk, was discovered to be -missing with £17,000.[154] Rewards were offered, and the town placarded, -but all in vain. The next day, however, the note-case arrived from -Southampton. The clerk's story was, that on his way through Piccadilly, -being seized with a stupor, he had got into a coach in order to secure the -money. He had remained insensible the whole journey, and had awoke at -Southampton. Mr. Coutts gave him a handsome sum from his private purse, -but dismissed him. - -Coutts's Bank stands on nearly the centre of the site of the "New -Exchange." When the Adelphi was built in Durham Gardens, Mr. Coutts -purchased a vista to prevent his view being interrupted, stipulating that -the new street leading to the entrance should face this opening; and on -this space, up to the level of the Strand, he built his strong rooms. Some -years after, wishing to enlarge them, he erected over the office a -counting-house and a set of offices extending from William Street to -Robert Street, and threw a stone bridge over William Street to connect the -front and back premises. - -Mr. Coutts, late in life, married Harriet Mellon, who, after his death, -became the wife of the Duke of St. Albans, a descendant of Nell Gwynn, -that light-hearted wanton, whom nobody could hate. "Miss Mellon," says -Leigh Hunt, "was arch and agreeable on the stage; she had no genius; but -then she had fine eyes and a good-humoured mouth." The same gay writer -describes her when young as bustling about at sea-ports, selling tickets -for her benefit-night; but then, says the kindly apologist for everybody, -she had been left with a mother to support.[155] - -Edmund Kean, the great tragedian, was lodging at 21 Cecil Street when, -poor and unknown, he made his first great triumph as Shylock, at Drury -Lane; a few days after, his mantelpiece was strewn with bank-notes, and -his son Charles was seen sitting on the floor playing with a heap of -guineas.[156] This great actor brought the theatre, in sixty-eight nights -of 1814, no less than twenty thousand pounds. - -The last house on the west side of Cecil Street was inhabited in 1706 by -Lord Gray, and in 1721-4 by the Archbishop of York. In the opposite house -lived for many years Major-General Sir William Congreve, the inventor of -the rockets which bear his name, and a great friend and companion of -George IV., to whom he is said to have borne a striking personal -resemblance. Sir William was a descendant of Congreve the dramatist; and -he was the inventor of a number of successful projects and contrivances, -among which may be mentioned the engines employed in dredging the Thames. -The east side of Cecil Street is in the Savoy precinct, the west in the -parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. - -Dr. Wollaston was living in Cecil Street (No. 28) in the year 1800. This -eccentric philosopher, originally a physician, was born in 1766, and died -of brain disease in 1828. He discovered two new metals--palladium and -rhodium--and acquired more than £30,000, by inventing a plan to make -platinum malleable. He improved and invented the camera lucida, and was -the first to demonstrate the identity of galvanism and common -electricity. He carried on his experiments with the simplest instruments, -and never allowed even his most intimate friends to enter his laboratory. -When a foreign philosopher once called on him and asked to see his study, -he instantly produced, in his strange way, a small tray, on which were -some glass tubes and a twopenny blow-pipe. Once, shortly after inspecting -a grand galvanic battery, on meeting a brother philosopher in the street -he led him by the button into a mysterious corner, took from his pocket a -tailor's thimble, poured into it some liquid from a small phial, and -instantly heated a platinum wire to a white heat.[157] - -Salisbury Street, in the Strand, was originally built about 1678, but was -extensively rebuilt by Payne in the early part of the reign of George III. - -Old Salisbury House stood on the sites of Salisbury and Cecil Streets, -between Worcester House, now Beaufort Buildings, and Durham House, now the -Adelphi. It was so called after Sir Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, and -Lord High Treasurer to James I., who died 1612. Queen Elizabeth was -present at the house-warming. This Cecil was the bad minister of a bad -king. He was Raleigh's enemy and Bacon's; he was the foe of reform, and -the friend of Spain, from whom he received bribes, and the slave of vice. -Bacon painted this vicious hunchback in his _Essay on Deformity_. The -house was divided subsequently into Great and Little Salisbury House--the -latter being let to persons of quality. About 1678 it was pulled down, and -Salisbury Street built; but it proved too steep and narrow, and was not a -successful speculation.[158] The other part, next to Great Salisbury House -and over the Long Gallery, was turned into the "Middle Exchange." This -eventually gave way to Cecil Street,--a fair street, with very good -houses, fit for persons of repute.[159] - -On the death of Sackville the poet, Cecil took the white staff, being -already Premier-Secretary. His ambition stretched into every department of -the State. "He built a new palace at Hatfield, and a new Exchange in the -Strand. Countesses intrigued for him. His son married a Howard, his -daughter a Clifford. Ambassadors started for Italy, less to see Doges and -Grand Dukes than to pick up pictures and statues, and bronzes and -hangings, for his vast establishment at Hatfield Chase. His gardeners -travelled through France to buy up mulberries and vines. Salisbury House, -on the Thames, almost rivalled the luxurious villas of the Roman -cardinals; yet, under this blaze of worldly success, Cecil was the most -miserable of men. Friends grudged his rise; his health was broken; the -reins which his ambition drew into his hands were beyond the powers of a -single man to grasp; and the vigour of his frame, wasted by years of -voluptuous licence, failed him at the moment when the strain on his -faculties was at the full."[160] - -In Little Salisbury House lived William Cavendish, third Earl of -Devonshire, and father of the first Duke of Devonshire, one of the leaders -of the great revolution that drove out the Stuarts. Two or three days -after the Restoration, King Charles, passing in his coach through the -Strand, espied Hobbes, that mischievous writer in favour of absolute -power, standing at the door of his patron the earl. The king took off his -hat very kindly to the old man, gave him his hand to kiss, asked after his -health, ordered Cooper to take his portrait, and settled on him a pension -of £100 a year. Hobbes had been an assistant of Bacon, and a friend of Ben -Jonson and of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. He had taught Charles II. -mathematics, and corresponded with Descartes. - -In the street standing on the site of Sir Robert Cecil's house was the -residence of the famous Partridge, the cobbler, impudent sham-almanac -maker, and predecessor of our own Moore and Zadkiel, who had foretold the -death of the French king. To expose this noisy charlatan and upset his -ridiculous hap-hazard predictions, Swift with cruel and trenchant malice -reported and lamented his decease in the _Tatler_ (1708), to which he -contributed under the name of Bickerstaff. The article raised a laugh -that has not even quite died away in the present day. Partridge, furious -at his losses and the extinguishing of his ill-earned fame, knocked down a -hawker who passed his stall crying an account of his death. This happening -just as the joke was fading, revived it again, and finally ruined the -almanac of poor Partridge.[161] "The villain," says the poor outwitted -astrologer, "told the world I was dead, and how I died, and that he was -with me at the time of my death. I thank God, by whose mercy I have my -being, that I am still alive, and, excepting my age, as well as ever I was -in my life." He actually died in 1715. - -A little beyond Cecil Street formerly stood Ivy Bridge, under which there -was a narrow passage to the Thames, once forming a boundary line between -the Duchy of Lancaster and the City of Westminster. Near Ivy Bridge stood -the mansion of the Earls of Rutland. Opposite this spot Old Parr had -lodgings when he came to court to be shown to Charles I., and died of the -visit. Parr was a Shropshire labourer. He was born in 1483, and died aged -152. His grandson lived to 120, and in the year of his death had married a -widow. Parr's London lodging became afterwards the Queen's Head -public-house.[162] - -Mrs. Siddons was living at 149 Strand, during the time of her earlier -successes. Probably she returned there on that glorious October night of -1782, when she achieved her first great triumph in Southerne's tragedy of -_Isabella_, when her younger son, who acted with her, burst into tears, -overcome by the reality of the dying scene. "I never heard," she says, -"such peals of applause in all my life." She returned home solemnly and -calmly, and sat down to a frugal, neat supper with her father and husband, -in silence uninterrupted, except by exclamations of gladness from Mr. -Siddons. - -Durham Street marks the site of old Durham House, built by Hatfield, -Bishop of Durham, in 1345. In Henry IV.'s time wild Prince Hal lodged -there for some nights. - -In the reign of Henry VIII. Bishop Tunstall exchanged the house with the -king for one in Thames Street. Here, in 1550, lodged the French -ambassador, M. de Chastillon, and his colleagues. - -Edward VI. granted the house to his sister Elizabeth for life, and here -that princess bore the scorn and persecution of Bonner and his spies. On -Mary coming to the throne and finding Tunstall driven from the Strand and -without a shelter, she restored to him Durham House. This Tunstall led a -life of great vicissitudes. Henry VIII. had moved him from London to -Durham; Edward VI. had dissolved his bishopric altogether; Mary had -restored it; and Elizabeth again stripped him in 1559, the year in which -he died. - -The virgin queen kept the house some time in her own tenacious hands, but -in 1583 granted it to Raleigh, whom she had loaded with favours, and who, -in 1591, was Captain of the Guard, Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and -Lieutenant of Cornwall. - -On the death of Queen Elizabeth Raleigh's sun of fortune set for ever, and -that sly time-server Toby Matthew, Bishop of Durham, claimed the old town -house of the see, relying on Cecil's help and King James's dislike to the -great enemy of Spain. Sir Walter opposed him, but the king in council, -1603, recognised the claim, and stripped Raleigh of his possession. The -aggrieved man, in a letter of remonstrance to the Lord Keeper Egerton, -states that he had occupied the house about twenty years, and had expended -on it £2000 out of his own purse.[163] Raleigh did not die at Tower Hill -till 1618; but Durham House was never occupied again either by bishop or -noble, and five years after the stables of the house came down to make way -for the New Exchange. - -In Charles I.'s reign the Earl of Pembroke bought Durham Yard from the -Bishop of Durham for £200 a year, and built a handsome street leading to -the river.[164] The river front and the stables remained in ruins till the -Messrs. Adam built the Adelphi on the site of Raleigh's old turret study. -Ivy Street had been the eastward boundary of the bishop's domain.[165] - -The New Exchange was opened April 11, 1609, in the presence of King James -and his Danish queen. It was built principally through the intervention of -Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, who lived close by. It was called by the king -"Britain's Bourse," but it could not at first compete with the Royal -Exchange. At the Restoration, however, when Covent Garden grew into a -fashionable quarter, the New Exchange became more frequented than -Gresham's building in the city. - -In the year 1653 (Cromwell), the New Exchange was the scene of a tragedy. -Don Pantaleon de Saa, brother of the Portuguese ambassador, quarrelled -with a gentleman named Giraud, who was flirting with the milliners, and -who had used some contemptuous expression. The Portuguese, bent on -revenge, hired some bravos, who the next day stabbed to death a gentleman -whom they mistook for Mr. Giraud. They were instantly seized, and Don -Pantaleon was found guilty and executed. Singularly enough, the intended -victim perished on the same day on the same scaffold, having in the -meantime been condemned for a plot against the Protector. - -There are many legends existing about the New Exchange. Thomas Duffet, an -actor of Charles II.'s time, kept originally a milliner's shop here. At -the Eagle and Child, in Britain's Bourse, the first edition of _Othello_ -was sold in 1622. At the sign of the "Three Spanish Gypsies" lived Thomas -Radford, who sold wash-balls, powder, and gloves, and taught sempstresses. -His wife, the daughter of John Clarges, a farrier in the Savoy before or -after Radford's death, married General Monk, became the vulgar Duchess of -Albemarle, and was eventually buried in Westminster Abbey. At the sign of -the Fop's Head lived, in 1674, Will Cademan, a player and -play-publisher.[166] Henry Herringham, the chief London publisher before -Dryden's petty tyrant, Tonson, had his shop at the Blue Anchor in the -Lower Walk. Mr. and Mrs. Pepys frequented the New Exchange. Here the -Admiralty clerk's wife had "a mind to" a petticoat of sarcenet bordered -with black lace, and probably purchased it. Here also, in April, 1664, -Pepys and his friend Creed partook of "a most delicate dish of curds and -cream."[167] Both Wycherly and Etherege have laid scenes of their comedies -at the New Exchange; and here, too, Dryden's intriguing Mrs. Brainsick -pretends to visit her "tailor" to try on her new stays. - -This Strand Bazaar, in the time of William and Mary, was the scene of the -pretty story of the "White Widow." For several weeks a sempstress appeared -at one of the stalls, clothed in white, and wearing a white mask. She -excited great curiosity, and all the fashionable world thronged her stall. -This mysterious milliner was at last discovered to be no less a person -than the Duchess of Tyrconnel, widow of Talbot, the Lord Deputy of Ireland -under James II. Unable to obtain a secret access to her family, and almost -starving, she had been compelled to turn shopwoman. Her relatives provided -for her directly the story became known.[168] This duchess was the Frances -Jennings mentioned by Grammont, and sister to Sarah, Duchess of -Marlborough. - -This long arcade, leading from the Strand to the water stairs, was divided -into four parts--the outward walk below stairs, the inner walk below -stairs, the outward walk above stairs, and the inner walk above stairs. -The lower walk was a place of assignations. In the upper walk the air rang -with cries of "Gloves or ribands, sir?" "Very good gloves or ribands." -"Choice of fine essences."[169] Here Addison used to pace, watching the -fops and fools with a kindly malice.[170] The houses in the Strand, over -against the Exchange door, were often let to rich country families, who -glared from the balconies and stared from the windows.[171] - -Soon after the death of Queen Anne the New Exchange became disreputable. -No one would take stalls, so it was pulled down in 1737, and a frontage of -dwelling-houses and shops made to the Strand, facing what is now the -Adelphi Theatre. But we must return for a moment to old Durham House and a -few more of its earlier tenants. - -In Henry VIII.'s time Durham House had been the scene of great banquets -given by the challengers after the six days' tournament that celebrated -the butcher king's ill-omened marriage with that "Flemish mare," as he -used ungallantly to call Anne of Cleves. To these sumptuous feasts the -bruised and battered champions, together with all the House of Commons and -Corporation of London, were invited. To reward the challengers, among whom -was Oliver Cromwell's ancestor, Dick o' the Diamond, the burly king gave -them each a yearly pension of one hundred marks out of the plundered -revenues of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. - -Later a mint was established at Durham House by Sir William Sherrington, -to aid the Lord Admiral Seymour in his treasonable efforts against his -brother, the Protector, who finally offered him up a victim to his -ambition. Sherrington, however, escaped, and worked the mint for the -equally unfortunate Protector. - -But no loss of heads could warn the Strand noblemen. It was here that the -ambitious Duke of Northumberland married his son, Lord Guildford Dudley, -to poor meek-hearted Lady Jane Grey, who, the luckless queen of an hour, -longed only for her Greek books, her good old tutor Ascham, and the quiet -country house where she had been so happy. On that great day for the duke, -Lady Jane's sister also married Lord Herbert, and Lord Hastings espoused -Lady Catherine Dudley. It was from Durham House that the poor martyr of -ambition, Lady Jane, was escorted in pomp to the Tower, which was so soon -to be her grave. - -In 1560 Jean Nicot, a French ambassador, had carried tobacco from Lisbon -to Paris. In 1586[172] Drake brought tobacco from Raleigh's colony in -Virginia. Raleigh was fond of smoking over his books. His tobacco-box -still existed in 1715; it was of gilt leather, as large as a muff-case, -and contained cases for sixteen pipes.[173] There is a doubtful legend -about Raleigh's first pipe, the scene of which may be not unfairly laid at -Durham House, where Raleigh then lived. - -One day his servant, bringing in a tankard of spiced ale as usual into the -turret study, found Raleigh (it is said) smoking a pipe over his folios. -The clown, seeing smoke issue in clouds from his master's mouth, dropped -the tankard in a fright, and ran downstairs to shout to the family that -"master was on fire, and that he would be burnt to ashes if they did not -run directly to his help."[174] - -The stalwart, sour-faced Raleigh disported himself at Durham House in a -suit of clothes beset with jewels and valued at sixty thousand -pounds,[175] and in diamond court-shoes valued at six thousand six hundred -pieces of gold. Here he lived with his wife Elizabeth, and his two unlucky -sons Walter and Carew. Here, as he sat in his study in the little turret -that looked over the Thames,[176] he must have written against the -Spaniards, told his adventures in Virginia, and described his discovery of -the gold country of Guiana, his quarrel with Essex at Fayal, and the -capture of the rich caracks laden with gold, pearls, and cochineal. - -The estate of Durham Place was purchased from the Earl of Pembroke, about -1760, by four brothers of the name of Adam, sons of an architect at -Kirkaldy, who were patronised by the handsome and much-abused Earl of -Bute, and who built Caen Wood House, near Hampstead, afterwards the wise -Lord Mansfield's. Robert, the ablest of the brothers, had visited Palmyra, -and was supposed from those gigantic ruins to have borrowed his grand -spirit of construction, as well as much of that trivial ornament which he -might surely have found nearer home. When the brothers Adam began their -work, Durham Yard (the court-yard of Raleigh's old house) was a tangle of -small sheds, coal-stores, wine-vaults, and lay-stalls. They resolved to -leave the wharves, throw some huge arches over the declivity, connect the -river with the Strand, and over these vaults erect a series of well-built -streets, a noble river terrace, and lofty rooms for the newly-established -Society of Arts. - -In July 1768,[177] when the Adelphi Buildings were commenced, the Court -and City were at war, and the citizens, wishing to vex Bute, applied to -Parliament to prevent the brothers encroaching on the river, of which -sable stream the Lord Mayor of London is the conservator, but not the -purifier; but they lost their cause, and the worthy Scotchmen -triumphed.[178] - -The Scotch are a patriotic people, and stand bravely by their own folk. -The Adams sent to Scotland for workmen, whose labours they stimulated by -countless bagpipes; but the canny men, finding the bagpipes played their -tunes rather too quick, threw up the work, and Irishmen were then -employed. The joke of the day was, that the Scotchmen took their bagpipes -away with them, but left their _fiddles_![179] - -The Adelphi at once became fashionable. Garrick, then getting old, left -his house in Southampton Street to occupy No. 5, the centre building of -the terrace, and lived there till his death in 1779. Singularly enough, -this great and versatile actor had, on first coming to London with his -friend Johnson, started as a wine merchant below in Durham Yard. Here he -must have raved in "Richard," and wheedled as Abel Drugger; and in the -rooms at No. 5 half the celebrities of his century must have met. He died -in the "first floor back," and his widow died in the same house as long -after as 1822. The ceiling in the front drawing-room was painted by -Antonio Zucchi. A white marble chimney-piece in the same room is said to -have cost £300.[180] Garrick died after only nine years' residence in the -new terrace; but his sprightly widow, a theatrical critic to the last, -lived till she was past ninety, still an enthusiast about her husband's -genius. The first time she re-opened the house after Davy's death, Dr. -Johnson, Boswell, Sir Joshua, Mrs. Carter, and Mrs. Boscawen were present. -"She looked well," says Boswell; "and while she cast her eyes on her -husband's portrait, which was hung over the chimney-piece, said, that -death was now the most agreeable object to her." Worthy woman! and so she -honestly thought at the time; but she lived exactly forty-three years -longer in the same house. - -If there is a spot in London which Johnson's ghost might be expected to -revisit, it is that quiet and lonely Adelphi Terrace. At night no sound -comes to you but a shout from some passing barge, or the creak of a ship's -windlass. Here Johnson and Boswell once leant over, looking at the Thames. -The latter said, "I was thinking of two friends we had lost, who once -lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick." "Ay, sir," -replied Johnson, seriously, "and two _such_ friends as cannot be -supplied." This is a recollection that should for ever hallow the Adelphi -Terrace to us. - -The Beauclerk above mentioned was one of the few rakes whom Johnson loved. -He was a friend of Langton, and as such had become intimate with the great -doctor. Topham Beauclerk was a man of acute mind and elegant manners, and -ardently fond of literature. He was of the St. Albans family, and had a -resemblance to swarthy Charles II., a point which pleased his elder -friend. The doctor liked his gay, young manner, and flattered himself much -as women do who marry rakes, that he should reform him in time. - -"What a coalition!" said Garrick, when he heard of the friendship; "why, I -shall have my old friend to bail out of the Round House." Beauclerk, says -Boswell, "could take more liberties with Johnson than any one I ever saw -him with;"[181] but, on the other hand, Beauclerk was not spared. On one -occasion Johnson said to him, "You never open your mouth, sir, without an -intention to give pain, and you have often given me pain--not from the -power of what you said, but from seeing your intention." At another time -he said, "Thy body is all vice, and thy mind all virtue." - -When the Adelphi was building, Garrick applied for the corner house of -Adam Street for his friend Andrew Beckett, the bookseller in the Strand, -and he obtained it. In this letter he calls the architects "the dear -Adelphi," and the western house "the corner blessing." Garrick's house was -for some years occupied by the Royal Literary Fund, but is now a Club. - -Garrick promised the brothers, if the request was granted, to make the -shop, as old Jacob Tonson's once was, the rendezvous of the first people -in England. "I have," he says, "a little selfishness in this request. I -never go to coffee-houses, seldom to taverns, and should constantly (if -this scheme takes place), be at Beckett's at one at noon and six at -night."[182] - -Garrick was a frequent visitor at the house of Mr. Thomas Beckett, the -bookseller, in Pall Mall, and he obtained the appointment of sub-librarian -at Carlton Palace for the son Andrew, who had written a comedy on the -_Emile_ of Rousseau at the age of fourteen, and produced a poem called -_Theodosius and Constantia_. For nearly ten years he wrote for the British -and Monthly Reviews. He was born in 1749, and died in 1843. His most -useful work is called _Shakspere Himself Again_, in which he released the -original text from much muddy nonsense of commentators. He complained -bitterly of Griffiths, of the _Monthly Review_, having given him only £45 -for four or five years' work--280 articles, produced after reading and -condensing 590 volumes; Mr. Griffiths' annual profit by the _Monthly_ -being no less than £2000. - -Into a house in John Street the Society of Arts, established in 1753 by -Mr. Shipley, an artist, moved, about 1772. This society still give -lectures and rewards, and does about as much good as ever it did. Art -must grow wild--it will not thrive in hot-houses. The great room is still -adorned with the six large pictures illustrating the "Progress of -Society," painted by poor, half-crazed Barry, the ill-educated artist, -who, too proud to paint cabinet pictures, could yet paint nothing larger -sound or well. - -Shipley, who established the society of Arts in imitation of one already -established at Dublin, was originally a drawing-master at Northampton. -From its commencement in 1753-4 to 1778 the society distributed in -premiums and bounties £24,616. A year after its foundation Josiah Wedgwood -began to infuse a classical and purer taste among the proprietors of the -Staffordshire potteries,[183] and employed Flaxman to draw some of his -designs, and was the first to improve the shape and character of our -simplest articles of use. - -Mr. Shipley was a brother of the Bishop of St. Asaph, and had studied -under a portrait-painter named Phillips. In 1738 the Society of Arts voted -their founder a gold medal for his public spirit. His school was continued -by a Mr. Pars. He died, aged upwards of ninety, in 1784.[184] - -Nollekens, the sculptor, learned drawing there, and Cosway, afterwards the -fashionable miniature-painter, was the errand-boy. The house was -subsequently inhabited by Rawle, the antiquary, a friend of fat, coarse, -clever Captain Grose.[185] - -Dr. Ward, the inventor of "Friar's Balsam," a celebrated quack doctor -ridiculed by Hogarth, left his statue by Carlini to the Society of Arts. -The doctor allowed Carlini £100 a year, so that he should work at this -statue for life.[186] - -This Joshua Ward, celebrated for his drop and pill, by which and his -balsam he made a fortune, was the son of a drysalter in Thames Street. -Praised by General Churchill and Lord Chief Baron Reynolds, he was called -in to prescribe for King George. The king recovering in spite of the -quack, "Spot" Ward was rewarded by a solemn vote of a credulous House of -Commons, and he obtained the privilege of being allowed to drive his -carriage through St. James's Park. Ward is conspicuous in one of Hogarth's -caricatures by a claret mark covering half his brazen face. - -The housekeeper at the Society of Arts in Haydon's time (1842) remembered -Barry at work on the frescoes that are so deficient in colour and taste, -but show such a fine grasp of mind. She said his violence was dreadful, -his oaths horrid, and his temper like insanity. In summer he came at five -and worked till dark; he then lit his lamp and went on etching till eleven -at night. He was seven years at his task. Burke and Johnson called once; -but no artist came to see him. He would have almost shot any painter who -dared to do so. He had his tea boiled in a quart pot, dined in Porridge -Island, and took milk for supper.[187] - -Years after Barry lay in state in the great room which his own genius had -adorned, and was buried in the Abbey; but few of the Academicians attended -his funeral. The Adelphi pictures have been recently lined and restored. - -Barry having vainly attempted to decorate St. Paul's, executed the -paintings now at the Society of Arts for his mere expenses, but -eventually, one way and another, cleared a considerable sum by them. He -painted them, as he said, to prove that Englishmen had a genius for high -art, music, and other refinements of life. They are fairly drawn, often -elegantly and reasonably well grouped, but bad in colour. The -heterogeneous dresses are jumbled together with bad taste--Dr. Burney in a -toupee floats among water-nymphs, and William Penn's wig and hat are -ludicrously obtrusive. The perspective is often "out," and the attitudes -are stiff; still, historically speaking, the pictures are large-minded and -interesting; and, in spite of his faults, one likes to think of the brave -Irishman busy on his scaffold, railing at Reynolds and defying everybody. -Barry was really a self-deceiver, like Haydon, and aimed far beyond his -powers. - -At Osborne's Hotel, in John Street, the King and Queen of the Sandwich -Islands resided while on a visit to England in the reign of George IV. A -comic song written on their arrival was once popular, though now -forgotten; and Theodore Hook produced a quaint epigram on their death by -small-pox, the point of which was, that one day Death, being hungry, -called for "two Sandwiches." The epigram was not without the unfeeling wit -peculiar to that heartless lounger at the clubs, who spent his life -amusing the great people, and who died at last a worn-out spendthrift, -_sans_ character, _sans_ everything. - -Of all London's charlatans, perhaps the most impudent was Dr. Graham, a -Scotchman, whose brother married Catherine Macaulay, the author of a -forgotten History of England, much vaunted by Horace Walpole. In or about -1780 this plausible cheat opened what he called a "Temple of Health," in a -central house in the Adelphi Terrace. His rooms were stuffed with glass -globes, marble statues, medico-electric apparatus, figures of dragons, -stained glass, and other theatrical properties. The air was drugged with -incense and strains of music. The priestess of this temple was said to be -no less a person than Emma Lyons, afterwards Lady Hamilton, the fatal -Cleopatra of Lord Nelson. She had been first a housemaid and afterwards a -painter's model. She was as beautiful as she was vulgar and abandoned. The -house was hung with crutches, ear-trumpets, and other trophies.[188] For -one night in the celestial bed, that secured a beautiful progeny, this -impostor obtained £100; for a supply of his elixir of life £1000 in -advance, and for his earth-baths a guinea each. Yet this arrant knave and -hypocrite was patronised by half the English nobility. Archenholz, a -German traveller, writing about 1784, describes Dr. Graham and his £60,000 -celestial bed. He dilates on the vari-coloured transparent glasses, and -the rich vases of perfume that filled the impudent quack's temple, the -half-guinea treatises on health, the _moonshine_ admitted into the rooms, -and the divine balm at a guinea a bottle. - -A magneto-electric bed, to be slept in for the small sum of £50 a night, -was on the second floor, on the right hand of the orchestra, and near the -hermitage. Electricity and perfumes were laid on in glass tubes from -adjoining reservoirs. The beds (there were two or three at least) rested -on six massy transparent columns. The perfumed curtains were of purple and -celestial blue, like those of the Grand Turk. Graham was blasphemous -enough to call this chamber his "Holy of Holies." His chief customers were -captains of privateers, nabobs, spendthrifts, and old noblemen. The farce -concluded in March 1784, when the rooms were shut for ever, and the temple -of Apollo, the immense electrical machine, the self-playing organ, and the -celestial bed, were sold in open daylight by a ruthless auctioneer.[189] - -Bannister "took off" Graham in a farce called _The Genius of Nonsense_, -produced at the Haymarket in 1780. His satin sofas on glass legs, his -celestial bed, his two porters in long tawdry greatcoats and immense -gold-laced cocked hats, distributing handbills at the door, while his -goddess of health was dying of a sore-throat from squalling songs at the -top of the staircase, were all hit off by a speaking harlequin, who also -caricatured the doctor's sliding walk and bobbing bows. The younger Colman -and Bannister had been to the Temple of Health on purpose to take the -quack's portrait.[190] - -Mr. Thomas Hill, the fussy, good-natured Hull of Theodore Hook's _Gilbert -Gurney_, lived for many years and finally died in the second floor of No. -1 James Street, Adelphi. He was the supposed prototype of the obtrusive -Paul Pry. It was Hill's boast always to have what you wanted. "Cards, sir? -Pooh! pooh! Nonsense! thousands of packs in the house." Liston made the -name of Paul Pry proverbial and world-wide. - -The names of the four Scotch brothers, John, Robert, James, and William -Adam, are preserved by the existing Adelphi Streets. When will any of our -streets be named after great thinkers? It is a disgrace to us to allow new -districts to be christened, without Government supervision, by worthless, -ignoble, and ridiculous names, confusing in their vulgar repetition. -Indifferent kings, and nobles not much better, give their names to half -the suburbs of London, while Shakespere is unremembered by the builders, -and Spenser and Byron have as yet no brick-and-mortar godchildren. - -[Illustration: OLD HOUSES ON THE SITE OF WELLINGTON STREET, 1742.] - -The eldest of the brothers, Robert Adam, died in 1792, and was buried in -the south aisle of Westminster Abbey. His pall was supported by the Duke -of Buccleuch, the Earl of Coventry, the Earl of Lauderdale, Lord Stormont, -Lord Frederick Campbell, and Mr. Pulteney. - -It was told as a joke invented against that fat butt, Sir William Curtis, -that at a public dinner some lover of royalty and Terence proposed the -healths of George IV. and the Duke of York as "the Adelphi," upon which -the alderman, who followed with the next toast, determining that the East -should not be far behind the West, rose and said that "as they were now on -the subject of streets, he would beg to propose Finsbury Square." But, -after all, why should we laugh at the poor alderman because he did not -happen to know Greek? That surely is a venial sin. - -And here, retracing our steps, we must make an episode and turn back down -the Savoy. - - - - -[Illustration: THE SAVOY FROM THE THAMES, 1650.] - - -CHAPTER VI. - -THE SAVOY. - - "Their leaders, John Ball, Jack Straw, and Wat Tyler, then marched - through London, attended by more than twenty thousand men, to the - PALACE OF THE SAVOY, which is a handsome building on the road to - Westminster, situated on the banks of the Thames, and belonging to the - Duke of Lancaster. They immediately killed the porters, pressed into - the house, and set it on fire."--_Froissart's Chronicles._ - - -A minute's walk down a turning on the south side of the Strand, and we are -in the precinct of an old palace, and standing on royal property. - -In a ramble by moonlight one cannot fail to meet under the churchyard -trees in the Savoy, John of Gaunt, who once lived there; John, King of -France, who died there; George Wither, the poet, and sweet Mistress Anne -Killigrew, who are buried there, and Chaucer, who was married there. - -Down that steep, dray-traversed street, now so dull and lonely, kings and -bishops, knights and ladies, have paced, and mobs have hurried with sword -and fire. Now it is a congeries of pickle warehouses, printing offices, -and glass manufactories. - -Simon de Montfort, that ambitious Earl of Leicester who married the sister -of Henry III., and whose father persecuted the Albigenses, dwelt in the -Savoy. Here he must have first won the barons, the people, and the humbler -clergy by his opposition to the extortions of the king and the bishops. -Here for a time he must have all but reigned, till that fatal August day -when he fell at Evesham. Simon was a friend of the monks, and after his -death endless miracles were said to have been wrought at his grave,[191] -as might have been expected. - -The Savoy derives its foreign name from a certain Peter, Earl of Savoy, -uncle of Eleanor, the daughter of Raymond, Count of Provence, and queen of -that good man, but weak monarch, Henry III. This earl was the leader of -that rapacious and insolent train of Frenchmen and Savoyards which -followed Queen Eleanor to England, and drove Simon de Montfort and his -impetuous barons to rebellion by their hunger for titles, lands, and -benefices. In 30 Henry III. the king granted to Peter, Earl of Richmond -and Savoy, all those houses in the Strand, adjoining the river, formerly -belonging to Brian de Lisle, upon paying yearly to the king's exchequer, -at the Feast of St. Michael, three barbed arrows for all services. - -In 1322 an Earl of Lancaster, then master of the Savoy, on the return of -the Spensers, formed an alliance with the Scots, and broke out into open -rebellion against Edward II. He was taken at Boroughbridge, led to -Pontefract, and there beheaded. As he was led to execution on a bridleless -pony, the mob pelted him with mud, taunting him as King Arthur--the royal -name he had assumed in his treasonable letters to the Scots.[192] - -Earl Peter, in due time growing weary of stormy England, and sighing for -his cool Savoy mountains, transferred his mansion to the provost and -chapter of Montjoy (Fratres de Monte Jovis) at Havering-atte-Bower, a -small village in Essex. At the death of the foolish king, his widow -purchased the palace of the Savoy of the Montjoy chapter, as a residence -for her son Edmund, afterwards Earl of Lancaster, to whom had been given -the chief estates of the defeated Montfort. - -His son Henry, Duke of Lancaster, repaired and partly rebuilt the palace, -at an expense of upwards of 50,000 marks. From this potent lord it -descended to Edward III.'s son, John of Gaunt (Ghent), who lived here in -the splendour befitting the son of Edward III., the uncle of Richard II., -and the father of a prince hereafter to become Henry IV. - -It was in the chapel of this river-side palace (about 1360, Edward III.) -that our great poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, married Philippa, daughter of a -knight of Hainault and sister to a mistress of the Duke's. He mentions his -marriage in his poem of _The Dream_.[193] He says harmoniously-- - - "On the morrow, - When every thought and every sorrow - Dislodg'd was out of mine heart, - With every woe and every smart, - Unto a tent prince and princess - Methought brought me and my mistress. - - * * * * * - - With ladies, knighten, and squiers, - And a great host of ministers, - Which tent was church parochial." - -Those marriage bells have long since rung, the smoke of that incense has -long since risen to heaven, yet we seldom pass the Savoy without thinking -how the poet and his fair Philippa went - - "To holy church's ordinance, - And after that to dine and dance, - ... and divers plays." - -It was to his great patron--"time-honoured" Lancaster, claimant, through -his wife, of the throne of Castile--that Chaucer owed all his court -favours, his Genoese embassy, his daily pitcher of wine, his wardship, his -controllership, and his annuity of twenty marks. It was in this palace he -must have imbibed his attachment to Wickliffe, and his hatred of all proud -and hypocritical priests. - -Buildings seem, like men, to be born under special stars. It was the fate -of the Savoy to enjoy a hundred and forty years of splendour, and then to -sink into changeless poverty and desolation. It was also its ill fate to -be once sacked and once burnt. In 1378, under Richard II., its first -punishment overtook it. John Wickliffe, a Yorkshireman, had been appointed -rector of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, by the favour of John of Ghent, -who was delighted with a speech of Wickliffe in Parliament denying that -King John's tribute to the Pope necessarily bound King Edward III. The -Papal bull for Wickliffe's prosecution did not reach England till the -king's death, but Wickliffe was cited on the 19th of February, 1378, to -appear before the Bishop of London at St. Paul's. In the interval before -his appearance he had promised the Parliament, at their request, to prove -the legality of its refusal to pay tribute to the Pope. - -On the day appointed Wickliffe appeared in Our Lady's Chapel, accompanied -by the Earl Marshall, Percy, and the Duke of Lancaster, who openly -encouraged him, to the horror of the populace and the bitter rage of the -priests. A quarrel instantly began by Courtenay, the Bishop of London, -opposing a motion of the Earl Marshall that Wickliffe should be allowed a -seat. The proud duke, pale with anger, whispered fiercely to the bishop -that, "rather than take such language from him, he would drag him out of -the church by the hair of his head." The threat was heard by an unfriendly -bystander, and it passed round the church in whispers. Rumour, with her -thousand babbling tongues, was soon busy in the churchyard, where the -people had assembled, eager for the reformer's condemnation. They -instantly broke forth like hounds which have recovered a scent. It was at -once proposed to break into the church and pull the duke from the -judgment-seat. When he appeared at the door, he was received with ominous -yells, and was chased and pelted by the mob. Furious and beside himself -with rage, he instantly proceeded to Westminster, where the Parliament was -sitting, and moved that from that day forth all the privileges of the -citizens of London should be annulled, that they should no longer elect a -mayor or sheriff, and that Lord Percy should possess the entire -jurisdiction over them--a severe penalty, it must be owned, for pelting a -duke with mud. - -The following day, the citizens, hearing of this insolent proposal, -snatched up their arms, and swore to take the proud duke's life. After -pillaging the Marshalsea, where Lord Percy resided, they poured down on -the Savoy and killed a priest whom they took to be Percy in disguise. They -then broke all the furniture and threw it into the Thames, leaving only -the bare walls standing. While the mob were shouting at the windows, -feeding the river with torrents of spoiled wealth, or cutting the beds and -tapestry to pieces, the duke and Lord Percy, who had been dining with John -of Ypres, a merchant in the City, escaped in disguise by rowing up the -river to Kingston in an open boat. Eventually, at the entreaties of the -Bishop of London, who pleaded the sanctity of Lent, the rioters dispersed, -having first hung up the duke's arms in a public place as those of a -traitor. The Londoners finally appeased their opponent by carrying to St. -Paul's a huge taper of wax, blazoned with the duke's arms, which was to -burn continually before the image of Our Lady in token of reconciliation. - -This John of Gaunt, fourth son[194] of Edward III., married Blanche, -daughter of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, who died of the plague in 1360, John -succeeding to the title in right of his wife. He married his daughter -Philippa to the King of Portugal, and his daughter Catharine to the Infant -of Spain. From Henry Plantagenet, fourth Earl and first Duke of -Lancaster, the Savoy descended to this John of Ghent, who married that -amiable princess, Blanche Plantagenet, daughter and co-heir of Earl Henry. - -Into this same king-haunted precinct John of France, after the slaughter -at Poitiers, was brought with chivalrous and almost ostentatious humility -by the Black Prince. One thousand nine hundred English lances had routed -with great slaughter eight thousand French. The lanes and moors of -Maupertuis were choked with dead knights; the French king had been -wounded, beaten to the ground, and taken prisoner, together with his son -Philip, by a gentleman of Artois.[195] Sailing from Bordeaux, the Black -Prince arrived at Sandwich with his prisoner, and was received at -Southwark by the citizens of London on May 5, 1357. Triumphal arches were -erected, and tapestry hung from every window. The King of France rode like -a conqueror on a richly trapped cream-coloured horse, while by his side -sat the young prince on a small black palfrey. Some hours elapsed before -the procession could reach Westminster Hall, where King Edward was -surrounded by his prelates, knights, and barons. When John entered, our -king arose, embraced him, and led him to a splendid banquet prepared for -him. The palace of the Savoy was allotted to King John and his son, till -his removal to Windsor. - -Here the royal Frenchman may have been when he heard the tidings of the -ferocity of the Jacquerie, and of the dreadful riots in his capital. To -the Savoy he returned when his son, the Duke of Anjou, broke his parole -and fled to Paris, desirous to exculpate himself of this dishonour, and to -arrange for a crusade to recover Cyprus from the Turk.[196] To his -council, dissuading him from returning, like a second Regulus, to -captivity and perhaps death, the king addressed these memorable words--"If -honour were banished from every other place, it should at least find an -asylum in the breast of kings." - -John was affectionately received by the chivalrous Edward, and again -returned to his old quarters in the Savoy, with his hostages of the blood -royal--"the three lords of the fleur-de-lys." Here he spent several weeks -in giving and receiving entertainments; but before he could proceed to -business, he was attacked with a dangerous illness, and expired in 1364. -His obsequies were performed with regal magnificence, and his corpse was -sent with a splendid retinue to be interred at St. Denis. - -When treaties are broken by statesmen, or unjust wars declared, let the -reader go to the Savoy, and think of that brave promise-keeper, King John -of France. - -During the latter years of King Edward III., John of Gaunt became very -unpopular. "The good Parliament" (1376) remonstrated against the expense -of his unsuccessful wars in Spain, Scotland, and France, and against the -excessive taxation. The duke imprisoned the Speaker, and banished wise -William of Wyckeham from the king's person, but in vain attempted to alter -the law of succession. - -In Wat Tyler's rebellion the duke's palace was the first to be destroyed. -A refusal to pay oppressive poll-tax led to a riot at Fobbing, a village -in Essex; from this place the flame spread like wildfire through the whole -county, and the people rose, led by a priest named Jack Straw. At -Dartford, a tiler bravely beat out the brains of a tax-collector who had -insulted his daughter. Kent instantly rose, took Rochester Castle, and -massed together at Maidstone, under Wat, a tiler, and Ball, a preacher. In -a few days a hundred thousand men, rudely armed with clubs, bills, and -bows, poured over Blackheath and hurried on to London.[197] In Southwark -they demolished the Marshalsea and the King's Bench; then they sacked -Lambeth Palace, destroyed Newgate, fired the house of the Knights -Hospitallers at Clerkenwell, and that of the Knights of St. John at -Highbury, and seizing the Tower, beheaded an archbishop and several -knights. All Flemings hidden in churches were dragged out and put to -death. Yet, with all this intoxication of new liberty, the claims of -these Kentish men were simple and just. They demanded--The abolition of -slavery; the reduction of rent to fourpence an acre; the free liberty of -buying and selling in all fairs and markets; and lastly a general pardon. - -At the great bivouacs at Mile End and on Tower Hill, Wat Tyler's men -required all recruits to swear to be true to King Richard and the Commons, -and to admit no monarch of the name of John.[198] This last clause of the -oath was aimed at John of Gaunt, to whom the people attributed all their -misery. On June 13, 1381, a deluge of billmen, bowmen, artisans, and -ploughmen rolled down on the Savoy. The duke was at the time negotiating -with the Scots on the Borders, while his castles of Leicester and Tutbury -were being plundered. The attack was sudden, and there was no defence. A -proclamation had previously been made by Wat Tyler, that, as the common -object was justice and not plunder, any one found stealing would be put to -death. - -For beauty and stateliness of building, as well as all manner of princely -furniture, there was, says Holinshed, no palace in the realm comparable to -the duke's house that the Kentish and Essex men burnt and marred. They -tore the silken and velvet hangings; they beat up the gold and silver -plate, and threw it into the Thames; they crushed the jewels and mortars, -and poured the dust into the river. One of the men--unfortunate -rogue!--being seen to slip a silver cup into the breast of his doublet, -was tossed into the fire and burnt to death, amid shouts and "fell -cries."[199] The cellars were ruthlessly plundered, probably in spite of -Wat Tyler, and thirty-two of the poor wretches, buried under beams and -stones, were either starved or suffocated. In the wildest of the storm, -some barrels were at last found which were supposed to contain money. They -were flung into the huge bonfire; in an instant they exploded, blew up the -great hall, shook down several houses, killed many men, and reduced the -palace to ruins. That was on the 13th; on the 15th, the Essex men had -dispersed; and Wat Tyler, the impetuous reformer, during a conference -with the king in Smithfield, was slain by a sudden blow from the sword of -Lord Mayor Walworth. - -John of Gaunt died at the Bishop of Ely's palace in Holborn, at Christmas -1398--his old home being now a ruin--and he was buried on the north side -of the high altar of Saint Paul's, beside the Lady Blanche, his first -wife. Instantly on his death, the wilful young king, to the rage of the -people, seized on all his uncle's lands, rents, and revenues, and banished -the duke's attorney, who resisted his shameless theft. Amongst this pile -of plunder the Savoy must have also passed. - -The Savoy had bloomed, and after the bloom came in its due time the "sere -and yellow leaf." The precinct must have remained a waste during the Wars -of the Roses;[200] but its blackened ruins preached their silent lesson in -vain to the turbulent and tormented Londoners. - -In the reign of that dark and wily king, Henry VII., sunshine again fell -on the Savoy. That prince, who was fond of erecting convents, founded on -the old site a hospital, intended to shelter one hundred poor almsmen. It -was not, however, finished when he died, nor was it completed till the -fifteenth year of his son's reign (1524), the year in which the French -were driven out of Italy. - -The hospital, which was dedicated to John the Baptist, was in the form of -a cross, and over the entrance-gate, facing the Strand, was the following -insipid inscription:-- - - "_Hospitium hoc inopi turba Savoia vocatum, - Septimus Henricus solo fundavit ab imo._" - -The master and four brethren were to be priests and to officiate in turns, -standing day and night at the gate to invite in and feed any poor or -distressed persons who passed down the river-side road. If those so -received were pilgrims or travellers, they were to be dismissed the next -morning with a letter of recommendation to the next hospital, and with -money to defray their expenses on the journey. - -In the reign of Edward VI., part of the revenues of the new hospital, to -the value of six hundred pounds, was transferred to Bridewell prison and -Christ's Hospital school for poor orphan children; for already abuses had -crept in, and indiscriminate charity had led to its usual melancholy -results. The old palace had become no mere shelter for the deserving poor, -but a den of loiterers, sham cripples, and vagabonds of either sex, who -begged all day in the fields and came to the Savoy to sleep and sup.[201] - -Queen Mary, whose Spanish blood made her a friend to all monastic -institutions, re-endowed the unlucky place with fresh lands; but it went -on in its old courses till the twelfth year of Elizabeth, who suddenly -pounced in her own stern way on the nest of rogues, and, to the terror of -sinecurists, deprived Thomas Thurland, then master, of his office, for -corruption and embezzlement of the hospital estates. - -We hear nothing more of the unlucky and neglected Hospital of St. John -till the Restoration, when Dr. Henry Killigrew was appointed master, much -to the chagrin and disappointment of the poet Cowley, to whom the sinecure -had been promised by Charles I. and Charles II. - -Cowley, the clever son of a London stationer, had been secretary to the -queen-mother, but returning as a spy to England, was apprehended, and upon -that made his peace with Cromwell. This latter fact the Royalists never -forgave, and considering his play of _The Cutter of Colman Street_ as -caricaturing the old roystering Cavalier officers, they damned his comedy, -lampooned him, and gave the Savoy to Killigrew, father of the court wit. -Upon this the mortified poet wrote his poem of "The Complaint,"[202] -wherein he calls the Savoy the Rachel he had served with "faith and labour -for twice seven years and more," and querulously describes himself as left -alone gasping on the naked beach, while all his fellow voyagers had -marched up to possess the promised land. The poem, though ludicrously -querulous, contains some lines, such as the following, which are truly -beautiful. The muse is reproaching the truant poet. - - "Art thou returned at last," said she, - "To this forsaken place and me, - Thou prodigal who didst so loosely waste, - Of all thy youthful years, the good estate? - Art thou return'd here to repent too late, - And gather husks of learning up at last, - Now the rich harvest-time of life is past, - And winter marches on so fast?" - -With this farewell lament Cowley withdrew "from the tumult and business of -the world," to his long-coveted retirement[203] at pleasant, green -Chertsey, where, seven years after, he died. - -The Savoy, always an abused sinecure, that made the master a rogue and its -inmates professional beggars, was finally suppressed in the reign of Queen -Anne.[204] It was then used as a barrack for five hundred soldiers, and as -a deserters' prison, till the approaches to Waterloo Bridge rendered its -removal necessary. - -Savoy Street occupies the site of the old central Henry VII.'s Tudor gate. -Coal wharves cover the site of the ancient front of the hospital, and the -houses in Lancaster Place, leading to Waterloo Bridge, another part of its -area. - -In 1661, the year after the restoration of Charles II., a celebrated -conference between the Church of England bishops and the Presbyterian -divines took place, with very small result, in the Bishop of London's -lodgings in the Savoy. Among the twelve bishops were Sheldon and Gauden, -the author of _Ikon Basilike_: among the Presbyterians Baxter, Calamy, and -Reynolds. They were to revise the Liturgy, and to discuss rules and forms -of prayer; but there was so much distrust and reserve on both sides, that -at the end of two months the conference came to an untimely end.[205] It -was the bishops' hour of triumph, and no concessions could be expected -from them after their many mortifications. In the same year Charles II. -established a French church in the Savoy, and Dr. Durel preached the first -sermon to the foreign residents in London, July 14, 1661.[206] - -In Queen Anne's time, after its suppression, the Savoy became, like the -Clink and Whitefriars, a sanctuary for fraudulent debtors. On one -occasion, in 1696, a creditor entering that nest of thieves to demand a -debt, was tarred and feathered, carried in a wheelbarrow into the Strand, -and there bound to the May-pole; but some constables coming up dispersed -the rabble and rescued the tormented man from his persecutors.[207] - -Strype, writing about 1720 (George I.), describes the Savoy as a great -ruinous building, divided into several apartments. In one a cooper stored -his hoops and butts; in another there were rooms for deserters, pressed -men, Dutch recruits, and military prisoners. Within the precinct there was -the king's printing-press, where gazettes, proclamations, and Acts of -Parliament were printed; and also a German Lutheran church, a French -Protestant church, and a Dissenting chapel; besides "harbours for refugees -and poor people."[208] The worthy writer thus describes the hall of the -old hospital:-- - -"In the midst of its buildings is a very spacious hall, the walls three -foot broad, of stone without and brick and stone inward. The ceiling is -very curiously built with wood, having knobs in one place hanging down, -and images of angels holding before their breasts coats of arms, but -hardly discoverable. One is a cross gules between four stars, or else -mullets. It is covered with lead, but in divers places open to the -weather. Towards the east end of the hall is a fair cupola with glass -windows, but all broken, which makes it probable the hall was as long -again, since cupolas are wont to be built about the middle of great -halls." - -In 1754 (George II.) clandestine marriages were performed at the Savoy -church; and the advantages of secrecy, privacy, and access by water were -boldly advertised in the papers of the day. The _Public Advertiser_ of -January 2, 1754, contains the following impudent and touting -advertisement:-- - -"BY AUTHORITY.--Marriages performed with the utmost privacy, secrecy, and -regularity, at the ancient royal chapel of St. John the Baptist in the -Savoy, where regular and authentic registers have been kept from the time -of the Reformation (being two hundred years and upwards) to this day. The -expense not more than one guinea, the five shilling stamp included. There -are five private ways by land to this chapel, and two by water." - -At this time the Savoy was still a large cruciform building, with two rows -of mullioned windows facing the Thames; a court to the north of it was -called the Friary. The north front, the most ornamented, had large pointed -windows and embattled parapets, lozenged with flint. - -At the west end, in 1816, stood the guard-house, or military prison, its -gateway secured by a strong buttress, and embellished with Henry VII.'s -arms and the badges of the rose and the portcullis: above these were two -hexagonal oriel windows. - -In 1816, when the ruins were to be removed, crowds thronged to see the -remains of John of Gaunt's old palace.[209] The workmen found it difficult -to destroy the mossy and ivy-covered walls and the large north window; the -masses of flint, stone, and brick being eight or ten feet thick. The -screw-jack was powerless to destroy the work of Chaucer's time. The masons -had to dig, pickaxe holes, and loosen the foundations, then to drive -crowbars into the windows and fasten ropes to them, so as to pull the -stones inwards. The outer buttresses would in any other way have defied -armies. - -Some of the stone was soft and white. This, according to tradition, was -that brought from Caen by Queen Mary. The industrious costermongers -discovered this, and cut it into blocks to sell as hearthstones. A fire -about 1777 had thrown down much of the hospital, so that the old level was -fifteen or twenty feet deeper. The vaults and subterranean passages were -unexplored. The wells were filled up. The workmen then pulled down the -German chapel, which stood next Somerset House, and the red-brick house in -the Savoy Square that was used for barracks. "The entrance," says a writer -of 1816, "to the Strand or Waterloo Bridge will be spacious, and the -houses in the Strand now only stop the opening."[210] - -The Chapel of St. Mary, Savoy, is a late and plain Perpendicular -structure, with a fine coloured ceiling. This small, quiet chapel holds a -silent congregation of illustrious dead. - -[Illustration: THE SAVOY CHAPEL.] - -Here are interred Sir Robert and Lady Douglas (temp. James I.); the -Countess of Dalhousie, daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, Lieutenant of the -Tower, and sister to that admirable wife, Mrs. Hutchinson, who died in -1663; William Chaworth, who died in 1582, a member of that Nottinghamshire -family, one of whom, Lord Byron's predecessor, killed in a tavern duel; -and Mrs. Anne Killigrew, who died in 1685, the paintress and poetess on -whom Dryden wrote an extravagant but glorious ode, beginning-- - - "That youngest virgin daughter of the skies, - Made in the last promotion of the blest."[211] - -This accomplished young lady was daughter of Dr. Henry Killigrew, and -niece of Thomas Killigrew the wit, of whom Denham, the poet, bitterly -said-- - - "Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killigrew ne'er writ, - Combined in one they'd made a matchless wit." - -The father of Mistress Killigrew was author of a tragedy called _The -Conspiracy_, which both Ben Jonson and Lord Falkland eulogised. Even old -Anthony Wood says, in his own quaint way, that this lady "was a Grace for -beauty, and a Muse for wit."[212] - -We must add to this list Sir Richard and Lady Rokeby, who died in 1523, -and Gawin Douglas, that good Bishop of Dunkeld who first translated Virgil -into Lowland Scotch. He was pensioned by Henry VIII., was a friend of -Polydore Virgil, and died of the plague in London in 1521. The brass is on -the floor, about three feet south of the stove in the centre of the -chapel.[213] - -Dr. Cameron, the last victim executed for the daring rebellion of 1745, -lies here also in good company among knights and bishops. His monument, by -M. L. Watson, was not erected till 1846. Here, too, is that great admiral -of Elizabeth--George, third Earl of Cumberland, who used to wear the glove -which his queen had given him, set in diamonds, in his tilting helmet. He -died in the Duchy House in the Savoy, October 3, 1605; but his bowels -alone were buried here, the rest of his body lies at Skipton. He was the -father of the brave, proud Countess, who, when Charles II.'s secretary -pressed on her notice a candidate for Appleby, wrote that celebrated -cannon-shot of a letter:-- - - "I have been bullied by an usurper; I have been neglected by a court, - but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man shan't stand. - - "ANNE, DORSET, PEMBROKE, AND MONTGOMERY." - -Here also there is a tablet to the memory of Richard Lander, the -traveller, originally a servant of that energetic discoverer Captain -Clapperton, who was the first to cross Africa from Tripoli and Benin. -Lander had the honour also of first discovering the course of the Niger. -He died in February 1834, from a gunshot-wound, at Fernando Po, aged only -thirty-one. Such are the lion-men who extend the frontiers of English -commerce. - -In the Savoy reposes a true poet, but an unhappy man--George Wither, the -satirist and idyllist, who died in 1667, and lies here between the east -door and the south end of the chapel.[214] He was one of Cromwell's -major-generals, and had a hard time of it after the Restoration. It was to -save Wither's life that Denham used that humorous petition--"As long as -Wither lives I should not be considered the worst poet in England." - -Wither anticipated Wordsworth in simple earnestness and a regard for the -humblest subjects. The soldier-poet himself says-- - - "In my former days of bliss, - Her divine skill taught me this: - That from everything I saw - I could some invention draw, - And raise pleasure to her height - Through the meanest object's sight, - By the murmur of a spring, - By the least bough's rustling."[215] - -These charming lines were written when Wither lay in the Marshalsea, -imprisoned for writing a satire--_Abuses stripped and whipped_. - -In the same church lies one of the smallest of military heroes--Lewis de -Duras, Earl of Feversham, who died in the reign of Queen Anne. He was -nephew of the great Turenne, and was one of the few persons present when -Charles II. received extreme unction. He commanded, or rather followed, -King James II.'s troops at Sedgemoor, in 1685, and at that momentous -crisis "thought only of eating and sleeping."[216] Upon this shambling -general the Duke of Buckingham wrote one of his latest lampoons.[217] - -In 1552 the first manufactory of glass in England was established at the -old Savoy House. It was here that, in 1658, the Independents met and drew -up their famous Declaration of Faith. In 1671 the Royal Society's -publications were printed here. In Dryden's time, the wounded English -sailors who had been mangled by Van Tromp's and De Ruyter's shot were -nursed here. The good and witty Fuller, who wrote the _Worthies_ lectured -here. Half-crazed Alexander Cruden, who compiled the laborious Concordance -to the Bible, lived here; and here grinding Jacob Tonson had a warehouse. - -In 1843 the Queen repaired the Savoy Chapel, in virtue of her being the -patron of it. The duty, indeed, fell upon the Crown, for the chapel stood -in the Liberty of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the office of the Duchy is -in Lancaster Place, to the right as you approach Waterloo Bridge. - -In July 1864 the Savoy Chapel was unfortunately destroyed by a fire -occasioned by an explosion of gas. The coloured ceiling, the altar window, -containing a figure of St. John the Baptist, and a solitary niche with -some tabernacle work at the east end, all perished. It was shortly -afterwards restored and decorated afresh throughout, at the cost of Her -Majesty. - -Mr. George Augustus Sala has admirably sketched the present condition of -the Precinct,--its almost solemn silence and its gravity,--its loneliness, -as of Juan Fernandez, Norfolk Island, or Key West,[218] although on the -very verge of the roaring world of London, and but five minutes' walk from -Temple Bar. - -The royal property is chiefly covered now by shops, public-houses, and -printing-offices. The Precinct still retains traditions of the vagabond -squatters who, till about the middle of the last century, assumed -possession of the ruinous tenements in the Savoy, till the Footguards -turned them out, and the houses were pulled down, rebuilt, and let to -respectable tenants. - -The old churchyard has long since been sealed up by the Board of Health, -but the trees and grass still flourish round the old stones. Clean-shaved, -nattily dressed actors come to this quiet purlieu to study their parts. -Musicians of theatrical orchestras, penny-a-liners, and printers haunt the -bar of the Savoy tavern. Those quiet houses with the white door-steps, -shining brass plates and green blinds, are inhabited by accountants' -clerks, retired and retiring small tradesmen, and commission agents -interested in pale ale, pickles, and Wallsend coals. - -"So," says Mr. Sala, "run the sands of life through this quiet hour-glass; -so glides the life away in the old Precinct. At its base a river runs for -all the world; at its summit is the brawling, raging Strand; on either -side are darkness and poverty and vice, the gloomy Adelphi arches, the -Bridge of Sighs that men call Waterloo. But the Precinct troubles itself -little with the noise and tumult; it sleeps well through life without its -fitful fever." - -Wearied of its old grandeur, pondering, as old men ponder, over its dead -kings--for Wat Tyler and his Kentish men need no Riot Act to quiet them -now--the Savoy and its crowned ghosts drift on with our methodical planet, -meekly awaiting the death-blow that time must some day inflict. - -Tait Wilkinson's father was a minister of the Savoy. Garrick helped to -transport him by informing against him for illegally performing the -marriage ceremony. In return, Garrick helped forward the son--"an exotic," -as he called him, rather than an actor--but a wonderful mimic, not only of -voice and manner, but even of features. He used to reproduce Foote's -imitations of the older actors--as Mathews afterward imitated Wilkinson, -who in his time had imitated Foote, to that impudent buffoon's great -vexation. - -The _Examiner_, whose office is near Waterloo Bridge, was started by Leigh -Hunt and his brother John in 1808. It began by boldly asserting the -necessity for reform, lampooning the Regent, and attacking the cant and -excesses of Methodism. In 1812 both the Hunts were found guilty of having -called the Prince Regent "the Prince of Whales" and "a fat Adonis of -fifty," and were sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Horsemonger Lane -gaol, and to pay a fine of £500. At a later period, Hazlitt joined the -paper, and wrote for it the essays reprinted (in 1817) under the title of -_The Round Table_.[219] Close to it is the office of the _Spectator_, -another paper of the same calibre and class, and more important than the -_Examiner_ now, though its early history is not so interesting. - -Waterloo Bridge, one of those marvels built by the industrious -simple-hearted John Rennie, was opened by the Prince Regent in 1817. Dupin -declared it was a colossal monument worthy of Sesostris or the Cæsars; and -what most struck Canova in England was that the foolish Chinese Bridge -then in St. James's Park should be the production of the Government, while -Waterloo Bridge was the result of mere private enterprise.[220] The bridge -did not settle more than a few inches after the centres were struck. - -The project of erecting the Strand Bridge, as it was first called, was -started by a company in 1809, a joint-stock-fever year. Rennie received -£1000 a year for himself and assistants, or £7: 7s. a day, and expenses. -The bridge consists of nine arches, of 120 feet span, with piers 20 feet -thick, the arches being plain semi-ellipses, with their crowns 30 feet -above high water. Over the points of each pier are placed Doric column -pilasters, after a design taken from the Temple of Segesta in Sicily. In -the construction of the bridge the chief features of Rennie's management -were the following:--The employment of coffer-dams in founding the piers; -new methods of constructing, floating, and fixing the centres; the -introduction and working of Aberdeen granite to an extent before unknown; -and the adoption of elliptical stone arches of an unusual width. - -Nearly all the bur stone was brought to the bridge by one horse, called -"Old Jack." On one occasion the driver, a steady man, but too fond of his -morning dram, kept "Old Jack" waiting a longer time than usual at the -public-house, upon which he poked his head in at the open door, and gently -drew out his master by the coat collar.[221] - -Rennie, the architect of the three great London bridges, the engineer of -the Plymouth Breakwater and of the London and East India Docks, and a -drainer of the Fens, was the son of a small farmer in East Lothian, and -was born in 1761.[222] - -[Illustration: THE SAVOY PRISON, 1793.] - - - - -[Illustration: DURHAM HOUSE, 1790.] - - -CHAPTER VII. - -FROM THE SAVOY TO CHARING CROSS. - - -Old York House stood on the site of Buckingham and Villiers Streets. In -ancient times, York House had been the inn of the Bishops of Norwich. -Abandoned to the crown, King Henry VIII. gave the place to that gay knight -Charles Brandon, the husband of his beautiful sister Mary, the Queen of -France. When the Church rose again and resumed its scarlet pomp, the house -was given to Queen Mary's Lord Chancellor, Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of -York, in exchange for Suffolk House in Southwark, which was presented by -Queen Mary to the see of York in recompense for York House, Whitehall, -taken from Wolsey by her father. On the fall of that minister, once more a -change took place, and the house passed to the Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas -Bacon, who rented it of the see of York. - -In this house the great Francis Bacon was born, on the 22d of January, -1561. York House stood near the royal palace, from which it was parted by -lanes and fields. Its courtyard and great gates opened to the street. The -main front, with its turrets and water stair, faced the river. The garden, -falling by an easy slope to the Thames, commanded a view as far south as -the Lollards' Tower at Lambeth, as far east as London Bridge. "All the gay -river life[223] swept past the lawn, the salmon-fishers spreading their -nets, the watermen paddling gallants to Bankside, and Shakspere's theatre, -the city barges rowing past in procession, and the queen herself, with her -train of lords and ladies, shooting by in her journeys from the Tower to -Whitehall Stairs. From the lattice out of which he gazed, the child could -see over the palace roof the pinnacles and crosses of the old abbey." - -The Lord Keeper Pickering died at York House in 1596, and Lord Chancellor -Egerton in 1616 or 1617. In 1588 it is supposed the Earl of Essex tried to -obtain the house, as Archbishop Sandys wrote to Burghley begging him to -resist some such demand. Essex was in ward here for six months, fretting -under the care of Lord Keeper Egerton. - -"York House was the scene," says a clever pleader for a great man's good -fame, "of Bacon's gayest hours, and of his sharpest griefs--of his highest -magnificence, and of his profoundest prostration. In it his studious -childhood passed away. In it his father died. On going into France, to the -court of Henry IV., he left it a lively, splendid home; on his return from -that country, he found it a house of misery and death. From its gates he -wandered forth with his widowed mother into the world. Though it passed -into other hands, his connection with it never ceased. Under Egerton its -gates again opened to him. It was the scene of that inquiry into the Irish -treason when he was the queen's historian. During his courtship of Alice -Barnham, York House was his second home. In one of its chambers he watched -by the sick-bed of Ellesmere, and on Ellesmere's surrender of the Seals, -presented the dying Chancellor with the coronet of Brackley. It became his -own during his reign as Keeper and Chancellor. From it he dated his great -Instauration; in its banqueting-hall he feasted poets and scholars; from -one of its bed-rooms he wrote his Submission and Confession; in the same -room he received the Earls of Arundel, Pembroke, and Southampton, as -messengers from the House of Lords; there he surrendered the Great Seal. -To regain York House, when it had passed into other hands, was one of the -warmest passions of his heart, and the resolution to retain it against the -eager desires of Buckingham was one of the secret causes of his fall." - -"No," said the fallen great man; "York House is the house wherein my -father died and wherein I first breathed, and there will I yield my last -breath, if it so please God, and the king will give me leave."[224] - -Some of the saddest and some of the happiest events of Bacon's life must -have happened in the Strand. From thence he rode, sumptuous in purple -velvet from cap to shoe, along the lanes to Marylebone Chapel, to wed his -bride Alice Barnham. - -York House was famous for its aviary, on which Bacon had expended £300. It -was in the garden here that we are told the Chancellor once stood looking -at the fishers below throwing their nets. Bacon offered them so much for a -draught, but they refused. Up came the net with only two or three little -fish; upon which his lordship told them that "hope was a good breakfast, -but an ill supper."[225] - -It was on the death of his friend, Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, and on his -own installation, that Bacon bought the lease of York House from the -former's son, the first Earl of Bridgewater. He found the rooms vast and -naked. His friends and votaries furnished the house, giving him books and -drawings, stands of arms, cabinets, jewels, rings, and boxes of money. -Lady Cæsar contributed a massive gold chain, and Prince Charles a diamond -ring. - -Bacon, when young, had been often taken to court by his father; and the -queen, delighting in the gravity and wisdom of the boy, used to call him -her "young Lord Keeper." Even then his mind was philosophically observant; -and it is said that he used to leave his playmates in St. James's Fields -to try and discover the cause of the echo in a certain brick conduit.[226] - -At Durham House, on January 22, 1620, the year in which he published his -_magnum opus_, the _Novum Organon_, and a twelvemonth before his disgrace, -Bacon gave a grand banquet to his friends. Ben Jonson was one of the -guests, and is supposed to have himself recited a set of verses, in which -he says-- - - "Hail th' happy genius of the ancient pile! - How comes it that all things so about thee smile,-- - The fire, the wine, the men?--and in the midst - Thou stand'st as if some mystery thou didst. - - "England's High Chancellor, the destined heir, - In his soft cradle to his father's chair, - Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full, - Out of their choicest and their richest wool. - 'Tis a brave cause of joy. * * - Give me a deep-crowned bowl, that I may sing, - In raising him, the wisdom of my king." - -Who till he dies can boast of having been happy? The year after, the -king's anger fell like an axe upon the great courtier. Solitary and -comfortless at Gorhambury, Bacon petitioned the Lords in almost abject -terms to be allowed to return to York House, where he could advance his -studies and consult his physicians, creditors, and friends, so that "out -of the carcass of dead and rotten greatness, as out of Samson's lion, -there may be honey gathered for future times." Sir Edward Sackville prayed -him in vain to remove his straitest shackles by surrendering York House to -the king's favourite; and so did his creditor, Mr. Meautys, who, says -Bacon, used him "coarsely," and meant "to saw him asunder." "The great -lords," says Meautys, "long to be in York House. I know your lordship -cannot forget they have such a savage word among them as _fleecing_." This -word has grown tame in modern times, but it had a terrible significance in -those days, when it hinted at flaying. - -An episode about Bacon's younger days may be pardoned here. The Gray's Inn -Chambers occupied by Bacon were in Coney Court, looking over the gardens -and past St. Pancras Church to Hampstead Hill. They are no longer -standing. The site of them was No. 1 Gray's Inn Square. Bacon began to -keep his terms at the age of eighteen, in June 1579. His uncle Burleigh -was bencher in this inn, and his cousins, Robert, Cecil, and Nicholas -Trott, students. In his latter days, when Attorney-General, and even when -Lord Chancellor, he retained a lease of his old rooms in Coney Court. He -was called to the bar when he was twenty-one, in 1582; and as soon as he -was called he appeared in Fleet Street in his serge and bands, as a sign -that he was going to practise for his bread. At the close of his first -session, however, he was raised to the bench. Bacon always remained -attached to Gray's Inn; he laid out the gardens, planted the elm-trees, -raised the terrace, pulled down and rebuilt the chambers, dressed the dumb -show, led off the dances, and invented the masques.[227] - -After Lord Bacon's disgrace, the first Duke of Buckingham of the Villiers -family borrowed the house from Toby Mathew, the courtly archbishop of -York, in hopes of a final exchange, which did eventually take place.[228] -In 1624, two years before Bacon's death, a bill was passed to enable the -king to exchange some lands for York House, so coveted by his proud -favourite. Buckingham soon partially pulled down the old mansion, and -lined the walls of his temporary structure with huge mirrors. Here he -entertained the foreign ambassadors. Of all his splendour, the only relic -left is the water gate usually ascribed to Inigo Jones. - -This Duke of Buckingham, the "Steenie" of King James, and of Scott's -_Fortunes of Nigel_, was the younger son of a poor knight, who won James -I. by his personal beauty, vivacity, and accomplishments--by his dancing, -jousting, leaping, and masquerading. At first page, cupbearer, and -gentleman of the bedchamber, he rose to power on the disgrace of Carr. - -It was at York House--"Yorschaux," as he calls it, with the usual -insolence and carelessness of his nation--that Bassompierre visited the -duke in 1626. He praises the mansion as more richly fitted up than any -other he had ever seen.[229] Yet the duke did not live here, but at -Wallingford House, on the site of the Admiralty, keeping York House for -pageants and levees, till Felton's knife severed his evil soul from his -body, August 23, 1628. His son, the Zimri of Dryden, was born at -Wallingford House. - -The "superstitious pictures" at York House were sold in 1645,[230] and the -house given by Cromwell to General Fairfax, whose daughter married the -second and last Duke of Buckingham, of the Villiers line, the favourite of -Charles II., the rival of Rochester, the plotter with Shaftesbury, the -selfish profligate who drove Lee into Bedlam and starved Samuel Butler. - -In 1661 the galleries of York House were famous for the antique busts and -statues that had belonged to Rubens on his visit to this country, when he -painted James I. in jackboots being hauled heavenward by a flock of -angels. In the riverside gardens--not far, I presume, from the water -gate--stood John of Bologna's "Cain and Abel," which the King of Spain had -given to Prince Charles on his luckless visit to Madrid, and which Charles -had bestowed on his dangerous favourite.[231] - -The great rooms, even then emblazoned with the lions and peacocks of the -Villiers and Manners families, were traversed by Evelyn, who describes the -house and gardens as much ruined through neglect. Pepys also, who thrust -his nose into every show-place, went to York House when the Russian -ambassador was there, and rapturously and poetically vows he saw "the -remains of the noble soul of the late Duke of Buckingham appearing in the -house in every place, in the door-cases and the windows,"[232]--odd places -for a noble soul to make its abode! - -The Duke of Buckingham, in King Charles's days, had turned York House into -a treasury of art. He bought Rubens's private collection of pictures for -£10,000, Sir Henry Wotten having purchased them for him at Venice. He had -seventeen Tintorets, and thirteen works of Paul Veronese. For an "Ecce -Homo" by Titian, containing nineteen figures as large as life, he refused -£7000 from the Earl of Arundel. During the Civil Wars the pictures were -removed by his son to Antwerp, and there sold by auction. - -Who can look down Buckingham Street in the twilight, and see the pediment -of the old water gate of the duke's house, without repeating to himself -the scourging lines of Dryden when he drew Buckingham as Zimri?-- - - "A man so various that he seem'd to be - Not one but all mankind's epitome; - Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong; - Was everything by turns, and nothing long; - But, in the course of one revolving moon, - Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon."[233] - -In vain Settle eulogised the mercurial and licentious spendthrift. -Settle's verse is forgotten, but we all remember Pope's ghastly but -exaggerated picture of the rake's death in "the worst inn's worst room"-- - - "No wit to flatter left of all his store, - No fool to laugh at, which he valued more, - There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, - And fame, this lord of useless thousand ends." - -The first Duke of Buckingham, to judge by Clarendon, who was the friend of -all friends of absolutism, must have been a man of magnificent generosity -and "flowing courtesy," a staunch friend, and a desperate and unrelenting -hater; but he was an enemy of the people; and had he survived the knife of -Felton he must have been the first of a faithless king's bad counsellors -to perish on the scaffold. - -[Illustration: THE WATER GATE, 1860.] - -The second duke was a base-tempered, shameless profligate, a fickle, -dishonest intriguer, who perished at last, a poor worn-out man, in a -farmer's house in Yorkshire, from a cold caught while hunting. He was the -author of several obscene lampoons, from which Swift took some hints; and -he was the godfather of a mock tragedy, _The Rehearsal_, in which he was -helped by Martin Clifford and Butler, the author of _Hudibras_, the latter -of whom he left to starve. Baxter, it is true, drops a redeeming word or -two on behalf of the gay scoundrel; but then Buckingham had intrigued with -the Puritans. - -York Stairs, the only monument of Zimri's splendour left, stand now in the -middle of the gardens of the new Embankment. Till the Embankment was made, -the gate was approached by a small enclosed terrace planted with lime -trees. The water gate consists of a central archway and two side windows. -Four rusticated columns support an arched pediment and two couchant lions -holding shields. On a scroll are the Villiers arms. On the street side -rise three arches, flanked by pilasters and an entablature, on which are -four stone globes. Above the keystone of the arches are shields and -anchors. In the centre are the arms of Villiers impaling those of Manners. -The Villiers' motto, _Fidei coticula crux_, "The cross is the whetstone of -faith," is inscribed on the frieze. The gate, as it now stands, is -ridiculous, and is almost buried in the soil. It would be a charity to -remove it to a water-side position. - -In 1661, on the day of the great affray at the Tower Wharf between the -retinues of the French and Spanish ambassadors, arising out of a dispute -for precedence, Pepys saw the latter return to York House in triumph, -guarded with fifty drawn swords, having killed several Frenchmen. "It is -strange," says the amusing quidnunc, "to see how all the city did rejoice, -and, indeed, we do naturally all love the Spanish and hate the French." -Worthy man! the fact was, all time-servers were then agog about the queen -who was expected from Portugal. From York House Pepys went peering about -the French ambassador's, and found his retainers all like dead men and -shaking their heads. "There are no men in the world," he says, "of a more -insolent spirit when they do well, and more abject if they miscarry, than -these people are."[234] - -In 1683 the learned and amiable John Evelyn, being then on the Board of -Trade, took a house in Villiers Street for the winter, partly for business -purposes, partly to educate his daughters.[235] Evelyn's works gave a -valuable impetus to art and agriculture. - -Addison's jovial friend, that delightful writer, Sir Richard Steele, lived -in Villiers Street from 1721 to 1724, after the death of his wife, the -jealous "Prue." Here he wrote his _Conscious Lovers_. The big, -swarthy-faced ex-trooper, so contrasting with his grave and colder friend -Addison, is a salient personage in the English Temple of Fame. - -Duke Street, built circa 1675,[236] was named from the last Duke of -Buckingham. Humphrey Wanley, the great Harleian librarian, lived here, and -the son of Shadwell, the poet and Dryden's enemy, who was an eminent -physician, and inherited much of his father's excellent sense. - -In 1672 the "chemyst, statesman, and buffoon" Duke of Buckingham sold York -House and gardens for £30,000 to a brewer and woodmonger, who pulled it -down and laid out the present streets, naming them, with due respect to -rank and wealth, even in a rascal, George Street, Villiers Street, Duke -Street, and Buckingham Street. In 1668 their rental was £1359: 10s.[237] - -In Charles II.'s time waterworks were started at York Buildings by a -company chartered to supply the West end with water, but they failed, -being in advance of the time. The company, however, did not concentrate -its energies on waterworks; it gave concerts, bought up forfeited estates -in Scotland, and started many wild and eccentric projects, in some of -which Steele figured prominently. The company has long been forgotten, -though kept in memory by a tall water tower, which was standing in the -reign of George III. - -In Buckingham Street, built in 1675, Samuel Pepys, the diarist, came to -live in 1684. The house, since rebuilt, was the last on the west side, and -looked on the Thames. It had been his friend Hewer's before him. A view of -the library shows us the tall plain book-cases, and a central window -looking on the river. Pepys, the son of an army tailor, and as fond of -dress and great people as might be expected of a tailor's son, was for a -long time Secretary of the Admiralty under Charles II. He was President of -the Royal Society; and it is largely to his five folio books of ballads -that we owe Dr. Percy's useful compilation, _The Relics of Ancient -Poetry_. Pepys died in 1703, at the house of his friend Hewer, at Clapham. - -Pepys's house (No. 14) became afterwards, in the summer of 1824, the home -of Etty, the painter, and remained so till within a few months of his -death in 1849. Etty first took the ground floor (afterwards occupied by -Mr. Stanfield), then the top floor; the special object of his ambition -being to watch sunsets over the river, which he loved as much as Turner -did, who frequently said, "There is finer scenery on its banks than on -those of any river in Italy." Its ebb and flow, Etty used to declare, was -like life, and "the view from Lambeth to the Abbey not unlike Venice." In -those river-side rooms the artists of two generations have -assembled--Fuseli, Flaxman, Holland, Constable, and Hilton--then Turner, -Maclise, Dyce, Herbert, and all the younger race. Etty's rooms looked on -to a terrace, with a small cottage at one end; the keeper once was a man -named Hewson, supposed to be the original Strap of _Roderick Random_.[238] -An amiable, dreamy genius was the son of the miller and gingerbread-maker -of York. - -The witty Earl of Dorset lived in this street in 1681. - -Opposite Pepys's house, and on the east side (left-hand corner), was a -house where Peter the Great lodged when in England. Here, after rowing -about the Thames, watching the boat-building, or pulling to Deptford and -back, this brave half-savage used to return and spend his rough evenings -with Lord Caermarthen, drinking a pint of hot brandy and pepper, after -endless flasks of wine. It was certainly "brandy for heroes" in this case. - -Lord Caermarthen was at this time Lord President of the Council, and had -been appointed Peter's cicerone by King William. The Russian czar was a -hard drinker, and on one occasion is said to have drunk a pint of brandy, -a bottle of sherry, and eight flasks of sack, after which he calmly went -to the play. While in York Buildings, the rough czar was so annoyed with -the vulgar curiosity of intrusive citizens, that he would sometimes rise -from his dinner and leave the room in a rage. Here the Quakers forced -themselves upon him, and presented him with _Barclay's Apology_, after -which the czar attended their meeting in Gracechurch Street. He once asked -them of what use they were in any kingdom, since they would not bear arms. -On taking his farewell of King William, Peter drew a rough ruby, valued at -£10,000, from his waistcoat pocket, and presented it to him screwed up in -brown paper.[239] He went back just in time to crush the Strelitzes, -imprison his sister Sophia, and wage war on Charles XII. The great -reformer was only twenty-six years old when he visited England. - -In 1706 Robert Harley, Esq., afterwards Swift's great patron and Earl of -Oxford, lived here;[240] and (1785) John Henderson, the actor, died in -this street. - -Walter, Lord Hungerford, of Farleigh Castle, Somerset, took the Duke of -Orleans prisoner at Agincourt. He was Lord High Steward of Henry V. and -one of the executors to his will, and Lord High Treasurer in the reign of -Henry VI. This illustrious noble was the son of Sir Thomas de Hungerforde, -who in 51 Edward III. was the first to take the chair as Speaker of the -House of Commons. - -Hungerford Market covered the site of the seat of the Hungerford family. -Pepys mentions a fire at the house of old Lady Hungerford in Charles II.'s -time. - -Sir Edward (her husband), created a Knight of the Bath at the coronation -of Charles II., pulled down the old mansion and divided it in 1680 into -several houses, enclosing also a market-place. On the north side of the -market-house was a bust of one of the family in a full-bottomed wig.[241] -It grew a disused and ill-favoured place before 1833. When a new market -(Fowler, architect) was opened, it was intended to put an end to the -monopoly of Billingsgate. The old market had at first answered well for -fruit and vegetables, as there was no need of porters from the water side; -but by 1720 Covent Garden had beaten it off.[242] It attempted too much in -rivalling at once Leadenhall and Billingsgate, and failed--only a few -fishmongers lingering on to the last. - -In 1845 a suspension bridge, crossing from Hungerford to Lambeth (built -under Mr. I. K. Brunel's supervision), was opened. It consisted of three -spans, and two brick towers in the Italian style; the main span, at the -time of its erection, was larger than that of any other in the country, -and only second to that of the bridge at Fribourg. It cost £110,000, and -consumed more than 10,000 tons of iron.[243] - -In the same year the bridge was sold to the original proprietors for -£226,000, but the purchase was never carried out. It was replaced in 1864 -by a railway bridge, and the market itself was filled up by an enormous -railway station. The market had sunk to zero years before. In 1850 some -rogue of a speculator had opened in it a pretended exhibition of the -surplus articles rejected for want of room from the glass palace in Hyde -Park. It proved a total failure, and swallowed up a vast sum of money and -a fine northern estate or two. Latterly it had become a gratuitous -music-hall, a billiard-room, and a penny-ice house, conducted by an -Italian. - -The railway station, built by Mr. Barry, the son of the architect of the -New Houses of Parliament, faces the Strand. It is of a most creditable -design, and the high Mansard roofs, which surmounted the hotel which forms -its front, are of a freer and grander character than those of any modern -London building. A model of the Eleanor Cross has been erected in the -courtyard in front of it. This building is one of the first omens of -better things that we have yet seen in our still terribly mean and ugly -city. - -Craven Street was called Spur Alley till 1742.[244] Grinling Gibbons, the -great wood-carver, born at Rotterdam, and whose genius John Evelyn -discovered, lived here after leaving the Belle Sauvage Yard. Here he must -have fashioned those fragile strings of birds and fruit and flowers that -adorn so many city churches, and the houses of so many English noblemen. -At No. 7, in 1775, lodged the great Benjamin Franklin, then no longer a -poor printer, but the envoy of the American colonies. Here Lords Howe and -Stanhope visited him to propose terms from Lords Camden and Chatham, but -unfortunately only in vain.[245] That weak and unfortunate man, the Rev. -Mr. Hackman, who shot Miss Ray, the actress and the mistress of Lord -Sandwich, who had encouraged his suit, lived in this street. - -James Smith, one of the authors of the _Rejected Addresses_,--a series of -parodies rivalled only by those of _Bon Gaultier_, lived at No. 27. It was -on his own street that he wrote the well-known epigram--[246] - - "In Craven Street, Strand, the attorneys find place, - And ten dark coal barges are moor'd at its base. - Fly, Honesty, fly! seek some safer retreat: - There's _craft_ in the river and _craft_ in the street." - -But Sir George Rose capped this in return, retorting in extemporaneous -lines, written after dinner:-- - - "Why should Honesty fly to some safer retreat, - From attorneys and barges?--'od rot 'em! - For the lawyers are _just_ at the top of the street, - And the barges are _just_ at the bottom." - -James Smith, the intellectual hero of this street, the son of a solicitor -to the Ordnance, was born in 1775. In 1802 he joined the staff of the -_Pic-Nic_ newspaper, with Combe, Croker, Cumberland, and that mediocre -poet, Sir James Bland Burgess. It changed its name to the _Cabinet_, and -died in 1803. From 1807 to 1817 James Smith contributed to the _Monthly -Mirror_ his "Horace in London." In 1812 came out the _Rejected Addresses_, -inimitable parodies by himself and his brother, not merely of the manner -but of the very mode of thought of Wordsworth, Cobbett, Southey, -Coleridge, Crabbe, Lord Byron, Scott, etc. The copyright, originally -offered to Mr. Murray for £20, but declined, was purchased by him in 1819, -after the sixteenth edition, for £131; so much for the foresight of -publishers. The book has since deservedly gone through endless editions, -and has not been approached even by the talented parody writers of -_Punch_. Those who wish to see the story of this publication in detail, -must hunt it up in the edition of the _Addresses_ illustrated by George -Cruickshank. - -Mr. Smith was the chief deviser of the substance of the _Entertainments_ -of the elder Charles Mathews. He wrote the _Country Cousins_ in 1820, and -in the two succeeding years the _Trip to France_ and the _Trip to -America_. For these last two works the author received a thousand pounds. -"A thousand pounds!" he used to ejaculate, shrugging his shoulders, "and -all for nonsense."[247] - -James Smith was just the man for Mathews, with his slight frameworks of -stories filled up with songs, jokes, puns, wild farcical fancies, and -merry conceits, and here and there among the motley, with true touches of -wit, pathos, and comedy, and faithful traits of life and character, such -as only a close observer of society and a sound thinker could pen. - -He was lucky enough to obtain a legacy of £300 for a complimentary epigram -on Mr. Strahan, the king's printer. Being patted on the head when a boy by -Chief-Justice Mansfield, in Highgate churchyard, and once seeing Horace -Walpole on his lawn at Twickenham, were the two chief historical events of -Mr. Smith's quiet life. The four reasons that kept so clever a man -employed on mere amateur trifling were these--an indolent disinclination -to sustained work, a fear of failure, a dislike to risk a well-earned -fame, and a foreboding that literary success might injure his practice as -a lawyer. His favourite visits were to Lord Mulgrave's, Mr. Croker's, -Lord Abinger's, Lady Blessington's, and Lord Harrington's. - -Pretty Lady Blessington used to say of him, that "James Smith, if he had -not been a _witty_ man, must have been a _great_ man." He died in his -house in Craven Street, with the calmness of a philosopher, on the 24th of -December 1839, in the sixty-fifth year of his age.[248] Fond of society, -witty without giving pain, a bachelor, and therefore glad to escape from a -solitary home, James Smith seems to have been the model of a diner-out. - -Caleb Whitefoord, a wine merchant in Craven Street, and an excellent -connoisseur in old pictures, was one of the legacy-hunters who infested -the studio of Nollekens, the miserly sculptor of Mortimer Street. He was a -foppish dresser, and was remarkable for a dashing three-cornered hat, with -a sparkling black button and a loop upon a rosette. He wore a wig with -five tiers of curls, of the Garrick cut, and he was one of the last to -wear such a monstrosity. This crafty wine merchant used to distribute -privately the most whimsical of his _Cross Readings_, _Ship News_, and -_Mistakes of the Press_--things in their day very popular, though now -surpassed in every number of _Punch_. Some of the best were the -following:--"Yesterday Dr. Pretyman preached at St. James's,--and -performed it with ease in less than sixteen minutes." "Several changes are -talked of at Court,--consisting of 9050 triple bob-majors." "Dr. Solander -will, by Her Majesty's command, undertake a voyage--round the head-dress -of the present month." "Sunday night.--Many noble families were -alarmed--by the constable of the ward, who apprehended them at cards." A -simple-hearted age could laugh heartily at these things: would that we -could! - -It has often been asserted that Goldsmith's epitaph on Whitefoord was -written by the wine merchant himself, and sent to the editor of the fifth -edition of the Poems by a convenient common friend. It is not very -pointed, and the length of the epitaph is certainly singular, -considering that the poet dismissed Burke and Reynolds in less than -eighteen lines. - -Adam built an octagon room in Whitefoord's house in order to give his -pictures an equal light; and Mr. Christie adopted the idea when he fitted -up his large room in King Street, St. James's.[249] - -Goldsmith is said to have been intimate with witty, punning Caleb -Whitefoord, and certain it is his name is found in the postscript to the -poem of _Retaliation_, written by Oliver on some of his friends at the St. -James's Coffee-house. These were the Burkes, fretful Cumberland, Reynolds, -Garrick, and Canon Douglas. In this poem Goldsmith laments that Whitefoord -should have confined himself to newspaper essays, and contented himself -with the praise of the printer of the _Public Advertiser_; he thus sums -him up:-- - - "Rare compound of oddity, frolic, and fun, - Who relish'd a joke and rejoiced in a pun; - Whose temper was generous, open, sincere; - A stranger to flattery, a stranger to fear. - - * * * * * - - "Merry Whitefoord, farewell! for thy sake I admit - That a Scot may have humour--I'd almost said wit; - This debt to thy memory I cannot refuse, - Thou best-humour'd man with the worst-humour'd Muse." - -Whitefoord became Vice-President of the Society of Arts. - -Anthony Pasquin (Williams), a celebrated art critic and satirist of Dr. -Johnson's time, was articled to Matt Darley, the famous caricaturist of -the Strand, to learn engraving.[250] - -The old name of Northumberland Street was Hartshorne Lane or Christopher -Alley.[251] Here Ben Jonson lived when he was a child, and after his -mother had taken a bricklayer for her second husband. - -At the bottom of this lane Sir Edmondbury Godfrey had his wood wharf. This -fact shows how much history is illustrated by topography, for the -residence of the unfortunate justice explains why it should have been -supposed that he had been inveigled into Somerset House. - -In 1829 Mr. Wood, who kept a coal wharf, resided in Sir Edmondbury's old -premises at the bottom of Northumberland Street. It was here the court -justice's wood-wharf was, but his house was in Green's Lane, near -Hungerford Market.[252] During the Great Plague Sir Edmondbury had been -very active; on one occasion, when his men refused to act, he entered a -pest-house alone to apprehend a wretch who had stolen at least a thousand -winding-sheets. Four medals were struck on his death. There is also a -portrait of the unlucky woodmonger in the waiting-room adjoining the -Vestry of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.[253] He wore, it seems, a full black -wig, like Charles II. - -Three men were tried for his murder--the cushion-man at the Queen's -Chapel, the servant of the treasurer of the chapel, and the porter of -Somerset House. The truculent Scroggs tried the accused, and those -infamous men, Oates, Prance, and Bedloe, were the false witnesses who -murdered them. The prisoners were all executed. Sir Edmondbury's corpse -was embalmed and borne to its funeral at St. Martin's from Bridewell. The -pall was supported by eight knights, all justices of the peace, and the -aldermen of London followed the coffin. Twenty-two ministers marched -before the body, and a great Protestant mob followed. Dr. William Lloyd -preached the funeral sermon from the text 2 Sam. iii. 24. The preacher was -guarded in the pulpit by two clergymen armed with "Protestant flails." - -[Illustration: YORK STAIRS, WITH THE HOUSES OF PEPYS AND PETER THE GREAT, -AFTER CANALETTI (CIRCA 1745).] - -In July 1861, No. 16 Northumberland Street, then an old-fashioned, -dingy-looking house, with narrow windows, which had been divided into -chambers, was the scene of a fight for life and death between Major Murray -and Mr. Roberts, a solicitor and bill-discounter; the latter attempted the -life of the former for the sake of getting possession of his mistress, to -whom he had lent money. Under pretext of advancing a loan to the Grosvenor -Hotel Company, of which the major was a promoter, he decoyed him into a -back room on the first floor of No. 16, then shot him in the back of the -neck, and immediately after in the right temple. The major, feigning to be -dead, waited till Roberts's back was turned, then springing to his feet -attacked him with a pair of tongs, which he broke to pieces over his -assailant's head. He then knocked him down with a bottle which lay near, -and escaped through the window, and from thence by a water-pipe to the -ground. Roberts died soon afterwards, but Major Murray recovered, and the -jury returning a verdict of "Justifiable Homicide," he was released. The -papers described Roberts's rooms as crowded with dusty Buhl cabinets, -inlaid tables, statuettes, and drawings. These were smeared with blood and -wine, while on the glass shades of the ornaments a rain of blood seemed -to have fallen. - -The embankment, which here is very wide, and includes several acres of -garden on the spot where the Thames once flowed, has largely altered the -character of the streets below the Strand and the river, destroying the -picturesque wharves and spoiling the appearance of the Water Gate, which -is half buried in gravel and flowers, like the Sphynx in Egypt. Between it -and the Thames now stands Cleopatra's Needle, brought over to England at -great cost of money and life, and set up here in 1878. - - - - -[Illustration: CROCKFORD'S FISH SHOP.] - - -CHAPTER VIII. - - THE NORTH SIDE OF THE STRAND, FROM TEMPLE BAR TO CHARING CROSS, WITH - DIGRESSIONS ON THE SOUTH. - - -The upper stratum of the Strand soil is composed of a reddish yellow -earth, containing coprolites. Below this runs a seam of leaden-coloured -clay, mixed with a few martial pyrites, calcined-looking lumps of iron -and sulphur with a bright silvery fracture. - -A petition of the inhabitants of the vicinity of the King's Palace at -Westminster (8 Edward II.) represents the footway from Temple Bar to their -neighbourhood as so bad that both rich and poor men received constant -damage, especially in the rainy season, the footway being interrupted by -_bushes and thickets_. A tax was accordingly levied for the purpose, and -the mayor and sheriffs of London and the bailiff of Westminster were -appointed overseers of the repairs. - -In the 27th of Edward III. the Knights Templars were called upon to -repair[254] "the bridge of the new Temple," where the lords who attended -Parliament took water on their way from the City. Workmen constructing a -new sewer in the Strand, in 1802, discovered, eastward of St. -Clement's,[255] a small, one-arched stone bridge, supposed to be the one -above alluded to, unless it was an arch thrown over some gully when the -Strand was a mere bridle-road. - -In James I.'s time, Middleton, the dramatist, describes a lawyer as -embracing a young spendthrift, and urging him to riot and excess, telling -him to make acquaintance with the Inns of Court gallants, and keep rank -with those that spent most; to be lofty and liberal; to lodge in the -Strand; in any case, to be remote from the handicraft scent of the -City.[256] - -It is but right to remind the reader that within the last few years the -whole of that part of the north side of the Strand lying between Temple -Bar and St. Clement's Inn, including what was once known as Pickett -Street, and extending backward almost as far as Lincoln's Inn, has been -demolished, in order to make room for the new Law Courts, which are now -fast rising towards completion. - -The house which immediately adjoined Temple Bar on the north side, to the -last a bookseller's, stood on the site of a small pent-house of lath and -plaster, occupied for many years by Crockford as a shell-fish shop. Here -this man made a large sum of money, with which he established a gambling -club, called by his name, on the west side of St. James's Street. It was -shut up at Crockford's death in 1844, and, having passed through sundry -phases, is now the Devonshire Club. Crockford would never alter his shop -in his lifetime; but at his death the quaint pent-house and James I. -gable[257] were removed, and a yellow brick front erected. - -That great engraver, William Faithorne, after being taken prisoner as a -Royalist at Basing in the Civil Wars, went to France, where he was -patronised by the Abbé de Marolles. He returned about 1650, and set up a -shop--where he sold Italian, Dutch, and English prints, and worked for -booksellers--without Temple Bar, at the sign of the Ship, next the Drake -and opposite the Palsgrave Head Tavern. He lived here till after 1680. -Grief for his son's misfortunes induced consumption, of which he died in -1691. Flatman wrote verses to his memory. _Lady Paston_ is thought his -_chef d'oeuvre_.[258] - -Ship Yard, now swept away, had been granted to Sir Christopher Hatton in -1571. Wilkinson gives a fine sketch of an old gable-ended house in Ship -Yard, supposed to have been the residence of Elias Ashmole, the celebrated -antiquarian. Here, probably, he stored his alchemic books and those -treasures of the Tradescants which he gave to Oxford. - -In 1813 sundry improvements projected by Alderman Pickett led to the -removal of one of the greatest eye-sores in London--Butcher Row. This -street of ragged lazar-houses extended in a line from Wych Street to -Temple Bar. They were overhanging, drunken-looking, tottering -tenements,[259] receptacles of filth, and invitations to the cholera. In -Dr. Johnson's time they were mostly eating-houses. - -This stack of buildings on the west side of Temple Bar was in the form of -an acute-angled triangle; the eastern point, nearest the Bar, was formed -latterly by a shoemaker's and a fishmonger's shop, with wide fronts; its -western point being blunted by the intersection of St. Clement's -vestry-room and almshouse. On both sides of it resided bakers, dyers, -smiths, combmakers, and tinplate-workers. - -The decayed street had been a flesh-market since Queen Elizabeth's time, -when it flourished. A scalemaker's, a fine-drawer's, and Betty's -chophouse, were all to be found there.[260] The whole stack was built of -wood, and was probably of about the age of Edward VI. The ceilings were -low, traversed by huge unwrought beams, and dimly lit by small casement -windows. The upper stories overhung the lower, according to the old London -plan of widening the footway. - -It was at Clifton's Eating-house, in Butcher Row, in 1763, that that -admirable gossip and useful parasite, Boswell, with a tremor of foolish -horror, heard Dr. Johnson disputing with a petulant Irishman about the -cause of negroes being black. - -"Why, sir," said Johnson, with judicial grandeur, "it has been accounted -for in three ways--either by supposing that they were the posterity of -Ham, who was cursed; or that God first created two kinds of men, one black -and the other white; or that by the heat of the sun the skin is scorched, -and so acquires a sooty hue. This matter has been much canvassed among -naturalists, but has never been brought to any certain issue."[261] - -What the Irishman's arguments were, Boswell of course forgot, but as his -antagonist became warm and intemperate, Johnson rose and quietly walked -away. When he had retired, the Irishman said--"He has a most ungainly -figure, and an affectation of pomposity unworthy of a man of genius." -(This very same evening Boswell and his deity first supped together at the -Mitre.) It was here, many years later, that Johnson spent pleasant -evenings with his old college friend Edwards,[262] whom he had not seen -since the golden days of youth. Edwards, a good, dull, simple-hearted -fellow, talked of their age. "Don't let us discourage one another," said -Johnson, with quiet reproof. It was this same worthy fellow who amused -Burke at the club by saying--"You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have -tried in my time to be a philosopher too, but I don't know how it was, -cheerfulness was always breaking in." This was a wise blunder, worthy of -Goldsmith, the prince of wise blunderers. - -It was in staggering home from the Bear and Harrow in Butcher Row, through -Clare Market, that Lee, the poet, lay down or fell on a bulk, and was -stifled in the snow (1692). - -Nat Lee was the son of a Hertfordshire rector; a pupil of Dr. Busby, a -coadjutor of Dryden, and an unsuccessful actor. He drank himself into -Bedlam, where, says Oldys, he wrote a play in twenty-five acts.[263] Two -of his maddest lines were-- - - "I've seen an unscrewed spider spin a thought - And walk away upon the wings of angels." - -The Duke of Buckingham, who brought Lee up to town,[264] neglected him, -and his extreme poverty no doubt drove him faster to Moorfields. Poor -fellow! he was only thirty-five when he died. He is described as -stout,[265] handsome, and red faced. The Earl of Pembroke, whose daughter -married a son of the brutal Judge Jefferies, was Lee's chief patron. The -poet, when visiting him at Wilton, drank so hard that the butler is said -to have been afraid he would empty the cellar. Lee's poetry, though noisy -and ranting, is full of true poetic fire,[266] and in tenderness and -passion the critics of his time compared him to Ovid and Otway. - -Thanks to the alderman, whose name is forgotten, though it well deserved -to live,--the streets, lanes, and alleys which once blocked up St. -Clement's Church, like so many beggars crowding round a rich man's door, -were swept away, and the present oval railing erected. The enlightened -Corporation at the same time built the big, dingy gateway of Clement's -Inn--people at the time called it "stupendous;"[267] and to it were added -the restored vestry-room and almshouse. The south side of the Strand was -also rebuilt, with loftier and more spacious shops. In the reign of Edward -VI. this beginning of the Strand had been a mere loosely-built suburban -street, the southern houses, then well inhabited, boasting large gardens. - -There is a fatality attending some parts of London. In spite of Alderman -Pickett and his stupendous arch of stucco, the new houses on the north -side did not take well. They were found to be too large and expensive; -they became under-let,[268] and began by degrees to relapse into their old -Butcher Row squalor; the tide of humanity setting in towards Westminster -flowing away from them to the left. As in some rivers the current, for no -obvious reason, sometimes bends away to the one side, leaving on the other -a broad bare reach of grey pebble, so the human tide in the Strand has -always, in order to avoid the detour of the twin streets (Holywell and -Wych), borne away to the left. - -It is probable that Palsgrave Place, on the south side, just beyond -Child's bank, in Temple Bar without, marks the site of the Old Palsgrave's -Head Tavern. The Palsgrave was that German prince who was afterwards King -of Bohemia, and who married the daughter of James I. - -No. 217 Strand, on the south side, was Snow's, the goldsmith. Gay has -preserved his memory in some pleasant verses. It was, a few years ago, the -bank of those most decent of defrauders, Strachan, Paul, and Bates, and -through them proved the grave of many a fortune. Next to it, westwards, -is Messrs. Twinings bank, and their still more ancient tea shop. - -The Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand (south side), afterwards the -Whittington Club, and now the Temple Club, is described by Strype as a -"large and curious house," with good rooms and other conveniences for -entertainments.[269] Here Dr. Johnson occasionally supped with Boswell, -and bartered his wisdom for the flattering Scotchman's inanity. In this -same tavern the sultan of literature quarrelled with amiable but -high-spirited Percy about old Dr. Mounsey; and here, when Sir Joshua -Reynolds was gravely and calmly upholding the advantages of wine in -stimulating and inspiring conversation, Johnson said, with good-natured -irony, "I have heard none of these drunken--nay, drunken is a coarse -word--none of these _vinous flights_!"[270] - -St. Clement's is one of Wren's fifty churches, and it was built by Edward -Pierce, under Wren's superintendence.[271] It took the place of an old -church mentioned by Stow, that had become old and ruinous, and was taken -down circa 1682, during the epidemic for church-building after the Great -Fire. - -This church has many enemies and few friends. One of its bitterest haters -calls it a "disgusting fabric," obtruded dangerously and inconveniently -upon the street. A second opponent describes the steeple as fantastic, the -portico clumsy and heavy, and the whole pile poor and unmeaning. Even -Leigh Hunt abuses it as "incongruous and ungainly."[272] - -There have been great antiquarian discussions as to why the church is -called St. Clement's "Danes." Some think there was once a massacre of the -Danes in this part of the road to Westminster; others declare that Harold -Harefoot was buried in the old church; some assert that the Danes, driven -out of London by Alfred, were allowed to settle between Thorney Island -(Westminster) and Ludgate, and built a church in the Strand; so, at -least, we learn, Recorder Fleetwood told Treasurer Burleigh. The name of -Saint Clement was taken from the patron saint of Pope Clement III., the -friend of the Templars, who dwelt on the frontier line of the City. - -In 1725 there was a great ferment in the parish of St. Clement's, in -consequence of an order from Dr. Gibson, Bishop of London, to remove at -once an expensive new altar-piece painted by Kent, a fashionable -architectural quack of that day; who, however, with "Capability Brown," -had helped to wean us from the taste for yew trees cut into shapes, Dutch -canals, formal avenues, and geometric flower-beds. - -Kent was originally a coach-painter in Yorkshire, and was patronised by -the Queen, the Duke of Newcastle, and Lord Burlington. He helped to adorn -Stowe, Holkham, and Houghton. He was at once architect, painter, and -landscape gardener. In the altar-piece, the vile drawing of which even -Hogarth found it hard to caricature, the painter was said to have -introduced portraits of the Pretender's wife and children. The "blue -print," published in 1725, was followed by another representing Kent -painting Burlington Gate. The altar-piece was removed, but the nobility -patronised Kent till he died, twenty years or so afterwards. We owe him, -however, some gratitude, if, according to Walpole, he was the father of -modern gardening. - -The long-limbed picture caricatured by Hogarth was for some years one of -the ornaments of the coffee-room of the Crown and Anchor in the Strand. -Thence it was removed to the vestry-room of the church, over the old -almshouses in the churchyard. After 1803 it was transported to the new -vestry-room on the north side of the churchyard.[273] - -In the old church Sir Robert Cecil, the first Earl of Salisbury, was -baptized, 1563; as were Sir Charles Sedley, the delightful song-writer and -the oracle of the licentious wits of his day, 1638-9; and the Earl of -Shaftesbury, the son of that troublous spirit "Little Sincerity," and -himself the author of the _Characteristics_. - -The church holds some hallowed earth: in St. Clement's was buried Sir John -Roe, who was a friend of Ben Jonson, and died of the plague in the sturdy -poet's arms. - -Dr. Donne's wife, the daughter of Sir George More, and who died in -childbed during her husband's absence at the court of Henri Quatre, was -buried here. Her tomb, by Nicholas Stone, was destroyed when the church -was rebuilt. Donne, on his return, preached a sermon here on her death, -taking the text--"Lo! I am the man that has seen affliction." John Lowin, -the great Shaksperean actor, lies here. He died in 1653. He acted in Ben -Jonson's "Sejanus" in 1605, with Burbage and Shakspere. Tradition reports -him to have been the favourite Falstaff, Hamlet, and Henry VIII. of his -day.[274] Burbage was the greatest of the Shaksperean tragedians, and -Tarleton the drollest of the comedians; but Lowin must have been as -versatile as Garrick if he could represent Hamlet's vacillations, and also -convey a sense of Falstaff's unctuous humour. Poor mad Nat Lee, who died -on a bulk in Clare Market close by, was buried at St. Clement's, 1692; and -here also lies poor beggared Otway, who died in 1685. In the same year as -Lee, Mountfort, the actor, whom Captain Hill stabbed in a fit of jealousy -in Howard Street adjoining, was interred here. - -In 1713 Thomas Rymer, the historiographer of William III. and the compiler -of the _Foedera_ and fifty-eight manuscript volumes now in the British -Museum, was interred here. He had lived in Arundel Street. In 1729 James -Spiller, the comedian of Hogarth's time, was buried at St. Clement's. A -butcher in Clare Market wrote his epitaph, which was never used. Spiller -was the original Mat of the Mint in the "Beggars' Opera." His portrait, by -Laguerre, was the sign of a public-house in Clare Market.[275] - -In this church was probably buried, at the time of the Plague, Thomas -Simon, Cromwell's celebrated medallist. His name, however, is not on the -register.[276] - -Mr. Needham, who was buried at St. Clement's with far better men, was an -attorney's clerk in Gray's Inn, who, in 1643, commenced a weekly paper. He -seems to have been a mischievous, unprincipled hireling, always ready to -sell his pen to the best bidder. - -It is not for us in these later days to praise a church of the Corinthian -order, even though its southern portico be crowned by a dome and propped -up with Ionic pillars. Its steeple of the three orders, in spite of its -vases and pilasters, does not move me; nor can I, as writers thought it -necessary to do thirty years ago,[277] waste a churchwarden's unreasoning -admiration on the wooden cherubim, palm-branches, and shields of the -chancel; nor can even the veneered pulpit and cumbrous galleries, or the -Tuscan carved wainscot of the altar draw any praise from my reluctant -lips. - -The arms of the Dukes of Norfolk and the Earls of Arundel and Salisbury, -in the south gallery, are worthy of notice, because they show that these -noblemen were once inhabitants of the parish. - -Among the eminent rectors of St. Clement's was Dr. George Berkeley, son of -the Platonist bishop, the friend of Swift, to whom Pope attributed "every -virtue under heaven." He died in 1798. It was of his father that Atterbury -said, he did not think that so much knowledge and so much humility existed -in any but the angels and Berkeley.[278] - -Dr. Johnson, the great and good, often attended service at St. Clement's -Church. They still point out his seat in the north gallery, near the -pulpit. On Good Friday, 1773, Boswell tells us he breakfasted with his -tremendous friend (Dr. Levett making tea), and was then taken to church by -him. "Dr. Johnson's behaviour," he says, "was solemnly devout. I never -shall forget the tremulous earnestness with which he pronounced the awful -petition in the Litany, 'In the hour of death and in the day of judgment, -good Lord, deliver us.'"[279] - -Eleven years later the doctor writes to Mrs. Thrale, "after a confinement -of 129 days, more than the third part of a year, and no inconsiderable -part of human life, I this day returned thanks to God in St. Clement's -Church for my recovery--a recovery, in my 75th year, from a distemper -which few in the vigour of youth are known to surmount." - -Clement's Inn (of Chancery), a vassal of the Inner Temple, derives its -name from the neighbouring church, and the "fair fountain called Clement's -Well,"[280] the Holy Well of the neighbouring street pump. - -Over the gate is graven in stone an anchor without a stock and a capital C -couchant upon it.[281] This device has reference to the martyrdom of the -guardian saint of the inn, who was tied to an anchor and thrown into the -sea by order of the emperor Trajan. Dugdale states that there was an inn -here in the reign of Edward II. - -There is, indeed, a tradition among antiquaries, that as far back as the -Saxon kings there was an inn here for the reception of penitents who came -to the Holy Well of St. Clement's; that a religious house was first -established, and finally a church. The Holy Lamb, an inn at the west end -of the lane, was perhaps the old Pilgrims' Inn. In the Tudor times the -Clare family, who had a mansion in Clare Market, appears to have occupied -the site. From their hands it reverted to the lawyers. As for the well, a -pump now enshrines it, and a low dirty street leads up to it. This is -mentioned in Henry II.'s time[282] as one of the excellent springs at a -small distance from London, whose waters are "sweet, healthful, and clear, -and whose runnels murmur over the shining pebbles: they are much -frequented," says the friend of Archbishop Becket, "both by the scholars -from the school (Westminster) and the youth from the City, when on a -summer's evening they are disposed to take an airing." It was seven -centuries ago that the hooded boys used to play round this spring, and at -this very moment their descendants are drinking from the ladle or -splashing each other with the water, as they fill their great brown -pitchers. The spring still feeds the Roman Bath in the Strand already -mentioned. - - "For men may come, and men may go, - But I flow on for ever."[283] - -The hall of St. Clement's Inn is situated on the south side of a neat -small quadrangle. It is a small Tuscan building, with a large florid -Corinthian door and arched windows, and was built in 1715. In the second -irregular area there is a garden, with a statue of a kneeling black figure -supporting a sun-dial on the east side.[284] It was given to the inn by an -Earl of Clare, but when is unknown. It was brought from Italy, and is said -to be of bronze, but ingenious persons having determined on making it a -blackamoor, it has been painted black. A stupid, ill-rhymed, cumbrous old -epigram sneers at the sable son of woe flying from cannibals and seeking -mercy in a lawyers' inn. The first would not have eaten him till they had -slain him; but lawyers, it is well known, will eat any man alive.[285] - -Poor Hollar, the great German engraver, lived in 1661 just outside the -back door of St. Clement's, "as soon as you come off the steps, and out of -that house and dore at your left hand, two payre of stairs, into a little -passage right before you." He was known for "reasons' sake" to the people -of the house only as "the Frenchman limner." Such was the direction he -sent to that gossiping Wiltshire gentleman, John Aubrey. - -The inn has very probably reared up a great many clever men; but it is -chiefly renowned for having fostered that inimitable old bragging twaddler -and country magistrate, the immortal Justice Shallow. Those chimes that -"in a ghostly way by moonlight still bungle through Handel's psalm tunes, -hoarse with age and long vigils"[286] as they are, must surely be the same -that Shallow heard. How deliciously the old fellow vapours about his wild -times! - -"Ha, Cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this knight and I have -seen!--Ha, Sir John, said I well?" - -_Falstaff_--"We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow." - -_Shal._--"That we have, that we have, that we have; in faith, Sir John, we -have; our watchword was--Hem, boys!--Come, let's to dinner; come, let's to -dinner. Oh, the days that we have seen!--Come, come."[287] - -And before that, how he glories in the impossibility of being detected -after bragging fifty-five years! This man, as Falstaff says, "lean as a -man cut after supper out of a cheese-paring," was once mad Shallow, lusty -Shallow, as Cousin Silence, his toady, reminds him. - -"By the mass," says again the old country gentleman, "I was called -anything, and I would have done anything, indeed, and roundly too. There -was I and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes of -Staffordshire, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele, a Cotswold man: you -had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the inns of court again." - -And thus he goes maundering on with dull vivacity about how he played Sir -Dagonet in Arthur's Show at Mile End, and once remained all night -revelling in a windmill in St. George's Fields. - -A curious record of Shakspere's times serves admirably to illustrate -Shallow's boast. In Elizabeth's time the eastern end of the Strand was the -scene of frequent disturbances occasioned by the riotous and unruly -students of the inns of court, who paraded the streets at night to the -danger of peaceable passengers. One night in 1582, the Recorder himself, -with six of the honest inhabitants, stood by St. Clement's Church to see -the lanterns hung out, and to try and meet some of the brawlers, the -Shallows of that time. About seven at night they saw young Mr. Robert -Cecil, the Treasurer's son, pass by the church and salute them civilly, on -which they said, "Lo, you may see how a nobleman's son can use himself, -and how he pulleth off his cap to poor men--our Lord bless him!" Upon -which the Recorder wrote to his father, like a true courtier, making -capital of everything, and said, "Your lordship hath cause to thank God -for so virtuous a child." - -Through the gateway in Pickett Street, a narrow street led to New Court, -where stood the Independent Meeting House in which the witty Daniel -Burgess once preached. The celebrated Lord Bolingbroke was his pupil, and -the Earl of Orrery his patron. He died 1712, after being much ridiculed by -Swift and Steele for his sermon of _The Golden Snuffers_, and for his -pulpit puns in the manner followed by Rowland Hill and Whitfield. This -chapel was gutted during the Sacheverell riots, and repaired by the -Government. Two examples of Burgess's grotesque style will suffice. On one -occasion, when he had taken his text from Job, and discoursed on the "Robe -of Righteousness," he said-- - -"If any of you would have a good and cheap suit, you will go to Monmouth -Street; if you want a suit for life, you will go to the Court of Chancery; -but if you wish for a suit that will last to eternity, you must go to the -Lord Jesus Christ and put on His robe of righteousness."[288] On another -occasion, in the reign of King William, he assigned as a motive for the -descendants of Jacob being called Israelites, that God did not choose that -His people should be called _Jacobites_. - -Daniel Burgess was succeeded in his chapel by Winter and Bradbury, both -celebrated Nonconformists. The latter of these was also a comic preacher, -or rather a "buffoon," as one of Dr. Doddridge's correspondents called -him. It was said of his sermons that he seemed to consider the Bible to be -written only to prove the right of William III. to the throne. He used to -deride Dr. Watts's hymns from the pulpit, and when he gave them out always -said-- - - "Let us sing one of Watts's whims." - -Bat Pidgeon, the celebrated barber of Addison's time, lived nearly -opposite Norfolk Street. His house bore the sign of the Three Pigeons. -This was the corner house of St. Clement's churchyard, and there Bat, in -1740, cut the boyish locks of Pennant[289]. In those days of wigs there -were very few hair-cutters in London. - -The father of Miss Ray, the singer, and mistress of old Lord Sandwich, is -said to have been a well-known staymaker in Holywell Street, now -Booksellers' Row. His daughter was apprenticed in Clerkenwell, from whence -the musical lord took her to load her with a splendid shame. On the day -she went to sing at Covent Garden in "Love in a Village," Hackman, who had -left the army for the church, waited for her carriage at the Cannon -Coffee-house in Cockspur Street. At the door of the theatre, by the side -of the Bedford Coffee-house, Hackman rushed out, and as Miss Ray was being -handed from her carriage he shot her through the head, and then attempted -his own life[290]. Hackman was hanged at Tyburn, and he died declaring -that shooting Miss Ray was the result of a sudden burst of frenzy, for he -had planned only suicide in her presence. - -The Strand Maypole stood on the site of the present church of St. Mary le -Strand, or a little northward towards Maypole Alley, behind the Olympic -Theatre. In the thirteenth century a cross had stood on this spot, and -there the itinerant justices had sat to administer justice outside the -walls. A Maypole stood here as early as 1634[291]. Tradition says it was -set up by John Clarges, the Drury Lane blacksmith, and father of General -Monk's vulgar wife. - -The Maypole was Satan's flag-staff in the eyes of the stern Puritans, who -dreaded Christmas pies, cards, and dances. Down it came when Cromwell went -up. The Strand Maypole was reared again with exulting ceremony the first -May day after the Restoration. The parishioners bought a pole 134 feet -high, and the Duke of York, the Lord High Admiral, lent them twelve seamen -to help to raise it. It was brought from Scotland Yard with drums, music, -and the shouts of the multitude; flags flying, and three men bare-headed -carrying crowns.[292] The two halves being joined together with iron -bands, and the gilt crown and vane and king's arms placed on the top, it -was raised in about four hours by means of tackle and pulleys. The Strand -rang with the people's shouts, for to them the Maypole was an emblem of -the good old times. Then there was a morris dance, with tabor and pipe, -the dancers wearing purple scarfs and "half-shirts." The children laughed, -and the old people clapped their hands, for there was not a taller Maypole -in Europe. From its summit floated a royal purple streamer; and half way -down was a sort of cross-trees or balcony adorned with four crowns and the -king's arms. It bore also a garland of vari-coloured favours, and beneath -three great lanterns in honour of the three admirals and all seamen, to -give light in dark nights. On this spot, a year before, the butchers of -Clare Market had rung a peal with their knives as they burnt an -emblematical Rump.[293] - -In the year 1677 a fatal duel was fought under the Maypole, which had been -snapped by a tempest in 1672.[294] One daybreak Mr. Robert Percival, a -notorious duellist, only nineteen years of age, was found dead under the -Maypole, with a deep wound in his left breast. His drawn and bloody sword -lay beside him. His antagonist was never discovered, though great rewards -were offered. The only clue was a hat with a bunch of ribbons in it, -suspected to belong to the celebrated Beau Fielding, but it was never -traced home to him. The elder brother, Sir Philip Percival, long after, -violently attacked a total stranger whom he met in the streets of Dublin. -The spectators parted them. Sir Philip could account for his conduct only -by saying he felt urged on by an irresistible conviction that the man he -struck at was his brother's murderer.[295] - -The Maypole, disused and decaying, was pulled down in 1713, when a new -one, adorned with two gilt balls and a vane, was erected in its stead. In -1718 the pole, being found in the way of the new church, was given to Sir -Isaac Newton as a stand for a large French telescope that belonged to his -friend Mr. Pound, the rector of Wanstead. - -Saint Mary-le-Strand was begun in 1714, and consecrated in 1723-4.[296] It -was one of the fifty ordered to be built in Queen Anne's reign. The old -church, pulled down by that Ahab, the Protector Somerset, to make room for -his ill-omened new palace, stood considerably nearer to the river. - -Gibbs, the shrewd Aberdeen architect, who succeeded to Wren and Vanbrugh, -and became famous by building St. Martin's Church, reared also St. Mary's. -Gibbs, according to Walpole, was a mere plodding mechanic. He certainly -wanted originality, simplicity, and grace. St. Mary's is broken up by -unmeaning ornament; the pagoda-like steeple is too high,[297] and crushes -the church, instead of as it were blossoming from it. One critic (Mr. -Malton) alone is found to call St. Mary's pleasant and picturesque; but I -confess to having looked on it so long that I begin almost to forget its -ugliness. - -Gibbs himself tells us how he set to work upon this church. It was his -first commission after his return from Rome. As the site was a very public -one, he was desired to spare no cost in the ornamentation, so he framed it -of two orders, making the lower walls (but for the absurd niches to hold -nothing) solid, so as to keep out the noises of the street. There was at -first no steeple intended, only a small western campanile, or bell-turret; -but, eighty feet from the west front, there was to be erected a column 250 -feet high, crowned by a statue of Queen Anne. This absurdity was forgotten -at the death of that rather insipid queen, and the stone still lying -there, the thrifty parish authorities, unwilling to waste the materials, -resolved to build a steeple. The church being already twenty feet from the -ground, it was necessary to spread it north and south, and so the church, -originally square, became oblong. - -Pope calls St. Mary's Church bitterly the church that-- - - Collects "the _saints_ of Drury Lane."[298] - -Addison describes his Tory fox-hunter's horror on seeing a church -apparently being demolished, and his agreeable surprise when he found it -was really a church being built.[299] - -St. Mary's was the scene of a tragedy during the proclamation of the short -peace in 1802. Just as the heralds came abreast of Somerset House, a man -on the roof of the church pressed forward too strongly against one of the -stone urns, which gave way and fell into the street, striking down three -persons: one of these died on the spot; the second, on his way to the -hospital; and the third, two days afterwards. A young woman and several -others were also seriously injured. The urn, which weighed two hundred -pounds, carried away part of the cornice, broke a flag-stone below, and -buried itself a foot deep in the earth. The unhappy cause of this mischief -fell back on the roof and fainted when he saw the urn fall. He was -discharged, no blame being attached to him. It was found that the urn had -been fastened by a wooden spike, instead of being clamped with iron.[300] - -The church has been lately refitted in an ecclesiastical style, and filled -with painted windows. There are no galleries in its interior. The ceiling -is encrusted with ornament. It contains a tablet to the memory of James -Bindley, who died in 1818. He was the father of the Society of -Antiquaries, and was a great collector of books, prints, and medals. - -New Inn, in Wych Street, is an inn of Chancery, appertaining to the Middle -Temple. It was originally a public inn, bearing the sign of Our Lady the -Virgin, and was bought by Sir John Fineux, Chief Justice of the King's -Bench, in the reign of King Edward IV., to place therein the students of -the law then lodged in St. George's Inn, in the little Old Bailey, which -was reputed to have been the most ancient of all the inns of -Chancery.[301] - -Sir Thomas More, the luckless minister of Henry VIII., was a member of -this inn till he removed to Lincoln's Inn. When the Great Seal was taken -from this wise man, he talked of descending to "New Inn fare, wherewith -many an honest man is well contented."[302] Addison makes the second best -man of his band of friends (after Sir Roger de Coverley) a bachelor -Templar; an excellent critic, with whom the time of the play is an hour of -business. "Exactly at five he passes through New Inn, crosses through -Russell Court, and takes a turn at Wills's till the play begins. He has -his shoes rubbed and his periwig powdered at the barber's as you go into -the Rose."[303] - -Wych Street derives its name from the old name for Drury Lane--_via de -Aldewych_. Till some recent improvements were effected in its tenants, it -bore an infamous character, and was one of the disgraces of London. - -The Olympic Theatre, in Wych Street, was built in 1805 by Philip Astley, a -light horseman, who founded the first amphitheatre in London on the garden -ground of old Craven House. It was opened September 18, 1806, as the -Olympic Pavilion, and burnt to the ground March 29, 1849. It was built out -of the timbers of the captured French man-of-war, _La Ville de Paris_, in -which William IV. went out as midshipman. The masts of the vessel formed -the flies, and were seen still standing amidst the fire after the roof -fell in. In 1813 it was leased by Elliston, and called the Little Drury -Lane Theatre. Its great days were under the rule of Madame Vestris,[304] -who, both as a singer and an actress, contributed to its success. More -recently it was under the able and successful management of the late Mr. -Frederick Robson. Born at Margate in 1821, he was early in life -apprenticed to a copperplate engraver in Bedfordbury. He appeared first, -unsuccessfully, at a private theatre in Catherine Street, and played at -the Grecian Saloon as a comic singer and low comedian from 1846 to 1849. -In 1853 he joined Mr. Farren at the Olympic. He there acquired a great -reputation in various pieces--"The Yellow Dwarf," "To oblige Benson," "The -Lottery Ticket," and "The Wandering Minstrel,"--the last being an old -farce originally written to ridicule the vagaries of Mr. Cochrane. - -Lyon's Inn, an inn of Chancery belonging to the Inner Temple, was -originally a hostelry with the sign of the Lion. It was purchased by -gentlemen students in Henry VIII.'s time, and converted into an inn of -Chancery.[305] - -It degenerated into a haunt of bill-discounters and Bohemians of all -kinds, good and bad, clever and rascally, and remained a dim, mouldy place -till 1861, when it was pulled down. Its site is now occupied by the Globe -Theatre. Just before the demolition of the inn, when I visited it, a -washerwoman was hanging out wet and flopping clothes on the site of Mr. -William Weare's chambers. - -On Friday, 24th of October 1823, Mr. William Weare, of No. 2 Lyon's Inn, -was murdered in Gill's Hill Lane, Hertfordshire, between Edgware and St. -Alban's. His murderer was Mr. John Thurtell, son of the Mayor of Norwich, -and a well-known gambler, betting man, and colleague of prize-fighters. -Under pretence of driving him down for a shooting excursion, Thurtell shot -Weare with a pistol, and when he leaped out of the chaise, pursued him -and cut his throat. He then sank the body in a pond in the garden of his -friend and probable accomplice, Probert, a spirit merchant, and afterwards -removed it to a slough on the St. Alban's road. His confederate, Hunt, a -public singer, turned king's evidence, and was transported for life. -Thurtell was hanged at Hertford. He pleaded that Weare had robbed him of -£300 with false cards at Blind Hookey, and he had sworn revenge; but it -appeared that he had planned several other murders, and all for money. -Probert was afterwards hanged in Gloucestershire for horse-stealing. - -At the sale of the building materials some Jews were observed to be very -eager to acquire the figure of the lion that adorned one of the walls. -There were various causes assigned for this eagerness. Some said that a -Jew named Lyons had originally founded the inn; others declared that the -lion was considered to be an emblem of the Lion of the tribe of Judah. -Directly the auctioneer knocked it down the Jewish purchaser drew a knife, -mounted the ladder, and struck his weapon into the lion. "S'help me, Bob!" -said he, in a tone of disgust, "if they didn't tell me it was lead, and -it's only stone arter all!" - -Gay, who speaks of the dangers of "mazy Drury Lane," gives Catherine -Street a very bad character. He describes the courtesans, with their -new-scoured manteaus and riding-hoods or muffled pinners, standing near -the tavern doors, or carrying empty bandboxes, and feigning errands to the -Change.[306] The street is now almost entirely occupied by newspaper -publishers. The _Morning Herald_, the _Court Journal_, the _Naval and -Military Gazette_, the _Gardener's Gazette_, the _Builder_, the _Weekly -Register_, and the _Court Gazette_, all either are or have been published -in Catherine Street. Scott's Sanspareil Theatre was opened here about 1810 -for the performance of operettas, dancing, and pantomimes.[307] In -September 1741 a man named James Hall was executed at the end of Catherine -Street. - -The Maypole close to St. Mary's Church is said to have been the first -place in London where hackney coaches were allowed to stand. Coaches were -first introduced into England from Hungary in 1580 by Fitzalan, Earl of -Arundel; but for a time they were thought effeminate. The Thames watermen -especially railed against them, as might be expected. In the year 1634, a -Captain Baily who had accompanied Raleigh in his famous expedition to -Guiana, started four hackney coaches, with drivers in liveries, at the -Maypole; but as, in the year 1613, sixty hackney coaches from London[308] -plied at Stourbridge fair, perhaps there had been coach-stands in the -streets before Baily's time. In 1625 there were only twenty coaches in -London; in 1666, under Charles II., the number had so increased that the -king issued a proclamation complaining of the coaches blocking up the -narrow streets and breaking up the pavement, and forbade coach-stands -altogether. - -Peter Molyn Tempest, the engraver of "The Cries of London," published at -the end of King William's reign, lived in the Strand opposite Somerset -House. "The Cries" were designed by Marcellus Laroon, a Dutch painter -(1653-1702), who painted draperies for Kneller.[309] He was celebrated for -his conversation pieces and his knack of imitating the old masters. -Tempest's quaint advertisement of the "Cries" in the _London Gazette_, May -28 and 31, 1688, runs thus:-- - -"There is now published the Cryes and Habits of London, lately drawn after -the life in great variety of actions, curiously engraved upon fifty -copper-plates, fit for the ingenious and lovers of art. Printed and sold -by P. Tempest, over against Somerset House, in the Strand." - -The _Morning Chronicle_, whose office was opposite Somerset House, was -started in 1770. It was to Perry, of the _Morning Chronicle_, that -Coleridge, when penniless and about to enlist in a cavalry regiment, sent -a poem and a request for a guinea, which he got. Hazlitt was theatrical -critic to this paper, succeeding Lord Campbell in the post. In 1810 David -Ricardo began his letters on the depreciation of the currency in the -_Chronicle_. James Perry, whose career we have no room to follow, lived in -great style at Tavistock House, the house afterwards occupied for many -years by Mr. Charles Dickens. _The Sketches by Boz_ of Charles Dickens -first appeared in the columns of the _Chronicle_. The last _Morning -Chronicle_ appeared on Wednesday, March 19, 1862. Latterly the paper was -said to have been in the pay of the Emperor of France. - -No. 346, at the east corner of Wellington Street, now the office of the -_Law Times_, the _Queen_, and the _Field_, was Doyley's celebrated -warehouse for woollen articles. Dryden, in his _Kind Keeper_, speaks of -"Doyley" petticoats; Steele, in his _Guardian_,[310] of his "Doyley" suit; -while Gay, in the _Trivia_, describes a "Doyley" as a poor defence against -the cold. - -Doyley's warehouse stood on the ancient site of Wimbledon House, built by -Sir Edward Cecil, son to the first Earl of Exeter, and created Viscount -Wimbledon by Charles I. The house was burnt to the ground in 1628, and the -day before the viscount had had part of his house at Wimbledon -accidentally blown up by gunpowder. Pennant, when a boy, was brought by -his mother to a large glass shop, a little beyond Wimbledon House; the old -man who kept it remembered Nell Gwynne coming to the shop when he was an -apprentice; her footman, a country lad, got fighting in the street with -some men who had abused his mistress.[311] - -Mr. Doyley was a much respected warehouseman of Dr. Johnson's time, whose -family had resided in their great old house, next to Hodsall the banker's, -at the corner of Wellington Street, ever since Queen Anne's time. The -dessert napkins called Doyleys derived their name from this firm. Mr. -Doyley's house was built by Inigo Jones, and forms a prominent feature in -old engravings of the Strand, as it had a covered entrance that ran out -like a promontory into the carriage-way. It was pulled down about -1782.[312] Mr. Doyley, a man of humour and a friend of Garrick and -Sterne, was a frequenter of the Precinct Club, held at the Turk's Head, -opposite his own house. The rector of St. Mary's attended the same club, -and enjoyed the seat of honour next the fire. - -[Illustration: THE OLD ROMAN BATH, STRAND.] - -Not far from this stood the Strand Bridge, which crossed the street, and -received the streams flowing from the higher grounds down Catharine Street -to the Thames. Strand Lane, hard by on the south, famous still for its old -Roman bath, passed under the arch, and led to a water stair or landing -pier. Addison, in his bright pleasant way, describes landing there one -morning with ten sail of apricot boats, after having put in at Nine Elms -for melons, consigned by Mr. Cuffe of that place to Sarah Sewell and -Company at their stall in Covent Garden.[313] - -The _Morning Post_, whose office is in Wellington Street, was started in -1772; when almost defunct it was bought in 1796 by Daniel Stuart, and -Christie the auctioneer, who gave only £600 for copyright, house, and -plant. Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, Wordsworth, and Mackintosh all wrote for -Stuart's paper. Coleridge commenced his political papers in 1797, and on -his return from Germany (November 1799) joined the badly-paid staff, but -refused to become a parliamentary reporter. Fox declared in the House of -Commons that Coleridge's essays had led to the rupture of the peace of -Amiens, an announcement which led to a pursuit by a French frigate, when -the poet left Rome, where he then was, and sailed from Leghorn. Lamb wrote -facetious paragraphs at sixpence a-piece.[314] The _Morning Post_ soon -became second only to the _Chronicle_, and the great paper for -booksellers' advertisements. It is mentioned by Byron as the organ of the -aristocracy and of West End society, and it has maintained that position -to the present time with little change. - -The _Athenæum_, whose office is in Wellington Street, is identified with -the name of Mr. (afterwards) Sir C. Wentworth Dilke. He was born in 1789, -and was originally in the Navy Pay Office. He bought the paper, which had -been unsuccessful since 1828 under its originator, that shifty adventurer, -Mr. J. S. Buckingham, and also under Mr. John Sterling. Under his care it -gradually grew into a sound property, and became what it now is, the -_Times_ of weekly papers. Its editor, Mr. Hervey, the author of many -well-known poems, was replaced in 1853 by Mr. Hepworth Dixon, under whom -it steadily throve, till his retirement in 1871. - -A little farther up the street is the office of _All the Year Round_, a -weekly periodical which, in 1859, took the place of _Household Words_, -started by Mr. Charles Dickens in 1850. It contains essays by the best -writers of the day, graphic descriptions of current events, and continuous -stories. Mrs. Gaskell, Mr. Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, Lord Lytton, -Mr. Sala, and Mr. Dickens himself, are among those who have published -novels in its pages. - -The original Lyceum was built in 1765 as an exhibition-room for the -Society of Arts, by Mr. James Payne, an architect, on ground once -belonging to Exeter House. The society splitting, and the Royal Academy -being founded at Somerset House in 1768, the Lyceum Society became -insolvent. Mr. Lingham, a breeches-maker, then purchased the room, and let -it out to Flockton for his Puppet-show and other amusements. About 1794 -Dr. Arnold partly rebuilt it as a theatre, but could not obtain a licence -through the opposition of the winter houses.[315] It was next door to the -shop of Millar the publisher. - -The Lyceum in 1789-94 was the arena of all experimenters--of Charles -Dibdin and his "Sans Souci," of the ex-soldier Astley's feats of -horsemanship, of Cartwright's "Musical Glasses," of Philipstal's -successful "Phantasmagoria." Lonsdale's "Egyptiana" (paintings of Egyptian -scenes, by Porter, Mulready, Pugh, and Cristall), with a lecture, was a -failure. Here Ker Porter exhibited his large pictures of Lodi, Acre, and -the siege of Seringapatam. Then came Palmer with his "Portraits," Collins -with his "Evening Brush," Incledon with his "Voyage to India," Bologna -with his "Phantascopia," and Lloyd with his "Astronomical Exhibition." -Subscription concerts, amateur theatricals, debating societies, and -schools of defence were also tried here. One day it was a Roman Catholic -chapel; next day the "Panther Mare and Colt," the "White Negro Girl," or -the "Porcupine Man" held their levee of dupes and gapers in its changeful -rooms.[316] - -In 1809 Dr. Arnold's son obtained a licence for an English opera-house. -Shortly afterwards the Drury Lane company commenced performing here, their -own theatre having been burnt. Mr. T. Sheridan was then manager. In 1815 -Mr. Arnold erected the predecessor of the present theatre, on an enlarged -scale, at an expense of nearly £80,000, and it was opened in 1816. In 1817 -the experiment of two short performances on the same evening was -unsuccessfully tried. On April 1, 1818, Mr. Mathews, the great comedian, -began here his entertainment called "Mail-coach Adventures," which ran -forty nights. - -The Beef-steak Club was established in the reign of Queen Anne (before -1709).[317] The _Spectator_ mentions it, 1710-11. The club met in a noble -room at the top of Covent Garden Theatre, and never partook of any dish -but beef-steaks. Their Providore was their president and wore their badge, -a small gold gridiron, hung round his neck by a green silk riband.[318] -Estcourt had been a tavern-keeper, and is mentioned in a poem of -Parnell's, who was himself too fond of wine. He died in 1712. Steele gives -a delightful sketch of him. He had an excellent judgment, he was a great -mimic, and he told an anecdote perfectly well. His well-turned compliments -were as fine as his smart repartees. "It is to Estcourt's exquisite talent -more than to philosophy," says Steele, "that I owe the fact that my person -is very little of my care, and it is indifferent to me what is said of my -shape, my air, my manner, my speech, or my address. It is to poor Estcourt -I chiefly owe that I am arrived at the happiness of thinking nothing a -diminution of myself but what argues a depravity of my will." - -The kindly essay ends beautifully. "None of those," says the true-hearted -man, "will read this without giving him some sorrow for their abundant -mirth, and one gush of tears for so many bursts of laughter. I wish it -were any honour to the pleasant creature's memory that my eyes are too -much suffused to let me go on." - -Later, Churchill and Wilkes, those partners in dissoluteness and satire, -were members of this social club. After Estcourt, that jolly companion, -Beard the singer, became president of this jovial and agreeable company. - -It was an old custom at theatres to have a Beef-steak Club that met every -Saturday, and to which authors and wits were invited. In 1749 Mr. -Sheridan, the manager, founded one at Dublin. There were fifty or sixty -members, chiefly noblemen and members of Parliament, and no performer was -admitted but witty Peg Woffington, who wore man's dress, and was president -for a whole season.[319] - -A Beef-steak Society was founded in 1735 by John Rich, the great -harlequin, and manager of Covent Garden Theatre, and George Lambert, the -scene-painter.[320] Lambert, being much visited by authors, wits, and -noblemen, whilst painting, and being too hurried to go to a tavern, used -to have a steak cooked in the room, inviting his guests to share his snug -and savoury but hurried meal. The fun of these accidental and impromptu -dinners led to a club being started, which afterwards moved to a more -convenient room in the theatre. After many years the place of meeting was -changed to the Shakspere Tavern, where Mr. Lambert's portrait, painted by -Hudson, Reynolds's pompous master, was one of the decorations of the -club-room.[321] They then returned to the theatre, but being burned out in -1812, adjourned to the Bedford. Lambert was the merriest of fellows, yet -without buffoonery or coarseness. His manners were most engaging, he was -social with his equals, and perfectly easy with richer men.[322] He was -also a great leader of fun at old Slaughter's artist-club. - -The club throve down to about 1869, when it was dissolved; steaks were -perennial as a dish, whatever the wit may have been, to the last. -Twenty-four noblemen and gentlemen, each of whom might bring a friend, -partook of a five o'clock dinner of steaks in a room of their own behind -the scenes at the Lyceum Theatre every Saturday from November till June. -They called themselves "The Steaks," disclaimed the name of "Club," and -dedicated their hours to "Beef and Liberty," as their ancestors did in the -anti-Walpole days.[323] - -Their room was a little typical Escurial. The doors, wainscot, and floor, -were of stout oak, emblazoned with gridirons, like a chapel of St. -Laurence. The cook was seen at his office through the bars of a vast -gridiron, and the original gridiron of the society (the survivor of two -terrific fires) held a conspicuous position in the centre of the ceiling. -This club descended lineally from Wilkes's and from Lambert's. To the end -there was Attic salt enough to sprinkle over "the Steaks," and to justify -the old epicure's lines to the club:-- - - "He that of honour, wit, and mirth partakes, - May be a fit companion o'er beef-steaks; - His name may be to future times enrolled - In Estcourt's book, whose gridiron's framed of gold."[324] - -Its gridiron and other treasures were sold by auction, and fetched -fabulous prices. - -Dr. William King, the author of the above quoted verses, was an indolent, -wrong-headed genius. Some three years after the Restoration he took part -against the irascible Bentley in the dispute about the Epistles of -Phalaris, satirised Sir Hans Sloane, and supported Sacheverell. He wrote -_The Art of Cookery_, _Dialogues of the Dead_, _The Art of Love_, and -_Greek Mythology for Schools_. Recklessly throwing up his Irish Government -appointment, he came to London. There Swift got him appointed manager of -the _Gazette_; but being idle, and fond of the bottle, he resigned his -office in six months, and went to live at a friend's house in the garden -grounds between Lambeth and Vauxhall. He died in 1712, in lodgings -opposite Somerset House, procured for him by his relation, Lord Clarendon. -He was buried in the north cloisters of Westminster Abbey, close to his -master, Dr. Knipe, to whom he had dedicated his _School Mythology_. - -Mr. T. P. Cooke obtained some of his early triumphs at the Lyceum as -Frankenstein, and at the Adelphi as Long Tom Coffin. His serious pantomime -in the fantastic monster of Mrs. Shelley's novel is said to have been -highly poetical. He made his début in 1804, at the Royalty Theatre, and -soon afterwards left Astley's to join Laurent, the manager of the Lyceum. -This best of stage seamen since Bannister's time was born in 1780, and -died only recently. - -Madame Lucia Elizabeth Vestris had the Lyceum in 1847. This fascinating -actress was the daughter of Francesco Bartolozzi, the engraver, and was -born in 1797. She married the celebrated dancer, Vestris, in 1813, and in -1813 appeared at the King's Theatre, in Winter's opera of "Proserpina." In -1820, after a wild and disgraceful life in Paris, she appeared at Drury -Lane as Lilla, Adela, and Artaxerxes, and exhibited the archness, and -vivacity of Storace without her grossness. In a burlesque of "Don -Giovanni," as "Paul" and as "Apollo," she was much abused by the critics -for her wantonness of manner and dress, but she still won her audiences by -her sweet and powerful contralto, and by her songs, "The Light Guitar" and -"Rise, gentle Moon." Harley played Leporello to her under Mr. Elliston's -management. After this she took to "first light comedy" and melodrama, and -married Mr. Charles Mathews. The theatre was burnt down in 1830, and -rebuilt soon afterwards. Madame Vestris herself died in 1856. - -"That little crowded nest" of shops and wild beasts,[325] Exeter Change, -stood where Burleigh Street now stands, but extended into the main road, -so that the footpath of the north side of the Strand ran directly through -it.[326] It was built about 1681,[327] and contained two walks below and -two walks above stairs, with shops on each side for sempsters, milliners, -hosiers, etc. The builders were very sanguine, but the fame of the New -Exchange (now the Adelphi) blighted it from the beginning;[328] the shops -next the street alone could be let; the rest lay unoccupied. The Land Bank -had rooms here. The body of the poet Gay lay in state in an upper room, -afterwards used for auctions. In 1721 a Mr. Normand Corry exhibited here a -damask bed, with curtains woven by himself; admission two shillings and -sixpence. About 1780 Lord Baltimore's body lay here in state, preparatory -to its interment at Epsom. - -This infamous lord, of unsavoury reputation, had married a daughter of the -Duke of Bridgewater: he lived on the east side of Russell Square, and was -notorious for an unscrupulous profligacy, rivalling even that of the -detestable Colonel Charteris. In 1767 his agents decoyed to his house a -young woman named Woodcock, a milliner on Tower Hill. After suffering all -the cruelty which Lovelace showed to Clarissa, the poor girl was taken to -Lord Baltimore's house at Epsom, where her disgrace was consummated. The -rascal and his accomplices were tried at Kingston in 1768, but -unfortunately acquitted through an informality in Miss Woodcock's -deposition. The disgraced title has since become extinct. - -The last tenants of the upper rooms were Mr. Cross and his wild beasts. -The Royal Menagerie was a great show in our fathers' days. Leigh Hunt -mentions that one day at feeding time, passing by the Change, he saw a -fine horse pawing the ground, startled at the roar of Cross's lions and -tigers.[329] The vast skeleton of Chunee, the famous elephant, brought to -England in 1810, and exhibited here, is to be seen at the College of -Surgeons in Lincoln's Inn Fields. In 1826, after a return of an annual -paroxysm, aggravated by inflammation of the large pulp of one of his -tusks, Chunee became dangerous, and it was necessary to kill him. His -keeper first threw him buns steeped in prussic acid, but these produced no -effect. A company of soldiers was then sent for, and the monster died -after upwards of a hundred bullets had pierced him. In the midst of the -shower of lead, the poor docile animal knelt down at the well-known voice -of his keeper, to turn a vulnerable point to the soldiers. At the College -of Surgeons the base of his tusk is still shown, with a spicula of ivory -pressing into the pulp. - -De Loutherbourg, after Garrick's retirement, left Covent Garden and -exhibited his _Eidophusikon_ in a room over Exeter Change. The stage was -about six feet wide and eight feet deep. The first scene was the view -from One-tree Hill in Greenwich Park. The lamps were above the proscenium, -and had screens of coloured glass which could be rapidly changed. His best -scenes were the loss of the _Halsewell_ East Indiaman and the rising of -Pandemonium. A real thunder-storm once breaking out when the shipwreck -scene was going on, some of the audience left the room, saying that "the -exhibition was presumptuous." Gainsborough was such a passionate admirer -of the _Eidophusikon_ that for a time he spent every evening at -Loutherbourg's exhibition.[330] - -Mr. William Clarke, a seller of hardware (steel buttons, buckles, and -cutlery), was proprietor of Exeter Change for nearly half a century. He -was an honest and kind man, much beloved by his friends, and known to -everybody in Johnson's time. When he became infirm he was allowed by King -George the special privilege of riding across St. James's Park to -Buckingham Gate, his house being in Pimlico. He died rich. - -Another character of Clarke's age was old Thomson, a music-seller, and a -good-natured humourist. He was deputy organist at St. Michael's, Cornhill, -and had been a pupil of Boyce. His shop was a mere sloping stall, with a -little platform behind it for a desk, rows of shelves for old pamphlets -and plays, and a chair or two for a crony. Thomson furnished Burney and -Hawkins with materials for their histories of music. It was said that -there was not an air from the time of Bird that he could not sing. Poor -soured Wilson used to be fond of sitting with Thomson and railing at the -times. Garrick and Dr. Arne also frequented the shop.[331] - -The nine o'clock drum at old Somerset House and the bell rung as a signal -for closing Exeter Change were once familiar sounds to old Strand -residents: but alas! times are changed; and they are heard no more. - -It was in Thomson's shop that the elder Dibdin (Charles), together with -Hubert Stoppelaer, an actor, singer, and painter, planned the Patagonian -Theatre, which was opened in the rooms above. The stage was six feet wide, -the puppet actors only ten inches high. Dibdin wrote the pieces, composed -the music, helped in the recitations, and accompanied the singers on a -small organ. His partner spoke for the puppets and painted the scenes. -They brought out "The Padlock" here. The miniature theatre held about 200 -people.[332] - -Exeter Hall was built by Mr. Deering, in 1831, for various charitable and -religious societies that had scruples about holding their meetings in -taverns or theatres. It stands a little west of the site of the "old -Change." The front, with its two massy plain Greek pillars, is a good -instance of making the most of space, though it still looks as if it were -riding "bodkin" between the larger houses. The building contains two -halls--one that will hold eight hundred persons, and another, on the upper -floor, able to hold three thousand. The latter is a noble room, 131 feet -long by 76 wide, and contains the Sacred Harmonic Society's gigantic -organ. There are also nests of offices and committee-rooms. In May the -white neckcloths pour into Exeter Hall in perfect regiments. - -In the Strand, near Exeter House, lived the beautiful Countess of -Carlisle, a beauty of Charles I.'s court, immortalised by Vandyke, -Suckling, and Carew. She paid £150 a year rent, equal to £600 of our -current money.[333] - -Exeter Street had no western outlet when first built; for where the street -ends was the back wall of old Bedford House. Dr. Johnson, after his -arrival with Garrick from Lichfield, lodged here, in a garret, at the -house of Norris, a staymaker. In this garret Johnson wrote part at least -of that sonorous tragedy, "Irene." He used to say he dined well and with -good company for eightpence, at the Pine Apple in the street close by. -Several of the guests had travelled. They met every day, but did not know -each other's names. The others paid a shilling, and had wine. Johnson paid -sixpence for a cut of meat (a penny for bread, a penny to the waiter), -and was served better than the rest, for the waiter that is forgotten is -apt also to forget. - -In Cecil's time Bedford House became known as Exeter House. From hence, in -1651, Cromwell, the Council of State, and the House of Commons followed -General Popham's body to its resting-place at Westminster.[334] It was -while receiving the sacrament on Christmas Day at the chapel of Exeter -House that that excellent gentleman, Evelyn, and his wife were seized by -soldiers, warned not to observe any longer the "superstitious time of the -Nativity," and dismissed with pity. - -In Exeter House lived that shifty and unscrupulous turncoat, Antony Ashley -Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, the great tormentor of Charles II., and the -father of the author of the _Characteristics_, who was born here 1670-1, -and educated by the amiable philosopher Locke. "The wickedest fellow in my -dominions," as Charles II. once called "Little Sincerity," afterwards -removed hence about the time of the Great Fire to Aldersgate Street, in -order to be near his City intriguers. After the Great Fire, till new -offices could be built, the Court of Arches, the Admiralty Court, etc., -were held in Exeter House. The property still belongs to the Cecil family. - -That great statesman, Burleigh, Bacon's uncle, lived on the site of the -present Burleigh Street. He was of birth so humble that his father could -only be entitled a gentleman by courtesy. Slow but sure of judgment, -silent, distrustful of brilliant men, such as Essex and Raleigh, he made -himself, by unremitting skill, assiduity, and fidelity, the most trusted -and powerful person in Queen Elizabeth's privy council. Here, fresh from -his frets with the rash Essex, the old wily statesman pondered over the -fate of Mary of Scotland, or strove for means to foil Philip of Spain and -his Armada. Here also lived his eldest son, Sir Thomas Cecil, subsequently -the second Lord Burleigh and Earl of Exeter, who died 1622, whose daughter -married the heir of Lord Chancellor Hatton, the dancing chancellor. -Burleigh Street replaced the old house in 1678, when Salisbury Street was -built. - -The "Little Adelphi" Theatre was opened in 1806 under the name of the -"Sans Souci" by Mr. John Scott, a celebrated colour-maker, famous for a -certain fashionable blue dye. The entertainments (optical and mechanical) -were varied by songs, recitations, and dances, the proprietor's daughter -being a clever amateur actress. Its real success did not begin till 1821, -when Pierce Egan's dull and rather vulgar book of London low life, _Tom -and Jerry_, was dramatised--Wrench as Tom, Reeve as Jerry. Subsequently -Power, the best Irishman that trod the boards in London, appeared here in -melodrama. In 1826 Terry and Yates became joint lessees and managers. -Ballantyne and Scott backed up Terry, Sir Walter being always eager for -money. Scott eventually had to pay £1750 for the speculative printer; he -seems from the outset to have entertained fears of Terry's failure.[335] -Here Keely too made his first hit as Jemmy Green. - -In 1839 Mr. Rice, "the original Jim Crow," was playing at the -Adelphi.[336] This Mr. Rice was an American actor who had studied the -drolleries of the Negro singers and dancers, especially those of one Jim -Crow, an old boatman who hung about the wharfs of Vicksburg, the same town -on the Mississippi that has lately stood so severe a siege. He initiated -among us negro tunes and negro dances. This was the fatal beginning of -those "negro entertainments," falsely so called. - -In 1808 Mr. Mathews gave his first entertainment, "The Mail-coach -Adventures," at Hull. Mr. James Smith had strung together some sketches of -character, and written for him those two celebrated comic songs, "The Mail -Coach" and "Bartholomew Fair." In 1818 Mr. Mathews, unfortunately for his -peace of mind, sold himself for seven years to a very sharp practiser, Mr. -Arnold, of the Lyceum, for £1000 a year, liable to the deduction of £200 -fine for any non-appearance. This becoming unbearable, Mr. Arnold made a -new agreement, by which he took to himself £40 every night, and shared the -rest with Mr. Mathews, who also paid half the expenses.[337] The shrewd -manager made £30,000 by this first speculation. Rivalling Mr. Dibdin, the -wonderful mimic appeared in plain evening dress with no other apparent -preparation than a drawing-room scene, a small table covered with a green -cloth, and two lamps. His first entertainment included "Fond Barney, the -Yorkshire Idiot" and the "Song of the Royal Visitors," full of droll -Russian names. In 1819 he produced "The Trip to Paris." In 1820 he brought -out "The Country Cousins," with the two celebrated comic songs, "The White -Horse Cellar," and "O, what a Town!--what a Wonderful Metropolis!" both -full of the most honest and boisterous fun. In 1821 Peake wrote for him -the "Polly Packet," introducing a caricature of Major Thornton, the great -sportsman, as Major Longbow. The entertainment was called "Earth, Air, and -Water," and contained the song of "The Steam-Boat." - -In 1824 Mr. Mathews gave his "Trip to America," with Yankee songs, negro -imitations, and that fine bit of pathos, "M. Mallet at the Post-Office." -In 1825 appeared his "memorandum Book," and in 1826 his "Invitations," -with the "Ruined Yorkshire Gambler (Harry Ardourly)," and "A Civic Water -Party." - -In 1828 he opened the Adelphi Theatre in partnership with Mr. Yates, -playing the drunken Tinker in Mr. Buckstone's "May Queen," and singing -that prince of comic songs, "The Humours of a Country Fair," written for -him by his son Charles. Mr. Moncrief wrote his "Spring Meeting for 1829," -and Mr. Peake his "Comic Annual for 1830." In 1831 his son Charles aided -Mr. Peake in producing an entertainment, and again in 1832. In 1833 his -health began to fail; he lost much money in bubble companies, and had an -action brought against him for £30,000. In 1833 Mr. Peake and Mr. Charles -Mathews wrote the "At Home." Subsequently the great mimic went to -America, whence he returned in 1838, only to die a few months after.[338] - -Leigh Hunt praises Mr. Mathews's valets and old men, but condemns his -nervous restlessness and redundance of bodily action. While Munden, -Liston, and Fawcett could not conceal their voices, Mathews rivalled -Bannister in his powers of mimicry. His delineation of old age was -remarkable for its truthfulness and variety. Leigh Hunt confesses that -till Mathews acted Sir Fretful Plagiary, he had ranked him as an actor of -habits and not of passions, and far inferior to Bannister and Dowton; but -the extraordinary blending of vexation and conceit in Sheridan's -caricature of Cumberland proved Mathews, Mr. Hunt allowed, to be an actor -who knew the human heart.[339] - -In 1820 Hazlitt criticised Mathews's third entertainment, "The Country -Cousins," a mélange of songs, narrative, ventriloquism, imitations, and -character stories. He had left Covent Garden on the ground that he had not -sufficiently frequent opportunities for appearing in legitimate comedy. -The severe critic says, "Mr. Mathews shines particularly neither as an -actor nor a mimic of actors; but his forte is a certain general tact and -versatility of comic power. You would say he is a clever performer--you -would guess he is a cleverer man. His talents are not pure, but mixed. He -is best when he is his own prompter, manager, performer, orchestra, and -scene-shifter."[340] - -Hazlitt then goes on to accuse his "subject" of a want of taste, of his -gross and often superficial surprises, and of his too restless disquietude -to please. "Take from him," says Hazlitt, "his odd shuffle in the gait, a -restless volubility of speech and motion, a sudden suppression of -features, or the continued repetition of a cant phrase with unabated -vigour, and you reduce him to almost total insignificance." It should be -said that his "shuffle" was rather a "limp." - -As a mimic of other actors, the same writer says Mathews often failed. He -gabbled like Incledon, entangled himself like Tait Wilkinson, croaked like -Suett, lisped like Young, but he could make nothing of John Kemble's -"expressive, silver-tongued cadences." He blames him more especially for -turning nature into pantomime and grimace, and dealing too much with -worn-out topics, like Cockneyisms, French blunders, or the ignorance of -country people in stage-coaches, Margate hoys, and Dover packet-boats. In -another place the severe critic, who could be ill-tempered if he chose, -blames Mathews for many of his songs, for his meagre jokes, dry as -scrapings of "Shabsuger cheese," and for his immature ventriloquism. "His -best imitations," says Hazlitt, "were founded on his own observation, and -on the absurd characteristics of chattering footmen, drunken coachmen, -surly travellers, and garrulous old men. His old Scotchwoman, with her -pointless story, was a portrait equal to Wilkie or Teniers, as faithful, -as simple, as delicately humorous, with a slight dash of pathos, but -without one particle of caricature, vulgarity, or ill-nature." His best -broad jokes were these: the abrupt proposal of a mutton-chop to a man who -was sea-sick, and the convulsive marks of abhorrence with which he -received it; and the tavern beau who was about to swallow a lighted candle -for a glass of brandy-and-water as he was going drunk to bed. Poor -Wiggins, the fat, hen-pecked husband, who, unwieldy and helpless, is -pursued by a rabble of boys, was one of his best characters. Hazlitt -mentions also as a stroke of true genius his imitation of a German family, -the wife grumbling at her husband returning drunk, and the little child's -paddling across the room to its own bed at its father's approach.[341] - -Terry, who in 1825 joined partnership with Yates, and died in 1829, was a -quiet, sensible actor, praised in his Mephistopheles, and even in King -Lear. His Peter Teazle was inferior to Farren's, and his Dr. Cantwell came -after Dowton's. - -Yates was born in 1797. He made his début at Covent Garden as Iago in -1818. He was very versatile, and triumphed alternately in tragedy, -comedy, farce, and melodrama. A critic of 1834 says, "Mr. Yates is -occasionally capital, and always respectable. In burlesque he is -excellent, but a little too broad, and given to an exaggeration which is -sometimes vulgar. He is a better buck than fop, and a better rake than -either, were he more refined." - -John Reeve was another of the Adelphi celebrities. He was born in 1799, -and was originally a clerk at a Fleet Street banking-house. He appeared -first at Drury Lane in 1819 as Sylvester Daggerwood. His imitations were -pronounced perfect, and he soon rose to great celebrity in broad farce, -burlesque, and the comic parts of melodrama. Lord Grizzle, Bombastes, and -Pedrillo, were favourite early characters of his. He was considered too -heavy for Caleb Quotem, and not quiet enough for Paul Pry. Liston excelled -him in the one, and Harley in the other. - -Benjamin Webster was born at Bath in 1800. He took the management of the -Haymarket in 1837, and built the New Adelphi Theatre in 1858. In melodrama -Mr. Webster excels. His best parts are--Lavater, Tartuffe, Belphegor, -Triplet, and Pierre Leroux in "The Poor Stroller." He is excellent in poor -authors and strolling players, and achieved a great triumph in Mr. Watts -Philips's play of "The Dead Heart." He is energetic and forcible, but he -has a bad hoarse voice, and he protracts and details his part so -elaborately as often to become tedious. - -In 1844 Madame Celeste, who in 1837 had appeared at Drury Lane on her -return from America, was directress of the Adelphi. She then left and took -the Lyceum, which she held until the close of 1860-1. - -The old Adelphi closed in June 1858. Although a small and incommodious -house, it had long earned a special fame of its own. It began its career -with "True Blue Scott," and went on with Rodwell and Jones during the "Tom -and Jerry" mania, when young men about town wrenched off knockers, knocked -down old men who were paid to apprehend thieves, and attended beggars' -suppers. Under Terry and Yates, Buckstone and Fitzball produced pieces in -which T. P. Cooke, O. Smith, Wilkinson, and Tyrone Power shone (this -actor was drowned in 1841). There also flourished Wright, Paul Bedford, -Mrs. Yates, and Mrs. Keeley, in "The Pilot," "The Flying Dutchman," "The -Wreck Ashore," "Victorine," "Rory O'More," and "Jack Sheppard,"[342]--the -last of these a play to be branded as a demoralising apotheosis of a -clever thief. - -In 1844 Mr. Webster became proprietor of the Adelphi, and Madame Celeste, -a good melodramatic actress, became the directress. Then was brought out -that crowning triumph of the theatre, "The Green Bushes," by Mr. -Buckstone--a tremendous success. - -Among the greatest "hits" at the Adelphi have been of later years Mr. -Watts Philips's "Dead Heart," a powerful melodrama of the French -Revolution period, Miss Bateman's "Leah," an American-German play of the -old school, and "The Colleen Bawn," Mr. Boucicault's clever dramatic -version of poor Gerald Griffin's novel, full of fine melodramatic -situations. - -The old town house of the Earls of Bedford stood on the site of the -present Southampton Street, and was taken down in 1704, in Queen Anne's -reign. It was a large house with a courtyard before it, and a spacious -garden with a terrace walk.[343] Before this house was built the Bedford -family lived at the opposite side of the Strand, in the Bishop of -Carlisle's inn, which, in 1598, was called Russell or Bedford House.[344] -In 1704 the family removed to Bloomsbury. The neighbouring streets were -christened by this family. Russell Street bears their family name, and -Tavistock Street their second title. - -Garrick lived at No. 36 Southampton Street before he went to the Adelphi. -In 1755, to give himself some rest, he brought out a magnificent ballet -pantomime, called "The Chinese Festival," composed by "the great Noverre." -Unfortunately for Garrick, war had just broken out between England and -France, and the pit and gallery condemned the Popish dancers in spite of -King George II. and the quality. Gentlemen in the boxes drew their swords, -leaped down into the pit, and were bruised and beaten. The galleries -looked on and pelted both sides. The ladies urged fresh recruits against -the pit, and each fresh levy was mauled. The pit broke up benches, tore -down hangings, smashed mirrors, split the harpsichords, and storming the -stage, cut and slashed the scenery.[345] The rioters then sallied out to -Mr. Garrick's house (now Eastey's Hotel) in Southampton Street, and broke -every window from basement to garret. - -Mrs. Oldfield, who lived in Southampton Street, was the daughter of an -officer, and so reduced as to be obliged to live with a relation who kept -the Mitre Tavern in St. James's Market. She was overheard by Mr. Farquhar -reading a comedy, and recommended by him to Sir John Vanbrugh. She was -excellent as Lady Brute and also as Lady Townley. She died in 1730; her -body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and was afterwards buried in -the Abbey. Lord Hervey and Bubb Doddington supported her pall. Her corpse, -by her own request, was richly adorned with lace--a vanity which Pope -ridiculed in those bitter lines-- - - "One would not sure be ugly when one's dead; - And, Betty, give this cheek a little red." - -In 1712 Arthur Maynwaring, in his will, describes this street as New -Southampton Street. - -Bedford Street was first so named in 1766 by the Paving Commissioners. The -lower part of the street was called Half-Moon Street; after the fire of -London it became fashionable with mercers, lacemen, and drapers.[346] The -lower part of the street is in the parish of St. Martin's in the Fields, -the upper in that of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. In the overseers' accounts -of St. Martin's mention is made of the names of persons who were fined in -1665 for drinking on the Lord's Day at the Half-Moon Tavern in this -street, also for carrying linen, for shaving customers, for carrying home -venison or a pair of shoes, and for swearing. Sir Charles Sedley and the -Duke of Buckingham were fined by the Puritans in 1657-58 for riding in -their coaches on that day.[347] Ned Ward, the witty publican, in his -_London Spy_, mentions the Half-Moon Tavern in this street. - -On the eastern side of the same street, in 1645, lived Remigius van -Limput, a Dutch painter, who, at the sale of King Charles's pictures, -bought Vandyke's florid masterpiece, now at Windsor, of the king on -horseback. After the Restoration he was compelled to disgorge it. Had this -grand picture been the portrait of any better king, Cromwell would not -have parted with it. - -The witty bulky Quin lived here from 1749 to 1752. It was in 1749 that -this great tragedian, reappearing after a retirement, performed in his -friend Thomson's posthumous play of "Coriolanus." Good-natured Quin had -once rescued the fat lazy poet from a sponging-house. It was about this -time that the great elocutionist was instructing Prince George in -recitation. When, afterwards, as king, he delivered his first speech -successfully in Parliament, the actor exclaimed triumphantly, "Sir, it was -I taught the boy." - -On the west side, at No. 15, lived Chief "Justice" Richardson, the -humourist. He died in 1635. The interior of the house is ancient. Sir -Francis Kynaston, an esquire of the body to Charles I., and author of -_Leoline and Sydanis_, lived in this street in 1637. He died in 1642. The -Earl of Chesterfield, one of Grammont's gay and heartless gallants, lived -in Bedford Street in 1656. In the same street, in his old age, at the -house of his son, a rich silk-mercer, dwelt Kynaston, the great actor of -Charles II.'s time, so well known for his female characters. Thomas -Sheridan, the lecturer on elocution, the son of Swift's friend, and the -father of the wit and orator, lived in Bedford Street, facing Henrietta -Street and the south side of Covent Garden. Here Dr. Johnson often visited -him. "One day," says Mr. Whyte, "we were standing together at the -drawing-room window expecting Johnson, who was to dine with us.[348] Mr. -Sheridan asked me could I see the length of the garden. 'No, sir.' 'Take -out your opera-glass then: Johnson is coming, you may know him by his -gait.' I perceived him at a good distance, walking along with a peculiar -solemnity of deportment, and an awkward, measured sort of step. At that -time the broad flagging at each side of the streets was not universally -adopted, and stone posts were in fashion to prevent the annoyance of -carriages. Upon every post, as he passed along, I could observe he -deliberately laid his hand; but missing one of them, when he had got to -some distance he seemed suddenly to recollect himself, and immediately -returning back, carefully performed the accustomed ceremony, and resumed -his former course, not omitting one, till he gained the crossing. This, -Mr. Sheridan assured me, however odd it might appear, was his constant -practice, but why or wherefore he could not inform me." This eccentric -habit of Johnson, the result of hypochondriacal nervousness, is also -mentioned by Boswell. - -[Illustration: EXETER CHANGE, 1821.] - -Richard Wilson, the great landscape-painter--"Red-nosed Dick," as he was -familiarly called--was a great ally of Mortimer, "the English Salvator." -They used to meet over a pot of porter at the Constitution, Bedford -Street. Mortimer, who was a coarse joker, used to make Dr. Arne, the -composer of "Rule Britannia," who had a red face and staring eyes, very -angry by telling him that his eyes looked like two oysters just opened for -sauce, and put on an oval side dish of beetroot. - -Close to the Lowther Arcade there is one of those large cafés that are -becoming features in modern London. It was started by an Italian named -Carlo Gatti. There you may see refugees of all countries, playing at -dominoes, sipping coffee, or groaning over the wrongs of their native land -and their own exile. No music is allowed in this large hall, because it -might interfere with the week-day services at St. Martin's Church. - - - - -[Illustration: TITUS OATES IN THE PILLORY.] - - -CHAPTER IX. - -CHARING CROSS. - - -On July 20, 1864, was laid the first stone of the great Thames Embankment, -which now forms the wall of our river from Blackfriars to Westminster. A -couple of flags fluttered lazily over the stone as a straggling procession -of the members of the Metropolitan Board of Works moved down to the -wooden causeway leading to the river. For two years about a thousand men -were at work on it night and day. Iron caissons were sunk below the mud, -deep in the gravel, and within ten feet of the clay which is the real -foundation of London, and the Victoria Embankment rose gradually into -being. It was opened by Royalty in the summer of 1870. This scheme, -originally sketched out by Wren, was designed by Colonel Trench, M.P., and -also by Martin the painter; but it was never carried out until the days of -Lord Palmerston and the Metropolitan Board of Works. Its piers, its -flights of steps, its broad highway covering a railway, its gardens, its -terraces, are complete; and when the buildings along it are finished -London may for the first time claim to compare itself in architectural -grandeur with Nineveh, Rome, or modern Paris. - -Northumberland House, which faced Charing Cross, covering the site of -Northumberland Avenue, was a good but dull specimen of Jacobean -architecture; it was built by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, son of -the poet Earl of Surrey, about 1605.[349] Walpole attributes the building -to Bernard Jansen, a Fleming, and an imitator of Dieterling, and to Gerard -Christmas, the designer of Aldersgate. Jansen probably built the house, -which was of brick, and Christmas added the stone frontispiece, which was -profusely ornamented with rich carved scrolls, and an open parapet worked -into letters and other devices. John Thorpe is also supposed to have been -associated in the work; and plans of both the quadrangles of this enormous -palace are preserved among the _Soane MSS._[350] Jansen was the architect -of Audley End, in Essex, one of the wonders of the age. Thorpe built -Burghley. The front was originally 162 feet long, the court 82 feet -square; as Inigo Jones has noted in a copy of _Palladio_ preserved at -Worcester College, Oxford. - -The Earl of Northampton left the house by his will, in 1614, to his -nephew, Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, who died in 1626. This was the -father of the memorable Frances, Countess of Essex and Somerset; and from -him the house took the name of Suffolk House, till the marriage in 1642 of -Elizabeth, daughter of Theophilus, second Earl of Suffolk, with Algernon -Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland, when it changed its name accordingly. - -Dorothy, sister of the rash and ungrateful Earl of Essex, whose violence -and follies nothing less than the executioner's axe could cure, married -the "wizard" Earl of Northumberland, as he was called, whom "she led the -life of a dog, till he indignantly turned her out of doors." He was -afterwards engaged in the Gunpowder Plot, being angry with the Government -that had overlooked him. "His name was used and his money spent by the -conspirators; one of his servants hired the vault, and procured the lease -of Vineyard House. Thomas Percy, his kinsman and steward, supped with him -on the very night of the plot. His servant, Sir Dudley Carleton, who hired -the house, was thrust into the Tower, and the earl joined him there not -long after; but Cecil was either unable or unwilling to touch his -life."[351] Northumberland, with Cobham and Raleigh, had before this -engaged in schemes with the French against the Government. Thomas Percy -had been beheaded for plotting with Mary. Henry Percy had shot himself -while in the Tower, on account of the Throckmorton Conspiracy. Compounding -for a fine of £11,000, the earl devoted himself in the Tower to scientific -and literary pursuits, and gave annuities to six or seven eminent -mathematicians, who ate at his table. In 1611 he was again examined, and -finally released in 1617. The king's favourite, Hay, afterwards Earl of -Carlisle, had married the earl's daughter Lucy against his will, which so -irritated him that he was with difficulty persuaded to accept his own -release, because it was obtained through the intercession of Hay. - -Joceline Percy, son of Algernon, dying in 1670, without issue male, -Northumberland House became the property of his only daughter Elizabeth -Percy, the heiress of the Percy estates. Her first husband was Henry -Cavendish, Earl of Ogle; her second, Thomas Thynne, of Longleat, in -Wilts, who was shot in his coach in Pall Mall, on Sunday, February 12, -1681-2; her third husband was Charles Seymour, the _proud_ Duke of -Somerset, who married her in 1682. This lady was twice a widow and three -times a wife before the age of seventeen. - -The "proud" duke and duchess lived in great state and magnificence at -Northumberland House. The duchess died in 1722, and the duke followed in -1748. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Algernon, Earl of Hertford, and -the seventh Duke of Somerset, who was created Earl of Northumberland in -1749, with remainder, failing issue male, to his son-in-law, Sir Hugh -Smithson, who in 1766 was raised to the dukedom. The lion which country -cousins for two centuries remember to have crowned the central gateway of -the duke's house, represented the Percy crest. It is of this stiff-tailed -animal, for the exact angle of the tail is treated by heralds as a matter -of the most vital importance, that the old story imputed to Sheridan is -told. Probably some audacious wit did once collect a London crowd by -declaring that its tail wagged--but certainly it was not Sheridan. - -Tom Thynne, or, as he was called, "Tom of Ten Thousand," was shot at the -east end of Pall Mall, opposite the Opera Arcade, by Borosky, a Polish -soldier urged on by Count Königsmark, a Swedish adventurer, son of one of -Gustavus's old generals, and who was enraged with Thynne for having just -married the youthful widow of the Earl of Ogle, Lady Elizabeth Percy. -Thynne was a favourite of the Duke of Monmouth. Shaftesbury had been -lately released from the Tower, in spite of Dryden's onslaught on him as -"Achitophel," on the foolish duke as "Absalom," and on Thynne as -"Issachar," his wealthy western friend. The three murderers were hanged in -Pall Mall, but their master strangely escaped, partly owing to the -influence of Charles II. The count, who had shown great courage at Tangier -against the Moors, and had boarded a Turkish galley at his eminent peril, -died in 1686, at the battle of Argos in the Morea. His younger brother was -assassinated at Hanover, on suspicion of an intrigue with Sophia of Zell, -the young and beautiful wife of the Elector, afterwards George I. of -England.[352] - -The Earl of Northampton, Surrey's son, who built Northumberland House (as -Osborne, who loved scandal, says with Spanish gold), seems to have been an -unscrupulous time-server, flatterer, and parasite. In 1596 he wrote to -Burleigh, and spoke of his reverend awe at his lordship's "piercing -judgment;" yet a year after he writes a plotting letter to Burleigh's -great enemy, Essex, and says: "Your lordship by your last purchase hath -almost enraged the dromedary that would have won the Queen of Sheba's -favour by bringing pearls. If you could once be so fortunate in dragging -old Leviathan (Burghley) and his rich tortuosum colubrum (Sir Robert -Cecil), as the prophet termeth them, out of their den of mischievous -device, the better part of the world would prefer your virtue to that of -Hercules." The earl became a toady and creature of the infamous Carr, Earl -of Somerset, and is thought to have died just in time to escape -prosecution for the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower.[353] - -It was shortly before Suffolk House changed its name that it became the -scene of one of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's mad Quixotic quarrels. His -chivalrous lordship had had sundry ague fits, which had made him so lean -and yellow that scarce any man could recognise him. Walking towards -Whitehall he one day met a Mr. Emerson, who had spoken very disgraceful -words of Lord Herbert's friend, Sir Robert Harley. Lord Herbert therefore, -sensible of the dishonour, took Emerson by his long beard, and then, -stepping aside, drew his sword; Captain Thomas Scriven being with Lord -Herbert, and divers friends with Mr. Emerson. All who saw the quarrel -wondered at the Welsh nobleman, weak and "consumed" as he was, offering to -fight; however, Emerson ran and took shelter in Suffolk House, and -afterwards complained to the Lords in Council, who sent for Lord Herbert, -the lean, yellow Welsh Quixote, but did not so much reprehend him for -defending the honour of his friend as for adventuring to fight, being at -the same time in such weak health.[354] - -Algernon, the tenth Earl of Northumberland, is called by Clarendon "the -proudest man alive." He had been Lord High Admiral to King Charles I., and -was appointed general against the Scotch Covenanters, but, being unable to -take the command from ill health, gave up his commission. He gradually -fell away from the king's cause, but nevertheless refused to continue High -Admiral against the king's wish. He treated the Dukes of York and -Gloucester and the Princess Elizabeth with "such consideration" that they -were removed from his care, and from that time he turned Royalist again. - -Sir John Suckling refers to Suffolk House in his exquisite little poem on -the wedding of Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, with Lady Margaret Howard, -daughter of the Earl of Suffolk. The well known poem begins-- - - "At Charing-cross, hard by the way - Where we (thou know'st) do sell our hay, - There is a house with stairs." - -And then the gay and graceful poet goes on to sketch Lady Margaret-- - - "Her lips were red, and one was thin, - Compared with that was next her chin. - Some bee had stung it newly." - -And then follows that delightful, fantastic simile, comparing her feet to -little mice creeping in and out her petticoat.[355] Sir John was born in -1609. - -The oldest part of Northumberland House was the Strand entrance. This was -crowned, as stated above, by a frieze or balustrade of large stone -letters, probably including the name and titles of the earl and the -glorified name of the architect. At the funeral of Anne of Denmark, 1619, -a young man, named Appleyard, was killed by the fall of the letter S[356] -from the house, which was then occupied by the Earl of Strafford, Lord -Treasurer. The house was originally only three sides of a quadrangle, the -river side remaining open to the gardens; but traffic and noise -increasing, the quadrangle was completed along the river side and the -principal apartments. There is a drawing by Hollar of the house in his -time, and another, a century later, by Canaletti. The new front towards -the gardens was spoiled by a clumsy stone staircase, which was attributed -to Inigo Jones, but probably incorrectly. - -The date, 1746, on the façade referred to the repairs made in that year, -and the letters "A. S. P. N." stood for Algernon Somerset, Princeps -Northumbriæ. The lion over the gateway was said to be a copy of one by -Michael Angelo; it is now at Sion House, Isleworth. The gateway was -covered with ornaments and trophies. Double ranges of grotesque pilasters -enclosed eight niches on the sides, and there was a bow window and an open -arch above the chief gate. Between each of the fourteen niches in the -front there were trophies of crossed weapons, and the upper stories had -twenty-four windows, in two ranges, and pierced battlements. Each wing -terminated in a little cupola, and the angles had rustic quoins. The -quadrangle within the gate was simpler and in better taste, and the house -was screened from the river by elm trees.[357] - -There used to be a schoolboy tradition, prevalent at King's College in the -author's time, that one of the niches in the front of Northumberland House -was of copper and movable. So far the story was true; but the tradition -went on to relate how, once upon a time, a certain enemy of the house of -Percy obtained secret admission by this niche and murdered one of the -dukes, his enemy. History is, however, fortunately, quite silent on this -subject. - -In February 1762 Horace Walpole and a party of quality set out from -Northumberland House to hear the ghost in Cock Lane that Dr. Johnson -exposed, and that Hogarth and Churchill ridiculed with pen and pencil. -The Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, and Lord Hertford, -all returned from the Opera with Horace Walpole, then changed their dress, -and set out in a hackney coach. It rained hard, and the lane and house -were "full of mob." The room of the haunted house, small and miserable, -was stuffed with eighty persons, and there was no light but one tallow -candle. As clothes-lines hung from the ceiling, Walpole asked drily if -there was going to be rope-dancing between the acts. They said the ghost -would not come till 7 A.M., when only 'prentices and old women remained. -The party stayed till half-past one. The Methodists had promised -contributions, provisions were sent in like forage, and the neighbouring -taverns and ale-houses were making their fortunes.[358] - -On May 14, 1770, poor Chatterton, who suffered so terribly for the -deceptions of his ambitious boyhood, writes from the King's Bench (for the -present) that a gentleman who knew him at the Chapter coffee-house, in -Paternoster Row--frequented by authors and publishers--would have -introduced him to the young Duke of Northumberland as a companion in his -intended general tour, "but, alas! I spake no tongue but my own."[359] But -this is taken from a most questionable work, full of fictions and -forgeries. Its author was a Bristol man, who afterwards fled to America. -He also wrote a series of Conversations with the poets of the Lake school, -many of which are too obviously imaginary. - -On March 18, 1780, the Strand front of Northumberland House was totally -destroyed by fire. The apartments of Dr. Percy, the Duke's kinsman and -chaplain, afterwards Bishop of Dromore and editor of the _Reliques of -Ancient Poetry_ were consumed; but great part of his library escaped. - -Goldsmith's simple-hearted ballad of _Edwin and Angelina_ was originally -"printed for the amusement of the Countess of Northumberland." Two years -after, Kenrick accused him in the papers of plagiarising it from Percy's -pasticcio from Shakspere in the _Reliques_, which was probably written in -1765.[360] - -It is probable that Goldsmith often visited Percy, when acting as chaplain -at Northumberland House. Sir John Hawkins, indeed, describes meeting the -poet waiting for an audience in an outer room. At his own audience Hawkins -mentioned that the doctor was waiting. On their way home together, -Goldsmith told Hawkins that his lordship said that he had read the -_Traveller_ with delight, that he was going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, -and should be glad, as Goldsmith was an Irishman, to do him any kindness. -Hawkins was enraptured at the rich man's graciousness. But Goldsmith had -mentioned only his brother, a clergyman there, who needed help. "As for -myself," he added, bitterly, "I have no dependence on the promises of -great men. I look to the booksellers for support; they are my best -friends, and I am not inclined to forsake them for others." "Thus," says -Hawkins, "did this idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his -fortunes and put back the hand that was held out to assist him." The earl -told Percy, after Goldsmith's death, that had he known how to help the -poet he would have done so, or he would have procured him a salary on the -Irish establishment that would have allowed him to travel. Let men of the -world remember that the poet a few days before had been forced to borrow -15s. 6d. to meet his own wants. - -This conversation took place in 1765. In 1771, when Goldsmith was stopping -at Bath with his good-natured friend Lord Clare, he blundered by mistake -at breakfast time into the next door on the same Parade, where the Duke -and Duchess of Northumberland were staying. As he took no notice of them, -but threw himself carelessly on a sofa, they supposed there was some -mistake, and therefore entered into conversation with him, and when -breakfast was served up, invited him to stay and partake of it. The poet, -hot, stammering, and irrecoverably confused, withdrew with profuse -apologies for his mistake, but not till he had accepted an invitation to -dinner. This story, a parallel to the laughable blunder in _She Stoops to -Conquer_, was told by the duchess herself to Dr. Percy. - -It was probably of the first of these interviews that Goldsmith used to -give the following account:-- - -"I dressed myself in the best manner I could, and, after studying some -compliments I thought necessary on such an occasion, proceeded to -Northumberland House, and acquainted the servants that I had particular -business with the duke. They showed me into an ante-chamber, where, after -waiting some time, a gentleman, very elegantly dressed, made his -appearance. Taking him for the duke, I delivered all the fine things I had -composed, in order to compliment him on the honour he had done me; when to -my fear and astonishment, he told me I had mistaken him for his master, -who would see me immediately. At that instant the duke came into the -apartment, and I was so confounded on the occasion that I wanted words -barely sufficient to express the sense I entertained of the duke's -politeness, and went away exceedingly chagrined at the blunder I had -committed."[361] - -Dr. Waagen, the picture critic, seems to have been rather dazzled at the -splendour of Northumberland House. He praises the magnificent staircase, -lighted from above and reaching up through three stories, the white marble -floors, the balustrades and chandeliers of gilt bronze, the cabinets of -Florentine mosaic, and the arabesques of the drawing-room.[362] The great -picture of the duke's collection was the Cornaro family, by Titian; I -believe from the Duke of Buckingham's collection. It is a splendid -specimen of the painter's middle period and golden tone. The faces of the -kneeling Cornari are grand, simple, senatorial, and devout. There was also -a Saint Sebastian, by Guercino, "clear and careful," and large as life; a -fine Snyders and Vandyke; many copies by Mengs (particularly "The School -of Athens"); and a good Schalcken, with his usual candlelight effect. The -gem of all the English pictures was one by Dobson, Vandyke's noble pupil. -It contained the portrait of the painter and those of Sir Balthasar -Gerbier, the architect, and Sir Charles Cotterell. The colour is as rich -and juicy as Titian's, the drapery learned and graceful, the faces are -full of fire and spirit. Dobson died at the age of thirty-six. Sir Charles -was his patron.[363] Vandyke is said to have disinterred Dobson from a -garret, and recommended him to the king. Gerbier was a native of Antwerp, -a painter, architect, and ambassador. This picture of Dobson was bought at -Betterton's sale for £44.[364] The gallery of the Duke of Northumberland -was removed in 1875, when the house was demolished, to Sion House. - -Northumberland House was connected with, at all events, one period of -English history. In the year 1660, when General Monk was in quarters at -Whitehall, the Earl of Northumberland, in the name of the nobility and -gentry of England, invited him here to the first conference in which the -restoration of the Stuarts was publicly talked of. Algernon Percy, the -tenth earl, had been Lord High Admiral under Charles I. - -That staunch, brave, crotchety man, Sir Harry Vane the younger (the son of -Lord Strafford's enemy), lived next door to Northumberland House, -eastwards, in the Strand. The house in Charles II.'s time became the -official residence of the Secretary of State, and Mr. Secretary Nicholas -dwelt there, when meetings were held to found a commonwealth and put down -that foolish, good-natured, incompetent Richard Cromwell. To the great -Protector, Vane was a thorn in the flesh, for he wanted a republic when -the nation required a stronger and more compact government. Oliver's -exclamation, "Oh, Sir Harry Vane! Sir Harry Vane!--The Lord deliver me -from Sir Harry Vane!" expresses infinite vexation with an impracticable -person. Vane was a "Fifth-monarchy man," and believed in universal -salvation. He must have been a good man, or Milton would never have -addressed the sonnet to him in which he says-- - - "Therefore, on thy firm hand Religion leans - In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son." - -Sir Harry left behind him some very tough and dark treatises on prophecy, -and other profound matters that few but angels or fools dare to meddle -with. - -There is a foolish tradition that Charing Cross was so named originally by -Edward I. in memory of his _chère reine_. Peele, one of the glorious band -of Elizabethan dramatists, helped to spread this tradition. He makes King -Edward say-- - - "Erect a rich and stately carved cross, - Whereon her statue shall with glory shine; - And henceforth see you call it Charing Cross. - For why?--the _chariest_ and the choicest queen - That ever did delight my royal eyes - There dwells in darkness."[365] - -The inconsolable widower, however, in spite of his costly grief, soon -married again. - -The truth is, there are in England one or two Charings; one of them is a -village thirteen miles from Maidstone. "_Ing_" means meadow in Saxon.[366] -The meaning of "_Char_" is uncertain; it may be the contraction of the -name of some long-forgotten landowner, "rich in the possession of -dirt."[367] The Anglo-Saxon word _cerre_--a turn (says Mr. Robert -Ferguson, an excellent authority), is retained in the name given in -Carlisle and other northern towns to the chares, or _wynds_--small -streets. In King Edward's time Charing was bounded by fields, both north -and west. There has been a good deal of nonsense, however, written about -"the pleasant village of Charing." In Aggas's map, published under -Elizabeth, Hedge Lane (now Whitcombe Street) is a country lane bordered -with fields; so is the Haymarket, and all behind the Mews up to St. -Martin's Lane is equally rural. - -Horne Tooke[368] derives the word Charing from the Saxon verb _charan_--to -turn; but the etymology is still doubtful, however much the river may bend -on its way to Westminster. However, doubtless, the place was named -Charing as far back as the Saxon times. - -It was Peele also who kept alive the old tradition of Queen Eleanor -sinking at Charing Cross and rising again at Queenhithe. When falsely -accused of _her crimes_, his heroine replies in the words of a rude old -ballad well known in Elizabeth's time-- - - "If that upon so vile a thing - Her heart did ever think, - She wished the ground might open wide, - And therein she might sink. - - With that at Charing Cross she sank - Into the ground alive, - And after rose with life again, - In London at Queenhithe."[369] - -The Eleanor crosses were erected at Lincoln, Geddington, Northampton, -Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, Waltham, Cheap, and -Charing. Three only now remain,--Northampton, Geddington, and Waltham. -Charing Cross was probably the most costly; it was octagonal, and was -adorned with statues in tiers of niches, which were crowned with -pinnacles. It was begun by Master Richard de Crundale, "cementarius," but -he died about 1293, before it was finished, and the work went on under the -supervision of Roger de Crundale. Richard received about £500 for his -work, exclusive of materials furnished him, and Roger £90: 7: 5. The stone -was brought from Caen, and the marble steps from Corfe in Dorsetshire. -Only one foreigner was employed on all the crosses, and he was a -Frenchman. The Abbot Ware brought mosaics, porphyry, and perhaps designs -from Italy, but there is no proof that he brought over Cavallini. A -replica of the original cross, designed by Mr. Barry, has been erected at -the west end of the Strand, opposite the Charing Cross Railway Station and -Hotel. - -The cluster of houses at Charing acquired the name of Cross from the -monument set up by Edward I. to the memory of his gentle, pious, and -brave wife Eleanor, the sister of Alphonso, King of Castille. This good -woman was the daughter of Ferdinand III., and after the death of her -mother, heiress of Ponthieu. She bore to her fond husband four sons and -eleven daughters, of whom only three are supposed to have survived their -father. - -Queen Eleanor died at Hardley, near Lincoln, in 1290. The king followed -the funeral to Westminster, and afterwards erected a cross to his wife's -memory at every place where the corpse rested for the night. In the -circular which the king sent on the occasion to his prelates and nobles, -he trusts that prayers may be offered for her soul at these crosses, so -that any stains not purged from her, either from forgetfulness or other -causes, may through the plenitude of the Divine grace be removed.[370] It -was Queen Eleanor who, when Edward was stabbed at Acre, by an emissary of -the Emir of Joppa, according to a Spanish historian,[371] sucked the -poison from the wounds at the risk of her own life. - -This warlike king, who subdued Wales and Scotland, who expelled the Jews -from England, who hunted Bruce, hanged Wallace, and who finally died on -his march to crush Scotland, had a deep affection for his wife, and strove -by all that art could do to preserve her memory. - -Old Charing Cross was long supposed to have been built from the designs of -Pietro Cavallini, a contemporary of Giotto. He is said to have assisted -that painter in the great mosaic picture over the chief entrance of St. -Peter's. But there is little ground for accepting the tradition as true, -though asserted by Vertue, as we learn from Horace Walpole's 'Anecdotes.' -Cavallini was born in 1279, and died in 1364. The monument to Henry III. -at the Abbey, and the old paintings round the chapel of St. Edward are -also attributed to this patriarch of art by Vertue.[372] - -Queen Eleanor had three tombs--one in Lincoln Cathedral, over her viscera; -another in the church of the Blackfriars in London, over her heart; a -third in Westminster Abbey, over the rest of her body. The first was -destroyed by the Parliamentarians; the second probably perished at the -dissolution of the monasteries; the third has escaped. It is a valuable -example of the thirteenth century beau-ideal. The tomb was the work of -William Torel, a London goldsmith. The statue is not a portrait statue any -more than the statue of Henry III. by the same artist. Torel seems to have -received for his whole work about £1700 of our money.[373] - -The beautiful cross, with its pinnacles and statues, was demolished in -1647 under an order of the House of Commons, which had remained dormant -for three years; and at the same time fell its brother cross in Cheapside. - -The Royalist ballad-mongers, eager to catch the Puritans tripping, -produced a lively street song on the occasion, beginning-- - - "Undone, undone the lawyers are, - They wander about the town, - Nor can find the way to Westminster, - Now Charing Cross is down. - At the end of the Strand they make a stand, - Swearing they are at a loss, - And chaffing say that's not the way, - They must go by Charing Cross." - -The ballad-writer goes on to deny that the Cross ever spoke a word against -the Parliament, though he confesses it might have inclined to Popery; for -certain it was that it "never went to church." - -The workmen were engaged for three months in pulling down the Cross.[374] -Some of the stones went to form the pavement before Whitehall; others were -polished to look like marble, and were sold to antiquaries for -knife-handles. The site remained vacant for thirty-one years. - -After the Restoration Charing Cross was turned into a place of execution. -Here Hugh Peters, Cromwell's chaplain, and Major-General Harrison, the -sturdy Anabaptist, Colonel Jones, and Colonel Scrope were executed. They -all died bravely, without a doubt or a fear. - -Harrison was the son of a Staffordshire farmer, and had fought bravely at -the siege of Basing; he had been major-general in Scotland; had helped -Cromwell at the disbanding of the Rump; had served in the Council of -State; and finally having expressed honest Anabaptist scruples about the -Protectorate, had been imprisoned to prevent rebellion. Cromwell's son -Oliver had been captain in Harrison's regiment.[375] As he was led to the -scaffold some base scullion called out to the brave old Ironside, "Where -is your good _old_ cause now?" Harrison replied with a cheerful smile, -clapping his hand on his breast, "Here it is, and I am going to seal it -with my blood." When he came in sight of the gallows he was transported -with joy; his servant asked him how he did? He answered, "Never better in -my life." His servant told him, "Sir, there is a crown of glory prepared -for you."[376] "Yes," replied he, "I see." When he was taken off the -sledge, the hangman desired him to forgive him. "I do forgive thee," said -he, "with all my heart, as it is a sin against me," and told him he wished -him all happiness; and further said, "Alas, poor man, thou dost it -ignorantly; the Lord grant that this sin may not be laid to thy charge!" -and putting his hand into his pocket he gave him all the money he had; and -so parting with his servant, hugging him in his arms, he went up the -ladder with an undaunted countenance. The cruel rabble observing him -tremble in his hands and legs, he took notice of it, and said, "Gentlemen, -by reason of some scoffing that I do hear, I judge that some do think I am -afraid to die by the shaking I have in my hands and knees. I tell you -_No_; but it is by reason of much blood I have lost in the wars, and many -wounds I have received in my body, which caused this shaking and weakness -in my nerves. I have had it this twelve years. I speak this to the praise -and glory of God. He hath carried me above the fear of death, and I value -not my life, because I go to my Father, and I am assured I shall take it -again. Gentlemen, take notice, that for being an instrument in that cause -(an instrument of the Son of God) which hath been pleaded amongst us, and -which God hath witnessed to by many appeals and wonderful victories, I am -brought to this place to suffer death this day, and if I had ten thousand -lives I could freely and cheerfully lay them down all to witness to this -matter." - -Then he prayed to himself with tears, and having ended, the hangman pulled -down his cap, but he thrust it up and said, "I have one word more to the -Lord's people. Let them not think hardly of any of the good ways of God -for all this, for I have found the way of God to be a perfect way, and He -hath covered my head many times in the day of battle. By my God I have -leaped over a wall, by my God I have run through a troop, and by my God I -will go through this death, and He will make it easy to me. Now, into thy -hands, O Lord Jesus, I commit my spirit." - -After he was hanged they cut down this true martyr, and stripping him, -slashed him open in order to disembowel him. In the last rigour of his -agony this staunch soldier is said to have risen up and struck the -executioner. - -Three days after, Carew and Cook were hanged at the same place, rejoicing -and praying cheerfully to the last. As Cook parted from his wife he said -to her, "I am going to be married in glory this day. Why weepest -thou?--let them weep who part and shall never meet again." - -On the 17th, Thomas Scot perished at the same place. His last words -were--"God engaged me in a cause not to be repented of--I say, in a cause -not to be repented of." - -Jones and Scrope (both old men) were drawn in one sledge. Their grave yet -cheerful and courageous countenances caused great admiration and -compassion among the crowd. Observing one of his friend's children weeping -at Newgate, Colonel Jones took her by the hand. He said, "Suppose your -father were to-morrow to be King of France, and you were to tarry a little -behind, would you weep so? Why, he is going to reign with the King of -kings." When he saw the sledge, he said, "It is like Elijah's fiery -chariot, only it goes through Fleet Street." The night before he suffered, -he told a friend the only temptation he had was lest he should be too much -transported, and so neglect and slight his life, so greatly was he -satisfied to die in such a cause. Another friend he grasped in his arms -and said, "Farewell! I could wish thee in the same condition as myself, -that our souls might mount up to heaven together and share in eternal -joys." To another friend he said, "Ah, dear heart! if we had perished -together in that storm going to Ireland, we had been in heaven to welcome -honest Harrison and Carew; but we will be content to go after them--we -will go after." It is added that "the executioner, having done his part -upon three others that day, was so surfeited with blood and sick, that he -sent his boy to finish the tragedy on Colonel Jones." - -Hugh Peters was much afraid while in Newgate lest his spirits should fail -him when he saw the gibbet and the fire, but his courage did not fail him -in that hour of great need. On his way to execution he looked about and -espied a man to whom he gave a piece of gold, having bowed it first, and -desired him to carry that as a token to his daughter, and to let her know -that her father's heart was as full of comfort as it could be, and that -before the piece should come into her hands he should be with God in -glory. - -While Cook was being hanged they made Peters sit within the rails to -behold his death. While sitting thus, one came to him and upbraided the -old preacher with the king's death, and bade him repent. Peters replied, -"Friend, you do not well to trample upon a dying man: you are greatly -mistaken--I had nothing to do in the death of the king." - -When Mr. Cook was cut down and about to be quartered, Colonel Turner told -the sheriff's men to bring Mr. Peters nearer to see the body. By and by -the hangman came to him, rubbing his bloody hands, and tauntingly asked -him, "Come, how do you like this--how do you like this work?" To whom Mr. -Peters calmly replied, "I am not, I thank God, terrified at it--you may do -your worst." - -Being upon the ladder, he spoke to the sheriff and said, "Sir, you have -here slain one of the servants of God before mine eyes, and have made me -to behold it on purpose to terrify and discourage me, but God hath made it -an ordinance to me for my strengthening and encouragement." - -When he was going to die, he said, "What, flesh! art thou unwilling to go -to God through the fire and jaws of death? Oh! this is a good day. He is -come that I have long looked for, and I shall soon be with Him in glory." -And he smiled when he went away. "What Mr. Peters said further it could -not be taken, in regard his voice was low at the time and the people -uncivil." - -In May 1685 that consummate scoundrel Titus Oates came to the pillory at -Charing Cross. He had been condemned to pay a thousand marks fine, to be -stripped of his gown, to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn, from Aldgate -to Newgate, and to stand in the pillory at the Royal Exchange and before -Westminster Hall. He was also condemned to stand one hour in the pillory -at Charing Cross every 10th of August, and there an eye-witness describes -seeing him in 1688.[377] - -In 1666 and 1667 an Italian puppet-player set up his booth at Charing -Cross, and there and then probably introduced "Punch and Judy" into -England. He paid a small rent to the overseers of St. Martin's parish, and -is called in their books "Punchinello." In 1668 we learn that a Mr. Devone -erected a small playhouse in the same place.[378] - -There is still extant a song written to ridicule the long delay in setting -up the king's statue, and it contains an allusion to "Punch"-- - - "What can the mistry be, why Charing Cross - These five months continues still blinded with board? - Dear Wheeler, impart--wee are all att a loss, - Unless Punchinello is to be restored."[379] - -The royal statue at Charing Cross is the work of Hubert Le Soeur, a -Frenchman and a pupil of the famous John of Bologna, the sculptor of the -"Rape of the Sabines" in the Loggia at Florence. Le Soeur's copy of the -"Fighting Gladiator," which is praised by Peacham in his "Compleat -Gentleman," once at the head of the canal in St. James's Park, is now at -Hampton Court. Le Soeur also executed the monuments of Sir George -Villiers, and Sir Thomas Richardson the judge, in Westminster Abbey. - -The original contract for the brazen equestrian statue, a foot larger than -life, is dated 1630. The sculptor was to receive £600. The agreement was -drawn up by Sir Balthasar Gerbier for the purchaser, the Lord High -Treasurer Weston. Yet the existing statue was not cast till 1633, and the -above-mentioned agreement speaks of it as to be erected in the Lord -Treasurer's garden at Roehampton; so that the agreement may not refer to -the same work, although it certainly specifies that the sculptor shall -"take advice of his Maj. riders of greate horses, as well for the shape of -the horse and action as for the graceful shape and action of his Maj. -figure on the same."[380] - -The present statue was cast in 1633, on a piece of ground near the church -in Covent Garden, and not being actually erected when the Civil War broke -out, it was sold by the Parliament to John Rivet, a brazier, living at -"the Dial, near Holburn Conduit," with strict orders to break it up. But -the man, being a shrewd Royalist, produced some fragments of old brass, -and hid the statue underground till the Restoration. Rivet refusing to -deliver up the statue after Charles's return, a replevin was served upon -him to compel its surrender. The dispute, however, lasted many years, and -he probably pleaded compensation. The statue was erected in its present -position about 1674, by an order from the Earl of Danby, afterwards Duke -of Leeds. Le Soeur died, it is supposed, before the statue was erected. - -Horace Walpole, who praises the "commanding grace of the figure," and the -"exquisite form of the horse,"[381] incorrectly says, "The statue was made -at the expense of the family of Howard, Lord Arundel, who have still the -receipt to show by whom and for whom it was cast." - -There is still extant a very rare large sheet print of the statue, -engraved in the manner and time of Faithorne, but without name or date. -The inscription beneath it describes the statue as almost ten feet high, -and as "preserved underground," with great hazard, charge, and care, by -John Rivet, a brazier.[382] - -John Rivet may have been a patriot, but he was certainly a shrewd one. To -secure his concealed treasure he had manufactured a large quantity of -brass handles for knives and forks, and advertised them as being forged -from the destroyed statue. They sold well; the Royalists bought them as -sad and precious relics; the Puritans as mementos of their triumph. He -doubled his prices, and still his shop was crowded with eager customers, -so that in a short time he realised a considerable fortune.[383] - -The brazier, or the brazier's family, probably sold the statue to Charles -II. at his restoration. The Parliament voted £70,000 for solemnising the -funeral of Charles I., and for erecting a monument to his memory.[384] -Part of this sum went for the pedestal, but whether the brazier or his kin -were rewarded is not known. Charles II. probably spent most of the money -on his pleasures. - -There is a fatality attending the verses of most time-serving poets. -Waller never wrote a court poem well but when he lauded that great man, -the Protector. When the statue of "the Martyr" was set up, _fourteen -years_ after the Restoration--so tardy was filial affection--Waller wrote -the following dull and unworthy lines about the statue of a faithless -king:-- - - "That the first Charles does here in triumph ride, - See his son reign where he a martyr died, - And people pay that reverence as they pass - (Which then he wanted) to the sacred brass - Is not th' effect of gratitude alone, - To which we owe the statue and the stone; - But Heaven this lasting monument has wrought, - That mortals may eternally be taught - Rebellion, though successful, is but vain, - And kings so kill'd rise conquerors again. - This truth the royal image does proclaim - Loud as the trumpet of surviving fame." - -Andrew Marvell, one of the most powerful of lampoon writers, and the very -Gillray of political satirists, wrote some bitter lines on the statue of -the so-called Martyr at Charing Cross, lines which in an earlier reign -would have cost the honest daring poet his ears, if not his head. - -There was an equestrian stone statue of Charles II. at Woolchurch -(Woolwich?), and the poet imagines the two horses, the one of stone and -the other of brass, talking together one evening, when the two riders, -weary of sitting all day, had stolen away together for a chat. - - "WOOLCHURCH.--To see Dei gratia writ on the throne, - And the king's wicked life says God there is none. - - CHARING.--That he should be styled Defender of the Faith - Who believes not a word what the Word of God saith. - - WOOLCHURCH.--That the Duke should turn Papist and that church defy - For which his own father a martyr did die. - - CHARING.--Tho' he changed his religion, I hope he's so civil - Not to think his own father has gone to the devil." - -Upon the brazen horse being asked his opinion of the Duke of York, it -replies with terrible truth and force:-- - - "The same that the frogs had of Jupiter's stork. - With the Turk in his head and the Pope in his heart, - Father Patrick's disciple will make England smart. - If e'er he be king, I know Britain's doom: - We must all to the stake or be converts to Rome. - Ah! Tudor! ah! Tudor! of Stuarts enough. - None ever reigned like old Bess in her ruff. - - * * * * * - - WOOLCHURCH.--But can'st thou devise when kings will be mended? - - CHARING.--When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended." - -In April 1810 the sword, buckles, and straps fell from the statue.[385] -The king's sword was stolen on the day on which Queen Victoria went to -open the Royal Exchange. - -London has its local traditions as well as the smallest village. There is -a foolish story that the sculptor of Charles I. and his steed committed -suicide in vexation at having forgotten to put a girth to the horse. The -myth has arisen from the supposition of there being no girth, and -retailers of such stories, Mr. Leigh Hunt included, did not take the -trouble to ascertain whether there was or was not a girth. Unfortunately -for the story there is a girth, and it is clearly visible. - -The pedestal, by some assigned to Marshal, by others to Grinling Gibbons, -the great wood-carver, and a Dutchman by birth, is seventeen feet high, -and is enriched with the arms of England, trophies of armour, cupids, and -palm-branches. It is erected in the centre of a circular area, thirty feet -in diameter, raised one step from the roadway, and enclosed with iron -rails. The lion and unicorn are much mutilated, and the trophies are -honeycombed and corroded by the weather. It has not been generally -observed that on the south side of the pedestal two weeping children -support a crown of thorns, and that the same emblem is repeated on the -opposite side, below the royal arms. - -In 1727 (1st George II.) that infamous rogue, Edmund Curll, the publisher -of all the filth and slander of his age, stood in the pillory at Charing -Cross for printing a vile work called _Venus in a Cloyster_. He was not, -however, pelted or ill-used; for, with the usual lying and cunning of his -reptile nature, he had circulated printed papers telling the people that -he stood there for daring to vindicate the memory of Queen Anne. The mob -allowed no one to touch him; and when he was taken down they carried him -off in triumph to a neighbouring tavern.[386] - -Archenholz, an observant Prussian officer who was in England in 1784, -tells a curious anecdote of the statue at Charing Cross. During the war in -which General Braddock was defeated by the French in America, about the -time when Minorca was in the enemy's hands, and poor Byng had just fallen -a victim to popular fury, an unhappy Spaniard, who did not know a word of -English, and had just arrived in England, was surrounded by a mob near -Whitehall, who took him by his dress for a French spy. One of the rabble -instantly proposed to mount him on the king's horse. The idea was adopted. -A ladder was brought, and the miserable Spaniard was forced upon its back, -to be loaded with insults and pelted with mud. Luckily for the stranger, -at that moment a cabinet minister happening to pass by, stopped to inquire -the cause of the crowd. On addressing the man in French he discovered the -mistake, and informed the mob. They instantly helped the man down, and the -minister, taking him in his coach to the Spanish ambassador, apologised in -the name of the nation for a mistake that might have been fatal.[387] - -In June 1731 Japhet Crook, _alias_ Sir Peter Stranger, who had been found -guilty of forging the writings to an estate, was sentenced to imprisonment -for life.[388] He was condemned to stand for one hour in the pillory at -Charing Cross. He was then seated in an elbow-chair; the common hangman -cut off both his ears with an incision knife, and then delivered them to -Mr. Watson, a sheriff's officer. He also slit both Crook's nostrils with a -pair of scissors, and seared them with a hot iron, pursuant to the -sentence. A surgeon attended on the pillory and instantly applied styptics -to prevent the effusion of blood. The man bore the operations with -undaunted courage. He laughed on the pillory, and denied the fact to the -last. He was then removed to the Ship Tavern at Charing Cross, and thence -taken back to the King's Bench prison, to be confined there for life.[389] - -This Crook had forged the conveyance, to himself, of an estate, upon which -he took up several thousand pounds. He was at the same time sued in -Chancery for having fraudulently obtained a will and wrongfully gained an -estate. In spite of losing his ears, he enjoyed the ill-gained money in -prison till the day of his death, and then quietly left it to his -executor. He is mentioned by Pope in his 3d epistle, written in 1732. -Talking of riches, he says-- - - "What can they give?--to dying Hopkins heirs? - To Chartres vigour? Japhet nose and ears?"[390] - -It was in this essay that, having been accused of attacking the Duke of -Chandos, Pope first began to attack vices instead of follies, and, in -order to prevent mistakes, boldly to publish the names of the malefactors -whom he gibbeted. - -Crook had been a brewer on Tower Hill. The 2d George II., c. 25, made -forgery a felony; and the first sufferer under the new law was Richard -Cooper, a Stepney victualler, who was hanged at Tyburn, in June 1731, six -days only after the older and luckier thief had stood in the pillory. - -In 1763 Parsons, the parish-clerk of St. Sepulchre's, and the impudent -contriver of the "Cock Lane ghost" deception, mounted here to the same bad -eminence. Parsons's child, a cunning little girl of twelve years, had -contrived to tap on her bed in a way that served to convey what were -supposed to be supernatural messages. It proved to be a plot devised by -Parsons out of malice against a gentleman of Norfolk who had sued him for -a debt. This gentleman was a widower, who had taken his wife's sister as -his mistress--a marriage with her being forbidden by law--and had brought -her to lodge with Parsons, from whence he had removed her to other -lodgings, where she had died suddenly of small-pox. The object of Parsons -was to obtain the ghost's declaration that she had been poisoned by -Parsons's creditor. The rascal was set three times in the pillory and -imprisoned for a year in the King's Bench. The people, however, singularly -enough, did not pelt the impudent rogue, but actually collected money for -him. - -There is a rare sheet-print of Charing Cross by Sutton Nicholls, in the -reign of Queen Anne. It shows about forty small square stone posts -surrounding the pedestal of the statue. The spot seems to have been a -favourite standing-place for hackney coaches and sedan chairs. Every house -has a long stepping-stone for horsemen at a regulated distance from the -front. - -In 1737 Hogarth published his four prints of the "Times of the Day."[391] -The scene of _Night_ is laid at Charing Cross; it is an -illumination-night. Some drunken Freemasons and the Salisbury "High-flyer" -coach upset over a street bonfire near the Rummer Tavern, fill up the -picture, which is curious as showing the roadway much narrower than it is -now, and impeded with projecting signs above and bulkheads below. - -The place is still further immortalised in the old song-- - - "I cry my matches by Charing Cross, - Where sits a black man on a black horse." - -In a sixpenny book for children, published about 1756, the absurd figure -of King George impaled on the top of Bloomsbury Church is contrasted with -that of King Charles at the Cross. - - "No longer stand staring, - My friend, at Cross Charing, - Amidst such a number of people; - For a man on a horse - Is a matter of course, - But look! here's a king on a steeple."[392] - -It was at Robinson's coffee-house, at Charing Cross, that that clever -scamp, vigorous versifier, and, as I think, great impostor, Richard -Savage, stabbed to death a Mr. Sinclair in a drunken brawl. Savage had -come up from Richmond to settle a claim for lodgings, when, meeting two -friends, he spent the night in drinking, till it was too late to get a -bed. As the three revellers passed Robinson's, a place of no very good -name, they saw a light, knocked at the door, and were admitted. It was a -cold, raw, November night; and hearing that the company in the parlour -were about to leave, and that there was a fire there, they pushed in and -kicked down the table. A quarrel ensued, swords were drawn, and Mr. -Sinclair received a mortal wound. The three brawlers then fled, and were -discovered lurking in a back-court by the soldiers who came to stop the -fray. The three men were taken to the Gate House at Westminster, and the -next morning to Newgate. That cruel and bullying judge, Page, hounded on -the jury at the trial in the following violent summing up:--"Gentlemen of -the jury, you are to consider that Mr. Savage is a very great man, a much -greater man than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he wears very fine -clothes, much finer than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he has -abundance of money in his pocket, much more money than you or I, gentlemen -of the jury; but, gentlemen of the jury, is it not a very hard case, -gentlemen of the jury, that Mr. Savage should therefore kill you or me, -gentlemen of the jury?" - -The verdict was of course "Guilty," for these homicides during tavern -brawls had become frightfully common, and quiet citizens were never sure -of their lives. Sentence of death was recorded against him. Eventually a -lady at court interceded for the poet, who escaped with six months' -imprisonment in Newgate, which he certainly well deserved. - -There is every reason to suppose from the researches of Mr. W. Moy Thomas, -that Savage was an impostor. He claimed to be the illegitimate son of the -Countess of Macclesfield by Lord Rivers. The lady had an illegitimate -child born in Fox Court, Gray's Inn Lane in 1697; but this child, there -is reason to think, died in 1698.[393] Savage imposed on Dr. Johnson and -other friends with stories of being placed at school and apprenticed to a -shoemaker in Holborn by his countess mother, until among his nurse's old -letters he one day accidentally discovered the secret of his birth. There -is no proof at all of his being persecuted by the countess, whose life he -rendered miserable by insults, lampoons, abuse, slander, and begging -letters. - -Pope has embalmed Page in the _Dunciad_ just as a scorpion is preserved in -a spirit-bottle:-- - - "Morality by her false guardians drawn, - Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn, - Gasps as they straighten at each end the cord, - And dies when Dulness gives her _Page_ the word."[394] - -And again, with equal bitterness and truth, in his _Imitations of -Horace_:-- - - "Slander or poison dread from Delia's rage, - Hard words or hanging if your judge be Page." - -This "hanging judge," who enjoyed his ermine and his infamy till he was -eighty, first obtained preferment by writing political pamphlets. He was -made a Baron of the Exchequer in 1718, a Justice of the Common Pleas in -1726, and in 1727 transferred to the Court of King's Bench. Page was so -illiterate that he commenced one of his charges to the grand jury of -Middlesex with this remarkable statement: "I dare venture to affirm, -gentlemen, on my own knowledge, that England never was so happy, both _at -home and abroad_, as it now is." Horace Walpole mentions that when Crowle, -the punning lawyer, was once entering an assize court, some one asked him -if Judge Page was not "just behind." Crowle replied, "I don't know, but I -am sure he never was just before."[395] - -The various mews, now stables, about London, derive their name from the -enclosure where falcons in the Middle Ages were kept to mew (_mutare_, -Minshew) their feathers. The King's Mews stood on the site of the present -Trafalgar Square. In the 13th Edward II. John de la Becke had the custody -of the Mews "apud Charing, juxta Westminster." In the 10th Edward III. -John de St. Albans succeeded Becke. In Richard II.'s time the office of -king's falconer, a post of importance, was held by Sir Simon Burley, who -was constable of the castles of Windsor, Wigmore, and Guilford, and also -of the royal manor of Kennington. This Sir Simon had been selected by the -Black Prince as guardian of Richard II., and he also negotiated his -marriage. One of the complaints of Wat Tyler and his party was that he had -thrown a burgher of Gravesend into Rochester Castle. The Duke of -Gloucester had him executed in 1388, in spite of Richard's queen praying -upon her knees for his life. At the end of this reign or in the first year -of Henry IV., the poet Chaucer was clerk of the king's works and also of -the Mews at Charing; and here, from his fluttering, angry little feathered -subjects, he must have drawn many of those allusions to the brave sport of -hawking to be found in the immortal _Canterbury Tales_. - -The falconry continued at Charing till 1534 (26th Henry VIII.), when the -king's fine stabling, with many horses and a great store of hay, being -destroyed by fire, the Mews was rebuilt and turned into royal stables, in -the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary.[396] - -M. St. Antoine, the riding-master, whose portrait Vandyke painted, -performed his caracoles and demi-tours at the Mews. Here Cromwell -imprisoned Lieut.-Colonel George Joyce, who, when plain cornet, had -arrested the king at Holmby. An angry little Puritan pamphlet of four -pages, published in 1659, gives an account of Cromwell's troubles with the -fractious Joyce, and how he had resolved to cashier him and destroy his -estate. - -The colonel was carried by musqueteers to the common Dutch prison at the -Mews, and seems to have been much tormented by Cavalier vermin. There he -remained ten days, and was then removed to another close room, where he -fell sick from the "evil smells," and remained so for ten weeks, refusing -all the time to lay down his commission, declaring that he had been -unworthily dealt with, and that all that had been sworn against him was -false. - -There was at the Mews gate a celebrated old book shop, opened in 1750 by -Mr. Thomas Payne, who kept it alive for forty years. It was the rendezvous -of all noblemen and scholars who sought rare books. It may be remarked, by -the way, that booksellers' shops have always been the haunts of wits and -poets. Dodsley, the ex-footman, gathered round him the wisest men of his -age, as Tonson had also done before him; while, as for John Murray's back -parlour, it was in Byron's and Moore's days a very temple of the Muses. - -In Charles II.'s time the famous but ugly horse Rowley lived at the Mews, -and gave a nickname to his swarthy royal master. - -In 1732 that impudent charlatan, Kent, rebuilt the Mews, which was only -remarkable after that for sheltering for a time Mr. Cross's menagerie, -when first removed from Exeter Change in 1829. - -The National Gallery, one of the poorest buildings in London (which is -saying a good deal), was built between 1832 and 1838, from the designs of -a certain unfortunate Mr. Wilkins, R.A. It is not often that Fortune is so -malicious as to give an inferior artist such ample room to show his -inability. The vote for founding the Gallery passed in Parliament in April -1824. The columns of the portico were part of the screen of Carlton -House--interesting memorials of a debasing regency, and, if possible, of a -worse reign. The site has been called "the finest in Europe:" it is, -however, a fine site, which is more than can be said of the building that -covers it. The front is 500 feet long. In the centre is a portico, on -stilts, with eight Corinthian columns approached by a double flight of -steps; a low squat dome not much larger than a washing basin; and two -pepper-castor turrets that crown the eyesore of London. Though on high -ground--very high ground for a rather flat city--the architect, pinched -for money, contrived to make the building lower than the grand portico of -St. Martin's Church, and even than the houses of Suffolk Place. - -One of the last occasions on which William IV. appeared in public was in -1837, before the opening of the first Academy Exhibition here in May. The -good-natured king is said to have suggested calling the square -"Trafalgar," and erecting a Nelson monument. A subscription was opened, -and the Duke of Buccleuch was appointed chairman. - -The square was commenced in 1829, but was not completed till after 1849. -The Nelson column was begun in 1837, and the statue set up in November -1843. Three premiums were offered for the three best designs, and Mr. -Railton carried off the palm. Upwards of £20,480 were subscribed, and, -£12,000 it was thought would be required to complete the monument.[397] It -was originally intended to expend only £30,000 upon the whole.[398] Alas -for estimates so sanguine, so fallacious! the granite work alone cost -upwards of £10,000. - -Mr. Railton chose a column, after mature reflection; although triumphal -columns are bad art, and the invention of a barbarous people and a corrupt -age.[399] He rejected a temple, as too expensive and too much in the way; -a group of figures he condemned as not visible at a distance; he finally -chose a Corinthian column as new, as harmonious, and as uniting the -labours of sculptor and architect. - -The column, with its base and pedestal, measures 193 feet. The fluted -shaft has a torus of oak leaves. The capital is copied from the fine -example of Mars Ultor at Rome; from it rises a circular pedestal wreathed -with laurel, and surmounted by a statue of Nelson, eighteen feet high, and -formed of two blocks of stone from the Granton quarry. The great pedestal -is adorned with four bassi-relievi, eighteen feet square each, -representing four of Nelson's great victories. It is difficult to say -which is tamest of the four. That of "Trafalgar" is by Mr. Carew; the -"Nile," by Mr. Woodington; "St. Vincent," by Mr. Watson; and "Copenhagen," -by Mr. Ternouth. - -The pedestal is raised on a flight of fifteen steps, at the angles of -which are placed couchant lions from the designs of Sir Edwin Landseer. -They are forged out of French cannon. The capital is of the same costly -material, which, considering the brave English blood it has cost, should -have been painted crimson. Many years passed by after the commission was -given to Sir Edwin Landseer before they were placed _in situ_. - -The cocked hat on Mr. Baily's statue has been somewhat unjustly ridiculed, -and so has the coil of rope or pigtail supporting the hero. - -The bronze equestrian statue of George IV., at the north-east end of the -square, is by Chantrey. It was ordered by the king in 1829. The price was -to be 9000 guineas, but the worthy monarch never paid the sculptor more -than a third of that sum; the rest was given by the Woods and Forests out -of the national taxes, and the third instalment in 1843, after Chantrey's -death, by the Lords of the Treasury. It is a sprightly and clever statue, -but of no great merit. It should have been paid for by William IV., just -as the Nelson statue should have been erected by Parliament, the honour -being one due to Nelson from an ungrateful nation. This statue of George -IV. was originally intended to crown the arch in front of Buckingham -Palace--an arch that cost £80,000, and that was hung with gates that cost -3000 guineas. The so-called Chartist riots of 1848 were commenced by boys -destroying the hoarding round the base of the Nelson monument. - -The fountains in the centre of the Square are of Peterhead granite, and -were made at Aberdeen. They are mean, despicable, and unworthy of the -noble position which they occupy. Some years ago there was a fuss about an -Artesian well that was to feed these stone punch-bowls with inexhaustible -gushes of silvery water. This supply has dwindled down to a sort of -overflow of a ginger-beer bottle once a day. I blush when I take a -foreigner to see Trafalgar Square, with its squat domes, its mean statues, -its tame bassi-relievi, and its disgraceful fountains. - -I will not trust myself to criticise the statues of Napier and Havelock. -The figures are poor, and unworthy of the fiery soldier and the Christian -hero they misrepresent. They should be in the Abbey. Why has the Abbey -grown, like the Court, less receptive than ever? What passport is there -into the Abbey, where such strange people sleep, if the conquest of Scinde -and the relief of Lucknow will not take a body there. - -But to return to the National Gallery. Mr. G. Agar-Ellis, afterwards Lord -Dover, first proposed a National Gallery in Parliament in 1824; Government -having previously purchased thirty-eight pictures from Mr. Angerstein for -£57,000. This collection included "The Raising of Lazarus," by Del Piombo. -It is supposed that Michael Angelo, jealous of Raphael's -"Transfiguration," helped Sebastian in the drawing of his cartoon, which -was to be a companion picture for Narbonne Cathedral. It was purchased -from the Orleans Gallery for 3500 guineas.[400] - -In 1825 some pictures were purchased for the Gallery from Mr. Hamlet. -These included the "Bacchus and Ariadne" of Titian, for £5000. This golden -picture (extolled by Vasari) was painted about 1514 for the Duke of -Ferrara. Titian was then in the full vigour of his thirty-seventh -year.[401] - -In the same year "La Vierge au Panier" of Correggio was purchased from Mr. -Nieuwenhuy, a picture-dealer, for £3800. It is a late picture, and hurt in -cleaning. It was one of the gems of the Madrid Gallery. - -In 1826, Sir George Beaumont presented sixteen pictures, valued at 7500 -guineas. These included one of the finest landscapes of Rubens, "The -Chateau," which originally cost £1500, and Wilkie's _chef-d'oeuvre_, that -fine Raphaelesque composition, "The Blind Fiddler." - -In 1834 the Rev. William Holwell Carr left the nation thirty-five -pictures, including fine specimens of the Caracci, Titian, Luini, -Garofalo, Claude, Poussin, and Rubens. - -Another important donation was that of the great "Peace and War," bought -for £3000 by the Marquis of Stafford, and given to the nation. It was -originally presented to Charles I., by Rubens, who gave unto the king not -as a painter but as almost a king. - -The British Institution also gave three esteemed pictures by Reynolds, -Gainsborough, and West, and a fine Parmigiano. - -But the greatest addition to the collection was made in 1834, when -£11,500[402] were given for the two great Correggios, the "Ecce Homo" and -the "Education of Cupid," from the Marquis of Londonderry's collection. To -the "Ecce Homo" Pungileoni assigns the date 1520, when the great master -was only twenty-six. It once belonged to Murat. The "Education of Cupid," -which once belonged to Charles I., has been a good deal retouched.[403] - -In 1836 King William IV. presented to the gallery six pictures; in 1837 -Colonel Harvey Ollney gave seventeen; in 1838 Lord Farnborough bequeathed -fifteen, and R. Simmons, Esq., fourteen. The last pictures were chiefly of -the Netherlands school. In 1854 the nation possessed two hundred and -sixteen pictures, and of these seventy only had been purchased. - -In 1857 that greatest of all landscape-painters, Joseph M. W. Turner, left -the nation 362 oil-paintings, and about 19,000 sketches (including 1757 -water-colour drawings of value). In his will this eccentric man -particularly desired that two of his pictures--a Dutch coast-scene and -"Dido Building Carthage"--should be hung between Claude's "Sea-Port" and -"Mill." - -The will was disputed, and the engravings and the money, all but £20,000, -went to the next of kin. - -The diploma pictures (that formerly were annually exhibited to the public) -are of great interest. They were given by various members of the Royal -Academy at their elections. That of the parsimonious Wilkie--"Boys digging -for Rats" (fine as Teniers)--is remarkably small. There is a very fine -graceful portrait of Sir William Chambers, the architect, by Reynolds, and -one still more robust and glowing of Sir Joshua by himself. He is in his -doctor's robes. There is a splendid but rather pale Etty--"A Satyr -surprising a Nymph;" and a fine vigorous picture by Briggs, of "Blood -stealing the Crown." - -In 1849, Robert Vernon, Esq., nobly left the nation one hundred and -sixty-two fine examples of the English school. These are now removed to -the Kensington Museum. - -Of the pictures given by Turner to the nation, the masterpieces are the -"Téméraire" and the "Escape of Ulysses,"--both triumphs of colour and -imagination. The one is a scene from the _Odyssey_; the other represents -an old man-of-war being towed to its last berth--a scene witnessed by the -artist himself while boating near Greenwich. The works of Turner may be -divided very fairly into three eras: those in which he imitated the Dutch -landscape-painters, the period when he copied idealised Nature, and the -time when he resorted from eccentricity or indifference to reckless -experiments in colour and effect--most of them quite unworthy of his -genius. Not in drawing the figure, but in aërial perspective, did Turner -excel. The great portfolios of drawings that he left the nation show with -what untiring and laborious industry he toiled. In habits sordid and mean, -in tastes low and debased, this great genius, the son of a humble -hairdresser in Maiden Lane, succeeded in attaining an excellence in -landscape, fitful and unequal it is true, but often rising to poetic -regions unknown to Claude, Ruysdael, Vandervelde, Salvator, or Backhuysen. - -Ever since the modern pictures were removed to South Kensington, there has -been a constant effort to transfer the ancient pictures and to abandon the -National Gallery to the Royal Academy--a rich society, making £5000 or -£6000 a year, which its members cannot spend, and which tenants the -national building only by permission. To remove the pictures from the -centre of London is to remove them from those who cannot go far to see -them, to the neighbourhood of rich people who do not need their teaching, -and who have picture-galleries of their own. - -In 1859, twenty pictures were bequeathed to the gallery by Mr. Jacob Bell, -and a few years later twenty-two others were added as a gift by Her -Majesty. The last great addition is the presentation of ninety-four -pictures by Mr. Wynn Ellis. But in spite of all these treasures, acquired -by purchase or by bequest, the nation cannot boast that its gallery does -justice to our taste or national wealth. It is still lamentably deficient -in more than one department; and there are not wanting those who assert -that the Royal Academy stifles art rather than promotes it. It is regarded -by the outside world as a close-borough, in which the interests of the -public and of students are postponed to those of its Associates and -Members, the A.R.A.'s and R.A.'s of the age. - -The building in which the collection is deposited was erected at the -national expense, from the designs of Mr. William Wilkins, R.A., and -opened to the public in 1838. It was considerably altered and enlarged in -1860, and in 1869 five other rooms were added by the surrender to the -Trustees of those hitherto appropriated by the Royal Academy. In 1876 a -new wing was added, after a design by Mr. E. M. Barry, R.A., and the whole -collection is now under one roof. - -The Royal College of Physicians is a large classic building at the -north-west corner of Trafalgar Square. It was built in 1823 from the -designs of Sir Robert Smirke. The college was founded in 1518 by Dr. -Linacre, the successor to Shakspeare's Dr. Butts, and physician to Henry -VII. From Knightrider Street the doctors moved to Amen Corner, and thence -to Warwick Lane, between Newgate Street and Paternoster Row. The number of -fellows, originally thirty, is now as unlimited as the "dira cohors" of -diseases that the college has to encounter. - -In the gallery above the library there are seven preparations made by the -celebrated Harvey when at Padua--"learned Padua." There are also some -excellent portraits--Harvey, by Jansen; Sir Thomas Browne, the author of -_Religio Medici_; Sir Theodore Mayerne, the physician of James I.; Sir -Edmund King, who, on his own responsibility, bled Charles II. during a -fit; Dr. Sydenham, by Mary Beale; Doctor Radcliffe, William III.'s doctor, -by Kneller; Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Museum, by -Richardson, whom Hogarth rather unjustly ridiculed; honest Garth (of the -"Dispensary"), by Kneller; Dr. Freind, Dr. Mead, Dr. Warren (by -Gainsborough); William Hunter, and Dr. Heberden. - -There are also some valuable and interesting busts--George IV., by -Chantrey (a _chef-d'oeuvre_); Dr. Mead, by the vivacious Roubilliac; Dr. -Sydenham, by Wilton; Harvey, by Scheemakers; Dr. Baillie, by Chantrey, -from a model by Nollekens; Dr. Babington, by poor Behnes. One of the -treasures of the place is Dr. Radcliffe's gold-headed cane, which was -successively carried by Drs. Mead, Askew, Pitcairn, and Baillie. There is -also a portrait-picture by Zoffany of Hunter delivering a lecture on -anatomy to the Royal Academy. Any fellow can give an order to see this -hoarded collection, which should be thrown open to the public on certain -days. It is selfish and utterly wanting in public spirit to keep such -treasures in the dark. - -The wits buzzed about Charing Cross between 1680 and 1730 as thick as bees -round May flowers. In this district, between those years, stood "The -Elephant," "The Sugarloaf," "The Old Man's Coffee-house," "The Old Vine," -"The Three Flower de Luces," "The British Coffee-house," "The Young Man's -Coffee-house," and "The Three Queens." - -There is an erroneous tradition that Cromwell had a house on the site of -Drummond's bank. He really lived farther south, in King Street. When the -bank was built, the houses were set back full forty yards more to the -west, upon an open square place called "Cromwell's Yard."[405] - -Drummond's is said to have gained its fame by advancing money secretly to -the Pretender. Upon this being known, the Court withdrew all their -deposits. The result was that the Scotch Tory noblemen rallied round the -house and brought in so much money that the firm soon became leading -bankers, dividing the West End custom with Messrs. Coutts. - -Craig's Court, on the east side of Charing Cross, was built in 1702. It is -generally supposed to have been named after the father of Mr. Secretary -Craggs, the friend of Pope and Addison: Mr. Cunningham, an excellent and -reliable authority, says that as early as the year 1658 there was a James -Cragg living on the "water side," in the Charing Cross division of St. -Martin's-in-the-Fields. The Sun Fire-office was established in this court -in 1726; and here is Cox and Greenwood's, the largest army agency office -in Great Britain. - -Locket's, the famous ordinary, so called from Adam Locket, the landlord in -1674, stood on the site of Drummond's bank. An Edward Locket succeeded to -him in 1688, and remained till 1702.[406] In 1693 the second Locket took -the Bowling-green House at Putney Heath. That fair, slender, genteel Sir -George Etherege, whom Rochester praises for "fancy, sense, judgment, and -wit," frequented Locket's, and displayed there his courtly foppery, which -served as a model for his own Dorimant, and that prince and patriarch of -fops Sir Fopling Flutter. Sir George was always gentle and courtly, and -was compared in this to Sedley. - -He once got into a violent passion at the ordinary, and abused the -"drawers" for some neglect. This brought in Mrs. Locket, hot and fuming. -"We are so provoked," said Sir George, "that even I could find it in my -heart to pull the nosegay out of your bosom, and fling the flowers in your -face." This mild and courteous threat turned his friends' anger into a -general laugh. - -Sir George having run up a long score at Locket's, added to the injury by -ceasing to frequent the house. Mrs. Locket began to dun and threaten him. -He sent word back by the messenger that he would kiss her if she stirred a -step in it. When Mrs. Locket heard this, she bridled up, called for her -hood and scarf, and told her anxious husband that she'd see if there was -any fellow alive who had the impudence! "Prythee, my dear, don't be so -rash," said her milder husband; "you don't know what a man may do in his -passion."[407] - -Wycherly, that favourite of Charles II. till he married his titled wife, -writes in one of his plays (1675), "Why, thou art as shy of my kindness as -a Lombard Street alderman of a courtier's civility at Locket's."[408] -Shadwell too, Dryden's surly and clever foe, says (1691), "I'll answer you -in a couple of brimmers of claret at Locket's at dinner, where I have -bespoke an admirable good one."[409] - -A poet of 1697 describes the sparks, dressed by noon hurrying to the Mall, -and from thence to Locket's.[410] Prior proposes to dine at a crown a head -on ragouts washed down with champagne; then to go to court; and lastly he -says[411]-- - - "With evening wheels we'll drive about the Park, - Finish at Locket's, and reel home i' the dark." - -In 1708, Vanbrugh makes Lord Foppington doubtful whether he shall return -to dinner, as the noble peer says--"As Gad shall judge me I can't tell, -for 'tis possible I may dine with some of our House at Lacket's."[412] - -And in the same play the very energetic nobleman remarks--"From thence -(the Park) I go to dinner at Lacket's, where you are so nicely and -delicately served that, stap my vitals! they shall compose you a dish no -bigger than a saucer shall come to fifty shillings. Between eating my -dinner and washing my mouth, ladies, I spend my time till I go to the -play." - -In 1709 the epicurean and ill-fated Dr. King, talking of the changes in -St. James's Park, says-- - - "For Locket's stands where gardens once did spring, - And wild ducks quack where grasshoppers did sing."[413] - -Tom Brown also mentions Locket's, for he writes--"We as naturally went -from Mann's Coffee-house to the Parade as a coachman drives from Locket's -to the play-house." - -Prior, the poet, when his father the joiner died, was taken care of by his -uncle, who kept the Rummer Tavern at the back of No. 14 Charing Cross, two -doors from Locket's. It was a well-frequented house, and in 1685 the -annual feast of the nobility and gentry of St. Martin's parish was held -there. Prior was sent by the honest vintner to study under the great Dr. -Busby at Westminster: and in a window-seat at the Rummer the future poet -and diplomatist was found reading Horace, according to Bishop Burnet, by -the witty Earl of Dorset, who is said to have educated him. Prior, in the -dedication of his poems to the earl's son, proves his patron to have been -a paragon. Waller and Sprat consulted Dorset about their writings. Dryden, -Congreve, and Addison praised him. He made the court read _Hudibras_, the -town praise Wycherly's "Plain Dealer," and Buckingham delay his -"Rehearsal" till he knew his opinion. Pope imitated his "Dorinda," and -King Charles took his advice upon Lely's portraits. - -One of Prior's gayest and pleasantest poems seems to prove, however, that -Fleetwood Shepherd was a more essential patron than even the earl. The -poet writes-- - - "Now, as you took me up when little, - Gave me my learning and my vittle, - Asked for me from my lord things fitting, - Kind as I'd been your own begetting, - Confirm what formerly you've given, - Nor leave me now at six and seven, - As Sunderland has left Mun Stephen." - -And again, still more gaily-- - - "My uncle, rest his soul! when living, - Might have contrived me ways of thriving, - Taught me with cider to replenish - My vats or ebbing tide of Rhenish; - So when for hock I drew pricked white-wine, - Swear't had the flavour, and was right wine; - Or sent me with ten pounds to Furni- - val's Inn, to some good rogue attorney, - Where now, by forging deeds and cheating, - I'd found some handsome ways of getting. - All this you made me quit to follow - That sneaking, whey-faced god, Apollo; - Sent me among a fiddling crew - Of folks I'd neither seen nor knew, - Calliope and God knows who, - I add no more invectives to it: - You spoiled the youth to make a poet." - -That rascally housebreaker, Jack Sheppard, made his first step towards the -gallows by the robbery of two silver spoons at the Rummer Tavern. This -young rogue, whose deeds Mr. Ainsworth has so mischievously recorded, was -born in 1701, and ended his short career at Tyburn in 1724.[414] The -Rummer Tavern is introduced by Hogarth into his engraving of "Night." The -business was removed to the water side of Charing Cross in 1710, and the -new house burnt down in 1750. In 1688, Samuel Prior offered ten guineas -reward for the discovery of some persons who had accused him of clipping -coin.[415] - -Mrs. Centlivre, whom Pope pilloried in the _Dunciad_[416] was the daughter -of a Lincolnshire gentleman, who, being a Nonconformist, fled to Ireland -at the Restoration to escape persecution. Being left an orphan at the age -of twelve, she travelled to London on foot to seek her fortune. In her -sixteenth year she married a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox, who, however, did -not live more than a twelvemonth after. She afterwards wedded an officer -named Carrol, who was killed in a duel soon after their marriage. Left a -second time a widow, she then took to dramatic writing for a subsistence, -and from 1700 to 1705 produced six comedies, to one of which--"The -Gamester"--the poet Rowe contributed a prologue. She next tried the stage; -and while performing Alexander the Great, at Windsor, won the heart of Mr. -Centlivre, "a Yeoman of the Mouth," or principal cook to Queen Anne, who -married her. She lived happily with her husband for eighteen years, and -wrote some good, bustling, but licentious plays. "The Busybody," and -"Wonder; a Woman keeps a Secret," act well. - -In May, 1716, Mrs. Centlivre visited her native town of Holbeach for her -health, and on King George's birthday[417] invited all the pauper widows -of the place to a tavern supper. The windows were illuminated, the -church-bells were set ringing, there were musicians playing in the room, -the old women danced, and most probably got drunk, the enthusiastic -loyalist making them all fall on their knees and drink the healths of the -royal family, the Duke of Marlborough, Mr. Walpole, the Duke of Argyle, -General Cadogan, etc. etc. She ended the feast by sending the ringers a -copy of stirring verses denouncing the Jacobites;-- - - "Disdain the artifice they use - To bring in mass and wooden shoes - With transubstantiation: - Remember James the Second's reign, - When glorious William broke the chain - Rome had put on this nation." - -This clever but not too virtuous woman died at her house in Buckingham -Court, Spring Gardens, December 1, 1723.[418] - -Pope's dislike to Mrs. Centlivre is best explained by one of his own notes -to the _Dunciad_:--"She (Mrs. C.) wrote many plays and a song before she -was seven years old: she also wrote a ballad against Mr. Pope's _Homer_ -before he began it." And why should not an authoress have expressed her -opinion of Mr. Pope's inability to translate Homer? - -Mrs. Centlivre is rather bitterly treated by Leigh Hunt, who says that -she, "without doubt, wrote the most entertaining dramas of intrigue, with -a genius infinitely greater, and a modesty infinitely less, than that of -her sex in general; and she delighted, whenever she could not be obscene, -to be improbable."[419] - -Milton lodged at one Thomson's, next door to the Bull-head Tavern at -Charing Cross, close to the opening to the Spring Gardens, during the time -he was writing his book _Joannis Philippi Angli Defensio_.[420] - -The Golden Cross ran up beside the King's Mews a little east of its -present site; it was the "Bull and Mouth" of the West End till railways -drew travellers from the old roads; it then became a railway parcel -office. Poor reckless Dr. Maginn wrote a ballad lamenting the change, in -which he mourned the Mews Gate public-house, Tom Bish and his lotteries, -and the barrack-yard. He curses Nash and Wyatville, and then bursts -forth-- - - "No more I'll eat the juicy steak - Within its boxes pent, - When in the mail my place I take, - For Bath or Brighton bent. - - "No more the coaches I shall see - Come trundling from the yard, - Nor hear the horn blown cheerily - By brandy-sipping guard. - King Charles, I think, must sorrow sore, - E'en were he made of stone, - When left by all his friends of yore - (Like Tom Moore's rose) alone. - - "No wonder the triumphant Turk - O'er Missolonghi treads, - Roasts bishops, and in bloody work - Snips off some thousand heads! - No wonder that the Crescent gains, - When we the fact can't gloss, - That we ourselves are at such pains - To trample down the Cross! - - "Oh! London won't be London long, - For 'twill be all pulled down, - And I shall sing a funeral song - O'er that time-honoured town. - One parting curse I here shall make, - And then lay down my quill, - Hoping Old Nick himself may take - Both Nash and Wyatville."[421] - -Till late in the last century a lofty straddling sign-post and a long -water-trough, just such as still adorn country towns, stood before this -inn.[422] - -Charing Cross Hospital, one of those great charities that atone for so -many of the sins of London, relieved, in the year 1878, 15,854 necessitous -persons, including more than 1000 cases of severe accident, while above -1500 persons were admitted on the recommendation of governors and -subscribers.[423] Surely, if anything can redeem our national vices, our -selfishness, our commercial dishonesty, our unjust wars, and our -unrighteous conquests, it must be such vast charities as these. - -One authority represents that great scholar and divine, Dr. Isaac Barrow, -the friend of Newton, as having died "in mean lodgings at a saddler's near -Charing Cross, an old, low, ill-built house, which he had used for many -years." Barrow was then Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Roger North, -however, says that he died of an overdose of opium, and "ended his days in -London in a prebendary's house that had a little stair to it out of the -cloisters, which made him call it a _man's nest_."[424] Barrow died in -1677, and was buried in the Abbey. Rhodes, the bookseller and actor, lived -at the Ship at Charing Cross. He had been wardrobe-keeper at the -Blackfriars Theatre; and in 1659 he reopened the Cockpit Theatre in Drury -Lane. - -On September 7, 1650, as that dull, learned man, Bulstrode Whitelock, one -of the Commissioners for the Great Seal, was going in his coach towards -Chelsea, a messenger from Scotland stopped him about Charing Cross, and -cried, "Oh, my lord, God hath appeared gloriously to us in Scotland; a -glorious day, my lord, at Dunbar in Scotland." "I asked him," says -Whitelock, "how it was. He said that the General had routed all the Scots -army, but that he could not stay to tell me the particulars, being in -haste to go to the House."[425] - -Lord Dartmouth relates a story in Burnet of Sir Edward Seymour the -Speaker's coach breaking down at Charing Cross, in Charles II.'s time. He -instantly, with proud coolness, ordered the beadles to stop the next -gentleman's coach that passed and bring it to him. The expelled gentleman -was naturally both surprised and angry; but Sir Edward gravely assured him -that it was far more proper for him than for the Speaker of the House of -Commons to walk the streets, and accordingly left him to do so without any -further apology.[426] - -Horace Walpole was a diligent attender at the State Trials of 1746. The -day "poor brave old" Balmerino retracted his plea, asked pardon, and -desired the Peers to intercede for mercy, Walpole tells us that his -lordship stopped the coach at Charing Cross as he returned to the Tower, -carelessly to buy "honey-blobs," as the Scotch call gooseberries. - -But we must not leave Charing Cross without specially remembering that -when Boswell dared to praise Fleet Street as crowded and cheerful, Dr. -Johnson replied in a voice of thunder, "Why, sir, Fleet Street _has_ a -very animated appearance; but I think the full tide of existence is at -Charing Cross."[427] - -Nearly where the Post Office at Charing Cross now stands, there was once -(of all things in the world) a hermitage. Even Prince George of Denmark -might have been pardoned by James II., his sour father-in-law, for making -his invariable reply, "Est-il possible?" to this statement. Yet the patent -rolls of the 47th Henry III. grant permission to William de Radnor, Bishop -of Llandaff, to lodge, with all his retainers, within the precinct of the -Hermitage at Charing, whenever he came to London.[428] - -Opposite this stood the ancient Hospital of St. Mary Roncevalles. It was -founded by William Marechal, Earl of Pembroke, a son, I believe, of the -early English conqueror of Ireland. It was suppressed by Henry V. as an -alien priory, restored by Edward IV., and finally suppressed by Edward -VI., who granted it to Sir Thomas Carwarden, to be held in free soccage of -the honour of Westminster. - -The mesh and labyrinth of obscure alleys and lanes running between the -bottom of St. Martin's Lane and Bedford Street, towards Bedfordbury, with -old Round Court, so called in mockery, for its centre, were swept away by -the besom of improvement in 1829, when Trafalgar Square was begun, never -to be finished. In Elizabeth's or James's time, gallants who had cruised -in search of Spanish galleons wittily nicknamed these Straits "the -Bermudas," from their narrow and intricate channels. Here the valorous -Captain Bobadill must have lived in Barmecidal splendour, and have taught -his dupes the true conduct of the weapon. Justice Overdo mentions the -Bermudas with a righteous indignation. "Look," says that great legal -functionary, "into any angle of the town, the Streights or the Bermudas, -where the quarrelling lesson is read, and how do they entertain the time -but with bottled ale and tobacco?"[429] How natural for Drake's men to -give such a name to a labyrinth of devious alleys! At a subsequent period -the cluster of avenues exchanged the title of _Bermudas_ for that of the -_C'ribbee Islands_, the learned possessors corrupting the name into a -happy allusion to the arts cultivated there.[430] - -Gay, writing in 1715, describes the small streets branching from Charing -Cross as resounding with the shoeblacks' cry, "Clean your honour's shoes?" -Great improvements were made in 1829-30, when the present arcade leading -from West Strand to St. Martin's Church, and inhabited chiefly by German -toymen, was built and named after Lord Lowther then Chief Commissioner of -the Woods and Forests.[431] The Strand was also widened, and many old -tottering houses were removed. - -Porridge Island was the cant name for a paved alley near St. Martin's -Church, originally a congeries of cookshops erected for the workmen at the -new church, and destroyed when the great rookery there was pulled down in -1829. It was a part of Bedfordbury, and derived its name from being full -of cookshops, or "slap-bangs," as street boys called such odorous places. -A writer in _The World_, in 1753, describes a man like Beau Tibbs, who had -his dinner in a pewter plate from a cookshop in Porridge Island, and with -only £100 a year was foolish enough to wear a laced suit, go every evening -in a chair to a rout, and return to his bedroom on foot, shivering and -supperless, vain enough to glory in having rubbed elbows with the quality -of Brentford.[432] - -It was in Round Court, in the centre of the key shops, herb shops, and -furniture warehouses of Bedfordbury that, in 1836, Robson the actor was -apprenticed to a Mr. Smellie, a copperplate engraver, and the printer of -the humorous caricatures of Mr. George Cruikshank.[433] - -The Swan at Charing Cross, over against the Mews, flourished in 1665, when -Marke Rider was the landlord. The token of the house bore the figure of a -swan holding a sprig in its mouth. Its memory is embalmed in a curious -extempore grace once said by Ben Jonson before King James. These are the -verses:-- - - "Our king and queen the Lord God bless, - The Palsgrave and the Lady Besse; - And God bless every living thing - That lives and breathes, and loves the king; - God bless the Council of Estate, - And Buckingham the fortunate; - God bless them all, and keep them safe, - And God bless me, and God bless Ralph." - -The schoolmaster king being mighty inquisitive to know who this Ralph was, -Ben told him it was the drawer at the Swan Tavern, who drew him good -canary. For this drollery the king gave Ben a hundred pounds.[434] The -story is probably true, for it is confirmed by Powell the actor.[435] - -The street signs of London were condemned in the second year of George -III.'s reign; but the sweeping Act for their final removal was not passed -till nine years later. In 1762, Bonnel Thornton (aided by Hogarth) opened -an exhibition of street signs in Bow Street[436] in ridicule of the Spring -Gardens exhibition. But as early as 1761 the street signs seem to have -been partially removed as dangerous obstructions. A writer in a -contemporary paper says,[437] "My master yesterday sent me to take a place -in the Canterbury stage; he said that when I came to Charing Cross I -should see which was the proper inn by the words on the sign. I rambled -about, but could see no sign at all. At last I was told that there used to -be such a sign under a little golden cross which I saw at a two pair of -stairs window. I entered and found the waiter swearing about innovations. -He said that the members of Parliament were unaccountable enemies to signs -which used to show trades; that, for his master's part, he might put on -sackcloth, for nobody came to buy sack. 'If,' said he, 'any of the signs -were too large, could they not have limited their size without pulling -down the sign-posts and destroying the painted ornaments of the Strand?' -On my return I saw some men pulling with ropes at a curious sign-iron, -which seemed to have cost some pounds: along with the iron down came the -leaden cover to the pent-house, which will cost at least some pounds to -repair." - -This was written the year of the first Act (2d George III.), and was -probably a groan from some one interested in the existence of the abuse. -The inferior artists gained much money from this source. Mr. Wale, one of -the first Academicians, painted a Shakspere five feet high[438] for a -public-house at the north-west corner of Little Russell Street, Covent -Garden. The picture was enclosed in a sumptuous carved gilt frame, and was -suspended by rich foliated ironwork. A London street a hundred years ago -must have been one long grotesque picture-gallery. - -When the meat is all good it is difficult to know where to insert the -knife. In travelling, how hard it is to turn back almost in sight of some -Promised Land of which one has often dreamed! Like that traveller I feel, -when I find it necessary in this chapter to confine myself strictly to the -legends, traditions, and history of Charing Cross proper, leaving for -other opportunities Spring Gardens, the story of the greater part of which -belongs more to St. James's Park, Whitehall, and Scotland Yard. - -[Illustration: THE KING'S MEWS, 1750.] - - - - -[Illustration: BARRACK AND OLD HOUSES ON SITE OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE, 1826.] - - -CHAPTER X. - -ST. MARTIN'S LANE. - - -Saint Martin's Lane, extending from Long Acre to Charing Cross, was built -before 1613, and then called the West Church Lane. The first church was -built here by Henry VIII. The district was first called St. Martin's Lane -about 1617-18.[439] - -Sir Theodore Mayerne, physician to James I., lived on the west side of -this lane. Mayerne was the godson of Beza, the great Calvinist reformer, -and one of Henry IV.'s physicians. He came to England after that king's -death. He then became James I.'s doctor, and was blamed for his treatment -of Prince Henry, whom many thought to have been poisoned. He was -afterwards physician to Charles I., and nominally to Charles II.; but he -died in 1655, five years before the Restoration. He gave his library to -the College of Physicians, and is said to have disclosed some of his -chemical secrets to the great enameller, Petitot.[440] Mayerne died of -drinking bad wine at a Strand tavern, and foretold the time of his death. - -A good story is told of Sir Theodore, which is the more curious because it -records the fashionable fee of those days. A friend consulting Mayerne, -and expecting to have the fee refused, ostentatiously placed on the table -two gold broad pieces (value six-and-thirty shillings each). Looking -rather mortified when Mayerne swept them into his pouch, "Sir." said Sir -Theodore, gravely, "I made my will this morning, and if it should become -known that I refused a fee the same afternoon I might be deemed _non -compos_."[441] - -Near this fortunate doctor, honoured by kings, lived Sir John Finett, a -wit and a song-writer, of Italian extraction. He became Master of the -Ceremonies to Charles I., and wrote a pedantic book on the treatment of -ambassadors, and other questions of precedency, of the gravest importance -to courtiers, but to no one else. He died in 1641. - -Two doors from Mayerne and five from Finett, from 1622 to 1634, lived -Daniel Mytens, the Dutch painter. On Vandyke's arrival Mytens grew jealous -and asked leave to return to the Hague. But the king persuaded him to -stay, and he became friendly with his rival, who painted his portrait. -There are pictures by this artist at Hampton Court. Prince Charles gave -him his house in the lane for twelve years at the peppercorn rent of 6d. a -year. - -Next to Sir John Finett lived Sir Benjamin Rudyer, and on the same side -Abraham Vanderoort, keeper of the pictures to Charles I., and necessarily -an acquaintance of Mytens and Vandyke. - -Carew Raleigh, son of the great enemy of Spain, and born in the Tower, -lived in this lane, on the west side, from 1636 to 1638, and again in -1664. This unfortunate man spent all his life in writing to vindicate his -father's memory, and in efforts to recover his Sherborne estate. In 1659, -by the influence of General Monk, he was made Governor of Jersey. - -The chivalrous wit, Sir John Suckling, dwelt in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields -in 1641, the year in which he joined in a rash plot to rescue Strafford -from the Tower. He fled to France, and died there in poverty the same -year, in the thirty-second year of his age. Suckling had served in the -army of Gustavus Adolphus, and was famous for his sparkling repartee. -There is an exquisite quaint grace about his poem of "The Wedding," which -has its scene at Charing Cross. - -Dr. Thomas Willis, a great physician of his day, who died here in 1678, -was grandfather of Browne Willis, the antiquary. Dr. Willis was a friend -of Wren, and a great anatomist and chemist. He mapped out the nerves very -industriously, and in his _Cerebri Anatome_ forestalled many future -phrenological discoveries.[442] - -In the same year that eccentric charlatan, Sir Kenelm Digby, was living in -the lane. The son of one of the gunpowder conspirators, and the -"Mirandola" of his age, he was one of Ben Jonson's adopted sons.[443] He -was generous to the poets; he understood ten or twelve languages; he -shattered the Venetian galleys at Scanderoon; he studied chemistry, and -professed to cure wounds with sympathetic powder. He held offices of -honour under Charles I., in France became a friend of Descartes, and after -the Restoration was an active member of the Royal Society. He was born, -won his naval victory, and died on the same day of the month. Ben Jonson, -in a poem on him, calls him "prudent, valiant, just, and temperate," and -adds quaintly-- - - "His breast is a brave palace, a broad street, - Where all heroic ample thoughts do meet, - Where Nature such a large survey hath ta'en, - As others' souls to _his dwelt in a lane_." - -I cannot here help observing that the ridiculous story about Ben Jonson in -his old age refusing money from Charles I., and rudely sending back word -"that the king's soul dwelt in a lane," must have originated in some -careless or malicious perversion of this line of the rough old poet's. - -"Immortal Ben" wrote ten poems on the death of Sir Kenelm's wife, who was -the daughter of Sir Edward Stanley, and, it is supposed, the mistress of -the Earl of Dorset. Randolph, Habington, and Feltham also wrote elegies on -this beautiful woman, who was found dead in her bed, accidentally -poisoned, it is supposed, by viper wine, or some philtre or cosmetic given -her by her experimentalising husband in order to heighten her beauty.[444] -In one of Ben Jonson's poems there are the following incomparable verses -about Lady Venetia:-- - - "Draw first a cloud, all save her neck, - And out of that make day to break, - Till like her face it do appear, - And men may think all light rose there." - -And again-- - - "Not swelling like the ocean proud, - But stooping gently as a cloud, - As smooth as oil pour'd forth, and calm - As showers, and sweet as drops of balm." - -Sir Kenelm, when imprisoned in Winchester House, in Southwark, wrote an -attack on Sir Thomas Browne's sceptical work _Religio Medici_. He also -produced a book on cookery, and a commentary on the _Faerie Queen_. This -strange being was buried in Christ Church, Newgate Street. - -St. Martin's-in-the-Fields is an ancient parish, but it was first made -independent of St. Margaret's, Westminster, in 1535, by that tyrant Henry -VIII., who, justly afraid of death, disliked the ceaseless black funeral -processions of the outlying people of St. Martin's passing the courtly -gate of Whitehall, and who therefore erected a church near Charing Cross, -and constituted its neighbourhood into a parish.[445] In 1607, that -unfortunate youth of promise, Henry Prince of Wales, added a chancel to -the very small church, which soon proved insufficient for the growing and -populous suburb. But though so modern, this parish formerly included in -its vast circle St. Paul's Covent Garden, St. James's Piccadilly, St. -Anne's Soho, and St. George's Hanover Square. It extended its princely -circle as far north as Marylebone, as far south as Whitehall, as far east -as the Savoy, and as far west as Chelsea and Kensington. When first rated -to the poor in Queen Elizabeth's time it contained less than a hundred -rateable persons. The chief inhabitants lived by the river side or close -to the church. Pall Mall and Piccadilly were then unnamed, and beyond the -church westward were St. James's Fields, Hay-hill Farm, Ebury Farm, and -the Neat houses about Chelsea.[446] - -In 1638 this overgrown parish, had carved out of it the district of St. -Paul's, Covent Garden; in 1684, St. James's, Westminster; and in 1686, St. -Anne's, Soho. But even in 1680, Richard Baxter, with brave fervour, -denounced what he called "the greatest cure in England,"[447] with its -population of forty thousand more persons than the church could -hold--people who "lived like Americans, without hearing a sermon for many -years." From such parishes of course crept forth Dissenters of all creeds -and colours. In 1826 the churchyard was removed to Camden Town, and the -street widened, pursuant to 7 George IV. c. 77. - -That shrewd native of Aberdeen, Gibbs--a not unworthy successor of -Wren--came to London at a fortunate time. Wren was fast dying; Vanbrugh -was neglected; there was room for a new architect, and no fear of -competition. His first church, St. Martin's, was a great success. Though -its steeple was heavy and misplaced, and the exterior flat and without -light or shade,[448] the portico was foolishly compared to that of the -Parthenon, and was considered unique for dignity and unity of combination. -The interior was so constructed as to render the introduction of further -ornaments or of monuments impossible. Savage did but express the general -opinion when he wrote with fine pathos-- - - "O Gibbs! whose art the solemn fanes can raise, - Where God delights to dwell and man to praise." - -The church was commenced in 1721 and finished in 1726, at a cost of -£36,891: 10: 4, including £1500 for an organ. - -With all its faults, it is certainly one of the finest buildings in -London, next to St. Paul's and the British Museum; but its cardinal fault -is the unnatural union of the Gothic steeple and the Grecian portico. The -one style is Pagan, the other Christian; the one expresses a sensuous -contentment with this earth, the other mounts towards heaven with an -eternal aspiration. The steeple leaps like a fountain from among lesser -pinnacles that all point upwards. The Grecian portico is a cave of level -shadow and of philosophic content. - -St. Martin's Church enshrines the dust of some illustrious persons. Here -lies Nicholas Hilliard, the miniature-painter to Queen Elizabeth, and who -died in 1619. He was a very careful painter, in the manner of Holbein. The -great Isaac Oliver was his pupil. He must have had some trouble with the -manly queen when she began to turn into a hag and to object to any shadow -in her portraits. Near him, in 1621, was buried Paul Vansomer, a Flemish -painter, celebrated for his portraits of James I. and his Danish queen. -And here rests, too, a third and greater painter, William Dobson, -Vandyke's protégé, who, born in an unlucky age, and forgotten amid the -tumult of the Civil War, died in 1646, in poverty, in his house in St. -Martin's Lane. Dobson had been apprenticed to a picture-dealer, and was -discovered in his obscurity by Vandyke, whose style he imitated, giving -it, however, a richer colour and more solidity. Charles I. and Prince -Rupert both sat to him for their portraits. In this church reposes Sir -Theodore Mayerne, an old court physician. His conserve of bats and -scrapings of human skulls could not keep him from the earthy bed it seems. -Nicholas Stone, the sculptor, who died 1647, sleeps here (Stone's son was -Cibber's master), all unknown to the learned Thomas Stanley, who died in -1678, and was known for his _History of Philosophy_ and translation of -Æschylus. Here, also, is John Lacey--first a dancing-master, afterwards a -trooper, lastly a comedian. He died in 1681. Charles II. was a great -admirer of Lacey, but unfortunately more so of Nell Gwynn, who also came -to sleep here in 1687. Poor Nell! with her good-nature and simple -frankness, she stands out, wanton and extravagant as she was, in pleasant -contrast with the proud painted wantons of that infamous court. - -If the dead could shudder, Secretary Coventry, who was buried here the -year before Nell, must have shuddered at the neighbourhood in which he -found himself; for he was the son of Lord Keeper Coventry, who died at -Durham House in 1639-40. He had been Commissioner to the Treasury, and had -given his name to Coventry Street. This great person became a precedent of -burial to the Hon. Robert Boyle. This wise and good man, whom Swift -ridiculed, was the inventor of the air-pump, and one of the great -promoters of the Royal Society and of the Society for the Propagation of -the Gospel. He died in 1691, and his funeral sermon was preached by -Swift's _bête noir_, that fussy time-server, Bishop Burnet. - -In the churchyard lies a far inferior man, Sir John Birkenhead, who died -in 1679. He was a great pamphlet-writer for the Royalists, and Lawes set -some of his verses to music.[449] He left directions that he should not be -buried within the church, as coffins were often removed. In or out of the -church was buried Rose, Charles II.'s gardener, the first man to grow a -pine-apple in England--a slice of which the king graciously handed to Mr. -Evelyn. - -Worst of all--a scoundrel, and fool among sensible men--here lies the -bully and murderer, Lord Mohun, who fell in a duel in Hyde Park with the -Duke of Hamilton, immortalised in Mr. Thackeray's _Esmond_. Mohun died -in 1712. Here also, in 1721, came that vile and pretentious French -painter, Louis Laguerre, whom Pope justly satirised. He was brought over -by Verrio, and painted the "sprawling" "Labours of Hercules" at Hampton -Court. He died of apoplexy at Drury Lane Theatre. That clever and -determined burglar, Jack Sheppard, is said to have been buried in St. -Martin's in 1724. Farquhar, the Irish dramatist, author of "The Beaux' -Stratagem," was interred here in 1707. Roubilliac, the French sculptor, -who lived close by, was also buried in this spot, and Hogarth attended his -funeral. - -Mr. J. T. Smith, author of the _Life of Nollekens_, speaking of his own -visits to the vaults of St. Martin's Church, says, "It is a curious fact -that Mrs. Rudd requested to be placed near the coffins of the Perreaus. -Melancholy as my visits to this vault have been, I frankly own that -pleasant recollections have almost invited me to sing, 'Did you ne'er hear -of a jolly young waterman?' when passing by the coffin of my father's old -friend, Charles Bannister."[450] - -Mr. F. Buckland that delightful writer on natural history, who visited the -same charnel-house in his search for the body of the great John Hunter, -describes the vaults as piled with heaps of leaden coffins, horrible to -every sense; but as I write from memory, I will not give the ghastly -details. - -That indefatigable and too restless exposer of abuses, Daniel Defoe, wrote -a pamphlet in 1720 entitled "Parochial Tyranny; or, the Housekeeper's -Complaint against the Exactions of Select Vestries." In this pamphlet he -published one of the bills of the vestry of St. Martin's in 1713, which -contains the following impudent items:-- - - "Spent at May meetings or visitation £65 0 4 - - Ditto at taverns, with ministers, justices, - overseers, &c. 72 19 7 - - Sacrament bread and wine 88 10 0 - - Paid towards a robbery 21 14 0 - - Spent for dinner at the Mulberry Gardens 49 13 4" - -In 1818 the churchwardens' dinner cost £56: 18s. Archdeacon Potts' sermon -on the death of Queen Charlotte not selling, the parish paid the loss, -£48: 12: 9. In 1813 the vestry charged the parish £5 for petitioning -against the Roman Catholics. - -The Thames watermen have a plot set apart for themselves in St. Martin's -Churchyard. These amphibious and pugnacious beings were formerly notorious -for their powers of sarcasm, though Dr. Johnson on a celebrated occasion -put one of them out of countenance. In spite of coaches and sedan -chairs--their horror in the times of the "Water Poet," who must often have -ferried Shakspere over to the Globe Theatre at the Bankside--they -continued till the days of omnibuses and cheap cabs, rowing and singing, -rejoicing in their scarlet tunics, and skimming to and fro over the Thames -like swallows. - -There is a Westminster tradition of a waterman who pretended to be deaf, -and who was much employed by lovers, barristers who wished to air their -eloquence, and young M.P.s who wanted to recite their speeches -undisturbed. - -In 1821 died Copper Holms, a well-known character on the river. He lived, -with his wife and children, somewhere along the shore in an ark, which he -had artfully framed from a West-country vessel, and which, coppers and -all, cost him £150. The City brought an action to compel him to remove the -obstruction. The honest fellow was buried in "The Waterman's Churchyard," -on the south side of St. Martin's Church.[451] - -In 1683 Dr. Thomas Tenison, vicar of the parish, afterwards Archbishop of -Canterbury, lived in this street; he died at Lambeth in 1715. He founded -in this parish a school and library. Though Swift did say he was "hot and -heavy as a tailor's iron," he seems to have been one of the best and most -tolerant of men, notwithstanding he attacked Hobbes and Bellarmine with -his pen. He worked bravely during the plague, and was princely in his -charities during the dreadful winter of 1683. It was he who prepared -Monmouth for death, and smoothed Queen Mary's dying pillow. He was a -steady friend of William of Orange. - -Two doors from Slaughter's, on the west side, but lower down, lived -Ambrose Philips, from 1720 to 1724. Pope laughed at his "Pastorals," which -had been overpraised by Tickell. Though a friend of Addison and Steele, -his sprightly but effeminate copies of verses procured him from Henry -Carey the name of "Namby Pamby." His "Winter Scene," a sketch of a Danish -winter, is, however, admirable. - -Ambrose Philips was laughed at for advertising in the _London Gazette_, of -January 1714, for contributions to a _Poetical Miscellany_. He was a -Leicestershire man, and chiefly remarkable for translating Racine's -"Distressed Mother." When the Whigs came into power under George I. he was -put into the commission of the peace, and made a Commissioner of the -Lottery. He afterwards became Registrar of the Prerogative Court at -Dublin, wrote in the _Free Thinker_, and died in 1749. Pope laughed at the -small poet as-- - - "The bard whom pilfered Pastorals renown, - Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown, - Just writes to make his barrenness appear, - And strains from hide-bound brains eight lines a year."[452] - -It was always one of Pope's keenest strokes to call a man poor. Philips, -in 1714, had industriously translated the _Thousand and One Days_, a -series of Persian tales, and gained very honourably earned money. The wasp -of Twickenham, whose malice never grew old, sketched Philips again as -"Macer," a simple, harmless fellow, who borrowed ends of verse, and whose -highest ambition was "to wear red stockings and to dine with Steele." -Ambrose, naturally indignant to hear himself accused of stealing the -little fame he had, very spiritedly hung up a birch at the bar of Button's -Coffee-house, with which he threatened to chastise the Æsop of the age if -he dared show himself, but Pope wisely stayed at home.[453] - -The first house from the corner of Newport Street, on the right hand going -to Charing Cross, was occupied by Beard, the celebrated public singer, who -in 1738-9 married Lady Henrietta Herbert, the only daughter of the Earl -Waldegrave. After her death the widower married the daughter of Mr. John -Rich, the inventor of English pantomime, the best harlequin that probably -ever lived, and the patentee of Covent Garden Theatre from 1732 to 1762. -The parlour of the house had two windows facing the south towards Charing -Cross. Here Mr. J. T. Smith describes his father smoking a pipe with Beard -and George Lambert, the latter the founder of the Beef-steak Club and the -clever scene-painter of Covent Garden Theatre. The fire of 1808 destroyed -most of Lambert's work with the theatre.[454] - -Next to this house stood "Old Slaughter's" Coffee-house, the great haunt -of artists from Hogarth to Wilkie. Towards the end of its existence it was -the head-quarters of naval and military officers before the establishment -of West End Clubs. It was pulled down in 1844 to make way for the new -street between Long Acre and Leicester Square. The original landlord, John -Slaughter, started it in 1692, and died about 1740.[455] It first became -known as "Old Slaughter's" in 1760, when an opposition set up in the -street under the name of "Young" or "New Slaughter's." - -There is a foolish tradition that the coffee-house derived its name from -being frequented by the butchers of Newport Market. Mr. Smith gives a -charming chapter on the frequenters of this old haunt of Dryden and -afterwards of Pope. The first he mentions was Mr. Ware, the architect, who -published a folio edition of Palladio, the great Italian architect of -Elizabeth's time. Ware was originally a chimney-sweeper's boy in Charles -Court, Strand; but being one day seen chalking houses on the front of -Whitehall, a gentleman passing became his patron, educated him, and sent -him to Italy. His bust was one of Roubilliac's best works. His skin is -said to have retained the stain of soot to the day of his death.[456] - -Gravelot, who kept a drawing-school in the Strand, nearly opposite -Southampton Street, was another frequenter of Old Slaughter's. Henri -François Bourignon Gravelot was born in Paris in 1699, and died in that -city in 1773. His drawings were always minutely finished, and his designs -tasteful, particularly those which he etched himself for Sir John Hanmer's -small edition of Shakspere. He found an excellent engraver in poor Charles -Grignon, Le Bas' pupil, who in his old age was driven off the field, fell -into poverty, and so remained till he died in 1810, aged 94. - -John Gwynn, the architect, who lived in Little Court, Castle Street, -Leicester Fields, also frequented this house. He built the bridge at -Shrewsbury, and wrote a work on London improvements, which his friend Dr. -Johnson revised and prefaced. The doctor also wrote strongly in favour of -Gwynn's talent and integrity when he was unsuccessfully competing with -Mylne for the erection of old Blackfriars Bridge. - -Hogarth, too, "used" Slaughter's, and came there to rail at the "black old -masters," the follies of patrons, and the knavery of dealers. Here he -would banter and brag, and sketch odd faces on his thumb-nail. Perhaps the -"Midnight Conversation" was partly derived from convivial scenes in St. -Martin's Lane. - -Roubilliac, the eccentric French sculptor, was another habitué of the -place. His house and studio were opposite on the east side of the lane, -and were approached by a long passage and gateway. Here his friends must -have listened to his rhapsodies in broken English about his great statues -of Handel, Sir Isaac Newton, and that of Shakspere now at the British -Museum, which cost Garrick, who left it to the nation, three hundred -guineas.[457] - -That pompous and wretched portrait-painter, Hudson, Reynolds's master and -Richardson's pupil, used also to frequent Slaughter's. Hudson was the most -ignorant of painters, yet he was for a time the fashion. He painted the -portraits of the members of the Dilettanti Society, and was a great and -ignorant collector of Rembrandt etchings. Hogarth used to call him, in his -brusque way, "a fat-headed fellow." - -Here Hogarth would meet his own engraver, M'Ardell, who lived in Henrietta -Street. One of the finest English mezzotints in respect of brilliancy is -Hogarth's portrait of Captain Coram, the brave old originator of the -Foundling Hospital, by M'Ardell. His engravings after Reynolds are superb. -That painter himself said that they would immortalise him.[458] - -Here, also, came Luke Sullivan, another of Hogarth's engravers, from the -White Bear, Piccadilly. His etching of "The March to Finchley" is -considered exquisite.[459] Sullivan was also an exquisite -miniature-painter, particularly of female heads. He was a handsome, -lively, reckless fellow, and died in miserable poverty. - -At Slaughter's, too, Hogarth must have met the unhappy Theodore Gardelle, -the miniature-painter, who afterwards murdered his landlady in the -Haymarket and burnt her body. Hogarth is said to have sketched him in his -ghostly white cap on the day of his execution. Gardelle, like Greenacre, -pleaded that he killed the woman by an accidental blow, and then destroyed -the body in fear. Foote notices his gibbet in _The Mayor of Garratt_. - -Old Moser, keeper of the drawing academy in Peter's Court--Roubilliac's -old rooms--was often to be seen at the same haunt. Moser was a German -Swiss, a gold-chaser and enameller; he became keeper of the Royal Academy -in 1768. His daughter painted flowers. - -That great painter, poor old Richard Wilson, neglected and almost starved -by the senseless art-patrons of his day, occasionally came to Slaughter's, -probably to meet his countryman, blind Parry, the Welsh harper and great -draught-player. - -And, last of all, we must mention Nathanael Smith, the engraver, and Mr. -Rawle, the accoutrement maker in the Strand, and the inseparable companion -of Captain Grose, the great antiquary, on whom Burns wrote poems--a -learned, fat, jovial Falstaff of a man, who compiled an indecorous but -clever slang dictionary. It was at Rawle's sale that Dickey Suett bought -Charles II.'s black wig, which he wore for years in "Tom Thumb." - -Nos. 76 and 77 St. Martin's Lane were originally one house, built by -Payne, the architect of Salisbury Street and the original Lyceum. He built -two small houses in his garden for his friends Gwynn, the competitor for -Blackfriars Bridge, and Wale, the Royal Academy lecturer on perspective, -and well-known book-illustrator. The entrances were in Little Court, -Castle Street. In old times the street on this side, from Beard's Court, -to St. Martin's Court, was called the Pavement; but the road has since -been heightened three feet. - -Below Payne's, in Hogarth's time, lived a bookseller named Harding, a -seller of old prints, and author of a little book on the _Monograms of Old -Engravers_. It was to this shop that Wilson, the sergeant painter, took an -etching of his own, which was sold to Hudson as a genuine Rembrandt. That -same night, by agreement, Wilson invited Hogarth and Hudson to supper. -When the cold sirloin came in, Scott, the marine-painter, called out, "A -sail, a sail!" for the beef was stuck with skewers bearing impressions of -the new Rembrandt, of which Hudson was so proud.[460] - -Nos. 88 and 89 were built on the site of a large mansion, the staircase of -which was adorned with allegorical figures. It was here that Hogarth's -particular friend, John Pine, lived. Pine was the engraver and publisher -of the scenes from the Armada tapestry in the House of Lords, now -destroyed. He was a round, fat, oily man; and Hogarth drew him, much to -his annoyance, as the fat friar eyeing the beef at the "Gate of Calais." -His son Robert, who painted one of the best portraits of Garrick, and -carried off the hundred guinea prize of the Society of Arts for his -picture of the "Siege of Calais," also lived here, and, after him, Dr. -Gartshore. - -The house No. 96, on the west side, was Powell the colourman's in 1828; it -had then a Queen Anne door-frame, with spread-eagle and carved foliage and -flowers, like the houses in Carey Street and Great Ormond Street, and a -shutter sliding in grooves in the old-fashioned way. Mr. Powell's mother -made for many years annually a pipe of wine from the produce of a vine -nearly a hundred feet long.[461] This house had a large staircase, painted -with figures in procession, by a French artist named Clermont, who claimed -one thousand guineas for his work, and received five hundred. Behind the -house was the room which Hogarth has painted in "Marriage à la Mode." The -quack is Dr. Misaubin, whose vile portrait the satirist has given. The -savage fat woman is his Irish wife. Dr. Misaubin, who lived in this house, -was the son of a pastor of the Spitalfields French Church. The quack -realised a great fortune by a famous pill. His son was murdered; his -grandson squandered his money, and died in St. Martin's Workhouse. - -No. 104 was at one time the residence of Sir James Thornhill, Hogarth's -august father-in-law, a poor yet pretentious painter, who decorated St. -Paul's. He painted the staircase wall with allegories that were existing -some years since in good condition. The junior Van Nost, the sculptor, -afterwards lived here--the same artist who took that mask of Garrick's -face which afterwards belonged to the elder Mathews. After him, before -1768, came Hogarth's convivial artist-friend, Francis Hayman, who -decorated Vauxhall and illustrated countless books. Perhaps it was here -that the Marquis of Granby, before sitting to the painter, had a round or -two of sparring. Sir Joshua Reynolds, too, a graver and colder man, came -to live here before he went to Great Newport Street. - -New Slaughter's, at No. 82 in 1828, was established about 1760, and was -demolished in 1843-44, when the new avenue of Garrick Street was made -between Long Acre and Leicester Square. It was much frequented by artists -who wished cheap fare and good society. Roubilliac was often to be found -here. Wilkie long after enjoyed his frugal dinners here at a small cost. -He was always the last dropper-in, and was never seen to dine in the house -before dark. The fact is, the patient young Scotchman always slaved at his -art till the last glimpse of daylight had disappeared below the red roofs. - -Upon the site of the present Quakers' Meeting-house in St. Peter's Court, -St. Martin's Lane, stood Roubilliac's first studio after he left Cheere. -Here he executed, with ecstatic raptures at his own genius, his great -statue of Handel for Vauxhall. Here afterwards a drawing academy was -started, Mr. Michael Moser being chosen the keeper. Reynolds, Mortimer, -Nollekens, and M'Ardell were among the earliest members. Hogarth presented -to it some of his father-in-law's casts, but opposed the principle of -cheap education to young artists, declaring that every foolish father -would send his boy there to keep him out of the streets, and so the -profession would be overstocked. In this academy the students sat to each -other for drapery, and had also male and female models--sometimes in -groups. - -Amongst the early members of the St. Martin's Lane Academy were the -following:--Moser, afterwards keeper of the Academy; Hayman, Hogarth's -friend; Wale, the book-illustrator; Cipriani, famous for his book-prints; -Allan Ramsay, Reynolds's rival; F. M. Newton; Charles Catton, the prince -of coach-painters; Zoffany, the dramatic portrait-painter; Collins, the -sculptor, who modelled Hayman's "Don Quixote;" Jeremy Meyer; William -Woollett, the great engraver; Anthony Walker, also an engraver; Linnel, a -carver in wood; John Mortimer, the Salvator Rosa of that day; Rubinstein, -a drapery-painter and drudge to the portrait-painters; James Paine, son of -the architect of the Lyceum; Tilly Kettle, who went to the East, painted -several rajahs, and then died near Aleppo; William Pars, who was sent to -Greece by the Dilettanti Society; Vandergutch, a painter who turned -picture-dealer; Charles Grignon, the engraver; C. Norton, Charles -Sherlock, and Charles Bibb, also engravers; Richmond, Keeble, Evans, -Roper, Parsons, and Black, now forgotten; Russell, the crayon-painter; -Richmond Cosway, the miniature-painter, a fop and a mystic; W. Marlowe, a -landscape-painter; Messrs. Griggs, Rowe, Dubourg, Taylor, Dance, and -Ratcliffe, pupils of gay Frank Hayman; Richard Earlom, engraver of the -"Liber Veritatis" of Claude for the Duke of Richmond; J. A. Gresse, a fat -artist who taught the queen and princesses drawing; Giuseppe Marchi, an -assistant of Reynolds; Thomas Beech; Lambert, a sculptor, and pupil of -Roubilliac; Reed, another pupil of the same great artist, who aided in -executing the skeleton on Mrs. Nightingale's monument, and was famous for -his pancake clouds; Biaggio Rebecca, the decorator; Richard Wilson, the -great landscape-painter; Terry, Lewis Lattifere, John Seton, David Martin, -Burgess; Burch, the medallist; John Collett, an imitator of Hogarth; -Nollekens, the sculptor; Reynolds, and, of course, Hogarth himself, the -_primum mobile_.[462] - -No. 112 was in old times one of those apothecaries' shops with bottled -snakes in the windows. It was kept by Leake, the inventor of a -"diet-drink" once as famous as Lockyer's pill. - -Frank Hayman, one of these St. Martin's Lane worthies, was originally a -scene-painter at Drury Lane. He was with Hogarth at Moll King's when -Hogarth drew the girl squirting brandy at the other for his picture in the -_Rake's Progress_. Hayman was a Devonshire man, and a pupil of Brown. When -he buried his wife, a friend asked him why he spent so much money on the -funeral. "Oh, sir," replied the droll, revelling fellow, "she would have -done as much or more for me with pleasure." - -Quin and Hayman were inseparable boon companions. One night, after -"beating the rounds," they both fell into the kennel. Presently Hayman, -sprawling out his shambling legs, kicked his bedfellow Quin. "Hallo! what -are you at now?" growled the Welsh actor. "At? why, endeavouring to get -up, to be sure, for this don't suit my palate." "Pooh!" replied Quin, -"remain where you are; the watchman will come by shortly, and he will -_take us both up_!"[463] - -No. 113 was occupied by Thomas Major, a die-engraver to the Stamp Office, -a pupil of Le Bas, and an excellent reproducer of subjects from Teniers. -He was also an engraver of landscapes after pictures by Ferg, one of the -artists employed with Sir James Thornhill at the Chelsea china -manufactory. - -The old watch-house or round-house used to stand exactly opposite the -centre of the portico of Gibbs's church.[464] There is a rare etching -which represents its front during a riot. Stocks, elaborately carved with -vigorous figures of a man being whipped by the hangman, stood near the -wall of the watch-house. The carving, much mutilated, was preserved in the -vaults under the church. - -Near the stocks, with an entrance from the King's Mews, stood "the Barn," -afterwards called "the Canteen," which was a great resort of the chess, -draught, and whist players of the City. - -At the south-west corner of St. Martin's Lane was the shop of Jefferys, -the geographer to King George III. - -No. 20 was a public-house, latterly the Portobello, with Admiral Vernon's -ship, well painted by Monamy, for its sign. The date, 1638, was on the -front of this house, now removed. - -No. 114 stands on the site of the old house of the Earls of Salisbury. -Before the alterations of 1827 there were vestiges of the old building -remaining. It has been a constant tradition in the lane, that in this -house, in James II.'s reign, the seven bishops were lodged before they -were conveyed to the Tower. - -Opposite old Salisbury House stood a turnpike, and the tradition in the -lane is that the Earl of Salisbury obtained its removal as a nuisance. At -that time the church was literally in the fields. The turnpike-house -stood (circa 1760) on the site of No. 28, afterwards (in 1828) Pullen's -wine-vaults. The Westminster Fire Office was first established in St. -Martin's Lane, between Chandos Street and May's Buildings. - -The White Horse livery-stables were originally tea-gardens,[465] and south -of these was a hop-garden. The oldest house in the lane overhung the White -Horse stables, and was standing in 1828. - -No. 60 was formerly Chippendale's, the great upholsterer and -cabinet-maker, whose folio work was the great authority in the trade -before Mr. Hope's classic style overthrew for a time that of Louis -Quatorze. - -No. 63 formerly led to Roubilliac's studio. Here, in 1828, the Sunday -paper _The Watchman_, was printed. - -It must have been here, in the sculptor's time, that Garrick, coming to -see how his Shakspere statue progressed, drew out a two-foot rule, and put -on a tragic and threatening face to frighten a great red-headed -Yorkshireman, who was sawing marble for Roubilliac; but who, to his -surprise, merely rolled his quid, and coolly said, "What trick are you -after next, my little master?" Upon the honest sculptor's death, Read, one -of his pupils, a conceited pretender, took the premises in 1762, and -advertised himself as "Mr. Roubilliac's successor." - -Read executed the poor monuments of the Duchess of Northumberland and of -Admiral Tyrrell, now in Westminster Abbey. His master used to say to Read -when he was bragging, "Ven you do de monument, den de varld vill see vot -von d-- ting you vill make." Nollekens used to say of the admiral's -monument, "That figure going to heaven out of the sea looks for all the -world as if it were hanging from a gallows with a rope round its -neck."[466] - -No. 70 was formerly the house where Mr. Hone held his exhibition when his -picture of "The Conjuror," intended to ridicule Sir Joshua Reynolds as a -plagiarist, and to insult Miss Angelica Kaufmann, was refused admittance -at Somerset House. Mr. Nathanael Hone was a miniature-painter on enamel, -who attempted oil pictures and grew envious of Reynolds. Hone was a tall, -pompous, big, erect man, who wore a broad brimmed hat and a lapelled coat, -punctiliously buttoned up to his chin. He walked with a measured, stately -step, and spoke with an air of great self-importance--in this sort of way: -"Joseph Nollekens, Esq., R.A., how--do--you--do?"[467] - -The corner house of Long Acre, now 72, formed part of the extensive -premises of Mr. Cobb, George III.'s upholsterer--a proud, pompous man, who -always strutted about his workshops in full dress. It was Dance's portrait -of Mr. Cobb, given in exchange for a table, that led to Dance's -acquaintance with Garrick. One day in the library at Buckingham House, old -King George asked Cobb to hand him a certain book. Instead of doing so, -mistaken Cobb called to a man who was at work on a ladder, and said, -"Fellow, give me that book." The king instantly rose and asked the man's -name. "Jenkins," replied the astonished upholsterer. "Then," observed the -good old king, "Jenkins shall hand me the book."[468] - -Alderman Boydell, the great encourager of art, when he first began with -half a shop, used to etch small plates of landscapes in sets of six for -sixpence. As there were few print-shops then in London, he prevailed upon -the proprietors of toy-shops to put them in their windows for sale. Every -Saturday he went the round of the shops to see what had been done, or to -take more. His most successful shop was "The Cricket-Bat," in Duke's -Court, St. Martin's Lane.[469] - -Abraham Raimbach, the engraver, was born in Cecil Court, St. Martin's -Lane, in 1776. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his early period, lived nearly -opposite May's Buildings. He afterwards went to Great Newport Street, -where he first met Dr. Johnson. - -O'Keefe describes being in a coffee-house in St. Martin's Lane on the very -morning when the famous No. 45 came out. The unconscious newsman came in, -and, as a matter of course, laid the paper on the table before him. About -the year 1777 O'Keefe was standing talking with his brother at Charing -Cross, when a slender figure in a scarlet coat with a large bag, and -fierce three-cocked hat, crossed the way, carefully choosing his steps, -the weather being wet--it was John Wilkes.[470] - -When Fuseli returned to London in 1779, after his foreign tour, he resided -with a portrait painter named Cartwright, at No. 100 St. Martin's -Lane,[471] and he remained there till his marriage with Miss Rawlins in -1788, when he removed to Foley Street. Here he commenced his acquaintance -with Professor Bonnycastle, and produced his popular picture of "The -Nightmare" (1781), by which the publisher of the print realised £500. Here -also he revised Cowper's version of the _Iliad_, and became acquainted -with Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Moore, the author of _Zeluco_. - -May's Buildings bear the date of 1739. Mr. May, who built them, lived at -No. 43, which he ornamented with pilasters and a cornice. This house used -to be thought a good specimen of architectural brickwork. - -The club of "The Eccentrics," in May's Buildings, was, in 1812, much -frequented by the eloquent Richard Lalor Sheil, by William Mudford, the -editor of the _Courier_, a man of logical and sarcastic power,--and by -"Pope Davis," an artist, in later years a great friend of the unfortunate -Haydon. "Pope Davis" was so called from having painted, when in Rome, a -large picture of the "Presentation of the Shrewsbury Family to the -Pope."[472] - -The Royal Society of Literature, at 4 St. Martin's Place, Charing Cross, -was founded in 1823, "for the advancement of literature," on which at -present it has certainly had no very perceptible influence. It was -incorporated by royal charter Sept. 13, 1826. George IV. gave 1000 guineas -a year to this body, which rescued the last years of Coleridge's wasted -life from utter dependence, and placed Dr. Jamieson above want. William -IV. discontinued the lavish grant of a king who was generous only with -other people's money, and was always in debt; and since that the somewhat -effete society has sunk into a Transaction Publishing Society, or rather a -club with an improving library. Sir Walter Scott's opposition to the -society was as determined as Hogarth's against the Royal Academy. "The -immediate and direct favour of the sovereign," said Scott, who had a -superstitious respect for any monarch, "is worth the patronage of ten -thousand societies." Literature wants no patronage now, thank God, but -only intelligent purchasers; and whether a king does or does not read an -author's work, is of small consequence to any writer. - -[Illustration: OLD SLAUGHTER'S COFFEE-HOUSE.] - -Admission to the Royal Society of Literature is obtained by a certificate, -signed by three members, and an election by ballot. Ordinary members pay -three guineas on admission, and two guineas annually, or compound by a -payment of twenty guineas. The society devotes itself for the most part to -the study of Greek and Latin inscriptions and Egyptian literature.[473] -This learned body also professes to fix the standard of the English -language; to read papers on history, poetry, philosophy, and philology; to -correspond with learned men in foreign countries; to reward literary -merit; and to publish unedited remains of ancient literature. - -St. Martin's Lane has seen many changes. Cranbourne Alley is gone with all -its bonnet-shops, and the Mews and C'ribbee Islands are no more, but there -still remain a few old houses, with brick pilasters and semi-Grecian -pediments, to remind us of the days of Fuseli and Reynolds, Hayman and Old -Slaughter's, Hogarth and Roubilliac. I can assure my readers that a most -respectable class of ghosts haunts the artist quarter in St. Martin's -Lane. - - - - -[Illustration: SALISBURY AND WORCESTER HOUSES, 1630.] - - -CHAPTER XI. - -LONG ACRE AND ITS TRIBUTARIES. - - -At the latter end of 1664, says Defoe, two men, said to be Frenchmen, died -of the plague at the Drury Lane end of Long Acre. Dr. Hodges, however, a -greater authority than Defoe, who wrote fifty-seven years after the event, -says merely that the pestilence broke out in Westminster, and that two or -three persons dying, the frightened neighbours removed into the City, and -there carried the contagion. He, however, distinctly states that the pest -came to us from Holland, and most probably in a parcel of infected goods -from Smyrna.[474] - -According to Defoe, the family with which the Frenchmen had lodged -endeavoured to conceal the deaths; but the rumour growing, the Secretary -of State heard of it, and sent two physicians and a surgeon to inspect the -bodies. They certifying that the men had really died of the plague, the -parish clerk returned the deaths to "the Hall," and they were printed in -the weekly bill of mortality. "The people showed a great concern at this, -and began to be alarmed all over the town."[475] At Christmas Dr. Hodges -attended a case of plague, and shortly afterwards a proclamation was -issued for placing watchmen day and night at the doors of infected houses, -which were to be marked with a red St. Andrew cross and the subscription -"Lord have mercy upon us!"[476] By the next September the terrible disease -had risen to its height, and the deaths ranged as high as 12,000 a week, -and in the worst night after the bonfires had been burned in the street, -to 4000 in the twelve hours.[477] - -Great Queen Street, so called after Henrietta Maria, the imprudent but -brave wife of Charles I., was built about 1629, before the troubles. Howes -(editor of Stow) speaks in 1631, of "the new fair buildings leading into -Drury Lane."[478] Many of the houses were built by Webb, one of Inigo -Jones's scholars. The south was the fashionable side, looking towards the -Pancras fields; most of the north side houses must, therefore, be of a -later date. According to one authority Inigo Jones himself built Queen -Street, at the cost of the Jesuits, designing it for a square, and leaving -in the middle a niche for the statue of Queen Henrietta. "The stately and -magnificent houses," begun on the other side near Little Queen Street, -were not continued. There were fleurs-de-luce placed on the walls in -honour of the queen.[479] - -George Digby, the second Earl of Bristol, lived in Great Queen Street, in -a large house with seven rooms on a floor, a long gallery, and gardens. -Evelyn describes going to see him (probably there), to consult about the -site of Greenwich Hospital, with Denham the poet and surveyor, and one of -Inigo Jones's clerks. Digby was a Knight of the Garter, who first wrote -against Popery and then converted himself. He persecuted Lord Strafford, -yet then turning courtier, lived long enough to persecute Lord Clarendon. -Grammont, Bussy, and Clarendon all decry the earl; and Horace Walpole -writes wittily of him--"With great parts, he always hurt himself and his -friends; with romantic bravery, he was always an unsuccessful commander. -He spoke for the Test Act, though a Roman Catholic, and addicted himself -to astrology on the birthday of true philosophy."[480] - -In 1671 Evelyn describes the earl's house as taken by the Commissioners of -Trade and Plantations, of which he was one, and furnished with tapestry -"of the king's." The Duke of Buckingham, the earl of Sandwich (Pepys's -patron), the Earl of Lauderdale, Sir John Finch, Waller the poet, and -saturnine Colonel Titus (the author of the terrible pamphlet against -Cromwell, _Killing no Murder_) were the new occupants. - -They sat, says Evelyn, at the board in the council chamber, a very large -room furnished with atlases, maps, charts, and globes. The first day's -debate was an ominous one: it related to the condition of New England, -which had grown rich, strong, and "very independent as to their regard to -Old England or his majesty. The colony was able to contest with all the -other plantations,[481] and there was fear of her breaking from her -dependence. Some of the council were for sending a menacing letter, but -others who better understood the peevish and touchy humour of that colony -were utterly against it." A few weeks afterwards Evelyn was at the -council, when a letter was read from Jamaica, describing how Morgan, the -Welsh buccaneer, had sacked and burned Panama; the bravest thing of the -kind done since Drake. Morgan, who cheated his companions and stole their -spoil, afterwards came to England, and was, like detestable Blood, -received at court. - -Lord Chancellor Finch, Earl of Nottingham, who lived in Great Queen -Street, presided as Lord High Steward at Lord Strafford's trial, at which -Evelyn was present, noticing the ill-bred impudence of Titus Oates.[482] -Finch was the son of a recorder of London, and died in 1681. He was living -here when that impudent thief, Sadler, stole the mace and purse, and -carried them off in procession. - -The choleric and Quixotic Lord Herbert of Cherbury lived in Great Queen -Street, in a house on the south side, a few doors east of Great Wyld -Street. Here he began his wild Deistic work, _De Veritate_, published in -Paris in 1624, and in London three years before his death. He says that he -finished this rhapsody in France, where it was praised by Tilenus, an -Arminian professor at Sedan, and an opponent of the Calvinists, which -procured him a pension from James I., and also from the learned Grotius -when he came to Paris, after his escape in a linen-chest from the -Calvinist fortress of Louvestein. Urged to publish by friends, Lord -Herbert, afraid of the censure his book might receive, was relieved from -his doubts by what his vanity and heated imagination pleased to consider a -vision from heaven. - -This Welsh Quixote says, "Being thus doubtful in my chamber one fair day -in the summer, my casement being open towards the south, the sun shining -clear and no wind stirring, I took my book, _De Veritate_, in my hand, and -kneeling on my knees, devoutly said these words: 'Oh, thou eternal God, -author of the light which now shines upon me, and giver of all inward -illuminations, I do beseech thee of thy infinite goodness to pardon a -greater request than a sinner ought to make. I am not satisfied enough -whether I shall publish this book, _De Veritate_. If it be for thy glory, -I beseech thee to give me some sign from heaven; if not, I shall suppress -it!' I had no sooner spoken these words, but a _loud though gentle -noise_[483] came from the heavens (for it was like nothing on earth), -which did so comfort and cheer me that I took my petition as granted. And -this (however strange it may seem) I protest before the eternal God is -true. Neither am I in any way superstitiously deceived herein, since I did -not only hear the noise, but in the serenest sky that ever I saw--being -without _all_ cloud--did, to my thinking, see the place from whence it -came." - -The noise was probably some child falling from a chair overhead, or a -chest of drawers being moved in an upper room; and if it _had_ been -thunder in a clear sky, it was no more than Horace once heard. Heaven does -not often express its approval of Deistical books. Lord Herbert, doubted -of general, and yet believed in individual revelation. What crazy vanity, -to think the work of an amateur philosopher of sufficient importance for a -special revelation,[484] that (in his own opinion) had been denied to a -neglected world! Lord Herbert, though refused the sacrament by Usher, bore -it very serenely, asked what o'clock it was, then said, "An hour hence I -shall depart," turned his head to the other side, and expired.[485] He had -moved to this quarter from King Street. Lord Herbert, though he wrote a -Life to vindicate that brutal tyrant Henry VIII., was inconsistent enough -to join the Parliament against a less wise but more illegal king, Charles -I. When I pass down Queen Street, wondering whether that southern window -of the Welsh knight's vision was on the front of the south side, or on the -back of the southern side of the street, I sometimes think of those soft -lines of his upon the question "whether love should continue for ever?" - - "Having interr'd her infant birth, - The watery ground that late did mourn - Was strew'd with flowers for the return - Of the wish'd bridegroom of the earth. - - "The well-accorded birds did sing - Their hymns unto the pleasant time, - And in a sweet consorted chime, - Did welcome in the cheerful spring." - -And then on my return home, I get out brave old Ben Jonson, and read his -lines addressed to this last of the knights:-- - - "... and on whose every part - Truth might spend all her voice, Fame all her art. - Whether thy learning they would take, or wit, - Or valour, or thy judgment seasoning it, - Thy standing upright to thyself, thy ends - Like straight, thy piety to God and friends." - -Sir Thomas Fairfax, general of the Parliament, probably lived here, as he -dated from this street a printed proclamation of the 12th of February -1648. - -Sir Godfrey Kneller, the great portrait painter of William and Mary's -reign, but more especially of Queen Anne's time, once lived in a house in -this street. Sir Godfrey, though a humorist, was the vainest of men, and -was made rather a butt by his friends Pope and Gay. Kneller was the son of -a surveyor at Lübeck, and intended for the army. King George I., who -created him a baronet, was the last of the sovereigns who sat to him. Sir -Godfrey was the successor of Sir Peter Lely in England, but was still more -slight and careless in manner. His portraits may be often known by the -curls being thrown behind the back, while in Lely's portraits they fall -over the shoulders and chest. Kneller was a humorist, but very vain, as a -man might well be whom Dryden, Pope, Addison, Prior, Tickell, and Steele -had eulogised in verse. On one occasion, when Pope was sitting watching -Kneller paint, he determined to fool him "to the top of his bent." "Do you -not think, Sir Godfrey," said the little poet, slily, "that, if God had -had your advice at the creation, he would have made a much better world?" -The painter turned round sharply from his easel, fixed his eyes on Pope, -and laying one hand on his deformed shoulder, replied, "Fore Gott, Mister -Pope, I theenk I shoode." - -There was wit in all Kneller's banter, and even when his quaint sayings -told against himself, they seemed to reflect the humour of a man conscious -of the ludicrous side of his own vanity. To his tailor who brought him his -son to offer him as an apprentice emulative of Annibale Caracci, whose -father had also sat cross-legged, Sir Godfrey said, grandly, "Dost thou -think, man, I can make thy son a painter? No; God Almighty only makes -painters." To a low fellow whom he overheard cursing himself he said, "God -damn you? No, God may damn the Duke of Marlborough, and perhaps Sir -Godfrey Kneller; but do you think he will take the trouble of damning such -a scoundrel as you?"[486] - -Gay on one occasion read some verses to Sir Godfrey (probably those -describing Pope's imaginary welcome from Greece) in which these outrageous -lines occur-- - - "What can the extent of his vast soul confine-- - A painter, critic, engineer, divine?" - -Upon which Kneller, remembering that he had been intended for a soldier, -and perhaps scenting out the joke, said, "Ay, Mr. Gay, all vot you 'ave -said is very faine and very true, but you 'ave forgot von theeng, my good -friend. Egad, I should have been a general of an army, for ven I vos in -Venice there vos a _girandole_, and all the Place of St. Mark vos in a -smoke of gunpowder, and I did like the smell, Mr. Gay--should have been a -great general, Mr. Gay."[487] - -His dream, too, was related by Pope to Spence as a good story of the -German's droll vanity. Kneller thought he had ascended by a very high hill -to heaven, and there found St. Peter at the gate, dealing with a vast -crowd of applicants. To one he said, "Of what sect was you?" "I was a -Papist." "Go you there." "What was you?" "A Protestant." "Go you there." -"And you?" "A Turk." "Go you there." In the meantime St. Luke had descried -the painter, and asking if he was not the famous Sir Godfrey Kneller, -entered into conversation with him about his beloved art, so that Sir -Godfrey quite forgot about St. Peter till he heard a voice behind him--St. -Peter's--call out, "Come in, Sir Godfrey, and take whatever place you -like."[488] - -Pope is said to have ridiculed his friend under the name of Helluo.[489] -He certainly laughed at his justice in dismissing a soldier who had stolen -a joint of meat, and blaming the butcher who had put it in the rogue's -way. Whenever he saw a constable, followed by a mob, coming up to his -house at Whitton, he would call out to him, "Mr. Constable, you see that -turning; go that way; you will find an ale-house, the sign of the King's -Head: go and make it up."[490] - -Jacob Tonson got pictures out of Kneller, covetous as he was, by praising -him extravagantly, and sending him haunches of fat venison and dozens of -cool claret. Sir Godfrey used to say to Vandergucht, "Oh, my goot man, -this old Jacob loves me. He is a very goot man, for you see he loves me, -he sends me goot things. The venison vos fat." Old Geckie, the surgeon, -however, got a picture or two even cheaper, for he sent no present, but -then his praises were as fat as Jacob's venison.[491] - -Sir Godfrey used to get very angry if any doubt was expressed as to the -legitimacy of the Pretender. "His father and mother have sat to me about -thirty-six times a-piece, and I know every line and bit of their faces. -Mine Gott, I could paint King James _now_ by memory. I say the child is so -like both, that there is not a feature in his face but what belongs to -either father or mother--nay, the nails of his fingers are his -mother's--the queen that was. Doctor, you may be out in your letters, but -I cannot be out in my lines."[492] - -Kneller had intended Hogarth's father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill, to -paint his staircase at Whitton, but hearing that Newton was sitting to -him, he was in dudgeon, declared that no portrait-painter should paint -his house, and employed "sprawling" Laguerre instead. - -Kneller's prices were fifteen guineas for a head, twenty if with only one -hand, thirty for a half, and sixty for a whole length. He painted much too -fast and flimsily, and far too much by the help of foreign assistants--in -fact, avowedly to fill his kitchen. In thirty years he made a large -fortune, in spite of losing £20,000 in the South Sea Bubble. His wigs, -drapery, and backgrounds were all painted for him. He is said to have left -at his death 500 unfinished portraits.[493] His favourite work, the -portrait of a Chinese converted and brought over by Couplet, a Jesuit, is -at Windsor. But Walpole preferred his Grinling Gibbons at Houghton. - -Kneller left his house in Great Queen Street to his wife, and after her -decease to his godson Godfrey Huckle, who took the name of Kneller. -Amongst the celebrated persons painted by Kneller in his best manner were -Bolingbroke, Wren, Lady Wortley Montague, Pope, Locke, Burnet, Addison, -Evelyn, and the Earl of Peterborough. The brittleness of this man's fame -is another proof that he who paints merely for his time must perish with -his time. - -Conway House was in Great Queen Street. Lord Conway, an able soldier, -brought up by Lord Vere, his uncle, was an epicure, who by his agreeable -conversation was very acceptable at the court of Charles I.[494] He had -the misfortune to be utterly routed by the Scotch at Newburn--a defeat -which gave them Newcastle. The previous Lord Conway was that Secretary of -State of whom James I. said, "Steenie has given me two proper servants--a -secretary (Conway) who can neither write nor read, and a groom of the -bedchamber (Mr. Clarke, a one-handed man) who cannot truss my -points."[495] It had been well for England if this sottish pedant had had -no worse servants than Conway and Clarke. Raleigh might then have been -spared, and Overbuy would not have been poisoned. - -Lord Conway, whose son, General Conway, was such an idol of Horace -Walpole, lived in the family house in Great Queen Street. - -Winchester House was not far off. Lord Pawlet figures in all the early -scenes of the Civil War. He was one of the first nobles to raise forces in -the West for the wrong-headed king. On one occasion Basing House was all -but lost by a plot hatched between Waller and the Marquis of Winchester's -brother, but it was detected in time to save that important place. Basing, -after three months' siege by a conjunction of Parliament troops from -Hampshire and Essex, was gallantly succoured by Colonel Gage. The -Marchioness, a lady of great honour and alliance, being sister to the Earl -of Essex and to the lady Marchioness of Hertford, enlisted all the Roman -Catholics in Oxford in this dashing adventure.[496] Basing was, however, -eventually stormed and taken by Cromwell, who put most of the garrison to -the sword. William, the fourth marquis, died 1628, and was succeeded by -his son, who was the father of Charles, created in 1689 Duke of Bolton, a -title that became extinct in 1794. - -John Greenhill, a Long Acre celebrity, was one of the most promising of -Lely's scholars. He painted portraits, among others, of Locke, -Shaftesbury, and Davenant. He also drew in crayons, and engraved. It is -said that Lely was jealous of him, and would not let his pupil see him -paint, till Greenhill's handsome wife was sent to Sir Peter to sit for her -portrait, which cost twelve broad pieces or £15. Greenhill, at first -industrious, became acquainted with the players, and fell into debauched -courses. Coming home drunk late one night from the Vine Tavern, he fell -into the kennel in Long Acre, and was carried to Perrey Walton's, the -royal picture-cleaner, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he had been lodging, -and died in his bed that night (1676), in the flower of his age. He was -buried at St. Giles's, and shameless Mrs. Aphra Behn, who admired his -person and his paintings, wrote a long elegy on his death. Sir Peter is -said to have settled £40 a year on Greenhill's widow and children, but she -died mad soon after her husband.[497] - -In June 1718 Ryan, an actor of Lincoln's Inn Theatre, was supping at the -Sun in Long Acre, and had placed his sword quietly in the window, when a -bully named Kelly came up and made passes at him, provoking him to a duel. -The young actor took his sword, drew it, and passed it through the -rascal's body. The act being one of obvious self-defence, he was not -called to serious account for it. This Ryan had acted with Betterton. -Addison especially selected him as Marcus in his "Cato," and Garrick -confessed he took Ryan's Richard as his model.[498] - -Some years after, Ryan, by this time the Orestes, Macduff, Iago, Cassio, -and Captain Plume of the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, in passing down -Great Queen Street, after playing Scipio in "Sophonisba," was fired at by -a footpad, and had his jaw shattered. "Friend," moaned the wounded man, -"you have killed me, but I forgive you." The actor, however, recovered to -resume his place upon the boards, and generous Quin gave him £1000 in -advance that he had put him down for in his will. He died in 1760. - -Hudson, a wretched portrait-painter, although the master of Sir Joshua -Reynolds, lived in a house now divided into two, Nos. 55 and 56. -Portrait-painting, being unable to sink lower than Hudson, turned and -began to rise again. When Reynolds in later years took a villa on Richmond -Hill, somewhat above that of Hudson, he said, "I never thought I should -live to look down on my old master." Hudson's house was afterwards -occupied by that insipid poet, Hoole, the translator of Tasso and of -Ariosto. - -The old West End entrance of this street, a narrow passage known as the -"Devil's Gap," was taken down in 1765. - -Martin Folkes, an eminent scholar and antiquarian, was born in Great Queen -Street in 1690. He was made vice-president of the Royal Society by Newton -in 1723, and in 1727, on Sir Isaac's death, disputed the presidentship -with Sir Hans Sloane,--a post which he eventually obtained in 1741, on the -resignation of Sir Hans. Folkes was a great numismatist, and seems to -have been a generous, pleasant man. He died in 1784. The sale of his -library, prints, and coins lasted fifty-six days. He was, as Leigh Hunt -remarks, one of "the earliest persons among the gentry to marry an -actress,"[499] setting by that means an excellent example. His wife's name -was Lucretia Bradshaw. - -Miss Pope, of Queen Street, had a face grave and unpromising, but her -humour was dry and racy as old sherry. Churchill, in the "Rosciad," -mentions her as vivaciously advancing in a jig to perform as Cherry and -Polly Honeycomb. Later she grew into an excellent Mrs. Malaprop.[500] - -This good woman, well-bred lady, and finished actress, lived for forty -years in Queen Street, two doors east of Freemasons' Tavern; there, the -Miss Prue, and Cherry, and Jacinta, and Miss Biddy of years before, the -friend of Garrick and the praised of Churchill, sat, surrounded by -portraits of Lord Nuneham, General Churchill, Garrick, and Holland, and -told the story of her first love to Horace Smith. - -An attachment had sprung up between her and Holland, but Garrick had -warned her of the man's waywardness and instability. Miss Pope would not -believe the accusations till one day, on her way to see Mrs. Clive at -Twickenham, she beheld the unfaithful Holland in a boat with Mrs. -Baddeley, near the Eel-pie Island. She accused him at the next rehearsal, -he would confess no wrong, and she never spoke to him again but on the -stage. "But I have reason to know," said the old lady, shedding tears as -she looked up at her cruel lover's portrait, "that he never was really -happy." - -Miss Pope left Queen Street at last, finding the Freemasons too noisy -neighbours, especially after dinner. "Miss Pope," says Hazlitt, "was the -very picture of a duenna or an antiquated dowager in the latter spring of -beauty--the second childhood of vanity; more quaint, fantastic, and -old-fashioned, more pert, frothy, and light-headed than can be -imagined."[501] - -It was not very easy to please poor soured Hazlitt, whose opinion of women -had not been improved by his having been jilted by a servant girl. This -good woman, Miss Pope, died at Hadley in 1801, her latter life having been -embittered by the loss of her brother and favourite niece. - -The Freemasons' Hall, built by T. Sandby, architect, was opened in 1776, -by Lord Petre, a Roman Catholic nobleman, with the usual mysterious -ceremonials of the order. The annual assemblies of the lodges had -previously been held in the halls of the City's companies. The tavern was -built in 1786, by William Tyler, and has since been enlarged. In the -tavern public meetings and dinners take place, chiefly in May and June. -Here a farewell banquet was given to John Philip Kemble, and a public -dinner on his birthday, to James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. All the -waiters in this tavern are Masons. The house has been lately enlarged. Its -new great Hall was inaugurated by the dinner given to Charles Dickens by -his friends on his departure for America in November 1857. - -Isaac Sparkes, a famous Irish comedian about 1774, was an old, fat, -unwieldy man, with a vast double chin, and large, bushy, prominent -eyebrows. When in London, he established in Long Acre a Club, which was -frequented by Lord Townshend, Lord Effingham, Lord Lindore, Captain -Mulcaster, Mr. Crewe of Cheshire, and "other nobles and fashionables." -Sparkes, who dressed well and had a commanding presence, probably presided -over it, as he did at Dublin clubs, dressed in robes as Lord Chief Justice -Joker.[502] - -In one of the grand old houses in Great Queen Street, on the right hand as -one goes towards Lincoln's Inn Fields, occupied before 1830 by Messrs. -Allman the booksellers, died Lewis the comedian, famous to the last, as -Leigh Hunt tells us, for his invincible airiness and juvenility. "Mr. -Lewis," says the same veteran play-goer, "displayed a combination rarely -to be found in acting--that of the fop and the real gentleman. With a -voice, a manner, and a person all equally graceful and light, with -features at once whimsical and genteel, he played on the top of his -profession like a plume. He was the Mercutio of the age, in every sense of -the word mercurial. His airy, breathless voice, thrown to the audience -before he appeared, was the signal of his winged animal spirits; and when -he gave a glance of his eye or touched with his finger another man's ribs, -it was the very _punctum saliens_ of playfulness and innuendo. We saw him -take leave of the public, a man of sixty-five, looking not more than half -the age, in the character of the Copper Captain; and heard him say, in a -voice broken with emotion, that for the space of thirty years he had not -once incurred their displeasure."[503] - -Benjamin Franklin, when first in England, worked at the printing-office of -Mr. Watts, in Little Wild Street, after being employed for twelve months -at one Palmer's, in Bartholomew Close. He lodged close by in Duke Street, -opposite the Roman Catholic Chapel, with a widow, to whom he paid -three-and-sixpence weekly. His landlady was a clergyman's daughter, who -had married a Catholic, and abjured Protestantism. She and Franklin were -much together, as he kept good hours and she was lame and almost confined -to her room. Their frugal supper often consisted of nothing but half an -anchovy, a small slice of bread and butter each, and half a pint of ale -between them. On Franklin proposing to leave for cheaper lodgings, she -consented to let him retain his room at two shillings a week. In the attic -of the house lived a voluntary nun. She was a lady who early in life had -been sent to the Continent for her health, but unable to bear the climate, -had returned home to live in seclusion on £12 a year, devoting the rest of -her income to charity, and subsisting, healthy and cheerful, on nothing -but water-gruel. Her presence was thought a blessing to the house, and -several tenants in succession had charged her no rent. She permitted the -occasional visits of Franklin and his landlady; and the brave American -lad, while he pitied her superstition, felt confirmed in his frugality by -her example. - -During his first weeks with Mr. Watts, Franklin worked as a pressman, -drinking only water while his companions had their five pints of porter -daily. The "Water American," as he was called, was, however, stronger than -his colleagues, and tried to persuade some of them that strong beer was -not necessary for strong work. His argument was that bread contained more -materials of strength than beer, and that it was only corn in the beer -that produced the strength in the liquid. - -Born to be a reformer, Franklin persuaded the _chapel_ to alter some of -their laws; he resisted impositions, and conciliated the respect of his -fellows. He worked as a pressman, as he had done in America, for the sake -of the exercise. He used, he tells us, to carry up and down stairs with -one hand a large _form_ of type, while the other fifty men required both -hands to do the same work. - -Franklin's fellow pressman drank every day a pint of beer before -breakfast, a pint with bread and cheese for breakfast, a pint between -breakfast and dinner, one at dinner, one again at six in the afternoon, -and another after his day's work; and all this he declared to be necessary -to give him strength for the press. "This custom," said the King of Common -Sense, "seemed to me abominable." Franklin, however, failed to make a -convert of this man, and he went on paying his four or five shillings a -week for the "cursed beverage," destined probably, poor devil, to remain -all his life in a state of voluntary wretchedness, serfdom, and poverty. - -A few of the men consented to follow Franklin's example, and renouncing -beer and cheese, to take for breakfast a basin of warm gruel, with butter, -toast, and nutmeg. This did not cost more than a pint of beer--"namely, -three halfpence"--and at the same time was more nourishing and kept the -head clearer. Those who gorged themselves with beer would sometimes run up -a score and come to the Water American for credit, "their light being -out." Franklin attended at the great stone table every Saturday evening to -take up the little debts, which sometimes amounted to thirty shillings a -week. "This circumstance," says Franklin in his autobiography, "added to -the reputation of my being a tolerable _gabber_--or, in other words, -skilful in the art of burlesque--kept up my importance in the 'chapel.' I -had, besides, recommended myself to the esteem of my master by my -assiduous application to business, never observing 'Saint' Monday. My -extraordinary quickness in composing always procured me such work as was -most urgent, and which is commonly best paid; and thus my time passed away -in a very pleasant manner."[504] - -Franklin, like a truly great man, was quietly proud of the humble origin -from which he had risen; and when he came to England as the agent and -ambassador of Massachusetts, he paid a visit to his work-room in Wild -Street, and going to his old friend the press, said to the two workmen -busy at it, "Come, my friends, we will drink together; it is now forty -years since I worked like you at this very press as a journeyman printer." - -Wild House stood on the site of Little Wild Street. The Duchess of Ormond -was living there in 1655.[505] - -On the day when King James II. escaped from London the mob grew unruly, -and assembled in great force to pull down houses where either mass was -said or priests lodged. Don Pietro Ronguillo, the Spanish ambassador, who -lived at Wild House, and whom Evelyn mentions as having received him with -"extraordinary civility" (March 26, 1681), had not thought it necessary to -ask for soldiers, though the rich Roman Catholics had sent him their money -and plate as to a sanctuary, and the plate of the Chapel Royal was also in -his care. But the house was sacked without mercy; his noble library -perished in the flames; the chapel was demolished; the pictures, rich -beds, and furniture were destroyed,--the poor Spaniard making his escape -by a back door.[506] His only comfort was that the sacred Host in his -chapel was rescued.[507] - -In 1780 another savage and thievish Protestant mob, under Lord George -Gordon, assembled in St. George's Fields to petition Parliament against -the Test Act, which relieved Roman Catholics from many vexatious penalties -and unjust disabilities on condition of their taking their oaths of -allegiance and disbelief in the infamous doctrines of the Jesuits. The mob -assembled on the 2d of June, and jostled and insulted the Peers going to -the House of Lords. The same evening the people demolished the greater -part of the Roman Catholic Chapel in Duke Street. On Monday they stripped -the house and shop of Mr. Maberly, of Little Queen Street, who had been a -witness at the trial of some rioters. On Tuesday they passed through Long -Acre and burnt Newgate, releasing three hundred prisoners, and the same -day destroyed the house of Justice Cox in Great Queen Street.[508] In -these street riots seventy-two private houses and four public gaols were -burnt, and more than four hundred rioters perished. - -At the above-named chapel Nollekens, the eminent sculptor, was baptized in -1737. The present chapel is much resorted to on Sundays by the Irish poor -and foreigners, who live about Drury Lane. - -Nicholas Stone, the great monumental sculptor, lived in Long Acre. In 1619 -Inigo Jones began the new Banqueting House at Whitehall, and replaced the -one destroyed by fire six months before. This master mason was Nicholas -Stone,[509] the sculptor of the fine monument to Sir Francis Vere in -Westminster Abbey. His pay was 4s. 10d. a day. Stone also designed Dr. -Donne's splendid monument in St. Paul's. Roubilliac was a great admirer of -the kneeling knight at the north-west corner of Vere's tomb. He used to -stand and watch it, and say, "Hush! hush! he vill speak presently." Mr. J. -T. Smith seems to think that the Shakspere monument at Stratford is in -this sculptor's manner.[510] Inigo Jones, who had been fined for having -borne arms at the siege of Basing House, joined with Nicholas Stone in -burying their money near Inigo's house in Scotland Yard; but as the -Parliament encouraged servants to betray such hidden treasures, the -partners removed their money and hid it again with their own hands in -Lambeth Marsh. - -Oliver Cromwell, when member for Cambridge, lived from 1637 to 1643, on -the south side of Long Acre, two doors from Nicholas Stone the sculptor. - -John Taylor, the "Water-Poet" an eccentric poetaster, kept a public-house -in Phoenix Alley, now Hanover Court, near Long Acre. He was a Thames -waterman, who had fought at the taking of Cadiz, and afterwards travelled -to Germany and Scotland as a servant to Sir William Waade. He was then -made collector of the wine-dues for the lieutenant of the Tower, and wrote -a life of Old Parr, and sixty-three volumes of satire and jingling -doggerel, not altogether without vivacity and vigour. He called himself -"the King's Water Poet" and "the Queen's Waterman;" and in 1623 wrote a -tract called "The World runs on Wheels"--a violent attack on the use of -coaches. "I dare truly affirm," says the writer, "that every day in any -term (especially if the court be at Whitehall) they do rob us of our -livings and carry five hundred and sixty fares daily from us." In this -quaint pamphlet Taylor gives a humorous account of his once riding in his -master's coach from Whitehall to the Tower. "Before I had been drawn -twenty yards," he says, "such a timpany of pride puft me up that I was -ready to burst with the wind-cholic of vaine glory." He complains -particularly of the streets and lanes being blocked with carriages, -especially Blackfriars and Fleet Street or the Strand after a masque or -play at court; the noise deafening every one and souring the beer, to the -injury of the public health. It is Taylor who mentions that William -Boonen, a Dutchman, first introduced coaches into England in 1564, and -became Queen Elizabeth's coachman. "It is," he says, "a doubtful question -whether the devil brought tobacco into England in a coach, or brought a -coach in a fog or mist of tobacco." Nor did Taylor rest there, for he -presented a petition to James I., which was submitted to Sir Francis -Bacon and other commissioners, to compel all play-houses to stand on the -Bankside, so as to give more work to watermen. In the Civil War, Taylor -went to Oxford and wrote ballads for the king. On his return to London, he -settled in Long Acre with a mourning crown for a sign;[511] but the -Puritans resenting this emblem, he had his own portrait painted instead -with this motto-- - - "There's many a head stands for a sign: - Then, gentle reader, why not mine?" - -Taylor was born in 1580, and died in 1654; and the following epitaph was -written on the vain, honest fellow, who was buried at St. -Martin's-in-the-Fields:-- - - "Here lies the Water-poet, honest John, - Who rowed on the streams of Helicon; - Where having many rocks and dangers past, - He at the haven of Heaven arrived at last."[512] - -From 1682 to 1686 John Dryden lived in Long Acre, on the north side, in a -house facing what formerly was Rose Street. His name appears in the -rate-books as "John Dryden, Esq."--an unusual distinction--and the sum he -paid to the poor varied from 18s. to £1.[513] It was here he resided when -he was beaten, one December evening in 1679, by three ruffians hired by -the Earl of Rochester and the Duchess of Portsmouth. Sir Walter Scott -makes the poet live at the time in Gerard Street; but no part of Gerard -Street was built in 1679. Rochester had the year before ridiculed Dryden -as "Poet Squab," and believed that Dryden had helped Mulgrave in -ridiculing him in his clumsy "Essay on Satire." The best lines of this -dull poem are these:-- - - "Of fighting sparks Fame may her pleasure say, - But 'tis a bolder thing to run away. - The world may well forgive him all his ill, - For every fault does prove his penance still; - Falsely he falls into some dangerous noose, - And then as meanly labours to get loose." - -A letter from Rochester to a friend, dated November 21, in the above year, -is still extant, in which he names Dryden as the author of the satire, and -concludes with the following threat:--"If he (Dryden) falls on me at the -blunt, which is his very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him, if you -please, and _leave the repartee to Black Will with a cudgel_."[514] - -Dryden offered a reward of fifty pounds for the discovery of the men who -cudgelled him, depositing the money in the hands of "Mr. Blanchard, -goldsmith, next door to Temple Bar," but all in vain. The Rose Alley -satire, the Rose Alley ambuscade, and the Dryden salutation, became -established jokes with Dryden's countless enemies. Even Mulgrave himself, -in his _Art of Poetry_ said of Dryden coldly-- - - "Though praised and punished for another's rhymes, - His own deserve as great applause sometimes." - -And, in a conceited note, the amateur poet described the libel as one for -which Dryden had been unjustly "_applauded and wounded_." But these lines -and this note Mulgrave afterwards suppressed. - -Poor Otway, whom Rochester had satirised, and who had accused Dryden of -saying of his _Don Carlos_ that, "Egad, there was not a line in it he -would be author of," stood up bravely for Dryden as an honest satirist in -these vigorous verses:-- - - "Poets in honour of the truth should write, - With the same spirit brave men for it fight. - - * * * * * - - From any private cause where malice reigns, - Or general pique all blockheads have to brains." - -Dryden never took any poetical revenge on Rochester, and in the prefatory -essay to his _Juvenal_ he takes credit for that forbearance.[515] - -Edward (more generally known as Ned) Ward was the landlord of -public-houses alternately in Moorfields, Clerkenwell, Fulwood's Rents, and -Long Acre. He was born in 1667, and died 1731. He was a High Tory, and -fond of the society of poets and authors.[516] Attacked in the _Dunciad_, -he turned _Don Quixote_ into Hudibrastic verse, and wrote endless songs, -lampoons, coarse clever satires, and _Dialogues on Matrimony_ (1710). - -The father of Pepys's long-suffering wife lived in Long Acre; and the -bustling official describes, with a stultifying exactitude, his horror at -a visit which he found himself forced to pay to a house surrounded by -taverns. - -Dr. Arbuthnot, in a letter to Mr. Watkins, gives Bessy Cox--a woman in -Long Acre whom Prior would have married when her husband died--a -detestable character. The infatuated poet left his estate between his old -servant Jonathan Drift, and this woman, who boasted that she was the -poet's Emma,--another virago, Flanders Jane, being his Chloe.[517] - -It is said of this careless, pleasant poet, that after spending an -intellectual evening with Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, in order -to unbend, he would smoke a pipe and drink a bottle of ale with a common -soldier and his wife in Long Acre. Cibber calls the man a butcher;[518] -other writers make him a cobbler or a tavern-keeper, which is more likely. -The shameless husband is said to have been proud of the poet's preference -for his wife. Pope, who was remorseless at the failings of friends, calls -the woman a wretch, and said to Spence, "Prior was not a right good man; -he used to bury himself for whole days and nights together with this poor -mean creature, and often drank hard." This person, who perhaps is -misrepresented--and where there is a doubt the prisoner at the bar should -always have the benefit of it--was the Venus of the poet's verse. To her -Prior wrote, after Walpole tried to impeach him:-- - - "From public noise and faction's strife, - From all the busy ills of life, - Take me, my Chloe, to thy breast, - And lull my wearied soul to rest. - - "For ever in this humble cell [ale-house] - Let thee and I [me], my fair one, dwell; - None enter else but Love, and he - Shall bar the door and keep the key." - -Prior was the son of a joiner,[519] and was brought up, as before -mentioned, by his uncle, a tavern-keeper at Charing Cross, where the -clever waiter's knowledge of Horace led to his being sent to college by -the Earl of Dorset. Abandoning literature, he finally became our -ambassador to France. He died in retirement in 1721. - -It was in a poor shoemaker's small window in Long Acre,--half of it -devoted to boots, half to pictures--that poor starving Wilson's fine -classical landscapes were exposed, often vainly, for sale. Here, from his -miserable garret in Tottenham Court Road, the great painter, peevish and -soured by neglect, would come swearing at his rivals Barret and Smith of -Chichester. I can imagine him, with his tall, burly figure, his red face, -and his enormous nose, striding out of the shop, thirsting for porter, and -muttering that, if the pictures of Wright of Derby had fire, his had air. -Yet this great painter, whose works are so majestic and glowing, so fresh, -airy, broad, and harmonious, was all but starved. The king refused to -purchase his "Kew Gardens," and the very pawnbrokers grew weary of taking -his Tivolis and Niobes as pledges, far preferring violins, flat-irons, or -telescopes. - -It was in Long Acre that that delightful idyllic painter, Stothard, was -born in 1755. His father, a Yorkshireman, kept an inn in the street.[520] -Sent for his health into Yorkshire, and placed with an old lady who had -some choice engravings, he began to draw. The first subject that he ever -painted was executed with an oyster-shell full of black paint, borrowed -from the village plumber and glazier. This little man was the father of -many a Watteau lover and tripping Boccaccio nymph. That genial and -graceful artist, who illustrated Chaucer, _Robinson Crusoe_, and _The -Pilgrim's Progress_, had the road to fame pointed out to him first by -that little black man. - -On the accession of King George I. the Tories had such sway over the -London mobs, that the friends of the Protestant succession resolved to -found cheap tavern clubs in various parts of the City in order that -well-affected tradesmen might meet to keep up their spirit of loyalty, and -serve as focus-points of resistance in case of Tory tumults. - -Defoe, a staunch Whig, describes one of these assemblies in Long Acre, -which probably suggested the rest. At the Mughouse Club in Long Acre, -about a hundred gentlemen, lawyers, and tradesmen met in a large room, at -seven o'clock on Wednesday and Saturday evenings in the winter, and broke -up soon after ten. A grave old gentleman, "in his own grey hairs,"[521] -and within a few months of ninety, was the president, and sat in an -"armed" chair, raised some steps above the rest of the company, to keep -the room in order. A harp was played all the time at the lower end of the -room, and every now and then one of the company rose and entertained the -rest with a song. Nothing was drunk but ale, and every one chalked his -score on the table beside him. What with the songs and drinking healths -from one table to another, there was no room for politics or anything that -could sour conversation. The members of these clubs retired when they -pleased, as from a coffee-house. - -Old Sir Hans Sloane's coach, made by John Aubrey, Queen Anne's coachmaker, -in Long Acre, and given to him by her for curing her of a fit of the gout, -was given by Sir Hans to his old butler, who set up the White Horse Inn -behind Chelsea Church, where it remained for half a century.[522] - -Charles Catton, one of the early Academicians, was originally a coach and -sign painter. He painted a lion as a sign for his friend, a celebrated -coachmaker, at that time living in Long Acre.[523] A sign painted by -Clarkson, that hung at the north-east corner of Little Russell Street -about 1780, was said to have cost £500, and crowds used to collect to -look at it. - -Lord William Russell was led from Holborn into Little Queen Street on his -way to the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. As the coach turned into this -street, Lord Russell said to Tillotson, "I have often turned to the other -hand with great comfort, but I now turn to this with greater." He referred -to Southampton House, on the opposite side of Holborn, which he inherited -through his brave and good wife, the grand-daughter of Shakspere's early -patron. - -In the year 1796 Charles Lamb resided with his father, mother, aunt, and -sister in lodgings at No. 7 Little Queen Street, a house, I believe, -removed to make way for the church. Southey describes a call which he made -on them there in 1794-5. The father had once published a small quarto -volume of poetry, of which "The Sparrow's Wedding" was his favourite, and -Charles used to delight him by reading this to him when he was in his -dotage. In 1797 Lamb published his first verses. His father, the -ex-servant and companion of an old Bencher in the Temple, was sinking into -the grave; his mother had lost the use of her limbs, and his sister was -employed by day in needlework, and by night in watching her mother. Lamb, -just twenty-one years old, was a clerk in the India House. On the 22d of -September[524] Miss Lamb, who had been deranged some years before by -nervous fatigue, seized a case-knife while dinner was preparing, chased a -little girl, her apprentice, round the room, and on her mother calling to -her to forbear, stabbed her to the heart. Lamb arrived only in time to -snatch the knife from his sister's hand. He had that morning been to -consult a doctor, but had not found him at home. The verdict at the -inquest was "Insanity," and Mary Lamb was sent to a mad-house, where she -soon recovered her reason. Poor Lamb's father and aunt did not long -survive. Not long after, Lamb himself was for six weeks confined in an -asylum. There is extant a terrible letter in which he describes rushing -from a party of friends who were supping with him soon after the horrible -catastrophe, and in an agony of regret falling on his knees by his -mother's coffin, asking forgiveness of Heaven for forgetting her so -soon.[525] - -There is no doubt that poor Lamb played the sot over his nightly grog; but -he had a noble soul, and let us be lenient with such a man-- - - "Be to his faults a little blind, - And to his virtues very kind." - -He abandoned her whom he loved, together with all meaner ambitions, and -drudged his years away as a poor, ignoble clerk, in order to maintain his -half-crazed sister; for this purpose--true knight that he was, though he -never drew sword--he gave all that he had--HIS LIFE! Peace, then! peace be -to his ashes! - -[Illustration: LYON'S INN, 1804.] - - - - -[Illustration: CRAVEN HOUSE, 1790] - - -CHAPTER XII. - -DRURY LANE. - - -The Roll of Battle Abbey tells us that the founder of the Drury family -came into England with that brave Norman robber, the Conqueror, and -settled in Suffolk.[526] - -From this house branched off the Druries of Hawstead, in the same county, -who built Drury House in the time of Elizabeth. It stood a little behind -the site of the present Olympic Theatre. Of another branch of the same -family was that Sir Drue Drury, who, together with Sir Amias Powlett, had -at one time the custody of Mary, Queen of Scots. - -Drury Lane takes its name from a house probably built by Sir William -Drury, a Knight of the Garter, and a most able commander in the desultory -Irish wars during the reign of Elizabeth, who fell in a duel with John -Burroughs, fought to settle a foolish quarrel about some punctilio of -precedency.[527] In this house, in 1600, the imprudent friends of rash -Essex resolved on the fatal outbreak that ended so lamentably at Ludgate. -The Earl of Southampton then resided there.[528] The plots of Blount, -Davis, Davers, etc., were communicated to Essex by letter. It was noticed -that at his trial the earl betrayed agitation at the mention of Drury -House, though he had carefully destroyed all suspicious papers. - -Sir William's son Robert was a patron of Dr. Donne, the religious poet and -satirist, who in 1611 had apartments assigned to him and his wife in Drury -House. Donne, though the son of a man of some fortune, was foolish enough -to squander his money when young, and in advanced life was so wanting in -self-respect as to live about in other men's houses, paying for his food -and lodging by his wit and conversation. He lived first with Lord -Chancellor Egerton, Bacon's predecessor, afterwards at Drury House and -with Sir Francis Wooley at Pitford, in Surrey. After his clandestine -marriage with Lady Ellesmere's niece, Donne's life was for some time a -hard and troublesome one. - -"Sir Robert Drury," says Isaac Walton, "a gentleman of a very noble estate -and a more liberal mind, assigned Donne and his wife a useful apartment in -his own large house in Drury Lane, and rent free; he was also a cherisher -of his studies, and such a friend as sympathised with him and his in all -their joys and sorrows."[529] - -Sir Robert, wishing to attend Lord Hay as King James's ambassador at his -audiences in Paris with Henry IV., begged Donne to accompany him. But the -poet refused, his wife being at the time near her confinement and in poor -health, and saying that "her divining soul boded some ill in his absence." -But Sir Robert growing more urgent, and Donne unwilling to refuse his -generous friend a request, at last obtained from his wife a faint consent -for a two months' absence. On the twelfth day the party reached Paris. Two -days afterwards Donne was left alone in the room where Sir Robert and -other friends had dined. Half an hour afterwards Sir Robert returned, and -found Mr. Donne still alone, "but in such an ecstasy, and so altered in -his looks," as amazed him. After a long and perplexed pause, Donne said, -"I have had a dreadful vision since I saw you; I have seen my dear wife -pass by me twice in this room with her hair hanging about her shoulders -and a dead child in her arms;" to which Sir Robert replied, "Sure, sir, -you have slept since I saw you, and this is the result of some melancholy -dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake." Donne assured -his friend that he had not been asleep, and that on the second appearance -his wife stopped, looked him in the face, and then vanished. - -The next day, however, neither rest nor sleep had altered Mr. Donne's -opinion, and he repeated the story with only a more deliberate and -confirmed confidence. All this inclining Sir Robert to some faint belief, -he instantly sent off a servant to Drury House to bring him word in what -condition Mrs. Donne was. The messenger returned in due time, saying that -he had found Mrs. Donne very sad and sick in bed, and that after a long -and dangerous labour she had been delivered of a dead child; and upon -examination, the delivery proved to have been at the very day and hour in -which Donne had seen the vision. Walton is proud of this late miracle, so -easily explainable by natural causes; and illustrates the sympathy of -souls by the story of two lutes, one of which, if both are tuned to the -same pitch, will, though untouched, echo the other when it is played. - -Far be it from me to wish to ridicule any man's belief in the -supernatural; but still, as a lover of truth, wishing to believe what -_is_, whether natural or supernatural, without confusing the former with -the latter, let me analyse this pictured presentiment. An imaginative man, -against his sick wife's wish, undertakes a perilous journey. Absent from -her--alone--after wine and friendly revel feeling still more lonely--in -the twilight he thinks of home and the wife he loves so much. Dreaming, -though awake, his fears resolve themselves into a vision, seen by the -mind, and to the eye apparently vivid as reality. The day and hour happen -to correspond, or he persuades himself afterwards that they do correspond -with the result, and the day-dream is henceforward ranked among -supernatural visions. Who is there candid enough to write down the -presentiments that do not come true? And after all, the vision, to be -consistent, should have been followed by the death of Mrs. Donne as well -as the child. - -Some verses are pointed out by Isaac Walton as those written by Donne on -parting from her for this journey. But there is internal evidence in them -to the contrary; for they refer to Italy, not to Paris, and to a lady who -would accompany him as a page, which a lady in Mrs. Donne's condition -could scarcely have done. I have myself no doubt that the verses cited -were written to his wife long before, when their marriage was as yet -concealed. With what a fine vigour the poem commences!-- - - "By our first strange and fatal interview, - By all desires which thereof did ensue, - By our long-striving hopes, by that remorse - Which my words' masculine persuasive force - Begot in thee, and by the memory - Of hurts which spies and rivals threaten me!" - - * * * * * - -And how full of true feeling and passionate tenderness is the dramatic -close!-- - - "When I am gone dream me some happiness, - Nor let thy looks our long-hid love confess; - Nor praise nor dispraise me; nor bless nor curse - Openly love's force; nor in bed fright thy nurse - With midnight startings, crying out, 'Oh! oh! - Nurse! oh, my love is slain! I saw him go - O'er the white Alps alone; I saw him, I, - Assailed, taken, fight, stabbed, bleed, and die.'" - -The verses really written on Donne's leaving for Paris begin with four -exquisite lines-- - - "As virtuous men pass mild away, - And whisper to their souls to go, - Whilst some of their sad friends do say, - 'The breath goes now,' and some say 'No!'" - -A later verse contains a strange conceit, beaten out into pin-wire a page -long by a modern poet--[530] - - "If we be two, we are two so - As stiff twin compasses are two; - Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show - To move, but does if t'other do." - -Donne was the chief of what Dr. Johnson unwisely called "the metaphysical -school of poetry." Dryden accuses Donne of perplexing the fair sex with -nice speculations.[531] His poems, often pious and beautiful, are -sometimes distorted with strange conceits. He has a poem on a flea; and in -his lines on Good Friday he thus whimsically expresses himself:-- - - "Who sees God's face--that is, self-life--must die: - What a death were it then to see God die! - It made his own lieutenant, Nature, shrink; - It made his footstool crack and the sun wink. - Could I behold those hands, which span the Poles, - And tune all sphears at once, pierced with those holes!"[532] - -This imitator of the worst faults of Marini was made Dean of St. Paul's by -King James I., who delighted to converse with him. The king used to say, -"I always rejoice when I think that by my means Donne became a divine." He -gave the poet the deanery one day as he sat at dinner, saying "that he -would carve to him of a dish he loved well, and that he might take the -dish (the deanery) home to his study and say grace there to himself, and -much good might it do him." - -Shortly before his death Donne dressed himself in his shroud, and standing -there, with his eyes shut and the sheet opened, "To discover his thin, -pale, and death-like face," he caused a curious painter to take his -picture. This picture he kept near his bed as a ghostly remembrance, and -from this Nicholas Stone, the sculptor, carved his effigy, which still -exists in St. Paul's, having survived the Great Fire, though the rest of -his tomb and monument has perished. - -Drury House took the name of Craven House when rebuilt by Lord Craven. -There is a tradition in Yorkshire, where the deanery of Craven is -situated, that this chivalrous nobleman's father was sent up to London by -the carrier, and there became a mercer or draper. His son was not unworthy -of the staunch old Yorkshire stock. He fought under Gustavus Adolphus -against Wallenstein and Tilly, and afterwards attached himself to the -service of the unfortunate King and Queen of Bohemia, and won wealth and a -title for his family, which the Wars of the Roses had first reduced to -indigence. - -The Queen of Bohemia had been married in 1613 to Frederic, Count Palatine -of the Rhine, only a few months after the death of Prince Henry her -brother. The young King of Spain had been her suitor, and the Pope had -opposed her match with a Protestant. She was married on St. Valentine's -Day; and Donne, from his study in Drury Lane, celebrated the occasion by a -most extravagant epithalamion in which is to be found this outrageous -line-- - - "Here lies a She sun, and a He moon there." - -The poem opens prettily enough with these lines-- - - "Hail, Bishop Valentine, whose day this is! - All the air is thy diocese; - And all the chirping choristers - And other birds are thy parishioners. - Thou marry'st every year - The lyrique lark and the grave whispering dove." - -At seventeen Sir William Craven had entered the service of the Prince of -Orange. On the accession of Charles I. he was ennobled. At the storming of -Creuzenach he was the first of the English Cavaliers to mount the breach -and plant the flag. It was then that Gustavus said smilingly to him, "I -perceive, sir, you are willing to give a younger brother a chance of -coming to your title and estate." At Donauwert the young Englishman again -distinguished himself. In the same month that Gustavus fell at Lutzen, the -Elector Palatine died at Mentz. While Grotius interceded for the Queen of -Bohemia, Lord Craven fought for her in the vineyards of the -Palatinate.[533] In consequence, perhaps, of Richelieu's intrigues, four -years elapsed before Charles I. took compassion on the children of his -widowed sister, whose cause the Puritans had loudly advocated. When -Charles and Rupert did go to England, they went under the care of the -trusty Lord Craven, who was to try to recover the arrears of the widow's -pension. On their return to Germany, to campaign in Westphalia, Rupert and -Lord Craven were taken prisoners and thrown into the castle at Vienna--a -confinement that lasted three years, a long time for brave young soldiers -who, like the Douglas, "preferred the lark's song to the mouse's squeak." - -Later in the Civil War we find this same generous nobleman giving £50,000 -to King Charles, at a time when he was a beggar and a fugitive. Cromwell, -enraged at the aid thus ministered to an enemy, accused the Cavalier of -enlisting volunteers for the Stuart, and instantly, with stern -promptitude, sequestered all his English estates except Combe Abbey. In -the meantime Lord Craven served the State and his queen bravely, and -waited for better times. It was this faithful servant who consoled the -royal widow for her son's ill-treatment, the slander heaped upon her -daughter, and the incessant vexations of importunate creditors. - -The Restoration brought no good news for the unfortunate queen. Charles, -afraid of her claims for a pension, delayed her return to England, till -the Earl of Craven generously offered her a house next his own in Drury -Lane. She found there a pleasant and commodious mansion, surrounded by a -delightful garden.[534] It does not appear that she went publicly to -court, or joined in the royal revelries; but she visited the theatres with -her nephew Charles and her good old friend and host, and she was reunited -to her son Rupert. - -In the autumn of 1661, the year after the Restoration, she removed to -Leicester House, then the property of Sir Robert Sydney, Earl of -Leicester, and in the next February she died.[535] Evelyn mentions a -violent tempestuous wind that followed her death, as a sign from Heaven to -show that the troubles and calamities of this princess and of the royal -family in general had now all blown over, and were, like the ex-queen, to -rest in repose. - -She left all her books, pictures, and papers to her incomparable old -friend and benefactor. The Earl of Leicester wrote to the Earl of -Northumberland a cold and flippant letter to announce the departure of -"his royal tenant;" and adds, "It seems the Fates did not think it fit I -should have the honour, which indeed I never much desired, to be the -landlord of a queen." Charles, who had grudged the dethroned queen even -her subsistence, gave her a royal funeral in Westminster Abbey. - -At the very time when she died Lord Craven was building a miniature -Heidelberg for her at Hampstead Marshall, in Berkshire, under the advice -of that eminent architect and charlatan, Sir Balthasar Gerbier. But the -palace was ill-fated, like the poor queen, for it was consumed by an -accidental fire before it could be tenanted. The arrival of the Portuguese -Infanta, a princess scarcely less unfortunate than the queen just dead, -soon erased all recollections of King James's ill-starred daughter. - -The biographers of the Queen of Bohemia do not claim for her beauty, wit, -learning, or accomplishments; but she seems to have been an affectionate, -romantic girl, full of vivacity and ambition, who was ripened by sorrow -and disappointment into an amiable and high-souled woman. - -It was always supposed that the Queen of Bohemia was secretly married to -Lord Craven, as Bassompierre was to a princess of Lorraine. A base and -abandoned court could not otherwise account for a friendship so -unchangeable and so unselfish. There is also a story that when Craven -House was pulled down, a subterranean passage was discovered joining the -eastern and western sides. Similar passages have been found joining -convents to monasteries; but, unfortunately for the scandalmongers, they -are generally proved to have been either sewers or conduits. The "Queen of -Hearts," as she was called--the princess to whose cause the chivalrous -Christian of Brunswick, the knight with the silver arm, had solemnly -devoted his life and fortunes--the "royal mistress" to whom shifty Sir -Henry Wotton had written those beautiful lines-- - - "You meaner beauties of the night, - That poorly entertain our eyes - More by your number than your light, - What are ye when the moon doth rise?" - -was at "last gone to dust." Her faithful servant, the old soldier of -Gustavus, survived her thirty-five years, and lived to follow to the grave -his foster-child in arms, Prince Rupert, whose daughter Ruperta was left -to his trusty guardianship. - -In 1670, on the death of the stolid and drunken Duke of Albemarle, Charles -II. constituted Lord Craven colonel of the Coldstreams. Energetic, -simple-hearted, benevolent, this good servant of a bad race became a -member of the Royal Society, lived in familiar intimacy with Evelyn and -Ray, improved his property, and employed himself in gardening. - -Although he had many estates, Lord Craven always showed the most -predilection for Combe Abbey, the residence of the Queen of Bohemia in her -youth. To judge by the numerous dedications to which his name is prefixed, -he would appear to have been a munificent patron of letters, especially -of those authors who had been favourites of Elizabeth of Bohemia.[536] - -On the accession of James, Lord Craven, true as ever, was sworn of the -Privy Council; but soon after, on some mean suspicion of the king, was -threatened with the loss of his regiment. "If they take away my regiment," -said the staunch old soldier, "they had as good take away my life, since I -have nothing else to divert myself with." In the hurry of the Popish -catastrophe it was not taken away. But King William proved Craven's -loyalty to the Stuarts by giving his regiment to General Talmash. - -The unemployed officer now expended his activity in attending riots and -fires. Long before, when the Puritan prentices had pulled down the houses -of ill-fame in Whettone Park and in Moorfields, Pepys had described the -colonel as riding up and down like a madman, giving orders to his men. -Later Lord Dorset had spoken of the old soldier's energy in a gay ballad -on his mistress-- - - "The people's hearts leap wherever she comes, - And beat day and night like my Lord Craven's drums." - -In King William's reign the veteran was so prompt in attending fires that -it used to be said his horse smelt a fire as soon as it broke out. - -Lord Craven died unmarried in 1697, aged 88, and was buried at Binley, -near Coventry. The grandson of a Wharfdale peasant had ended a well-spent -life. His biographer, Miss Benger, well remarks:--"If his claims to -disinterestedness be contemned of men, let his cause be (left) to female -judges,--to whose honour be it averred, examples of nobleness, generosity -and magnanimity are ever delightful, because to their purer and more -susceptible souls they are (never) incredible."[537] - -Drury House was rebuilt by Lord Craven after the Queen's death. It -occupied the site of Craven Buildings and the Olympic Theatre. Pennant, -ever curious and energetic, went to find it, and describes it in his -pleasant way as a "large brick pile," then turned into a public-house -bearing the sign of the Queen of Bohemia, faithful still to the worship of -its old master. - -The house was taken down in 1809, when the Olympic Pavilion was built on -part of its gardens. The cellars, once stored with good Rhenish from the -Palatinate, and sack from Cadiz, still exist, but have been blocked up. -Palsgrave Place, near Temple Bar, perpetuates the memory of the unlucky -husband of the brave princess. - -It was Lord Craven who generously founded pest-houses in Carnaby Street, -soon after the Great Plague. There were thirty-six small houses and a -cemetery. They were sold in 1772 to William, third Earl of Craven, for -£1200. It may be remembered that in the _Memoirs of Scriblerus_ a room is -hired for the dissection of the purchased body of a malefactor, near the -St. Giles's pest-fields, and not far from Tyburn Road, Oxford Street. The -Earl was their founder. - -On the end wall at the bottom of Craven Buildings there was formerly a -large fresco-painting of the Earl of Craven, who was represented in -armour, mounted on a charger, and with a truncheon in his hand. This -portrait had been twice or thrice repainted in oil, but in Brayley's time -was entirely obliterated.[538] This fresco is said to have been the work -of Paul Vansomer, a painter who came to England from Antwerp about 1606, -and died in 1621. He painted the Earl and Countess of Arundel, and there -are pictures by him at Hampton Court. He also executed the pleasant and -quaint hunting scene, with portraits of Prince Henry and the young Earl of -Essex, now at St. James's Palace.[539] - -Mr. Moser, keeper of the Royal Academy, a chaser of plate, cane-heads, and -watch-cases, afterwards an enameller of watch-trinkets, necklaces, and -bracelets, lived in Craven Buildings, which were built in 1723 on part of -the site of Craven House. He died in his apartments in Somerset House in -1783. - -It was in Short's Gardens, Drury Lane, "in a hole," that Charles Mathews -the elder made one of his first attempts as an actor. - -Clare House Court, on the left hand going up Drury Lane, derived its name -from John Holles, second Earl of Clare, whose town house stood at the end -of this court. His son Gilbert, the third Earl, died in 1689, and was -succeeded by his son, John Holles, created Marquis of Clare and Duke of -Newcastle in 1694. He died in 1711, when all his honours became extinct. -The corner house has upon it the date 1693.[540] - -In the reign of James I., when Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, lived at -Ely House, in Holborn, he used to pass through Drury Lane in his litter on -his way to Whitehall, Covent Garden being then an enclosed field, and this -district and the Strand the chief resorts of the gentry. The ladies, -knowing his hours, would appear in their balconies or windows to present -their civilities to the old man, who would bend himself as well as he -could to the humblest posture of respect. One day, as he passed by the -house of Lady Jacob in Drury Lane, she presented herself: he bowed to her, -but she only gaped at him. Curious to see if this yawning was intentional -or accidental, he passed the next day at the same hour, and with the same -result. Upon which he sent a gentleman to her to let her know that the -ladies of England were usually more gracious to him than to encounter his -respects with such affronts. She answered that she had a mouth to be -stopped as well as others. Gondomar, finding the cause of her distemper, -sent her a present, an antidote which soon cured her of her strange -complaint.[541] This Lady Jacob became the wife of the poet Brooke. - -That credulous gossip, the Wiltshire gentleman, Aubrey, tells a quaint -story of a duel in Drury Lane, in probably Charles II.'s time, which is a -good picture of such rencontres amongst the hot-blooded bravos of that -wild period. - -"Captain Carlo Fantom, a Croatian," he says, "who spoke thirteen -languages, was a captain under the Earl of Essex. He had a world of cuts -about his body with swords, and was very quarrelsome. He met, coming late -at night out of the Horseshoe Tavern in Drury Lane, with a lieutenant of -Colonel Rossiter, who had great jingling spurs on. Said he, 'The noise of -your spurs doe offend me; you must come over the kennel and give me -satisfaction.' They drew and passed at each other, and the lieutenant was -runne through, and died in an hour or two, and 'twas not known who killed -him."[542] - -About this time John Lacy, Charles II.'s favourite comedian, the Falstaff -of Dryden's time, lived in Drury Lane from 1665 till his death in 1681. -The ex-dancing-master and lieutenant dwelt near Cradle Alley and only two -doors from Lord Anglesey. - -Drury Lane, though it soon began to deteriorate, had fashionable -inhabitants in Charles II.'s time. Evelyn, that delightful type of the -English gentleman, mentions in his _Diary_ the marriage of his niece to -the eldest son of Mr. Attorney Montague at Southampton Chapel, and talks -of a magnificent entertainment at his sister's "lodgings" in Drury Lane. -Steele, however, branded its disreputable districts; Gay[543] warned us -against "Drury's mazy courts and dark abodes;" and Pope laughed at -building a church for "the saints of Drury Lane," and derided its proud -and paltry "drabs." The little sour poet, snugly off and well housed, -delighted to sneer, with a cruel and ungenerous contempt, at the poverty -of the poor Drury Lane poet who wrote for instant bread:-- - - "'Nine years!' cries he, who, high in Drury Lane, - Lull'd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane, - Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before Term ends, - Obliged by hunger and request of friends." - -To ridicule poverty, and to treat misfortune as a punishable crime, is the -special opprobrium of too many of the heroes of English literature. - -Hogarth has shown us the poor poet of Drury Lane; Goldsmith has painted -for us the poor author, but in a kindlier way, for he must have -remembered how poor he himself and Dr. Johnson, Savage, Otway, and Lee had -been. Pope, in his notes to the _Dunciad_, expressly says that the poverty -of his enemies is the cause of all their slander. Poverty with him is -another name for vice and all uncleanness. Goldsmith only laughs as he -describes the poor poet in Drury Lane in a garret, snug from the Bailiff, -and opposite a public-house famous for Calvert's beer and Parsons's "black -champagne." The windows are dim and patched; the floor is sanded. The damp -walls are hung with the royal game of goose, the twelve rules of King -Charles, and a black profile of the Duke of Cumberland. The rusty grate -has no fire. The mantelpiece is chalked with long unpaid scores of beer -and milk. There are five cracked teacups on the chimney-board; and the -poet meditates over his epics and his finances with a stocking round his -brows "instead of bay." - -Early in the reign of William III. Drury Lane finally lost all traces of -its aristocratic character. - -Vinegar Yard, in Drury Lane, was originally called Vine Garden Yard. Vine -Street, Piccadilly, Vine Street, Westminster, and Vine Street, Saffron -Hill, all derived their names from the vineyards they displaced; but there -is great reason to suppose that in the Middle Ages orchards and -herb-gardens were often classified carelessly as "vineyards." English -grapes might produce a sour, thin wine, but there was never a time when -home-made wine superseded the produce of Montvoisin, Bordeaux, or Gascony. -Vinegar Yard was built about 1621.[544] In St Martin's Burial Register -there is an entry, "1624, Feb. 4: Buried Blind John out of Vinagre Yard." -Clayrender's letter in Smollett's _Roderick Random_ is written to her -"dear kreetur" from "Winegar Yard, Droory Lane." This fair charmer must -surely have lived not far from Mr. Dickens's inimitable Mrs. Megby. The -nearness of Vinegar Yard to the theatre is alluded to by James Smith in -his parody on Sir Walter Scott in the _Rejected Addresses_. - -General Monk's gross and violent wife was the daughter of his servant, -John Clarges, a farrier in the Savoy. Her mother, says Aubrey, was one of -the five women-barbers[545] that lived in Drury Lane. She kept a -glove-shop in the New Exchange before her marriage, and as a seamstress -used to carry the general's linen to him when he was in the Tower. - -Pepys hated her, because she was jealous of his patron, Lord Sandwich, and -called him a coward. He calls her "ill-looking" and "a plain, homely -dowdy," and says that one day, when Monk was drunk, and sitting with -Troutbeck, a disreputable fellow, the duke was wondering that Nan Hyde, a -brewer's daughter, should ever have come to be Duchess of York. "Nay," -said Troutbeck, "ne'er wonder at that, for if you will give me another -bottle of wine I will tell you as great if not a greater miracle, and that -was that our Dirty Bess should come to be Duchess of Albemarle."[546] - -Nell Gwynn was born in Coal Yard, on the east side of Drury Lane,[547] the -next turning to the infamous Lewknor Lane, which used to be inhabited by -the orange-girls who attended the theatres in Charles II.'s reign. It was -in this same lane that Jonathan Wild, the thief-taker, whom Fielding -immortalises, afterwards lived. In a coarse and ruthless satire written by -Sir George Etherege after Nell's death, the poet calls her a "scoundrel -lass," raised from a dunghill, born in a cellar, and brought up as a -cinder-wench in a coalyard.[548] - -Nelly was the vagabond daughter of a poor Cavalier captain and fruiterer, -who is said to have died in prison at Oxford. She began life by selling -fish in the street, then turned orange-girl at the theatres, was promoted -to be an actress, and finally became a mistress of Charles II. Though not -as savage-tempered as the infamous Lady Castlemaine, Nelly was almost as -mischievous, and quite as shameless. She obtained from the king £60,000 -in four years.[549] She bought a pearl necklace at Prince Rupert's sale -for £4000. She drank, swore, gambled, and squandered money as wildly as -her rivals. Nelly was small, with a good-humoured face, and "eyes that -winked when she laughed."[550] She was witty, reckless, and good-natured. -The portrait of her by Lely, with the lamb under her arm, shows us a very -arch, pretty, dimply little actress. The present Duke of St. Alban's is -descended from her.[551] - -In 1667 Nell Gwynn was living in Drury Lane, for on May day of that year -Pepys says--"To Westminster, in the way meeting many milkmaids with -garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler between them; and saw -pretty Nelly standing at her lodging's door in Drury Lane, in her -smock-sleeves and boddice, looking upon one. She seemed a mighty pretty -creature." Nelly had not then been long on the stage, and Pepys had hissed -her a few months before being introduced to her by dangerous Mrs. Knipp. -In 1671 Evelyn saw Nelly, then living in Pall Mall, "looking out of her -garden on a terrace at the top of the wall," and talking too familiarly to -the king, who stood on the green walk in the park below.[552] - -Poor Nell was not "allowed to starve," but ended an ill life by dying of -apoplexy. There is no authority for the name of "Nell Gwynn's Dairy" given -to a house near the Adelphi. - -That infamous and perjured scoundrel, and the murderer of so many innocent -men, Titus Oates, was the son of a popular Baptist preacher in Ratcliffe -Highway, and was educated at Merchant Taylor's. Dismissed from the Fleet, -of which he was chaplain, for infamous practices, he became a Jesuit at -St. Omer's, and came back to disclose the sham Popish plot, for which -atrocious lie he received of the Roman Catholic king, Charles II., £1200 a -year, an escort of guards, and a lodging in Whitehall. Oates died in -1705. He lodged for some time in Cockpit Alley, now called Pitt Place. - -It was in the Crown Tavern, next the Whistling Oyster, and close to the -south side of Drury Lane Theatre, that _Punch_ was first projected by Mr. -Mark Lemon and Mr. Henry Mayhew in 1841; and its first number was -"prepared for press" in a back room in Newcastle Street, Strand. Great -rivers often have their sources in swampy and obscure places, and our -good-natured satirist has not much to boast of in its birthplace. To -_Punch_ Tom Hood contributed his immortal "Song of the Shirt," and -Tennyson his scorching satire against Bulwer and his "New Timon;" almost -from the first, Leech devoted to it his humorous pencil, and Albert Smith -his perennial store of good humour and drollery. Amongst its other early -contributors should be mentioned Mr. Gilbert A. à Beckett, Mr. W. H. -Wills, and Douglas Jerrold. - -Zoffany, the artist, lived for some time in poverty in Drury Lane. Mr. -Audinet, father of Philip Audinet the engraver, served his time with the -celebrated clockmaker, Rimbault, who lived in Great St. Andrew's Street, -Seven Dials. This worthy excelled in the construction of the clocks called -at that time "Twelve-tuned Dutchmen," which were contrived with moving -figures, engaged in a variety of employments. The pricking of the barrels -of those clocks was performed by Bellodi, an Italian, who lived hard by, -in Short's Gardens, Drury Lane. This person solicited Rimbault in favour -of a starving artist who dwelt in a garret in his house. "Let him come to -me," said Rimbault. Accordingly Zoffany waited upon the clockmaker, and -produced some specimens of his art, which were so satisfactory that he was -immediately set to work to embellish clock-faces, and paint appropriate -backgrounds to the puppets upon them. From clock-faces the young painter -proceeded to the human face divine, and at last resolved to try his hand -upon the visage of the worthy clockmaker himself. He hit off the likeness -of the patron so successfully, that Rimbault exerted himself to serve and -promote him. Benjamin Wilson, the portrait-painter, who at that time lived -at 56 Great Russell Street, a house afterwards inhabited by Philip -Audinet, being desirous of procuring an assistant who could draw the -figure well, and being, like Lawrence, deficient in all but the head, -found out the ingenious painter of clock-faces, and engaged him at the -moderate salary of forty pounds a year, with an especial injunction to -secrecy. In this capacity he worked upon a picture of Garrick and Miss -Bellamy in "Romeo and Juliet," which was exhibited under the name of -Wilson. Garrick's keen eye satisfied him that another hand was in the -work; so he resolved to discover the unknown painter. This discovery he -effected by perseverance: he made the acquaintance of Zoffany and became -his patron, employing him himself and introducing him to his friends; and -in this way his bias to theatrical portraiture became established. -Garrick's favour met with an ample return in the admirable portraits of -himself and contemporaries, which have rendered their personal appearance -so speakingly familiar to posterity both in his pictures and the admirable -mezzotinto scrapings of Earlom. Zoffany was elected among the first -members of the Royal Academy in 1768. - -The old Cockpit, or Phoenix Theatre, stood on the site of what is now -called Pitt Place. Early in James I.'s reign it had been turned into a -playhouse, and probably rebuilt.[553] - -On Shrove Tuesday 1616-17 the London prentices, roused to their annual -zeal by a love of mischief and probably a Puritan fervour, sacked the -building, to the discomfiture of the harmless players. Bitter, -narrow-headed Prynne, who notes with horror and anger the forty thousand -plays printed in two years for the five Devil's chapels in London,[554] -describes the Cockpit as demoralising Drury Lane, then no doubt wealthy, -and therefore supposed to be respectable. In 1647 the Cockpit Theatre was -turned into a schoolroom; in 1649 Puritan soldiers broke into the house, -which had again become a theatre, captured the actors, dispersed the -audience, broke up the seats and stage, and carried off the dramatic -criminals in open day, in all their stage finery, to the Gate House at -Westminster. - -Rhodes, the old prompter at Blackfriars, who had turned bookseller, -reopened the Cockpit on the Restoration. The new Theatre in Drury Lane -opened in 1663 with the "Humorous Lieutenant" of Beaumont and Fletcher. -This was the King's Company under Killigrew. Davenant and the Duke of -York's company found a home first in the Cockpit, and afterwards in -Salisbury Court, Fleet Street. - -The first Drury Lane Theatre was burnt down in 1672. Wren built the new -house, which opened in 1674 with a prologue by Dryden. Cibber gives a -careful account of Wren's Drury Lane, the chief entrance to which was down -Playhouse Passage. Pepys blamed it for the distance of the stage from the -boxes, and for the narrowness of the pit entrances.[555] The platform of -the stage projected very forward, and the lower doors of entrance for the -actors were in the place of the stage-boxes.[556] - -In 1681 the two companies united, leaving Portugal Street to the lithe -tennis-players and Dorset Gardens to the brawny wrestlers. Wren's theatre -was taken down in 1791; its successor, built by Holland, was opened in -1794, and destroyed in 1809. The present edifice, the fourth in -succession, is the work of Wyatt, and was opened in 1812.[557] - -Hart, Mohun, Burt, and Clun were all actors in Killigrew's company. Hart, -who had been a captain in the army, was dignified as Alexander, -incomparable as Catiline, and excellent as Othello. He died in 1683. -Mohun, whom Nat Lee wrote parts for, and who had been a major in the Civil -War, was much applauded in heroic parts, and was a favourite of -Rochester's. Burt played Cicero in Ben Jonson's "Catiline;" and poor Clun, -who was murdered by footpads in Kentish Town, was great as Iago, and as -Subtle in "The Alchymist." - -From Pepys's memoranda of visits to Drury Lane we gather a few facts about -the licentious theatre-goers of his day. After the Plague, when Drury Lane -had been deserted, the old gossip went there, half-ashamed to be seen, and -with his cloak thrown up round his face.[558] The king flaunts about with -his mistresses, and Pepys goes into an upper box to chat with the -actresses and see a rehearsal, which seems then to have followed and not -preceded the daily performance.[559] He describes Sir Charles Sedley, in -the pit, exchanging banter with a lady in a mask. Three o'clock seems to -have been about the time for theatres opening.[560] The king was angry, he -says, with Ned Howard for writing a play called "The Change of Crowns," in -which Lacy acted a country gentleman who is astonished at the corruption -of the court. For this Lacy was committed to the porter's lodge; on being -released, he called the author a fool, and having a glove thrown in his -face, returned the compliment with a blow on Howard's pate with a cane; -upon which the pit wondered that Howard did not run the mean fellow -through; and the king closed the house, which the gentry thought had grown -too insolent. - -August 15, 1667, Pepys goes to see the "Merry Wives of Windsor," which -pleased our great Admiralty official "in no part of it." Two days after he -weeps at the troubles of Queen Elizabeth, but revives when that dangerous -Mrs. Knipp dances among the milkmaids, and comes out in her nightgown to -sing a song. Another day he goes at three o'clock to see Beaumont and -Fletcher's "Scornful Lady," but does not remain, as there is no one in the -pit. In September of the same year he finds his wife and servant in an -eighteenpenny seat. In October 1667 he ventures into the tiring-room where -Nell was dressing, and then had fruit in the scene-room, and heard Mrs. -Knipp read her part in "Flora's Vagaries," Nell cursing because there were -so few people in the pit. A fortnight after he contrives to see a new -play, "The Black Prince," by Lord Orrery; and though he goes at two, finds -no room in the pit, and has for the first time in his life to take an -upper four-shilling-box. November 1, he proclaims the "Taming of the -Shrew" "a silly old play." November 2, the house was full of Parliament -men, the House being up. One of them choking himself while eating some -fruit, Orange Moll thrust her finger down his throat and brought him to -life again. - -Pepys condemns Nell Gwynn as unbearable in serious parts, but considers -her beyond imitation as a madwoman. In December 1667 he describes a poor -woman who had lent her child to the actors, but hearing him cry, forced -her way on to the stage and bore it off from Hart. - -It would seem from subsequent notes in the _Diary_, that to a man who -stopped only for one act at a theatre, and took no seat, no charge was -made. - -In February 1668 Pepys sees at Drury Lane "The Virgin Martyr," by -Massinger, which he pronounces not to be worth much but for Becky -Marshall's acting; yet the wind music when the angel descended "wrapped -up" his soul so, that, remarkably enough, it made him as sick as when he -was first in love, and he determined to go home and make his wife learn -wind music. May 1, 1668, he mentions that the pit was thrown into disorder -by the rain coming in at the cupola. May 7 of the same year, he calls for -Knipp when the play is over, and sees "Nell in her boy's clothes, mighty -pretty." "But, Lord!" he says, "their confidence! and how many men do -hover about them as soon as they come off the stage! and how confident -they are in their talk!" - -On May 18, 1668, Pepys goes as early as twelve o'clock to see the first -performance of that poor play, Sir Charles Sedley's "Mulberry Garden," at -which the king, queen, and court did not laugh. While waiting for the -curtain to pull up, Pepys hires a boy to keep his place, slips out to the -Rose Tavern in Russell Street, and dines off a breast of mutton from the -spit. - -On September 15, 1668, there is a play--"The Ladies à la Mode"--so bad -that the actor who announced the piece to be repeated fell a-laughing, as -did the pit. Four days after Pepys sits next Shadwell, the poet, -admiring Ben Jonson's extravagant comedy, "The Silent Woman." - -In January 1669 he sat in a box near "that merry jade Nell," who, with a -comrade from the Duke's House, "lay there laughing upon people." - -"Les Horaces" of Corneille he found "a silly tragedy." February 1669 -Beetson, one of the actors, read his part, Kynaston having been beaten and -disabled by order of Sir Charles Sedley, whom he had ridiculed. The same -month Pepys went to the King's House to see "The Faithful Shepherdess," -and found not more than £10 in the house. - -A great leader in the Drury Lane troop was Lacy, the Falstaff of his day. -He was a handsome, audacious fellow, who delighted the town as "Frenchman, -Scot, or Irishman, fine gentleman or fool, honest simpleton or rogue, -Tartuffe or Drench, old man or loquacious woman." He was King Charles's -favourite actor as Teague in "The Committee," or mimicking Dryden as Bayes -in "The Rehearsal." - -The greatest rascal in the company was Goodman--"Scum Goodman," as he was -called--admirable as Alexander and Julius Cæsar. He was a dashing, -shameless, impudent rogue, who used to boast that he had once taken "an -airing" on the road to recruit his purse. He was expelled Cambridge for -slashing a picture of the Duke of Monmouth. He hired an Italian quack to -poison two children of his mistress, the infamous Duchess of Cleveland, -joined in the Fenwick plot to kill King William, and would have turned -traitor against his fellow conspirators had he not been bought off for -£500 a year, and sent to Paris, where he disappeared. - -Haines, one of Killigrew's band, was an impudent but clever low comedian. -In Sparkish, in "The Country Wife," he was the very model of airy -gentlemen. His great successes were as Captain Bluff in Congreve's "Old -Bachelor," Roger in "Æsop," and "the lively, impudent, and irresistible -Tom Errand" in Farquhar's "Constant Couple," "that most triumphant comedy -of a whole century."[561] - -The stories told of Joe Haines are good. He once engaged a simple-minded -clergyman as "chaplain to the Theatre Royal," and sent him behind the -scenes ringing a big bell to call the actors to prayers. "Count" Haines -was once arrested by two bailiffs on Holborn Hill at the very moment that -the Bishop of Ely passed in his carriage. "Here comes my cousin, he will -satisfy you," said the ready-witted actor, who instantly stepped to the -carriage window and whispered Bishop Patrick--"Here are two Romanists, my -lord, inclined to become Protestants, but yet with some scruples of -conscience." The anxious bishop instantly beckoned to the bailiffs to -follow him to Ely Place, and Joe escaped; the mortified bishop paying the -money out of sheer shame. Haines died in 1701. - -Amongst the actresses at this house were pretty but frail Mrs. Hughes, the -mistress of Prince Rupert, and Mrs. Knipp, Pepys's dangerous friend, who -acted rakish fine ladies and rattling ladies'-maids, and came on to sing -as priestess, nun, or milkmaid. Anne Marshall, the daughter of a -Presbyterian divine, acquired a reputation as Dorothea in "The Virgin -Martyr," and as the Queen of Sicily in Dryden's "Secret Love." - -But Nell Gwynn was the chief "toast" of the town. Little, pretty, -impudent, and witty, she danced well, and was a good actress in comedy and -in characters where "natural emotion bordering on insanity" was to be -represented.[562] Her last original part was that of Almahide in Dryden's -"Conquest of Granada," where she spoke the prologue in a straw hat as -large as a waggon-wheel. - -Leigh Hunt says that "Nineteen out of twenty of Dryden's plays were -produced at Drury Lane, and seven out of Lee's eleven; all the good plays -of Wycherly, except 'The Gentleman Dancing Master;' two of -Congreve's--'The Old Bachelor' and 'The Double Dealer;' and all -Farquhar's, except 'The Beau's Stratagem.'"[563] Dryden's impurity and -daring bombast were the attractions to Drury Lane, as Otway's -sentimentalism and real pathos were to the rival house. Lee's splendid -bombast was succeeded by Farquhar's gay rakes and not too virtuous women. - -Doggett, who was before the public from 1691 to 1713, was a little lively -Irishman, for whom Congreve wrote the characters of Fondlewife, Sir Paul -Pliant, and Ben. He was partner in the theatre with Cibber and Wilkes from -1709 to 1712, but left when Booth was taken into the firm. He was a -staunch Whig, and left an orange livery and a badge to be rowed for yearly -by six London watermen. - -The queen of comedy, Mrs. Oldfield, flashed upon the town first as Lady -Betty Modish in Cibber's "Careless Husband," in 1704-5. When quite a girl -she was overheard by Farquhar reading "The Scornful Lady" of Beaumont and -Fletcher to her aunt, who kept the Mitre Tavern in St. James's Market. -Farquhar introduced her to Vanbrugh, and Vanbrugh to Rich. "She excelled -all actresses," says Davies, "in sprightliness of wit and elegance of -manner, and was greatly superior in the clear, sonorous, and harmonious -tones of her voice." Her eyes were large and speaking, and when intended -to give special archness to some brilliant or gay thought, she kept them -mischievously half shut. Cibber praises Mrs. Oldfield for her unpresuming -modesty, and her good sense in not rejecting advice--"A mark of good -sense," says the shrewd old manager, "rarely known in any actor of either -sex but herself. Yet it was a hard matter to give her any hint that she -was not able to take or improve."[564] With all this merit, she was -tractable and less presuming in her station than several that had not half -her pretensions to be troublesome. This excellent actress was not fond of -tragedy, but she still played Marcia in "Cato;" Swift, who attended the -rehearsals with Addison, railed at her for her good-humoured carelessness -and indifference; and Pope sneered at her vanity in her last moments. It -is true that she was buried in kid gloves, tucker, and ruffles of best -lace. Mrs. Oldfield lived first with a Mr. Maynwaring, a rough, -hard-drinking Whig writer, to whom Addison dedicated one of the volumes of -the _Spectator_; and after his death with General Churchill, one of the -Marlborough family. Nevertheless, she went to court and habitually -associated with ladies of the highest rank. Society is cruel and -inconsistent in these matters. Open scandal it detests, but to secret vice -it is indifferent. - -Mrs. Oldfield died in 1730, lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and -when she was borne to her grave in the Abbey, Lord Hervey (Pope's -"Sporus"), Lord Delawarr, and that toady Bubb Doddington, supported her -pall. The late Earl of Cadogan was the great-grandson of Anne -Oldfield.[565] This actress, so majestic in tragedy, so irresistible in -comedy, was generous enough to give an annuity to poor, hopeless, scampish -Savage. - -Robert Wilkes, a young Irish Government clerk, obtained great successes as -Farquhar's heroes, Sir Harry Wildair, Mirabel, Captain Plume, and Archer. -He played equally well the light gentlemen of Cibber's comedies. Genest -describes him as buoyant and graceful on the stage, irreproachable in -dress, his every movement marked by "an ease of breeding and manner." This -actor also excelled in plaintive and tender parts. Cibber hints, however, -at his professional conceit and overbearing temper. Wilkes on one occasion -read "George Barnwell" to Queen Anne at the Court at St. James's. He died -in 1732. - -Barton Booth, who was at Westminster School with Rowe the poet, identified -himself with Addison's Cato. His dignity, pathos, and energy as that lover -of liberty led Bolingbroke to present him on the first night with a purse -of fifty guineas. The play was translated into four languages; Pope gave -it a prologue; Garth decked it with an epilogue; while Denis proved it, to -his own satisfaction, to be worthless. Aaron Hill tells us that statistics -proved that Booth could always obtain from eighteen to twenty rounds of -applause during the evening. When playing the Ghost to Betterton's Hamlet, -Booth is said to have been once so horror-stricken as to be unable to -proceed with his part. He often took inferior Shaksperean parts, and was -frequently indolent; but if he saw a man whose opinion he valued among the -audience he fired up and played to him. This petted actor and manager died -in 1733. - -Colley Cibber, to judge from Steele's criticisms, must have been admirable -as a beau, whether rallying pleasantly, scorning artfully, ridiculing, or -neglecting.[566] Wilkes surpassed him in beseeching gracefully, -approaching respectfully, pitying, mourning, and loving. In the part of -Sir Fopling Flutter in "The Fool of Fashion," played in 1695, Cibber wore -a fair, full-bottomed periwig which was so much admired that it used to be -brought on the stage in a sedan and put on publicly. To this wonder of the -town Colonel Brett, who married Savage's mother, took a special fancy. -"The beaux of those days," says Cibber, "had more of the stateliness of -the peacock than the pert of the lapwing." The colonel came behind the -scenes, first praised the wig, and then offered to purchase it. On -Cibber's bantering him about his anxiety for such a trifle, the gay -colonel began to rally himself with such humour that he fairly won Cibber, -and they sat down at once, laughing, to finish their bargain over a -bottle. - -Quin's career began at Dublin in 1714, and ended at Bath in 1753. From -1736 to 1741 he was at Drury Lane. From Booth's retirement till the coming -of Garrick, Quin had no rival as Cato, Brutus, Volpone, Falstaff, Zanga, -etc. His Macbeth, Othello, and Lear were inferior. Davies says, the tender -and the violent were beyond his reach, but he gave words weight and -dignity by his sensible elocution and well-regulated voice. His movements -were ponderous and his action languid. Quin was generous, witty, a great -epicure, and a careless dresser. It was his hard fate, though a -warm-hearted man, to be equally warm in temper, and to kill two -adversaries in duels that were forced upon him. Quin was a friend of -Garrick and of Thomson the poet, and a frequent visitor at Allen's house -at Prior Park, near Bath, where Pope, Warburton, and Fielding visited. - -Some of Quin's jests were perfect. When Warburton said, "By what law can -the execution of Charles I. be justified?" Quin replied, "By all the laws -he had left them." No wonder Walpole applauded him. The bishop bade the -player remember that the regicides came to violent ends, but Quin gave him -a worse blow. "That, your lordship," he said, "if I am not mistaken, was -also the case with the twelve apostles." Quin could overthrow even Foote. -They had at one time had a quarrel, and were reconciled, but Foote was -still a little sore. "Jemmy," said he, "you should not have said that I -had but one shirt, and that I lay in bed while it was washed." "Sammy," -replied the actor, "I never _could_ have said so, for I never knew that -you had a shirt to wash." Quin died in 1766, and Garrick wrote an epitaph -on his tomb in Bath Abbey, ending with the line-- - - "To this complexion we must come at last." - -Garrick appeared first at Goodman's Fields Theatre, in 1741, as King -Richard. In eight days the west flocked eastward, and, as Davies tells us, -"the coaches of the nobility filled up the space from Temple Bar to -Whitechapel." Pope came up from Twickenham to see if the young man was -equal to Betterton. Garrick revolutionised the stage. Tragedians had -fallen into a pompous "rhythmical, mechanical sing-song,"[567] fit only -for dull orators. Their style was overlaboured with art--it was mere -declamation. The actor had long ceased to imitate nature. Garrick's first -appearance at Drury Lane was in 1742. Cumberland, then at Westminster -School, describes his sight of Quin and Garrick, and the first impressions -they produced on him. Garrick was Lothario, Mrs. Cibber Calista, Quin -Horatio, and Mrs. Pritchard Lavinia. Quin, when the curtain drew up, -presented himself in a green velvet coat, embroidered down the seams, an -enormous full-bottomed periwig, rolled stockings, and high-heeled square -shoes.[568] "With very little variation of cadence, and in a deep full -tone, accompanied by a sawing kind of action which had more of the senate -than the stage in it, he rolled out his heroics with an air of dignified -indifference that seemed to disdain the plaudits that were bestowed upon -him. Mrs. Cibber, in a key high-pitched but sweet withal, sang or rather -recitatived Rowe's harmonious strains. But when, after long and anxious -expectation, I first beheld little Garrick, then young and light and alive -in every muscle and every feature, come bounding on the stage and pointing -at the wittol Altamont and heavy-paced Horatio, heavens! what a -transition!--it seemed as if a whole century had been swept over in the -passage of a single scene." And yet, according to fretful Cumberland, "the -show of hands" was for Quin, though, according to Davies, the best judges -were for Garrick. And when Quin was slow in answering the challenge, -somebody in the gallery called out, "Why don't you tell the gentleman -whether you will meet him or not?" Garrick's repertory extended to one -hundred characters, of which he was the original representative of -thirty-six. Of his comic characters, Ranger and Abel Drugger were the -best--one was irresistibly vivacious, the other comically stupid. - -Garrick, who mutilated Shakespere and wrote clever verses and useful -theatrical adaptations, was a vain, sprightly man, who got the reputation -of reforming stage costume, although it was Macklin, pugnacious and -courageous, who first dared to act Macbeth dressed as a Highland chief, -and felt proud of his own anachronism. Garrick had, in fact, a dislike to -really truthful costume. He dared to play Hotspur in laced frock and -Ramillies wig.[569] In truth, it was neither Garrick nor Macklin who -originated this reform, but the change of public opinion and the widening -of education. West, in spite of ridicule and condemnation, dared to dress -the soldiers in his "Death of Wolfe" in English uniform, instead of in the -armour of stage Romans. Burke said of Garrick that he was the most acute -observer of nature he had ever known. Garrick could assume any passion at -the moment, and could act off-hand Scrub or Richard, Brute or Macbeth. He -oscillated between tragedy and comedy; he danced to perfection; he was -laborious at rehearsals, and yet all that he did seemed spontaneous. In -Fribble he imitated no fewer than eleven men of fashion so that every one -recognised them. Garrick died in 1779, and was buried in _the_ Abbey. -"Chatham," says Dr. Doran, the actor's admirable biographer, "had -addressed him living in verse, and peers sought for the honour of -supporting the pall at his funeral."[570] That he was vain and -over-sensitive there can be no doubt; but there can be also no doubt that -he was generous, often charitable, delightful in society, and never, like -Foote, eager to give pain by the exercise of his talent. As an actor, -Garrick has not since been equalled in versatility and equal balance of -power; nor has any subsequent actor attained so high a rank among the -intellect of his age. - -Kitty Clive, born in 1711, took leave of the stage in 1769. She was one of -the best-natured, wittiest, happiest, and most versatile of actresses, -whether as "roguish chambermaid, fierce virago, chuckling hoyden, brazen -romp, stolid country girl, affected fine lady, or thoroughly natural old -woman."[571] Fielding, Garrick, and Walpole delighted in Kitty Clive. -After years of quadrille at Purcell's, and cards and music at the villa at -Teddington which Horace Walpole lent her, Kitty Clive died suddenly, -without a groan, in 1785. - -Woodward was excellent in fops, rascals, simpletons, and Shakesperean -light characters. His Bobadil, Marplot, and Touchstone were beyond -approach. Shuter, originally a billiard-marker, came on the stage in 1744, -and quitted it in 1776. His grimace and impromptu were much praised. - -Samuel Foote, born at Truro in 1720, having failed in tragedy, and not -been very successful in comedy, started his entertainments at the -Haymarket in 1747. He died in 1777. His history belongs to the records of -another theatre. - -Spanger Barry in 1748-9 acted Hamlet and Macbeth alternately with Garrick. -Davies says that Barry could not perform such characters as Richard and -Macbeth, but he made a capital Alexander. "He charmed the ladies by the -soft melody of his love complaints and the noble ardour of his courtship." -Only Mrs. Cibber excelled him in the expression of love, grief, -tenderness, and jealous rage. Tall, handsome, and dignified, Barry -undoubtedly ran Garrick close in the part of Romeo, artificial as -Churchill in the _Rosciad_ declares him to have been. A lady once said, -"that had she been Juliet she should have expected Garrick to have stormed -the balcony, he was so impassioned; but that Barry was so eloquent, -tender, and seductive, that she should have come down to him."[572] In -Lear, the town said that Barry "was every inch a king" but Garrick "every -inch King Lear." Barry was amorous and extravagant. He delighted in giving -magnificent entertainments, and treated Mr. Pelham in so princely a style -that that minister (with not the finest taste) rebuked him for his lavish -hospitality. - -The brilliant and witching Peg Woffington was the daughter of a small -huckster in Dublin, and became a pupil of Madame Violante, a rope-dancer. -In 1740 she came out at Covent Garden, and soon won the town as Sir Harry -Wildair. She played Lady Townley and Lady Betty Modish with "happy ease -and gaiety."[573] She rendered the most audacious absurdities pleasing by -her beautiful bright face and her vivacity of expression. Peg quarrelled -with Kitty Clive and Mrs. Cibber, and detested that reckless woman George -Anne Bellamy. This witty and enchanting actress, as generous and -charitable as Nell Gwynn with all her faults, was struck by paralysis -while acting Rosalind at Covent Garden, and died in 1760. - -During his career from 1691 to his retirement in 1733, clever, careless -Colley Cibber originated nearly eighty characters, chiefly grand old fops, -inane old men, dashing soldiers, and impudent lacqueys. His Fondlewife, -Sir Courtly Nice, and Shallow were his best parts. "Of all English -managers," says Dr. Doran, "Cibber was the most successful. Of the English -actors, he is the only one who was ever promoted to the laureateship or -elected a member of White's Club." Even Pope, who hated him and got some -hard blows from him, praised "The Careless Husband;" Walpole, who despised -players, praised Colley; and Dr. Johnson approved of his admirably written -_Apology_. - -Cibber's daughter, Mrs. Clarke, led a wild and disreputable life, became a -waitress at Marylebone, and died in poverty in 1760. Colley's son -Theophilus, the best Pistol ever seen on the stage, and the original -George Barnwell, was drowned in crossing the Irish Sea. - -His wife was a sister of Dr. Arne, the composer. In tragedy she was -remarkable for her artless sensibility and exquisite variety of -expression. As Ophelia she moved even Tate Wilkinson. She was one of the -first actresses to make the woes of the grand tragedy queen natural. She -died in 1766, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. - -Mrs. Pritchard, that "inspired idiot," as Dr. Johnson called her in his -contempt for her ignorance, seems to have been a virtuous woman. She left -the stage in 1768. Though plain, and in later years very stout, Mrs. -Pritchard was admired in tragedy for her perfect pronunciation and her -force and dignity as the Queen in "Hamlet," and as Lady Macbeth. She was -also a good comedian in playful and witty parts. She was, however, not -very graceful, and inclined to rant. - -When Mrs. Cibber died in 1765, Mrs. Yates succeeded to her fame, with Mrs. -Barry for a rival, till Mrs. Siddons came from Bath and unseated both. -Mrs. Yates was wanting in pathos, but in pride and scorn as Medea, or in -hopeless grief as Constance, she was unapproachable. She died in 1787. - -George Anne Bellamy, the reckless and the unfortunate, was the daughter of -a Quakeress, with whom Lord Tyrawley ran away from school. Dr. Doran says, -"What with the loves, caprices, charms, extravagances, and sufferings of -Mrs. Bellamy, she excited the wonder, admiration, pity, and contempt of -the town for thirty years."[574] Now she was squandering money like a -Cleopatra; now she was crouching on the wet steps of Westminster Bridge, -brooding over suicide. "The Bellamy," says the critic, was only equal to -"the Cibber" in expressing the ecstasy of love. This follower of the old -school of intoners was the original Volumnia of Thomson, the Erixene of -Dr. Young, and the Cleone of the honest footman poet and publisher -Dodsley. She took her farewell benefit in 1784. - -In 1778 Miss Farren appeared at Drury Lane. She was the daughter of a poor -vagabond strolling player. Walpole says she was the most perfect actress -he had ever seen; and he spoke well of her fine ladies, of whom he was a -judge. Adolphus, not easily appeased, praised her irresistible graces and -"all the indescribable little charms which give fascination to the women -of birth and fashion." She was gay as Lady Betty Modish, sentimental as -Cecilia or Indiana, and playful as Rosara in the "Barber of Seville." In -1797 the little girl who had been helped over the ice to the lock-up at -Salisbury, to hand up a bowl of milk to her father when a prisoner -there,[575] took leave of the stage in the part of Lady Teazle, and -married the Earl of Derby, who had buried his wife just six weeks before. - -In 1798 Mrs. Abington, "the best affected fine lady of her time," retired -from the stage of Drury Lane. She was the daughter of a common soldier, -and as a girl was known as "Nosegay Fan," and had sold flowers in St. -James's Park. She first appeared at Drury Lane in 1756-7. - -Poor Mrs. Robinson, the "Perdita" so heartlessly betrayed by the Prince of -Wales, was driven on to the stage in 1776 by her husband, a handsome -scapegrace who had run through his fortune. She passed from the stage in -1780, and died, forgotten, poor, and paralytic, in 1800. - -In 1767 Samuel Reddish, Canning's stepfather, first appeared at Drury Lane -as Lord Townley. He was a reasonably good Edgar and Posthumus, but failed -in parts of passion. He went mad in 1779. In this group of minor actors we -may include Gentleman Smith, a good Charles Surface, who retired from the -stage in 1786; Yates, whose forte was old men and Shakspere's fools -(1736-1780); Dodd, who, from 1765 to 1796, was the prince of fops and old -men (Master Slender and Master Stephen were said to die with him); and -lastly, that great comic actor, John Palmer, who died on the stage in -1798, as he was playing the Stranger. He was the original representative -of plausible Joseph Surface. "Plausible," he used to say, "am I? You rate -me too highly. The utmost I ever did in that way was that I once persuaded -a bailiff who had arrested me to bail me." Once when making friends with -Sheridan after a quarrel, Palmer said to the author, "If you could but see -my heart, Mr. Sheridan!" to which Sheridan replied, "Why, Jack, you forgot -I wrote it." "Jack Palmer," says Lamb, "was a gentleman with a slight -infusion of the footman."[576] He had two voices, both plausible, -hypocritical, and insinuating. - -Henderson was engaged by Sheridan for Drury Lane in 1777. As Falstaff this -humorous friend of Gainsborough was seldom equalled. His defects were a -woolly voice and a habit of sawing the air. Dr. Doran says, "he was the -first actor who, with Sheridan, gave public readings" at Freemasons' Hall; -and his recitation of "John Gilpin" gave impetus to the sale of the -narrative of that adventurous ride.[577] Henderson died in 1785, aged only -thirty-eight, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. - -Mrs. Siddons, the daughter of an itinerant actor, was born in 1755. After -strolling and becoming a lady's-maid, she married a poor second-rate actor -of Birmingham. She appeared first at Drury Lane in 1775 as Portia. Her -first real triumph was in 1780, as Isabella in Southerne's tragedy. The -management gave her Garrick's dressing-room, and some legal admirers -presented her with a purse of a hundred guineas. Soon afterwards, as Jane -Shore, she sent many ladies in the audience into fainting fits. This great -actress closed her career in 1812 with Lady Macbeth, her greatest triumph. -She is said to have made King George III. shed tears. He admired her -especially for her repose. "Garrick," he used to say, "could never stand -still. He was a great fidget." No actress received more homage in her time -than Mrs. Siddons. Reynolds painted his name on the hem of her garment in -his portrait of her as the Tragic Muse. Dr. Johnson kissed her hand and -admired her genius. In comedy Mrs. Siddons failed; her rigorous Grecian -face was not arch. "In comedy" says Colman, "she was only a frisking -grig." "Those who knew her best," says Dr. Doran, "have recorded her -grace, her noble carriage, divine elocution and solemn earnestness, her -grandeur, her pathos, her correct judgment." Erskine studied her cadences -and tones. According to Campbell, she increased the heart's capacity for -tender, intense, and lofty feelings. This lofty-minded actress, as Young -calls her, died in 1831. - -Her elder brother, John Kemble, first appeared at Drury Lane, in 1783, as -Hamlet. In 1788-9 he succeeded King as manager of the theatre, and -continued so till 1801. In Coriolanus and Cato, Kemble was pre-eminent, -but his Richard and Sir Giles were inferior to Cook's and Kean's. In -comedy he failed, except in snatches of dignity or pathos. As an actor -Kemble was sometimes heavy and monotonous. He had not the fire or -versatility of Garrick, or the wild passion of Edmund Kean. As Hamlet he -was romantic, dignified, and philosophic. In his Rolla he delighted -Sheridan and Pitt; in Octavian he drew tears from all eyes. He excelled -also in Coeur de Lion, Penruddock, and the Stranger. In private life he -was always majestic and gravely convivial. When Covent Garden was burnt -down in 1808, he bore the loss bravely, and on the night of the opening -the generous Duke of Northumberland sent him back his bond for £10,000 to -be committed to the flames. Walpole, who saw Kemble, preferred him to -Garrick in Benedick, and to Quin in Maskwell. Kemble took his solemn -farewell of the stage in 1817 as Coriolanus, and died at Lausanne in 1823. -Leigh Hunt, an excellent dramatic critic, paints the following picture of -Kemble: "A figure of melancholy dignity, dealing out a most measured -speech in sepulchral tones and a pedantic pronunciation, and injuring -what he has made you feel by the want of feeling it himself."[578] John -Kemble's brother Charles acted well in Mercutio, Young Mirabel, and -Benedick. He remained on the stage till 1836. - -George Frederick Cooke, whose life was one perpetual debauch, and whose -career on the stage extended from 1801 to 1812, when he died at Boston, -did not, I think, appear at Drury Lane. His laurels were won chiefly at -Covent Garden. - -Master Betty, born in 1791 at Shrewsbury, elegant, and quick of memory, -appeared at Drury Lane in 1804, fretted his little hour upon the stage, -and earned a fortune with which he prudently retired in 1808. He lived -till 1876. - -King, the original representative of Sir Peter Teazle, Lord Ogleby, Puff, -and Dr. Cantwell, began his London career at Drury Lane in 1748. He left -the stage in 1802. His best characters were Touchstone and Ranger, and in -these parts he was always arch, rapid, and versatile. Hazlitt discourses -on King's old, hard, rough face, and his shrewd hints and tart replies. - -Dickey Suett was a favourite low comedian from 1780 to 1805, when he died. -He was a tall, thin, ungainly man, too much addicted to grimace, -interpolations, and practical jokes. He drank hard, and suffered from -mental depression. Hazlitt calls him "the delightful old croaker, the -everlasting Dickey Gossip of the stage."[579] Lamb describes his "Oh, la!" -as irresistible; "he drolled upon the stock of those two syllables richer -than the cuckoo." Shakspere's jesters "have all the true Suett stamp--a -loose and shambling gait, and a slippery tongue."[580] - -Miss Pope, who left the stage in 1808, had played with Garrick and Mrs. -Clive. She was the original Polly Honeycomb, Miss Sterling, Mrs. Candour, -and Tilburina. In youth she played hoydens, chambermaids, and half-bred -ladies, with a dash and good-humour free from all vulgarity, and in old -age she took to duennas and Mrs. Heidelburg. In 1761 Churchill mentions -her as "lively Pope," and in 1807 Horace Smith describes her as "a bulky -person with a duplicity of chin." - -In 1741 the theatre, which had been rebuilt by Wren in 1674, in a cheap -and plain manner, became ruinous, and was enlarged and almost rebuilt by -the Adams. In 1747 Garrick became the manager, and Dr. Johnson, as a -friend, wrote the celebrated address beginning with the often-quoted -lines-- - - "When Learning's triumph o'er her barbarous foes - First reared the stage, immortal Shakspere rose. - - * * * * * - - Each change of many-coloured life he drew, - Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new; - Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, - And panting Time toiled after him in vain." - -In 1775, the year in which "The Duenna" was brought out at Covent Garden, -Garrick made known his wish to sell a moiety of the patent of this -theatre. In June 1776 a contract was signed, Mr. Sheridan taking -two-fourteenths of the whole for £10,000, Mr. Linley the same, and Dr. -Ford three-fourteenths at £15,000.[581] How Sheridan raised the money no -one ever knew. - -Sheridan's first contribution to this new stage was an alteration of -Vanbrugh's licentious comedy of "The Relapse," which he called "A Trip to -Scarborough," and brought out in 1777. The same year the brilliant -manager, then only six-and-twenty, produced the finest and most popular -comedy in the English language, "The School for Scandal." On the last slip -of this miracle of wit and dramatic construction Sheridan wrote--"Finished -at last, thank God!--R. B. SHERIDAN." Below this the prompter added his -devout response--"Amen.--W. HOPKINS."[582] Garrick was proud of the new -manager, and boasted of his budding genius.[583] - -In 1778 Sheridan bought out Mr. Lacy for more than £45,000, and Dr. Ford -for £77,000. In 1779 Garrick died, and Sheridan wrote a monody to his -memory, which was delivered by Mrs. Yates after the play of "The West -Indian." Slander attributed the finest passage in this monody to Tickell, -just as it had before attributed Tickell's bad farce to Sheridan. - -Dowton, who appeared in 1796 as Sheva, was felicitous in good-natured -testy old men, and also in crabbed and degraded old villains. His Dr. -Cantwell and Sir Anthony Absolute were in the true spirit of old comedy. -Leigh Hunt praises Dowton's changes from the irritable to the yielding, -and from the angry to the tender. - -Willy Blanchard was natural and unaffected, but mannered. - -Mathews first appeared in London in 1803. He excelled in valets and old -men, and drew tears as M. Mallet, the poor emigré who is disappointed -about a letter. - -Liston made his début at the Haymarket in 1805 as Sheepface. Leigh Hunt -praises his ignorant rustics, and condemns his old men. He sets him down -as a painter of emotions, and therefore more intellectual than Fawcett and -less farcical than Munden. Liston was a hypochondriac; below his fun there -was always an under-current of melancholy, "as though," says Dr. Doran, -mysteriously, "he had killed a boy when, under the name of Williams, he -was usher at the Rev. Dr. Burney's at Gosport."[584] - -In 1807 Jones and Young made their first appearances, but not at Drury -Lane. Young originated Rienzi, and played Hamlet, Falstaff, and Captain -Macheath. Jones was a stage rake of great excellence. - -Among the actresses before Kean, we may mention Miss Brunton, afterwards -Countess of Craven, and Mrs. Davison, a good Lady Teazle. - -Lewis, who left the stage in 1809, was a draper's son. He died in 1813, -and out of part of his fortune the new church at Ealing was erected. He -played Young Rapid and Jeremy Diddler, and created the Hon. Tom -Shuffleton in "John Bull." His restless style suited Morton and Reynolds's -comedies, and he succeeded in "all that was frolic, gay, humorous, -whimsical, eccentric, and yet elegant." He was manager of Covent Garden -for twenty-one years, and made everyone do his duty by kindness and good -treatment. Leigh Hunt sketches Lewis admirably, with his "easy -flutter,"[585] short knowing respiration, and complacent liveliness. Lewis -played the gentleman with more heart than Elliston. He seemed polite, not -from vanity, but rather from a natural irresistible wish to please. He had -all the laborious carelessness of action, important indifference of voice, -and natural vacuity of look that are requisite for the lounger.[586] His -defects were a habit of shaking his head and drawing in of the breath. His -"flippant airiness," "vivacious importance," and "French flutter" must -have been in their way perfect. "Gay, fluttering, hair-brained Lewis!" -says Hazlitt; "nobody could break open a door, or jump over a table, or -scale a ladder, or twirl a cocked hat, or dangle a cane, or play a -jockey-nobleman or a nobleman's jockey like him."[587] - -Here a moment's pause for an anecdote. When a riot took place at Drury -Lane in 1740 about the non-appearance of a French dancer, the first -symptoms of the outbreak were the ushering of ladies out of the pit. A -noble marquis gallantly proposed to fire the house. The proposal was -considered, but not adopted. The bucks and bloods then proceeded to -destroy the musical instruments and fittings, to break the panels and -partitions, and pull down the royal arms. The offence was finally condoned -by the ringleading marquis sending £100 to the manager. - -Charles Lamb describes Drury Lane in his own delightful way. The first -play he ever saw was in 1781-2, when he was six years old. "A portal, now -the entrance," he writes, "to a printing-office, at the north end of Cross -Court was the pit entrance to old Drury; and I never pass it without -shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening -when I passed through it to see my first play. The afternoon was wet: with -what a beating heart did I watch from the window the puddles! - -"It was the custom then to cry, ''Chase some oranges, 'chase some -nonpareils, 'chase a bill of the play?' But when we got in, and I beheld -the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, the breathless -anticipations I endured! The boxes, full of well-dressed women of quality, -projected over the pit. The orchestra lights arose--the bell sounded -once--it rang the second time--the curtain drew up, and the play was -'Artaxerxes;' 'Harlequin's Invasion' followed." - -The next play Lamb went to was "The Lady of the Manor," followed by a -pantomime called "Lunn's Ghost." Rich was not long dead. His third play -was "The Way of the World" and "Robinson Crusoe." Six or seven years after -he went (with what changed feelings!) to see Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. -"Comparison and retrospection," he says, "soon yielded to the present -attraction of the scene, and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, -the most delightful of all recreations."[588] - -Handsome Jack Bannister, who played in youth with Garrick, and in later -years with Edmund Kean, was the model for the Uncle Toby in Leslie's -picture. Natural, honest, as Hamlet, he was also good as Walter in "The -Children of the Wood." Inimitable "in depicting heartiness," says Dr. -Doran, "ludicrous distress, grave or affected indifference, honest -bravery, insurmountable cowardice, a spirited young or an enfeebled yet -impatient old fellow, mischievous boyishness, good-humoured vulgarity, -there was no one of his time who could equal him."[589] Bannister left the -stage with a handsome fortune. Hazlitt says finely of him that his -"gaiety, good-humour, cordial feeling, and natural spirits shone through -his characters and lighted them up like a transparency."[590] His kind -heart and honest face were as well known as his good-humoured smile and -buoyant activity. "Jack," says Lamb, "was beloved for his sweet, -good-natured moral pretensions." He gave us "a downright concretion of a -Wapping sailor, a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar." - -Mrs. Jordan's mother was the daughter of a Welsh clergyman who had eloped -with an officer. The débutante came out at Drury Lane in 1785 as the -heroine of "The Country Girl." In 1789 she became the mistress of the Duke -of Clarence. Good-natured, and endowed with a sweet clear voice, she -played rakes with the airiest grace, and excelled in representing arch, -buoyant girls, spirited, buxom, lovable women, and handsome hoydens. The -critics complained of her as vulgar. Late in life she retired to France, -and died in 1815. "Her wealth," says Dr. Doran, "was lavished on the Duke -of Clarence, who left her to die untended; but when he became king he -ennobled all her children, the eldest being made Earl of Munster." -Hazlitt, speaking of Mrs. Jordan, says eloquently, her voice "was a -cordial to the heart, because it came from it full, like the luscious -juice of the rich grape. To hear her laugh was to drink nectar. Her smile -was sunshine; her talking far above singing; her singing was like the -twanging of Cupid's bow. Her body was large, soft, and generous like the -rose. Miss Kelly, if we may accept the judgment of Hazlitt, was in -comparison a mere dexterous, knowing chambermaid. Jordan was all -exuberance and grace. It was her capacity for enjoyment, and the contrast -she presented to everything sharp, angular, and peevish, that delighted -the spectator. She was Cleopatra turned into an oyster wench."[591] -Charles Lamb praises Mrs. Jordan for her tenderness in such parts as -Ophelia, Helena, and Viola, and for her "steady, melting eye."[592] - -Robert William Elliston was the son of a Bloomsbury watchmaker, and was -born in 1774. He appeared in London first in 1797, and obtained a triumph -as Sir Edward Mortimer, a part in which Kemble had failed. He is praised -by Dr. Doran as one of the best of stage gentlemen, not being so reserved -and languid as Charles Kemble. All the qualities that go to the making of -a gallant were conspicuous in his Duke Aranza--self-command, kindness, -dignity, good-humour, a dash of satire, and true amatory fire; but then -his voice was too pompously deep in soliloquy, and he was too genteel in -low comedy. As a stage lover he was impassioned, tender, and courteous, -yet he would persist in one uniform dress--blue coat, white waistcoat, and -white knee-breeches. Yet, though a self-deceiving and pompous humbug, -Charles Lamb reverenced him and Leigh Hunt admired his acting. In turn -proprietor of the Olympic, the Surrey, and Drury Lane theatres, Elliston -outlived his fame and fortune. When acting George IV. in a sham coronation -procession, having taken too much preliminary wine, he became so affected -at the delight of the audience that he gave them his grandest benediction -in these affecting words, "Bless you, my people!" When Douglas Jerrold -saved the Surrey Theatre by his "Black-eyed Susan," Elliston declared such -services should be acknowledged by a presentation of plate--not by -himself, however, but by Jerrold's own friends. Elliston's last appearance -was in 1826, and he died in 1831. - -Hull, a heavy, useful, and intelligent actor, left the stage in 1807. -Holman, an exaggerating actor, had a career that lasted from 1784 to 1800. -Munden, the broadest of farceurs and drollest of grimacers, appeared first -in 1790 as Sir Francis Gripe, and last, in 1823, as Sir Robert Bramble and -Dozey. His Crack in "The Turnpike Gate" was one of his greatest parts; but -I am afraid he would be now thought too much of the buffoon. Charles Lamb -devotes a whole essay to the subject of Munden's acting as Cockletop, Sir -Christopher Curry, Old Dornton, and the Cobbler of Preston. He says of -him: "When you think he has exhausted his battery of looks in -unaccountable warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an -entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He, and he alone, makes faces. -In the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands out as single and -unaccompanied as Hogarth. Can any man wonder like him, any man see ghosts -like him, or fight with his own shadow?"[593] - -Lamb praises Dodd for a face formally flat in Foppington, frothily pert in -Fattle, and blankly expressive of no meaning in Acres and Fribble.[594] - -In 1792 Sheridan's affairs began to get entangled. The surveyors reported -the theatre unsafe and incapable of repair, and it was therefore resolved -to build a new one at a cost of £150,000 by means of 300 shares at £500 -each. In the meantime, while Sheridan was paying interest for his loan, -the company was playing at an enormous expense on borrowed stages; and the -careless and profuse manager, his prudent wife now dead, was maintaining -three establishments--one at Wanstead, one at Isleworth, and one in Jermyn -Street. In 1794 a new Theatre was built by Henry Holland. - -In 1798 that masterpiece of false, hysterical German sentiment, "The -Stranger" (translated from Kotzebue), was rewritten by Sheridan, and -brought out at his own theatre. This was one of the earliest importations -of the Germanism that Canning afterwards, for political purposes, so -pungently denounced in the _Anti-Jacobin_. The great success of "The -Stranger," and the false taste it had implanted, induced Sheridan, in -1799, to bring out the play of "Pizarro." He wrote scarcely anything in it -but the speech of Rolla, which is itself an amplification of a few lines -of the original. - -The new theatre was to have cost £75,000, and the £150,000 subscribed for -was to have paid the architect and defrayed the mortgage debts. The -theatre, however, cost more than £150,000; only part of the debt was paid -off, and a claim of £70,000 remained upon the property.[595] - -On the 24th of February 1809, while the House of Commons was occupied with -Mr. Ponsonby's motion on the conduct of the war in Spain, the debate was -interrupted by a great glare of light through the windows. When the cause -was ascertained, so much sympathy was felt for Sheridan that it was -proposed to adjourn; but Sheridan calmly rose and said, "that whatever -might be the extent of his private calamity, he hoped it would not -interfere with the public business of the country." He then left the -house, and is said to have reached Drury Lane just in time to find all -hope of saving his property abandoned. According to one story he coolly -proceeded to the Piazza Coffee-house and discussed a bottle of wine, -replying to a friend who praised his philosophic calmness, "Why, a man may -surely be allowed to take a glass of wine _at his own fireside_."[596] He -is said to have been most grieved at the loss of a harpsichord that had -belonged to his wife. - -Encouraged by the opening presented, and at the tardiness of shareholders -to rebuild, speculators now proposed to erect a third theatre; but this -design Sheridan and his friends defeated, and Mr. Whitbread, the great -brewer of Chiswell Street, Finsbury, who afterwards destroyed himself, -exerted his energies in the rebuilding of it. - -By the new agreement of 1811, Sheridan was to receive for his moiety -£24,000, and an additional sum of £4000 for the property of the -fruit-offices and the reversion of boxes and shares; his son also -receiving his quarter of the patent property. Out of this sum the claims -of the Linley family and other creditors were to be satisfied. - -Overwhelmed with debt, dogged by bailiffs, hurried to and from -sponging-houses, Sheridan, now a broken-down man, died in 1816, -reproaching the committee with his last breath for refusing to lend him -more money. - -The new theatre, built by Mr. B. Wyatt, had been opened in October 1812, -the performances consisting of "Hamlet" and "The Devil to Pay." The house -held 800 persons less than its predecessor. The proprietors being anxious -to have an opening address equal to that of Dr. Johnson, advertised for a -suitable poem, and professed a desire for an open and free competition. -The verses were, like Oxford competition poems, to be marked with a word, -number, or motto, and the appended sealed paper containing the name of -the writer was not to be opened unless the poem was successful. They -offered twenty guineas as the prize, and extended the time for sending in -the poems. The result was an avalanche of mediocrity, till the secretary's -desk and the treasury-office ran over with poems. The proprietors were in -despair, when Lord Holland prevailed on Lord Byron to write an address, at -the risk, as the poet feared, "of offending a hundred rival scribblers and -a discerning public." The poem was written and accepted, and delivered on -the special night by Mr. Elliston, who performed the part of Hamlet. The -address was voted tame by the newspapers, with the exception of the -following passage-- - - "As soars this fane to emulate the last, - Oh, might we draw our omens from the past? - Some hour propitious to our prayers, may boast - Names such as hallow still the dome we lost. - On Drury first your Siddons' thrilling art - O'erwhelmed the gentlest, stormed the sternest heart; - On Drury Garrick's latest laurels grew; - Here your last tears retiring Roscius drew, - Sigh'd his last thanks, and wept his last adieu." - -The brothers Smith eagerly seized this fine opportunity for parody, and -the "Rejected Addresses" made all London shake with laughter. - -The leaden statue of Shakspere over the entrance of old Drury Lane was -executed by Cheere of Hyde Park Corner--"the leaden figure man" formerly -so celebrated--from a design by Scheemakers, a native of Antwerp and the -master of Nollekens. When this sculptor first went to Rome to study, he -travelled on foot, and had to sell his shirts by the way in order to -procure funds. Mr. Whitbread, one of Sheridan's creditors, gave the figure -to the theatre.[597] - -Mr. Whitbread and a committee had erected the house and purchased the old -patent rights by means of a subscription of £400,000. Of this £20,000 was -paid to Sheridan, and a like sum to the other holders of the patent. The -creditors of the old house took a quarter of what they claimed in full -payment, and the Duke of Bedford abandoned a claim of £12,000. The company -consisted of Elliston, Dowton, Bannister, Rae, Wallack, Wewitzer, Miss -Smith, Mrs. Davison, Mrs. Glover, Miss Kelly, and Miss Mellon. Mr. C. -Kemble and Grimaldi were at the other house, that the next season boasted -a strong company--John and Charles Kemble, Conway, Terry, and Matthews. At -Drury Lane no new piece was brought out except Coleridge's "Remorse." At -Covent Garden there was played "Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp." - -At Drury Lane, says Dr. Doran, neither new pieces nor new players -succeeded, till on the 20th of January 1814, the play-bills announced the -first appearance of an actor from Exeter, whose coming changed the evil -fortunes of the house, scared the old correct, dignified, and classical -school of actors, and brought again to the memories of those who could -look back as far as Garrick the fire, nature, impulse, and terrible -earnestness--all, in short, but the versatility, of that great master in -his art. This player was Edmund Kean. - -Kean was born in 1787. He was the son of a low and worthless actress, -whose father, George Saville Carey, a poor singer, reciter, and mimic, -hanged himself. The father of Carey was a dramatist and song-writer, the -natural son of the great Lord Halifax, who died in 1695. Kean's father is -unknown: he may have been Aaron Kean the tailor, or Moses Kean the -builder. In early life the genius was cabin-boy, strolling player, dancer -on the tight-rope, and elocutionist at country fairs. His first -appearance, as Shylock, in 1814, was a triumph. That night he came home -and promised his wife a carriage, and his son Charles (then in his cradle) -an education at Eton. In Richard III. he soon attained great triumphs. He -was audacious, sneering, devilish, almost supernatural in his cruelty and -hypocrisy. His Hamlet, though graceful and earnest, was inferior to his -Othello; but Kemble thought that the latter was a mistake, Othello being -palpably "a slow man." When Southey saw Kean and Young, he said, "It is -the arch-fiend himself." When Kean played Sir Giles Overreach, and -removed it from Kemble's repertory, his wife received him on his return -from the theatre with the anxious question, "What did Lord Essex think of -it?" The triumphant reply is well known: "D---- Lord Essex, Mary! the pit -rose at me." - -In 1822, after a visit to America, Kean appeared with his rival Young in a -series of characters, though he never liked "the Jesuit," as he used to -call Young. In 1827, Kean's son Charles appeared as Norval at Drury Lane, -while his father, now sinking fast, was acting at Covent Garden. In 1833 -Kean, shattered and exhausted, played Othello to his son's Iago, and died -two months after. - -Hazlitt has a fine comparison between Kean and Mrs. Siddons. Mrs. Siddons -never seemed to task her powers to the utmost. Her least word seemed to -float to the end of the stage; the least motion of her hand commanded -obedience. "Mr. Kean," he says, "is all effort, all violence, all extreme -passion; he is possessed with a fury and demon that leaves him no repose, -no time for thought, nor room for imagination.[598] Mr. Kean's imagination -appears not to have the principles of joy or hope or love in it. He seems -chiefly sensible to pain and to the passion that springs from it, and to -the terrible energies of mind or body which are necessary to grapple with -or to avert it."[599] - -The new theatre had small success under its committee of proprietors, and -soon became involved in debt and unable to pay the performers. In 1814 it -was let to the highest bidder, Elliston, who took it at the yearly rental -of £10,300, and expended £15,000 on repairs. Captain Polhill afterwards -became the lessee, and sunk in it large sums of money. The two next -lessees, Messrs. Bunn and Hammond, became bankrupts. Towards the middle of -1840 the house was reopened, after a closing of some months, for the then -new entertainments of promenade concerts. - -Grimaldi, the son of Queen Charlotte's dentist, was born in 1779. He made -his début at Drury lane in a "Robinson Crusoe" pantomime in 1781, and -retired from the stage in 1828. His first part of any importance was -Orson. He remained at Drury Lane for nearly five-and-twenty years, and -then played alternately at Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells every night. -"He was the very beau-ideal of thieves," says a critic of the time: -"robbery became a science in his hand; you forgave the larceny from the -humour with which Joe indulged his irresistible weakness."[600] He was -famous for his rich ringing laugh, his complacent chuckle, the roll of his -eyes, the drop of his chin, and his elongated respiration. But we must go -back to the singers. - -Mrs. Crouch, the great singer, and the daughter of a Gray's Inn Lane -attorney, was articled to Mr. Linley, patentee of Drury Lane, in 1779, and -in 1780 made her début as Mandane. In 1785 she married a lieutenant in the -navy, but returned to the stage in 1786, to be eclipsed by Mrs. -Billington. In 1787 she acted with Kelly at Drury Lane in the opera of -"Richard Coeur de Lion," and in the same year, in the character of Selima, -sang the once popular song of "No Flower that blows is like the Rose." In -1788 she played Lady Elinor in "The Haunted Tower" at Drury Lane. She died -in 1804. - -Mrs. Billington, the daughter of a German musician, was born in London in -1765. In 1801-2 she sang alternately at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. She -died in 1818. Bianchi wrote for this lady the opera of "Inez de Castro." -She is said to have played and sung at sight Mozart's "Clemenza di Tito;" -her voice ranged from D to G in altissimo. She indulged too much in -ornament, but was especially celebrated for her "Soldier tired of War's -Alarms." - -John Braham, a Jew pencil-boy--so the musical _on dit_ goes--was brought -up by a singer at the Duke's Place Synagogue. He made his début in 1787. -He appeared first, in 1796, in Storace's opera of "Mahmoud," at Drury -Lane. The compass of his song, "Let Glory's Clarion," extended over -seventeen notes. He died in 1856. - -Storace, born in 1763, died in 1796. He was the son of an Italian -double-bass player, was engaged by Linley to compose for Drury Lane, and -for that theatre wrote the following operas:--"The Siege of Belgrade," -1792: "Lodoiska," 1794; and "The Iron Chest," 1796. This brilliant young -man wrote chiefly for Braham and Kelly. - -Madame Storace made her début at Drury Lane, in 1789, in her brother's -comic opera of "The Haunted Tower." - -Bishop, who was born about 1780, produced his opera of "The Mysterious -Bride" at Drury Lane in 1808. In 1809, the night preceding the fire, -Bishop produced his first great success, "The Circassian Bride," the score -of which was burnt. After being long at Covent Garden, Bishop, in 1826, -produced his "Aladdin" at Drury Lane to compete with Weber's "Oberon" at -Covent Garden. In 1827 he adapted Rossini's "Turco in Italia;" and in -1830, for Drury Lane, he adapted Rossini's "William Tell." - -Michael Kelly, born in 1762, made his first appearance at Drury Lane in -1787. In his jovial career Kelly composed "The Castle Spectre," "Blue -Beard" (the march in which is very pompously oriental and fine), "Of Age -To-morrow," "Deaf and Dumb," etc. He also wrote many Italian, English, and -French songs, and had a good tenor voice. He became superintendent of -music at the Drury Lane Theatre, and died in 1826. He was an agreeable -man, and much esteemed by George IV. Parkes accuses him of a want of -knowledge of harmony, and of stealing from the Italians. - -In May 1836 Madame Malibran (de Beriot) appeared at Drury Lane as Isolina -in Balfe's "Maid of Artois," which was a great success. At the close of -the season she went abroad. Returned in September, she sang at the -Manchester Festival, and after a duet with Madame Caradori Allen, was -taken ill, and died a few days after. This gifted woman, the daughter of a -Spanish Jew (an opera-singer), was born in 1808. - -To return to our last batch of actors. James Wallack, born in 1792, began -to be known about 1816, and in 1820 was principal tragedian at Drury -Lane. His Hamlet, Rolla, and Romeo were very manly and bearable. He -afterwards became stage-manager at Drury Lane, and was praised for his -light comedy. - -Charles Young, who played with Kean at Drury Lane, was a dignified but -rather cold actor. Booth appeared also with Kean in 1817, and again in -1820 with Wallack and Cooper. - -Mrs. Mardyn (the supposed mistress of Lord Byron) appeared on the Drury -Lane stage in 1815. She was boisterous, but so full of girlish gaiety and -reckless wildness that she became for a short time the favourite of the -town. She failed, however, when she reappeared in 1833 in a tragic part. - -Charming Mrs. Nisbett, "that peach of a woman," as Douglas Jerrold used to -call her, died in 1858, aged forty-five. The daughter of a drunken Irish -officer who took to the stage, she married an officer in the Life Guards -in 1831; but on the death of her husband by an accident, she returned to -her first love in 1832, and reappeared at Drury Lane. Her great triumph -was "The Love Chase," which was produced at the Haymarket in 1837, and ran -for nearly one hundred nights. It was worth going a hundred miles to hear -Mrs. Nisbett's merry, ringing, silvery laugh. - -Irish Johnstone, who died in 1828, is described by Hazlitt as acting at -Drury Lane, "with his supple knees, his hat twisted round in his hand, his -good-humoured laugh, his arched eyebrows, his insinuating leer, and his -lubricated brogue curling round the ear like a well-oiled -moustachio."[601] - -Oxberry quitted Drury Lane with Elliston in 1820. In 1821 he took the -Craven's Head Chop-house in Drury Lane, where he used to say to his -guests, "We vocalise on a Friday, conversationalise on a Sunday, and -chopise every day." His best characters were Leo Luminati, Slender, and -Abel Day. Emery surpassed him in Tyke, Little Knight, and Robin Roughhead. - -Farren, who was born about 1787, made his début at Covent Garden in 1818. -He was for some time at Drury Lane, and latterly manager of the Olympic. -In old men he took the place of Dowton. His finest performance was Lord -Ogleby, but in his prime he excelled also in Sir Peter Teazle, Sir Anthony -Absolute, Sir Fretful Plagiary, and the Bailie Nicol Jarvie. - -John Pritt Harley was the son of a silk-mercer, and originally a clerk in -Chancery Lane. He was born in 1786 or 1790. He made his début at the -Lyceum in 1815, in "The Devil's Bridge." His first appearance at Drury -Lane was in 1815, as Lissardo in "The Wonder." In farce he was -good-humoured, bustling, and droll; and he excelled in Caleb Quotem, Peter -Fidget, Bottom, and many Shaksperean characters. He died only a year or -two ago, repeating, it is said, this line of one of his old parts: "I have -an exposition of sleep come upon me." - -Miss Kelly, born in 1790, was at the Lyceum in 1808, and went from thence -to Drury Lane. She sang in operas, and was admirable in genteel comedy and -domestic tragedy. Her romps were scarcely inferior to Mrs. Jordan's; her -waiting-maids were equal to Mrs. Orger's. Charles Lamb, writing in 1818, -says of her-- - - "Your tears have passion in them, and a grace, - A genuine freshness which our hearts avow; - Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace, - That vanish and return we know not how." - -Miss Kelly was twice shot at while acting. In both cases the cruel -assailants were rejected admirers. - -In 1850 Mrs. Glover took her farewell benefit at Drury Lane; Farren and -Madame Vestris taking parts in the performance--Mrs. Glover playing Mrs. -Malaprop. She was born in 1779, and had made her first appearance as -Elvina in good Hannah More's dull tragedy, at Covent Garden, in 1797. -Beautiful in youth, Mrs. Glover had gracefully passed from sighing Juliets -and maundering Elvinas into Mrs. Heidelbergs, Mrs. Candours, and the Nurse -in "Romeo and Juliet." - -Robert Keeley, who was brought up a compositor, was born in Grange Court, -Carey Street, in 1794. He acted at Drury Lane as early as 1819, and at the -Adelphi as early as 1826 as Jemmy Green in "Tom and Jerry." In 1834 we -find the critics ranking him below Liston and Reeve, but he was very -popular in his representations of cowardly fear and stupid chuckling -astonishment. He left the stage for several years before his death. Miss -Helen Faucit, born in 1816, was the original heroine of Sir Bulwer -Lytton's and Mr. Browning's plays. Her Beatrice, Imogen, and Rosalind were -admirable, and her Antigone was a great success. She retired from the -stage in 1851, when she married Mr. Theodore Martin, the accomplished -translator of Horace and Catullus, and the joint author with Professor -Aytoun of those admirable burlesque ballads of "Bon Gaultier." - -William Charles Macready, the son of a Dublin upholsterer, appeared in -London first in 1816. Kean approved his Orestes, and he soon advanced to -Rob Roy, Virginius, and Coriolanus. He then removed to Drury Lane, and -distinguished himself as Caius Gracchus and William Tell, in two of Mr. -Sheridan Knowles's plays. He reappeared at Drury Lane in 1826. The critics -said that he failed in Rolla and Hamlet, but excelled in Rob Roy, -Coriolanus, and Richard. He himself preferred his own Hamlet. They -complained that he had a burr in his enunciation, and a catching of the -breath--that he was too fond of declamation and violent transitions; -others thought him too heavy and colloquial. In 1826 he went to America, -where the fatal riot of Forrest's partisans occurred, and twenty-two men -were killed. His season closed at Drury Lane in 1843. His benefit took -place in 1851, and he then retired from the stage to live the life of a -quiet, useful country gentleman in the west of England. He died in 1873, -and lies buried at Kensal Green. - -Mr. Charles Kean, struggling with a bad voice and a mean figure, had a -hard fight for success, and won it only by the most dauntless -perseverance. Born in 1811, he appeared for the first time upon the boards -as Norval, in 1827. After repeated failures in London and much success in -the provinces and America, Mr. Kean accepted an engagement at Drury Lane -in 1838--Mr. Bunn offering him £50 a night. He succeeded in Hamlet, and -was presented with a silver vase of the value of £200. In Richard and Sir -Giles Overreach he also triumphed. In 1843 Mr. Kean renewed his engagement -with Mr. Bunn. Before retiring from the stage and starting for Australia, -Mr. and Mrs. Kean performed for many nights at Drury Lane. Charles Kean -died in 1868. - -Miss Ellen Tree first performed at Drury Lane as Violante in "The Wonder." -She married Mr. C. Kean in 1842, and aided him in those -antiquarianly-correct spectacles that for a time rendered a scholarly, -careful, but scarcely first-rate actor popular in the metropolis. - -We have room in this brief and imperfect _résumé_ of theatrical history -for only two pictures of Drury Lane. One is in 1800, when George III. was -fired at by Hatfield as he entered the house to witness Cribber's comedy -of "She Would and She Would Not." When the Marquis of Salisbury would have -drawn him away, the brave, obstinate king said--"Sir, you discompose me as -well as yourself: I shall not stir one step." The queen and princesses -were in tears all the evening, but George III. sat calm and collected, -staring through his single-barrel opera-glass. In 1783 the king, queen, -and Prince of Wales went to Drury Lane to see Mrs. Siddons play Isabella. -They sat under a dome of crimson velvet and gold. The king wore a -Quaker-coloured dress with gold buttons, while the handsome scapegrace -prince was adorned in blue Genoa velvet. - -Mr. Planché, the accomplished writer of extravaganzas and the _Somerset -Herald_, brought out his burlesque of "Amoroso, King of Little Britain," -at Drury Lane in 1818. He afterwards wrote the libretto of "Maid Marian" -for Mr. Bishop, and that of "Oberon" for Weber. In 1828 his "Charles XII." -was produced at Drury Lane. - -On Mr. Falconer's clever imitative experiments we have no room to dilate. -The "Peep o' Day," a piece which reproduced all the "Colleen Bawn" -effects, was the best. - -And now leaving the theatres for meaner places, we pass on to the district -of the butchers. Clare Market stands on a spot formerly called Clement's -Inn Fields, and was built by the Earl of Clare, who lived close by, in -1657. The family names, Denzil, Holles, etc., are retained in the -neighbouring streets. - -This market became notorious in Pope's time for the buffoonery, noisy -impudence, and extravagances of Orator Henley, a sort of ecclesiastical -outlaw of a not very religious age, who tried to make his impudence and -conceit pass for genius. This street-orator, the son of a Leicestershire -vicar, was born in 1692. After going to St. John's College, Cambridge, he -returned home, kept a school, wrote a poem called "Esther," and began a -Universal Grammar in ten languages. Heated by an itch for reforming, and -tired of the country, or driven away, as some say, by a scandalous -embarrassment, he hurried to London, and for a short time did duty at a -chapel in Bedford Row. During this time, under the Earl of Macclesfield's -patronage, he translated Pliny's epistles, Vertot's works, and -Montfaucon's Italian travels. He then competed for a lecturership in -Bloomsbury, but failed, the parishioners not disliking his language or his -doctrine, but complaining that he threw himself about too much in the -pulpit. - -Now, "regular action" was one of Henley's peculiar prides. The rejection -hurt his vanity and nearly drove him crazy. Losing his temper, he rushed -into the vestry-room. "Blockheads!" he roared, "are _you_ qualified to -judge of the degree of action necessary for a preacher of God's Word? Were -you able to read, or had got sufficient sense, you sorry knaves, to -understand the renowned orator of antiquity, he would tell you almost the -only requisite of a public speaker was ACTION, ACTION, ACTION. But I -despise and defy you: _provoco ad populum_; the public shall decide -between us." He then hurried from the room, soon afterwards published his -probationary discourse, and taking a room in Newport Market, started as -quack divine and public lecturer. - -But he first consulted the eccentric and heretical Whiston, whom Swift -bantered so ruthlessly--Whiston being, like Henley, a Leicestershire -man--as to whether he should incur any legal penalties by officiating as a -separatist from the Church of England. Whiston, himself an expelled -professor, tried to dissuade the Orator from his wild project. -Disagreement and abuse followed, and the correspondence ended with the -following final bomb-shell from the violent demagogue:-- - - "To Mr. WILLIAM WHISTON, - - "Take notice that I give you warning not to enter my room in Newport - Market, at your peril. - - "JOHN HENLEY."[602] - -The Orator patronised divinity on Sundays, and secular subjects on -Wednesdays and Fridays. The admittance was one shilling. He also published -outrageous pamphlets and a weekly farrago called The _Hyp-Doctor_, -intended to antidote _The Craftsman_, and for which pompous nonsense Sir -Robert Walpole is said to have given him £100 a year. He also attacked -eminent persons, even Pope, from his pulpit. Every Saturday an -advertisement of the subject of his next week's oration appeared in the -_Daily Advertiser_, preceded by a sarcastic or libellous motto, and -sometimes an offer that if any one at home or abroad could be found to -surpass him, he would surrender his Oratory at once to his conqueror. - -In 1729 Henley, growing perhaps more popular, removed to Clare Market, -where the butchers became his warm partisans and served as his body-guard. -The following are two of his shameless advertisements:-- - -"At the Oratory in Newport Market, to-morrow, at half an hour after ten, -the sermon will be on the Witch of Endor. At half an hour after five, the -theological lecture will be on the conversion and original of the Scottish -nation and of the Picts and Caledonians, St. Andrew's relics and -panegyric, and the character and mission of the Apostles. - -"On Wednesday, at six or near the matter, take your chance, will be a -medley oration on the history, merits, and praise of confusion and of -confounders, in the road and out of the way. - -"On Friday will be that on Dr. Faustus and Fortunatus and conjuration. -After each the Chimes of the Times, Nos. 23 and 24." - -Very shortly afterwards he advertised from Clare Market:-- - -1. "The postil will be on the turning of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. -2. The sermon will be on the necessary power and attractive force which -religion gives the spirit of a man with God and good spirits. - -2. "At five--1. The postil will be on this point:--In what language our -Saviour will speak the last sentence to mankind. - -3. "The lecture will be on Jesus Christ's sitting at the right hand of -God; where that is; the honours and lustre of his inauguration; the -learning, criticism, and piety of that glorious article. - -"The Monday's orations will shortly be resumed. On Wednesday the oration -will be on the skits of the fashions, or a live gallery of family pictures -in all ages; ruffs, muffs, puffs manifold; shoes, wedding-shoes, -two-shoes, slip-shoes, heels, clocks, pantofles, buskins, pantaloons, -garters, shoulder-knots, periwigs, head-dresses, modesties, tuckers, -farthingales, corkins, minnikins, slammakins, ruffles, round-robins, fans, -patches; dame, forsooth, madam, my lady, the wit and beauty of my granmum; -Winnifred, Joan, Bridget, compared with our Winny, Jenny, and Biddy: fine -ladies and pretty gentlewomen; being a general view of the _beau monde_ -from before Noah's flood to the year '29. On Friday will be something -better than last Tuesday. After each a bob at the times." - -This very year, 1729, the _Dunciad_ was published, and in it this Rabelais -of the pulpit had, of course, his niche. Pope had been accused of taking -the bread out of people's mouths. He denies this, and asks if "Colley -(Cibber) has not still his lord, and Henley his butchers;" and ends with -these lines, which, however, had no effect, for Henley went on ranting for -eighteen years longer-- - - "But where each science lifts its modern type, - History her pot, Divinity his pipe; - While proud Philosophy repines to show, - Dishonest sight! his breeches rent below,-- - Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, - Tuning his voice and balancing his hands. - How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! - How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung! - Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain, - While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach in vain. - O great restorer of the good old stage, - Preacher at once and zany of the age! - O worthy thou of Egypt's wise abodes! - A decent priest when monkeys were the gods. - But Fate with butchers placed thy priestly stall, - Meek modern faith to murder, hack, and maul, - And bade thee live to crown Britannia's praise - In Toland's, Tindal's, and in Woolston's days."[603] - -In another place he says-- - - "Henley lay inspired beside a sink, - And to mere mortals seemed a priest in drink." - -Pope often attacked Henley in the _Grub Street Journal_, and the Orator -retaliated. A year or two after the _Essay on Man_ was published, Henley -(Dec. 1737) announced a lecture, "Whether Mr. Pope be a man of sense, in -one argument--'Whatever is is right.'" If whatever is is right, Henley -thought that nothing could be wrong; ergo, he himself was not a proper -object of satire. - -Henley's pulpit was covered with velvet and gold lace, and over his altar -was written, "The PRIMITIVE Eucharist." A contemporary journalist -describes him entering his pulpit suddenly, like a harlequin, through a -sort of trap-door at the back, and "at one large leap jumping into it and -falling to work," beating his notions into the butcher-audience -simultaneously with his hands, arms, legs, and head. - -In one of his arrogant puffs, he boasts that he has singly executed what -"would sprain a dozen of modern doctors of the tribe of Issachar;" that no -one dares to answer his challenges; that he can write, read, and study -twelve hours a day and not feel the yoke; and write three dissertations a -week without help, and put the Church in danger. He struck medals for his -tickets, with a star rising to the meridian upon them, and the vain -superscription "Ad summa" ("To the heights"), and below, "Inveniam viam -aut faciam" ("I will find a way or make one"). - -When the Orator's funds grew low, his audacity and impudence rose to their -climax. He once filled his chapel with shoemakers, whom he had attracted -by advertising that he could teach a method of making shoes with wonderful -celerity. His secret consisted in cutting the tops off old boots. His -motto to this advertisement was "Omne majus continet in se minus" ("The -greater includes the less"). - -In 1745 Henley was cited before the Privy Council for having used -seditious expressions in one of his lectures. Herring, then Archbishop of -York, had been arming his clergy, and urging every one to volunteer -against the Pretender. The Earl of Chesterfield, then Secretary of State, -urged on Henley the impropriety of ridiculing such honest exertions at a -time when rebellion actually raged in the very heart of the kingdom. "I -thought, my lord," said Henley, "that there was no harm in cracking a joke -on a _red herring_." - -During his examination, the restorer of ancient eloquence requested -permission to sit, on account of a rheumatism that was generally supposed -to be imaginary. The earl tried to turn the outlaw divine into ridicule; -but Henley's eccentric answers, odd gestures, hearty laughs, strong voice, -magisterial air, and self-possessed face were a match for his somewhat -heartless lordship. - -Being cautioned about his disrespectful remarks on certain ministers, -Henley answered gravely, "My lords, I must live." Lord Chesterfield -replied, "I don't see the necessity," and the council laughed. Upon this -Henley, remembering that the joke was Voltaire's, was somewhat irritated. -"That is a good thing, my lord," he exclaimed, "but it has been said -before." A few days after the Orator, being reprimanded and cautioned, was -dismissed as an impudent but entertaining fellow.[604] - -Dr. Herring whom the rogue ridiculed was a worthy man, who in 1747, on the -death of Potter, became Archbishop of Canterbury, and died in 1757. Swift -hated Herring for condemning the "Beggars' Opera" in a sermon at Lincoln's -Inn, and wrote accordingly: "The 'Beggars' Opera' will probably do more -good than a thousand sermons of so stupid, so injudicious, and so -prostitute a divine."[605] - -In 1748 Dr. Cobden, the Court chaplain, an odd but worthy man, incurred -the resentment of King George II. by preaching before him a sermon -entitled "A Persuasive to Chastity"--a virtue not popular then at St. -James's. He resigned his post in 1752. The text of this obnoxious sermon -was, "Take away the wicked from before the king." Henley's next Saturday's -motto was-- - - "Away with the wicked before the king, - Away with the wicked behind him; - His throne it will bless - With righteousness, - And we shall know where to find him." - -If any of the Orator's old Bloomsbury friends ever caught his eye among -the audience, he would gratify his vanity and rankling resentment by a -pause. He would then say, "You see, sir, all mankind are not exactly of -your opinion; there are, you perceive, a few sensible persons in the world -who consider me as not totally unqualified for the office I have -undertaken." His abashed adversaries, hot and confused, and with all eyes -turned on them, would retreat precipitately, and sometimes were pushed out -of the room by Henley's violent butchers. - -The Orator figures in two caricatures, attributed, as Mr. Steevens thinks, -wrongly to Hogarth. In one he is christening a child; in another he is on -a scaffold with a monkey by his side. A parson takes the money at the -door, while a butcher is porter. Modesty is in a cloud, Folly in a coach, -and there is a gibbet prepared for poor Merit. - -Henley, who latterly grew coarse, brutal, and drunken, died October 14, -1756. The _Gentleman's Magazine_ merely announces his death thus:--"Rev. -Orator Henley, aged 64." "Nollekens" Smith says that he died mad. - -It is somewhat uncertain where his Oratory stood: some say in Duke Street; -others, in the market. It was probably in Davenant's old theatre, at the -Tennis Court in Vere Street.[606] - -The beginning of one of this buffoon's ribald sermons has been preserved, -and is worth quoting to prove the miserable claptrap with which he amused -his rude audience. The text is taken from Jeremiah xvi. 16, "I will send -for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after that -I will send many hunters, and they shall hunt." - -"The former part of the text seems, as Scripture is written for our -admonition, on whom the ends of the world are come (an end of all we have -in the world), to relate to the _Dutch_, who are to be fished by us -according to Act of Parliament; for the word 'herrings' in the Act has a -figurative as well as a literal sense, and by a metaphor means Dutchmen, -who are the greatest stealers of herrings in the world; so that the drift -of the statute is, that we are to fish for Dutchmen, and catch them, -either by nets or fishing-rods in return for their repeated catching of -Englishmen, then transport them in some of Jonathan Forward's close -lighters and sell them in the West Indies, to repair the loss which our -South Sea Company endure by the Spaniards denying them the assiento, or -sale of negroes."[607] - -Among other wild sermons of Henley, we find discourses on "The Tears of -Magdalen," "St. Paul's Cloak," and "The Last Wills of the Patriarchs." He -left behind him 600 MSS., which he valued at one guinea a-piece, and 150 -volumes of commonplaces and other scholarly memoranda. They were sold for -less than £100. They had been written with great care. When Henley was -once accused that he _did all_ for lucre, he retorted "that some do -nothing for it." He once filled his room by advertising an oration on -marriage. When he got into his pulpit he shook his head at the ladies, and -said "he was afraid they oftener came to church to get husbands than to -hear the preacher." On one occasion two Oxonians whom he challenged came -followed by such a strong party that the butchers were overawed, and -Henley silently slunk away by a door behind the rostrum.[608] - -There are still popular preachers in London as greedy of praise and as -basely eager for applause as Orator Henley. Equally great buffoons, and -men equally low in moral tone, still fill some pulpits, and point the way -to a path they may never themselves take. To such unhappy self-deceivers -we can advise no better cure than a moonlight walk in Clare Market in -search of the ghost of Orator Henley. - -There was in Hogarth's time an artists' club at the Bull's Head, Clare -Market. Boitard etched some of the characters. Hogarth, Jack Laguerre, -Colley Cibber, Denis the critic (?), Boitard, Spiller the comedian, and -George Lambert, were members. Laguerre gave Spiller's portrait to the -landlord, and drew a caricature procession of his "chums." The inn was -afterwards called the "Spiller's Head." One of the wags of the club wrote -an epitaph on Spiller, beginning-- - - "The butchers' wives fall in hysteric fits, - For sure as they're alive, poor Spiller's dead; - But, thanks to Jack Laguerre, we've got his head. - - * * * * * - - He was an inoffensive, merry fellow, - When sober hipped, blithe as a bird when mellow."[609] - -The Bull's Head Tavern in Clare Market, the same place in which Hogarth's -club was held, had previously been the favourite resort of that -illustrious Jacobite, Dr. Radcliffe, who is said to have killed two -queens. Swift did not like this overbearing, ignorant, and surly humorist, -who, however, rejoiced in doing good, and left a vast sum of money to the -University of Oxford. When Bathurst, the head of Trinity College, asked -Radcliffe where his library was, he pointed to a few vials, a skeleton, -and a herbal, and replied, "There is Radcliffe's library."[610] - -[Illustration: DRURY LANE THEATRE, 1806.] - -Mrs. Bracegirdle, that excellent and virtuous actress, used to be in the -habit (says Tony Ashton) of frequently going into Clare market and giving -money to the poor unemployed basketwomen, insomuch that she could not pass -that neighbourhood without thankful acclamations from people of all -degrees. - -In 1846 there were in and about Clare Market, about 26 butchers who -slaughtered from 350 to 400 sheep weekly in the stalls and cellars. The -number killed was from 50 to 60 weekly--but in winter sometimes as many as -200. But the butchers' market has now become almost a thing of the past. - -Joe Miller formerly lay buried in a graveyard on the south side of -Portugal Street, but the graveyard is now turned to other purposes. At the -corner of Portugal Street and Lincoln's Inn Fields is the "Black Jack" -Inn, a hostelry whose name is connected with some of Jack Sheppard's -feats. - - - - -[Illustration: OLD ST. GILES'S--CHURCH LANE AND DYOT STREET, 1869.] - - -CHAPTER XIII. - -ST. GILES'S. - - -That ancient Roman military road (the Watling Street) came from Edgeware, -and passing over Hyde Park and through St. James's Park by Old Palace -Yard, once the Wool Staple, it reached the Thames. Thence it was continued -to Canterbury and the three great seaports. - -Another Roman road, the _Via Trinobantica_, which began at Southampton and -ended at Aldborough, ran through London, crossed the Watling Street at -Tyburn, and passed along Oxford Street. In latter times, says Dr. -Stukeley, the road was changed to a more southerly direction, and Holborn -was formed, leading to Newgate or the Chamberlain's Gate. - -One of the earliest tolls ever imposed in England is said to have had its -origin in St. Giles's.[611] In 1346 Edward III. granted to the Master of -the Hospital of St. Giles and to John de Holborne, a commission empowering -them to levy tolls for two years (one penny in the pound on their value) -on all cattle and merchandise passing along the public highways leading -from the old Temple, _i.e._ Holborn Bars, to the Hospital of St. Giles's, -and also along the Charing Road and another highway called Portpool, now -Gray's Inn Lane. The money was to be used in repairing the roads, which, -by the frequent passing of carts, wains, horses, and cattle, had become so -miry and deep as to be nearly impassable. The only persons exempted were -to be lords, ladies, and persons belonging to religious -establishments.[612] - -Henry V. ascended the throne in 1413, and astonished his subjects by -suddenly casting off his slough of vice, and becoming a self-restrained, -virtuous, and high-spirited king. His first care was to forget party -distinctions, and to put down the Lollards, or disciples of Wickliffe, -whom the clergy denounced as dangerous to the civil power. As a good -general secures the rear of his army before he advances, so the young king -was probably desirous to guard himself against this growing danger before -he invaded Normandy and made a clutch at the French crown. - -Arundel, the primate, urged him to indict Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, -the head of the Lollard sect. The king was averse to a prosecution, and -suggested milder means. At a conference, therefore, appointed before the -bishops and doctors in 1414, the following articles were handed Oldcastle -as tests, and the unorthodox lord was allowed two days to retract his -heresies. He was required to confess that at the sacrament the material -bread and wine are turned into Christ's very body and Christ's very -blood; that every Christian man ought to confess to an ordained priest; -that Christ ordained St. Peter and his successors as his vicars on earth; -that Christian men ought to obey the priest; and that it is profitable to -go on pilgrimages and to worship the relics and images of saints. "This is -determination of Holy Church. _How feel ye this article?_" With these -stern words ended every dogma proposed by the primate. - -Lord Cobham, who was much esteemed by the king, and had been a good -soldier under his father, repeatedly refused to profess his belief in -these tenets. The archbishop then delivered the heretic to the secular -arm, to be put to death, according to the usage of the times. The night -previous to his execution, however, Lord Cobham escaped from the Tower and -fled to Wales, where he lay hid for four years while Agincourt was being -fought, and where he must have longed to have been present with his true -sword. - -Soon after his escape, the frightened clergy spread a report that he was -in St. Giles's Fields, at the head of twenty thousand Lollards, who were -resolved to seize the king and his two brothers, the Dukes of Bedford and -Gloucester. For this imaginary plot thirty-six persons were hanged or -burnt; but the names of only three are recorded, and of these Sir Roger -Acton is the only person of distinction. - -A reward of a thousand marks was offered for Lord Cobham, and other -inducements were held out by Chicheley, the Primate Arundel's successor. -Four years, however, elapsed before the premature Protestant was -discovered and taken by Lord Powis in Wales.[613] After some blows and -blood a country-woman in the fray breaking Cobham's leg with a stool, he -was secured and sent up to London in a horse-litter. He was sentenced to -be drawn on a hurdle to the gallows in St. Giles's Fields, and to be -hanged over a fire, in order to inflict on him the utmost pain. - -He was brought from the Tower on the 25th of December 1418, and his arms -bound behind him. He kept a very cheerful countenance as he was drawn to -the field where his assumed treason had been committed. When he reached -the gallows, he fell devoutly on his knees and piously prayed God to -forgive his enemies. The cruel preparations for his torment struck no -terror in him, nor shook the constancy of the martyr. He bore everything -bravely as a soldier, and with the resignation of a Christian. Then he was -hung by the middle with chains and consumed alive in the fire, praising -God's name as long as his life lasted. - -He was accused by his enemies of holding that there was no such thing as -free will; that all sin was inevitable; and that God could not have -prevented Adam's sin, nor have pardoned it without the satisfaction of -Christ.[614] - -Fuller says of him: "Stage-poets have themselves been very bold with, and -others very merry at, the memory of Sir John Oldcastle (Lord Cobham), whom -they have fancied a boon companion or jovial roysterer, and yet a coward -to boot, contrary to the credit of the chronicles, owning him to be a -martial man of merit. Sir John Falstaff hath derided the memory of Sir -John Oldcastle, and of late is substituted buffoon in his place; but it -matters us little what petulant priests or what malicious poets have -written against him." - -The gallows had been removed from the Elms at Smithfield in 1413, the -first year of Henry V.; but Tyburn was a place of execution as early as -1388.[615] The St. Giles's gallows was set up at the north corner of the -hospital wall, between the termination of High Street and Crown Street, -opposite to where the Pound stood. - -The manor of St. Giles was anciently divided from Bloomsbury by a great -fosse called Blemund's Ditch. The Doomsday Book contains no mention of -this district, nor indeed of London at all, except of ten acres of land -nigh Bishopsgate, belonging to St. Paul's, and a vineyard in Holborn, -belonging to the Crown. This yard is supposed to have stood on the site of -the Vine Tavern (now destroyed), a little to the east of Kingsgate -Street.[616] - -Blemund's Ditch was a line of defence running nearly parallel with the -north side of Holborn, and connecting itself to the east with the Fleet -brook. It was probably of British origin.[617] On the north-west of -London, in the Roman times, there were marshes and forests, and even as -late as Elizabeth, Marylebone and St. John's Wood were almost all chase. - -The manor was crown property in the Norman times, for Matilda, daughter of -Malcolm king of Scotland and the queen of Henry I., built a leper hospital -there, and dedicated it to St. Giles. The same good woman erected a -hospital at Cripplegate, and another at St. Katharine's, near the Tower, -and founded a priory within Aldgate. The hospital of St. Giles sheltered -forty lepers, one clerk, a messenger, the master, and several matrons; the -queen gave 60s. a year to each leper. The inmates of lazar hospitals were -in the habit of begging in the market-places. - -The patron saint, St. Giles, was an Athenian of the seventh century, who -lived as a hermit in a forest near Nismes. One day some hunters, pursuing -a hind that he had tamed, struck the Greek with an arrow as he protected -it, but the good man still went on praying, and refused all recompense for -the injury. The French king in vain attempted to entice the saint from his -cell, which in time, however, grew first into a monastery, and then into a -town.[618] - -This hospital was built on the site of the old parish church, and it -occupied eight acres. It stood a little to the west of the present church, -where Lloyd's Court stands or stood; and its gardens reached between High -Street and Hog Lane, now Crown Street, to the Pound, which used to stand -nearly opposite to the west end of Meux's Brewhouse. It was surrounded by -a triangular wall, running in a line with Crown Street to somewhere near -the Cock and Pye Fields (afterwards the Seven Dials), in a line with -Monmouth Street, and thence east and west up High Street, joining near the -Pound. - -Unwholesome diet and the absence of linen seem to have encouraged -leprosy, which was probably a disease of Eastern origin. In 1179 the -Lateran Council decreed that lepers should keep apart, and have churches -and churchyards of their own. It was therefore natural to build hospitals -for lepers outside large towns. King Henry II., for the health of the -souls of his grandfather and grandmother, granted the poor lepers a second -60s. each to be paid yearly at the feast of St. Michael, and 30s. more out -of his Surrey rents to buy them lights. He also confirmed to them the -grant of a church at Feltham, near Hounslow. In Henry III.'s reign, Pope -Alexander IV. issued a bull to confirm these privileges. Edward I. granted -the hospital two charters in 1300 and 1303; and in Edward II.'s reign so -many estates were granted to it that it became very rich. Edward III. made -St. Giles a cell of Burton St. Lazar in Leicestershire. This annexation -led to quarrels, and to armed resistance against the visitations of Robert -Archbishop of Canterbury. In this reign the great plague broke out, and -the king commanded the wards of the city to issue proclamations and remove -all lepers. It is strange that St. Giles's should have been the resort of -pariahs from the very beginning. - -Burton St. Lazar (a manor sold in 1828 for £30,000) is still celebrated -for its cheeses. It remained a flourishing hospital from the reign of -Stephen till Henry VIII. suppressed it. St. Giles's sank in importance -after this absorption, and finally fell in 1537 with its larger brother. -By a deed of exchange the greedy king obtained forty-eight acres of land, -some marshes, and two inns. Six years after the king gave St. Giles's to -John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, High Admiral of England, who fitted up the -principal part of the hospital for his own residence. Two years after Lord -Lisle sold the manor to Wymond Carew, Esq. The mansion was situated -westward of the church and facing it. It was afterwards occupied by the -celebrated Alice, Duchess of Dudley, who died there in the reign of -Charles II., aged ninety. This house was subsequently the residence of -Lord Wharton. It divided Lloyd's Court from Denmark Street. - -The master's house, "The White House," stood on the site of Dudley Court, -and was given by the duchess to the parish as a rectory-house. The wall -which surrounded the hospital gardens and orchards was not entirely -removed till 1639. - -Early in the fourteenth century the parish of St. Giles, including the -hospital inmates, numbered only one hundred inhabitants. In King John's -reign it was laid out in garden plots and cottages. In Henry III.'s reign -it was a scattered country village, with a few shops and a stone cross, -where the High Street now is. As far back as 1225 a blacksmith's shop -stood at the north-west end of Drury Lane, and remained there till its -removal in 1575. - -In Queen Elizabeth's reign the Holborn houses did not run farther than Red -Lion Street; the road was then open as far as the present Hart Street, -where a garden wall commenced near Broad Street, St. Giles's, and the end -of Drury Lane, where a cluster of houses on the right formed the chief -part of the village, the rest being scattered houses. The hospital -precincts were at this time surrounded by trees. Beyond this, north and -south, all was country; and avenues of trees marked out the Oxford and -other roads. There was no house from Broad Street, St. Giles's, to Drury -House at the top of Wych Street.[619] - -The lower part of Holborn was paved in the reign of Henry VI., in 1417; -and in 1542 (33d Henry VIII.) it was completed as far as St. Giles's, -being very full of pits and sloughs, and perilous and noisome to all on -foot or horseback. The first increase of buildings in this district was on -the north side of Broad Street. Three edicts of 1582, 1593, and 1602 -evince the alarm of Government at the increase of inhabitants and prohibit -further building under severe penalties. The first proclamation, dated -from Nonsuch Palace, in Surrey, assigns the reason of these -prohibitions:--1. The difficulty of governing more people without new -officers and fresh jurisdictions. 2. The difficulty of supplying them with -food and fuel at reasonable rates. 3. The danger of plague and the injury -to agriculture. Regulations were also issued to prevent the further -resort of country people to town, and the lord mayor took oaths to enforce -these proclamations. But London burst through these foolish and petty -restraints as Samson burst the green withs. In 1580 the resident -foreigners in the capital had increased from 3762 to 6462 persons, the -majority being Dutch who had fled from the Spaniards, and Huguenots who -had escaped from France after the massacre of St. Bartholomew. St. Giles's -grew, especially to the east and west, round the hospital. The girdle wall -was mostly demolished soon after 1595. Holborn, stretching westward, with -its fair houses, lodgings for gentlemen, and inns for travellers,[620] had -nearly reached it. In Aggas's map, cattle graze amid intersecting -footpaths, where Great Queen Street now is. There were then only two or -three houses in Covent Garden, but in 1606 the east side of Drury Lane was -built; in the assessment of 1623 upwards of twenty courtyards and alleys -are mentioned; and 100 houses were added on the north side of St. Giles's -Street, 136 in Bloomsbury, 56 on the west side of Drury Lane, and 71 on -the south side of Holborn.[621] The south and east sides of the hospital -site had been the slowest in their growth. After the Great Fire, these -still remained gardens, but the north side, nearer Oxford Road, was -already occupied. The first inhabitants of importance were Mr. Abraham -Speckart and Mr. Breads, in the reigns of James I. and Charles I., and -afterwards Sir William Stiddolph. New Compton Street was originally called -Stiddolph Street, but afterwards changed its name when Charles II. gave -the adjoining marsh-land to Mr. Francis Compton, who built on the old -hospital land a continuation of Old Compton Street. Monmouth Street, -probably named after the foolish and unfortunate duke, was also built in -this reign. - -In 1694, in the reign of William III., a Mr. Neale, a lottery promoter, -took on lease the Cock and Pye Fields--then the resort of gambling boys, -thieves, and beggars, and a sink of filth and cesspools--and built the -neighbouring streets, placing in the centre a Doric pillar with seven -dials on it; afterwards a clock was added.[622] This same Mr. Thomas Neale -took a large piece of ground on the north side of Piccadilly from Sir -Thomas Clarges, agreeing to lay out £10,000 in building; but he failed to -carry out his design, and Sir Walter Clarges, after great trouble, got the -lease out of his hands, and Clarges Street was then built.[623] - -In 1697 many hundreds of the 14,000 French refugees who fled from Louis -XIV.'s dragoons after the cruel revocation of the Edict of Nantes settled -about Long Acre, the Seven Dials, and Soho. In Strype's time (Queen Anne's -reign), Stacie Street, Kendrick Yard, Vinegar Yard, and Phoenix Street, -were mostly occupied by poor French people; indigent marquises and -starving countesses. - -In the reign of Queen Anne, St. Giles's increased with great rapidity--St. -Giles's Street and Broad Street from the Pound to Drury Lane, the -south-east side of Tottenham Court Road, Crown Street, the Seven Dials, -and Castle Street were completed; the south side of Holborn was also -finished from Broad Street to a little east of Great Turnstile, and, on -the north side, the street spread to two doors east of the Vine -Tavern.[624] The Irish had already begun to debase St. Giles's; the French -refugees completed the degradation and hopelessness, and spread like a mud -deluge towards Soho. - -In 1640 there are in the parish books several entries of money paid to -soldiers and distressed men who had lost everything they had in Ireland:-- - - Paid to a poor Irishman, and to a prisoner come - over from Dunkirk £0 1 0 - - Paid for a shroud for an Irishman that died at - Brickils 0 2 6 - -In 1640, 1642, and 1647, there constantly occur donations to poor Irish -ministers and plundered Irish. Clothes were sent by the parish into -Ireland. There is one entry-- - - Paid to a poor gentleman undone by the burning of a city - in Ireland; having licence from the lords to collect £0 3 0 - -The following entries are also curious and characteristic:-- - - 1642.--To Mrs. Mabb, a poet's wife, her husband being - dead £0 1 0 - - Paid to Goody Parish, to buy her boys two - shirts; and Charles, their father, a waterman - at Chiswick, to keep him at £20 a - year from Christmas 0 3 0 - - 1648.--Gave to the Lady Pigot, in Lincoln's Inn - Fields, poor and deserving relief 0 2 6 - - 1670.--Given to the Lady Thornbury, being poor - and indigent 0 10 0 - - 1641.--To old Goodman Street and old Goody - Malthus, very poor ------ - - 1645.--To Mother Cole and Mother Johnson, xiid. - a-piece 0 2 0 - - 1646.--To William Burnett, in a cellar in Raggedstaff - Yard, being poor and very sick 0 1 6 - - To Goody Sherlock, in Maidenhead-fields - Lane, one linen-wheel, and gave her - money to buy flax 0 1 0 - -There are also some interesting entries showing what a sink for the -poverty of all the world the St. Giles's cellars had become, even before -the Restoration. - - 1640.--Gave to Signor Lifecatha, a distressed - Grecian ------ - - 1642.--To Laylish Milchitaire, of Chimaica, in - Armenia, to pass him to his own country, - and to redeem his sons in slavery under - the Turks £0 5 0 - - 1654.--Paid towards the relief of the mariners, - maimed soldiers, widows and orphans of - such as have died in the service of Parliament 4 11 0 - -These were for Cromwell's soldiers; and this year Oliver himself gave £40 -to the parish to buy coals for the poor. - - 1666.--Collected at several times towards the relief - of the poor sufferers burnt out by the late - dreadful fire of London £25 8 4 - -In 1670 nearly £185 was collected in this parish towards the redemption of -slaves. - -After 1648 the Irish are seldom mentioned by name. They had grown by this -time part and parcel of the district, and dragged all round them down to -poverty. In 1653 an assistant beadle was appointed specially to search out -and report all new arrivals of chargeable persons. In 1659 a monthly -vestry-meeting was instituted to receive the constable's report as to new -vagrants. - -In 1675 French refugees began to increase, and in 1679-1680, 1690 and 1692 -fresh efforts were made to search out and investigate the cases of all -new-comers. In 1710 the churchwardens reported to the commissioners for -building new churches, that "a great number of French Protestants were -inhabitants of the parish." - -Well-known beggars of the day are frequently mentioned in the parish -accounts, as for instance-- - - 1640.--Gave to Tottenham Court Meg, being very - sick £0 1 0 - - 1642.--Gave to the ballad-singing cobbler 0 1 0 - - 1646.--Gave to old Friz-wig 1 6 0 - - 1657.--Paid the collectors for a shroud for old Guy, - the poet 0 2 6 - - 1658.--Paid a year's rent for Mad Bess 1 4 6 - - 1642.--Paid to one Thomas, a traveller 0 0 6 - - To a poor woman and her children, almost - starved 0 5 6 - - 1645.--For a shroud for Hunter's child, the blind - beggar-man 0 1 6 - - 1646.--Paid and given to a poor wretch, name forgot 0 1 0 - - Given to old Osborn, a troublesome fellow 0 1 3 - - Paid to Rotton, the lame glazier, to carry - him towards Bath 0 3 0 - - 1647.--To old Osborne and his blind wife 0 0 6 - - To the old mud-wall maker 0 0 6 - -In 1665 the plague fell heavily on St. Giles's, already dirty and -overcrowded. The pest had already broken out five times within the eighty -years beginning in 1592; but no outbreak of this Oriental pest in London -had carried off more than 36,000 persons. The disease in 1665, however, -slew no fewer than 97,306 in ten months.[625] In St. Giles's the plague of -1592 carried off 894 persons; in 1625 there died of the plague about 1333; -but in 1665 there were swept off from this parish alone 3216. The plague -of 1625 seemed to have alarmed London quite as much as its successor, for -we find that in St. Giles's no assessment could be made, as the richer -people had all fled into the country. A pest-house was fitted up in -Bloomsbury for the nine adjoining parishes, and this was afterwards taken -by St. Giles's for itself. The vestry appointed two examiners to inspect -infected houses. Mr. Pratt, the churchwarden, who advanced money to -succour the poor when the rich deserted them, was afterwards paid forty -pounds for the sums he had generously disbursed at his own risk. In 1642 -the entries in the parish books show that the disease had again become -virulent and threatening. The bodies were collected in carts by -torchlight, and thrown without burial service into large pits. Infected -houses were padlocked up, and watchmen placed to admit doctors or persons -bringing food to the searchers, who at night brought out the dead. - -The following entries (for 1642) in the parish books seem to me even more -terrible than Defoe's romance written fifty years after the events:-- - - Paid for the two padlocks and hasps for visited - houses £0 2 6 - - Paid Mr. Hyde for candles for the bearers 0 10 0 - - " to the same for the night-cart and cover 7 9 0 - - " to Mr. Mann for links and candles for the - night-bearers 0 10 0 - -The next year the plague still raged, and the same precautions seem to -have been taken as afterwards in 1665, showing that the terrible details -of that punishment of filth and neglect were not new to London citizens. - -The entries go on:-- - - To the bearers for carrying out of Crown Court a woman - that died of the plague £0 1 6 - - Sent to a poor man shut up in Crown Yard of the plague 0 1 6 - -Then follow sums paid for padlocks and staples, graves and links:-- - - Paid and given Mr. Lyn, the beadle, for a piece of good - service to the parish in conveying away of a visited - household to Lord's Pest House, forth of Mr. Higgins's - house at Bloomsbury £0 1 6 - - Received of Mr. Hearle (Dr. Temple's gift) to be given - to Mrs. Hockey, a minister's widow, shut up in the - Crache Yard of the plague 0 10 0 - -But now came the awful pestilence of 1665; the streets were so deserted -that grass grew in them, and nothing was to be seen but coffins, -pest-carts, link-men, and red-crossed doors. The air resounded with the -tolling of bells, the screams of distracted mourners crying from the -windows, "Pray for us!" and the dismal call of the searchers, "Bring out -your dead!"[626] - -The plague broke out in its most malignant form among the poor of St. -Giles's;[627] and Dr. Hodges and Sir Richard Manningham, both first-rate -authorities on this subject, agree in this assertion. - -In August 1665 an additional rate to the amount of £600 was levied. -Independent of this, very large sums were subscribed by persons resident -in, or interested in, the parish. The following are a few of the items:-- - - Mr. Williams, from the Earl of Clare £10 0 0 - - Mr. Justice (Sir Edmondbury) Godfrey, from the - Lord Treasurer 50 0 0 - - Earl Craven and the rest of the justices, towards - the visited poor, at various times 449 16 10 - - Earl Craven towards the visited poor 40 3 0 - -There are also these ominous entries:-- - - August.--Paid the searchers for viewing the corpse - of Goodwife Phillips, who died of the - plague £0 0 6 - - Laid out for Goodman Phillips and his - children, being shut up and visited 0 5 0 - - Laid out for Lylla Lewis, 3 Crane Court, - being shut up of the plague; and laid - out for the nurse, and for the nurse and - burial 0 18 6 - -In July 1666 the constables, etc. were ordered to make an account of all -new inmates coming to the parish, and to take security that they would not -become burdensome. They were also directed to be careful to prevent the -infection spreading for the future by a timely guard of all "that are or -hereafter may happen to be visited." - -"During the plague time," says an eye-witness, "nobody put on black or -formal mourning, yet London was all in tears. The shrieks of women and -children at the doors and windows of their houses where their dearest -relations were dying, or perhaps dead, were enough to pierce the stoutest -hearts. At the west end of the town it was a surprising thing to see those -streets which were usually thronged now grown desolate; so that I have -sometimes gone the length of a whole street (I mean bye streets), and have -seen nobody to direct me but watchmen[628] sitting at the doors of such -houses as were shut up; and one day I particularly observed that even in -Holborn the people walked in the middle of the street, and not at the -sides--not to mingle, as I supposed, with anybody that came out of -infected houses, or meet with smells and scents from them." - -Dr. Hodges, a great physician, who shunned no danger, describes even more -vividly the horrors of that period. "In the streets," he says, "might be -seen persons seized with the sickness, staggering like drunken men; here -lay some dozing and almost dead; there others were met fatigued with -excessive vomiting, as if they had drunk poison; in the midst of the -market, persons in full health fell suddenly down as if the contagion was -there exposed to sale. It was not uncommon to see an inheritance pass to -three heirs within the space of four days. The bearers were not sufficient -to inter the dead."[629] - -It is supposed that till the Leper Hospital was suppressed, the St. -Giles's people used the oratory there as their parish church. Leland does -not mention any other church, although he lived and wrote about the time -of the suppression, and even made an effort to save the monastic MSS. by -proposing to have them placed in the king's library. The oratory had -probably a screen walling off the lepers from the rest of the -congregation. It boasted several chantry chapels, and a high altar at the -east end, dedicated to St. Giles, before which burnt a great taper called -"St. Giles's light," and towards which, about A.D. 1200, one William -Christemas bequeathed an annual sum of twelvepence. There was also a -Chapel of St. Michael, appropriated to the infirm, and which had its own -special priest. - -In the reign of Charles I. the south aisle of the hospital church was full -of rubbish, lumber, and coffin-boards; and Lady Dudley put up a screen to -divide the nave from the chancel. In 1623 the church became so ruinous -that it had to be rebuilt at an expense of £2068: 7: 2. Among the -subscribers appear the names of the Duchess of Lennox, Sir Anthony -Ashleye, Sir John Cotton, and the players at "the Cockpit playhouse." The -415 householders of the parish subscribed £1065: 9s., the donations -ranging from the £250 of the Duchess of Dudley to Mother Parker's -twopence. - -Nearly five years elapsed before the new church was consecrated. On the -9th of June 1628 Pym brought a charge against the rector, Dr. Mainwaring, -for having preached two obnoxious sermons, entitled "Religion" and -"Allegiance," and accused the imprudent time-server of persuading citizens -to obey illegal commands on pain of damnation, and framing, like Guy Faux, -a mischievous plot to alter and subvert the Government.[630] The third -sermon in which Mainwaring defended his two first, the stern Commons found -upon inquiry[631] had been printed by special command of the king. It was -as full of mischief as a bomb-shell. It held that on any exigency all -property was transferred to the sovereign; that the consent of Parliament -was not necessary for the imposition of taxes; and that the divine laws -required compliance with every demand which a prince should make upon his -subjects. For these doctrines the Commons impeached Mainwaring; the -sentence pronounced on him was, that he should be imprisoned during the -pleasure of the House, that he should be fined £1000, to the king, make -submission of his offence, be suspended from lay and ecclesiastical office -for three years, and that his sermons be called in and burnt. - -On June 20 the courtly preacher came to the House, and on his knees -submitted himself in sorrow and repentance for the errors and -indiscretions he had been guilty of in preaching the sermons "rashly, -scandalously, and unadvisedly." He further acknowledged the three sermons -to be full of dangerous passages and aspersions, and craved pardon for -them of God and the king. No sooner was the session over than the wilful -king pardoned him, promoted him to the deanery of Winchester, and some -years after to the bishopric of St. David's.[632] - -The new church was consecrated on the 26th of January 1630. Bishop Laud -performed the ceremony, and was entertained at the house of a Mr. -Speckart, near the church. There were two tables sufficient to seat -thirty-two persons. The broken churchyard wall was fenced up with boards, -the altar hung with green velvet, a rail made to keep the mob from the -west door, and a train of constables, armed with bills and halberts, -appointed to maintain order if the Puritans became threatening. The new -rector, Dr. Heywood, had been chaplain to Laud, and was probably of the -High Church party. Like his expelled predecessor, he had been chaplain to -one of the most arbitrary of kings. In 1640 the Puritans, gaining -strength, petitioned Parliament against him, stating that he had set up -crucifixes and images of saints, likewise organs, "with other confused -music, etc., hindering devotion and maintained at the great and needless -charge of the parish." They described the carved screen as particularly -obnoxious, and they objected to the altar rail, the chancel carpet, the -purple velvet in the desk, the needlework covers of the books, the -tapestry, the lawn cloth, the bone lace of the altar cloths, and the -taffeta curtains on the walls. These "popish and superstitious" ornaments -were sold by order of Parliament, all but the plate and the great bell. -The surplices were given away. The twelve apostles were washed off the -organ-loft, and the painted glass was taken down from the windows. The -screen was sold for forty shillings, and the money given to the poor. The -Covenant was framed and hung up in the church, and five shillings given to -a pewterer for a new basin cut square on one side for baptisms. The blue -velvet carpet, embroidered cushions, and blue curtains were sold, and so -were the communion rails. In 1647 Lady Dudley's pew was lined with green -baize and supplied with two straw mats. In 1650 the king's arms were taken -out of the windows, and a sun-dial was substituted. The organ-loft was let -as a pew. - -The Restoration soon followed on these paltry excesses of a low-bred -fanaticism. The ringers of St. Giles's rang a peal for three days running. -The king's arms in the vestry and the windows were restored. Galleries -were erected for the nobility. In 1670 a brass chandelier of sixteen -branches was bought for the church, and an hour-glass for the pulpit. - -In 1718 the old hospital church had become damp and unwholesome. The -grave-ground had risen eight feet, so that the church lay in a pit. -Parliament was therefore petitioned that St. Giles's should be one of the -fifty new churches. It was urged that a good church facing the High -Street, the chief thoroughfare for all persons who travelled the Oxford -or Hampstead roads, would be a great ornament. The petitioners also -contended that St. Giles's already spent £5300 a year on the poor, and -that a new rate would impoverish many industrious persons. The Duke of -Newcastle, the Lord Chancellor, and other eminent parishioners strenuously -supported the petition, which, on the other hand, was warmly opposed by -the Archbishop of York, five bishops, and eleven temporal peers. The -opposition contended that the parish was well able to repair the present -church; that the fund given for building new churches was never meant to -be devoted to rebuilding old ones; and that so far from the parish not -requiring church accommodation, St. Giles's contained 40,000 persons, a -number for which three new churches would be barely sufficient.[633] -Eleven years longer the church remained a ruin, when in 1729 the -commissioners granted £8000 for a new church, provided that the parish -would settle £350 a year on the rector of the new parish of Bloomsbury. - -The architect of the new church, opened in 1734, was Henry Flitcroft. The -roof is supported by Ionic pillars of Portland stone. The steeple is 160 -feet high, and consists of a rustic pedestal supporting Doric pilasters; -over the clock is an octangular tower, with three-quarter Ionic columns -supporting a balustrade with vases. The spire is octangular and belled. -This hideous production of Greek rules was much praised by the critics of -1736. They called it "simple and elegant." They considered the east end as -"pleasing and majestic," and found nothing in the west to object to but -the smallness and poverty of the doors. The steeple they described as -"light, airy, and genteel."[634] whether taken with the body of the church -or considered as a _separate building_. - -In 1827 the clock of St. Giles's Church was illuminated with gas, and the -novelty and utility of the plan "attracted crowds to visit it from the -remotest parts of the metropolis."[635] - -St. Giles's Churchyard was enlarged in 1628, and again soon after the -Restoration. The garden plot from which the new part was divided was -called Brown's Gardens. In 1670 we find the sexton agreeing, on condition -of certain windows he had been allowed to introduce into the side of his -house, facing the churchyard, to furnish the rector and churchwardens, -every Tuesday se'nnight after Easter, with two fat capons ready dressed. - -In 1687 the Resurrection Gate, or Lich Gate, as it was called, and which -still exists, was erected at a cost of £185: 14: 6. It stood for many -years farther to the west than the old gate, and contains a heap of -dully-carved figures in relievo, abridged from Michael Angelo's "Last -Judgment," and crowded under a large "compass pediment." It has lately, -however, been replaced in its old position. This work was much admired and -celebrated, but "Nollekens" Smith says that it is poor stuff. - -Pennant, always shrewd and vivacious, was one of the first writers who -exposed the disgraceful and dangerous condition of the London churchyards. -He describes seeing at St Giles's a great square pit with rows of coffins -piled one upon the other, exposed to sight and smell, awaiting the -mortality of the night. "I turned away," he says, "disgusted at the scene, -and scandalised at the want of police which so little regards the health -of the living as to permit so many putrid corpses, packed between some -slight boards, dispersing their dangerous effluvia over the capital."[636] - -In 1808 a new burial-ground for St. Giles's parish was consecrated in St. -Pancras's. It stands in grim loneliness between the Hampstead Road and -College Street, Camden Town. - -The graves of John Flaxman, the sculptor, and his wife and sister, are -marked by an altar tomb of brick, surmounted by a thick slab of Portland -stone. Near it is the ruinous tomb of ingenious, faddling Sir John Soane, -the architect to the Bank of England. It is a work of great pretension, -"but cut up into toy-shop prettiness, with all the peculiar defects of -his style and manner." Two black cypresses mark the grave.[637] - -A few eminent persons are buried in the old St. Giles's Churchyard. -Amongst these, the most illustrious is George Chapman, who produced a fine -though rugged translation of the _Iliad_ which is to Pope's what heart of -oak is to veneer, and who died in 1634 aged seventy-seven, and lies buried -here. Inigo Jones generously erected an altar tomb to his memory at his -own expense; it is still to be seen in the external southern wall of the -church. The monument is old; but the inscription is only a copy of all -that remained visible of the old writing. That chivalrous visionary, Lord -Herbert of Cherbury, was also buried here, and so was James Shirley, the -dramatist, who died in 1666. The latter was the last of the great -ante-Restoration play-writers, and of a thinner fibre than any of the -rest, except melancholy Ford. - -Richard Pendrell, the Staffordshire farmer, "the preserver and conductor -of King Charles II. after his escape from Worcester Fight," has an altar -tomb to his memory raised in this churchyard. After the Restoration, -Richard came to town, to be in the way, I suppose, of the good things then -falling into Cavaliers' mouths, and probably settled in St. Giles's to be -near the Court. The story of the Boscobel oak was one with which the -swarthy king delighted to buttonhole his courtiers. Pendrell died in 1671, -and had a monument erected to his memory on the south-east side of the -church. The black marble slab of the old tomb forms the base of the -present one. The epitaph is in a strain of fulsome bombast, considering -the king who was preserved showed his gratitude to Heaven only by a long -career of unblushing vice, and by impoverishing and disgracing the foolish -country that called him home. It begins thus:-- - - "Hold, passenger! here's shrouded in this hearse - Unparalleled Pendrell thro' the universe. - Like when the eastern star from heaven gave light - To three lost kings, so he in such dark night - To Britain's monarch, lost by adverse war, - On earth appeared a second eastern star." - -The dismal poet ends by assuring the world that Pendrell, the king's -pilot, had gone to heaven to be rewarded for his good steering. In 1702 a -Pendrell was overseer in this parish. About 1827 a granddaughter of this -Richard lived near Covent Garden, and still enjoyed part of the family -pension. In 1827 Mr. John Pendrell, another descendant of Richard, died at -Eastbourne.[638] His son kept an inn at Lewes, and was afterwards clerk at -a Brighton hotel. - -The only monument at present of interest in the church is a recumbent -figure of the Duchess Dudley, the great benefactor of the parish, created -a duchess in her own right by Charles I. She died 1669. The monument was -preserved by parochial gratitude when the church was rebuilt, in -consideration of the duchess's numerous bequests to the parish. She was -buried at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire. This pious and charitable lady was -the daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh, and she married Sir Robert -Dudley, son of the great Earl of Leicester, who deserted her and his five -daughters, and went and settled in Florence, where he became chamberlain -to the Grand Duchess. Clever and unprincipled as his father, Sir Robert -devised plans for draining the country round Pisa, and improving the port -of Leghorn. He was outlawed, and his estates at Kenilworth, etc. were -confiscated and sold for a small sum to Prince Henry; but Charles I. -generously gave them back to the duchess. - -In her funeral sermon, Dr. Boreman says of this good woman: "She was a -magazine of experience.... I have often said she was a living chronicle -bound up with the thread of a long-spun age. And in divers incidents and -things relating to our parish, I have often appealed to her stupendous -memory as to an ancient record.... In short, I would say to any desirous -to attain some degree of perfection, 'Vade ad Sancti Egidii oppidum, et -disce Ducinam Dudleyam'--('Come to St. Giles, and inquire the character of -Lady Dudley')."[639] - -The oldest monument remaining in the churchyard in 1708 was dated 1611. It -was a tombstone, "close to the wall on the south side, and near the west -end," and was to the memory of a Mrs. Thornton.[640] Her husband was the -builder of Thornton Alley, which was probably his estate. The following -painful lines were round the margin of the stone:-- - - "Full south this stone four foot doth lie - His father John and grandsire Henry - Thornton, of Thornton, in Yorkshire bred, - Where lives the fame of Thornton's being dead." - -Against the east end of the north aisle of the church was the tombstone of -Eleanor Steward, who died 1725, aged 123 years and five months. - -That good and inflexible patriot, Andrew Marvell, the most poignant -satirist of King Charles II., died in 1678, and is buried in St. Giles's. -Marvell was Latin secretary to Milton, and in the school of that good -man's house learnt how a true patriot should live. It is recorded that one -day when he was dining in Maiden Lane, one of Charles II.'s courtiers came -to offer him £1000 as a bribe for his silence. Marvell refused the gift, -took off the dish-cover, and showed his visitor the humble half-picked -mutton-bone on which he was about to dine. He was member for -Kingston-upon-Hull for nearly twenty years, and was buried at last at the -expense of his constituents. They also voted a sum of money to erect a -monument to him with a harmless epitaph; to this, however, the rector of -the time, to his own disgrace, refused admittance. Thompson, the editor of -Marvell's works, searched in vain in 1774 for the patriot's coffin. He -could find no plate earlier than 1722. - -In the same church with this fixed star rests that comet, Sir Roger -l'Estrange. His monument was said to be the grandest in the church. Sir -Roger died in 1704, aged eighty-eight. - -In 1721, after an ineffectual treaty for Dudley Court, where the -parsonage-house had once stood, a piece of ground called Vinegar Yard was -purchased for the sum of £2252: 10s. as a burial-ground, hospital, and -workhouse for the parish of St. Giles's. At that time St. Giles's relieved -about 840 persons, at the cost of £4000 a year. Of this number there were -162 over seventy years of age, 126 parents overburthened with children, -183 deserted children and orphans, 70 sick at parish nurses', and 300 men -lame, blind, and mad. - -The Earl of Southampton granted land for five almshouses in St. Giles's in -1656.[641] The site was in Broad Street, nearly at the north end of -Monmouth and King Streets, where they stood until 1782, at which period -they were pulled down to widen the road. The new almshouses were erected -in a close, low, and unhealthy spot in Lewknor's Lane. - -In the year 1661 Mr. William Shelton left lands for a school for fifty -children in Parker's Lane, between Drury Lane and Little Queen Street. The -tenements, before he bought them, had been in the occupation of the Dutch -ambassador. The premises were poor houses, and a coach-house and stables -in the occupation of Lord Halifax. In 1687, the funds proving inadequate, -the school was discontinued; but in 1815, after being in abeyance for -fifty-three years, it was re-opened in Lloyd's Court.[642] - -The select vestry of St. Giles's was much badgered in 1828 by the excluded -parishioners. There were endless errors in the accounts, and items -amounting to £90,000 were found entered only in pencil. The special pleas -put in by the attorneys of the vestry covered 175 folios of writing. - -Hog Lane, built in 1680, was rechristened in 1762 Crown Street, as an -inscription on a stone let into the wall of a house at the corner of Rose -Street intimates.[643] Strype calls it a "place not over well built or -inhabited." The Greeks had a church here, afterwards a French refugee -place of worship, and subsequently an Independent chapel. It stood on the -west side of the lane, a few doors from Compton Street; and its site is -now occupied by St. Mary's Church and clergy-house. Hogarth laid the scene -of his "Noon" in Hog Lane, at the door of this chapel; but the houses -being reversed in the engraving, the truth of the picture is destroyed. -The background contains a view of St. Giles's Church. The painter -delighted in ridiculing the fantastic airs of the poor French gentry, and -showed no kindly sympathy with their honest poverty and their sufferings. -It was to St. Giles's that Hogarth came to study poverty and also vice. A -scene of his "Harlot's Progress" is in Drury Lane, close by. Tom Nero, in -the "Four Stages of Cruelty," is a St. Giles's charity-boy, and we see him -in the first stage tormenting a dog near the church. Hogarth's "Gin -Street" is situated in St. Giles's. The scenes of all the most hideous and -painful of his works are in this district. - -"Nollekens" Smith, writing of St. Giles's, says: "I recollect the building -of most of the houses at the north end of New Compton Street--so named in -compliment to Bishop Compton, Dean of St. Paul's. I also remember a row of -six small almshouses, surrounded by a dwarf brick wall, standing in the -middle of High Street. On the left hand of High Street, passing into -Tottenham Court Road, there were four handsome brick houses, probably of -Queen Anne's time, with grotesque masks as keystones to the first-floor -windows. Nearly on the site of the new "Resurrection Gate," in which the -basso-relievo is, stood a very small old house towards Denmark Street, -which used to totter, to the terror of passers by, whenever a heavy -carriage rolled through the street."[644] - -Exactly where Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road meet in a right -angle, a large circular boundary-stone was let into the pavement. Here -when the charity-boys of St. Giles's walked the boundaries, those who -deserved flogging were whipped, in order to impress the parish frontier on -their memories. - -The Pound originally stood in the middle of the High Street, whence it was -removed in 1656 to make way for the almshouses. It had stood there when -the village really required a place to imprison straying cattle. The -latest pound stood in the broad space where the High Street, Tottenham -Court Road, and Oxford Street meet; it occupied a space of about -thirty-feet, and was removed in 1768. It must have faced Meux's Brewery. -An old song that celebrates this locality begins-- - - "At Newgate steps Jack Chance was found, - And bred up near St. Giles's Pound." - -Criminals on their way to Tyburn used to "halt at the great gate of St. -Giles's Hospital, where a bowl of ale was provided as their last -refreshment in this life."[645] A similar custom prevailed at York, which -gave rise to the proverb, "The saddler of Bawtry was hung for leaving his -liquor," meaning that if the impatient man had stopped to drink, his -reprieve would have arrived in time.[646] - -Bowl Yard was built about 1623, and was then surrounded by gardens. It is -a narrow court on the south side of High Street, over against Dyot Street, -now George Street. There was probably here a public-house, the Bowl, at -which in later time ale was handed to the passing thieves. - -Swift, in a spirited ballad describes "clever Tom Clinch," who rode -"stately through Holborn to die in his calling," stopping at the George -for a bottle of sack, and promising to pay for it "_when he came back_." -No one has sketched the highwayman more perfectly than the Irish prelate. -Tom Clinch wears waistcoat, stockings, and breeches of white, and his cap -is tied with cherry ribbon. He bows like a beau at the theatre to the -ladies in the doors and to the maids in the balconies, who cry, "Lackaday, -he's a proper young man." He swears at the hawkers crying his last speech, -kicks the hangman when he kneels to ask his pardon, makes a short speech -exhorting his comrades to ply their calling, and so carelessly and -defiantly takes his leave of an ungrateful world. - -"Rainy Day" Smith describes,[647] when a boy of eight years old, being -taken by Nollekens, the sculptor, to see that notorious highwayman John -Rann, alias "Sixteen-string Jack," on his way to execution at Tyburn, for -robbing Dr. Bell, chaplain to the Princess Amelia, in Gunnersbury Lane, -near Brentford, in 1774. Rann was a smart fellow, and had been a coachman -to Lord Sandwich, who then lived at the south-east corner of Bedford Row, -Covent Garden. The undaunted malefactor wore a bright pea-green coat, and -carried an immense nosegay, which some mistress of the highwayman had -handed him, according to custom, as a last token, from the steps of St. -Sepulchre's Church. The sixteen strings worn by this freebooter at his -knees were reported to be in ironical allusion to the number of times he -had been acquitted. On their return home, Nollekens, stooping to the boy's -ear, assured him that had his father-in-law, Mr. Justice Welch, been then -High Constable, they could have walked all the way to Tyburn beside the -cart.[648] - -Holborn used to be called "the Heavy Hill" because it led thieves from -Newgate to Tyburn. Old fat Ursula, the roast-pig seller in Ben Jonson's -_Bartholomew Fair_ talks of ambling afoot to hear Knockhem the footpad -groan out of a cart up the Heavy Hill. This was in James I.'s time. Dryden -alludes to it in the same way in 1678,[649] and in 1695 Congreve's Sir -Sampson[650] mentions the same doleful procession. In 1709 (Queen Anne) -Tom Browne mentions a wily old counsellor in Holborn who used to turn out -his clerks every execution day for a profitable holiday, saying, "Go, you -young rogues, go to school and improve." - -St. Giles's was always famous for its inns.[651] One of the oldest of -these was the Croche House, or Croche Hose (Cross Hose), so called from -its sign--the Crossed Stockings. The sign, still used by hosiers, was a -red and white stocking forming a St. Andrew's Cross. This inn belonged to -the hospital cook in 1300, and was given by him to the hospital. It stood -at the north of the present entrance to Compton Street, and was probably -destroyed before the reign of Henry VIII. - -The Swan on the Hop was an inn of Edward III.'s time; it stood eastward of -Drury Lane and on the south side of Holborn.[652] - -The White Hart is described in Henry VIII.'s time as possessing eighteen -acres of pasture. It stood near the Holborn end of Drury Lane, and existed -till 1720. In Aggas's Plan it appears surrounded on three sides by a wall. -It was bounded on the east by Little Queen Street, and was divided from -Holborn by an embankment. A court afterwards stood on its site. - -The Rose is mentioned as early as Edward III.'s reign. It was near -Lewknor's Lane, and stood not far from the White Hart. - -The Vine was an inn till 1816. It was on the north side of Holborn, a -little to the east of Kingsgate Street. It is supposed to have stood on -the site of a vineyard mentioned in Doomsday Book. It was originally a -country roadside inn, with fields at the back. It became an infamous -nuisance. The house that replaced it was first occupied by a -timber-merchant, and afterwards by Probert, the accomplice of Thurtell, -who, escaping death for the murder of Mr. Weare, was soon after hanged for -horse-stealing in Gloucestershire. It was at this trial that the -prisoner's keeping a gig was adduced as an incontestible proof of his -respectability--a fact immortalised, almost to the weariness of a -degenerate age, by Mr. Thomas Carlyle. The inn was once called the -Kingsgate Tavern, from its having stood near the king's gate or turnpike -in the adjoining street. - -The Cock and Pye Inn stood at the west corner of what was once a mere or -marshland. The fields surrounding it, now Seven Dials, were called from -it the Cock and Pye Fields. - -The Maidenhead Inn stood in Dyot Street, and formed part of Lord -Mountjoy's estates in Elizabeth's time. It was the house for parish -meetings in Charles II.'s reign. It then became a resort for mealmen and -farmers, and latterly a brandy-shop and beggars' haunt of the vilest sort. -It was finally turned into a stoneyard. Dyot Street, so called after Sir -John Dyot, who left it by wish to the poor, though it was afterwards a -poor and even dangerous locality, must have been respectable in 1662, when -a Presbyterian chapel was built there for Joseph Read, Baxter's friend, an -ejected minister from Worcestershire. Read was taken up under the -Conventicles Act in 1677, and endured much persecution, but was restored -to his congregation on the accession of James II. From 1684 to 1708 the -building was used as a chapel of ease to St. Giles's Church. At the close -of the last century men would hurry along Dyot Street as through a -dangerous defile. There was a legend current of a banker's clerk who, -returning from his round, with his book of notes and bills fastened by the -usual chain, as he passed down Dyot Street felt a cellar door sinking -under him. Conscious of his danger, he made a spring forward, dashed down -the street, and escaped the trap set for him by the thieves. It may be -added that Dyot Street gave the name to a song sung by Liston in the -admirable burlesque of "Bombastes Furioso." - -Irish mendicants--the poorest, dirtiest, and most unimprovable of all -beggars--began to crowd into St. Giles's about the time of Queen -Elizabeth.[653] - -The increase of London soon attracted country artisans and country -beggars. The closing of the monasteries had filled England with herds of -sturdy and dangerous vagrants not willing to work, and by no means -inclined to starve. The new-comers resorting to the suburbs of London to -escape the penalties of infringing the City jurisdiction, the -stout-hearted queen ordered all persons within three miles of London -gates to forbear from allowing any house to be occupied by more than one -family. - -A proclamation of 1583 alludes to the very poor and the beggars, who lived -"heaped up" in small tenements and let lodgings. A subsequent warning -orders the suppression of the great multitude of Irish vagrants, many of -whom haunted the courts under pretence of suits; by day they mixed with -disbanded soldiers from the Low Countries and other impostors and beggars, -and at night committed robberies and outrages. St. Giles's was then one of -the great harbours for these "misdemeaned persons." On one occasion a mob -of these rogues surrounded the queen as she was riding out in the evening -to Islington to take the air. That same night Fleetwood, the Recorder, -issued warrants, and in the morning went out himself and took seventy-four -rogues, including some blind rich usurers, who were all sent to Bridewell -for speedy punishment. - -James I. pursued the same crusade against vagrants, forbidding new -buildings in the suburbs, and ordering all newly raised structures to be -pulled down. The beadles had to attend every Sunday at the vestry to -report all new inmates, and who lodged them, and to take up all idlers; -the constables in 1630 were also required to give notice of such persons -to the churchwardens every month. In an entry in St. Giles's parish books -in 1637 "families in cellars" are first mentioned.[654] The locality -afterwards became noted for these dens, and "a cellar in St. Giles's" -became a proverbial phrase to signify the lowest poverty. - -In 1640 Irishmen are first mentioned by name, and money was paid to take -them back again to their native land. - -Sir John Fielding, brother of the great novelist, who was an active -Westminster magistrate in his time and a great hunter down of highwaymen, -in a pamphlet on the increase of crime in London, lays special stress on -the vicious poverty of St. Giles's. He gives a statement on the authority -of Mr. Welch, the High Constable of Holborn, of the overcrowding of the -miserable lodgings where idle persons and vagabonds were sheltered for -twopence a night. One woman alone owned seven of these houses, which were -crowded with twopenny beds from cellar to garret. In these beds both -sexes, strangers or not, lay promiscuously, the double bed being a -halfpenny cheaper. To still more wed vice to poverty, these lodging-house -keepers sold gin at a penny a quartern, so that no beggar was so poor that -he could not get drunk. No fewer than seventy of these vile houses were -found open at all hours, and in one alone, and not the largest, there were -counted fifty-eight persons sleeping in an atmosphere loathsome if not -actually poisonous. - -This Judge Welch was the father of Mrs. Nollekens, and a brave and -benevolent man. He was a friend of Dr. Johnson and of Fielding, whom he -succeeded in his justiceship, Mr. Welch having on one occasion heard that -a notorious highwayman who infested the Marylebone lanes was sleeping in -the first floor of a house in Rose Street, Long Acre, he hired the tallest -hackney-coach he could find, drove under the thief's window, ascended the -roof, threw up the sash, entered the room, actually dragged the fellow -naked out of bed on to the roof of the coach, and in that way carried him -down New Street and up St. Martin's Lane, amidst the huzzas of an immense -throng which followed him, to Litchfield Street, Soho.[655] - -Archenholz, the German traveller, writing circa 1784, describes the -streets of London as crowded with beggars. "These idle people," says this -curious observer, "receive in alms three, four, and even five shillings a -day. They have their clubs in the parish of St. Giles's, where they meet, -drink and feed well, read the papers, and talk politics. One of my friends -put on one day a ragged coat, and promised a handsome reward to a beggar -to introduce him to his club. He found the beggars gay and familiar, and -poor only in their rags. One threw down his crutch, another untied a -wooden leg, a third took off a grey wig or removed a plaister from a sound -eye; then they related their adventures, and planned fresh schemes. The -female beggars hire children for sixpence and sometimes even two -shillings a day: a very deformed child is worth four shillings." In the -same parish the pickpockets met to dine and exchange or sell snuff-boxes, -handkerchiefs, and other stolen property. - -About fifty years before, says Archenholz, there had been a pickpockets' -club in St. Giles's, where the knives and forks were chained to the table -and the cloth was nailed on. Rules were, however, decorously observed, and -chairmen chosen at their meetings. Not far from this house was a -celebrated gin-shop, on the sign-post of which was written, "Here you may -get drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, and straw for nothing." -The cellars of this public-spirited man were never empty. - -Archenholz also sketches the conjurors who told fortunes for a shilling. -They wore black gowns and false beards, advertised in the newspapers, and -painted their houses with magical figures and planetary emblems.[656] - -In 1783 Mr. J. T. Smith describes how he made for Mr. Crowle, the -illustrator of Pennant, a sketch of Old Simon, a well-known character, who -took his station daily under one of the gate piers of the old red and -brown brick gateway at the northern end of St. Giles's Churchyard, which -then faced Mr. Remnent's timber-yard. This man wore several hats, and was -remarkable for a long, dirty, yellowish white beard. His chapped fingers -were adorned with brass rings. He had several coats and waistcoats--the -upper wrap-rascle covering bundles of rags, parcels of books, canisters of -bread and cheese, matches, a tinder-box, meat for his dog, scraps from -_Fox's Book of Martyrs_, and three or four dog's-eared, thumbed, and -greasy numbers of the _Gentleman's Magazine_. From these random leaves he -gathered much information, which he retailed to persons who stopped to -look at him. Simon and his dog lodged under a staircase in an old -shattered building in Dyot Street, known as "Rat's Castle." It was in this -beggars' rendezvous that Nollekens the sculptor used to seek models for -his Grecian Venuses. Rowlandson etched Simon several times in his usual -gross but droll manner.[657] There was also a whole-length print of him -published by John Seago, with this monumental inscription--"Simon Edy, -born at Woodford, near Thrapston, Northamptonshire, in 1709. Died May -18th, 1783." - -Simon had had several dogs, which, one after the other, were stolen, and -sent for sale at Islington, or killed for their teeth by men employed by -the dentists. The following anecdote is told of his last and most faithful -dog:--Rover had been a shepherd's dog at Harrow, and having its left eye -struck out by a bullock's horn, was left with Simon by its master, a -Smithfield drover. The beggar tied him to his arm with a long string, -cured him, and then restored him to the drover. After that, the dog would -stop at St. Giles's porch every market-day on its way after the drover to -the slaughter-house in Union Street, and receive caresses from the hand -which had bathed its wound. Rover would then yelp for joy and gratitude, -and scamper off to get up with the erring bullocks. At last poor Simon -missed the dog for several weeks; at the end of that time it appeared one -morning at his feet, and with its one sorrowful and uplifted eye implored -Simon's protection by licking his tawny beard. His master the drover was -dead. Simon was only too glad to adopt Rover, who eventually followed him -to his last home. - -There was an elegy printed for good-natured, inoffensive old Simon, with a -woodcut portrait attached. The Hon. Daines Barrington is said to have -never passed the old mendicant without giving him sixpence. - -Mr. J. T. Smith, himself afterwards Curator of the Prints at the British -Museum, published some curious etchings of beggars and street characters -in 1815. Amongst them are ragged men carrying placards of "The Grand -Golden Lottery;" strange old-clothesmen in cocked hats and two-tier wigs; -itinerant wood-merchants; sellers of toys, such as "young lambs" or live -haddock; flying piemen in pig tails and shorts; women in gipsy hats; -door-mat sellers; vendors of hot peas, pickled cucumbers, lemons, -windmills (toys); and, last and least, Sir Harry Dimsdale, the dwarf Mayor -of Garratt. - -The condition of the beggars of St. Giles in 1815 we gather pretty -accurately from the evidence given by Mr. Sampson Stevenson, overseer of -the parish, and by trade an ironmonger at No. 11 King Street, Seven Dials, -before a committee of the House of Commons, the Right Honourable George -Rose in the chair. - -Mr. Stevenson's shop was not more than a few yards from one of the -beggars' chief rendezvous, and he had therefore been enabled to closely -study their habits. The inn had lost its licence, as the landlord -encouraged thieves; and he had made inquiries of petition-writers, the -highest class of mendicants. He had gone frequently into the bar of the -Fountain in King Street, another of their haunts, to watch their -goings-on. The pretended sailors never carried anything on their backs, as -they only begged or extorted money; but the other rogues, who made it -their practice to ask for food and clothing, always carried a knapsack to -put it in. They returned laden with shoes and clothes, which they would -sell in Monmouth Street. They had been heard to say that they had made -three or four shillings a day by begging shoes alone.[658] Their mode of -obtaining charity was to go barefoot and scarify their heels so that the -blood might show. They went out two or three together, or more, and -invariably changed their routes each day. Mr. Stevenson had seen them pull -out their money and share it. Victuals, he believed, they threw away; but -everything else they sold. They would stop at the Fountain till the house -closed, or till they got drunk, began to fight, and were turned out by the -publican, who feared the losing his licence. They probably went to even -lower places to finish their revel. - -"They teach other," he said, "different modes of extortion. They are of -the worst character, and overwhelm you with cursing and abuse if you -refuse them money. There is one special rascal, Gannee Manos, who is -scarcely three months in the year out of gaol. He always goes barefoot, -and scratches his ankles to make them bleed. He is the greatest collector -of shoes and clothes, as he goes the most naked to excite compassion." -Another man had been known in the streets for fifteen or twenty years. He -generally limped or passed as a cripple; but Mr. Stevenson has seen him -fencing and jumping about like a pugilist. He went without a hat, with -bare arms, and a canvas bag on his back. He generally began by singing a -song, and he carried primroses or something in his hand. He pretended to -be scarcely able to move one foot before the other; but if a Bow Street -officer or a beadle came in sight, he was off as quick as any one. There -was another man, an Irishman who had had a good education, and had been in -the medical line; he wrote a beautiful hand, and drew up petitions for -beggars at sixpence or a shilling each. - -"These men come out by twenties and thirties from the bottom of Dyot -Street, and then branch off five or six together. The one who has still -some money left starts them with a pint or half a pint of gin. They have -all their divisions, and they quarter the town into sections. Some of them -collect three, four, or five children, paying sixpence a day for each, and -then they go begging in gangs, setting the children crying to excite -people's sympathies. The Irish sometimes have the impudence to bring these -children to the board and claim relief, and swear the children are their -own. In a short time they are found out; but till the discovery their -landlords will swear their story is true. Sometimes, by giving their own -country people something, the landlords help to detect them. But even in -cases where the children are their own, they will not work when they have -once got into the habit of begging. If they will not come into the -workhouse, their relief is instantly stopped. - -"They spend their evenings drinking, after dining at an eating-house. -Deserving people never beg: they are ashamed of it. They do not eat broken -victuals. They have seldom any lodgings. There are houses where forty or -fifty of them sleep. A porter stands at the door and takes the money. In -the morning there is a general muster to see they have stolen nothing, and -then the doors are unlocked. For threepence they have clean straw, for -fourpence something more decent, and for sixpence a bed. These are all -professional beggars; they beg every day, even Sundays. They will not -work; they get more money by begging. Sometimes during hard frosts they -pretend to beg for work; but their children are sent out early by their -parents to certain prescribed stations to beg, sometimes with a broom. If -they do not bring home more or less according to their size, they are -beaten. A large family of children is a revenue to these people." - -When beggars did not get enough for their subsistence, Mr. Stevenson -believed that they had a fund amongst themselves, as they so seldom -applied for relief. The Irish were generally afraid to apply, for fear of -being returned to their own country. Beggars had been heard to brag of -getting six, seven, and eight shillings a day, or more; and if one got -more than the others, he divided it with the rest. Mr. Stevenson concluded -his evidence by saying that there were so many low Irish in St. Giles's, -that out of £30,000 a year collected in that parish by poor-rate, £20,000 -went to this low and shifting population, that decreased in summer and -increased in winter. - -From one or two specimens culled from the London newspapers in 1829 we do -not augur much improvement in the character and habits of the St. Giles's -beggars. On the 12th of July 1829 John Driscoll, an old professional -mendicant, was brought up at the Marylebone Police-office, charged with -begging, annoying respectable persons, and even following fashionably -dressed ladies into shops. In his pockets were found a small sum of money, -some ham sandwiches, and an invitation ticket signed "Car Durre, -chairman." It requested the favour of Mr. Driscoll's company on Monday -evening next, at seven o'clock, at the Robin Hood, Church Street, St. -Giles's, for the purpose of taking supper with others in his line of -calling or profession. Mr. Rawlinson said he supposed that an alderman in -chains would grace the beggars' festive board, but he would at least -prevent the prisoner forming one of the party on Monday, and sent him to -the House of Correction for fourteen days.[659] - -The same day one of those men who chalk "I am starving" on the pavement -was also sent to the treadmill for fourteen days. Francis Fisher, the -prisoner in question, was one of a gang of forty pavement chalkers. In the -evening, "after work," these men changed their dress, and with their -ladies enjoyed themselves over a good supper, brandy and water, and -cigars. In the winter time, when they excited more compassion, their -average earnings were ten shillings a day. This would make £20 a day for -the gang, and no less than £7300 a year. - -Monmouth Street is generally supposed to have derived its name from the -Duke of Monmouth, Charles II.'s natural son, whose town house stood close -by in Soho Square. It was perhaps named from Carey, Earl of Monmouth, who -died in 1626, and his son, who died in 1661: they were both parishioners -of St. Giles's.[660] It was early known as the great mart for old clothes, -but was superseded in later times by Holy Well Street, which in its turn -was displaced by the Minories. Lady Mary Wortley alludes to the lace coats -hung up for sale in Monmouth Street like Irish patents. Even Prior, in his -pleasant metaphysical poem of "Alma," says-- - - "This looks, friend Dick, as Nature had - But exercised the salesman's trade, - As if she haply had sat down - And cut out clothes for all the town, - Then sent them out to Monmouth Street, - To try what persons they would fit." - -Gay also alludes to this Jewish street in the following distich in his -"Trivia"-- - - "Thames Street gives cheeses, Covent Garden fruits, - Moorfields old books, and Monmouth Street old suits." - -Most of the shops in Monmouth Street were occupied by Jew dealers in 1849, -and horse-shoes were then to be seen nailed under the door-steps of the -cellars to scare away witches.[661] - -Mr. Charles Dickens in his _Sketches by Boz_, published in 1836-7, -describes Seven Dials and Monmouth Street as they then appeared. The maze -of streets, the unwholesome atmosphere, the men in fustian spotted with -brickdust or whitewash, and chronically leaning against posts, are all -painted by this great artist with the accuracy of a Dutch painter. The -writer boldly plunges into the region of "first effusions and last dying -speeches, hallowed by the names of Catnach and of Pitts," and carries us -at once into a fight between two half-drunk Irish termagants outside a -gin-shop. He then takes us to the dirty straggling houses, the dark -chandler's shop, the rag and bone stores, the broker's den, the -bird-fancier's room as full as Noah's ark, and completes the picture with -a background of dirty men, filthy women, squalid children, fluttering -shuttlecocks, noisy battledores, reeking pipes, bad fruit, more than -doubtful oysters, attenuated cats, depressed dogs, and anatomised fowls. -Every house has, he says, at least a dozen tenants. The man in the shop is -in the "baked jemmy" line, or deals in firewood and hearthstones. An Irish -labourer and his family occupy the back kitchen, while a jobbing -carpet-beater is in the front. In the front one pair there's another -family, and in the back one pair a young woman who takes in tambour-work. -In the back attic is a mysterious man who never buys anything but coffee, -penny loaves, and ink, and is supposed to write poems for Mr. Warren.[662] - -The Monmouth Street inhabitants Mr. Dickens describes as a peaceable, -thoughtful, and dirty race, who immure themselves in deep cellars or small -back parlours, and seldom come forth till the dusk and cool of the -evening, when, seated in chairs on the pavement, smoking their pipes, they -watch the gambols of their children as they revel in the gutter, a happy -troop of infantine scavengers. - -"A Monmouth Street laced coat" was a byword a century ago, but still we -find Monmouth Street the same. Pilot coats, double-breasted check -waistcoats, low broad-brimmed coachmen's hats, and skeleton suits, have -usurped the place of the old attire; but Monmouth Street, said Charles -Dickens, is still "the burial-place of the fashions, and we love to walk -among these extensive groves of the illustrious dead, and indulge in the -speculations to which they give rise."[663] - -In 1816 there were said to be 2348 Irish people resident in St. Giles's; -but an Irish witness before a committee of the House declared there were -6000 Irish, and 3000 children in the neighbourhood of George Street alone. -In 1815 there were 14,164 Irish in the whole of London.[664] The Irish -portion of the parish of St. Giles's was known by the name of the Holy -Land in 1829. - -[Illustration: THE SEVEN DIALS.] - - - - -[Illustration: LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS THEATRE, 1821.] - - -CHAPTER XIV. - -LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. - - -Lincoln's Inn, originally belonging to the Black Friars before they -removed Thames-ward, derives its name from Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, -to whom it was given by Edward I., and whose town house or inn stood on -the same site in the reign of Edward I. Earl Henry died in 1312, the year -in which Gaveston was killed, and his monument was one of the stateliest -in the old church. His arms are still those of the inn and of its -tributaries, Furnival's and Thavies inns. There is yet extant an old -account of the earl's bailiff, relating to the sale of the fruit of his -master's garden. The noble's table was supplied and the residue sold. The -apples, pears, large nuts, and cherries, the beans, onions, garlic, and -leeks, produced a profit of £9: 2: 3 (about £135 in modern money). The -only flowers were roses. The bailiff, it appears, expended 8s. a year in -purchasing small fry, frogs, and eels, to feed the pike in the pond or -vivary.[665] - -Part of the Chancery Lane side of Lincoln's Inn was in 1217 and 1272 "the -mansion house" of William de Haverhill, treasurer to King Henry III. He -was attainted for treason, and his house and lands were confiscated to the -king, who then gave his house to Ralph Neville, Chancellor of England and -Bishop of Chichester, who built there "a fair house;" and the Bishops of -Chichester inhabited it there till Henry VII.'s time, when they let it to -law students, reserving lodgings for themselves, and it fell into the -hands of Judge Sulyard and other feoffees. This family held it till -Elizabeth's time, when Sir Edward Sulyard, of Essex, sold the estate to -the Benchers,[666] who then began enlarging their frontier and building. - -The plain Tudor gateway with the two side towers soaked with black smoke, -the oldest part of the existing structure, was built in 1518 by Sir Thomas -Lovell, a member of this inn and treasurer of the household to Henry VII., -when great alterations took place in the inn. What thousands of wise men -and rogues have passed under its murky shadow! None of the original -building is left. The Black Friars' House fronted the Holborn end of the -Bishop's Palace.[667] The chambers adjoining the Gate House are of a later -date and it was at these that Mr. Cunningham thinks Ben Jonson -worked.[668] - -The chapel, of debased Perpendicular Gothic, was built by Inigo Jones, and -consecrated in 1623, Dr. Donne the poet preaching the consecration sermon. -The stained glass was the work of a Mr. Hale of Fetter Lane. The twelve -apostles, Moses, and the prophets still glow like immortal flowers, -bright as when Donne, or Ussher, watched the light they shed. One of the -windows bears the name of Bernard van Linge, the same man probably who -executed the windows at Wadham College, Oxford.[669] Noy, the -Attorney-General and creature of Charles I., a friend of Laud, and the -proposer of the writ for ship-money, put up the window representing John -the Baptist, rather an ominous saint, surely, in Charles's time. Noy died -in 1634, before the storm which would certainly have carried his head off. -He left his money to a prodigal son, who was afterwards killed in a -duel,--"Left to be squandered, and I hope no better from him," says the -dying man, bitterly. It was Noy who decided the curious case of the three -graziers who left their money with their hostess. One of them afterwards -returned and ran off with the money; upon which the other two sued the -woman, denying their consent. Mr. Noy pleaded that the money was ready to -be given up directly the three men came together and claimed it.[670] -Rogers tells this story in his poem of "Italy," and gives it a romantic -turn. - -Laud, always restless for novelties that could look like Rome, and yet not -be Rome, referred to the Lincoln's Inn windows at his trial. He wondered -at a Mr. Brown objecting to such things, considering he was not of -Lincoln's Inn, "where Mr. Prynne's zeal had not yet beaten down the images -of the apostles in the fair windows of that chapel, which windows were set -up new long since the statute of Edward VI.; and it is well known," says -that enemy of the Puritans, "that I was once resolved to have returned -this upon Mr. Brown in the House of Commons, but changed my mind, lest -thereby I might have set some furious spirit at work to destroy those -harmless goodly windows, to the just dislike of that worthy society."[671] - -The crypt under the chapel rests on many pillars and strong-backed arches, -and, like the cloisters in the Temple, was intended as a place for -student-lawyers to walk in and exchange learning. Butler describes -witnesses of the straw-bail species waiting here for customers,[672] just -as half a century ago they used to haunt the doors of Chancery Lane -gin-shops. On a June day in 1663 Pepys came to walk under the chapel by -appointment, after pacing up and down and admiring the new garden then -constructing. - -The great Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England in Henry VIII.'s time, -had chambers at Lincoln's Inn when he was living in Bucklersbury after his -marriage. This was about 1506. He wrote his _Utopia_ in 1516. King Henry -grew so fond of More's learned and witty conversation, that he used to -constantly send for him to supper, and would walk in the garden at Chelsea -with his arm round his neck. More was beheaded in 1535 for refusing to -take the oath of succession and acknowledge the legality of the king's -divorce from Catherine of Arragon. Erasmus, who knew More well, inscribed -the "Nux" of Ovid to his son. More's skull is still preserved, it is said, -in the vault of St. Dunstan's Church at Canterbury.[673] More's daughter, -Margaret Roper, was buried with it in her arms. - -Dr. Donne, the divine and poet, whose mother was distantly related to Sir -Thomas More and to Heywood the epigrammatist, was a student at Lincoln's -Inn in his seventeenth year, but left it to squander his father's fortune. -He was a friend of Bacon, with whom he lived for five years, and also of -Ben Jonson, who corresponded with him. When young, Donne had written a -thesis to prove that suicide is no sin. "That," he used to say in later -years, "was written by Jack Donne, not by Dr. Donne." - -This same poet was for two years preacher at Lincoln's Inn; so was the -charitable and amiable Tillotson in 1663. The latter, after preaching the -doctrine of non-resistance before King Charles II., was nicknamed "Hobbes -in the pulpit;" he and Dr. Burnet both tried in vain to force the same -doctrine on Lord William Russell when he was preparing for death. -Tillotson, who was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1691 by King William, -was a valued friend of Locke. Addison considered Tillotson's three folio -volumes of sermons to be the standard of English, and meant to make them -the ground-work of a dictionary which he had projected. Warburton, a -sterner critic, denies that the sermons are oratorical like Jeremy -Taylor's, or thoughtful like Barrow's, but yet confesses them to be clear, -rational, equable,[674] and certainly not without a noble simplicity. - -Among the most eminent students of Lincoln's Inn we must remember Sir -Matthew Hale. After a wild and vain youth, Hale suddenly commenced -studying sixteen hours a day,[675] and became so careless of dress that he -was once seized by a pressgang. The sight of a friend who fell down in a -fit from excessive drinking led to this honest man's renouncing all -revelry and becoming unchangeably religious. Noy directed him in his -studies; he became a friend of Selden, and was one of the counsel for -Strafford, Laud, and the king himself. Nevertheless, he obtained the -esteem of Cromwell, who was tolerant of all shades of goodness. He died -1675-6. When a nobleman once complained to Charles II. that Hale would not -discuss with him the arguments in his cause then before him, Charles -replied, "Ods fish, man! he would have treated me just the same." - -Lord Chancellor Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere, was of Lincoln's Inn. -His son became Earl of Bridgewater. He was a friend of Lord Bacon, and had -a celebrated dispute with Chief Justice Coke as to whether "the Chancery -can relieve by subpoena after a judgment at law in the same cause." -Prudent, discreet, and honest, Ellesmere was esteemed by both Elizabeth -and James, and died at York House in 1617. Bishop Hacket says of him that -"He neither did, spoke, nor thought anything in his life but what deserved -praise."[676] It is said that many persons used to go to the Chancery -Court only to see and admire his venerable presence. - -Sir Henry Spelman was admitted of Lincoln's Inn. He was a friend of -Dugdale, and one of our earliest students of Anglo-Saxon. He wrote much -on civil law, sacrilege, and tithes. Aubrey tells us that he was thought a -dunce at school, and did not seriously sit down to hard study till he was -about forty. This eminent scholar died in 1641, and was interred with -great solemnity in Westminster Abbey. - -Shaftesbury, the subtle and dangerous, and one of the restorers of the -king he afterwards worked so hard to depose, was of Lincoln's Inn. - -Ashmole, the great herald, antiquary, and numismatist, originally a London -attorney, was married in Lincoln's Inn Chapel, in 1668, to the daughter of -his great colleague in topography and heraldry, Sir William Dugdale, the -part compiler of the _Monasticon_. - -In the chapel was buried Alexander Brome, a Royalist attorney, a -translator of Horace, and a great writer of sharp songs against "The -Rump," who died in 1666. Here also--in loving companionship with him only -because dead--rests that irritable Puritan lawyer, William Prynne. He -twice lost an ear in the pillory, besides being branded on the cheek. He -ultimately opposed Cromwell and aided the return of Charles, for which he -was made Keeper of the Tower Records. His works amount to forty folio and -quarto volumes. He left copies of them to the Lincoln's Inn library. -Needham calls him "the greatest paper-worm that ever crept into a -library." He died in his Lincoln's Inn chambers in 1669. Wood computes -that Prynne wrote as much as would amount to a sheet for every day of his -life. His epitaph had been erased when Wood wrote the _Athenæ Oxonienses_ -in 1691. - -In the same chapel lies Secretary Thurloe, the son of an Essex rector and -the faithful servant of Cromwell. He was admitted of Lincoln's Inn in -1647, and in 1654 was chosen one of the masters of the upper bench. He -died suddenly in his chambers in Lincoln's Inn in 1668. Dr. Birch -published several folio volumes of his _State Papers_. He seems to have -been an honest, dull, plodding man. Thurloe's chambers were at No. 24 in -the south angle of the great court leading out of Chancery Lane, formerly -called the Gatehouse Court, but now Old Buildings--the rooms on the left -hand of the ground-floor. Here Thurloe had chambers from 1645 to 1659. -Cromwell must have often come here to discuss dissolutions of Parliament -and Dutch treaties. State papers sufficient to fill sixty-seven folio -volumes were discovered in a false ceiling in the garret by a clergyman -who had borrowed the chambers of a friend during the long vacation. He -disposed of them to Lord Chancellor Somers.[677] Cautious old Thurloe had -perhaps sown these papers, hoping to reap the harvest under some new -Cromwellian dynasty that never came. - -Rushworth the historian was a barrister of Lincoln's Inn. During the Civil -Wars he was assistant clerk to the House of Commons. After the Restoration -he became secretary to the Lord Keeper, but falling into distress, died in -the King's Bench in 1690. His eight folio volumes of _Historical -Collections_ are specially valuable.[678] - -Sir John Denham also studied in this pasturing-ground of English genius; -and here, after squandering all his money in gaming, he wrote an essay -upon the vice that brings its own punishment. In 1641, when his tragedy of -"The Sophy" appeared, Waller said that Denham had broken out like the -Irish rebellion, threescore thousand strong. In 1643 appeared his -"Cooper's Hill" which the lampooners declared the author had bought of a -vicar for forty pounds.[679] He became mad for a short time at the close -of life, and was then ridiculed by Butler, so says Dr. Johnson. He died in -1668, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. Denham and Waller smoothed -the way for Dryden,[680] and founded the Pope school of highly polished -artificial verse. Denham's noble apostrophe to the river Thames is all but -perfect. - -George Wither, one of our fine old poets of a true school, rougher but -more natural than Denham's, the son of a Hampshire farmer, entered at -Lincoln's Inn. Sent to the Marshalsea for his just but indiscreet satires, -he turned soldier, fought against the Royalists, and became one of -Cromwell's dreaded major-generals. He was in Newgate for a long time after -the Restoration, and died in 1667. When taken prisoner by Charles, Sir -John Denham obtained his release on the humorous pretext that, while -Wither lived, he (Denham) would not be the worst poet in England.[681] - -In No. 1 New Square, Arthur Murphy, the friend of Dr. Johnson, resided for -twenty-three years. He became a member of the inn in 1757. In 1788 he sold -his chambers, and retired from the bar. As a journalist he was ridiculed -by Wilkes and Churchill. His plays, "The Grecian Daughter" and "Three -Weeks after Marriage," were successful. He also translated Tacitus and -Sallust. He died in 1805.[682] - -Judge Fortescue, a great English lawyer of the time of Henry VI., was a -student of this inn. He wrote his great work, _De Laudibus Legum Angliæ_ -to educate Prince Edward when in banishment in Lorraine. This pious, -loyal, and learned man, after being nominal Chancellor, returned to -retirement in England, and acknowledged Edward IV. - -The Earl of Mansfield belonged to the same illustrious inn. For elegance -of mind, for honesty and industry, and for eloquence, he stands -unrivalled. The proceedings against Wilkes, and the destruction of his -house in Bloomsbury by the fanatical mob of 1780, were the chief events of -his useful life. - -Spencer Perceval was of Lincoln's Inn. A son of the Earl of Egmont, he -became a student here in 1782. In Parliament he supported Pitt and the war -against Napoleon. In 1801, under the Addington ministry, he became -Attorney-General, and persecuted Peltier for a libel on Bonaparte during -the peace of Amiens. On the death of the Duke of Portland he was raised to -the head of the Treasury, where he continued till May 1812, when he was -shot through the heart in the lobby of the House of Commons by Bellingham, -a bankrupt merchant of Archangel, who considered himself aggrieved because -ministers had not taken his part and claimed redress for his losses from -the Russian Government. Perceval was a shrewd, even-tempered lawyer, -fluent and industrious, who, had time been permitted him, might possibly -have proved more completely than he did his incapacity for high -ministerial command. - -George Canning became a student at Lincoln's Inn in 1781. His father was a -bankrupt wine-merchant who died of a broken heart. His mother was a -provincial actress. His relation, Sheridan, introduced him to Fox, Grey, -and Burke, the latter of whom, it is said, induced him to make politics -his profession. He made his maiden speech, attacking Fox and supporting -Pitt, in 1794. Late in life he gradually began to support some liberal -measures. In 1827 he became First Lord of the Treasury, and died a few -months afterwards in the zenith of his power. - -Lord Lyndhurst was also one of the glories of this inn. The trial of Dr. -Watson for treason, in 1817, first gained for this son of an American -painter a reputation which, joined with his prudent conduct in the trial -of Cashman the rioter led to his being appointed Solicitor-General in -1818. From that he rose in rapid succession, to the posts of -Attorney-General, Master of the Rolls, Lord Chancellor, and Lord -Lyndhurst. Old, eccentric, "irrepressible" Sir Charles Wetherell was -Copley's fellow-advocate in Watson's case, that ended in the prisoner's -acquittal.[683] In 1827, when Abbott became Lord Tenterden, Copley -accepted the Great Seal, displacing Lord Eldon, and joined Canning's -cabinet, becoming Lord Lyndhurst. In 1830 he became Chief Baron of the -Exchequer. - -Charles Pepys, Lord Cottenham, born 1781, was called to the bar by the -Society of Lincoln's Inn in 1804. He was appointed King's Counsel in 1826, -was made Solicitor-General in 1834, succeeded Sir John Leach as Master of -the Rolls in the same year, and was elevated to the woolsack in 1836. This -Chancellor, who was a very excellent lawyer, was descended from a branch -of the family of Samuel Pepys, author of the celebrated _Diary_. - -Sir E. Sugden was a member of Lincoln's Inn. He was born in the year 1781. -He was the son of a Westminster hairdresser who became rich by inventing a -substitute for hair-powder. He was created Lord St. Leonards on the -formation of a Conservative ministry in 1852, when he accepted the Great -Seal. - -Lord Brougham also studied in Lincoln's Inn. He was born in 1778, and -started the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1802. In 1820 he defended Queen -Caroline; but it would take a volume to follow the career of this -impetuous and versatile genius. His struggles for law-reform, for Catholic -emancipation, for abolition of slavery, for the education of the people, -and for Parliamentary reform, are matters of history. In his old age, -though still vigorous, Lord Brougham grew tamer, and condemned the armed -emancipation of slaves practised by the Northern States in the present -American war. He died at his residence at Cannes in the South of France in -1868. - -Cottenham and Campbell were students in Lincoln's Inn; so was that -eccentric reformer Jeremy Bentham, who was called to the bar in 1722, and -was the son of a Houndsditch attorney; and so was Penn, the founder of -Pennsylvania. - -That "luminary of the Irish Church,"[684] Archbishop Ussher, was preacher -at Lincoln's Inn in 1647, the society giving the good man handsome rooms -ready furnished. He continued to preach there for eight years, till his -eyesight began to fail. He died in 1655, and was buried, by Cromwell's -permission, with great magnificence, in Erasmus's chapel in Westminster -Abbey. His library of 10,000 volumes, bought of him by Cromwell's -officers, was given by Charles II. to Dublin College. Ussher, when only -eighteen, was the David who discomfited in public dispute the learned -Jesuit Fitz-Simons. He saw Charles beheaded from the roof of a house on -the site of the Admiralty. - -Dr. Langhorne, the joint translator with his brother of the _Lives of -Plutarch_, was assistant preacher at Lincoln's Inn. An imitator of -Sterne, and a writer in Griffiths's _Monthly Review_, he was praised by -Smollett and abused by Churchill. Langhorne's amiable poem, _The Country -Justice_, was praised by Scott. He died in 1779. - -That fiery controversialist Warburton was preacher at Lincoln's Inn in -1746, and the same year preached and published a sermon on the Highland -rebellion. He was the son of an attorney at Newark-upon-Trent. His _Divine -Legation_ was an effort to show that the absence of allusions in the -writings of Moses to a system of rewards and punishments was a proof of -their divine origin. The book is full of perverse digressions. His edition -of Shakspere is, perhaps, to use a fine expression of Burke, "one of the -poorest maggots that ever crept from the great man's carcase." Pope left -half his library to Warburton, who had suggested to him the conclusion of -the _Dunciad_. Wilkes, Bolingbroke, Dr. Louth, and Churchill were all by -turns attacked by this arrogant knight-errant. Warburton died in 1779. - -Reginald Heber, afterwards the excellent Bishop of Calcutta, was appointed -preacher at Lincoln's Inn in 1822, the year before he sailed for India. In -1826 this good man was found dead in his bath at Trichinopoly. The sudden -death of this energetic missionary was a great loss to East Indian -Christianity. In the "company of the preachers" we must not forget the -excellent Dr. Van Mildert, afterwards Bishop of Durham, and Dr. Thomson -the present Archbishop of York. - -In the old times the Lord Chancellor held his sittings in the great hall -of Lincoln's Inn. Here, too, at the Christmas revels, the King of the -Cockneys administered _his_ laws. Jack Straw, a sort of rebellious rival, -was put down, with all his adherents, as a bad precedent for the Essexes -and Norfolks of the inn, by wary Queen Elizabeth, who always kept a firm -grip on her prerogative. In the same reign absurd sumptuary laws, vainly -trying to fix the quicksilver of fashion, forbade the students to wear -long hair, long beards, large ruffs, huge cloaks, or big spurs. The fine -for wearing a beard of more than a fortnight's growth was three shillings -and fourpence.[685] In her father's time beards had been prohibited under -pain of double commons. - -In the old hall, replaced by the new Tudor building, stood one of -Hogarth's most pretentious but worst pictures, "Paul preaching before -Felix," an ill-drawn and ludicrous caricature of epic work. The society -paid for it. It is now rolled up and hid away with as much contumely as -Kent's absurdity at St. Clement's when Hogarth parodied it. - -The new hall of Lincoln's Inn was built by Mr. P. Hardwick, the architect -of the St. Katherine Docks, and was opened by the Queen in person in 1845. -It is a fine Tudor building of red brick, with stone dressings. The hall -is 120 feet, the library 80 feet long. The contract was taken for £55,000, -but its cost exceeded that sum. The library contains the unique fourth -volume of Prynne's _Records_, which the society bought for £335 at the -Stow sale in 1849, and all Sir Matthew Hale's bequests of books and MSS.: -"a treasure," says that "excellent good man," as Evelyn calls him[686] in -his will, "that is not fit for every man's view." The hall contains a -fresco representing the "Lawgivers of the World," by Watts. The gardens -were much curtailed by the erection of the hall, and their quietude -destroyed. Ben Jonson talks of the walks under the elms.[687] Steele seems -to have been fond of this garden when he felt meditative. In May 1709, he -says much hurry and business having perplexed him into a mood too -thoughtful for company, instead of the tavern "I went into Lincoln's Inn -Walk, and having taken a round or two, I sat down, according to the -allowed familiarity of these places, on a bench." In a more thoughtful -month (November) of the same year he goes again for a solitary walk in the -garden, "a favour that is indulged me by several of the benchers, who are -very intimate friends, and grown old in the neighbourhood." It was this -bright frosty night, when the whole body of air had been purified into -"bright transparent æther," that Steele imagined his vision of "The -Return of the Golden Age." - -Brave old Ben Jonson was the son of a Scotch gentleman in Henry VIII.'s -service, who, impoverished by the persecutions of Queen Mary, took orders -late in life. His mother married for the second time a small builder or -master bricklayer. He went to Westminster school, where Camden, the great -antiquary, was his master. A kind patron sent him to Cambridge.[688] He -seems to have left college prematurely, and have come back to London to -work with his father-in-law.[689] - -There is an old tradition that he worked at the garden-wall of Lincoln's -Inn next to Chancery Lane, and that a knight or bencher (Sutton, or -Camden), walking by, hearing him repeat a passage of Homer, entered into -conversation with him, and finding him to have extraordinary wit, sent him -back to college; or, as Fuller quaintly puts it, "some gentlemen pitying -that his parts should be buried under the rubbish of so mean a calling, -did by their bounty manumise him freely to follow his own ingenious -inclinations."[690] - -Gifford sneers at the story, for the poet's own words to Drummond of -Hawthornden were simply these:--"He could not endure the occupation of a -bricklayer," and therefore joined Vere in Flanders, probably going with -reinforcements to Ostend in 1591-2.[691] He there fought and slew an -enemy, and stripped him in sight of both armies. On his return, he became -an actor at a Shoreditch theatre. His enemies, the rival satirists, -frequently sneer at the quondam profession of Ben Jonson, and describe him -stamping on the stage as if he were treading mortar. For myself, I admire -brave, truculent old Ben, and delight even in his most crabbed and -pedantic verse, and therefore never pass Lincoln's Inn garden without -thinking of Shakspere's honest but rugged friend--"a bear only in the -coat." - -On June 27, 1752, there was a dreadful fire in New Square, which -destroyed countless historical treasures, including Lord Somers's original -letters and papers. - -At No. 2 and afterwards at No. 6 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, which is built -on Little Lincoln's Inn Fields, and forms no part of the Inn of court, -lived Sir Samuel Romilly. This "great and amiable man," as Tom Moore calls -him, killed himself in a fit of melancholy produced by overwork joined to -the loss of his wife, "a simple, gay, unlearned woman." Sir Samuel was a -stern, reserved man, and she was the only person in the world to whom he -could unbosom himself. When he lost her, he said, "the very vent of his -heart was stopped up."[692] - -It was in Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, that Benjamin Disraeli, born in -December 1805, much too erratic for Plowden and Coke, used to come to -study conveyancing at the chambers of Mr. Bassevi. He is described as -often arriving with Spenser's _Faerie Queen_ under his arm, stopping an -hour or two to read, and then leaving. This led, as might be expected, not -to the woolsack but to the authorship of _Coningsby_. His Premiership and -his Patent of Peerage as Lord Beaconsfield, are due to other causes. - -Whetstone Park, now a small quiet passage, full of printing-offices and -stables, between Great Turnstile and Gate Street, derived its name from a -vestryman of the time of Charles I. It is now chiefly occupied by mews, -but was once filled by infamous houses and low brandy-shops. - -In 1671, the Duke of Monmouth, the Duke of Grafton, and the Duke of St. -Alban's, three of King Charles II.'s illegitimate sons, killed here a -beadle in a drunken brawl. A street-ballad was written on the occasion, -more full of spite against the corrupt court than of sympathy with the -slain man. In poor doggerel the Catnach of 1671 describes the watch coming -in, disturbed from sleep, to appease their graces-- - - "Straight rose mortal jars, - 'Twixt the night blackguard and (the) silver stars; - Then fell the beadle by a ducal hand, - For daring to pronounce the saucy 'Stand!'" - -Sadly enough, the silly fellow's death led to a dance at Whitehall being -put off,-- - - "Disappoints the queen, 'poor little chuck!'"[693] - -and all the brisk courtiers in their gay coats bought with the nation's -subsidies. - -The last two lines are vigorous, sarcastic, and worthy of a humble -imitator of Dryden. The poet sums up-- - - "Yet shall Whitehall, the innocent and good, - See these men dance, all daubed with lace and blood." - -In 1682 the misnamed "Park" grew so infamous, that a countryman, having -been decoyed into one of the houses and robbed, went into Smithfield and -collected an angry mob of about 500 apprentices, who marched on Whetstone -Park, broke open the houses, and destroyed the furniture. The constables -and watchmen, being outnumbered, sent for the king's guard, who dispersed -them and took eleven of them. Nevertheless, the next night another mob -stormed the place, again broke in the doors, smashed the windows, and cut -the feather-beds to pieces. - -Lincoln's Inn Fields formed part of the ancient Fickett's Fields, a plot -of ground of about ten acres, extending formerly from Bell Yard to -Portugal Street and Carey Street. It seems to have been used in the Middle -Ages for jousts and tournaments by the Templars and Knights of St. John of -Jerusalem, to the priory of which last order it belonged till Henry VIII. -dissolved the monasteries, when it was granted to Anthony Stringer. In an -inquest of the time of James I. it is described as having two gates for -horses and carriages at the east end--one gate leading into Chancery Lane, -the other gate at the western end.[694] - -Queen Elizabeth, afraid that London was growing unwieldly, issued several -proclamations against further building. James I., still more timid and -conservative, and not thoroughly acquainted with his own capital, issued a -like absurd ukase in 1612, by the desire of the benchers and students of -Lincoln's Inn, forbidding the erection of new houses in these fields. But -no royal edict can prevent a demand for creating a supply, and as the -building still went on, a commission was appointed in 1618 to lay out the -square in a regular plan. Bacon, then Lord Chancellor, and many noblemen, -judges, and masters in Chancery, were on this commission, and Inigo Jones, -the king's Surveyor-General, drew up the scheme. The report of this body, -given by Rymer, sets out that in the last sixteen years there had been -more building near and about the City of London than in ages before, and -that as these fields were much surrounded by the dwellings and lodgings of -noblemen and gentlemen of quality, "all small cottages and closes shall be -paid for and removed, and the square shall be reduced," both for -sweetness, uniformity, and comeliness, as an ornament to the City, and for -the health and recreation of the inhabitants, into walks and partitions, -as Mr. Inigo Jones should in his map devise.[695] - -There is a tradition that the area of the square, according to Inigo -Jones's plan, was to have been made the exact dimensions of the base of -the great pyramid of Geezeh. The tradition is probably true, for the area -of the pyramid is 535,824 square feet, and that of Lincoln's Inn Fields -550,000.[696] The height of the pyramid was 756 feet. - -The plan proved too costly, and the subscriptions began probably to fail; -but in the course of time noblemen and others began to build for -themselves, but without much regard to uniformity. - -The elevation of Inigo's plan for the Fields, painted in oil colours, is -still preserved at Wilton House, near Salisbury. The view is taken from -the south, and the principal feature in the elevation is Lindsey House in -the centre of the west side, whose stone façade, still existing, stands -boldly out from the brick houses which support it on either side. The -internal accommodation of Lindsey House was never good.[697] - -These fields in Charles I.'s time became the haunt of wrestlers, bowlers, -beggars, and idle boys; and here, in 1624, Lilly the astrologer, then -servant to a mantua-maker in the Strand, spent his time in bowling with -Wat the cobbler, Dick the blacksmith, and such idle apprentices. Hither, -after the Restoration, came every sort of villain--the Rufflers, or maimed -soldiers, who told lies of Edgehill and Naseby, and who surrounded the -coaches of charitable lords; "Dommerers," or sham dumb men; "Mumpers," or -sham broken gentlemen; "Whipjacks," or sham seamen with bound-up legs; -"Abram-men," or sham idiots; "Fraters," or rogues with forged patents; -"Anglers," wild rogues, "Clapper-dudgeons,"[698] and men with gambling -wheels of fortune. - -In Queen Anne's reign Gay sketches the dangers of night in these fields; -he warns his readers to avoid the lurking thief, by day a beggar, or -else-- - - "The crutch, which late compassion moved, shall wound - Thy bleeding head, and fell thee to the ground. - -Nor trust the linkman," he adds, "along the lonely wall, or he'll put out -his light and rob you, but-- - - "Still keep the public streets where oily rays - That from the crystal lamp o'erspread the ways." - -The south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields was built and named three years -before the Restoration, by Sir William Cowper, James Cowper, and Robert -Henley. In 1668 Portugal Row, as it was called, but not from Charles's -queen,[699] was extremely fashionable. There were then living here such -noble and noted persons as Lady Arden, William Perpoint, Esq., Sir Charles -Waldegrave, Lady Fitzharding, Lady Diana Curzon, Serjeant Maynard, Lord -Cardigan, Mrs. Anne Heron, Lady Mordant, Richard Adams, Esq., Lady Carr, -Lady Wentworth, Mr. Attorney Montagu, Lady Coventry, Judge Welch, and Lady -Davenant.[700] - -Mr. Serjeant Maynard was the brave old Presbyterian lawyer, then -eighty-seven, who replied to the Prince of Orange, when he said that he -must have outlived all the men of law of his time--"Sir, I should have -outlived the law itself had not your highness come over." - -Lady Davenant was the widow of Sir William Davenant, the Oxford -innkeeper's son, the poet and manager, who, aided by Whitlocke and -Maynard, was allowed in Cromwell's time to perform operas at a theatre in -Charterhouse Square. After the Restoration he had the theatre in Portugal -Street. He died in 1668, insolvent. His poems were published by his widow, -and dedicated to the Duke of York in 1673. - -Lord Cardigan was the father of the infamous Countess of Shrewsbury, who -is said, disguised as a page, to have held her lover the Duke of -Buckingham's horse while he killed her husband in a duel near Barn Elms. -The Earl of Rochester lived in the house next the Duke's Theatre,[701] -which stood behind the present College of Surgeons, as Davenant says in -one of his epilogues-- - - "The prospect of the sea cannot be shown, - Therefore be pleased to think that you are all - Behind the row which men call Portugal." - -In September 1586 Ballard, Babington, and other conspirators against the -life of Queen Elizabeth were put to death in Lincoln's Inn Fields. -Babington was a young man of good family, who had been a page to the Earl -of Shrewsbury, and had plotted to rescue Mary and assassinate Elizabeth. -His plot discovered, he had fled to St. John's Wood for concealment. Seven -of these plotters were hanged on the first day, and seven on the second. -The last seven were allowed to die, by special grace, before being -disembowelled by the executioner. - -It was through these fields that, one spring night in 1676-7, Thomas -Sadler, an impudent and well-known thief, rivalling the audacity of Blood, -having with some confederates stolen the mace and purse of Lord Chancellor -Finch from his house in Great Queen Street, bore them in mock procession -on their way to their lodgings in Knightrider Street, Doctors' Commons. -Sadler was hanged at Tyburn for this theft. - -Lord William Russell was son of William, Earl of Bedford, by Lady Ann -Carr, daughter of Carr, Earl of Somerset. He was beheaded in the centre of -Lincoln's Inn Fields, July 21, 1683, the last year but two of the reign of -King Charles II., for being, as it was alleged, engaged in a plot to -attack the guards and kill the king, on his return from Newmarket races, -at the Rye House Farm, in a by-road near Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire, about -seventeen miles north-east of London. - -The Whig party, in their eagerness to restrain the Papists and exclude the -Duke of York from the throne, had gone too far, and their zeal for the -Dissenters had produced a violent reaction in the High Church party. -Charles and the Duke, taking advantage of the return tide, began to -persecute the Dissenters, denounce Shaftesbury, assail the liberties of -the City, and finally dissolved the Parliament. Soon after this, that -subtle politician, Shaftesbury, finding it impossible to rouse the Duke of -Monmouth, Essex, or Lord Russell, denounced them all as sold and deceived, -and fled to Holland. - -After his flight, meetings of his creatures were held at the chambers of -one West, an active talking man. Keeling, a vintner of decaying business, -betrayed the plot, as also did Lord Howard, a man so infamous that Charles -himself said "he would not hang the worst dog he had upon his evidence." -Keeling and his brother swore that forty men were hired to intercept the -king, but that a fire at Newmarket, which had hastened Charles's return, -had defeated their plans. Goodenough, an ex-sheriff, had told them that -the Duke of Monmouth and other great men were to raise 4000 soldiers and -£20,000. The brothers also swore that Goodenough had told them that Lord -Russell had joined in the design of killing the king and the duke. - -Lord Russell acted with great composure. He would not fly, refused to let -his friends surrender themselves to share his fortunes, and told an -acquaintance that "he was very sensible he should fall a sacrifice."[702] -When he appeared at the council, the king himself said that "nobody -suspected Lord Russell of any design against his own person, but that he -had good evidence of his being in designs against his government." The -prisoner denied all knowledge of the intended insurrection, or of the -attempt to surprise the guards. - -The infamous Jeffries was one of the counsel for his prosecution. Lord -Russell argued at his trial, that, allowing he had compassed the king's -death, which he denied, he had been guilty only of a conspiracy to levy -war, which was not treason except by a recent statute of Charles II., the -prosecutions upon which were limited to a certain time, which had -elapsed,[703] so that both law and justice were in this case violated. - -The truth seems to be that Lord Russell was a true patriot, of a slow and -sober judgment, a taciturn, good man, of not the quickest intelligence, -who had allowed himself to listen to dangerous and random talk for the -sake of political purposes. He wished to debar the duke from the throne, -but he had never dreamt of accomplishing his purpose by murder. It has -since been discovered that Sidney, doing evil that good might come, had -accepted secret-service money from France, and that Russell himself had -interviews with French agents. Lord John Russell explains away this charge -very well. Charles was degraded enough to take money from France. The -patriots, told that Louis XIV. wished to avoid a war, intrigued with the -French king to maintain peace, fearing that if Charles once raised an army -under any pretence, he would first employ it to obtain absolute power at -home, which it is most probable he would have done.[704] On the whole, -these disingenuous interviews must be lamented; they could not and they -did not lead to good. It has been justly regretted also that Lord Russell -on his trial did not boldly denounce the tyranny of the court, and show -the necessity that had existed for active opposition. - -After sentence the condemned man wrote petitions to the king and duke, -which were unjustly sneered at as abject. They really, however, contain no -promise but that of living beyond sea and meddling no more in English -affairs. Of one of them at least, Burnet says it was written at the -earnest solicitation of Lady Rachel; and Lord Russell himself said, with -regret, "This will be printed and sold about the streets as my submission -when I am led out to be hanged." He lamented to Burnet that his wife beat -every bush and ran about so for his preservation; but he acquiesced in -what she did when he thought it would be afterwards a mitigation of her -sorrow. - -When his brave and excellent wife, the daughter of Charles I.'s loyal -servant, Southampton, who was the son of Shakspere's friend, begged for -her husband's life, the king replied, "How can I grant that man six weeks, -who would not have granted me six hours?"[705] - -There is no scene in history that "goes more directly to the heart," says -Fox, "than the story of the last days of this excellent man." The night -before his death it rained hard, and he said, "Such a rain to-morrow will -spoil a great show," which was a dull thing on a rainy day. He thought a -violent death only the pain of a minute, not equal to that of drawing a -tooth; and he was still of opinion _that the king was limited by law, and -that when he broke through those limits, his subjects might defend -themselves and restrain him_.[706] He then received the sacrament from -Tillotson with much devotion, and parted from his wife with a composed -silence; as soon as she was gone he exclaimed, "The bitterness of death is -past," saying what a blessing she had been to him, and what a misery it -had been if she had tried to induce him to turn an informer. He slept -soundly that night and rose in a few hours, but would take no care in -dressing. He prayed six or seven times by himself, and drank a little tea -and some sherry. He then wound up his watch, and said, "Now I have done -with time and shall go into eternity." When told that he should give the -executioner ten guineas, he said, with a smile, that it was a pretty thing -to give a fee to have his head cut off. When the sheriffs came at ten -o'clock, Lord Russell embraced Lord Cavendish, who had offered to change -clothes with him and stay in his place in prison, or to attack the coach -with a troop of horse and carry off his friend; but the noble man would -not listen to either proposal. - -In the street some in the crowd wept, while others insulted him. He said, -"I hope I shall quickly see a better assembly." He then sang, half to -himself, the beginning of the 149th Psalm. As the coach turned into Little -Queen Street, he said, looking at his own house, "I have often turned to -the one hand with great comfort, but now I turn to this with greater," and -then a tear or two fell from his eyes. As they entered Lincoln's Inn -Fields he said, "This has been to me a place of sinning, and God now makes -it the place of my punishment." When he came to the scaffold, he walked -about it four or five times: then he prayed by himself, and also with -Tillotson; then he partly undressed himself, laid his head down without -any change of countenance, and it was cut off in two strokes. Lord -William's walking-stick and a cotemporary account of his death are kept at -Woburn Abbey. - -Lady Rachel Russell, the excellent wife of this patriot, had been his -secretary during the trial. She spent her after-life, not in unwisely -lamenting the inevitable past, but in doing good works, and in educating -her children. Writing two months after the execution to Dr. Fritzwilliams, -this noble woman says:[707] "_Secretly_, my heart mourns and cannot be -comforted, because I have not the dear companion and sharer of all my joys -and sorrows. I want him to talk with, to walk with, to eat and sleep with. -All these things are irksome to me now; all company and meals I could -avoid, if it might be.... When I see my children before me, I remember -the pleasure he took in them: this makes my heart shrink." - -In 1692 Lady Russell appears to have regained her composure. But she had -other trials in store: for in 1711 she lost her only son, the Duke of -Bedford, in the flower of his age, and six months afterwards one of her -daughters died in childbed. - -It is said that, in his hour of need, James II. was mean enough to say to -the Duke of Bedford, "My lord, you are an honest man, have great credit, -and can do me signal service." "Ah, sir," replied the duke, with a grave -severity, "I am old and feeble now, but I once had a _son_." - -The Sacheverell riots culminated in these now quiet Fields. In 1710 Daniel -Dommaree, a queen's waterman, Francis Willis, a footman, and George -Purchase, were tried at the Old Bailey for heading a riot during the -Sacheverell trial and pulling down meeting-houses. This Sacheverell was an -ignorant, impudent incendiary, the adopted son of a Marlborough -apothecary, and was impeached by the House of Commons for preaching at St. -Andrew's, Holborn, sermons denouncing the Revolution of 1688. His sermons -were ordered to be burnt, and he was sentenced to be suspended for three -years. Atterbury helped the mischievous firebrand in his ineffectual -defence, and Swift wrote a most scurrilous letter to Bishop Fleetwood, who -had lamented the excesses of the mob. Sacheverell had been at Oxford with -Addison, who inscribed a poem to him. During the trial, a mob marched from -the Temple, whither they had escorted Sacheverell, pulled down Dr. -Burgess's meeting-house, and threw the pulpit, sconces, and gallery pews -into a fire in Lincoln's Inn Fields, some waving curtains on poles, -shouting, "High Church standard!" "Huzza! High Church and Sacheverell!" -"We will have them all down!" They also burnt other meeting-houses in -Leather Lane, Drury Lane, and Fetter Lane, and made bonfires of the -woodwork in the streets. They were eventually dispersed by the -horse-grenadiers and horse-guards and foot. Dommaree was sentenced to -death, but pardoned; Willis was acquitted; and Purchase was pardoned.[708] - -Wooden posts and rails stood round the Fields till 1735, when an Act was -passed to enable the inhabitants to make improvements, to put an iron gate -at each corner, and to erect dwarf walls and iron palisades.[709] Before -this time grooms used to break in horses on this spot. One day while -looking at these centaurs, Sir Joseph Jekyll, who had brought a very -obnoxious bill into Parliament in 1736 in order to raise the price of gin, -was mobbed, thrown down, and dangerously trampled on. His initials, "J. -J.," figure under a gibbet chalked on a wall in one of Hogarth's -prints.[710] Macaulay's _History_ contains a very highly coloured picture -of these Fields. A comparison of the passage with the facts from which it -is drawn would be a useful lesson to all historical students who love -truth in its severity.[711] - -Newcastle House stands at the north-west angle of the Fields, at the -south-eastern corner of Great Queen Street. It derived its name from John -Holles, Duke of Newcastle, a relative of the noble families of Vere, -Cavendish, and Holles. This duke bought the house before 1708, but died in -1711 without issue, and was succeeded in the house by his nephew, the -leader of the Pelham administration under George II. - -The house had been bought by Lord Powis about 1686. It was built for him -by Captain William Winde, a scholar of Webbe's, the pupil and executor of -Inigo Jones.[712] William Herbert, first Marquis of Powis, was outlawed -and fled to St. Germain's to James II., who made him Duke of Powis. -Government had thought of buying the house when it was inhabited by the -Lord Keeper, Sir Nathan Wright,[713] and to have settled it officially on -the Great Seal. It was once the residence of Sir John Somers, the Lord -Chancellor. - -In 1739 Lady Henrietta Herbert, widow of Lord William Herbert, second son -of the Marquis of Powis, and daughter of James, first Earl of Waldegrave, -was married to Mr. John Beard,[714] who seems to have been a fine singer -and a most charitable, estimable man. Lady Henrietta's grandmother was the -daughter of James II. by the sister of the great Duke of Marlborough. Dr. -Burner speaks of Beard's great knowledge of music and of his intelligence -as an actor.[715] In an epitaph on him, still extant, the writer says-- - - "Whence had that voice such magic to control? - 'Twas but the echo of a well-tuned soul; - Through life his morals and his music ran - In symphony, and spoke the virtuous man. - ... Go, gentle harmonist! our hopes approve, - To meet and hear thy sacred songs above; - When taught by thee, the stage of life well trod, - We rise to raptures round the throne of God." - -Beard, excellent both in oratorios and serious and comic operas, became -part proprietor of Covent Garden Theatre, and died in 1791. - -The Duke of Newcastle's crowded levées were his pleasure and his triumph. -He generally made people of business wait two or three hours in the -ante-chamber while he trifled with insignificant favourites in his closet. -When at last he entered the levée room, he accosted, hugged, embraced, and -promised everything to everybody with an assumed cordiality and a -degrading familiarity.[716] - -"Long" Sir Thomas Robertson was a great intruder on the duke's time; if -told that he was out, he would come in to look at the clock or play with -the monkey, in hopes of the great man relenting. The servants, at last -tired out with Sir Thomas, concocted a formula of repulses, and the next -time he came the porter, without waiting for his question, began--"Sir, -his grace is gone out, the fire has gone out, the clock stands, and the -monkey is dead."[717] - -Sir Timothy Waldo, on his way from the duke's dinner-table to his own -carriage, once gave the cook, who was waiting in the hall, a crown. The -rogue returned it, saying he did not take silver. "Oh, don't you, indeed?" -said Sir Timothy, coolly replacing it in his pocket; "then I don't give -gold." Jonas Hanway, the great opponent of tea-drinking, published eight -letters to the duke on this subject,[718] and the custom began from that -time to decline. But Hogarth had already condemned the exaction. - -The duke was very profuse in his promises, and a good story is told of the -result of his insincerity. At a Cornish election, the duke had obtained -the turning vote for his candidate by his usual assurances. The elector, -wishing to secure something definite, had asked for a supervisorship of -excise for his son-in-law on the present holder's death. "The moment he -dies," said the premier, "set out post-haste for London; drive directly to -my house in the Fields: night or day, sleeping or waking, dead or alive, -thunder at the door; the porter will show you upstairs directly; and the -place is yours." A few months after the old supervisor died, and up to -London rushed the Cornish elector. - -Now that very night the duke had been expecting news of the death of the -King of Spain, and had left orders before he went to bed to have the -courier sent up directly he arrived. The Cornish man, mistaken for this -important messenger, was instantly, to his great delight, shown up to the -duke's bedroom. "Is he dead?--is he dead?" cried the duke. "Yes, my lord, -yes," answered the aspirant, promptly. "When did he die?" "The day before -yesterday, at half-past one o'clock, after three weeks in his bed, and -taking a power of doctor's stuff; and I hope your grace will be as good as -your word, and let my son-in-law succeed him." "_Succeed him!_" shouted -the duke; "is the man drunk or mad? Where are your despatches?" he -exclaimed, tearing back the bed-curtains; and there, to his vexation, -stood the blundering elector, hat in hand, his stupid red face beaming -with smiles as he kept bowing like a joss. The duke sank back in a -violent fit of laughter, which, like the electric fluid, was in a moment -communicated to his attendants.[719] It is not stated whether the Cornish -man obtained his petition. - -There is an agreement in all the stories of the duke, who was thirty years -Secretary of State, and nearly ten years First Lord of the Treasury, -"whether told," says Macaulay, "by people who were perpetually seeing him -in Parliament and attending his levées in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or by Grub -Street writers, who had never more than a glimpse of his star through the -windows of his gilded coach."[720] Smollett and Walpole mixed in different -society, yet they both sketch the duke with the same colours. Smollett's -Newcastle runs out of his dressing-room with his face covered with -soapsuds to embrace the Moorish envoy. Walpole's Newcastle pushes his way -into the Duke of Grafton's sick-room to kiss the old nobleman's plaisters. -"He was a living, moving, talking caricature. His gait was a shuffling -trot, his utterance a rapid stutter. He was always in a hurry--he was -never in time; he abounded in fulsome caresses and in hysterical tears. -His oratory resembled that of Justice Shallow--it was nonsense -effervescent with animal spirits and impertinence. 'Oh yes, yes, to be -sure--Annapolis must be defended; troops must be sent to Annapolis. Pray, -where is Annapolis?'--'Cape Breton an island! Wonderful! Show it me on the -map. So it is, sure enough. My dear sir, you always bring us good news. I -must go and tell the king that Cape Breton is an island.' His success is a -proof of what may be done by a man who devotes his whole heart and soul to -one object. His love of power was so intense a passion, that it almost -supplied the place of talent. He was jealous even of his own brother. -Under the guise of levity, he was false beyond all example." "All the able -men of his time ridiculed him as a dunce, a driveller, a child, who never -knew his own mind for an hour together, and yet he overreached them all -round." If the country had remained at peace, this man might have been at -the head of affairs till a new king came with fresh favourites and a -strong will; "but the inauspicious commencement of the Seven Years' War -brought on a crisis to which Newcastle was altogether unequal. After a -calm of fifteen years, the spirit of the nation was again stirred to its -inmost depths." - -This is strongly etched, but Macaulay was too fond of caricature for a -real lover of truth. Walpole, recounting this greedy imbecile's disgrace, -reviews his career much more forcibly, for in a few words he shows us how -great had been the power which this chatterer's fixed purpose had -attained. The memoir-writer describes the duke as the man "who had begun -the world by heading mobs against the ministers of Queen Anne; who had -braved the heir-apparent, afterwards George I., and forced himself upon -him as godfather to his son; who had recovered that prince's favour, and -preserved power under him, at the expense of every minister whom that -prince preferred; who had been a rival of another Prince of Wales for the -chancellorship of Cambridge; and who was now buffeted from a fourth court -by a very suitable competitor (Lord Bute), and reduced in his tottery old -age to have recourse to those mobs and that popularity which had raised -him fifty years before." - -Lord Bute was mean enough to compliment the old duke on his retirement. -The duke replied, with a spirit that showed the vitality of his ambition: -"Yes, yes, my lord, I am an old man, but yesterday was my birthday, and I -recollected that Cardinal Fleury _began_ to be prime-minister of France -just at my age."[721] - -Newcastle House, now occupied by the Society for Promoting Christian -Knowledge, was, for forty years or more, inhabited by Sir Alan Chambre, -one of King George III.'s judges. The society, then lodged in Bartlett's -Buildings, in Holborn, derived its first name from that place, and at Sir -Alan's death they purchased the house and site. - -About the centre of the west side of the square, in Sir Alan's time, lived -the Earl and Countess of Portsmouth. The earl was half-witted, but was -always well-conducted and quite producible in society under the guidance -of his countess, a daughter of Lord Grantley. - -Near Surgeons' Hall, at the same epoch, lived the first Lord Wynford, Lord -Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, better known as Serjeant Best. A -quarrel between this irritable lawyer and Serjeant Wilde, afterwards Lord -Chancellor Truro, one of the most stalwart gladiators who ever won a name -and title in the legal arena, gave rise to an epigram, the point of which -was--"That Best was wild, and Wilde was best." - -In 1774, when Lord Clive had rewarded Wedderburn, his defender, with lacs -of rupees and a villa at Mitcham, the lawyer had an elegant house in -Lincoln's Inn Fields, not far from the Duke of Newcastle's,--"a quarter," -says Lord Campbell, "which I recollect still the envied resort of legal -magnates." - -Wedderburn, afterwards better known as Lord Chancellor Loughborough, had a -special hatred for Franklin, and loaded him with abuse before a committee -of the Privy Council, for having sent to America letters from the -Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, urging the Government to employ -military force to suppress the discontents in New England.[722] The effect -of Wedderburn's brilliant oratory in Parliament was ruined, says Lord -Campbell, by "his character for insincerity."[723] When George III. heard -of his death, he is reported to have said, "He has not left a greater -knave behind him in my dominions;" upon which Lord Thurlow savagely said, -with his usual oath, "I perceive that his majesty is quite sane at -present." Wedderburn was a friend of David Hume; his humanity was -eulogised by Dr. Parr, but he was satirised by Churchill in the _Rosciad_. - -Montague, Earl of Sandwich, the great patron of Pepys, lived in Lincoln's -Inn Fields, paying £250 a year rent.[724] Pepys calls it "a fine house, -but deadly dear."[725] He visits him, February 10, 1663-4, and finds my -lord very high and strange and stately, although Pepys had been bound for -£1000 with him, and the shrewd cit naturally enough did not like my lord -being angry with him and in debt to him at the same time. The earl was a -distant cousin of Pepys, and on his marriage received him and his wife -into his house, and took Pepys with him when he went to bring home Charles -II., when he was elected one of the Council of State and General at Sea. -He brought the queen-mother to England and took her back again. He also -brought the ill-fated queen from Portugal, and became a privy-councillor, -and was sent as ambassador to Spain. He seems to have been not untainted -with the vices of the age. He was in the great battle where Van Tromp was -killed, and in 1668 he took forty-five sail from the Dutch at sea, and -that is the best thing known of him. He died in 1672, and was buried in -great state. - -Inigo Jones built only the west side of the square. No. 55 was the -residence of Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey, a general of King Charles. It -is described in 1708 as a handsome building of the Ionic order, with a -beautiful and strong Court Gate, formed of six spacious brick piers, with -curious ironwork between them, and on the piers large and beautiful -vases.[726] The open balustrade at the top bore six urns. - -The Earl of Lindsey was shot at Edgehill in 1642, when a reckless and -intemperate charge of Rupert had led to the total defeat of the -unsupported foot. His son, Lord Willoughby, was taken in endeavouring to -rescue his father. Clarendon describes the earl as a lavish, generous, yet -punctilious man, of great honour and experience in foreign war. He was -surrounded by Lincolnshire gentlemen, who served in his regiment out of -personal regard for him. He was jealous of Prince Rupert's interference, -and had made up his mind to die. As he lay bleeding to death he reproved -the officers of the Earl of Essex, many of them his old friends, for their -ingratitude and "foul rebellion."[727] - -The fourth Earl of Lindsey was created Duke of Ancaster, and the house -henceforward bore that now forgotten name. It was subsequently sold to the -proud Duke of Somerset, the same who married the widow of the Mr. Thynne -whom Count Königsmarck murdered. - -In the early part of George III.'s reign Lindsey House became a sort of -lodging-house for foreign members of the Moravian persuasion. The -staircase, about 1772, was painted with scenes from the history of the -Herrnhuthers. The most conspicuous figures were those of a negro -catechumen in a white shirt, and a missionary who went over to Algiers to -preach to the galley-slaves, and died in Africa of the plague. There was -also a painting of a Moravian clergyman being saved from a desert rock on -which he had been cast.[728] - -Repeated mention of the Berties is made in Horace Walpole's pleasant -_Letters_. Lord Robert Bertie was third son of Robert the first Duke of -Ancaster and Kesteven. He was a general in the army, a colonel in the -Guards, and a lord of the bedchamber. He married Lady Raymond in 1762, and -died in 1782. - -The proud Duke of Somerset, in 1748, left to his eldest daughter, Lady -Frances, married to the Marquis of Granby, three thousand a year, and the -fine house built by Inigo Jones in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which he had -bought of the Duke of Ancaster for the Duchess, hoping that his daughter -would let her mother live with her.[729] In July 1779 the Duke of -Ancaster, dying of drinking and rioting at two-and-twenty, recalls much -scandal to Walpole's mind. He had been in love with Lady Honoria, -Walpole's niece; but Horace does not regret the match dropping through, -for he says the duke was of a turbulent nature, and, though of a fine -figure, not noble in manners. Lady Priscilla Elizabeth Bertie, eldest -sister of the duke, married the grandson of Peter Burrell, a merchant, who -became husband of the Lady Great Chamberlain of England, and inherited a -barony and half the Ancaster estate.[730] "The three last duchesses," -goes on the cruel gossip, "were never sober." "The present -duchess-dowager," he adds, "was natural daughter of Panton, a disreputable -horse-jockey of Newmarket. The other duchess was some lady's woman, or -young lady's governess." Mr. Burrell's daughters married Lord Percy and -the Duke of Hamilton. - -In 1791 Walpole writes to Miss Berry to describe the marriage of Lord -Cholmondeley with Lady Georgiana Charlotte Bertie: "The men were in frocks -and white waistcoats. The endowing purse, I believe, has been left off -ever since broad pieces were called in and melted down. We were but -eighteen persons in all.... The poor duchess-mother wept excessively; she -is now left quite alone,--her two daughters married, and her other -children dead. She herself, I fear, is in a very dangerous way. She goes -directly to Spa, where the new married pair are to meet her. We all -separated in an hour and a half."[731] - -Alfred Tennyson in early life had fourth-floor chambers at No. 55, and -there probably his friend Hallam, whose early death he laments in his _In -Memoriam_ spent many an hour with him. There, in the airy regions of -Attica, in a low-roofed room, the single window of which is darkened by a -huge stone balustrade--a gloomy relic of past grandeur--the young poet may -have recited the majestic lines of his "King Arthur," or the exquisite -lament of "Mariana," and there he may have immortalised the "plump -head-waiter of the Cock," in Fleet Street. Mr. John Foster, the author of -many sound and delightful historical biographies, had also chambers in -this house. - -No. 68, on the west side, stands on the site of the approach to the -stables of old Newcastle House. Here Judge Le Blanc lived, and at his -death the house was occupied by Mr. Thomas Le Blanc, Master of Trinity -Hall, Cambridge. - -At No. 33, on the same side as the Insolvent Debtors' Court, dwelt Judge -Park, a man much beloved by his friends; in his early days, as a young -and poor Scotch barrister, he had lived in Carey Street till his house -there was burnt down. He used to say that his great ambition in youth had -been to one day live at No. 33 in the Fields, at that time occupied by -Chief Justice Willis; but in later days, as a judge, leaving the former -goal of his ambition, he migrated to Bedford Square, where he died. - -Nos. 40 and 42, on the south side, form the Museum of the College of -Surgeons, incorporated in 1800. The Grecian front is a most clever -contrivance by Sir John Soane. The building contains the incomparable -anatomical collection of the eminent John Hunter, bought by the Government -for £15,000 and given to the College of Surgeons on condition of its being -opened to the public. John Hunter died in 1793; and the first courses of -lectures in the new building were delivered by Sir Everard Home and Sir -William Blizard, in 1810. The Museum was built by Barry in 1835, and cost -about £40,000.[732] It is divided into two rooms, the normal and abnormal. -The total number of specimens is upwards of 23,000. The collection is -unequalled in many respects; every article is authentic and in perfect -preservation. The largest human skeleton is that of Charles O'Brien, the -Irish giant, who died in Cockspur Street, Charing Cross, in 1783, aged -twenty-two. It measures eight feet four inches. By its side, in ghastly -contrast, is the bony sketch of Caroline Crachami, a Sicilian dwarf who -died in 1824, aged ten years. There is also a cast of the hand of Patrick -Cotter, another Irish giant, who measured eight feet seven and a half -inches. Nor must we overlook the vast framework of Chunee, the elephant -that went mad with toothache at Exeter Change, and was shot by a company -of riflemen in 1826. The sawn base of the inflamed tusk shows a spicula of -ivory pressing into the nervous pulp. Toothache is always terrible, but -only imagine a square foot of it! - -Very curious too, are the jaw of the extinct sabre-toothed tiger, and the -skeleton of a gigantic extinct Irish deer found under a bed of shell-marl -in a peat bog near Limerick. The antlers are seven feet long, eight feet -across, and weigh seventy-six pounds. The height of the animal (measured -from his skull) was seven feet six inches. Amongst other horrors, there is -a cast of the fleshy band that united the Siamese twins, and one of a -woman with a long curved horn growing from her forehead. There are also -many skulls of soldiers perforated and torn with bullets, the lead still -adhering to some of the bony plates of the crania. But the wonder of -wonders is the iron pivot of a trysail-mast that was driven clean through -the chest of a Scarborough lad. The boy recovered in five months, and not -long after went to work again. It is a tough race that rules the sea. - -There are also fragments of the skeleton of a rhinoceros discovered in a -limestone cavern at Oreston during the formation of the Plymouth -Breakwater. In a recess from the gallery stands the embalmed body of the -wife of Martin Van Butchell, an impudent Dutch quack doctor. It is -coarsely preserved, and is very loathsome to look at. It was prepared in -1775 by Dr. W. Hunter and Mr. Cruikshank, the vascular system being -injected with oil of turpentine and camphorated spirits of wine, and -powdered nitre and camphor being introduced into the cavities. On the case -containing the body is an advertisement cut from an old newspaper, stating -the conditions which Dr. Van Butchell required of those who came to see -the body of his wife. At the feet of Mrs. Van Butchell is the shrunken -mummy of her pet parrot. - -The pictures include the portrait of John Hunter by Reynolds, which Sharp -engraved: it has much faded. There is also a posthumous bust of Hunter by -Flaxman, and one of Clive by Chantrey. Any Fellow of the College can -introduce a visitor, either personally or by written order, the first four -days of the week. In September the Museum is closed. It would be much more -convenient for students if some small sum were charged for admission. It -is now visited but by two or three people a day, when it should be -inspected by hundreds. - -That great surgeon, John Hunter, was the son of a small farmer in -Lanarkshire. He was born in 1728, and died in 1793. In early life he went -abroad as an army-surgeon to study gunshot-wounds; and in 1786 he was -appointed deputy surgeon-general to the army. In 1772 he made discoveries -as to the property of the gastric juice. He was the first to use cutting -as a cure for hydrophobia, and to distinguish the various species of -cancer. He kept at his house at Brompton a variety of wild animals for the -purposes of comparative anatomy, was often in danger from their violence, -and as often saved by his own intrepidity. Sir Joseph Banks divided his -collection between Hunter and the British Museum. Unequalled in the -dissecting-room, Hunter was a bad lecturer. He was an irritable man, and -died suddenly during a disputation at St. George's Hospital which vexed -him. His death is said to have been hastened by fear of death from -hydrophobia, he having cut his hand while dissecting a man who had died of -that mysterious disease. Hunter used to call an operation "opprobrium -medici." - -In Portugal Row, as the southern side of the square used to be called, -lived Sir Richard Fanshawe, the translator of the _Lusiad_ of Camoens, and -of Guarini's _Pastor Fido_. Sir Richard was our ambassador in Spain; but -Charles, wishing to get rid of Lord Sandwich from the navy, recalled -Fanshawe, on the plea that he had ventured to sign a treaty without -authority. He died in 1666, on the intended day of his return, of a -violent fever, probably caused by vexation at his unmerited disgrace. Sir -Richard appears to have been a religious, faithful man and a good scholar, -but born in unhappy times and to an ill fate. Charles I. had very justly a -great respect for him. His wife was a brave, determined woman, full of -affection, good sense, and equally full of hatred and contempt for Lord -Sandwich, Pepys's friend, who had supplanted her husband in the embassy. - -On one occasion, on their way to Malaga, the Dutch trading vessel in which -she and her husband were was threatened by a Turkish galley which bore -down on them in full sail. The captain, who had rendered his sixty guns -useless by lumbering them up with cargo, resolved to fight for his £30,000 -worth of goods, and therefore armed his two hundred men and plied them -with brandy. The decks were partially cleared, and the women ordered below -for fear the Turks might think the vessel a merchant-ship and board it. -Sir Richard, taking his gun, bandolier, and sword, stood with the ship's -company waiting for the Turks.[733] But we must quote the brave wife's own -simple words:--"The beast the captain had locked me up in the cabin. I -knocked and called long to no purpose, until at length the cabin-boy came -and opened the door. I, all in tears, desired him to be so good as to give -me the blue thrum cap he wore and his tarred coat, which he did, and I -gave him half-a-crown; and putting them on, and flinging away my -night-clothes, I crept up softly and stood upon the deck by my husband's -side, as free from fear as, I confess, from discretion; but it was the -effect of that passion which I could never master. By this time the two -vessels were engaged in parley, and so well satisfied with speech and -sight of each other's forces, that the Turks' man-of-war tacked about and -we continued our course. But when your father saw me retreat, looking upon -me, he blessed himself and snatched me up in his arms, saying, 'Good God! -that love can make this change!' and though he seemingly chid me, he would -laugh at it as often as he remembered that journey." This same vessel, a -short time after, was blown up in the harbour with the loss of more than a -hundred men and all the lading.[734] - -This brave, good woman showed still greater fortitude when her husband -died and left her almost penniless in a strange country. She had only -twenty-eight doubloons with which to bring home her children, and sixty -servants, and the dead body of her husband. She, however, instantly sold -her carriages and a thousand pounds' worth of plate, and setting apart the -queen's present of two thousand doubloons for travelling expenses, started -for England. "God," she says, in her brave, pious way, "did hear, and -see, and help me, and brought my soul out of trouble." - -In 1677 Lady Fanshawe took a house in Holborn Row, the north side of the -square, and spent a year lamenting "the dear remembrances of her past -happiness and fortune; and though she had great graces and favours from -the king and queen and whole court, yet she found at the present no -remedy."[735] - -Lord Kenyon lived at No. 35 in 1805. Jekyll was fond of joking about -Kenyon's stinginess, and used to say he died of eating apple-pie crust at -breakfast to save the expense of muffins; and that Lord Ellenborough, who -succeeded on Kenyon's death to the Chief Justiceship, always used to bow -to apple-pie ever afterwards which Jekyll called his "apple-pie-ety." The -princesses Augusta and Sophia once told Tom Moore, at Lady Donegall's that -the king used to play tricks on Kenyon and send the despatch-box to him at -a quarter past seven, when it was known the learned lord was in bed to -save candlelight.[736] Lord Ellenborough used to say that the final word -in "Mors janua vitæ" was mis-spelled _vita_ on Kenyon's tomb to save the -extra cost of the diphthong.[737] George III. used to say to Kenyon, "My -Lord, let us have a little more of your good law, and less of your bad -Latin." - -Lord Campbell, who gives a very pleasant sketch of Chief Justice Kenyon, -with his bad temper and bad Latin, his hatred of newspaper writers and -gamblers, and his wrath against pettifoggers, describes his being taken in -by Horne Tooke, and laughs at his ignorantly-mixed metaphors. He seems to -have been a respectable second-rate lawyer, conscientious and upright. "He -occupied," says Lord Campbell, "a large gloomy house, in which I have seen -merry doings when it was afterwards transferred to the Verulam Club." The -tradition of this house was that "it was always Lent in the kitchen and -Passion Week in the parlour." On some one mentioning the spits in Lord -Kenyon's kitchen, Jekyll said, "It is irrelevant to talk about the spits, -for nothing _turns_ upon them." The judge's ignorance was profound. It is -reported that in a trial for blasphemy the Chief Justice, after citing the -names of several remarkable early Christians, said, "Above all, gentlemen, -need I name to you the Emperor Julian, who was so celebrated for the -practice of every Christian virtue that he was called Julian the -Apostle?"[738] On another occasion, talking of a false witness, he is -supposed to have said, "The allegation is as far from truth as 'old -Boterium from the northern main'--a line I have heard or met with, God -knows where."[739] - -Lord Erskine lived at No. 36, in 1805, the year before he rose at once to -the peerage and the woolsack, and presided at Lord Melville's trial. He -did not hold the seals many months, and died in 1823. This great Whig -orator was the youngest son of the Earl of Buchan. He was a midshipman and -an ensign before he became a student at Lincoln's Inn. He began to be -known in 1778; in 1781 he defended Lord George Gordon, in 1794 Horne -Tooke, Hardy, Thelwall, and afterwards Tom Paine. - -The house that contains the Soane Museum, No. 13 on the north side, was -built in 1812, and, consisting of twenty-four small apartments crammed -with curiosities, is in itself a marvel of fantastic ingenuity. Every inch -of space is turned to account. On one side of the picture-room are -cabinets, and on the other movable shutters or screens, on which pictures -are also hung; so that a small area, only thirteen feet long and twelve -broad, contains as much as a gallery forty-five feet long and twenty feet -broad. A Roman altar once stood in the outer court. - -It is a disgrace to the trustees that this curious museum is kept so -private, and that such impediments are thrown in the way of visitors. It -is open only two days a week in April, May, and June, but at certain -seasons a third day is granted to foreigners, artists, and people from the -country. To obtain tickets, you are obliged to get, some days before you -visit, a letter from a trustee, or to write to the curator, enter your -name in a book, and leave your card. All this vexatious hindrance and -fuss has the desired effect of preventing many persons from visiting a -museum left, not to the trustees or the curator, but to the nation--to -every Englishman. In order to read the books, copy the pictures, or -examine the plans and drawings, the same tedious and humiliating form must -be gone through. - -The gem of all the Soane treasures is an enormous transparent alabaster -sarcophagus, discovered by Belzoni in 1816 in a tomb in the valley of -Beban el Molook, near Thebes. It is nine feet four inches long, three feet -eight inches wide, two feet eight inches deep, and is covered without and -within with beautifully-cut hieroglyphics. It was the greatest discovery -of the runaway Paduan Monk, and was undoubtedly the cenotaph or -sarcophagus of a Pharaoh or Ptolemy. It was discovered in an enormous tomb -of endless chambers, which the Arabs still call "Belzoni's tomb." On the -bottom of the case is a full-length figure in relief, of Isis, the -guardian of the dead. Sir John Soane gave £2000 for this sarcophagus to -Mr. Salt, Consul General of Egypt and Belzoni's employer. The raised lid -is broken into nineteen pieces. The late Sir Gardner Wilkinson considered -this to be the cenotaph of Osirei, the father of Rameses the Great. But -the forgotten king for whom the Soane sarcophagus was really executed was -Seti, surnamed Meni-en-Ptah, the father of Rameses the Great; he is called -by Manetho Séthos.[740] Dr. Lepsius dates the commencement of his reign -B.C. 1439. Dr. Brugsch places it twenty years earlier. Mr. Sharpe, with -that delightful uncertainty characteristic of Egyptian antiquaries, drags -the epoch down two hundred years later. Seti was the father of the Pharaoh -who persecuted the Israelites, and he made war against Syria. His son was -the famous Rameses. All three kings were descended from the Shepherd -Chiefs. The most beautiful fragment in Karnak represents this monarch, -Seti, in his chariot, with a sword like a fish-slice in one hand, while in -the other he clutches the topknots of a group of conquered enemies, -Nubian, Syrian, and Jewish. The work is full of an almost Raphaelesque -grace. - -After this come some of Flaxman's and Banks's sketches and models, a cast -of the shield of Achilles by the former, and one of the Boothby monument -by the latter. There is also a fine collection of ancient gems and -intaglios, pure in taste and exquisitely cut, and a set of the Napoleon -medals, selected by Denon for the Empress Josephine, and in the finest -possible state. We may also mention Sir Christopher Wren's watch, some -ivory chairs, and a table from Tippoo Saib's devastated palace at -Seringapatam, and a richly-mounted pistol taken by Peter the Great from a -Turkish general at Azof in 1696. The latter was given to Napoleon by the -Russian emperor at the treaty of Tilsit in 1807, and was presented by him -to a French officer at St. Helena. The books, too, are of great interest. -Here is the original MS. copy of the _Gierusalemme Liberata_, published at -Ferrara in 1581, and in Tasso's own handwriting; the first four folio -editions of Shakspere, once the property of that great actor and -Shaksperean student John Philip Kemble; a folio of designs for Elizabethan -and Jacobean houses by the celebrated architect John Thorpe; Fauntleroy -the forger's illustrated copy of Pennant's _London_, purchased for six -hundred and fifty guineas; a Commentary on Paul's Epistles, illuminated by -the laborious Croatian, Giulio Clovio (who died in 1578), for Cardinal -Grimani. Vasari raves about the minute finish of this painter. - -The pictures, too, are good. There are three Canalettis full of that Dutch -Venetian's clear common sense; the finest, a view on the Grand Canal--his -favourite subject--and "The Snake in the Grass," better known as "Love -unloosing the Zone of Beauty," by Reynolds. There is a sadly faded replica -of this in the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg. This one was purchased at -the Marchioness of Thomond's sale for £500. The "Rake's Progress," by -Hogarth, in eight pictures, was purchased by Sir John in 1802 for £598. -These inimitable pictures are incomparable, and display the fine, pure, -sober colour of the great artist, and his broad touch so like that of Jan -Steen. - -The Soane collection also boasts of Hogarth's four "Election" pictures, -purchased at Garrick's sale for £1732 10s. They are rather dark in tone. -There is also a fine but curious Turner, "Van Tromp's Barge entering the -Texel;" a portrait by Goma of Napoleon in 1797, when emaciated and -haggard, and a fine miniature of him in 1814, when fat and already on the -decline, both physically and mentally, by Isabey the great -miniature-painter, taken at Elba in 1814. In the dining-room is a portrait -of Soane by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and in the gallery under the dome a bust -of him by Chantrey. - -Sir John Soane was the son of a humble Reading bricklayer, and brought up -in Mr. Dance's office. Carrying off a gold and silver medal at the -Academy, he was sent as travelling student to Rome. In 1791 he obtained a -Government employment, in 1800 enlarged the Bank of England, and in 1806 -became Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy. He built the -Dulwich Gallery, and in 1826 the Masonic Hall in Great Queen Street. In -1827 he gave £1000 to the Duke of York's monument. At the close of his -life he left his collection of works of art, valued at £50,000, to the -nation, and died in 1837,[741] leaving his son penniless. In 1835 the -English architects presented Sir John with a splendid medal in token of -their approbation of his conduct and talents. - -The Literary Fund Society, instituted in 1790, and incorporated in 1818, -had formerly rooms at No. 4 Lincoln's Inn Fields. The society was -established in order to aid authors of merit and good character who might -be reduced to poverty by unavoidable circumstances, or be deprived of the -power of exertion by enfeebled faculties or old age. George IV. and -William IV. both contributed one hundred guineas a year to its funds, and -this subscription is continued by our present Queen. The society -distributed £1407 in 1846. The average annual amount of subscriptions and -donations is about £1100. The Literary Fund Society moved afterwards to -73 Great Russell Street. Some years ago a split occurred in this society. -Charles Dickens and Mr. C. W. Dilke, the proprietor of the _Athenæum_, -objecting to the wasteful expense of the management, seceded from it; the -result of this secession was the founding of the Guild of Literature, and -the collection of £4000 by means of private theatricals--a sum which, -unfortunately, still lies partly dormant. The Fund is now domiciled in -Bloomsbury. - -Both Pepys and Evelyn praise the house of Mr. Povey in Lincoln's Inn -Fields as a prodigy of elegant comfort and ingenuity. The marqueterie -floors, "the perspective picture in the little closet," the grotto -cellars, with a well for the wine, the fountains and imitation porphyry -vases, his pictures and the bath at the top of the house, seem to have -been the abstract of all luxurious ease. - -Names were first put on doors in London in 1760, some years before the -street-signs were removed. In 1764 houses were first numbered; the -numbering commenced in New Burlington Street, and Lincoln's Inn Fields was -the second place numbered. - -In Carey Street lived that excellent woman Mrs. Hester Chapone, who -afterwards removed to Arundel Street. She was a friend of Mrs. Carter, who -translated Epictetus, and of Mrs. Montagu, the Queen of the Blue -Stockings. She was one of the female admirers who thronged round -Richardson the novelist, and she married a young Templar whom he had -introduced to her. It was a love match, and she had the misfortune of -losing him in less than ten months after their marriage. Her celebrated -letters on _The Improvement of the Mind_, published in 1773, were written -for a favourite niece, who married a Westminster Clergyman and died in -childbed. Though Mrs. Chapone's letters are now rather dry and -old-fashioned, reminding us of the backboards of a too punctilious age, -they contain some sensible and well-expressed thoughts. Here is a sound -passage:--"Those ladies who pique themselves on the particular excellence -of neatness are very apt to forget that the decent order of the house -should be designed to promote the convenience and pleasure of those who -are to be in it; and that if it is converted into a cause of trouble and -constraint, their husbands' guests would be happier without it."[742] - -Gibbons's Tennis Court stood in Vere Street, Clare Market; it was turned -into a theatre by Thomas Killigrew. Ogilby the poet, started a lottery of -books at "the old theatre" in June 1668. He describes the books in his -advertisements as "all of his own designment and composure." - -"The Duke's Theatre" stood in Portugal Street, at the back of Portugal -Row. It was pulled down in 1835 to make room for the enlargement of the -Museum of the College of Surgeons. Before that it had been the china -warehouse of Messrs. Spode and Copeland.[743] There had been, however, -frailer things than china in the house in Pepys's time. Here, the year of -the Restoration, came Killigrew with the actors from the Red Bull, -Clerkenwell, and took the name of the King's Company. Three years later -they moved to Drury Lane. Davenant's company then came to Portugal Street -in 1662, deserting their theatre, once a granary, in Salisbury Court. They -played here till 1671, when they returned to their old theatre, then -renovated under the management of Charles Davenant and the celebrated -Betterton, the great tragedian. They afterwards united in Drury Lane, and -again fell apart. In 1695 a company, headed by Betterton, with Congreve -for a partner, re-opened the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It then -became celebrated for pantomimes under Rich, the excellent harlequin. On -his removal to Covent Garden it was deserted, re-opened by Gifford from -Goodman's Fields, and finally ceased to be a theatre about 1737, so that -its whole life did not extend to more than one generation. - -Actresses first appeared in London in Prynne's time. Soon after the -Restoration a lady of Killigrew's company took the part of Desdemona. In -January 1661 Pepys saw women on the stage at the Cockpit Theatre: the play -was Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beggars' Bush." The prologue to "Othello" in -1660 contains the following line:[744]-- - - "Our women are defective and so sized, - You'd think they were some of the guard disguised; - For, to speak truth, men act that are between - Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen, - With bone so large, and nerve so uncompliant, - That, when you call Desdemona, enter giant." - -The Puritans were now happily in the minority, and so the attempt -succeeded. Davenant did not bring forward his actresses till June 1661, -when he produced his "Siege of Rhodes." Kynaston, Hart, Burt, and Clun, -famous actors of Charles II.'s time, were all excellent representatives of -female characters. - -It was at the Duke's Theatre, in 1680, that Nell Gwynn who was present, -being reviled by one of the audience, and William Herbert, who had married -a sister of one of the king's mistresses, taking up Nell's quarrel--a -sword fight took place between the two factions in the house. This -hot-blooded young gallant Herbert grew up to be Earl of Pembroke and first -plenipotentiary at Ryswick. - -The chief ladies at the Duke's House were Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Davies, and -Mrs. Saunderson. The first of these ladies, generally known as "Roxalana," -from a character of that name in the "Siege of Rhodes," resisted for a -long time the addresses of Aubrey de Vere, the last Earl of Oxford, a -wicked brawling roysterer, and a disgrace to his name, who at last -obtained her hand by the cruel deception of a sham marriage. The pretended -priest was a trumpeter, the witness a kettle-drummer in the king's -regiment. The poor creature threw herself in vain at the king's feet and -demanded justice, but gradually grew more composed upon an annuity of a -thousand crowns a year.[745] - -As for Mrs. Davies, who danced well and played ill, she won the -susceptible heart of Charles II. by her singing the song, "My lodging is -on the cold, cold ground." "Through the marriage of the daughter of Lord -Derwentwater with the eighth Lord Petre," says Dr. Doran, "the blood of -the Stuarts and of Moll Davies still runs in their lineal descendant, the -present and twelfth lord."[746] - -Mrs. Saunderson became the excellent wife of the great actor Betterton. -For about thirty years she played the chief female characters, especially -in Shakspere's plays, with great success. She taught Queen Anne and her -sister Mary elocution, and after her husband's death received a pension of -£500 a year from her royal pupil. - -In 1664 Pepys went to Portugal Street to see that clever but impudent -impostor, the German Princess, appear after her acquittal at the Old -Bailey for inveigling a young citizen into a marriage, acting her own -character in a comedy immortalising her exploit. - -In February 1666-7 Pepys goes again to the Duke's Playhouse, and observes -there Rochester the wit and Mrs. Stewart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond, -the same lady whose portrait we retain as Britannia on the old -halfpennies. "It was pleasant," says the tuft-hunting gossip, "to see how -everybody rose up when my Lord John Butler, the Duke of Ormond's son, came -into the pit, towards the end of the play, who was a servant to Mrs. -Mallett, and now smiled upon her and she on him."[747] - -The same month, 1667-8, Pepys revisits the Duke's House to see Etherege's -new play, "She Would if She Could." He was there by two o'clock, and yet -already a thousand people had been refused at the pit. The fussy -public-office man, not being able to find his wife, who was there, got -into an eighteenpenny box, and could hardly see or hear. The play done, it -being dark and rainy, Pepys stays in the pit looking for his wife and -waiting for the weather to clear up. And there for an hour and a half sat -also the Duke of Buckingham, Sedley, and Etherege talking; all abusing the -play as silly, dull, and insipid, except the author, who complained of the -actors for not knowing their parts. - -In May 1668 Pepys is again at this theatre in the balcony box, where sit -the shameless Lady Castlemaine and her ladies and women; on another -occasion he sits below the same group, and sees the proud lady look like -fire when Moll Davies ogles the king her lover. In another place he -observes how full the pit is, though the seats are two shillings and -sixpence a piece, whereas in his youth he had never gone higher than -twelvepence or eighteenpence.[748] - -Kynaston, the greatest of the "boy-actresses," was chiefly on this stage -from 1659 to 1699. Evadne was his favourite female part. Later in life he -took to heroic characters. Cibber says of him: "He had something of a -formal gravity in his mien, which was attributed to the stately step he -had been so early confined to. But even that in characters of superiority -had its proper graces; it misbecame him not in the part of Leon in -Fletcher's 'Rule a Wife,' which he executed with a determined manliness -and honest authority. He had a piercing eye, and in characters of heroic -life a quick imperious vivacity in his tone of voice that painted the -tyrant truly terrible. There were two plays of Dryden in which he shone -with uncommon lustre; in 'Arungzebe,' he played Morat, and in 'Don -Sebastian' Muley Moloch. In both these parts he had a fierce lion-like -majesty in his port and utterance that gave the spectator a kind of -trembling admiration."[749] Kynaston died in 1712, and left a fortune to -his son, a mercer in Covent Garden, whose son became rector of Aldgate. - -James Nokes was Kynaston's contemporary in Portugal Street. Leigh Hunt -calls him something between Liston and Munden. Dryden mentions him, in a -political epistle to Southerne, as indispensable to a play. Cibber says, -"The ridiculous solemnity of his features was enough to have set the whole -bench of Bishops into a titter." In his ludicrous distresses he sank into -such piteous pusilanimity that one almost pitied him. "When he debated any -matter by himself he would shut up his mouth with a dumb, studious pout, -and roll his full eye into a vacant amazement."[750] He died in 1692, -leaving a fortune and an estate near Barnet. - -But the great star of Portugal Street was Betterton, the Garrick of his -age. His most admired part was Hamlet; but Steele especially dilates on -his Othello. He acted his Hamlet from traditions handed down by Davenant -of Taylor, whom Shakspere himself is said to have instructed. Cibber says -that there was such enchantment in his voice alone that no one cared for -the sense of the words; and he adds, "I never heard a line in tragedy come -from Betterton wherein my judgment, my ear, and my imagination, were not -fully satisfied." This great man, who created no fewer than 130 -characters, was a friend of Dryden, Pope, and Tillotson. Kneller's -portrait of him is at Knowle;[751] A copy of it by Pope is preserved in -Lord Mansfield's gallery at Caen Wood. When he died, in 1710, Steele wrote -a "Tatler" upon him, in which he says "he laboured incessantly, and lived -irreproachably. He was the jewel of the English stage." He killed himself -by driving back the gout in order to perform on his benefit night, and his -widow went mad from grief. Betterton acted as Colonel Jolly in Colman's -"Cutter of Coleman Street," as Jaffier in Otway's _chef d'oeuvre_, as fine -gentlemen in Congreve's vicious but gay comedies, as a hero in Rowe's -flatulent plays, and as Sir John Brute in Vanbrugh's great comedy. - -Mrs. Barry was one of the best actresses in Portugal Street. She was the -daughter of an old Cavalier colonel, and was instructed for the stage by -Rochester, whose mistress she became. Dryden pronounced her the best -actress he had ever seen. Her face and colour varied with each passion, -whether heroic or tender. "Her mien and motion," says Cibber, "were superb -and gracefully majestic, her voice full, clear, and strong." In scenes of -anger, defiance, or resentment, while she was impetuous and terrible, she -poured out the sentiment with an enchanting harmony. She was so versatile -that she played Lady Brute as well as Zara or Belvidera. For her King -James II. originated the custom of actors' benefits. After a career of -thirty-eight years on the boards, she died at Acton in 1713. Kneller's -picture represents her with beautiful eyes, fine hair drawn back from her -forehead, "the face full, fair, and rippling with intellect,"[752] but her -mouth a little awry.[753] - -Mrs. Mountfort also appeared in Portugal Street before the two companies -united at Drury Lane in 1682. She was the best of male coxcombs, stage -coquettes, and country dowdies, a vivacious mimic, and of the most -versatile humour. Cibber sketches her admirably as Melantha in "Marriage à -la Mode:"--"She is a fluttering, finished impertinent, with a whole -artillery of airs, eyes, and motions. When the gallant recommended by her -father brings his letter of introduction, down goes her dainty diving body -to the ground, as if she were sinking under the conscious load of her own -attractions; then she launches into a flood of fine language and -compliment, still playing her chest forward in fifty falls, and rising -like a swan upon waving water; and to complete her impertinence, she is so -rapidly fond of her own wit that she will not give her lover leave to -praise it;[754] and at last she swims from him with a promise to return in -a twinkling." - -The virtuous, good, and discreet Mrs. Bracegirdle was another favourite in -Portugal Street. For her Congreve, who affected to be her lover, wrote his -Araminta and Cynthia, his Angelica, his Almeria, and his Millamant in "The -way of the world." All the town was in love with her youth, cheerful -gaiety, musical voice, the happy graces of her manner, her dark eyes, -brown hair, and expressive, rosy-brown face. Her Statira justified Nat -Lee's frantic Alexander for all his rant; and "when she acted Millamant, -all the faults, follies, and affectation of that agreeable tyrant were -venially melted down into so many charms and attractions of a conscious -beauty." Mrs. Bracegirdle was on the stage from 1680 to 1707. She lived -long enough to warn Cibber against envy of Garrick, and died in 1748. - -Three of Congreve's plays, "Love for Love," "The Mourning Bride," and "The -Way of the World," came out in Portugal Street. Steele, in the _Tatler_, -No. 1, mentions "Love for Love" as being acted for Betterton's -benefit--Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Doggett taking parts. He -describes the stage as covered with gentlemen and ladies, "so that when -the curtain was drawn it discovered even there a very splendid audience." -"In Dryden's time," says Steele, "You used to see songs, epigrams, and -satires in the hands of every person you met [at the theatre]; now you -have only a pack of cards, and instead of the cavils about the turn of the -expression, the elegance of style and the like, the learned now dispute -only about the truth of the game." - -Poor Mountfort, the most handsome, graceful, and ardent of stage lovers, -the most admirable of courtly fops, and the best dancer and singer of the -day, strutted his little hour in Portugal Street till run through the body -by Lord Mohun's infamous boon companion. His career extended from 1682 to -1695. He was only thirty-three when he died. - -The last proprietor of the theatre was Rich, an actor who, failing in -tragedy, turned harlequin and manager, and became celebrated for producing -spectacles, ballets, and pantomimes. Under the name of Lun he revelled as -harlequin, and was admirable in a scene where he was hatched from an egg. - -Pope, always sore about theatrical matters, describes this manager's -pompousness in the _Dunciad_ (book iii.):-- - - "At ease - 'Midst storm of paper fierce hail of pease, - And proud his mistress' order to perform, - Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." - -Rich's great success was the production of Gay's _Beggars' Opera_ in -1727-8. This piece brought £2000 to the author, and for a time drove the -Italian Opera into the shade. It ran sixty-three nights the first season, -and then spread to all the great towns in Great Britain. Ladies carried -about the favourite songs engraved on their fan-mounts, and they were also -printed on fire-screens and other furniture. Miss Lavinia Fenton, who -acted Polly, became the idol of the town; engravings of her were sold by -thousands: her life was written, and collections were made of her -jests.[755] Eventually she married the Duke of Bolton. Sir Robert Walpole -laughed at the satire against himself, and "Gay grew rich, and Rich gay," -as the popular epigram went. Hogarth drew the chief scene with Walker as -Macheath, and Spiller as Mat o' the Mint. Swift was vexed to find his -Gulliver for the time forgotten. - -The custom of allowing young men of fashion to have chairs upon the stage -was an intolerable nuisance to the actors before Garrick. In 1721 it led -to a desperate riot at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre. Half-a-dozen -beaux, headed by a tipsy earl, were gathered round the wings, when the -earl reeled across the stage where Macbeth and his lady were then acting, -to speak to a boon companion at the opposite side. Rich the manager, vexed -at the interruption, forbade the earl the house, upon which the earl -struck Rich and Rich the earl. Half-a-dozen swords at once sprang out and -decreed that Rich must die; but Quin and his brother actors rushed to the -rescue with bare blades, charged the coxcombs, and drove them through the -stage-door into the kennel. The beaux returning to the front, rushed into -the boxes, broke the sconces, slashed the hangings, and threatened to burn -the house; upon which doughty Quin and a party of constables and watchmen -flung themselves on the rioters and haled them to prison. The actors, -intimidated, refused to re-open the house till the king granted them a -guard of soldiers, a custom that has not long been discontinued. It was -not till 1780 that the habit of admitting the vulgar, noisy, and turbulent -footmen gratis was abandoned.[756] - -Macklin, afterwards the inimitable Shylock and Sir Pertinax, played small -parts at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre till 1731, when a short speech as -Brazencourt, in Fielding's "Coffee-house Politicians," betrayed the true -actor. He lived till over a hundred, so long that he did not leave Covent -Garden till after Braham's appearance, and Braham many of our elder -readers have seen.[757] - -Macklin, an Irishman, and in early life a Dragoon officer, was irritable, -restless, and pugnacious; he obtained his first triumph at Drury Lane, as -Shylock in 1741. In stern malignity, no one has surpassed Macklin. His -acting was hard, but manly and weighty, though his features were rather -rigid. He naturally condemned Garrick's action and gesture as -superabundant. His Sir Pertinax was excellent in its sly and deadly -suppleness. He was also admirable in Lovegold, Scrub, Peachem, Polonius, -and many Irish characters. - -Quin was at Portugal Street as early as 1718-19. There he first "delighted -the town by his chivalry as Hotspur, his bluntness as Clytus, his -fieriness as Bajazet, his grandeur as Macbeth, his calm dignity as Brutus, -his unctuousness as Falstaff, his duplicity as Maskwell, and his coarse -drollery as Sir John Brute."[758] It was just before this, that locked in -a room and compelled to fight, he had killed Bowen, who was jealous of his -acting as Bajazet. When Rich refused to give Quin more than £300 a year, -he joined the Drury Lane company, where he instantly got £500 per annum. - -When Rich grew wealthy enough to hire a new theatre in Covent Garden, he -left Portugal Street. Almost the last play acted there was "The -Anatomist," by Ravenscroft, a second-rate author of Dryden's time. - -The mob attributed the flight of Rich from the old theatre to the -appearance of a devil during the performance of the pantomime of -"Harlequin and Dr. Faustus," a play in which demons abound. The -supernumerary spirit ascending by the roof instead of leaving by the door -with his paid companions, was believed to have so frightened manager Rich -that, taking the warning against theatrical profanity to heart, he never -had the courage to open the theatre again.[759] The legend is curious, as -it proves that even in 1732 the old Puritan horror of theatricals had not -quite died out, and that at that period the poorer part of the audience -was still ignorant enough to attribute mechanical tricks to supernatural -interference. - -Garrick, in one of his prologues, speaks of Rich, under the name of Lun-- - - "When Lun appeared with matchless art and whim, - He gave the power of speech to every limb; - Though masked and mute, convey'd his quick intent, - And told in frolic gestures all he meant; - But now the motley coat and sword of wood - Require a tongue to make them understood." - -Every motion of Rich meant something. His "statue scene" and "catching the -butterfly" were moving pictures. His "harlequin hatched from an egg by -sun-heat" is highly spoken of; Jackson calls it "a masterpiece of dumb -show." From the first chipping of the egg, his receiving of motion, his -feeling the ground, his standing upright, to his quick harlequin trip -round the broken egg, every limb had its tongue. Walpole says, "His -pantomimes were full of wit, and coherent, and carried on a story." Yet -Rich was so ignorant that he called a 'turban' a 'turbot,' and an -'adjective' an 'adjutant.' - -Spiller, who died of apoplexy in Portugal Street, in 1729-30 as he was -playing in the "Rape of Proserpine," was inimitable in old men. This was -the year that Quin played Macheath for his benefit, and Fielding brought -out his inimitable "Tom Thumb" at the Haymarket, to ridicule the bombast -of Thomson and Young. - -King's College Hospital, which occupies a large portion of the southern -side of Carey Street, is connected with the medical school of King's -College, and is supported by voluntary contributions. For each guinea a -year a subscriber may recommend one in and two out patients. Contributors -acquire the same right for every donation of ten guineas. Annual -subscribers of three guineas, or donors of thirty guineas, are governors -of the hospital. The house is surrounded by a population of nearly 400,000 -persons, of whom about 20,000 annually receive relief. In one year 363 -poor married women have been attended in confinements at their own houses. - -The last memorial of a gay generation, passed like last year's swallows, -was a headstone that used to stand in the burial-ground belonging to St. -Clement's, now the site of King's College Hospital. The slab rose from -rank green grass that was sprinkled with dead cats, worn-out shoes, and -fragments of tramps' bonnets; in summer it was half hid by a clump of -sunflowers.[760] It kept dimly alive the memory of Joe Miller, a taciturn -actor, in whose mouth Mottley, the poet put his volume of jokes that had -been raked from every corner of the town. Mottley was a place-seeker and a -writer of stilted tragedies and a bad comedy, for whose benefit night -Queen Caroline, wife of George II., condescended to sell tickets at her -own drawing-room.[761] Miller appears to have been an honest, and stupid -fellow, but some good sayings are embalmed in the rather coarse book which -bears his name. His portrait represents Joe as a broad-nosed man with -large saucer eyes, a big absurd mouth, and a look of comic stolid -surprise. He died in 1738, and the Jest Book was published the year after, -price one shilling. - -Joe Miller made his first appearance on the stage in 1715, at Drury Lane, -in Farquhar's comedy of "A trip to the Jubilee." He also played Clodpole -in Betterton's "Amorous Widow," Sir H. Gubbin in Steele's "Tender -Husband," La Foole in Ben Jonson's "Epicene," and above all Sir Joseph -Whittol in Congreve's "Old Bachelor." Hogarth designed a benefit ticket -for this play. As Ben in "Love for Love," Cibber cut out Joe Miller. In -1721 Joe opened a booth at Bartholomew Fair with Pinkethman. His last -great success was as the Miller in Dodsley's farce of "The King and the -Miller of Mansfield." Stephen Duck, the Wiltshire thresher, afterwards a -popular preacher, wrote his epitaph. Joe Miller's monument is still -carefully preserved in one of the rooms in King's College Hospital. John -Mottley, his editor, was the son of a Colonel Mottley, a Jacobite who -followed James into France. His son was placed in the Excise Office, and -grew up a place-hunter. He wrote a bad tragedy called "The Imperial -Captives," and was promised a commissionership of wine licenses by Lord -Halifax, and a place in the Exchequer by Sir Robert Walpole, but received -nothing from either. He compiled the Jest-Book, it is said partly from the -recollection of the comedian's conversations,[762] but it is doubtful if -this is true. The compilation (once so useful to diners-out) went through -three editions in 1739, and at about the thirteenth edition was reprinted, -after thirty years, by Barker, of Russell Street, Covent Garden.[763] - -The Grange public-house close by, with its picturesque old courtyard, is -mentioned by Davenant, in his "Playhouse to Let," as an inn patronised by -poets and actors. - -The Black Jack public-house in Portsmouth Street was Joe Miller's -favourite haunt. Some paintings on its walls still testify to the -occasional presence of artists of the last century. This inn used to be -called "The Jump," from that adroit young scoundrel Jack Sheppard having -once jumped from one of its first-floor windows to escape the armed -emissaries of that still greater thief, the thief-taker, Mr. Jonathan -Wild. - -When paviours dig deep under the Strand they find the fossil remains of -antediluvian monsters. A church in the street bears a name that carries us -back to the times of the Saxons and the Danes. In one lane there is a -Roman bath, in another there are the nodding gable-ends of houses at which -Beaumont and Fletcher may have looked, and which Shakspere and Ben Jonson -must have visited. So the Present is built out of the Past. The Strand -teems with associations of every period of history. The story of St. -Giles's parish alone should embrace the whole records of London vagrancy. -The chronicle of Lincoln's Inn Fields embraces reminiscences of half our -great lawyers. In the chapter on St. Martin's Lane I have been glad to -note down some interesting incidents in the careers of many of our -greatest painters. Long Acre leads us to Dryden, Cromwell, Wilson, and -Stothard. At Charing Cross we have stopped to see how brave men can die -for a good cause. - -A thorough history of our great city, considered in every aspect, would -almost be a condensed history of the world. I offer these pages to my -readers only as a humble contribution to the history of London. - -[Illustration: THE BLACK JACK, PORTSMOUTH STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.] - -Our commercial wealth and the vastness of our maritime enterprise is shown -in nothing more than by the distance from which we fetch our commonest -articles of consumption--tea from China, sugar from the West Indies, -coffee from Ceylon, oil from the farthest nooks of Italy, chocolate from -Mexico. An Englishman need not be very rich in order to consume samples -of all these productions of different hemispheres at a single meal. - -In the same manner many books of far-divided ages have gone to form the -patchwork of the present volume; I am like the merchant who sends his -ships to collect in different harbours, and across wide and adverse seas, -the materials that he needs. In this busy and overworked age there are -many persons who have no time themselves to make such voyages, no patience -to traverse such seas, even if they possessed the charts: it is for them I -have written, and it is from them I hope for some kind approval. - - - - -APPENDIX. - - "The West End seems to me one vast cemetery. Hardly a street but has - in it a house once occupied by dear friends with whom I had daily - intercourse: if I stopped and knocked now, who would know or take - interest in me? _The streets to me are peopled with shadows: the city - is as a city of the dead._" - - SAMUEL ROGERS. - - -THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE).--p. 25. - - "I often shed tears in the motley Strand for fulness of joy at such - multitude of life."--CHARLES LAMB'S _Letters_, vol. i. - -The Strand is three-quarters of a mile long. Van de Wyngerede's view, -1543, shows straggling houses on the south side, but on the north side all -is open to Covent Garden. There were three water-courses, crossed by -bridges. Haycock's Ordinary, near Palsgrave Place, was much frequented in -the seventeenth century by Parliament men and town gallants. No. 217 was -the shop of Snow, a wealthy goldsmith who withstood the South Sea Bubble -without injury. Gay describes him during the panic with black pen behind -his ear. He says to Snow-- - - "Thou stoodst (an Indian king in size and hue); - Thy unexhausted shop was our Peru." - -The Robin Hood Debating Society held its meetings in Essex Street. Burke -spoke here, and Goldsmith was a member. The great Cottonian Library was -kept in Essex House from 1712 to 1730, on the site of the Unitarian -Chapel, built about 1774. Mr. Lindsey, Dr. Disney, Mr. Belsham -(Priestley's successor) preached here, and after Mr. Belsham the Rev. -Thomas Madge. At George's Coffee-house, now 213 Strand, Foote describes -the town wits meeting in 1751. Shenstone was a frequenter of this house, -and came here to read pamphlets--the subscription being one shilling. The -Grecian Coffee-house was used by Goldsmith and the Irish and Lancashire -Templars. Milford Lane was so named from an adjacent ford over the Thames. -A windmill stood near St. Mary's Church, temp. James I. Sir Richard Baker, -the worthy old chronicler whom Sir Roger de Coverley so admired, lived in -this lane in 1632-9. The old houses were taken down in 1852. No. 191 was -the shop of William Godwin, bookseller, the author of _Caleb Williams_, -and the friend of Lamb and Shelley.--Strype mentions the Crown and Anchor -Tavern. Here, in 1710, was instituted the Academy of Ancient Music. Here, -on Fox's birthday, in 1798, 2000 guests were feasted. Johnson and Boswell -occasionally supped here, and here the Royal Societies were held. In -Surrey Street, in a large garden-house at the east end fronting the river, -lived the Hon. Charles Howard, the eminent chemist who discovered the -process of sugar-refining _in vacuo_. - -At No. 169, now the Strand Theatre, Barker, an artist, exhibited the -panorama--his own invention--suggested to him when sketching under an -umbrella on the Calton Hill. No. 217, now a branch of the London and -Westminster Bank, was formerly Paul, Strahan, and Bates's,[764] who in -1858 disposed of their customers' securities to the amount of £113,625, -and were sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude. The drinking -fountain opposite St. Mary's Church is a product of a most useful -association. The first fountain erected under its auspices was opened in -April 1859, by Lord John Russell, Lord Carlisle, and Mr. Gurney.--At No. -147 was published the _Sphinx_, and Jan. 2, 1828, No. 1 of the _Athenæum_. -No. 149 is the shop once belonging to Mr. Mawe, the mineralogist, who was -succeeded by James Tennant, Professor of Mineralogy at King's College. At -No. 132 Strand (site of Wellington Street), the first circulating library -in London was started by a Mr. Wright, in 1740. Opposite Southampton -Street, from 1686 to late in the last century, lived Vaillant, the eminent -foreign bookseller. No. 143 was the site of the first office of the -_Morning Chronicle_ (Perry succeeding Woodfall in 1789). Lord Campbell and -Hazlitt were theatrical critics to this paper. Mr. Dickens was a -parliamentary reporter, Mr. Serjeant Spankie an editor, Campbell the poet -a contributor. On Perry's death, in 1821, it was purchased by Mr. Clement -for £42,000. The _Mirror_, the first cheap illustrated periodical was also -published at this office. At No. 1 lived Rudolph Ackermann, the German -printseller, who introduced lithography and annuals. He illuminated his -gallery when gas was a novelty. Aaron Hill was born in a dwelling on the -site of the present Beaufort House; Lord Clarendon lived here while his -unlucky western house was building; and here, in 1660, the Duke of York -married the chancellor's daughter. - -The York Buildings Water Company failed in 1731. Hungerford Hall and its -panoramic pictures were burnt in 1854. At No. 18 Strand, in 1776, the -elder Mathews the comedian was born; Dr. Adam Clarke and Rowland Hill used -to visit his father, who was a religious bookseller. No. 7 Craven Street -(Franklin's old house) was long occupied by the Society for the Relief of -Persons imprisoned for Small Debts. In Northumberland Court, once known as -"Lieutenants' Lodgings," Nelson once lodged. - - -NORFOLK STREET.--p. 44. - -Mr. Dickens has sketched Norfolk Street in his own inimitable way. -"Norfolk is a delightful street to lodge in, provided you don't go lower -down (Mrs. Lirriper dates from No. 81); but of a summer evening, when the -dust and waste paper lie in it, and stray children play in it, and a kind -of gritty calm and bake settles on it, and a peal of church-bells is -practising in the neighbourhood, it is a trifle dull; and never have I -seen it since at such a time, and never shall I see it ever more at such a -time, without seeing the dull June evening when that forlorn young -creature sat at her open corner window on the second, and me at my open -corner window (the other corner) on the third."[765] - - -THE STRAND THEATRE.--p. 53. - -The Strand Theatre, No. 169, formerly called Punch's Playhouse, was -altered in 1831 for Rayner, the low comedian, and Mrs. Waylett, the -singer. Here were produced many of Douglas Jerrold's early plays. Under -Miss Swanborough's management, Miss Marie Wilton, arch and witty as -Shakspere's Maria, delighted the town. Here poor Rogers, now dead, was -inimitable in burlesque female characters. - - -THE SOMERSET COFFEE-HOUSE.--p. 56. - -The bold and redoubtable Junius (now pretty well ascertained, after much -inkshed, to be Sir Philip Francis) occasionally left his letters for -Woodfall at the bar of the Somerset Coffee-house at the east corner of the -entrance to King's College. His other houses of call were the bar of the -New Exchange, and now and then Munday's in Maiden Lane. - - -SOMERSET HOUSE.--p. 56. - -The School of Design, formerly located in Somerset House, was established -in 1857, under the superintendence of the Board of Trade, for the -improvement of ornamental art, with regard more especially to our staple -English manufactures. The school is now incorporated with the Science and -Art Schools at South Kensington, which have been established, under -Government, in connection with South Kensington Museum. - - -KING'S COLLEGE.--p. 56. - -King's College and School (to the latter of which the author owes some -gratitude for a portion of his education) form a proprietary institution -that occupies an east wing of Somerset House which was built to receive -it. The college was founded in 1828; its fundamental principle is, that -instruction in religion is an indispensable part of instruction, without -which knowledge "will be conducive neither to the happiness of the -individual nor the welfare of the State." The college education is divided -into five departments:--1. Theology. 2. General Literature and Science. 3. -Applied Sciences. 4. Medicine. 5. The School. A certificate of good -conduct, signed by his last instructor, is required of each pupil on -entry. The age for admission is from nine to sixteen years. A limited -number of matriculated students can live within the walls. Each proprietor -can nominate two pupils--one to the school, and one to the college. The -museum once contained the celebrated calculating machine of the late Mr. -Charles Babbage. This scientific toy was given by the Commissioners of the -Woods and Forests. It is now at South Kensington. The collection of -mechanical models and philosophical instruments was formed by George III. -and presented to the college by Queen Victoria. - - -HELMET COURT.--p. 56. - -Helmet Court-so called from the Helmet Inn-is over against Somerset House. -The inn is enumerated in a list of houses and taverns made in the reign of -James I.[766] When the King of Denmark came to see his daughter, he was -lodged in Somerset House, and new kitchen-ranges were set up at the Helmet -and the Swan at the expense of the Crown. Henry Condell, a fellow-actor -with Shakspere, left his houses in Helmet Court to "Elizabeth, his -well-beloved wife."[767] - - -BEAUFORT BUILDINGS.--p. 83. - -Charles Dibdin, born 1745, the author of 1300 songs, gave his musical -entertainments at the Lyceum, and at Scott and Idle's premises in the -Strand. Latterly, assisted by his pupils, he conducted public musical -soirees at Beaufort Buildings. - - -COUTTS'S BANK.--p. 86. - -Mr. Coutts died in 1822. He was a pallid, sickly, thin old gentleman, who -wore a shabby coat and a brown scratch-wig.[768] He was once stopped in -the street by a good-natured man, who insisted on giving him a guinea. The -banker, however, declined the present with thanks, saying he was in no -"immediate want." Miss Harriet Mellon first appeared at Drury Lane in -1795, as Lydia Languish. Mr. Coutts married Miss Mellon in 1815. She made -her last appearance at Drury Lane, early in the same year, as Audrey. She -left the bulk of her fortune to Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts, whose gold the -_Morning Herald_ once computed at 13 tons, or 107 flour-sacks full. The -sum, £1,800,000, was the exact sum also left by old Jemmy Wood of -Gloucester. Counting a sovereign a minute, it would take ten weeks to -count; and placed sovereign to sovereign, it would reach 24 miles 260 -yards. - -Coutts's Bank was founded by George Middleton. Till Coutts's time it stood -near St. Martin's Church. Good-natured Gay banked there, and afterwards -Dr. Johnson, Sir Walter Scott, and the Duke of Wellington. The Royal -Family have banked at Coutts's ever since the reign of Queen Anne. - - -THE DARK ARCHES.--p. 97. - -"The Adelphi arches, many of which are used for cellars and coal-wharfs, -remind one in their grim vastness," says Mr. Timbs, "of the Etruscan -Cloaca of old Rome." Beneath the "dry arches" the most abandoned -characters used to lurk; outcasts and vagrants came there to sleep, and -many a street thief escaped from his pursuers in those subterranean haunts -before the introduction of gas-light and a vigilant police. Mr. Egg, that -tragic painter, placed the scene of one of his most pathetic pictures by -this part of what was once the river-bank. - - -SOCIETY OF ARTS.--p. 99. - -Lord Folkestone and Mr. Shipley founded the Society of Arts, at a meeting -at Rawthmell's Coffee-house, in Catharine Street, in March 1754. It was -proposed to give rewards for the discovery of cobalt and the cultivation -of madder in England. Premiums were also to be given for the best drawings -to a certain number of boys and girls under the age of sixteen. The first -prize, £15, was adjudged by the society to Cosway, then a boy of fifteen. -The society was initiated in Crane Court; from thence it removed to -Craig's Court, Charing Cross; from there to the Strand, opposite Beaufort -Buildings; and from thence, in 1774, to the Adelphi. - -The subjects of Barry's six pictures in the Council Room are the following -(beginning on the left as you enter):--1. "Orpheus." The figure of Orpheus -and the heads of the two reclining women are thought fine. 2. "A Grecian -Harvest Home" (the best of the series). 3. "Crowning the Victors at -Olympia." 4. "Commerce, or the Triumph of the Thames." (Dr. Burney, the -composer, is composedly floating among tritons and sea-nymphs in his grand -tie-wig and queue.) 5. "The Distribution of Premiums by the Society of -Arts." (This picture contains a portrait of Dr. Johnson, for which he -sat.) 6. "Elysium, or the State of Final Retribution." - -Barry did pretty well with this work, which occupied him from 1777 to -1783. The society gave him £300 and a gold medal, and also £500, the -profit of two exhibitions-total, £800. - -In 1776 the society had proposed to the Academy to decorate the Council -Room, and be reimbursed by the exhibition of the works. Reynolds and the -rest refused, but Barry soon afterwards obtained permission to execute the -whole, stipulating to be paid for his colours and models. Barry at the -time had only sixteen shillings in his pocket. During the progress of the -work the painter, being in want, applied for a small subscription through -Sir George Savile, but in vain. An insolent secretary even objected to his -charge for colours and models. The society afterwards relented and -advanced £100. Barry died poor, neglected, and half crazy, in 1806, aged -sixty-five. - -The Adelphi Rooms contain three poor statues (Mars, Venus, and Narcissus) -by Bacon, R.A., a portrait of Lord Romney by Reynolds, and a full-length -portrait of Jacob, Lord Folkestone, the first president, by Gainsborough. -In the ante-room, in a bad light, hangs a characteristic likeness of poor, -wrongheaded Barry. The pictures are to be seen between ten and four any -day but Wednesday and Saturday. The society meets every Wednesday at eight -from October 31 to July 31. - -In the Council Room, that parade-ground of learned men, Goldsmith once -made an attempt at a speech, but was obliged to sit down in confusion. Dr. -Johnson once spoke there on "Mechanics," "with a propriety, perspicuity, -and energy which excited general admiration."[769] - -Jonas Hanway, that worthy old Russian merchant, when he came to see -Barry's pictures, insisted on leaving a guinea instead of the customary -shilling. The Prince of Wales gave Barry sittings. Timothy Hollis left him -£100. Lord Aldborough declared that the painter had surpassed Raphael. -Lord Romney gave him 100 guineas for a copy of one of the heads, and Dr. -Johnson praised the "grasping mind" in the six pictures.[770] - - -DUCHY OF LANCASTER.--p. 110. - -The Duchy of Lancaster is a liberty (whatever that means) in the Strand. -It belongs to the Crown, the Queen being "Duchess of Lancaster." It begins -without Temple Bar and runs as far as Cecil Street. The annual revenue of -the duchy is about £75,000. - - -WATERLOO BRIDGE.--p. 124. - -Hood's exquisite poem, "The Bridge of Sighs," appeared in "Hood's -Magazine" in May 1844. The poet's son informs me that he believes that the -poem was not suggested by any special incident, but that a great many -suicides had been reported in the papers about that time. - - "The bleak wind of _March_ - Made her tremble and shiver" - -marks the date of the writing, - - "But not the dark arch - Of the black flowing river." - -The dark arch is that of Waterloo Bridge, a spot frequently selected by -unfortunate women who meditate suicide, on account of its solitude and -privacy. - - -YORK HOUSE.--p. 135. - -After the death of Buckingham, York House was entrusted to the -guardianship of that Flemish adventurer and quack in art, Sir Balthasar -Gerbier, who here quarrelled and would have fought with Gentilleschi, a -Pisan artist who had been invited over by Charles I., and of whom he was -intolerably jealous. Some of Gentilleschi's work is still preserved at -Marlborough House. The York Buildings Waterworks Company was started in -the 27th year of Charles II. In 1688 there were forty-eight shares. After -the Scotch rebellion in 1715, the company invested large sums in -purchasing forfeited estates, which no Scotchman would buy. The concern -became bankrupt. The residue of the Scotch estates was sold in 1783 for -£102,537.[771] - - -BUCKINGHAM STREET.--p. 135. - -It is always pleasant to recall any scenes on which the light of Mr. -Dickens's fancy has even momentarily rested. It was to Buckingham Street -that Mr. David Copperfield went with his aunt to take chambers commanding -a view of the river. They were at the top of the house, very near the -fire-escape, with a half-blind entry and a stone-blind pantry.[772] - - -HUNGERFORD BRIDGE.--p. 138. - -The Hungerford Suspension Bridge was purchased in 1860 by a company of -gentlemen, and used in the construction of the bridge across the Avon at -Clifton. This aerial roadway has a span of 703 feet, and is built at the -height of 245 feet. It cost little short of £100,000. A bridge at Clifton -was first suggested in 1753 by Alderman Vick of Bristol, who left a -nest-egg of £1000. The bridge was completed and opened in 1864. - - -THE GAIETY THEATRE, STRAND (NORTH SIDE).--p. 147. - -This elegant and well-appointed theatre, near the corner of Wellington -Street, was built in 1868, from the designs of Mr. C. J. Phillips. It -occupies the site of the Strand Music Hall, a large building which had -been erected in the place of an arcade which the late Lord Exeter had -built here in order to resuscitate the glories of old Exeter 'Change. Both -the arcade and music hall proved disastrous failures, whilst the Gaiety -Theatre, on the other hand, has turned out immensely successful, under the -management of Mr. John Hollingshead. - - -THE STRAND (NORTH SIDE).--p. 147. - -Sir John Denham, the poet, when a student at Lincoln's Inn, in 1638, in a -drunken frolic blotted out with ink all the Strand signs from Temple Bar -to Charing Cross. - -In a house in Butcher Row, Winter, Catesby, Wright, and Guy Fawkes met and -took the sacrament together. Raleigh's widow lived in Boswell Court, and -also Lord Chief Justice Lyttelton and Sir Richard and Lady Fanshawe; and -in Clement's Lane resided Sir John Trevor, cousin to Judge Jeffries and -Speaker to the House of Commons. Dr. Johnson's pew at St. Clement's is No. -18 in the north gallery; Dr. Croly put up a tablet to his memory. The -_Tatler_, 1710, announces a stage-coach from the One Bell in the Strand -(No. 313) to Dorchester. - -No. 317 was the forge kept by the Duchess of Albemarle's father, and it -faced the Maypole; Aubrey describes it as the corner shop, the first -turning to the right as you come out of the Strand into Drury Lane. Dr. -King died at No. 332, once the _Morning Chronicle_ office. The New Exeter -Change--the site of which is now covered by the Gaiety Theatre and -Restaurant--was designed by Sydney Smirke, with Jacobean frontage. East of -Exeter Change stood the Canary House, mentioned by Dryden as famous for -its sack with the "abricot" flavour. Pepys mentions Cary House, probably -the same place. At No. 352 was born, in 1798, Henry Neale the poet, son of -the map and heraldic engraver. In Exeter Change No. 1 of the _Literary -Gazette_ was published, January 25, 1817. Old Parr lodged at No. 405, the -Queen's Head public-house. No. 429, built for an insurance office by Mr. -Cockerell, has a fine façade. At No. 448 is the Electric Telegraph Office; -the time signal-ball, liberated by a galvanic current sent from Greenwich, -falls exactly at one, and drops ten feet. The old Golden Cross Hotel stood -farther west than the present. The Lowther Arcade, designed by Witherden -Young, is 245 feet long and 20 feet broad. Here the electric eel and -Perkin's steam-gun were exhibited about 1838. In 1832 a Society for the -Exhibition of Models had been formed here. In 1831 the skeleton of a whale -was exhibited in a tent in Trafalgar Square; it was 98 feet long, and -Cuvier had estimated it to be nearly a thousand years old. - -It should be added that for most of the facts in this note the author is -indebted to that treasure-house of topographical anecdote, _Curiosities of -London_, by J. Timbs, Esq., F.S.A., a book displaying an almost boundless -industry. - - -THE CROWN AND ANCHOR TAVERN.--p. 152. - -The Crown and Anchor Tavern, at the corner of Arundel Street, was for some -years the Whittington Club. Before the alterations it had an entrance from -the Strand, which is now closed, its door being now in Arundel Street. -Douglas Jerrold was one of the earliest promoters of this club, which was -much used by young men of business. In 1873, after having been closed for -some time, it was re-opened as the Temple Club. The King of Clubs was -started about 1801 by Mr. Robert (Bobus) Smith, brother of Sydney, a -friend of Canning's, and Advocate-General of Calcutta. It sat every -Saturday at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, at that time famous for its -dinners and wine, and a great resort for clubs. Politics were excluded. -One of the chief members was Mr. Richard Sharpe, a partner in a West India -house, and a Parliamentary speaker during Addington's and Perceval's -administrations. Mackintosh, Scarlett, Rogers the poetical banker, John -Allen, and M. Dumont, an emigré and friend of the Abbé de Lisle, were also -members. Erskine, too, often dropped in to spend an hour stolen from his -immense and overflowing business. He there told his story of Lord -Loughborough trying to persuade him not to take Tom Paine's brief. He once -met Curran there. A member of the club describes the ape's face of the -Irish orator, with the sunken and diminutive eyes that flashed lightning -as he compared poor wronged Ireland to "Niobe palsied with sorrow and -despair over her freedom, and her prosperity struck dead before her."[773] - - -WYCH STREET.--p. 164. - -"In a horrible little court, branching northward from Wych Street," writes -Mr. Sala, in an essay written in America, "good old George Cruikshank once -showed me the house where Jack Sheppard, the robber and prison-breaker, -served his apprenticeship to Mr. Wood, the carpenter; and on a beam in the -loft of this house Jack is said to have carved his name. * * * Theodore -Hook used to say that "he never passed through Wych Street in a -hackney-coach without being blocked up by a hearse and a coal waggon in -the van, and a mud-cart and the Lord Mayor's carriage in the rear." - - -NEWSPAPER OFFICES.--p. 167. - -It is almost impossible to enumerate all the Strand newspaper offices, -present and past. It is, perhaps, sufficient to mention _The Spectator_ (a -very able paper,--office in Waterloo Place); _The London Journal_ (a -cheap, well-conducted paper with an enormous circulation); _The Family -Herald_ (the house formerly of Mr. Leigh, bookseller, a relation of the -elder Mathews, and the first introducer of the _Guides_ that Mr. Murray -has now rendered so complete); _The Illustrated Times_, _The Morning -Post_, _Notes and Queries_, _The Queen_, _Law Times_, _Athenæum_, and -_Field_ (in Wellington Street); _Bell's Life_, _The Globe_, _Bell's -Messenger_, _The Observer_, and lastly, _The Pall Mall Gazette_, and _The -Saturday Review_. - - -THE BEEF-STEAK CLUB.--p. 172. - -Bubb Doddington, Aaron Hill, "Leonidas" Glover, Sir Peere Williams (a -youth of promise, shot at the siege of Belleisle), Hoadly, and the elder -Colman (the author of _The Suspicious Husband_), were either guests or -members of this illustrious club, whose origin dates back to Rich's days -in 1735. Then came the days of Lord Sandwich, Wilkes, Bonnell Thornton, -Arthur Murphy, Churchill, and Tickell. In 1785 the Prince of Wales -(afterwards George IV.) became the twenty-fifth member. - -Churchill resigned when the club began to receive him coldly after his -desertion of his wife. Wilkes never visited the club after the -contemptuous rejection of his infamous poem, the _Essay on Woman_. Garrick -was a great ornament of the club; he once dined there dressed in the -character of Ranger. Little Serjeant Prime was another club celebrity of -that period. An anonymous writer describes a meeting of the club in or -about 1799. There were present John Kemble, Cobb of the India House, the -Duke of Clarence, Sir John Cox Hippisley, Charles Morris (the writer of -our best convivial songs), Ferguson of Aberdeen, Mingay, and the Duke of -Norfolk. As the clock struck five, a curtain drew up, discovering the -kitchen through a gridiron grating, over which was inscribed this motto-- - - "If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well - It were done quickly." - -The Duke of Norfolk ate at least three steaks, and then when the cloth was -removed, took the chair on a dais, elevated some steps above the table, -and above which hung the small cocked-hat in which Garrick played Ranger, -and other insignia of the society. He was also invested with an orange -ribbon, to which a silver gridiron was appended. The sound motto "Beef and -Liberty" is inscribed on the buttons of the members. It is the duty of the -junior member at this club to bring up the wine. The writer before quoted -describes seeing Lord Brougham and the Duke of Leinster performing this -subordinate duty. Sir John Hippisley was the man who Windham used to say -was very _nearly_ a clever fellow. Cobb was the author of "First Floor" (a -farce) and of three comic operas--"The Haunted Tower," "The Siege of -Belgrade," and "Ramah Drûg." To the two former Storace set his finest -music. - -"Captain" Morris, the author of those delightful songs, "The Town and -Country Life" and "When the Fancy-stirring Bowl wakes the Soul to -Pleasure," used to brew punch and "out-watch the Bear" at this club till -after his seventy-eighth year. The Duke of Norfolk, at Kemble's -solicitation, gave the veteran bard a pleasant little Sabine retreat near -Dorking. Jack Richards, the presbyter of the club, was famous for -inflicting long verbal harangues on condemned social culprits. - -Another much respected member was old William Linley, Sheridan's -brother-in-law; nor must we forget Richard Wilson, Lord Eldon's secretary, -and Mr. Walsh, who had been in early life valet to Lord Chesterfield. The -club secretary, in 1828, was Mr. Henry Stephenson, comptroller to the Duke -of Sussex; and about this time also flourished, either as guests or -members, Lord Viscount Kirkwall, Rowland Stephenson the banker, and Mr. -Denison, then M.P. for Surrey.[774] - -A literary friend tells me that the last time he saw Mr. Thackeray was one -evening in Exeter Street. The eminent satirist of snobs was peering about -for the stage door of the Lyceum Theatre, or some other means of entrance -to the Beef-steak Club, with whose members he had been invited to dine. - - -EXETER CHANGE.--p. 175. - -Thomas Clark, "the King of Exeter Change," took a cutler's stall here in -1765 with £100 lent him by a stranger. By trade and thrift he grew so rich -that he once returned his income at £6000 a year, and before his death in -1816 he rented the whole ground-floor of the Change. He left nearly half a -million of money, and one of his daughters married Mr. Hamlet, the -celebrated jeweller. Some of the old materials of Exeter House, including -a pair of large Corinthian columns at the east end, were used in building -the Change, which was the speculation of a Dr. Barbon, in the reign of -William and Mary. - - -TRAFALGAR SQUARE.--p. 221. - -The fountains were constructed in 1845, after designs from Sir Charles -Barry. - -Morley's Hotel (1 to 3 at the south-east corner) is much frequented by -American travellers, who may be seen on summer evenings calmly smoking -their cigars outside the chief entrance. The late proprietor, who died a -few years since, left nearly a hundred thousand pounds to the Foundling -and other charities. - - -THE UNION CLUB.--p. 226. - -The Union Club House, which stands on the south-west of Trafalgar Square -and faces Cockspur Street, was built by Sir Robert Smirke, R.A. The club, -consisting of 1000 members, has been in existence forty-four years; its -expenditure is about £10,000 a year. Its trustees are the Earl of -Lonsdale, Viscount Gage, Lord Trimleston, and Sir John Henry Lowther, -Bart. The entrance money is thirty guineas, the annual subscription six -guineas. Mr. Peter Cunningham, writing in 1849, describes the club as "the -resort chiefly of mercantile men of eminence;" but its present members are -of all the professions. - - -DRUMMOND'S BANK.--p. 227. - -This bank is older than Coutts's. Pope banked there. The Duke of -Sutherland and many of the Scottish nobility bank there. - - -ST. MARTIN'S LANE.--p. 252. - -Roger Payne was a celebrated bookbinder in Duke's Court, St. Martin's -Lane, London. This ingenious artist, a native of Windsor Forest, was born -in 1739, and first became initiated into the rudiments of his business -under the auspices of Mr. Pote, bookseller to Eton College. On settling in -the metropolis, about the year 1766, he worked for a short time for Thomas -Osborne, bookseller in Holborn, but principally for _honest_ Thomas Payne, -of the Mews Gate, who, although of the same name, was not related to him. -His talents as an artist, particularly in the finishing department, were -of the first order, and such as, up to his time, had not been developed by -any other of his countrymen. "Roger Payne," says Dr. Dibdin, "rose like a -star, diffusing lustre on all sides, and rejoicing the hearts of all true -sons of bibliomania." He succeeded in executing binding with such artistic -taste as to command the admiration and patronage of many noblemen. His -_chef-d'oeuvre_ is a large paper copy of Æschylus, translated by the Rev. -Robert Potter, the ornaments and decorations of which are most splendid -and classical. The binding of this book cost Earl Spencer fifteen guineas. - -It was by his artistic talents alone that Roger Payne became so celebrated -in his day; for, owing to his excessive indulgence in strong ale, he was -in person a deplorable specimen of humanity. As evidence of this -propensity, his account-book contains the following memorandum of one -day's expenditure: "For bacon, one halfpenny; for liquor, one shilling." -Even his trade bills are literary curiosities in their way, and frequently -illustrate his unfortunate propensity. On one delivered to Mr. Evans for -binding Barry's work on _The Wines of the Ancients_, he wrote:-- - - "Homer the bard, who sung in highest strains, - Had, festive gift, a goblet for his pains: - Falernian gave Horace, Virgil fire, - And barley-wine my British muse inspire; - Barley-wine, first from Egypt's learned shore, - Be this the gift to me from Calvert's store!" - -During the latter part of his life, as might have been expected, Roger -Payne was the victim of poverty and disease. He closed his earthly career -at his residence in Duke's Court on Nov. 20, 1787, and was interred in the -burial-ground of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, at the expense of his worthy -patron, Mr. Thomas Payne. This excellent man had also a portrait taken and -engraved of his namesake at his work in his miserable den, under which Mr. -Bindley wrote the following lines:-- - - "ROGERUS PAYNE: Natus Vindesor. MDCCXXXIX.; denatus Londin. - MDCCLXXXVII. Effigiem hanc graphicam solertis BIBLIOPEGI [Greek: - Mnêmosunon] meritis BIBLIOPOLA dedit. Sumptibus Thomæ Payne. [Etch'd - and published by S. Harding, No. 127 Pall Mall, March 1, 1800."][775] - - -HEMINGS' ROW.--p. 252. - -Hemings' Row, St. Martin's Lane, was originally called Dirty Lane.[776] -The place probably derived its name from John Hemings, an apothecary -living there in 1679. Peter Cunningham writes in 1849: "Upon an old wooden -house at the west end of this street, near the second-floor window, is the -name given above, and the date 1680."[777] - - -BEDFORDBURY.--p. 261. - -Mr. James Payne, a bookseller of Bedfordbury (perhaps the son of Thomas -Payne), died in Paris in 1809. Mr. Burnet describes him as remarkable for -amenity as for probity and learning. Repeated journeys to Italy, France, -and Germany had enabled him to collect a great number of precious MSS. and -rare first editions, most of which went to enrich Lord Spencer's -library--the most splendid collection ever made by a private person.[778] - - -EARL OF BRISTOL.--p. 264. - -Digby, Earl of Bristol, whom Pepys accuses of losing King Charles his head -by breaking off the treaty of Uxbridge, lived in Lincoln's Inn Fields. His -second daughter, Lady Ann, married the evil Earl of Sutherland. It was -Bristol who was base enough to impeach Lord Clarendon for selling Dunkirk -and making Charles marry a barren queen. Burnet describes the earl as -having become a Roman Catholic in order to be qualified for serving under -Don John in Flanders. He was an astrologer,[779] and had the impudence to -tell the king he was in danger from his brother. He renounced his new -religion openly at Wimbledon,[780] and then fled to France. - - -WILD HOUSE.--p. 277. - -Wild House, Drury Lane, was formerly the town mansion of the Welds of -Lulworth Castle. Short's Gardens were so called from Dudley Short, Esq., -who had a mansion here with fine gardens in the reign of Charles II. In -Parker Street, Philip Parker, Esq., had a mansion in 1623. - - -CRAVEN HOUSE, DRURY LANE.--p. 292. - -Pepys frequently mentions Lord Craven as attending the meetings at the -Trinity House upon Admiralty business. The old veteran, whom he -irreverently calls "a coxcomb," complimented him on several occasions upon -his popularity with the Duke of York. Pennant says that Lord Craven and -the Duke of Albemarle "heroically stayed in town during the dreadful -pestilence, and, at the hazard of their lives, preserved order in the -midst of the terrors of the time."[781] This fine old Don Quixote happened -to be on duty at St. James's when William's Dutch troops were coming -across the park to take possession. Lord Craven would have opposed their -entrance, but his timid master forbidding him to resist, he marched away -"with sullen dignity." The date of the sale of the pest-houses should be -1722, not 1772. - - -DRURY LANE.--p. 299. - -In the Regency time, and before, Drury Lane was what the Haymarket is now. -Oyster shops, low taverns, and singing-rooms of the worst description -surrounded the theatre. One of the worst of these, even down to our own -times, was "Jessop's" ("The Finish")--a great resort of low -prize-fighters, gamblers, sporting men, swindlers, spendthrifts, and -drunkards. "_H.'s_" (I veil the infamous name), described in a MS. of -Horace Walpole, is now a small, dingy theatrical tailor's, and in the -besmirched back-shop shreds of gilding and smears of colour still show -where Colonel Hanger knocked off the heads of champagne bottles, and -afterwards, Lord Waterford and such "bloods" squandered their money and -their health. - - -THE SAVAGE CLUB.--p. 303. - -The Savage Club, which was started at the Crown Tavern in Drury Lane, and -then removed to rooms next the Lyceum, and said to have been those once -occupied by the Beef-steak Club, is now moored at Evans's Hotel, Covent -Garden. The name of the club has a duplex signification; it refers to -Richard Savage the poet, and also to the Bohemian freedom of its members. -It includes in its number no small share of the literary talent of the -London newspaper and dramatic world. - - -CLARE MARKET.--p. 339. - -Denzil Street was so called by the Earl of Clare in 1682, in memory of his -uncle Denzil, Lord Holles, who died 1679-80. He was one of the five -members of Parliament whom Charles I. so despotically and so unwisely -attempted to seize. The inscription on the south-west wall of the street -was renewed in 1796. - - -STREET CHARACTERS.--p. 381. - -It would be impossible to recapitulate the street celebrities from -Hogarth's time to the present day which St. Giles's has harboured. A -writer in _Notes and Queries_ mentions a man who used to sell dolls' -bedsteads, and who was always said to have been the king's evidence -against the Cato Street conspirators. Charles Lamb describes, in his own -inimitable way, an old sailor without legs who used to propel his -mutilated body about the streets on a wooden framework supported on -wheels. He was said to have been maimed during the Gordon riots. But I -have now myself to add to the list the most remarkable relic of all. There -is (1868?) to be seen any day in the London streets a gaunt grey-haired -old blind beggar, with hard strongly-marked features and bushy eyebrows. -This is no less a person than Hare the murderer, who years ago aided Burke -in murdering poor mendicants and houseless people in Edinburgh, and -selling their bodies to the surgeons for dissection. Hare, a young man -then, turned king's evidence and received a pardon. He came to London with -his blood money, and entered himself as a labourer under an assumed name -at a tannery in the suburbs. The men discovering him, threw the wretch -into a steeping-pit, from which he escaped, but with loss of both eyes. - - -THE SEVEN DIALS.--p. 385. - -Evelyn describes going (Oct. 5, 1694) to see the seven new streets in St. -Giles's, then building by Mr. Neale, who had introduced lotteries in -imitation of those of Venice. The Doric column was removed in July 1773, -in the hope of finding a sum of money supposed to be concealed under the -base. The search was ineffectual; the pillar now ornaments the common at -Weybridge. Gay describes Seven Dials, in his own pleasant, inimitable way -(circa 1712). - - "Where fam'd St. Giles's ancient limits spread, - An inrailed column rears its lofty head, - Here to seven streets seven dials count the day, - And from each other catch the circling ray; - Here oft the peasant, with inquiring face, - Bewildered trudges on from place to place; - He dwells on every sign with stupid gaze, - Enters the narrow alley's doubtful maze, - Tries every winding court and street in vain, - And doubles o'er his weary steps again."[782] - -Martinus Scriblerus is supposed to have been born in Seven Dials. Horace -Walpole describes the progress of family portraits from the drawing-room -to the parlour, from the parlour to the counting-house, from the -housekeeper's room to the garret, and from thence to flutter in rags -before a broker's shop in the Seven Dials.[783] Here Taylor laid the scene -of "Monsieur Tonson." - - "Be gar! there's Monsieur Tonson come again!" - -The celebrated Mr. Catnach, the printer of street ballads, lived in Seven -Dials. He died about 1847. - - -STREETS IN ST. GILES'S.--p. 385. - -In Dyot Street lived Curll's "Corinna," Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, and her -mother.[784] At the Black Horse and Turk's Head public-houses in this -street, those wretches Haggerty and Holloway, in November 1802, planned -the murder of Mr. Steele on Hounslow Heath, and here they returned after -the perpetration of the crime. At the execution of these murderers at the -Old Bailey, in 1807, twenty-eight persons were trampled to death. The -street was immortalised by a song in _Bombastes Furioso_, an excellent and -boisterous burlesque tragic opera, written by William Barnes Rhodes, a -clerk in the Bank of England. Bainbridge and Breckridge Streets, St. -Giles's, now no more, were built prior to 1672, and derived their names -from the owners, eminent parishioners in the reign of Charles II. Dyot -Street was inhabited as late as 1803 by Philip Dyot, Esq., a descendant of -Richard Dyot, from whom it derived its name. In 1710 there was a -"Mendicants' Convivial Club" held at the Welsh's Head in this street. The -club was founded in 1660, when its meetings were held at the Three Crowns -in the Poultry. Denmark Street was probably built in 1689. Zoffany lived -at No. 9. Bunbury, the caricaturist, laid the scene of his "Sunday Evening -Conversation" in this street. In July 1771 Sir John Murray, the -Pretender's secretary, was carried off in a coach from his house near St. -Giles's Church by armed men.[785] - - -SAINT GILES.--p. 385. - -This saint has some scurvy worshippers. Pierce Egan, in his _Life in -London_ (1820), afterwards dramatised, describes the thieves' kitchens and -beggars' revels, which men about town in those days thought it "the -correct thing," as the slang goes, to see and share. "The Rookery" was a -triangular mass of buildings, bounded by Bainbridge, George, and High -Streets. It was swept away by New Oxford Street. The lodgings were -threepence a night. Sir Henry Ellis, in 1813, counted seventeen -horse-shoes nailed to thresholds in Monmouth Street as antidotes against -witches. Jews preponderate in this unsavoury street. Mr. Henry Mayhew -describes a conversation with a St. Giles's poet who wrote Newgate -ballads, Courvousier's Lamentation, and elegies. He was paid one shilling -each for them. A parliamentary report of 1848 describes Seven Dials as in -a degraded state. "Vagrants, thieves, sharpers, scavengers, basket-women, -charwomen, army seamstresses, and prostitutes, compose its mass. Infidels, -chartists, socialists, and blasphemers have their head-quarters there. -There are a hundred and fifty shops open on the Sunday. The ragged-school -there is badly situated and uninviting." Mr. Albert Smith says gin shops -are the only guides in "the dirty labyrinth" of the Seven Dials. The -author once accompanied a Scripture-reader to some of the lowest and -poorest courts and alleys of St. Giles's. In one bare room, he remembers, -on an earth floor, sat a blind beggar waiting for the return of his boy, a -sweeper, who had been sent out to a street-crossing to try and earn some -bread. In another room there was a poor old lonely woman who had made a -pet of an immense ram. We ended our tour by visiting an Irishwoman who had -been converted from "Popery." While we were there, some Irish boys -surrounded the house and shouted in at the key-hole, threatening to -denounce her to the priest. When we emerged from this den we were received -with a shower of peculiarly hard small potatoes, a penance which the -author bore somewhat impatiently, while the Scripture-reader, who seemed -accustomed to such rough compliments, took the blows like an early -Christian martyr. - - -LINCOLN'S INN HALL.--p. 398. - -In 1800 or 1801 Mackintosh delivered lectures in the old Lincoln's Inn -Hall on the "Laws of Nature and Nations." They were attended by Canning, -Lord Liverpool, and a brilliant audience. They contained a panegyric on -Grotius. In style Mackintosh was measured and monotonous--of the school of -Robertson and Gilbert Stuart. He made one mistake in imputing the doctrine -of the association of ideas to Hobbes, which Coleridge corrected. He -refuted the theories of Godwin in a masterly way.[786] - - -SERLE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.--p. 401. - -This street derived its name from a Mr. Henry Serle, who died intestate -circa 1690, much in debt, and with lands heavily mortgaged. He purchased -the property from the executors of Sir John Birkenhead, the conductor of -the Royalist paper, _Mercurius Aulicus_, during the Civil War, a writer -whose poetry Lawes set to music, and who died in 1679. New Square was -formerly called Serle's Court, and the arms of Serle are over the Carey -Street gateway. The second edition of _Barnaby's Journal_ was printed in -1716, for one Illidge, under Serle's Gate, Lincoln's Inn, New Square.[787] -Addison seems to have visited Serle's Coffee-house, to study from some -quiet nook the "humours" of the young barristers. There is a letter extant -from Akenside, the poet, addressed to Jeremiah Dyson, that excellent -friend and patron who defended him from the attacks of Warburton at -Serle's Coffee-house. - - -CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY.--p. 414. - -The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, now at 66 Lincoln's Inn -Fields, had apartments in 1714 at No. 6 Serle's Court. This society was -founded by Dr. Bray and four friends on the 8th of March 1699, and it -celebrated its third jubilee, or 150th anniversary, in 1849. The society -assists schools and colonial churches, and is said to have distributed -more than a hundred millions of Bibles and Prayer-books since its -foundation. - - -THE SOANE MUSEUM.--p. 424. - -The following squib is said to have been placed under the plates at an -Academic dinner:-- - - "THE MODERN GOTH. - - "Glory to thee, great artist soul of taste - For mending pigsties where a plank's displaced, - Whose towering genius plans from deep research - Houses and temples fit for Master Birch - To grace his shop on that important day - When huge twelfth-cakes are raised in bright array. - Each pastry pillar shows thy vast design; - Hail! then, to thee, and all great works of thine. - Come, let me place thee in the foremost rank - With him whose dulness discomposed the Bank." - -The writer then, apostrophising Wren, adds-- - - "Oh, had he lived to see thy blessed work, - To see pilasters scored like loins of pork, - To see the orders in confusion move, - Scrolls fixed below and pedestals above, - To see defiance hurled at Rome and Greece, - Old Wren had never left the world in peace. - Look where I will--above, below is shown - A pure disordered order of thy own; - Where lines and circles curiously unite - A base compounded, compound composite, - A thing from which in turn it may be said, - Each lab'ring mason turns abash'd his head; - Which Holland reprobates and Dance derides, - While tasteful Wyatt holds his aching sides."[788] - -Soane foolishly brought an action against the bitter writer; but Lord -Kenyon directed the jury to find for the defendant on the ground that the -satire was not personal. - - - - -INDEX. - - - Abingdon, Mrs., "Nosegay Fan," 318 - - Adam, the Brothers, their design, 96; - joke against their Scotch workmen, 103 - - Adam, Robert, death and funeral of, 104 - - Addison, the "Cato" of, 311; - Booth's representation of "Cato," _ib._ - - Adelphi, site of the, 97; - the residence of Garrick, _ib._; - Johnson and Boswell at, 98; - prowlers in its arches, 448 - - Adelphi Rooms, the, 449 - - Adelphi Theatre, first success of, 180; - Terry and Yates as its lessees, _ib._; - appearance of "Jim Crow" in, _ib._; - the elder Mathews manager of, _ib._; - last great successes at, 185 - - Akenside, at Tom's Coffee-house, 38 - - Albemarle, Duke of. _See_ Monk - - Albemarle, Duchess of, 93; - anecdotes of, 301 - - "All the Year Round," 170 - - Ambassador, Spanish, attack of an anti-Catholic mob on his house, 277 - - Ambassadors, French and Spanish, affray between the retainers of, 134 - - Amiens, proclamation of peace of, 18 - - Anderson, Dr. Patrick, his Scotch pills, 53; - story of Sir Walter Scott relating to, _ib._ - - Anne of Denmark, her masques and masquerades in Somerset House, 58; - accident at the funeral of, 195 - - Anstis, John, Garter King at Arms, 43 - - Antiquaries, Society of, 70 - - Apollo Court and Room, 6 - - Armstrong, Sir Thomas, 11 - - Arnold, Dr., and the Lyceum, 171 - - Art, English, institutions for promoting, 75 - - Arts, the Society of, its place of meeting, 99; - Barry's paintings, 100, 449; - premiums and bounties distributed by, _ib._; - Barry at work on its frescoes, 101; - foundation and object of, 449; - Barry's application to, _ib._ - - Artists' Club in Clare Market, 346 - - Arundel House, Strand, 39; - occupants of, 40; - death of the Countess of Nottingham in, 41; - the Marquis of Rosney's description of, _ib._; - Thomas Howard's treasures of art in, 42; - neglect of antiquities in, _ib._; - rooms lent to the Royal Society in, 43; - streets erected on the site of, _ib._; - Gay's remarks on its glories, _ib._ - - Arundel Street, Strand, its residents, 43, 164 - - Astronomical Society, 71 - - "Athenæum" (Newspaper), 170 - - Atterbury, Bishop, 155 - - - Bacon, Lord, his ingratitude, 32; - birthplace of, 127; - events of his life connected with York House, 127-8; - anecdotes of his early life, 128; - verses addressed to him at Durham House, 129; - his early legal studies, 130 - - Balmerino, Lord, an anecdote of, 234 - - Baltimore, Lord, infamous conduct of, 176 - - Banks. _See_ Coutts, Child, and Drummond - - Bannister, Jack, 325 - - Barrow, Dr. Isaac, the death of, 232 - - Barry, his violence, 101; - his diligence at work, _ib._; - his paintings in the Council Room of the Society of Arts, _ib._; - effect produced by his paintings, 449; - his poverty and death, _ib._ - - Barry, Mrs., her theatrical career, 433 - - Barry, Spanger, an actor, 315 - - Basing House, an adventure at, 279 - - Beard, singer and actor, 249 - - Beauclerk, Topham, 98 - - Beaufort, House, Strand, 83, 447 - - Beckett, Andrew, works of, 99 - - Beckett, Thomas, bookseller, 99 - - Bedford, the Earls of, the old town house of, 185; - streets named after his family, _ib._ - - Bedford Street once fashionable, 186; - Half Moon Tavern in, _ib._; - residents of, 187; - Constitution Tavern in, 197 - - Bedfordbury, 236, 459 - - Beefsteak Club, 172; - badge of, _ib._; - members of, 173; - Peg Woffington, president of one at Dublin, _ib._; - another started by Rich and Lambert, _ib._; - its place of meeting, _ib._; - distinguished members of, 454; - sale of its effects, 174 - - Bell, Mr. Jacob, 225 - - Bellamy, George Anne, actress, 317 - - Berkeley, Dr., 155 - - Bermudas, the Justice Overdo's allusion to, 235 - - Berties, the, 417 - - Betterton, the "Garrick" of his age, 433; - the parts he represented, _ib._; - his death, _ib._ - - Betty, Master, 321 - - Billington, Mrs., 333 - - Bindley, James, father of the Society of Antiquaries, his burial-place, - 164 - - Birch, Dr., the antiquary, 36; - his books and literary remains, 48; - Dr. Johnson's remark on, _ib._ - - Birkenhead, Sir John, 245 - - Bishop, operas produced by, 334 - - Black Jack, 348, 440 - - Blake, the mystical painter, 83 - - Blemund's Ditch, 353 - - Bohemia, the Queen of, 293; - reports concerning, 295; - Sir Henry Wotton's lines to, _ib._; - memorial of her husband, 296 - - Boleyn, Anne, at Temple Bar, 21 - - Bonomi, 78 - - Booksellers, their shops the haunts of wits and poets, 219 - - Booth, Barton, 311 - - Boswell, James, admitted into the Literary Club, 17; - the supposed Shaksperean MSS., 47. - - Bowl-yard, its name, 373 - - Boydell, Alderman, 258 - - Bracegirdle, Mrs., 49; - her abduction, 50; - her charity, 347; - her popularity, 434 - - Braham, John, 333 - - Bristol, Earl of, 264; - particulars concerning, 459 - - Britain's Bourse. _See_ Exchange - - Brocklesby, Dr. Richard, friend of Burke and Johnson, 45; - attends Lord Chatham when he fainted in the House of Lords, _ib._ - - Brougham, Lord, 396 - - Buckingham, the first Duke of, 130; - his residences, _ib._; - patronage of art, 131; - Dryden's lines on, 132; - Pope's lines on, _ib._; - Clarendon's view of his character, 133 - - Buckingham, the second Duke of, 133 - - Buckingham Street, 135; - distinguished residents in, 136, 137; - Mr. David Copperfield's visit to, 451 - - Bull's Head, the, Clare Market, 346 - - Burgess, Dr., a witty preacher, 159; - successors of, _ib._ - - Burleigh, Lord, his residence, 179 - - Burleigh Street, site of, 179 - - Burley, Sir Simon, 218 - - Burnet, Bishop, 44 - - Burton St. Lazar, 350 - - Bushnell, John, the sculptor, 7, 8 - - Butcher Row, 148; - Lee's death in, 150 - - - "Cabinet" Newspaper, _see_ "Pic-Nic" - - Caermarthan, Lord, 136 - - Cameron, Dr., burial place of, 120 - - Canary House, 452 - - Canning, George, 395 - - Carey Street, 428 - - Carlini, 65 - - Carlisle, the Countess of, 178 - - Catherine of Braganza, 61; - her return to Portugal, 62 - - Catherine Street, its newspapers and theatre in, 166; - Gay's description of, _ib._ - - Cavalini Pietro, works attributed to, 203 - - Cavendish, William, Earl of Devonshire, 90 - - Cecil, Robert, Earl of Salisbury, 89, 153 - - Cecil Street, its residents, 88 - - Celeste, Madam, 184 - - Centlivre, Mrs., 230; - her hatred to the Jacobites, 231; - Pope's dislike to, _ib._; - Leigh Hunt's treatment of, 232 - - Ceracchi, Giuseppe, 66 - - Chambers, Sir William, 65 - - Chapone, Mrs. Hester, 428 - - Charing, village of, 201; - population under Edward I., _ib._; - the Falconry or Mews at, 218 - - Charing Cross, tradition concerning, 201; - Peele's lines on, 202; - tradition of Queen Eleanor connected with, _ib._; - erection and demolition of, 204; - a Royalist ballad on, _ib._; - executions at, 205; - introduction of Punch into England at, 208; - Titus Oates, in the pillory at, _ib._; - the royal statue at, 209; - Waller's lines on the statue, 210; - Andrew Marvell's lines on the Cross, 211; - loss of parts of, 212; - a tradition concerning, _ib._; - the pedestal of, _ib._; - a rogue exposed in the pillory at, _ib._; - punishment of Japhet Crook at, 213; - old prints of, 215; - poetical eulogiums of, _ib._; - coffee-houses in the neighbourhood of, 226; - Locket's ordinary at, 227; - Milton's lodging at, 232; - other memoranda, 248; - a strange scene at, _ib._; - a remark of Dr. Johnson's on, 234; - site of the post office at, _ib._; - ancient hospital at, 235; - former improvements at, _ib._; - the "Swan," and verses by Johnson, 236 - - Charing Cross Hospital, 233 - - Charles I., letter written by, 58; - his statue at Charing Cross, 209; - strange story regarding the statue of, 212 - - Charles II., his progress through London, his coronation, 22; - the two courts in the reign of, 61 - - Chatterton, 80; - story concerning, 197 - - Chaucer, his marriage, 108; - favours obtained, 109; - royal post held by, 218 - - Chesterfield, Earl of, 187 - - Child's Bank, 6 - - Christian Knowledge, Society for Promoting, 414, 464 - - Chunee, the elephant, 95, 419 - - Cibber, Colley, 312; - characters originated by, 316; - his success as actor and manager, _ib._ - - Cibber, Theophilus, his fate, 317; - his wife, _ib._ - - Clare House Court, 298 - - Clare Market, 339; - Orator Henley's appearances in, _ib._; - artists' club at the Bull's Head in, 346; - Mrs. Bracegirdle's visits to, 347 - - Clarges, John, farrier, 93, 301 - - Clarke, William, proprietor of Exeter Change, 177 - - Clement's Inn, 156; - a tradition concerning, _ib._; - the hall of, 157; - the New Court and Independent Meeting-house in, 159 - - Clement's, St., Church, improvements round, 152; - general dislike to, _ib._; - a ferment in the parish of, 153; - distinguished men baptized and buried in, _ib._; - adornments of, 155; - Dr. Johnson's attendance in, _ib._ - - Clement's, St., Well, 156; - Cleopatra's Needle, 145 - - Clifton, bridge over the Avon at, 451 - - Clifton's Eating-house, 149 - - Clinch, Tom, the highwayman, 373 - - Clive, Kitty, 315 - - Coaches and coach-stands, 166, 167 - - Coal Hole, the, 85 - - Cobb, the upholsterer, anecdote of, 258 - - Cock and Pye Fields, 356 - - Cock Lane ghost, the, 196; - the contriver of, 214 - - Cockpit, or Phoenix Theatre, its site, 304; - Puritan violence against, _ib._; - its reopening at the Restoration, 305 - - Coffee, 36 - - Coffee-houses, 36; - mentioned by Steele in the _Tatler_, _ib._ - - Coleridge, S. T., 170 - - Commons, House of, 101 - - Congreve, William, 53; - Pope's declaration regarding, 51; - the successful career of, _ib._; - Voltaire's visit to, _ib._; - Curll's life of, 52 - - Congreve, Sir William, 88 - - Conway, Lord, memoranda of, 270 - - Cooke, George Frederick, 321 - - Cooke, T. P., 174 - - Cottenham, Lord, 395 - - Coutts's Bank, the strong room of, 86, 87; - the first deposit in, 87; - story of one of the clerks of, _ib._; - the site of, and additions to, _ib._ - - Coutts, Thomas, his origin, and marriage, 86; - anecdote of, 448 - - Covent Garden, 93 - - Covent Garden Theatre and Sheridan, 328 - - Coventry, Secretary, 245 - - Cowley, enmity of the Royalists to, 115; - occasion of "The Complaint" by, _ib._; - beautiful lines by, 116; - his death at Chertsey, _ib._ - - Cox, Bessy, 282 - - Craig's Court, Charing Cross, 227 - - Craven, Lord, his life, etc., 294; - miniature Heidelberg erected by, _ib._; - his services to the Queen of Bohemia, 295; - patronage of literature, _ib._; - employment in King William's reign, 296; - Miss Benger's estimate of, _ib._; - Quixotic character of, 460 - - Craven Buildings, fresco portrait at, 297 - - Craven House, 292, 459 - - Craven Street, residents of, 139; - diplomatic consultation in, _ib._; - epigrams by James Smith and Sir George Rose on it, _ib._ - - "Cries of London," the, 167 - - Crockford, his shop in the Strand, 148; - his club, _ib._ - - Cromwell, Oliver, residences of, 226, 279 - - Crook, Japhet, his punishment, 213; - lines by Pope on, 214 - - Crouch, Mrs., the singer, 333 - - Crowle, _bon mot_ on Judge Page by, 217 - - Crown and Anchor, the, 152, 153; - the great room of, 444 - - Cumberland, George, Earl of, 120 - - Cuper's Gardens, 43 - - Curl, Edmund, 212 - - Curtis, Mrs., visits Mrs. Siddons, 91 - - - Davenant, Lady, 404 - - Davenant, the actor, 429 - - Davies, Moll, 430 - - Dawson, Jemmy, 15 - - Denham, Sir John, works written by, 393; - a drunken frolic of, 452 - - Denzil Street, 460 - - Deptford, and Peter the Great in, 45 - - Design, the School of, 446 - - De Sully, Duc, 41 - - Devereux Court, 36; - duel in, _ib._; - death of Marchmont Needham in, 37; - relic of Pope at Tom's Coffee-house, _ib._ - - Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex, 28; - Spenser's relation to, _ib._; - his house near the Temple, 29; - his plot against Elizabeth, _ib._; - his running a-muck in the City, and flight to Essex Gardens, 30; - his capture and death 31; - his mother and sister, 32; - his crimes, 34 - - Devonshire Club, 148 - - Dibdin, Charles, his entertainments, 34 - - Dickens, Charles, 170; - on Seven Dials and Monmouth Street, 385; - - Digby, Sir Kenelm, 241; - Ben Jonson's lines on, _ib._ - - Dilke, Sir C. Wentworth, 170 - - Disraeli, B., 400 - - Dobson, Vandyke's protégé, 200 - - Dodd, the actor, 328 - - Doggett, the actor, 310 - - Donne, Dr., the tomb of his wife, 154; - his want of self-respect, 289; - strange circumstance recorded, 290; - vision seen by, _ib._; - conceits of, 291; - his picture in his shroud, 292; - a divine and a poet, 390 - - Dowton, the actor, 323 - - Doyley, 168 - - Drinking-fountains, the first, 445 - - Drummond's Bank, 227, 457 - - Drury family, 288 - - Drury House, secret meetings there arranged by Essex, 29; - outbreak decided on at, 288; - site of, 237 - - Drury Lane, origin of its name, 288; - residents in, 297 _et seq._; - a strange scene in, 298; - a duel in, _ib._; - pictures of, 299; - the poor poet's home in, _ib._; - its bad repute during the Regency, 460 - - Drury Lane Theatre, 305; - Pepys's visits to, 306; - scuffle in the king's presence in, _ib._; - distinguished actresses of, 309 _et seq._; - plays produced at, _ib._; - Garrick's first appearance at, 313; - Dr. Johnson's address on its re-opening, 322; - a riot in 1740 in, 324; - Charles Lamb's description of, 324, 325; - the rebuilding of, 329; - competitive poems for the opening of, 330; - Byron's opening address at, _ib._; - statue over its entrance, _ib._; - pecuniary statements relating to, _ib._; - revival of its fortunes by Edmund Kean, 331; - Grimaldi at, 334; - various actors of, _ib._; - pictures of royalty at, 338; - recent productions at, _ib._ - - Drury, Sir Robert, 288 - - Dryden, his lines on the death of Buckingham, 132; - his squabbles with Jacob Tonson, 54; - attack on, 280; - established jokes against, _ib._; - Mulgrave's lines on, 281; - Otway's defence of, _ib._ - - Dudley, Sir Robert, 369 - - Dudley, Duchess of, 369 - - Duke Street, 135 - - Duke's Theatre, 429 - - Durham House, residents of, 92; - sufferings of the Princess Elizabeth in, _ib._; - its last occupants, _ib._; - banquets given by Henry VII. at, _ib._; - mint established at, 95; - Lady Jane Grey's marriage in, _ib._; - the scene of an old legend, 96; - Raleigh in his turret study at, _ib._; - purchased by the brothers Adam, _ib._ - - Durham Street, 91 - - Dyot Street, 462 - - - Eccentrics, club of, 259 - - Edward III., 110; - his conduct on the death of John of Gaunt, 114 - - Edward VI. at Temple Bar, 21 - - Egerton, Lord Chancellor, 391 - - Eleanor Cross, model of, 138 - - Eleanor, Queen, crosses in memory of, 138, 202; - tombs of, 203; - the preservation of her body, 204 - - Elizabeth, Queen, procession on the anniversary of her accession, 9; - adornment of her statue at Temple Bar, 10; - her reception at Temple Bar, 21; - the plot of Essex against, 29; - her relations with Admiral Seymour, 39; - story of the Essex ring, 40; - her favour for Raleigh, 92 - - Ellesmere. _See_ Egerton - - Elliston, Robert William, 326; - stories told of, 327 - - Epigram, an, a legacy gained by, 139 - - Erskine, Lord, 424 - - Essex House, 29; - occupants of, 31; - the Parliamentary general a resident in, 33 - - Essex, Robert, Earl of, Ben Jonson's masque on his marriage, 33; - divorce of his countess, and her marriage with Robert Carr, _ib._; - general for the Parliament, _ib._; - attempts to seize his papers, 34 - - Essex Street, Strand, 25; - residents in, 34; - Johnson's club at the Essex Head, 35; - Unitarian chapel in, 443; - memoranda of, _ib._ - - Estcourt, 452; - Steele's compliments to, 180 - - Etherage, Sir George, 301; - play by, 431 - - Etty, residence of, 136 - - Evans's Hotel, Covent Garden, 460 - - Evelyn, John, 134 - - "Examiner," the, 123 - - Exchange, the New, 93; - a tragedy in, _ib._; - legends about, _ib._; - the White Widow, 94; - the walks of, _ib._; - a frequenter of, _ib._; - its destruction, 95 - - Exeter Change, 175; - exhibitions in, _ib._; - last tenants of, 176 - - Exeter Hall, 178 - - Exeter House, 179 - - Exeter Place, 261 - - Exeter Street, 178 - - - Faithorne, William, 148 - - Fanshawe, Lady, 423 - - Fanshawe, Sir Richard, 421 - - Farren, Miss, the actress, 318 - - Farren, the actor, 335 - - Faucit, Helen (Mrs. T. Martin), 337 - - "Field" newspaper, 168 - - Finch, Lord Chancellor, 265 - - Finett, Sir John, 240 - - Fletcher, his execution, 14 - - Folkes, Martin, 272 - - Folly, the, 82 - - Foote, the actor, 315 - - Fordyce, George, 34 - - Fortescue, Judge, 394 - - Fortescue, Pope's lawyer, 37 - - Fountain Club, the, 84 - - Fountain Court Tavern, 84; - the Coal Hole in, 85 - - Fountain, the, King Street, 381 - - Franklin, Benjamin, 139; - his landlady and the charitable nun, 275; - extravagance of his fellow-pressmen, 276; - his visit as ambassador of Massachusetts, 277 - - Freemasons' Hall, the, 274 - - Friend, Sir John, 13 - - Fuseli, 76; - his residence, 259 - - - Gaiety Theatre, 452 - - Gardelle, the artist and murderer, 251 - - Garrick, David, 96, 99; - Johnson's esteem for, _ib._; - his "Chinese Festival," 185, 186; - anecdote of, 273; - Zoffany's portrait of, 304; - his career, 313; - his first appearance at Drury Lane, _ib._; - his varied talent, 314; - appears on the stage with Quin, _ib._; - his death, 315 - - Gatti's café, 189 - - George, Madame St., 59 - - Geological Society, the, 69 - - George III., his patronage of art, 73; - his coolness, 338 - - George IV., Chantrey's statue of, 226 - - Gerbier, Sir Balthasar, 72 - - Gibbons, Grinling, 139 - - Gibbons's Tennis Court, 429 - - Gibbs, the architect, 162 - - Giles, St., tradition of, 353; - a scurvy worshipper of, 463 - - Giles's, St., ancient toll in, 350; - hospital for lepers in, 350; - death of Sir John Oldcastle in, 351; - the gallows in, 352; - site of the hospital, 353; - the manor of, 352-3; - gradual growth of, 355, 356; - its progress after the Great Fire, 356; - settlement of foreigners in, 357; - its increase in Queen Anne's reign, _ib._; - resort of Irish to, _ib._; - entries in the parish records of, _ib._; - increase of French refugees in, 357; - relief to well-known mendicants in, 359; - the plague in, 360; - the plague-cart of, _ib._; - rates levied in consequence of the plague, 361; - hospital church of, 363; - Dr. Mainwaring rector of, _ib._; - new church of, 364; - Dr. Heywood, the rector of, _ib._; - celebration of the Restoration in, 365; - church extension in, _ib._; - a sexton's bargain with the rector of, 367; - the Resurrection Gate in the churchyard of, _ib._; - churchyard of, 367, 368; - new burial-ground of, 368; - celebrated persons buried in the churchyard of, 369, 370; - the oldest monument in the burial-ground of, 370; - persons relieved in, 371; - erection of the new almshouses and school for, _ib._; - Hogarth's studies and scenes in, 372; - Nollekens Smith's description of, _ib._; - the whipping-stone of, _ib._; - the Pound in, 373; - the inns of, 374; - resort of Irish beggars to, 376, 377; - the cellars of, 378; - lodgings in, _ib._; - beggars, conjurors, and pickpockets of, 379; - the mendicants of, 381; - low Irish in, 385, 386; - persons connected with several streets in, 463; - the author's visit with a missionary to houses in, 463 - - Giles's, St., Hospital, criminals at its gate, on their way to Tyburn, - 373 - - Giraud, his quarrel, 93; - execution, _ib._ - - Globe Theatre, 165 - - Glover, Mrs., as an actress, 336 - - Godfrey, Sir E., murder of, 61; - residence of, 142 - - Godwin, William, 444 - - Golden Cross, the, 232 - - Goldsmith, Oliver, a quotation of Dr. Johnson's cleverly capped by, 18; - lines on Caleb Whitefoord by, 141; - his friends, 197; - an earl's patronage of, 198; - anecdote of, _ib._; - his visit to Northumberland House, _ib._ - - Gondomar, Spanish ambassador, 298 - - Goodman, and the Drury Lane Company, 308 - - Gordon, Lord George, 278 - - Gorges, Sir Ferdinand, 30 - - Graham, Dr., a London Cagliostro, his rooms and their chief priestess, - 102; - his "celestial bed" and "elixir of life," 103 - - Grange Inn, 440 - - Gravelot, the drawing-master, 250 - - Gray's Inn, Bacon's chambers in, 130 - - Grecian, the, Addison's description of, 36; - a quarrel at, _ib._; - meetings of savans at, 37; - the privy-council held at, _ib._ - - Greenhill, John, 271 - - Green Ribbon Club, the, 8 - - Gresham College, 68 - - Grimaldi at Drury Lane, 334 - - Gwynn, Nell, her last resting-place, 244; - the birthplace, life, and character of, 301; - a descendant of, 302; - Pepys's allusion in his "Diary" to, _ib._; - her death, _ib._; - a memorandum of Evelyn's regarding, _ib._; - Pepys's estimate of the other actresses associated with, 307; - her last original part, 308 - - - Hackman, the Rev. Mr., the murderer of Miss Ray, 160; - his execution, _ib._ - - Haines, Joe, a clever actor, 308 - - Hale, Sir Matthew, an eminent student of Lincoln's Inn, 390 - - Hare, the murderer, the lamentable condition of, 461 - - Harley, John Pritt, actor, 336 - - Harrison, General, the Anabaptist, the brave end of, 205 - - Haverhill, William de, Henry III.'s treasurer, his mansion and the - various uses to which it was put, 388 - - Haycock's Ordinary, 443 - - Haydon, anecdote of, 1; - another, of his early life in London, 77 - - Hayman, Frank, a St. Martin's Lane worthy, amusing anecdotes of, 255 - - Haymarket Theatre, the, Fielding's "Tom Thumb" brought out at, 438 - - Hazlitt, William, his criticism of the elder Mathews, 182 - - Heber, Bishop, 397 - - Helmet Court, memoranda of, 447 - - Hemings' Row, St. Martin's Lane, origin of its name, 458 - - Henderson, the actor, 319 - - Henley, Orator, sketch of his life, 339; - his defence of action in a preacher, _ib._; - his correspondence with William Whiston, 340; - the shameless advertisements issued by, 340, 341; - lines by Pope in the "Dunciad" on, 342; - his controversy with Pope, _ib._; - a contemporary description of, _ib._; - his plans for raising money, 343; - a joke on Archbishop Herring by, _ib._; - his appearance before the privy-council, _ib._; - Hogarth's two caricatures of, 344; - beginning of one of his sermons, 345; - overawed by two Oxonians, 346 - - Henrietta Maria, queen of Charles I., the insolent conduct of her French - household, and the king's difficulty in getting rid of them, 58; - her last masques at Somerset House, 59 - - Henry VII., hospital founded on the site of the Savoy by, 114 - - Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, a Quixotic quarrel of, 194; - commencement of his work, "De Veritate," 265; - a remarkable vision which is said to have appeared to, _ib._; - reflections on passing the residence of, 266 - - Herring, Archbishop, Swift's opposition to, 344 - - Hewson, the supposed original Strap of "Roderick Random," 136 - - Heywood, Dr., rector of St. Giles's, Puritan petition against, 365 - - Hill, Captain, a well-known profligate bully, his drunken jealousy of - Mountfort the actor, 49; - his attempt to carry off Mrs. Bracegirdle, 50; - cowardly murder of Mountfort, by, 51 - - Hill, Mr. Thomas, the supposed prototype of Paul Pry, 103 - - Hilliard, Nicholas, Queen Elizabeth's miniature-painter, 244 - - "Histriomastix," the, Prynne's punishment for a scurrilous note in, 59 - - Hodges, Dr., his account of the commencement and progress of the plague, - 262 - - Hogarth, 72; - his picture of "Noon," 372 - - Hog Lane, St. Giles's (now Crown Street), 371 - - Holborn, gradual extension and first pavement of, 355; - allusions to a doleful procession up the Heavy Hill of, 374 - - Hollar, the German engraver, description of a scarce view of Somerset - House by, 63; - the residence of, 157 - - Holmes, Copper, a well-known character on the river, 247 - - Holy Land, the, a part of St. Giles's, 386 - - Hone, Nathaniel, 258 - - Hood, Thomas, his "Bridge of Sighs," 450 - - Hook, Theodore, 102 - - Howard, Lady Margaret, Sir John Suckling's fantastic simile in lines on - her feet, 195 - - Howard, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, discovery of the cipher used by--his - treason and death, 27 - - Howard, Thomas, Earl of Arundel, an amateur of art, Clarendon's - description of, 42; - Vansomer's portrait of, _ib._; - his devotion in the pursuit of objects of art, 43; - disposal of his statues, marbles, and library, _ib._; - remarks made by him in a dispute with Charles I., _ib._ - - Howard, Philip, Earl of Arundel, a letter to, 27; - memorial in the Tower of, _ib._ - - Hudson, the portrait-painter, 272 - - Hungerford, Lord Walter, first Speaker of the House of Commons, 137 - - Hungerford, Sir Edward, founder of Hungerford Market, 137 - - Hungerford Market, the site of, 137; - the origin and object of, 138; - vicissitudes of, _ib._; - an unlucky speculation at, _ib._ - - Hungerford Suspension Bridge, 138; - the purchase of, 451; - the new railway bridge in place of, 138; - the railway station at, _ib._ - - Hunter, Dr. William, O'Keefe's description of him lecturing on anatomy, - 78 - - Hunter, Dr. John, particulars of his professional life, 420, 421 - - Hunt, Leigh, the imprisonment of, 123; - his critical remarks on the elder Mathews, 182 - - - "Illustrated London News," the proprietor and staff of, 55 - - Ingram, Mr. Herbert, proprietor of the "Illustrated London News," career - and death of, 55 - - Ireland, Samuel, father of the celebrated literary impostor, the - residence of, 46; - his belief in the genuineness of "Vortigern" as a work of Shakspere's, - 47 - - Ireland, W. H., the true story of the Shakspere forgery committed by, 46; - effect of the extraordinary praise lavished on, 47; - supporters and opponents of, _ib._; - damnation of his play of "Vortigern," _ib._ - - "Isabella," Southerne's tragedy of, effect of Mrs. Siddons's acting in, - 91 - - Ivy Bridge, narrow passage to the Thames under, and mansion near, 91 - - - Jacobites, the cant words used by, 15 - - James I., pageants on his passage through the city, 21 - - James Street, Adelphi, No. 2, the residence of Mr. Thomas Hill, the Hull - of "Gilbert Gurney," 103 - - Jansen, an architect, works by, 191 - - Jekyll, Sir Joseph, his obnoxious bill, and the fury of the mob against, - 410; - his _bon-mot_ on Lord Kenyon's spits, 423 - - Jennings, Frances. _See_ Widow, the White - - Jerdan, William, 83 - - John, King of France, his entrance as a captive into London, 112; - his honourable return to England after having been liberated on - parole, _ib._; - his death at the Savoy, _ib._ - - John of Padua, Henry VIII.'s architect, 57 - - John, Saint, the foundation of the hospital of, 114; - abuses of, transference of its funds, etc., 115; - Dr. John Killigrew appointed master of, _ib._; - Strype's description of the old hall of, 117 - - John Street, Adelphi, 99 - - Johnson, Dr., his conversation with Goldsmith on Westminster Abbey, 17; - club formed at the Essex Head by--its principal members, 35; - his high estimation for Garrick, 97; - Garrick's remark on the philosopher's friendship for Beauclerk, 98; - his three reasons for the black skin of the negro race, 149; - an Irishman's opinion of, _ib._; - his pleasant evenings at the Mitre with an old college friend, 150; - Boswell's account of his solemn devotion during divine service, 155; - extract from a letter written to Mrs. Thrale by, 156; - his first residence in London, 178; - an eccentric habit of, 187; - beginning of his address for the re-opening of Drury Lane Theatre, 322 - - Johnstone, Irish, 335 - - Jones, Colonel, his execution, 205 - - Jones, Inigo, his plan for laying out Lincoln's Inn Fields, 402 - - Jones, the actor, 323 - - Jonson, Ben, dialogues, speeches, and masques by, 22, 33; - his residence when a child, 142; - a story of, 251; - early life of, 399; - tradition of, _ib._; - his exploit in Flanders, _ib._ - - Jordan, Mrs., 326 - - - Kauffman, Angelica, 76 - - Kean, Charles, 338 - - Kean, Mrs. Charles (Miss Ellen Tree), 338 - - Kean, Edmund, habits of, 85; - his early success in London, 88; - his origin, early life, and first triumphs in London, 331; - Hazlitt's remarks on, 332 - - Keeley, Robert, the actor, 337 - - Keelings the, 405 - - Kelly, Michael, 334 - - Kelly, Miss, actress, 336; - attacks on, _ib._ - - Kemble, Charles, 321 - - Kemble, John, 320; - generous act of the Duke of Northumberland to, _ib._; - Leigh Hunt's picture of, _ib._ - - Kenilworth, Lord of, 28 - - Kennington Common, execution of Jacobites on, 14 - - Kensington, South, transfer of pictures from the National Gallery to, 224 - - Kent, the rising under Wat Tyler, 112 - - Kenyon, Lord, jokes on, 423; - his stinginess and bad Latin, _ib._ - - Killigrew, Dr. Henry, 119 - - Killigrew, Mrs. Anne, 119 - - Killigrew, Thomas, 119; - actors in his company, 308 - - King, Dr., Principal of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, 36 - - King, Dr. William, lines on the Beefsteak Club by, 174 - - King, the original Sir Peter Teazle, 321 - - King's College and its museum, 66, 447; - models and instruments presented by Queen Victoria, _ib._ - - King's College Hospital, 438 - - Kirby, Mr., 73, 74 - - Kit Cat Club, 51; - institution of the, 85; - origin of its name, _ib._; - the summer rendezvous of, 86; - Lady Mary Wortley Montague the toast of, _ib._ - - Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 72; - his life and character, 267; - the witty banter of, 268; - his vanity, 269; - how Jacob Tonson got pictures out of, _ib._; - his conviction of the legitimacy of the Pretender, _ib._ - - Knight Templars, the, 25 - - Knollys, Lettice, Countess of Essex, afterwards Lady Leicester, 31 - - Knowledge, Christian, the Society for Promoting, 461 - - Königsmark, Count, 193 - - Kynaston, Sir Francis, 71, 187 - - Kynaston, the actor, 187, 432 - - - Lacy, a favourite actor, 308 - - Laguerre, the French painter, 246 - - Lamb, Charles, tragedy in his family, 285; - his devotion to his sister, 286 - - Lancaster, the Earl of, 107 - - Lancaster, John, Duke of, favours Wickliffe, 109; - his peril from the London mob, 110; - his escape, _ib._; - _amende_ of the Londoners to, _ib._; - his marriage and connections, _ib._; - his unpopularity and violence, 119; - clause aimed by Wat Tyler against, 112; - destruction of his London palace, etc., 113; - his death and burial, 114 - - Lancaster, the Duchy of, 122, 450 - - Lander, Richard, 120 - - Langhorne, Dr., 396 - - Law Courts, new, 147 - - "Law Times," Office, 168 - - Layer, Christopher, 17 - - Learning, Society for the encouragement of, 49 - - Lee, the poet, his death, 154 - - Lepers, 354 - - Lewis, the comedian, 274; - his acting, 323, 324 - - Lillie, Charles, the perfumer, 84 - - Limput, Remigius van, 187 - - Liston, the comedian, 323 - - Lincoln's Inn, origin of its name, 387; - the Chancery Lane side of, 388; - the gateway of, _ib._; - the chapel, 388, 389; - distinguished students of, 390 _et seq._; - persons buried in the chapel, 392 _et seq._; - old customs and laws of, 397, 398; - disposal of Hogarth's picture, "Preaching before Felix," at, 398; - the new hall, library, and garden of, _ib._, 464; - Mr. Disraeli's studies at, 400 - - Lincoln's Inn Field, part of Fickett's field, 401; - King James regulates building in, 401, 402; - Inigo Jones's plan for laying out and building, 402; - state in the time of Charles I. and Charles II.; - Gay's sketch of its dangers, 403; - Earl of Rochester's house in, 404; - execution of plotters against Elizabeth in, _ib._; - procession of Thomas Sadler, the thief, through, _ib._; - Lord Russell's death in, 405; - improvements in 1735 in, 410; - Macaulay's picture of, _ib._; - distinguished inhabitants of, 414 _et seq._; - Tennyson's chambers in, 418; - Mr. Povey's house in, 428 - - Lindsey, Earl, 416, 417 - - Lindsey House, 417 - - Literary Club, Boswell and Johnson at, 17 - - Literary Fund Society, 427 - - Literature, Royal Society of, 259 - - Locket's Ordinary, 227 - - London, growth and changes of, 2; - points of departure for tours in, _ib._; - start for the author's tour in, 3; - banks in, 7; - the rebels under Tyler in, 112; - King William at the celebration of the peace of Ryswick in, 23, 24; - a bishop beheaded by the mob of, 26; - cruel treatment of a Spaniard by the mob of, 213; - the street signs of, 237; - foreigners in 1580 in, 356; - a glance at an ancient map of, 356, 357; - Pennant on its churchyards, 367; - crusade against Irish and other vagrants, 377; - royal fears as to its increase, 401; - its history an epitome of that of the world, 441; - its newspapers and periodicals, 454 - - Long Acre, the plague in, 262; - Oliver Cromwell's residence in, 279; - Tory tavern Club in, 284 - - Lord Mayor's Day, 23 - - Loutherberg, De, 167 - - Lowin, John, 154 - - Lyceum, the, 171; - exhibitions in, _ib._; - experiment in, 172; - Mathew's entertainment in, _ib._; - Beefsteak Club meet in, _ib._; - Mr. T. P. Cooke's early triumphs in, 174 - - Lyndhurst, Lord, 395 - - Lyons, Emma (afterwards Lady Hamilton), 102 - - Lyon's Inn, 165; - sale of its materials, _ib._; - murder of Mr. Weare, _ib._ - - Lyttelton, Sir Thomas, 44 - - - M'Ardell, Hogarth's engraver, 251 - - Mackintosh, Sir James, 464 - - Macklin, the actor, 436 - - Macready, William Charles, 337 - - Maginn, Dr., ballad by, 232 - - Malibran, Madame, 334 - - Manos, Gannee, and other beggars, 382 - - Mansfield, the Earl of, 394 - - Mardyn, Mrs., the actress, 335 - - Marlborough, the Duchess of, Congreve's legacy to, 52; - her regard for Congreve, 53 - - Martin's St., Lane, residents of, 239 _et seq._; - Beard, the singer, 249; - Old Slaughter's Coffee-house, _ib._; - houses built by Payne in, 252; - curious staircase in No. 96, 253; - a house favoured by artists in, _ib._; - Roubilliac's first studio in, 257; - old house of the Earls of Salisbury in, 256; - changes in, 261 - - Martin's-in-the-Fields, St., 242; - the church of, 244; - the dust enshrined in, _ib._; - J. T. Smith's visit to the vaults of, 246; - the parochial abuses of, _ib._; - the old watch and stocks of, 256 - - Marvell, Andrew, 209; - the grave of, 370 - - Mary, Queen, 21 - - Mary, St. Savoy, the Chapel of, the dead interred in, 121; - its destruction by fire, 122; - its restoration, _ib._ - - Mary, St., Roncevalles, the hospital of, 235 - - Mary-le-Strand, St., 162; - construction of, _ib._; - allusions by Pope and Addison to, 163; - tragedy at, _ib._; - interior of, _ib._ - - Mathews, his entertainment, 140; - his "Mail-coach Adventures," 172; - his bargains with Mr. Arnold, 181; - his various entertainments, _ib._; - failure of his health, and death, 182; - his first attempts as an actor, 298; - his first appearance in London, 323 - - Matthews, Bishop of Durham, 98 - - Mayerne, Sir Theodore, 239; - story of, 240; - his death, 260 - - Maynard, Mr. Serjeant, 404 - - Mainwaring, Dr., 363, 364 - - Maypole in the Strand, the, 160; - its fall and restoration, 161; - removal of, 162 - - May's Buildings, 259 - - Mellon, Miss, the actress, 87; - her first and second marriages, 88; - her first appearance at Drury Lane, 448; - leaves her fortune to Miss Burdett Coutts, _ib._ - - Mendicants' Convivial Club, 462 - - Mews, origin of the name, 217; - notes concerning, 218; - old bookshop at the gate of one, 219 - - Michael's, St., Alley, Cornhill, 36 - - Milford Lane, 38 - - Millar, the publisher, 56 - - Miller, Joe, his burial-place, 348; - his début on the stage, 439; - his last success, _ib._; - his haunt, 440 - - Milton, John, 232 - - Misaubin, Dr., 253 - - Mitre, the, 150 - - Mohun, Lord, 50, 245 - - Monk, General, his death, 65; - the Restoration effected by, 61; - his vulgar wife, 301; - invited to a conference by the Earl of Northumberland, 200 - - Monmouth Street, 385; - Mr. Dickens's description of, _ib._; - modern civilisation in, 463 - - Montague, Lady M. W., 86 - - Montfort, Simon de, 107 - - More, Sir Thomas, 164 - - Morgan, the Welsh buccaneer, 264 - - Morley's Hotel, 456 - - "Morning Chronicle," 167; - the end of, 168 - - "Morning Post," 170 - - Mortimer, the English Salvator, 46 - - Moss, the engraver, 63 - - Mottley, the actor, 439; - origin of his jest book, 440 - - Mountfort, Mrs., 434 - - Mountfort, the actor, 50; - his career, 435 - - Munden, Charles Lamb on, 327 - - Murphy, Arthur, 394 - - Murray, Major, 143 - - Mytens, Daniel, 240 - - - National Gallery, opening of, 219; - the paltry design of, 75; - the first purchase of pictures for, 222; - the gems of, 223, 224; - purchases and donations for, _ib._; - Turner's bequest to, 224; - proposed removal of the pictures from, _ib._; - Jacob Bell's bequest, 225; - enlargement of the, _ib._ - - Needham, Marchmont, 37; - his burial-place, 155 - - Nelson, Admiral, a tradition of, 71 - - Nelson Column, the, original estimate for, 220; - bassi relievi on, _ib._; - adornment of the pedestal of, 221 - - Newcastle, the Duke of, his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, 410; - his levees, _ib._; - the porter's reply to an intruder on, 411; - impertinence of his cook, 412; - anecdote of, _ib._; - Smollett's and Walpole's sketches of, 413; - Walpole's review of his career, _ib._; - his reply to Lord Bute, 414 - - Newgate ballads, 463 - - New Inn, 164 - - Newspaper offices, 454 - - Nisbett, Mrs., 335 - - Nivernois, the Duc de, 18 - - Nokes, James, 432 - - Nollekens, the sculptor, 379 - - Norfolk Street, 44 _et seq._; - Charles Dickens's sketch of, 445 - - Northampton, the Earl of, 191 - - Northampton, Algernon, tenth Earl of, 192, 195 - - Northumberland, the wizard Earl of, his marriage 192; - treason, etc., _ib._ - - Northumberland, the Duke of, 192 - - Northumberland House, 191; - the oldest part of, 195; - accident at, _ib._; - the letters and date on its façade, 196; - destruction of the Strand front by fire, 197; - Sir John Hawkins's and Goldsmith's visit to Mr. Percy at, 198; - Goldsmith's account of a visit to, 199; - pictures in the gallery of, _ib._ - - Northumberland Street, 142; - demolition of, 200 - - Nottingham, the Countess of, 39, 40 - - Noy, Attorney-general, 389 - - - Oates, Titus, 208, 302 - - O'Keefe, the dramatist, 18, 258 - - Oldcastle, Sir John, Lord Cobham, 352; - his imprisonment, escape, and death, _ib._ - - Oldfield, Mrs., actress, 186; - her merits as a comedian, 310; - her death, 311 - - "Old Slaughter's," the frequenters of, 249; - Hogarth and Roubilliac at, _ib._ - - Olympic, the, 164; - Mr. Robson's representations at, 165 - - Oratory, Henley's, 339 - - Oxberry, the actor, 335 - - Oxburgh, Sir John, 13 - - Oxford, the Earl of, 137 - - - Page, Judge, 217; - the "Dunciad" on, _ib._ - - Paget, Lord, 26 - - Paintings, the first exhibition in London of, 75 - - Palsgrave Head Tavern, 148, 151 - - Parr, Dr., 47 - - Parr, Old, 91 - - Parsons, parish-clerk of St. Sepulchre's, 214 - - Partridge, the charlatan cobbler, 90 - - Pasquin (Williams), Anthony, 142 - - Patterson, Samuel, bookseller, 34 - - Payne, Mr. James, collector of MSS., 459 - - Payne, Roger, bookbinder, 457 - - Pendrell, Richard, his tomb and epitaph, 368 - - Penn, the Quaker, 44 - - Pepys, residence of, 135; - his career, 136; - residence of his father-in-law, 282; - visits Drury Lane Theatre, 302; - Lord Cottenham, a descendant of the author of the "Diary," 395 - - Perceval, Spencer, 394 - - Percy, the Earl Marshal, 109 - - Percy, Elizabeth, her marriages, 192 - - Perkins, Sir William, 12 - - Perry, James, 167 - - Pest-houses, 297 - - Peter the Great, 45; - his evenings in York Buildings, 136 - - Peters, Hugh, 207 - - Petty, William, 42 - - Philips, Ambrose, 248; - Pope's lines on, _ib._ - - Physicians, the Royal College of, 225 - - Pickett, Alderman, 148; - street named after, 147 - - "Pic-Nic," the, London newspaper, 139 - - Pidgeon, Bat, barber, 160 - - Pierce, Edward, sculptor, 49 - - Pine, the engraver, 252 - - "Pine Apple," the, 178 - - Plague, the Great, 143; - its origin in London, 262; - its progress, 263 - - Poitiers, the victory of, 111 - - Pope, the, 9 - - Pope, a relic of, 37; - lines on the death of Buckingham by, 132; - insolence of, 248; - reply of Sir Godfrey Kneller to, 268; - his dispute with Orator Henley, 342 - - Pope, Miss, the actress, 273; - her manner on the stage, 321 - - Porridge Island, 236 - - Porter, Mrs., the actress, 43 - - Portugal Row, 403, 421 - - Portugal Street, 429 _et seq._ - - Precinct of the Savoy, 122 - - Precinct Club, the, 169 - - Prior, his boyhood, 229; - his attachments, 282; - his death, 283 - - Pritchard, Mrs., actress, 317 - - Proctor, student of the Royal Academy, 80 - - Prynne, William, 398 - - Punch, the puppet-show, 208 - - "Punch," the periodical, 303 - - - Quakers, the, 44 - - "Queen" newspaper, 168 - - Queen Street, Great, 263; - residents in, 264 _et seq._; - residence of Lord Herbert of Cherbury in, 266 - - Quin, the actor, 187, 271; - appears on the stage with Garrick, 312; - his career as an actor, _ib._; - appears at Portugal Street Theatre, 437 - - - Radcliffe, Dr., 347 - - Radford, Thomas, 93 - - Railton, designer of the Nelson Memorial, 220 - - Raimbach, the engraver, 258 - - Raleigh, Sir Walter, 92; - Durham House unjustly taken from, 96; - costly dress worn by, _ib._ - - Rann, John, "Sixteen-stringed Jack," 374 - - Rawlinson, Dr., 16 - - Ray, Miss, murder of, 160 - - Rebecca, Biaggio, 76 - - Reddish, Samuel, the actor, 318 - - Reeve, John, 184 - - _Rejected Addresses_, the, 140 - - Rennie, John, architect, 124 - - Reynolds, Sir Joshua, his club in Essex Street, 35; - his adherence to the Spring Garden Society, 73; - his lectures, 83; - lying-in-state of, 79; - residences of, 274 - - Rhodes, the bookseller and actor, 233, 305 - - Rice, Mr. ("Jim Crow"), 180 - - Rich, Penelope, 31 - - Rich, the actor and manager, 435; - legend regarding, 436; - Garrick's lines on, 438 - - Richardson, the humourist, 187 - - Richmond, the Duke of, his gallery at Whitehall, 72 - - Rimbault, the clockmaker, 303 - - Rivet, John, a brazier, 212 - - Roberts, the solicitor, 143 - - Robin Hood Debating Society, 443 - - Robinson, Mrs., 318 - - Robinson's Coffee-house, 215 - - Robson, Mr. Frederick, 165, 236 - - Roman Bath, in the Strand, 169 - - Roman Road, ancient, 349 - - Romilly, Sir Samuel, 400 - - Rookery, the, 463 - - Roubilliac, his burial-place, 246; - his studio, 255; - a pupil of, 257 - - Royal Academy, the, Somerset House, 65; - the germs of, 71; - its service to English art, 75; - its first officers, 74; - catalogue, etc., 75 - - Royal Academicians, the, 74 - - Royal Society, the, 68; - its portraits of Newton, and other curiosities, 69 - - "Rummer," the, 229; - the scene of Jack Sheppard's first robbery, 230 - - Russel, Lord William, 285; - his alleged plot, 405; - his appearance before the Council, 406; - his interview with French agents, _ib._; - petition presented for his life, 407; - the last days of, _ib._; - his execution, 408 - - Russel, Lady Rachel, her petition for her husband's life, 407; - her letter to Dr. Fitzwilliams, 408 - - Rutland, the Earls of, 91 - - Ryan, the actor, 272 - - Rymer, the antiquary, 43, 154 - - - Saa, Don Pantaleon de, his quarrel with Giraud, 93 - - Sacheverell, Dr., 409 - - Sadler, Thomas, the thief, 404 - - St. Leonards, Lord, 396 - - Sala, G. A., 122 - - Sale, George, 49 - - Salisbury, Earls of, old house of the, 256 - - Salisbury House, Little, 89 - - Salisbury House, Old, 89 - - Salisbury Street, 89 - - Sandwich Islands, the king and queen of, 102 - - Sandwich, Montague, Earl of, 415 - - Savage, Richard, 216; - his escape from execution, _ib._ - - Savage Club, the, 460 - - Savoy, Peter, Earl of, 107; - Henry III.'s grant to, _ib._; - transfer of his manor to the chapter of Montjoy, 108 - - Savoy, the, moonlight meetings in, 106; - derivation of the name of, 107; - occupants of the palace of, 108; - Chaucer's marriage in, _ib._; - the vicissitudes of, 109; - attack of the mob of London on, 110; - a residence of John, King of France, 111; - its destruction by Wat Tyler, 112; - erection of an hospital on its site, 114; - its suppression and removal, 115; - Conference of the Savoy, 116; - a French church in, 117; - a sanctuary for debtors, _ib._; - Strype's description of it, _ib._; - clandestine marriages in, 118; - its state in the reign of George II., _ib._; - portions of it remaining in 1816, _ib._; - the destruction of, 119; - Mr. G. A. Sala's description of the Precinct of, 122; - traditions still lingering in, 123 - - Savoy Street, 116 - - Scheemakers, 333 - - School of Design, 446 - - Serle Street, origin of its name, 464 - - Serle's coffee-house, Addison's visit to, 464; - a curious letter extant at, _ib._ - - Seven Dials, the, Mr. Dickens's description of, 385; - Gay's description of, 461; - the degraded state of, 462 - - Seymour, Lord Thomas, 39; - the mint established in aid of his designs, 95 - - Seymour, Sir Edward, anecdote of, 234 - - Seymour Place. _See_ Arundel House - - Shadwell, son of the poet, 135 - - Shaftesbury, Earl of, 179 - - Shallow, the revelry of, 158 - - Sheppard, Jack, the burial-place of, 246 - - Sheridan, Thomas, 187 - - Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, produces the "School for Scandal," 322; - his extravagance, 328; - _sang froid_ exhibited in the House of Commons by, _ib._; - his death, 329 - - Shipley, Mr., founder of the Society of Arts, 100; - his pupils, _ib._ - - Shippen, "Honest," 45 - - Shipyard, the, gable-ended house in, 148 - - Shorter, Sir John, 22 - - Siddons, Mrs., 91, 319; - the homage of distinguished men to, 320 - - Signs, the suppression of, 237; - adornment of old London by, 238 - - Simon, Old, 379-80; - portraits of, 380; - anecdotes of his dog "Rover," _ib._ - - Singers, theatrical, 333 _et seq._ - - Slaughter's, Old, 249; - Hogarth and Roubilliac at, _ib._ - - Slaughter's, New, 253 - - Sloane, Sir Hans, 284 - - Smith, the brothers, 330 - - Smith, James, 139; - epigram by, 140 - - Snow, the goldsmith, 151, 443 - - Soane, Sir John, 427 - - Soane Museum, the, curiosities in, 424; - impediments thrown in the way of visitors to, _ib._; - its treasures, 425 _et seq._; - its pictures and engravings, 426; - a satire on, 465 - - Soeur, Le, French sculptor, 209 - - Somerset, the Protector, 57 - - Somerset House, 56; - Elizabeth's visits to Lord Hunsdon in, 58; - Anne of Denmark's masquerades in, _ib._; - pranks of Henrietta Maria's French household in, _ib._; - Puritans offended by Henrietta Maria's Roman Catholic chapel in, 59; - tombs under the great square of, _ib._; - death of Inigo Jones in, _ib._; - the celebration of Protestant service in, _ib._; - the lying-in-state of Cromwell in, 60; - Pepys's description of a strange scene in the presence-chamber of, 61; - lying-in-state of Monk, Duke of Albemarle, in, _ib._; - the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, _ib._; - Waller made drunk at, 62; - apartments for poor noblemen, _ib._; - erection of new Government offices on the site of the old palace of, - _ib._; - scene witnessed by Pepys at, 63; - old prints of, _ib._; - the architect of the modern buildings of, 64; - demolition of the old palace of, _ib._; - Edward VI.'s furniture, and Catherine of Braganza's breakfast room in, - _ib._; - dimensions of the building completed by Sir William Chambers, 65; - retirement of the Royal Academy to, _ib._; - figures on the Strand front of, _ib._; - Government clerks and public offices in, 66; - statue and figure in the east wing of, _ib._; - office for auditing public accounts in, _ib._; - learned societies sheltered in, 67; - distinguished men who must have frequented the halls of, _ib._; - a legend of, 71; - a tradition of Nelson at, _ib._; - accident during Reynolds's lecture at, 78; - day-dreams in the great quadrangle of, 81 - - Somerset Coffee-house, 446 - - Somerset House Stairs, 63 - - Southampton Street, 185; - Garrick's house in, _ib._ - - Sparkes, Isaac, Irish comedian, 274 - - "Spectator," office of the, 124 - - Spelman, Lady, 40 - - Spelman, Sir Henry, 391 - - Spenser, his death and burial, 28 - - Spiller, James, comedian, 154; - his death, 438 - - Spring Gardens Academy of Art, the, 72; - dissimulation of the king in relation to, 73; - intrigues against, _ib._ - - Stage, the, reform of declamation and costume on, 325; - first appearance of actresses, in London, on, 429 - - Stapleton, Walter, his death, 26 - - Steele, Sir Richard, his coffee-houses, 36; - his residence, 135; - his allusions to Lincoln's Inn, 398 - - Stone, Nicholas, sculptor, 278 - - Storace, operas written by, 334 - - Stothard, the artist, sketch of his career, 283 - - Strahan and Co., bankers, 151, 451 (_note_) - - Strand, the:-- - Essex Street, 25; - Exeter House, 26; - Exeter Place, _ib._; - Essex House 29; - Milford Lane, 38; - Devereux Court, _ib._; - Arundel House, 39; - Arundel Street, 43; - Norfolk Street, 44; - Surrey Street, 48; - Howard Street, 49; - Strand Lane, 53; - Anderson's pills in, _ib._; - Turk's Head Coffee-house, _ib._; - residence of Jacob Tonson in, 54; - occupants of No. 141, _ib._; - office of the "Illustrated London News" in, 55; - Somerset House, 56; - Haydon's first London lodgings in, 77; - Beaufort House, 83; - the residence of Blake, in, _ib._; - office of the "Sun" newspaper, 83; - Coutts's Bank, 86; - Cecil Street, 88; - Salisbury Street and House, 89; - Mrs. Siddons's residence in, 91; - Durham Street and House, _ib._; - Buckingham Street, 135; - Villiers Street, _ib._; - Duke Street, _ib._; - York Buildings, _ib._; - Hungerford Bridge and Market, 136; - Craven Street, 139; - Northumberland Street, 143; - the strata of, 146; - the footway in Edward II.'s time, 147; - discovery of a small bridge in, _ib._; - houses on the north side of, _ib._ _et seq._; - Butcher Row, 148; - Palsgrave Place, 151; - the Maypole in, 160; - St. Clement's Danes, 152; - a scene of Elizabeth's time in, 161; - St. Mary's-le-Strand, 162; - New Inn, 164; - Wych Street, _ib._; - Lyon's Inn, 165; - Catherine Street, 166; - Doyley's warehouse in, 168; - Wellington Street, _ib._; - Lyceum Theatre, 171; - Exeter Change, 175; - familiar sounds to the old residents in, 177; - Exeter Street, 178; - Exeter Hall, _ib._; - a resident in, _ib._; - Exeter House, 179; - Burleigh Street, _ib._; - Adelphi Theatre, 180; - Southampton Street, 185; - Bedford Street, 186; - Gaiety Theatre, 452; - memoranda relating to the south side of, 443; - do. relating to the north side of, 452 - - Strand, Bridge, the, 169 - - Strand Lane, 53; - mentioned by Addison, 169 - - Strand Theatre, 444, 446 - - Streets, the nomenclature of, 103 - - Strype, the antiquary, 117 - - Suckling, Sir John, 195; - his death, 241 - - Suett, the actor, 321 - - Suffolk House, 194 - - Sullivan, Luke, engraver, 251 - - "Sun," office of the, 83 - - Surrey Street, 48 - - Surgeons, College of, 419 - - Swan, the, Charing Cross, 236 - - - Tart-Hall, 43 - - Taylor, the water-poet, 279; - his complaint regarding carriages and tobacco, _ib._; - epitaph on, 280 - - Tempest, Peter Molyn, engraver, 167 - - Temple Bar, its erection, 4; - description of, 5; - threatened destruction of, 6; - fixing the heads of traitors on, 11; - curious print of, 13; - heads of Fletcher, Townley, and Oxburgh, exposed on, _ib._; - apprehension of a man for firing bullets at the two last heads - exhibited on, 16; - Counsellor Layer's head blown by a terrible wind from, _ib._; - removal of the last iron spike from, 17; - a quotation of Dr. Johnson's at, _ib._; - proclamation of peace at, 18; - its adornment on public occasions, 19; - opening its gates to the sovereign, 20; - reception of Queen Elizabeth at, _ib._; - reception of royal persons at, 21; - pageants on the passage of King James, _ib._; - the mournful celebrity of, 22 - - Temple Club, 453 - - Tenison, Dr. Thomas, 247 - - Tennyson, Alfred, 418 - - Terry, an actor, 183 - - Thames, the, scenery on its banks, 136; - embankment of, 190; - old watermen on, 247; - Copper Holme's ark on, _ib._ - - Theatres, an old custom at, 172; - a riot in one, 186 - - Theatre, the Duke's, 429; - a sword-fight between two factions in, 430; - the principal ladies of, _ib._; - Pepys's visits to, 431; - the principal performers at, 432 _et seq._; - plays of Congreve produced at, 434; - Steele's account of an audience in, 435; - the last proprietor of, _ib._; - riot at, 436; - Macklin's performance at, 437; - Quin's appearance at, _ib._ - - Thomson, the music-seller, 177 - - Thornbury, the Rev. Nathaniel, 47 - - Thornhill, Sir James, 72 - - Thurloe, Secretary, 392-393 - - Thurtell, the murderer of Weare, 165 - - Thynne, Tom, 193 - - Tillotson, Dr., 390 - - Tobacco, introduction of, 96 - - Tom's Coffee-house, 37 - - Tonson, Jacob, 54 - - Tories, they establish tavern-clubs, 284 - - Townley, execution of, 14 - - Trafalgar Square, 220; - statues and fountains in, 221, 456 - - Trojan Horse, Bushnell's, 7 - - Tunstall, Bishop, 92 - - Turk's Head Coffee-house, 53 - - Turk's Head, Gerrard Street, 72 - - Turner, J. W. M., anecdote of, 78; - his opinion of the Thames scenery, 136; - characteristics of his works, 224; - his bequests to the nation, _ib._ - - Tyburn, criminals on their way to, 373 - - Tyler Wat, 112; - a mistake of Shakspere regarding, 114 (_note_) - - Tyrconnel, the Duchess of. _See_ Widow, the White - - Twinings, the Messrs., 35, 152 - - - Ussher, Archbishop, 396 - - Union Club, the, 457 - - - Vanderbank starts an academy of art, 72 - - Vane, Sir Harry, 200 - - Vere Street, Clare Market, 345 - - Vernon, Robert, 224 - - Vertue, 8 - - Vestris, Madame, 175 - - Via Trinovantica, 349 - - Victoria embankment, 191 - - "Ville de Paris," the Olympic Theatre partially built of its timbers, 164 - - Villiers Street, 135 - - "Vine," the, in St. Giles's, 375 - - Vine Street, origin of the name, 300 - - Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane, 300 - - Voltaire rebukes Congreve's vanity, 52 - - "Vortigern," by W. H. Ireland, 46 - - - Waagen, Dr., 199 - - Waldo, Sir Timothy, 412 - - Wallack, the actor, 334 - - Waller, the poet, Saville's saying of, 62; - lines by, 210 - - Wallis, Albany, residence of, 46 - - Walpole, a circumstance to surprise, 78; - visits the Cock Lane ghost, 196 - - Warburton, Bishop, 397 - - Ward, Dr., inventor of "Friar's Balsam," disposal of his statue by - Carlini, 100; - attends on George II., _ib._ - - Ward, Edward, 281 - - Waterloo Bridge, Dupin and Canova's declaration respecting, 124; - chief features of, _ib._; - anecdote of Old Jack, a horse employed to drag the stone to, _ib._; - the dark arch of, 451 - - Watling Street, 349 - - Weare, Mr. William, 165 - - Webster, Benjamin, as an actor, 184 - - Wedderburn, his insincerity, 415; - Lord Clive's reward to, _ib._ - - Welch, Judge, apprehends a highwayman, 378 - - Wellington Street, newspapers and periodicals in, 167, 168, 454 - - West, anecdote of, 73; - his patronage of Proctor, 80 - - Westminster Fire Office, 257 - - Whetstone Park, 400 - - Whitefoord, Caleb, 141; - Adam's room in the house of, 142; - Goldsmith's lines on, _ib._ - - White Horse livery stables, 257 - - Whitelock, Bulstrode, 234 - - Whittington Club, the, 152 - - Wickliffe, John, refuses tribute to the Pope, 109; - appears before the Bishop of London, _ib._ - - Widow, the White, the story of, 94 - - Wild House, 277, 459 - - Wilkes, Robert, actor, 311 - - Wilkinson, Tate, 123 - - Willis, Dr. Thomas, 241 - - Wilson, the painter, 189, 283 - - Wimbledon House, Strand, and Doyley's warehouse erected on the site of, - 168 - - Winchester House, 271 - - Wither, George, 120, 121 - - Woffington, Peg, president of the Beefsteak Club, 173; - her career, 316 - - Wolcot, Dr. (Peter Pinder), 84 - - Wollaston, Dr., discoveries of, 88; - anecdote of, 85 - - Woodward, the actor, 315 - - Wych Street, 164, 454 - - Wynford, Lord, epigram on, 415 - - - Yates, Mr., the actor, 183 - - Yates, Mrs., actress, 317 - - York House, old, 126; - river view of, 127; - celebrated men connected with, _ib._; - Lord Bacon's life here, _ib._; - pictures, busts, and statues at, 131; - paintings placed in it by the Duke of Buckingham, _ib._; - Pepys's visit to, 132; - streets built on its site, 135 - - York Stairs, description of, 134 - - York Buildings, waterworks, 135, 445 - - York Buildings, Water Company, 445 - - Young, Charles, the actor, 323, 335 - - - Zoffany, the artist, 303; - Garrick's patronage of, 304 - - -THE END. - - - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] Tom Taylor's _Life of Haydon_, vol. i. p. 49. - -[2] Strype, B. iii. p. 278. - -[3] It was pulled down in January 1878. - -[4] The steepness of Holborn Hill was abolished by the new viaduct in -1869. - -[5] Cunningham's _London_, vol. i. p. 260. - -[6] Archenholz, p. 227. - -[7] Beautifully reprinted in 1863 by Mr. J. C. Hotten. - -[8] Walpole's _Anecdotes of Painting_, vol. iii. p. 274. - -[9] Pamphlet "The Burning of the Pope," quoted in Brayley's _Londiniana_, -vol. iv. p. 74. - -[10] Roger North's _Examen_, p. 574. - -[11] _Ibid._ p. 574. - -[12] For a further account of these Anti-Papal proceedings the reader may -refer to _Sir Roger de Coverly_, with notes by W. H. Wills. - -[13] _State Trials_, x. pp. 105-124; Burnet, ii. p. 407. - -[14] Hume, vol. vii. p. 220. - -[15] Evelyn, vol. ii. p. 341. - -[16] _Temple Bar, the City Golgotha_ (1853), p. 33. - -[17] Cobbett's _State Trials_, vol. xviii. - -[18] _State Trials_, vol. xviii. p. 375. - -[19] _Annual Register_ (1766), p. 52. - -[20] Nichol's _Literary Anecdotes_. - -[21] Brayley. - -[22] Boswell, p. 258. - -[23] Ovid, _de Art. Amand._, B. v. 339. - -[24] _Recollections of the Life of John O'Keefe_, vol. i. p. 81. - -[25] _O'Keefe's Life_, vol. i. p. 101. - -[26] _London Scenes_, by Aleph (1863), p. 75. - -[27] Stow's _Annals_. - -[28] Hall's _Chronicle_ (condensed in Nichols' _London Pageants_). - -[29] Leland's _Collectanea_, vol. iv. pp. 310 _et seq._ - -[30] Holinshed. - -[31] Nichols' _Progresses_, vol. i. p. 58. - -[32] Nichols' _London Pageants_, p. 63. - -[33] _London Gazette._ - -[34] Nichols p. 83. - -[35] Dugdale. - -[36] Holinshed's _Chronicles_, vol. iii. p. 338. - -[37] Sharon Turner's _Hist. of England_, vol. xii. p. 276. - -[38] Hygford's _Exam. Murd._, 57. - -[39] _Ibid._ - -[40] Pennant. - -[41] Camden, p. 632. - -[42] Hepworth Dixon's _Story of Lord Bacon's Life_ (1862), p. 120. - -[43] Hepworth Dixon's _Story of Lord Bacon's Life_ (1862), p. 121. - -[44] Wotton, _Reliquiæ_, p. 160. - -[45] Dr. Birch's _Memoirs of the Reign of James I._ - -[46] Ben Jonson's _Works_ (Gifford), vol. vii. p. 75. - -[47] Clarendon's _History of the Rebellion_, x. 80. - -[48] MS. Journal of the House of Commons. - -[49] Smith's _Nollekens_. - -[50] Boswell's _Johnson_ (1860), p. 751. - -[51] Jeaffreson's _Book about Doctors_, p. 97. - -[52] Boswell, vol. iv. p. 276. - -[53] J. T. Smith's _Streets of London_ (1846), vol. i. p. 412. - -[54] _The Intelligencer_, Jan. 23, 1664-5. - -[55] Disraeli's _Curios. of Lit._, p. 289. - -[56] Evelyn, vol. i. p. 10. - -[57] Dr. King's _Anecdotes_, p. 117. - -[58] Thoresby's _Diary_, ii. 111-117. - -[59] _British Bibliographer_, vol. i. p. 574. - -[60] Pope's _Works_ (Carruthers), vol. ii. p. 379. - -[61] Hawkins's _Life of Johnson_, pp. 207-244. - -[62] Jeaffreson's _Book about Doctors_ (2d edit.) pp. 207, 208. - -[63] Stow, p. 161. - -[64] Dryden's _Misc. Poems_, iv. 275, ed. 1727 (Cunningham). - -[65] Latimer's Fourth Sermon, 1st ed. - -[66] Strype, B. iv. p. 105. - -[67] _Earl of Monmouth's Mem._, ed. 1759, p. 77. - -[68] Lysons. - -[69] Dr. Birch's _Mems. of the Peers of England_. - -[70] Lingard's _History of England_. - -[71] Hughson. - -[72] Cunningham (1846), vol. i. p. 38. - -[73] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. i. p. 292. - -[74] Lilly _On the Life and Death of King Charles I._, p. 224. - -[75] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, ii. 153. - -[76] Smith's _Streets_, vol. i. p. 385. - -[77] Thoresby's _Letters_, ii. 329. - -[78] Hawkins's _Life of Johnson_, p. 208. - -[79] _Spectator_, 329-335. - -[80] Ireland's _Authentic Account_, etc. (1796), i. p. 42. - -[81] W. H. Ireland's _Vindication_, p. 21. - -[82] Ireland's _Vindication_, p. 19. - -[83] Boaden's _Life of Kemble_, vol. ii. p. 172. - -[84] Andrews's _History of British Journalism_, vol. ii. p. 285. - -[85] Strype, B. iv. p. 118. - -[86] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. ii. p. 391. - -[87] _The Mourning Bride._ - -[88] It is doubtful whether it was not the duchess. (Wilson's _Life of -Congreve_, 8vo, 1730, i. p. 1 of Preface.) - -[89] Cibber's _Lives of the Poets_ (1753). - -[90] Stow, p. 165. - -[91] _Spectator_, No. 454. - -[92] Malachi Malagrowther's _Letters_. - -[93] Croker's _Boswell_, vol. i. p. 475. - -[94] Scott's _Dryden_, vol. i. p. 388. - -[95] Johnson's _Life of Dryden_. - -[96] Strype, B. ii. p. 508. - -[97] Hume. - -[98] Dugdale, vol. ii. p. 363. - -[99] Mitford, v. 201. - -[100] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 756. - -[101] Stow, p. 149. - -[102] Burleigh's _Diary in Munden_, p. 811. - -[103] Wilson's _Life of James I._ - -[104] L'Estrange's _Life of Charles I._ - -[105] _Certain Information_, etc., No. 11, p. 87. - -[106] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 755. - -[107] Essay by John D'Espagne. - -[108] Ludlow's _Memoirs_, vol. ii. p. 615. - -[109] Pepys, 2d. edit. vol. i. p. 309. - -[110] Pepys, vol. i. p. 357. - -[111] Aubrey's _Lives and Letters_. - -[112] Stow, p. 1045, ed. 1631. - -[113] Pepys's _Diary_, vol. i. p. 16. - -[114] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 166. - -[115] _Ibid._ p. 168. - -[116] Dryden's _Essay on Dramatick Poesy_, 1668. - -[117] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 756. - -[118] _European Magazine_ (Mr. Moser). - -[119] Smith's _Life of Nollekens_, vol. ii. p. 205. - -[120] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. i. p. 22 (Notes by Northcote and Mr. -Wornum). - -[121] Chalmers's _British Poets_, vol. vii. p. 101 (Ode to the Royal -Society). - -[122] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 26. - -[123] _Ibid._ p. 757. - -[124] _Ibid._ - -[125] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. i. p. 282. - -[126] Galt's _Life of West_, pt. ii. p. 25. - -[127] _Ibid._ pp. 36-38. - -[128] Strange's _Enquiry into the Rise and Establishment of the Royal -Academy_ (1775). - -[129] Pye's _Patronage of British Art_, p. 134. - -[130] The original thirty-six Academicians were--Benjamin West, Francesco -Zuccarelli, Nathaniel Dance, Richard Wilson, George Michael Moser, Samuel -Wale (a sign-painter), J. Baptist Cipriani, Jeremiah Meyer, Angelica -Kauffmann, Charles Catton (a coach and sign painter), Francesco -Bartolozzi, Francis Cotes, Edward Penny, George Barrett (Wilson's rival), -Paul Sandby, Richard Yeo, Mary Moser, Agostino Carlini, William Chambers -(the architect of Somerset House), Joseph Wilton (the sculptor), Francis -Milner Newton, Francis Hayman, John Baker, Mason Chamberlin, John Gwynn, -Thomas Gainsborough, Dominick Serres, Peter Toms (a drapery painter for -Reynolds, who finally committed suicide), Nathaniel Hone (who for his -libel on Reynolds was expelled the Academy), Joshua Reynolds, John -Richards, Thomas Sandby, George Dance, J. Tyler, William Hoare of Bath, -and Johann Zoffani. In 1772 Edward Burch, Richard Cosway, Joseph -Nollekens, and James Barry (expelled in 1797), made up the -forty.--Wornum's Preface to the _Lectures on Painting_. - -[131] Pye's _Patronage of British Art_, 1845, p. 136. - -[132] Royal Academy _Catalogues_, Brit. Mus. - -[133] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. p. 381. - -[134] _Life of Haydon_, by Tom Taylor, vol. i. p. 30. - -[135] _Ibid._ p. 20. - -[136] Thornbury's _Life of Turner_. - -[137] O'Keefe's _Life_ vol. i. p. 386. - -[138] Knowles's _Life of Fuseli_, vol. i. p. 32. - -[139] Irvine's _Life of Falconer_. - -[140] Smith's _Life of Nollekens_, vol. ii. p. 129. - -[141] Hatton, p. 785. - -[142] _Postman_, No. 80. - -[143] _Life of Blake_, by Gilchrist. - -[144] Andrews's _History of Journalism_, vol. ii. p. 85. - -[145] Strype, B. iii. p. 196. - -[146] Glover's _Life_, p. 6. - -[147] Dennis's _Letters_, p. 196. - -[148] Procter's _Life of Kean_, vol. ii. p. 140. - -[149] Dr. King's _Art of Cookery_. - -[150] _Spectator_, No. 9. - -[151] _Memoirs of the Kit-Cat Club_, p. 6. - -[152] Defoe's _Journal_, vol. i. p. 287. - -[153] _Letters of Lady M. W. Montagu_, edited by W. M. Thomas, Esq. - -[154] _Annual Obituary_, vol. vii. - -[155] _Monthly Repository_, by Leigh Hunt, 1836. - -[156] Procter's _Life of Kean_. - -[157] _The Temple Anecdotes_ (Groombridge), p. 50. - -[158] Strype, B. iv. p. 120. - -[159] _Ibid._ - -[160] Dixon's _Bacon_, p. 227. - -[161] Appendix to the _Tatler_, vol. iv. p. 615. - -[162] Smith's _Streets of London_, vol. iv. p. 244. - -[163] _Egerton Papers_, by Collier, p. 376. - -[164] Strype, B. vi. p. 76. - -[165] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 283. - -[166] _London Gazette_, No. 897. - -[167] Pepys, vol. i. p. 137, 4to ed. - -[168] Horace Walpole. - -[169] Otway. - -[170] _Spectator_, No. 155. - -[171] _Tatler_, No. 26. - -[172] _Nouvelle Biographie Univ._, vol. xxxviii. p. 19. - -[173] _Ducatus Leodiensis_, fol. 1715, p. 485. - -[174] _British Apollo_ (1740), ii. p. 376. - -[175] Oldys's _Life of Raleigh_, p. 145. - -[176] Aubrey, vol. iii. p. 513. - -[177] Gough's _British Topography_, vol. i. p. 743. - -[178] Walpole's _Mems. of George III._, vol. iv. p. 173. - -[179] Elmes's _Anecdotes_, vol. iii. - -[180] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 83. - -[181] Boswell, vol. i. p. 225. - -[182] Hone's _Everyday Book_, vol. i. p. 237. - -[183] Pye's _Patronage of British Art_ (1845), pp. 61, 62. - -[184] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i. p. 161. - -[185] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. p. 3. - -[186] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 203. - -[187] _Haydon's Life_, vol. iii. p. 182. - -[188] _Book about Doctors_, by J. C. Jeaffreson, p. 221. - -[189] Archenholz, p. 109. - -[190] Colman's _Random Records_. - -[191] See the Percy Society's Publications. - -[192] Rymer, iii. 926. - -[193] Chaucer's _Works_. - -[194] Dugdale's _Baronetage_, vol. 1. p. 789. - -[195] _Scala Chron._, p. 175; Froissart, c. 161. - -[196] Rymer, vi. 452. - -[197] Froissart, lix. - -[198] Walsingham, p. 248. - -[199] Holinshed, vol. ii. p. 431. - -[200] Shakspere incorrectly makes Jack Cade burn the Savoy. He has -attributed to that Irish impostor the act of Wat Tyler, a far more -patriotic man. - -[201] Stow. - -[202] Cowley's _Works_, 10th edit. (Tonson), 1707, vol. ii. p. 587. - -[203] Letter to Evelyn. Cowley's _Works_ (1707), vol. ii. p. 731. - -[204] J. T. Smith's _Antiquarian Ramble in the Streets of London_ (1846), -vol. i. p. 255. - -[205] Baker's _Chronicle_ (1730), p. 625. - -[206] Cunningham's _London_ (1849), vol. ii. p. 728. - -[207] _The Postman_ (1696), No. 180. - -[208] Strype, B. iv. p. 107, ed. 1720. - -[209] Hughson's _Walks through London_, p. 207. - -[210] Hughson's _Walks through London_, p. 209. - -[211] Dryden's _Works_ (1821 ed.), vol. ii. p. 105. - -[212] _Athenæ Ox._ vol. ii. p. 1036. - -[213] Cunningham (1849), vol. ii. p. 537. - -[214] Wood's _Athen. Ox._ ii. 396, ed. 1721. - -[215] _The Shepherd's Hunting_ (1633). - -[216] Macaulay's _History of England_, vol. ii. chap. v. - -[217] Buckingham's _Works_ (1704), p. 15. - -[218] _All the Year Round_, May 12, 1860 (_The Precinct_). - -[219] Andrews's _History of British Journalism_, vol. ii. p. 83. - -[220] Smiles's _Lives of the Engineers_, vol. ii. p. 187. - -[221] Smiles's _Lives of the Engineers_, vol. ii. p. 186. - -[222] _Ibid._, vol. ii. p. 93. - -[223] Hepworth Dixon's _Story of Lord Bacon's Life_ (1862), p. 14. - -[224] Montagu, xii. 420, 432. - -[225] Aubrey's _Lives_, vol. ii. p. 224; Dixon's _Bacon_, p. 315. - -[226] _Character of Lord Bacon._ - -[227] Dixon's _Story of Lord Bacon's Life_, p. 33 (1862). Pearce's _Inns -of Court_. - -[228] Sir B. Gerbier. - -[229] Bassompierre's _Embassy to England_. - -[230] Whitelocke, p. 167. - -[231] Peacham's _Compleat Gentleman_, ed. 1661, p. 108. - -[232] Pepys, 6th June 1663. - -[233] Dryden (Scott), vol. ix. p. 233. - -[234] Pepys's _Diary_. vol. i. p. 223. - -[235] Evelyn's _Memoirs_, vol. i. p. 530. - -[236] Rate Books of St. Martin's. - -[237] Cole's _MSS._, vol. xx. folio 220. - -[238] Gilchrist's _Life of Etty_, vol. i. p. 221. - -[239] Barrow's _Life of Peter the Great_, p. 90. - -[240] Ballard's Collection, Bodleian. - -[241] Pennant. - -[242] Strype, B. vi. p. 76. - -[243] Cunningham, vol. i. pp. 402, 403. - -[244] Rate-books of St. Martin's. - -[245] _Memorials of Franklin_, vol. i. p. 261. - -[246] Smith's _Comic Misc._ vol. ii. p. 186. - -[247] _Memoirs of James Smith_, by Horace Smith, vol. i. p. 32. - -[248] _Memoirs of James Smith_, by Horace Smith, vol. i. p. 54. - -[249] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. p. 340. - -[250] _Ibid._ vol. i. pt 302. - -[251] Harl. MSS. 6850. - -[252] Rate-books of St. Martin's. - -[253] Smith's _Book for a Rainy Day_, pp. 281, 282. - -[254] Cal. Rot. Patentium. - -[255] Brayley's _Beauties of England and Wales_, vol. x. part iv. p. 167. - -[256] _Father Hubbard's Tale_, 4to, 1604.--Middleton's _Works_, vol. v. p. -573. - -[257] Archer's _Vestiges of Old London_ (View of Crockford's shop). - -[258] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. iii. p. 911. - -[259] Malcolm's _Londinum Rediviv._ vol. iii. p. 397. - -[260] Hughson's _Walks_ (1829). - -[261] Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, vol. i. p. 383. - -[262] Boswell, vol. iii. p. 331. - -[263] _Censura Literaria_, vol. i. p. 176. - -[264] Spence's _Anecdotes_. - -[265] _State Poems_, vol. ii. p. 143 ("A Satyr on the Poets.") - -[266] Leigh Hunt's _Town_ (1857), p. 135. - -[267] Hughson's _Walks_, p. 184. - -[268] Leigh Hunt's _Town_ (1859 ed.), p. 134. - -[269] Strype, B. iv. p. 117. - -[270] Boswell. - -[271] Walpole's _Anecdotes_ (ed. Dallaway), vol. ii. p. 315. - -[272] Leigh Hunt's _Town_ (1859), p. 145. - -[273] Brayley's _Beauties of England and Wales_, vol. x. part iv. p. 166. - -[274] Malone's _Shakspere_, vol. iii. p. 516. - -[275] Nichols's _Hogarth_, vol. ii. p. 70. - -[276] Cunningham (1849), vol. i. p. 210. - -[277] Hughson's _Walks through London_, p. 188. - -[278] Chalmers's _Biog. Dict._ vol. v. p. 64. - -[279] Boswell, ed. Croker, vol. ii. 201. - -[280] Stow, p. 166. - -[281] Sir G. Buc, in Howes (ed. 1631), p. 1075. - -[282] Fitzstephen, circa, 1178: the quotation refers, however, more to the -north of London. - -[283] Tennyson. - -[284] Malcolm's _London_, vol. ii. - -[285] Knox's _Elegant Extracts_. - -[286] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 146. - -[287] _Henry IV._ second part, act iii. sc. 2. - -[288] _Prot. Dissenters' Magazine_, vol. vi. - -[289] Smith's _Life of Nollekens_, vol. i. 365. - -[290] Cradock's _Memoirs_, vol. iv. p. 166. - -[291] _Garrard to the Earl of Strafford_, vol. i. p. 227. - -[292] _Citie's Loyaltie Displayed_, 4to, 1661. - -[293] Pepys. - -[294] Aubrey's _Anecdotes_, vol. iii. p. 457. - -[295] Malcolm's _Streets of London_ (1846), vol. i. p. 363. - -[296] _Parish Clerks' Survey_, p. 286. - -[297] Cunningham's _Lives of the Painters_, vol. iii. p. 292. - -[298] Pope's _Dunciad_. - -[299] Addison's _Freeholder_, No. 4. - -[300] J. T. Smith's _Streets of London_ (1846), vol. i. pp. 366, 367. - -[301] Sir G. Buc (Stow by Howes), p. 1075, ed. 1631. - -[302] Roper's _Life of Sir Thomas More_, by Singer, p. 52. - -[303] _Spectator_ No. 2, March 2, 1710-11. - -[304] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 606. - -[305] Sir G. Buc, in Howes, p. 1076, ed. 1631. - -[306] _Trivia._ - -[307] _Smith's Streets of London_, vol. i. p. 338. - -[308] Hone's _Every-day Book_, vol. i. p. 1300. - -[309] Walpole's _Anecdotes of Painting_, vol. ii. p. 612. - -[310] No. 102. - -[311] Pennant's _London_ (1813), p. 204. - -[312] _Spectator_, No. 454. - -[313] _Spectator_, No. 454. - -[314] Andrews's _History of Journalism_, vol. ii. p. 8. - -[315] Brayley's _Theatres of London_ (1826), p. 40. - -[316] Brayley, p. 42. - -[317] Chetwood's _History of the Stage_, p. 141. - -[318] _Spectator_, No. 468. - -[319] Ward's _Secret History of Clubs_, ed. 1709. - -[320] Victor. - -[321] Edwards's _Anecdotes of Painting_, p. 20. - -[322] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i. p. 110. - -[323] P. Cunningham. - -[324] Dr. King's _Art of Cookery, humbly inscribed to the Beef-steak -Club_. (1709.) - -[325] Leigh Hunt's _Town_ (1859), p. 191. - -[326] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 297. - -[327] Delaune. - -[328] Strype, B. iv. p. 119. - -[329] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, ch. iv. - -[330] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i. p. 281. - -[331] _Ibid._ p. 269. - -[332] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i. p. 276. - -[333] Cunningham, p. 187. - -[334] Whitelocke. - -[335] Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vol. vi. p. 20. - -[336] _The Stage_, by Alfred Bunn, vol. iii. p. 131. - -[337] _Life of Mathews_, by Mrs. Mathews (abridged by Mr. Yates), p. 211. - -[338] _Life of Mathews_, by Mrs. Mathews. - -[339] _Critical Essays_ (1807), p. 140. - -[340] Hazlitt's _Criticisms of the English Stage_, p. 98. - -[341] Hazlitt's _Criticisms of the English Stage_, p. 98. - -[342] Cole's _Life of C. Kean_, vol. ii. p. 260. - -[343] Strype, B. vi. p. 93. - -[344] Stow. - -[345] Davies's _Life of Garrick_, vol. x. p. 217. - -[346] Strype, B. vi. p. 93. - -[347] Cunningham's _London_ (1850), p. 219. - -[348] Whyte's _Miscellanea Nova_, p. 49. - -[349] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 597.--Rate-books of St. Martin's. - -[350] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. i. p. 248. - -[351] Dixon's _Story of Lord Bacon's Life_, p. 204. - -[352] _English Causes Célèbres_ (edited by Craik), vol. i. p. 79. - -[353] _Memoirs of the Peers of James I._, p. 240. - -[354] _Autobiography of Lord Herbert_, p. 110 - -[355] Suckling's _Poems_. - -[356] Camden's _Annals of King James_. - -[357] _Londinum Redivivum._ - -[358] Walpole to Montague, Feb. 2, 1762. - -[359] Dix's _Life of Chatterton_, p. 267. - -[360] Foster's _Life of Goldsmith_, p. 216. - -[361] Irving's _Oliver Goldsmith_ (1850), p. 90. - -[362] Dr. Waagen's _Treasures of Art_, vol. i. p. 394. - -[363] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. ii. p. 354. - -[364] Walpole, vol. i. p. 277. - -[365] _The Famous Chronicle of King Edward I._ (4to., 1593). - -[366] Bosworth's _Anglo-Saxon Dictionary_. - -[367] Hamlet. - -[368] _Diversions of Purley._ - -[369] Peele's _Works_ (Dyce), vii. 575. - -[370] Rymer, ii. 498. - -[371] Heming, 590. - -[372] Walpole, vol. i. p. 32. - -[373] _Gleanings from Westminster Abbey_, 2d edition, p. 152 (W. Burges), -Roxburghe Club. - -[374] Lilly's _Observations_. - -[375] Carlyle's _Cromwell_, vol. i. p. 99. - -[376] _State Trials_, vol. v. pp. 1234-5. - -[377] Narcissus Luttrell. - -[378] Overseers' Books (_Cunningham_, vol. i. p. 179). - -[379] _Harl. MSS._ 7315. - -[380] Carpenter (quoted by Walpole, _Anecdotes_, vol. ii. p. 395). - -[381] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. ii. p. 394. - -[382] Smith's _Streets of London_, vol. i. p. 139. - -[383] Archenholz, _Tableau de l'Angleterre_, vol. ii. p. 164, 1788. - -[384] _Burnet_, vol. ii. p. 53, ed. 1823. - -[385] _Annual Register_ (1810). - -[386] Cobbett's _State Trials_, vol. xvii. p. 160. - -[387] Archenholz, vol. i. p. 166. - -[388] _Daily Advertiser_, 1731. - -[389] _Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. i. - -[390] v. 85. - -[391] Hogarth's _Works_ (Nicholls and Steevens), vol. i. p. 162. - -[392] Smith's _London_, vol. i. p. 141. - -[393] _Notes and Queries_ (vol. vi., 1858), p. 364. - -[394] _Dunciad_, B. iv. 30. - -[395] Pope's Works (edited by R. Carruthers), vol. ii. p. 314. - -[396] Stow, p. 167. - -[397] Report, May 16, 1844. - -[398] Smith's _London_, vol. i. p. 133. - -[399] Dr. Waagen, vol. i. p. 6. - -[400] Waagen, vol. i. p. 322. - -[401] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 331. - -[402] Cunningham, nearly always correct, says £10,000 (vol. ii. p. 577). - -[403] Waagen, vol. ii. p. 329. - -[404] Cunningham's _London_, p. 428. - -[405] Smith's _Streets of London_, vol. i. p. 153. - -[406] Rate-books of St. Martin's (Cunningham). - -[407] MSS., Birch, 4221, quoted in the notes of the _Tatler_. - -[408] "Country Wife." - -[409] "The Scowrers." - -[410] _State Poems._ - -[411] "The Hind and the Panther Transversed." - -[412] "The Relapse." - -[413] _The Art of Cookery._ - -[414] _Weekly Journal_, Nov. 21, 1724. - -[415] _London Gazette_, June 4, 1688. - -[416] _Dunciad_, B. ii. v. 411. - -[417] _Flying Post_, June 23, 1716. - -[418] Pope's _Works_ (Carruthers), vol. ii. pp. 309, 310. - -[419] Leigh Hunt's _Essays on the Theatres_ (1807), p. 64. - -[420] Philips's _Life of Milton_, p. 32, 12mo, 1694. - -[421] Cunningham (1850), p. 107. - -[422] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i. p. 163. - -[423] _Royal Guide to the London Charities_, 1878-79. - -[424] _Life of Dr. John North._ - -[425] Whitelock, p. 470, ed. 1732. - -[426] Burnet, vol. ii. p. 70, ed. 1823. - -[427] Boswell (Croker), vol. iii. p. 213. - -[428] Willis's _History of the See of Llandaff_. - -[429] _Bartholomew Fair_ (Ben Jonson). - -[430] Gifford's _Ben Jonson_, iv. p. 430. - -[431] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 505. - -[432] _The World_, Nov. 29, 1753. - -[433] _Robson: a Sketch_ (Hotten, 1864). - -[434] Aubrey, iii. 415. - -[435] "Treacherous Brothers," 4to, 1696. - -[436] _St. James's Chronicle_, April 24, 1762. - -[437] _Ibid._ May 26, 1761. - -[438] Edwards' _Anecdotes_, pp. 116, 117. - -[439] Rate-books of St. Martin's. - -[440] Lord Orford's _Anecdotes of Painting_. - -[441] J. C. Jeaffreson's _Book about Doctors_, p. 109. - -[442] _Ath. Ox._ vol. ii. - -[443] Gifford's _Ben Jonson_, vol. ix. pp. 48, 63, 64. - -[444] Aubrey's _Letters_, vol. ii. p. 332. - -[445] Recital in grant to the parish from King James I. - -[446] Cunningham's _London_ (1849), vol. ii. p. 526. - -[447] Burnet's _Own Times_, vol. i. p. 327, ed. 1823. - -[448] Allan Cunningham's _Lives_, vol. iv. p. 290. - -[449] _Biog. Brit._ - -[450] Smith's _Life of Nollekens_, vol. ii. p. 233. - -[451] Smith's _Book for a Rainy Day_, pp. 251, 252. - -[452] Prologues to the _Satires_, v. 180. - -[453] Dr. Johnson's _Life of Ambrose Philips_. - -[454] Smith's _Nollekens and his Times_, vol. ii. p. 222. - -[455] Cunningham (1850), p. 450. - -[456] Smith's _Streets_, vol. ii. p. 208. - -[457] Smith, vol. ii. p. 97. - -[458] Smith, p. 211. - -[459] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 212. - -[460] Smith, vol. ii. p. 224. - -[461] Smith's _Streets of London_, vol. ii. p. 226. - -[462] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i. p. 178, a curious and amusing book, the -truth in which is spoiled by an injudicious and eccentric mixture of -fiction. - -[463] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. pp. 93, 94. - -[464] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 233. - -[465] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. ii. p. 238. - -[466] _Ibid._ p. 241. - -[467] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. p. 143. - -[468] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 244. - -[469] _Ibid._ p. 250. - -[470] _Recollections of O'Keefe_, vol. i. p. 108. - -[471] Knowles's _Life of Fuseli_, vol. i. p. 57. - -[472] _Passages of a Working Life_, by Charles Knight, vol. i. pp. 114, -115. - -[473] Hume's _Learned Societies_, pp. 84, 85. - -[474] Dr. Hodges' _Letter to a Person of Quality_, p. 15. - -[475] Defoe's _Journal of the Plague Year_. - -[476] Dr. Hodges' _Loimologia_, p. 7 (from the reprint in 1720, when the -plague was raging in France). - -[477] _Ibid._ pp. 19, 20. - -[478] Howes, p. 1048. - -[479] Bagford, Harl. MSS. 5900, fol. 50. - -[480] Walpole's _Royal and Noble Authors_, vol. ii. p. 25. - -[481] Evelyn's _Diary_ (1850), vol. ii. p. 59. - -[482] Evelyn's _Diary_, vol. ii. p. 153 (1850). - -[483] _Life of Lord Herbert_ (1826), p. 304. - -[484] Horace Walpole. - -[485] Aubrey's _Lives_, vol. ii. p. 387. - -[486] Walpole's _Anecdotes of Painting_ (Dallaway), vol. ii. p. 593. - -[487] Richardson. - -[488] Walpole, vol. ii. p. 563 (partly from Dallaway's version of the same -story). - -[489] Dallaway. - -[490] Walpole, vol. ii. p. 594. - -[491] Spence. - -[492] Aubrey, vol. ii p. 132. - -[493] Dallaway's Notes. - -[494] Clarendon, B. ii. p. 2117. - -[495] _Ibid._ B. i. p. 116. - -[496] _Clarendon_, B. viii. p. 694. - -[497] Walpole's _Anecdotes of Painting_, vol. ii. p. 452. - -[498] Doran's _Her Majesty's Servants_, vol. ii. p. 51. - -[499] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 226. - -[500] _Ibid._ p. 226. - -[501] Hazlitt's _Criticisms of the English Stage_, p. 49. - -[502] _O'Keefe's Life_, vol. i. p. 322. - -[503] Leigh Hunt, p. 226. - -[504] _Life of Benjamin Franklin_ (1826), p. 31. - -[505] _Life of the Duke of Ormond_ (1747), pp. 67, 80. - -[506] Macaulay, vol. ii. p. 560. - -[507] Bramston, p. 339. - -[508] _Annual Register_ (1780), pp. 254-287. - -[509] _Life of Inigo Jones_, by P. Cunningham, p. 22 (Shakspere Society). - -[510] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. ii. p. 90. - -[511] Cibber's _Lives_, vol. ii. p. 10. - -[512] _Ibid._ p. 11. - -[513] Cunningham's _London_, vol. ii. p. 501. - -[514] Dryden's Works (Scott), vol. i. p. 204. - -[515] Scott's _Dryden_, vol. xiii. p. 7. - -[516] Cibber's _Lives_, vol. iv. p. 293. - -[517] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. ii. p. 277. - -[518] Cibber's _Lives_, vol. iv. p. 47. - -[519] Cibber's _Lives_, vol. iv. p. 47. - -[520] Mrs. Bray's _Life of Stothard_, p. 47. - -[521] Defoe's _Journey through England_. - -[522] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. ii. p. 167. - -[523] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. p. 27. - -[524] _Times_, Sept. 26, 1796. - -[525] Talfourd's _Final Memorials of Charles Lamb_, vol. i. p. 56. - -[526] Burke's _Landed Gentry_ (1858), p. 320. - -[527] Pennant. - -[528] Lingard, vol. vi. p. 607. - -[529] Walton's _Lives_ (1852), p. 22. - -[530] _Angel in the House_, by Mr. Coventry Patmore. - -[531] Dedication to Translation of Juvenal. - -[532] Donne's _Poems_ (1719), p. 291. - -[533] Miss Benger's _Memoirs of the Queen of Bohemia_, vol. ii. p. 322. - -[534] Miss Benger's _Memoirs of the Queen of Bohemia_, vol. ii. p. 428. - -[535] Sydney State Papers, vol. ii. p. 723. - -[536] Benger, vol. ii. p. 457. - -[537] _Ibid._, Preface. - -[538] Brayley's _Londiniana_, vol. iv. p. 301. - -[539] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, p. 210. - -[540] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 204. - -[541] Wilson's _Life of James I._ (1653), p. 146. - -[542] Aubrey's _Anecdotes and Traditions_, p. 3. - -[543] _Trivia._ - -[544] Rate-books of St. Martin's, quoted by P. Cunningham. - -[545] Granger's _Biographical History of England_ (1824), vol. v. p. 356. - -[546] Pepys's _Memoirs_, vol. iii. p. 75. - -[547] Curll's _History of the English Stage_, vol. i. p. III. - -[548] _Miscellaneous Works by the late Duke of Buckingham, etc._, p. 35 -(1704). - -[549] _Miscellaneous Works by the late Duke of Buckingham, etc._, vol. i. -p. 34. - -[550] _Burnet's History of his own Times_ (1753), vol. i. p. 387. - -[551] Leigh Hunt's _Town_ (1859), p. 282. - -[552] Evelyn's _Mems._ vol. ii. p. 339. - -[553] Collier, iii. 328. - -[554] Prynne's _Histrio-Mastix_ (1633). - -[555] Pepys (May 8, 1663). - -[556] Cibber's _Apology_, p. 338. ed. 1740. - -[557] Doran, vol. i. p. 57. - -[558] Dec. 7, 1666. - -[559] Jan. 23, 1667. - -[560] April 20, 1667. - -[561] Doran, p. 97. - -[562] Doran, vol. i. p. 79. - -[563] Leigh Hunt, p. 267. - -[564] Cibber's _Apology_, 250. - -[565] Doran, vol. i. p. 466. - -[566] _Tatler_, No. 182. - -[567] Doran, vol. i. p. 464. - -[568] Cumberland's _Memoirs_, p. 59. - -[569] Davies's _Miscellanies_, vol. i. p. 126. - -[570] Doran, vol. ii. p. 126. - -[571] _Ibid._ p. 149. - -[572] Doran, vol. i. p. 511. - -[573] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 7. - -[574] Dr. Doran, vol. ii. p. 277. - -[575] Dr. Doran's _Knights and their Days_. - -[576] _Elia_, p. 217. - -[577] Doran, vol. ii. p. 330. - -[578] Leigh Hunt's _Essays on the Theatres_, p. 124. - -[579] Hazlitt's _Essays_, p. 47. - -[580] _Elia_, p. 216. - -[581] Moore's _Sheridan_, p. 140. - -[582] _Ibid._ p. 181. - -[583] Murphy's _Garrick_. - -[584] Doran, vol. ii. p. 489. - -[585] Leigh Hunt's _Essays on the Theatres_, p. 124. - -[586] _Ibid._ p. 78. - -[587] Hazlitt's _Criticisms of the Stage_, p. 441. - -[588] _Elia_, p. 221. - -[589] Doran, vol. ii. p. 476. - -[590] Hazlitt's _Essays_, p. 47. - -[591] Hazlitt's _Criticisms_, pp. 49, 50. - -[592] _Elia_ (1853), p. 206. - -[593] _Elia_, p. 232. - -[594] _Ibid._ p. 213. - -[595] Moore's _Life of Sheridan_, p. 637. - -[596] Moore's _Sheridan_, p. 637. - -[597] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. ii. p. 113. - -[598] Hazlitt's _Essays_, p. 51. - -[599] _Ibid._ p. 212. - -[600] _The Georgian Era_, vol. iv. p. 43. - -[601] Hazlitt's _Essays_, p. 49. - -[602] _Lounger's Commonplace Book_, vol. ii. p. 137. - -[603] _Dunciad_, B. iii. p. 199. - -[604] _Lounger's Commonplace Book_, vol. ii. p. 141. - -[605] _The Intelligencer_, No. 3. - -[606] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 248. - -[607] _Fly Leaves_ (Miller), vol. i. p. 96. - -[608] Disraeli's _Miscellanies_, p. 77. - -[609] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. ii. p. 150. - -[610] Jeaffreson's _Book about Doctors_ (2d ed.), p. 85. - -[611] The very earliest was granted to Philip the Hermit, for gravelling -the road at Highgate. - -[612] Rymer's _Foedera_. - -[613] Fuller's _Church History_. - -[614] Vaughan's _Life of Wickliffe_. - -[615] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, p. 11. - -[616] _Ibid._ (1829), p. 2. - -[617] Pennant (4th ed.), p. 3. - -[618] Butler's _Lives of the Saints_. - -[619] Aggas's Map, published in 1578 or 1560. - -[620] Stow's _Survey_, 1595. - -[621] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, p. 46. - -[622] Evelyn's _Diary_. - -[623] Brayley's _Londiniana_. - -[624] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, pp. 58, 59. - -[625] Defoe's _History of the Plague_. - -[626] Maitland's _History of London_. - -[627] Dr. Sydenham. - -[628] Dr. Hodgson's _Journal of the Plague_. - -[629] Dr. Hodges on the Plague. - -[630] Fuller's _Church History_. - -[631] Hume. - -[632] Fuller. - -[633] Parliamentary Report. - -[634] Ralph. - -[635] Rowland Dobie's _History of St. Giles's_, p. 119. - -[636] Pennant's _London_, p. 159. - -[637] Cunningham's _London_, vol. i. p. 339. - -[638] _Annual Register_, 1827. - -[639] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, p. 367. - -[640] Strype. - -[641] Strype. - -[642] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, p. 225. - -[643] Cunningham's _London_, vol. i. p. 384. - -[644] Smith's _Book for a Rainy Day_, p. 21. - -[645] Stow, p. 164. - -[646] Pennant. - -[647] Smith's _Book for a Rainy Day_, p. 29, date 1774. - -[648] Smith's _Book for a Rainy Day_ is one of the best works of a clever -London antiquarian, to whose industry, as well as to Mr. Peter -Cunningham's, the author is much indebted, as his foot-notes pretty well -show. - -[649] Dryden's _Limberham_. - -[650] _Love for Love._ - -[651] Stow. - -[652] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, p. 66. - -[653] Parton's account of St. Giles's. - -[654] Parton. - -[655] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. p. 130. - -[656] Archenholz, p. 117. - -[657] Smith's _Book for a Rainy Day_, p. 74. - -[658] Dobie's _History of St. Giles's_, p. 204. - -[659] _Bell's Life in London_, July 12, 1829. - -[660] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 565. - -[661] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 566. - -[662] _Sketches by Boz_, p. 44. - -[663] _Sketches by Boz_, p. 45. - -[664] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, p. 362. - -[665] T. Hudson Turner, _Archæological Journal_, Dec. 1848. - -[666] Sir G. Buc in Stow, by Howes, p. 1072 (ed. 1631). - -[667] Pennant, p. 176. - -[668] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 480. - -[669] _Walpole_, by Dallaway, vol. ii. p. 37. - -[670] Lloyd's _State Worthies_. - -[671] _State Trials_, iv. 445, fol. ed. - -[672] _Hudibras_, part iii. c. 3. - -[673] Granger's _Biography_ in art. "Margaret Roper." - -[674] Dr. Birch's _Life of Tillotson_. - -[675] _Hale's Life_, by Burnet. - -[676] _Biog. Brit._, by the Hon. and Rev. F. Egerton. - -[677] Preface to Thurloe's _State Papers_, 1742. - -[678] _Biog. Brit._ - -[679] _Session of the Poets._ - -[680] Johnson's _Lives_. - -[681] _Ath. Ox._ vol. ii. - -[682] Foote's _Life of Murphy_. - -[683] Campbell's _Lives of the Chief Justices_, vol. iii. p. 221. - -[684] Dr. Johnson. - -[685] Pennant, p. 176. - -[686] Evelyn's _Diary_, vol. ii. p. 60 (1850). - -[687] _The Devil is an Ass._ - -[688] Aubrey. - -[689] Gifford's _Ben Jonson_, vol. i. p. 9. - -[690] Fuller's _Worthies_, vol. ii. p. 112. - -[691] Gifford, vol. i. p. 14. - -[692] Moore's _Memoirs_, vol. ii. p. 211. - -[693] _Poems on Affairs of State_, vol. i. p. 147. - -[694] Cunningham. - -[695] Rymer's _Foedera_, vol. xvii. p. 120. - -[696] Wilkinson's _Handbook for Egypt_, p. 185. - -[697] Cunningham's _Life of Inigo Jones_, p. 23 (Shakspere Society). - -[698] _Canting Academy_, 1674 (Malcolm). - -[699] Cunningham. - -[700] Rate-books of St. Clement's Danes (Cunningham). - -[701] Wharton's _Works_. - -[702] _Life of Lord W. Russell_, by Lord John Russell, 3d ed. vol. ii. p. -18. - -[703] Fox's _History of the Reign of James II._ (Introduction). - -[704] Lord John Russell, vol. i. p. 121. - -[705] Raplin, vol. xiv. p. 333. - -[706] Burnet's _History of his own Times_ (1725), vol. ii. - -[707] _Letters of Lady Russell_, 7th ed. 1819. - -[708] _State Trials_, vol. xviii. p. 522. - -[709] _Daily Journal_, July 9, 1735. - -[710] Ireland _Inns of Court_, p. 129. - -[711] Macaulay's _History of England_, vol. i. p. 353. - -[712] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. iii. p. 167. - -[713] Pennant, p. 238. - -[714] _Lady M. W. Montague's Letters._ - -[715] Burney's _Hist. of Music_, vol. iv. p. 667. - -[716] Lord Chesterfield (Mahon), vol. ii. p. 264. - -[717] Hawkins's _Life of Johnson_, p. 192. - -[718] Pugh's _Life of Jonas Hanway_ (1787), p. 184. - -[719] _Lounger's Commonplace Book_, vol. i. p. 361. - -[720] Macaulay's _Essay on Walpole's Letters_. - -[721] Walpole's _Memoirs_, vol. i. p. 169. - -[722] Campbell's _Lives of the Lord Chancellors_, vol. vi. p. 105. - -[723] Campbell's _Chief Justices_, vol. ii. p. 563. - -[724] Pepys, vol. ii. p. 272. - -[725] _Ibid._ p. 282. - -[726] Hatton's _New View of London_ (1708), p. 627. - -[727] Clarendon, vol. vi. pp. 89, 90. - -[728] Grosley's _Tour to London_, vol. ii. p. 309. - -[729] Walpole's _Letters_, vol. ii. p. 137. - -[730] Walpole's _Letters_, vol. vii. p. 223. - -[731] _Ibid._ vol. ix. p. 307. - -[732] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 228. - -[733] _Lady Fanshawe's Memoirs_, p. 92. - -[734] _Ibid._ p. 94. - -[735] _Lady Fanshawe's Memoirs_, pp. 300, 301. - -[736] Moore's _Diary_, vol. iv. p. 193. - -[737] _Ibid._ p. 35. - -[738] Coleridge's _Table Talk_. - -[739] Townsend, vol. i. p. 91. - -[740] "The Alabaster sarcophagus of Oimeneptah I., King of Egypt, now in -Sir John Soane's Museum. Drawn by Joseph Bonomi, and described by Samuel -Sharpe." London: Longmans and Co. 1864. - -[741] _Annual Register_ (1837). - -[742] Chapone's _Letters_, vol. ii. p. 68. - -[743] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 237. - -[744] Malone, pp. 135, 136. - -[745] Grammont's _Mems._ (1811), vol. ii. p. 142. - -[746] Doran's _Her Majesty's Servants_, vol. i. p. 80. - -[747] Pepys, vol. iii. p. 136. - -[748] Pepys, vol. iv. p. 2. - -[749] Cibber's _Apology_, chap. v. - -[750] _Ibid._ - -[751] _Doran_, vol. i. p. 119. - -[752] Doran, vol. i. p. 149. - -[753] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 245. - -[754] Cibber's _Apology_, 2d. ed. p. 138. - -[755] Baker's _Biog. Dram._, vol. i. p. 270. - -[756] Doran, vol. i. p. 542. - -[757] Doran, vol. i. p. 424. - -[758] _Ibid._ p. 446. - -[759] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 427. - -[760] Cunningham (1850), p. 406. - -[761] Doran, vol. i. p. 327. - -[762] Whincop's _Scanderberg_, p. 80 (1747). - -[763] _Fly Leaves_, by John Miller, p. 20. - -[764] The name of Strahan, Paul, and Bates's firm was originally Snow and -Walton. It was one of the oldest banking-houses in London, second only to -Child's. At the period of the Commonwealth Snow and Co. carried on the -business of pawnbrokers, under the sign of the "Golden Anchor." The firm -suspended payment about 1679 (as did many other banks), owing to the -tyranny of Charles II. Strahan (the partner at the time of the last -failure) had changed his name from Snow; his uncle, named Strahan (Queen's -printer?) having left him £180,000, making change of name a condition. It -is curious that on examining Strahan and Co.'s books, it was found by -those of 1672 that a decimal system had been then employed. Strahan was -known to all religious people. Bates had for many years been managing -clerk. The firm had also a navy agency in Norfolk Street. They had -encumbered themselves with the Mostyn Collieries to the amount of -£139,940, and backed up Gandells, contractors who were making railways in -France and Italy and draining Lake Capestang, lending £300,000 or -£400,000. They finally pledged securities (£22,000) to the Rev. Dr. -Griffiths, Prebendary of Rochester. Sir John Dean Paul got into a -second-class carriage at Reigate, the functionaries trying to get in after -him; the porter pulled them back, the train being in motion! Paul went to -London alone, and in spite of telegraph got off, but at eight o'clock next -night surrendered. The three men were tried October 26 and 27, 1858. - -[765] _Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings_ (1863), pp. 6, 7. - -[766] _Harleian MS._, 6850. - -[767] _Cunningham_, vol. i. p. 378. I may here, as well as anywhere else, -express my thanks to this careful and most industrious antiquary. - -[768] Mrs. Cornwall Baron Wilson's _Memoirs of the Duchess of St. Albans_ -(1840), vol. i. p. 331. - -[769] Kippis, _Bio. Brit._ iv. p. 266. - -[770] Thornbury's _British Artists_, vol. i. p. 171. - -[771] _Gentleman's Magazine_, August 1783, p. 709. - -[772] _David Copperfield_ (1864), p. 208. - -[773] _The Clubs of London_, vol. ii. p. 150. - -[774] _The Clubs of London_ (1828), vol. ii. - -[775] _Notes and Queries_, vol. vi. 2d series, p. 131. - -[776] Hatten, p. 24. - -[777] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 378. - -[778] _Notes and Queries_ (Bolton Corney), vol. viii. 2d series, p. 122. - -[779] Burnet, vol. i. p. 338. - -[780] Pepys, vol. v. p. 436. - -[781] Pennant, p. 215. - -[782] _Trivia._ - -[783] _Anecdotes of Painting_, iv. 22. - -[784] Malone's _Dryden_, ii. 97. - -[785] Mr. Rimbault in _Notes and Queries_, Feb. 1850. - -[786] _Clubs of London_, vol. ii. p. 263. - -[787] All from Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 731, and how much else. - -[788] _Notes and Queries_, 2d series, vol. xi. p. 289. - - - - -Transcriber's Notes: - -The original text includes Greek characters that have been replaced with -transliterations in this text version. - -Footnote 404 appears on page 224 of the text, but there is no -corresponding marker on the page. - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Haunted London, by Walter Thornbury - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAUNTED LONDON *** - -***** This file should be named 41580-8.txt or 41580-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/1/5/8/41580/ - -Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Haunted London - -Author: Walter Thornbury - -Editor: Edward Walford - -Illustrator: F. W. Fairholt - -Release Date: December 8, 2012 [EBook #41580] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAUNTED LONDON *** - - - - -Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive.) - - - - - - -</pre> - - +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41580 ***</div> <p class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></p> <p> </p><p> </p> @@ -19866,382 +19824,6 @@ express my thanks to this careful and most industrious antiquary.</p> <p><a href="#f_404">Footnote 404</a> appears on <a href="#Page_224">page 224</a> of the text, but there is no corresponding marker on the page.</p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Haunted London, by Walter Thornbury - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAUNTED LONDON *** - -***** This file should be named 41580-h.htm or 41580-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/1/5/8/41580/ - -Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Haunted London - -Author: Walter Thornbury - -Editor: Edward Walford - -Illustrator: F. W. Fairholt - -Release Date: December 8, 2012 [EBook #41580] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAUNTED LONDON *** - - - - -Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive.) - - - - - - - - - -HAUNTED LONDON - - - - -DR. JOHNSON'S OPINIONS OF LONDON.--"It is not in the showy evolution of -buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations, that the -wonderful immensity of London consists.... The happiness of London is not -to be conceived but by those who have been in it. I will venture to say -there is more learning and science within the circumference of where we -now sit than in all the rest of the kingdom.... A man stores his mind [in -London] better than anywhere else.... No place cures a man's vanity or -arrogance so well as London, for no man is either great or good, _per se_, -but as compared with others, not so good or great, and he is sure to find -in the metropolis many his equals and some his superiors.... No man of -letters leaves London without regret.... By seeing London I have seen as -much of life as the world can show.... When a man is tired of London he is -tired of life, for there is in London all life can afford, and [London] is -the fountain of intelligence and pleasure."--_Boswell's Life of Johnson._ - -BOSWELL'S OPINION OF LONDON.--"I have often amused myself with thinking -how different a place London is to different people. They whose narrow -minds are contracted to the consideration of some one particular pursuit, -view it only through that medium, a politician thinks of it merely as the -seat of government, etc.; but the intellectual man is struck with it _as -comprehending the whole of human life in all its variety, the -contemplation of which is inexhaustible_."--_Boswell's Life of Johnson_ -(Croker, 1848), p. 144. - - - - - HAUNTED LONDON - - - BY WALTER THORNBURY - - EDITED BY EDWARD WALFORD, M.A. - - - [Illustration: TEMPLE BAR, 1761.] - - - _ILLUSTRATED BY F. W. FAIRHOLT, F.S.A._ - - - London - CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY - 1880 - - - - -PREFACE. - - -This book deals less with the London of the ghost-stories, the scratching -impostor in Cock Lane, or the apparition of Parson Ford at the Hummums, -than with the London consecrated by manifold traditions--a city every -street and alley of which teems with interesting associations, every -paving-stone of which marks, as it were, the abiding-place of some ancient -legend or biographical story; in short, this London of the present haunted -by the memories of the past. - -The slow changes of time, the swifter destructions of improvement, and the -inevitable necessities of modern civilisation, are rapidly remodelling -London. - -It took centuries to turn the bright, swift little rivulet of the Fleet -into a foetid sewer, years to transform the palace at Bridewell into a -prison; but events now move faster: the alliance of money with enterprise, -and the absence of any organised resistance to needful though sometimes -reckless improvements, all combine to hurry forward modern changes. - -If an alderman of the last century could arise from his sleep, he would -shudder to see the scars and wounds from which London is now suffering. -Viaducts stalk over our chief roads; great square tubes of iron lie heavy -as nightmares on the breast of Ludgate Hill. In Finsbury and Blackfriars -there are now to be seen yawning chasms as large and ghastly as any that -breaching cannon ever effected in the walls of a besieged city. On every -hand legendary houses, great men's birthplaces, the haunts of poets, the -scenes of martyrdoms, and the battle-fields of old factions, heave and -totter around us. The tombs of great men, in the chinks of which the -nettles have grown undisturbed ever since the Great Fire, are now being -uprooted. Milton's house has become part of the _Punch_ office. A printing -machine clanks where Chatterton was buried. Almost every moment some -building worthy of record is shattered by the pickaxes of ruthless -labourers. The noise of falling houses and uprooted streets even now in my -ears tells me how busily Time, the Destroyer and the Improver, is working; -erasing tombstones, blotting out names on street-doors, battering down -narrow thoroughfares, and effacing one by one the memories of the good, -the bad, the illustrious, and the infamous. - -A sincere love of the subject, and a strong conviction of the importance -of the preservation of such facts as I have dredged up from the Sea of -Oblivion, have given me heart for my work. The gradual changes of Old -London, and the progress of civilisation westward, are worth noting by all -students of the social history of England. It will be found that many -traits of character, many anecdotes of interest, as illustrating -biography, are essentially connected with the habitations of the great men -who have either been born in London, or have resorted to it as the centre -of progress, art, commerce, government, learning, and culture. The fact of -the residence of a poet, a painter, a lawyer, or even a rogue, at any -definite date, will often serve to point out the social status he either -aimed at or had acquired. It helps also to show the exact relative -distinctions in fashion and popularity of different parts of London at -particular epochs, and contributes to form an illustrated history of -London, proceeding not by mere progression of time, and dealing with the -abstract city--the whole entity of London--but marching through street -after street, and detailing local history by districts at a time. - -A century after the martyrs of the Covenant had shed their blood for the -good old cause, an aged man, mounted on a little rough pony, used -periodically to make the tour of their graves; with a humble and pious -care he would scrape out the damp green moss that filled up the letters -once so sharp and clear, cut away the thorny arches of the brambles, tread -down the thick, prickly undergrowth of nettles, and leave the brave names -of the dead men open to the sunlight. It is something like this that I -have sought to do with London traditions. - -I have especially avoided, in every case, mixing truth with fiction. I -have never failed to give, where it was practicable, the actual words of -my authorities, rather than run the risk of warping or distorting a -quotation even by accident, or losing the flavour and charm of original -testimony. Aware of the paramount value of sound and verified facts, I -have not stopped to play with words and colours, nor to sketch imaginary -groups and processions. Such pictures are often false and only mislead; -but a fact proved, illustrated, and rendered accessible by index and -heading, is, however unpretentious, a contribution to history, and has -with certain inquirers a value that no time can lesson. - -In a comprehensive work, dealing with so many thousand dates, and -introducing on the stage so many human beings, it is almost impossible to -have escaped errors. I can only plead for myself that I have spared no -pains to discover the truth. I have had but one object in view, that of -rendering a walk through London a journey of interest and of pilgrimage to -many shrines. - -In some cases I have intentionally passed over, or all but passed over, -outlying streets that I thought belonged more especially to districts -alien to my present plan. Maiden Lane, for example, with its memories of -Voltaire, Marvell, and Turner, belongs rather to a chapter on Covent -Garden, of which it is a palpable appanage; and Chancery Lane I have left -till I come to Fleet Street. - -I should be ungrateful indeed if, in conclusion, I did not thank Mr. -Fairholt warmly for his careful and valuable drawings on wood. To that -accomplished antiquary I am indebted, as my readers will see, for several -original sketches of bygone places, and for many curious illustrations -which I should certainly not have obtained without the aid of his learning -and research. - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION pp. 1-3 - - - CHAPTER II. TEMPLE BAR. - - The Devil Tavern--London Bankers and Goldsmiths--A Whim - of John Bushnell, the Sculptor--Irritating Processions-- - The Bonfire at Inner Temple Gate--A Barbarous Custom-- - Called to the Bar--A Curious Old Print of 1746--The - White Cockades--An Execution on Kennington Common-- - Shenstone's "Jemmy Dawson"--Counsellor Layer--Dr. - Johnson in the Abbey--The Proclamation of the Peace of - Amiens--The Dispersion of the Armada--City Pageants and - Festivities--The Guildhall--The Guildhall Twin Giants-- - Proclamation of War--A Reflection pp. 4-24 - - - CHAPTER III. THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE). - - Essex Street--Beheading a Bishop--Exeter Place--The - Gipsy Earl--Running a-muck--Lettice Knollys--A Portrait - of Essex--Robert, Earl of Essex, the Parliamentary - General--The Poisoning of Overbury--An Epicurean - Doctor--Clubable Men--The Grecian--The Templar's - Lounge--Tom's Coffee-house--A Princely Collector--"The - Long Strand"--"Honest Shippen"--Boswell's Enthusiasm-- - Sale and the Koran--The Infamous Lord Mohun--A fine - Rebuke--Jacob Tonson pp. 25-55 - - - CHAPTER IV. SOMERSET HOUSE. - - The Protector Somerset--Denmark House--The Queen's - French Servants--The Lying-in-State of Cromwell--Scenes - at Somerset House--Sir Edmondbury Godfrey--Old Somerset - House--Erection of the Modern Building--Carlini's - Grandeur--A Hive of Red Tapists--Expensive Auditing--The - Royal Society--The Geological and the Antiquarian - Societies--A Legend of Somerset House--St. Martin's Lane - Academy--An Insult to Engravers--Rebecca's Practical - Jokes--A Fashionable Man actually Surprised--Lying in - State pp. 56-81 - - - CHAPTER V. THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE, CONTINUED). - - The Folly--Fountain Court and Tavern--The Coal-hole--The - Kit-cat Club--Coutts's Bank--The Eccentric Philosopher-- - Old Salisbury House--Robert the Devil--Little Salisbury - House--Toby Matthew--Ivy Bridge--The Strand Exchange-- - Durham House--Poor Lady Jane--The Parochial Mind--A - Strange Coalition--Garrick's Haunt--Shipley's School of - Art--Barry's Temper--The Celestial Bed--Sir William - Curtis pp. 82-105 - - - CHAPTER VI. THE SAVOY. - - The Earl of Savoy--John Wickliffe--A French King - Prisoner--The Kentish Rebellion--John of Gaunt--The - Hospital of St. John--Cowley's Regrets--Secret - Marriages--Conference between Church of England and - Presbyterian Divines--An Illegal Sanctuary--A Lampooned - General--A Fat Adonis--John Rennie--Waterloo Bridge--The - Duchy of Lancaster pp. 106-125 - - - CHAPTER VII. FROM THE SAVOY TO CHARING CROSS. - - York House--Lord Bacon--"To the Man with an Orchard give - an Apple"--"Steenie"--Buckingham Street--Zimri--York - Stairs--Pepys and Etty--Scenery on the Banks of the - Thames--The London Lodging of Peter the Great--The Czar - and the Quakers--The Hungerford Family--The Suspension - Bridge--Grinling Gibbons--The Two Smiths--Cross - Readings--Northumberland Street--Armed Clergymen pp. 126-145 - - - CHAPTER VIII. THE NORTH SIDE OF THE STRAND (FROM TEMPLE BAR TO CHARING - CROSS). - - Faithorne, the Engraver--The Stupendous Arch--The Murder - of Miss Ray--One of Wren's Churches--Thomas Rymer--Dr. - Johnson at Church--Shallow's Revelry--Low Comedy - Preachers--New Inn--Alas! poor Yorick!--The first - Hackney Coaches--Doyley--The Beef-steak Club--Beef and - Liberty--Madame Vestris--Old Thomson--Irene in a - Garret--Mathews at the Adelphi--The Bad Points of - Mathew's Acting--The Old Adelphi--A Riot in a Theatre-- - Dr. Johnson's Eccentricities pp. 146-189 - - - CHAPTER IX. CHARING CROSS. - - The Gunpowder Plot--Lord Herbert's Chivalry--A Schoolboy - Legend--Goldsmith's Audience--Dobson Buried in a - Garret--Charing--Queen Eleanor--A Brave Ending-- - Great-hearted Colonel Jones--King Charles at Charing - Cross--A Turncoat--A Trick of Curll's--The Cock Lane - Ghost--Savage the Poet--The Mews--The Nelson Column--The - Trafalgar Square Fountains--Want of Pictures of the - English School--Turner's Pictures--Mrs. Centlivre of - Spring Gardens--Maginn's Verses--The Hermitage at - Charing Cross--Ben Jonson's Grace--The Promised Land pp. 190-238 - - - CHAPTER X. ST. MARTIN'S LANE. - - A Certain Proof of Insanity--An Eccentric Character-- - Experimentum Crucis--St. Martin's-in-the-Fields--Gibb's - Opportunity--St. Martin's Church--Good Company--The - Thames Watermen--Copper Holmes--Old Slaughter's-- - Gardelle the Murderer--Hogarth's Quack--St. Martin's - Lane Academy--Hayman's Jokes--The Old Watch-house and - Stocks--Garrick's Tricks--An Encourager of Art--John - Wilkes--The Royal Society of Literature--The Artist - Quarter pp. 239-261 - - - CHAPTER XI. LONG ACRE AND ITS TRIBUTARIES. - - The Plague--Great Queen Street--Burning Panama--Lord - Herbert's Poetry--Kneller's Vanity--Conway House-- - Winchester House--Ryan the Actor--An Eminent Scholar and - Antiquary--Miss Pope--The Freemasons' Hall--Gentleman - Lewis--Franklin's Self-denial--The Gordon Riots--Colonel - Cromwell--An Eccentric Poetaster--Black Will's Rough - Repartee--Ned Ward--Prior's Humble Cell--Stothard--The - Mug-houses--Charles Lamb pp. 262-286 - - - CHAPTER XII. DRURY LANE. - - Drury House--Donne's Vision--Donne in his Shroud--The - Queen of Bohemia--Brave Lord Craven--An Anecdote of - Gondomar--Drury Lane Poets--Nell Gwynn--Zoffany--The - King's Company--Memoranda by Pepys--Anecdotes of Joe - Haines--Mrs. Oldfield's Good Sense--The Wonder of the - Town--Quin and Garrick--Barry and Garrick--The Bellamy-- - The Siddons--Dicky Suett--Liston's Hypochondria--The - First Play--Elliston's Tears--The End of a Man about - Town--Edmund Kean--Grimaldi--Kelly and Malibran--Keeley - and Harley--Scenes at Drury Lane--"Wicked Will - Whiston"--Henley's Butchers--"Il faut vivre"--Henley's - Sermons--The Leaden Seals pp. 287-348 - - - CHAPTER XIII. ST. GILES'S. - - The Lollards--Cobham's Death--The Lazar House--Holborn - First Paved--The Mud Deluge--French Protestants--The - Plague Cart--The Plague Time--Brought to his Knees--The - New Church--The Grave of Flaxman--The Thorntons--Hog - Lane--The Tyburn Bowl--The Swan on the Hop--The Irish - Deluge--Sham Abraham--Simon and his Dog--Hiring Babies-- - Pavement Chalkers--Monmouth Street pp. 349-386 - - - CHAPTER XIV. LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. - - The Earl of Lincoln's Garden--The Headless Chancellor-- - Spelman a late Ripener--Denham and Wither--Lord - Lyndhurst--Warburton and Heber--Ben Jonson the - Bricklayer--A Murder in Whetstone Park--The Dangers of - Lincoln's Inn Fields--Shelter in St. John's Wood--Lord - William Russell--A Brave Wife--Pelham--The Caricature of - a Duke--Wilde and Best--Lindsey House--The Dukes of - Ancaster--Skeletons--Lady Fanshawe--Lord Kenyon's - Latin--The Belzoni Sarcophagus--Sir John Soane--Worthy - Mrs. Chapone--The Duke's House--Betterton--Mrs. - Bracegirdle--A Riot--Rich's Pantomime--The Jump pp. 387-442 - - APPENDIX pp. 443-465 - - INDEX pp. 467-476 - - - - -DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. - - - TEMPLE BAR, 1761, from a drawing by S. Wale. The view is - taken from the City side of the Bar, looking through the - arch to Butcher Row and St. Clement's Church. The sign - projecting from the house to the spectator's left is that - of the famous Devil Tavern _Vignette on Title_ - - PAGE - - OLD HOUSES, SHIP YARD, TEMPLE BAR, circa 1761, from a plate - in Wilkinson's _Londina Illustrata_ 4 - - THE LORD MAYOR'S SHOW. From the picture by Hogarth 19 - - TEMPLE BAR, 1746, copied from an undated print published soon - after the execution of the rebel adherents of the young - Pretender. The view is surrounded by an emblematic framework, - and contains representations of the heads of Townley and - Fletcher, remarkable as the last so exposed; they remained - there till 1772 23 - - ST. CLEMENT'S CHURCH AND THE STRAND IN 1753, from a print by - I. Maurer 25 - - - TWO VIEWS OF ARUNDEL HOUSE, 1646, after Hollar. These views, - unique of their kind, are particularly valuable for the - clear idea they give of a noble London mansion of the period. - Arundel House retains many ancient features, particularly in - its dining-hall, which, with the brick residence for the - noble owner, is the only dignified portion of the building. - The rest has the character of an inn-yard--a mere collection - of ill-connected outhouses and stabling. The shed with the - tall square window in the roof was the depository of the - famous collection of pictures and antiques made by the - renowned Earl, part of which still forms the Arundel - Collection at Oxford 40, 41 - - PENN'S HOUSE, NORFOLK STREET, 1749, from a view by J. Buck. - The view is taken from the river, looking up Norfolk Street - to a range of old houses, still standing, in the Strand. - Penn's house was the last on the west side of the street (to - the spectator's left), overlooking the water 55 - - SOMERSET HOUSE FROM THE RIVER, 1746, from an engraving by I. - Knyff. Upon a barge moored in the river is seen the famous - coffee-house known as "The Folly," which, originally used as - a musical summer-house, ended in being the resort of depravity 56 - - STRAND FRONT OF SOMERSET HOUSE, 1777, from a large engraving - after I. Moss 80 - - JACOB TONSON'S BOOK-SHOP, 1742, from an etching by Benoist. - The shop of this famous bibliopole was opposite Catherine - Street. The view is obtained from the background of the - print representing a burlesque procession of Masons, got up - by some humourist in ridicule of the craft 82 - - OLD HOUSES IN THE STRAND, 1742, copied from the same print as - the preceding view. These houses stood on the site of the - present Wellington Street 104 - - THE SAVOY, FROM THE THAMES, IN 1650, after Hollar 106 - - THE SAVOY CHAPEL, from an original drawing 119 - - THE SAVOY PRISON, 1793, from an etching by J. T. Smith 125 - - DURHAM HOUSE, 1790, from an etching by J. T. Smith 126 - - THE WATER GATE, 1860, from a Sketch 133 - - YORK STAIRS AND SURROUNDING BUILDINGS, circa 1745, after an - original drawing by Canaletti in the British Museum. This is - one of the few interesting views of Old London sketched by - Canaletti during his short stay in England. It comprises the - famous water-gate designed by Inigo Jones, and the tall - wooden tower of the York Buildings Water Company. The large - mansion behind this (at the south-west corner of Buckingham - Street) was that inhabited by Pepys from 1684, and in which - he entertained the members of the Royal Society during his - presidency. The house at the opposite corner (seen above the - trees) is that in which the Czar Peter the Great resided for - some time, when he visited England for instruction in - shipbuilding 144 - - CROCKFORD'S FISH-SHOP, from an original sketch 146 - - THE OLD ROMAN BATH, from a drawing 169 - - EXETER CHANGE, 1821, from an etching by Cooke 188 - - TITUS OATES IN THE PILLORY, from an anonymous contemporary - Dutch engraving 190 - - THE KING'S MEWS, 1750, from a print by I. Maurer. This - building, erected in 1732 at the expense of King George II., - was pulled down in 1830. In the foreground of this view the - King is represented returning to his carriage after - inspecting his horses 238 - - BARRACK AND OLD HOUSES on the site of Trafalgar Square in - 1826, from an original sketch by F. W. Fairholt. The view is - taken from St. Martin's Church, looking toward Pall Mall; - the building in the distance, to the left, is the College of - Physicians 239 - - OLD SLAUGHTER'S COFFEE-HOUSE, 1826, from an original sketch - by F. W. Fairholt 260 - - SALISBURY AND WORCESTER HOUSES IN 1630, from a drawing by - Hollar in the Pepysian Library, Cambridge 262 - - LYON'S INN, 1804, from an engraving in Herbert's _History of - the Inns of Court_ 286 - - CRAVEN HOUSE, 1790, from an original drawing in the British - Museum 287 - - DRURY LANE THEATRE, 1806, from an original drawing by Pugin. - This was the _third_ theatre, succeeding Garrick's. It was - built by Henry Holland, opened March 12, 1794, and burnt down - Feb. 24, 1809. It was never properly finished on the side - toward Catherine Street, where this view was taken 347 - - CHURCH LANE AND DYOT STREET, from an original sketch by F. W. - Fairholt 349 - - THE SEVEN DIALS, from an original sketch by F. W. Fairholt 386 - - LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS THEATRE IN 1821, from an original sketch - by F. W. Fairholt 387 - - THE BLACK JACK, Portsmouth Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, from - an original sketch by F. W. Fairholt. This public-house was - the resort of the actors from the theatre, and among them Joe - Miller, who was buried in the graveyard close by, where the - hospital now stands. The house was also frequented by Jack - Sheppard, and was sometimes termed "The Jump," from the - circumstance of his having once jumped from one of the - first-floor windows to escape from officers of justice 441 - - - - -HAUNTED LONDON. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -INTRODUCTION. - - -One day when Fuseli and Haydon were walking together, they reached the -summit of a hill whence they could catch a glimpse of St. Paul's. - -There was the grey dome looming out by fits through rolling drifts of -murky smoke. The two little lion-like men stood watching "the sublime -canopy that shrouds the city of the world."[1] Now it spread and seethed -like the incense from Moloch's furnace; now it lifted and thinned into the -purer blue, like the waft of some great sacrifice, or settled down to -deeper and gloomier grandeur over "the vastness of modern Babylon." That -brown cloud hid a huge ants' nest teeming with three millions of people. -That dome, with its golden coronet and cross, rose like the globe in an -emperor's hand--a type of the civilisation, and power, and Christianity of -England. - -The hearts of the two men beat faster at the great sight. - -"Be George!" said Fuseli, shaking his white hair and stamping his little -foot, "be George! sir, it's like the smoke of the Israelites making bricks -for the Egyptians." - -"It is grander, Fuseli," said Haydon, "for it is the smoke of a people who -would _have made the Egyptians make bricks for them_." - -It is of the multitudinous streets of this more than Egyptian city, their -traditions, and their past and present inhabitants, that I would now -write. I shall not pass by many houses where any eminent men dwell or -dwelt, without some biographical anecdote, some epigram, some -illustration; yet I will not stop long at any door, because so many others -await me. I have "set down," I hope, "nought in malice." Truth I trust has -been, and truth alone shall be, my object. I shall stay at Charing Cross -to point out the heroism of the dying regicides; I shall pause at -Whitehall to narrate some redeeming traits even in the character of a -wilful king. - -The growth of London, and its conquest of suburb after suburb, has roused -the imagination of poets and essayists ever since the days of Queen -Elizabeth. - -When James I. forbade the building of fresh houses outside London walls, -he little foresaw the time when the City would become almost impassable; -when practical men would burrow roads under ground, or make subterranean -railways to drain off the choking traffic; when cool-headed people would -seriously propose to have flying bridges thrown over the chief -thoroughfares; when new manners and customs, new diseases, new follies, -new social complications would arise, from the fact of three millions of -men silently agreeing to live together on only eleven square miles of -land; when fish would cease to inhabit the poisoned river; when the roar -of the traffic would render it almost impossible to converse; when, in -fact, London would grow too large for comfort, safety, pleasure, or even -social intercourse. - -It is difficult to select from what centre to commence a pilgrimage. For -old Roman London we might start from the Exchange or the Tower; for -mediaeval London from Chepe or Aldermanbury; for fashionable London from -Charing Cross; for Shaksperean London from the Globe or Blackfriars. Even -then our tours would be circuitous, and sometimes retrograde, and we -should turn and double like hares before the hounds. - -I have for several reasons, therefore, and after some consideration, -decided to start from Temple Bar, and walk westward along the Strand to -Charing Cross; then to turn up St. Martin's Lane, and return by Longacre -and Drury Lane to Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. - -That walk embraces the long line of palaces which once adorned the Strand, -or river-bank street, the countless haunts of artists in St. Martin's -Lane, the legends of Longacre, the theatrical reminiscences of Drury Lane, -and the old noblemen's houses in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. It comprises a -period not so remote as East London, and not so modern as that of the West -End. It brings us acquainted not only with many of the contemporaries of -Shakspere and Dryden, but also with many celebrities of Garrick's time and -of Dr. Johnson's age. - -If this is not the best point of departure, it has at least much to be -said in its favour, as the loop I have drawn includes nothing intramural, -and comprises a part of London inhabited by persons who lived more within -the times of memoir-writing than those in the farther East,--a district, -too, more within the range of the antiquary than the newer region of the -West. - -I trust that in these remarks I have in some degree explained why I have -spent so much time in pouring "old wine into new bottles." - -A preface is too often a pillory made by an author, in which he exposes -himself to a shower of the most unsavoury missiles. I trust that mine may -be considered only as a wayside stone on which I stand to offer a fitting -apology for what I trust is a venial fault. - -It is the glory of my old foster-mother, London, I would celebrate; it is -her virtues and her crimes I would record. Her miles of red-tiled roofs, -her quiet green squares, her vast black mountain of a cathedral, her -silver belt of a river, her acres and acres of stony terraces, her -beautiful parks, her tributary fleets, seem to me as so many episodes in -one great epic, the true delineation of which would form a new chapter in -the HISTORY OF MANKIND. - - - - -[Illustration: SHIP YARD, TEMPLE BAR, 1761.] - - -CHAPTER II. - -TEMPLE BAR. - - -Temple Bar, that old dingy gateway of blackened Portland stone which -separates the Strand from Fleet Street, the City from the Shire, and the -Freedom of the City of London from the Liberty of the City of Westminster, -was built by Sir Christopher Wren in the year 1670, four years after the -Great Fire, and ten after the Restoration. - -In earlier days there were at this spot only posts, rails, and a chain, as -at Holborn, Smithfield, and Whitechapel. In later times, however, a house -of timber was erected, with a narrow gateway and one passage on the south -side.[2] - -The original Bar seems to have crossed Fleet Street, several yards farther -to the east of its successor. In the time of James I. it consisted of an -iron railing with a gate in the middle. A man sat on the spot for many -years after the erection of the new gate, to take toll from all carts -which had not the City arms painted on them. - -Temple Bar, if described now in an architect's catalogue, would be noted -as pierced with two side posterns for foot passengers, and having a -central flattened archway for carriages. In the upper story is an -apartment with semicircular arched windows on the eastern and western -sides, and the whole is crowned with a sweeping pediment. - -On the western or Westminster side there are two niches, in which are -placed mean statues of Charles I. and Charles II. in fluttering Roman -robes, and on the east or Fleet Street side there are statues of James I. -and Queen Elizabeth. They are all remarkable for their small feeble heads, -their affected and crinkled drapery, and the piebald look produced by -their projecting hands and feet being washed white by years of rain, while -the rest of their bodies remains a sooty black. - -The upper room is held of the City by the partners of the very ancient -firm of Messrs. Child, bankers. There they store their books and records, -as in an old muniment-chamber. The north side ground floor, next to Shire -Lane, was occupied as a barber's shop from the days of Steele and the -_Tatler_. - -The centre slab on the east side of Temple Bar once contained the -following inscription, now all but obliterated:--"Erected in the year -1670, Sir Samuel Sterling, Mayor; continued in the year 1671, Sir Richard -Ford, Lord Mayor; and finished in the year 1672, Sir George Waterman, -Lord Mayor." It is probable that the corresponding western slab, and also -the smaller one over the postern, once bore inscriptions. - -Temple Bar was doomed to destruction by the City as early as 1790, through -the exertions of Alderman Picket. "Threatened men live long," says an old -Italian proverb. Temple Bar still stands[3] a narrow neck to an immense -decanter; an impeder of traffic, a venerable nuisance, with nothing -interesting but its associations and its dirt. But then let us remember -that as Holborn Hill has tormented horses and drivers ever since the -Conquest, and its steepness is not yet in any way mitigated,[4] we must -not expect hasty reforms in London. - -It does not enter into my purpose (unless I walked like a crab, backwards) -to give the history of Child's bank. Suffice it for me to say that it -stands on part of the site of the old Devil Tavern, kept by old Simon -Wadloe, where Ben Jonson held his club. It was taken down in 1788, and -Child's Place built in its stead.[5] Alderman Backwell, who was ruined by -the shutting up of the Exchequer in the reign of Charles II., and became a -partner in this, the oldest banking-house in London, was the agent for -Government in the sale of Dunkirk to the French. - -Pepys makes frequent allusions to his friend Child, probably one of the -founders of this bank. The Duke of York opposed his interference in -Admiralty matters, and had a quarrel with a gentleman who declared that -whoever impugned Child's honesty must be a knave. Child wrote an -enlightened work on Indian trade, supporting the interests of the East -India Company. - -Apollo Court, exactly opposite the bank, marks a passage that once faced -the Apollo room, from whose windows Ben Jonson must have often glowered -and Herrick laughed. - -Archenholz says that in his day there were forty-eight bankers in London. -"The Duke of Marlborough," writes the Prussian traveller, "had some years -ago in the hands of Child the banker, a fund of ten, fifteen, or twenty -thousand pounds. Drummond had often in his hands several hundred thousand -pounds at one time belonging to the Government."[6] - -In the earliest London Directory (1677),[7] among "the goldsmiths that -keep running cashes," we find "Richard Blanchard and Child, at the -Marygold in Fleet Street." The huge marigold (really a sun in full shine), -above four feet high, the original street-sign of the old goldsmiths at -Temple Bar, is still preserved in one of the rooms of Child's bank. - -John Bushnell, the sculptor who executed the statues on Temple Bar, being -compelled by his master, Burman, of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, to marry a -discarded servant-maid, went to Italy, and resided in Rome and Venice, and -in the latter place executed a monument to a Procuratore, representing a -naval engagement between the Venetians and the Turks. His best works are -Cowley's monument, that of Sir Palmes Fairborne in Westminster Abbey, and -Lord Mordaunt's statue in Fulham church. He also executed the statues of -Charles I., Charles II., and Sir Thomas Gresham for the Royal Exchange. He -had agreed to complete the set of kings, but Cibber being also engaged, -Bushnell would not finish the six or seven he had begun. Being told by -rival sculptors that he could carve only drapery, and not the naked -figure, he produced a very despicable Alexander the Great. - -The next whim of this vain, fantastic, and crazy man, was to prove that -the Trojan Horse could really have been constructed.[8] He therefore had a -wooden horse built with huge timbers, which he proposed to cover with -stucco. The head held twelve men and a table; the eyes served as windows. -Before it was half completed, however, it was demolished by a storm of -wind, and no entreaties of the two vintners who had contracted to use the -horse for a drinking booth could induce the mortified projector to rebuild -the monster, which had already cost him L500. A wiser plan of his, that of -bringing coal to London by sea, also miscarried; and the loss of an estate -in Kent, through an unsuccessful lawsuit, completed the overthrow of -Bushnell's never very well-balanced brain. He died in 1701, and was buried -at Paddington. His two sons (to one of whom he left L100 a year, and to -the other L60) became recluses, moping in an unfinished house of their -father's, facing Hyde Park, in the lane leading from Piccadilly to Tyburn, -now Park Lane. This strange abode had neither staircase nor doors, but -there they brooded, sordid and impracticable, saying that the world had -not been worthy of their father. Vertue, in 1728, describes a visit to the -house, which was then choked with unfinished statues and pictures. There -was a ruined cast of an intended brass equestrian statue of Charles II.: -an Alexander and other unfinished kings completed the disconsolate -brotherhood. Against the wall leant a great picture of a classic triumph, -almost obliterated; and on the floor lay a bar of iron, as thick as a -man's wrist, that had been broken by some forgotten invention of -Bushnell's. - -After the discovery of the absurd Meal-Tub Plot, in 1679, the 17th of -November, the anniversary of the accession of Queen Elizabeth was kept, -according to custom, as a high Protestant festival, and celebrated by an -extraordinary procession, at the expense of the Green-Ribbon Club, a few -citizens, and some gentlemen of the Temple. The bells began to ring out at -three o'clock in the morning; at dusk the procession began at Moorgate, -and passed through Cheapside and Fleet Street, where it ended with a huge -bonfire, "just over against the Inner Temple gate."[9] - -The stormy procession was thus constituted:-- - -1. Six whifflers, in pioneer caps and red waistcoats, who cleared the -way. 2. A bellman, ringing his bell, and with a doleful voice crying, -"Remember Justice Godfrey." 3. A dead body, representing the wood-merchant -of Hartshorne Lane (Sir E. Godfrey), in a decent black habit, white -gloves, and the cravat wherewith he was murdered about his neck, with -spots of blood on his wrists, breast, and shirt. This figure was held on a -white horse by a man representing one of the murderers. 4. A priest in a -surplice and cope, embroidered with bones, skulls, and skeletons. He -handed pardons to all who would meritoriously murder Protestants. 5. A -priest, bearing a great silver cross. 6. Four Carmelite friars, in white -and black robes. 7. Four Grey Friars. 8. Six Jesuits with bloody daggers. -9. The waits, playing all the way. 10. Four bishops in purple, with lawn -sleeves, golden crosses on their breasts, and croziers in their hands. 11. -Four other bishops, in full pontificals (copes and surplices), wearing -gilt mitres. 12. Six cardinals, in scarlet robes and caps. 13. The Pope's -chief physician, with Jesuits' powder and other still more grotesque -badges of his office. 14. Two priests in surplices, bearing golden -crosses. 15. Then came the centre of all this pageant, the Pope himself, -sitting in a scarlet and gilt fringed chair of state. His feet were on a -cushion, supported by two boys in surplices, with censers and white silk -banners, painted with red crosses and bloody consecrated daggers. His -Holiness wore a scarlet gown, lined with ermine and daubed with gold and -silver lace. On his head he had the triple tiara, and round his neck a -gilt collar, strung with precious stones, beads, Agnus Dei's, and St. -Peter's keys. At the back of his chair climbed and whispered the devil, -who hugged and caressed him, and sometimes urged him aloud to kill King -Charles, or to forge a Protestant plot and to fire the city again, for -which purpose he kept a torch ready lit. - -The number of spectators in the balconies and windows was computed at two -hundred thousand. A hundred and fifty flambeaux followed the procession by -order, and as many more came as volunteers. - -Roger North also describes a fellow with a stentorophonic tube (a -speaking-trumpet), who kept bellowing out--"Abhorrers! abhorrers!"[10] - -Lastly came a complaisant, civil gentleman, who was meant to represent -either Sir Roger l'Estrange, or the King of France, or the Duke of York. -"Taking all in good part, he went on his way to the fire." - -At Temple Bar some of the mob had crowned the statue of Elizabeth with -gilt laurel, and placed in her hand a gilt shield with the motto, "The -Protestant Religion and Magna Charta." A spear leant against her arm, and -the niche was lit with candles and flambeaux, so that, as North said, she -looked like the goddess Pallas, the object of some solemn worship and -sacrifice. - -All this time perpetual battles and skirmishes went on between the Whigs -and Tories at the different windows, and thousands of volleys of squibs -were discharged. - -When the pope was at last toppled into the fire a prodigious shout was -raised, that spread as far as Somerset House, where the queen then was, -and, as a pamphleteer of the time says, before it ceased, reached -Scotland, France, and even Rome. - -From these processions the word MOB (_mobile vulgus_) became introduced -into our language.[11] In 1682, Charles II. tried to prohibit this annual -festival, but it continued nevertheless till the reign of Queen Anne, or -even later.[12] - -At Temple Bar, where the houses seemed turned into mountains of heads, and -many fireworks were let off, a man representing the English cardinal -(Philip Howard, brother of the Duke of Norfolk) sang a rude part-song with -other men who personated the people of England. The cardinal first -began:-- - - "From York to London town we come - To talk of Popish ire, - To reconcile you all to Rome, - And prevent Smithfield fire." - -To which the people replied, valorously:-- - - "Cease, cease, thou Norfolk cardinal, - See! yonder stands Queen Bess, - Who saved our souls from Popish thrall: - Oh, Bess! Queen Bess! Queen Bess! - - "Your Popish plot, and Smithfield threat, - We do not fear at all, - For, lo! beneath Queen Bess's feet, - You fall! you fall! you fall! - - "'Tis true our king's on t'other side, - A looking t'wards Whitehall, - But could we bring him round about, - He'd counterplot you all. - - "Then down with James and up with Charles, - On good Queen Bess's side, - That all true commons, lords, and earls - May wish him a fruitful bride. - - "Now God preserve great Charles our king, - And eke all honest men, - And traitors all to justice bring: - Amen! Amen! Amen!" - -It was formerly the barbarous and brutal custom to place the heads and -quarters of traitors upon Temple Bar as scarecrows to all persons who did -not consider William of Orange, or the Elector of Hanover, the rightful -possessors of the English crown. - -Sir Thomas Armstrong was the first to help to deck Wren's new arch. When -Shaftesbury fled in 1683, and the Court had partly discovered his -intrigues with Monmouth and the Duke of Argyle, the more desperate men of -the Exclusion Party plotted to stop the king's coach as he returned from -Newmarket to London, at the Rye House, a lonely mansion near Hoddesden. -The plot was discovered, and Monmouth escaped to Holland. In the meantime -the informers dragged Russell and Sydney into the scheme, for which they -were falsely put to death. Sir Thomas Armstrong, who had been taken at -Leyden and delivered up to the English Ambassador at the Hague, claimed a -trial as a surrendered outlaw, according to the 6th Edward VI. But Judge -Jeffreys refused him his request, as he had not surrendered voluntarily, -but had been brought by force. Armstrong still claiming the benefit of the -law, the brutal judge replied:--"And the benefit of the law you shall -have, by the grace of God. See that execution be done on Friday next, -according to law." - -Armstrong had sinned deeply against the king. He had sold himself to the -French ambassador, he had urged Monmouth on in his undutiful conduct to -his father, and he had been an active agent in the Rye House Plot. Charles -would listen to no voice in his favour. On the scaffold he denied any -intention of assassinating the king or changing the form of -government.[13] - -Sir William Perkins and Sir John Friend were the next unfortunate -gentlemen who lent their heads to crown the Bar. They were rash, -hot-headed Jacobites, who, too eagerly adopting the "ultima ratio" of -political partisans, had planned, in 1696, to stop King William's coach in -a deep lane between Brentford and Turnham Green, as he returned from -hunting at Richmond. Sir John Friend was a person who had acquired wealth -and credit from mean beginnings, but Perkins was a man of fortune, -violently attached to King James, though as one of the six clerks of -Chancery he had taken the oath to the new Government. Friend owned that he -had been at a treasonable meeting at the King's Head Tavern in Leadenhall -Street, but denied connivance in the assassination-plot. Perkins made an -artful and vigorous defence, but the judge acted as counsel for the Crown -and guided the jury. They both suffered at Tyburn, three nonjuring -clergymen absolving them, much to the indignation of the loyal -bystanders.[14] - -John Evelyn calls the sight of Temple Bar "a dismal sight."[15] Thank God, -this revolting spectacle of traitors' heads will never be seen here again. - -In 1716 Colonel Henry Oxburgh's head was added to the quarters of Sir -John Friend (a brewer) and the skull of Sir William Perkins. Oxburgh was a -Lancashire gentleman, who had served in the French army. General Foster -(who escaped from Newgate, in 1716) had made him colonel directly he -joined the Pretender's army. To him, too, had been entrusted the -humiliating task of proposing capitulation to the king's troops at -Preston, when the Highlanders, frenzied with despair, were eager to sally -out and cut their way through the enemy's dragoons. He met death with a -serene temper. A fellow-prisoner described his words as coming "like a -gleam from God. You received comfort," he says, "from the man you came to -comfort." Oxburgh was executed at Tyburn, May 14; his body was buried at -St. Giles', all but his head, and that was placed on Temple Bar two days -afterwards. - -A curious print of 1746 represents Temple Bar with the three heads raised -on tall poles or iron rods. The devil looks down in triumph and waves the -rebel banner, on which are three crowns and a coffin, with the motto, "A -crown or a grave." Underneath are written these wretched verses: - - "Observe the banner which would all enslave, - Which ruined traytors did so proudly wave. - The devil seems the project to despise; - A fiend confused from off the trophy flies. - - "While trembling rebels at the fabrick gaze, - And dread their fate with horror and amaze, - Let Briton's sons the _emblematick_ view, - And plainly see what to rebellion's due." - -A curious little book "by a member of the Inner Temple," which has -preserved this print, has also embalmed the following stupid and -cold-blooded impromptu on the heads of Oxburgh, Townley, and Fletcher:-- - - "Three heads here I spy, - Which the glass did draw nigh, - The better to have a good sight; - Triangle they're placed, - Old, bald, and barefaced, - Not one of them e'er was upright."[16] - -The heads of Fletcher and Townley were put up on Temple Bar August 2, -1746. On August 16, Walpole writes to Montague to say that he had "passed -under the new heads at Temple Bar, where people made a trade of letting -spying-glasses at a halfpenny a look." - -Townley was a young officer about thirty-eight years of age, born at -Wigan, and of a good family. His uncle had been out in 1715, but was -acquitted on his trial. Townley had been fifteen years abroad in the -French army, and was close to the Duke of Berwick when the duke's head was -shot off at the siege of Philipsburgh. When the Highlanders came into -England he met them near Preston, and received from the young Pretender a -commission to raise a regiment of foot. He had been also commandant at -Carlisle, and directed the sallies from thence. - -Fletcher, a young linen chapman at Salford, had been seen pulling off his -hat and shouting when a sergeant and a drummer were beating up for -volunteers at the Manchester Exchange. He had been seen also at Carlisle, -dressed as an officer, with a white cockade in his hat and a plaid sash -round his waist.[17] - -Seven other Jacobites were executed on Kennington Common with Fletcher and -Townley. They were unchained from the floor of their room in Southwark new -gaol early in the morning, and having taken coffee, had their irons -knocked off. They were then, at about ten o'clock, put into three sledges, -each drawn by three horses. The executioner, with a drawn scimitar, sat in -the first sledge with Townley; a party of dragoons and a detachment of -foot-guards conducted him to the gallows, near which a pile of faggots and -a block had been placed. While the prisoners were stepping from their -sledges into a cart drawn up beneath a tree, the wood was set on fire, and -the guards formed a circle round the place of execution. The prisoners had -no clergyman, but Mr. Morgan, one of their number, put on his spectacles -and read prayers to them, which they listened and responded to with -devoutness. This lasted above an hour. Each one then threw his -prayer-book and some written papers among the spectators; they also -delivered notes to the sheriff, and then flung their hats into the crowd. -"Six of the hats," says the quaint contemporary account, "were laced with -gold,--all of these prisoners having been genteelly dressed." Immediately -after, the executioner took a white cap from each man's pocket and drew it -over his eyes; then they were turned off. When they had hung about three -minutes, the executioner pulled off their shoes, white stockings, and -breeches, a butcher removing their other clothes. The body of Mr. Townley -was then cut down and laid upon a block, and the butcher seeing some signs -of life remaining, struck it on the breast, then took out the bowels and -the heart, and threw them into the fire. Afterwards, with a cleaver, they -severed the head and placed it with the body in the coffin. When the last -heart, which was Mr. Dawson's, was tossed into the fire, the executioner -cried, "God save King George!" and the immense multitude gave a great -shout. The heads and bodies were then removed to Southwark gaol to await -the king's pleasure. - -According to another account the bodies were cloven into quarters; and as -the butcher held up each heart he cried, "Behold the heart of a traitor!" - -Mr. James Dawson, one of the unhappy men thus cruelly punished, was a -young Lancashire gentleman of fortune, just engaged to be married. The -unhappy lady followed his sledge to the place of execution, and approached -near enough to see the fire kindled and all the other dreadful -preparations. She bore it well till she heard her lover was no more, but -then drew her head back into the coach, and crying out, "My dear, I follow -thee!--I follow thee! Sweet Jesus, receive our souls together!" fell on -the neck of a companion and expired. Shenstone commemorated this -occurrence in a plaintive ballad called "Jemmy Dawson." - -Mr. Dawson is described as "a mighty gay gentleman, who frequented much -the company of the ladies, and was well respected by all his acquaintance -of either sex for his genteel deportment. He was as strenuous for their -vile cause as any one in the rebel army. When he was condemned and double -fettered, he said he did not care if they were to put a ton weight of iron -on him; it would not in the least daunt his resolution."[18] - -On January 20 (between 2 and 3 A.M.), 1766, a man was taken up for -discharging musket-bullets from a steel crossbow at the two remaining -heads upon Temple Bar. On being examined he affected a disorder in his -senses, and said his reason for doing so was "his strong attachment to the -present Government, and that he thought it was not sufficient that a -traitor should merely suffer death; that this provoked his indignation, -and that it had been his constant practice for three nights past to amuse -himself in the same manner. And it is much to be feared," says the -recorder of the event, "that he is a near relation to one of the unhappy -sufferers."[19] Upon searching this man, about fifty musket-bullets were -found on him, wrapped up in a paper with a motto--"Eripuit ille vitam." - -"Yesterday," says a news-writer of the 1st of April, 1772, "one of the -rebel heads on Temple Bar fell down. There is only one head now -remaining." - -The head that fell was probably that of Councillor Layer, executed for -high treason in 1723. The blackened head was blown off the spike during a -violent storm. It was picked up by Mr. John Pearce, an attorney, one of -the Nonjurors of the neighbourhood, who showed it to some friends at a -public-house, under the floor of which it was buried. In the meanwhile Dr. -Rawlinson, a Jacobite antiquarian, having begged for the relic, was -imposed on with another. In his will the doctor desired to be buried with -this head in his right hand,[20] and the request was complied with. - -This Dr. Rawlinson, one of the first promoters of the Society of -Antiquaries, and son of a lord mayor of London, died in 1755. His body was -buried in St. Giles' churchyard, Oxford, and his heart in St. John's -College. The sale of his effects lasted several days, and produced L1164. -He left upwards of 20,000 pamphlets; his coins he bequeathed to Oxford. - -The last of the iron poles or spikes on which the heads of the unfortunate -Jacobite gentlemen were fixed, was removed only at the commencement of the -present century.[21] - -The above-named Christopher Layer was a barrister, living in Old -Southampton Buildings, who had engaged in a plot to seize the Bank and the -Tower, to arm the Minters in Southwark, to seize the king, Walpole, and -Lord Cadogan, to place cannon on the terrace of Lincoln's-Inn-Fields -gardens, and to draw a force of armed men together at the Exchange. The -prisoner had received blank promissory-notes signed in the Pretender's own -hand, and also treasonable letters full of cant words of the party in -disguised names--such as Mr. Atkins for the Pretender, Mrs. Barbara Smith -for the army, and Mr. Fountaine for himself. - -It was proved that, at an audience in Rome, Layer had assured the -Pretender that the South Sea losses had done good to his cause; and the -Pretender and the Pretender's wife (through their proxies, Lord North and -Grey, and the Duchess of Ormond) had stood as godfather and godmother to -his (Layer's) daughter's child. - -He was executed at Tyburn in May 1723, and avowed his principles even -under the gallows. His head was taken to Newgate, and the next day fixed -upon Temple Bar; but his quarters were delivered to his relations to be -decently interred. - -In April 1773 Boswell dined at Mr. Beauclerk's with Dr. Johnson, Lord -Charlemont, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and some other members of the Literary -Club--it being the evening when Boswell was to be balloted for as -candidate for admission into that distinguished society.[22] The -conversation turned on Westminster Abbey, and on the new and commendable -practice of erecting monuments to great men in St. Paul's; upon which the -doctor observed-- - -"I remember once being with Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey. While we -surveyed the Poets' Corner, I said to him-- - - 'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur illis.' - -When we got to Temple Bar he stopped me, pointed to the heads upon it, and -slily whispered-- - - 'Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur _istis_.'"[23] - -This walk must have taken place a year or two before 1773, for in 1772, as -we have seen, the last head but one fell. - -O'Keefe, the dramatist, who arrived in England on August 12, 1762, the day -on which the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.) was born, describes -the heads of poor Townley and Fletcher as stuck up on high poles, not over -the central archway, but over the side posterns. Parenthetically he -mentions that he had also seen the walls of Cork gaol garnished with -heads, like the ramparts of the seraglio at Constantinople.[24] - -O'Keefe tells us that he heard the unpopular peace of 1763 proclaimed at -Temple Bar, and witnessed the heralds in the Strand knock at the city -gate. The duke of Nivernois, the French ambassador on that occasion, was a -very little man, who wore a coat of richly-embroidered blue velvet, and a -small _chapeau_, which set the fashion of the Nivernois hat.[25] - -At the proclamation of the short peace of Amiens, the king's marshal, with -his officers, having ridden down the Strand from Westminster, stopped at -Temple Bar, which was kept shut to show that there commenced the Lord -Mayor's jurisdiction. The herald's trumpets were blown thrice; the junior -officer then tapped at the gate with his cane, upon which the City -marshal, in the most unconscious way possible, answered, "Who is there?" -The herald replied, "The officers-of-arms, who seek entrance into the City -to publish his majesty's proclamation of peace." On this the gates were -flung open, and the herald alone was admitted, and conducted to the Lord -Mayor. The latter then read the royal warrant, and returning it to the -bearer, ordered the City marshal to open the gate for the whole -procession. The Lord Mayor and aldermen then joined it, and proceeded to -the Royal Exchange, where the proclamation, that was to bid the cannon -cease and chain up the dogs of war, was read for the last time. - -[Illustration: THE LORD MAYOR'S SHOW. AFTER HOGARTH.] - -The timber work and doors of Temple Bar have been often renewed since -1672. New doors were hung for Nelson's funeral, when the Bar was to be -closed; and again at the funeral of Wellington, when the plumes and -trophies had to be removed in order that the car might pass through the -gate, which was covered with dull theatrical finery.[26] - -The old, black, mud-splashed gates of Temple Bar are also shut whenever -the sovereign has occasion to enter the City. This is an old custom, a -tradition of the times when the city was proud of its privileges, and -sometimes even jealous of royalty. When the cavalcade approaches, a -herald, in his tabard of crimson and gold lace, sounds a trumpet before -the portal of the City; another herald knocks; a parley ensues; the gates -are then thrown open, and the Lord Mayor appearing, kneels and hands the -sword of the city to his sovereign, who graciously returns it. - -Stow describes a scene like this in the old days of the "timber house," -when Queen Elizabeth was on her way to old St. Paul's to return thanks to -God for the discomfiture of the Armada. The City waits fluted, trumpeted, -and fiddled from the roof of the gate; while below, the Lord Mayor and his -brethren, in scarlet gowns, received and welcomed their brave queen, -delivering up the sword which, after certain speeches, she re-delivered to -the mayor, who, then taking horse, rode onward to St. Paul's bearing it in -its shining sheath before her.[27] - -In the June after the execution of Charles I., when Cromwell had dispersed -the mutinous regiments with his horse, and pistolled or hanged their -leaders, a day of thanksgiving was appointed, and the Parliament, the -Council of State, and the Council of the Army, after endless sermons, -dined together at Grocers' Hall; on that day Lenthall, the Speaker, -received the sword of state from the mayor at the Bar, and assumed the -functions of royalty. - -The same ceremony took place when Queen Anne went to St. Paul's to return -thanks for the Duke of Marlborough's victories, and again when George III. -came to return thanks for a recovery from his fit of insanity, and when -Queen Victoria passed on her way to Cornhill to open the Royal Exchange. - -Temple Bar naturally does not figure much in the early City pageants, -because, after proceeding to Westminster by water, the mayor and aldermen -usually landed at St. Paul's Stairs. - -It is, we believe, first mentioned in the great festivities when the City -brought poor Anne Boleyn, in 1533, from Greenwich to the Tower, and on the -second day after conducted her through the chief streets and honoured her -with shows. On that day the Fleet Street conduit ran claret, and Temple -Bar was newly painted and repaired; there also stood singing men and -children, till the company rode on to Westminster Hall. The next day was -the coronation.[28] - -On the 19th of February 1546-7 the young King Edward VI. passed through -London, the day before his coronation. At the Fleet Street conduit two -hogsheads of wine were given to the people. The gate at Temple Bar was -also painted and fashioned with varicoloured battlements and buttresses, -richly hung with cloth of arras, and garnished with fourteen standards. -There were eight French trumpeters blowing their best, besides a pair of -"regals," with children singing to the same.[29] - -In September 1553 Queen Mary rode through London, the day before her -coronation, in a chariot covered with cloth of tissue, and drawn by six -horses draped with the same. Minstrels played at Ludgate, and the Temple -Bar was newly painted and hung.[30] - -But even a greater time came for the old City boundary in January 1558-9, -when Queen Elizabeth went from the Tower to Westminster. Temple Bar was -"finely dressed" up with the two giants--Gog and Magog (now in the -Guildhall)--who held between them a poetical recapitulation of all the -other pageantries, both in Latin and English. On the south side was a -noise of singing children, one of whom, richly attired as a poet, gave the -queen farewell in the name of the whole city.[31] - -In 1603 King James, Queen Anne of Denmark, and Prince Henry Frederick -passed through "the honourable City and Chamber" of London, and were -welcomed with pageants. The last arch, that of Temple Bar, represented a -temple of Janus. The principal character was Peace, with War grovelling at -her feet; by her stood Wealth; below sat the four handmaids of -Peace,--Quiet treading on Tumult, Liberty on Servitude, Safety on Danger, -and Felicity on Unhappiness. There was then recited a poetical dialogue by -the Flamen Martialis and the Genius Urbis, written by Ben Jonson. - -Here, hitherto, the pageantry had always ceased, but the Strand suburbs -having now greatly increased, there was an additional pageant beyond -Temple Bar, which had been thought of and perfected in only twelve days. -The invention was a rainbow; and the moon, sun, and pleiades advanced -between two magnificent pyramids seventy feet high, on which were drawn -out the king's pedigrees through both the English and the Scottish -monarchs. A speech composed by Ben Jonson was delivered by Electra.[32] - -When Charles II. came through London, according to custom, the day before -his coronation, I suspect that "the fourth arch in Fleet Street" was close -to Temple Bar. It was of the Doric and Ionic orders, and was dedicated to -Plenty, who made a speech, surrounded by Bacchus, Ceres, Flora, Pomona, -and the Winds; but whether the latter were alive or only dummies, I cannot -say. - -The _London Gazette_ of February 8, 1665-6, announces the proclamation of -war against France; and Pepys mentions this as also the day on which they -went into mourning at court for the King of Spain. War was proclaimed by -the herald-at-arms and two of his brethren, his majesty's -sergeants-at-arms, and trumpeters, with the other usual officers before -Whitehall, and afterwards (the Lord Mayor and his brethren assisting) at -Temple Bar, and in other usual parts of the City. - -James II., in 1687, honoured Sir John Shorter as Lord Mayor with his -presence at an inaugurative banquet at Guildhall. The king was accompanied -by Prince George of Denmark, and was met by the two sheriffs at Temple -Bar. - -[Illustration: TEMPLE BAR, 1746.] - -On Lord Mayor's Day, 1689, when King William and Queen Mary came to the -City to see the show, the City militia regiments lined the street as far -as Temple Bar, and beyond came the red and blue regiments of Middlesex and -Westminster; the soldiers, at regulated distances, holding lighted -flambeaux in their hands, and all the houses being illuminated.[33] - -In 1697, when Macaulay's hero, William III., made a triumphant entry into -London to celebrate the conclusion of the peace of Ryswick, the procession -included fourscore state coaches, each with six horses; the three City -regiments guarded Temple Bar, and beyond them came the liveries of the -several companies, with their banners and ensigns displayed.[34] - -George III. in his day, and Queen Victoria in her and our own, passed -through Temple Bar in state more than once, on their way into the City; -the last occasion was on February 1872, when the Queen proceeded to St. -Paul's to offer thanks for the recovery of her son the Prince of Wales. -Through it also the bodies of Nelson and of Wellington were borne to their -last resting place in St. Paul's. - -On the auspicious entrance into London of the fair Princess Alexandra, the -old gate was hung with tapestry of gold tissue, powdered with crimson -hearts; and very mediaeval and gorgeous it looked; but the real days of -pageants are gone by. We shall never again see fountains running wine, nor -maidens blowing gold-leaf into the air, as in the luxurious days of our -Plantagenet kings. - -There are many portals in the world loftier and more beautiful than our -dull, black arch of Temple Bar. The Vatican has grander doorways, the -Louvre more stately entrances, but through no gateway in the world have -surely passed onwards to death so many millions of wise and brave men, or -so many thinkers who have urged forward learning and civilisation, and -carried the standard of struggling humanity farther into space. - - - - -[Illustration: ST. CLEMENT'S CHURCH IN THE STRAND, 1753.] - - -CHAPTER III. - -THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE). - - -Essex Street was formerly part of the Outer Temple, the western wing of -the Knight Templars' quarter. The outer district of these proud and -wealthy Crusaders stretched as far as the present Devereux Court; those -gentler spoilers, the mediaeval lawyers, having extended their frontiers -quite as far as their rooted-out predecessors. From the Prior and Canons -of the Holy Sepulchre[35] it was transferred, in the reign of Edward II. -to the Bishops of Exeter, who built a palace here and occupied it till the -reign of Henry VII. or Henry VIII. - -The first tenant of Exeter House was the ill-fated Walter Stapleton, Lord -Treasurer of England, a firm adherent to the luckless Edward II., against -his queen and the turbulent barons. In 1326, when Isabella landed from -France to chase the Spensers from her husband's side, and advanced on -London, the weak king and his evil counsellors fled to the Welsh frontier; -but the bishop held out stoutly for his king, and, as custos of the City -of London, demanded the keys from the Lord Mayor, Hammond Chickwell, to -prevent the treachery of the disaffected city. The watchful populace, -roused by Isabella's proclamation that had been hung on the new cross in -Cheapside, rose in arms, seized the vacillating mayor, and took the keys. -They next ran to Exeter House, then newly erected, fired the gates, and -burnt all the plate, jewels, money, and goods. The bishop, at that time in -the fields, being almost too proud to show fear, rode straight to the -northern door of St. Paul's to take sanctuary. There the mob tore him from -his horse, stripped him of his armour, and dragging him to Cheapside, -proclaimed him a traitor, a seducer of the king, and an enemy of their -liberties, and lopping off his head, set it on a pole. The corpse was -buried without funeral service in an old churchyard of the Pied -Friars.[36] His brother and some servants were also beheaded, and their -bleeding and naked bodies thrown on a heap of rubbish by the river side. - -Exeter Place was shortly afterwards rebuilt, but the new house seemed a -doomed place, and brought no better fortune to its new owners. Lord Paget, -who changed its name to Paget House, fought at Boulogne under the poet -Earl of Surrey, was ambassador at the court of Charles V., and on his -return obtained a peerage and the garter. He fell with the Protector -Somerset, being accused of having planned the assassination of the Duke of -Northumberland at Paget House. Released from the Tower, he was deprived of -the garter upon the malicious pretence that he was not a gentleman by -blood. Queen Mary, however, restored the fallen man to honour, made him -Lord Privy Seal, and sent him on an embassy. - -The next occupier of the unlucky house, Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of -Norfolk, and son of the poet Earl of Surrey, maintained in its chambers an -almost royal magnificence. It was here he was arrested for conspiring, -with the aid of Mary Queen of Scots, the Pope, and the King of Spain, to -marry Mary and restore the Popish religion. - -The duke's ambition and treason were fully proved by his own intercepted -letters; indeed, he himself confessed his guilt, though he had denounced -Mary to Elizabeth as a "notorious adulteress and murderer." To crown his -rashness, meanness, and treason, he wrote from the Tower the most abject -letters to Elizabeth, imploring her clemency. He was privately beheaded in -1572, but his estates were restored to his children.[37] It was under the -mat, hard by a window in the entry towards the duke's bedchamber, that the -celebrated alphabet in cipher[38] was hidden, which the duke afterwards -concealed under a roof tile, where it was found, unmasking all his plans. - -In the Tower the unhappy plotter had written affecting letters to his son -Philip, bidding him worship God, avoid courts, and beware of ambition.[39] -The warning of the man whose eyes had been opened too late is touching. -The writer, speaking of court life, remarks, "It hath no certainty. Either -a man, by following thereof, hath too much worldly pomp, which in the end -throws him down headlong, or else he liveth there unsatisfied, either that -he cannot obtain to himself that he would, or else that he cannot do for -his friends as his heart desireth." - -Poor Philip did not benefit much by these lessons, but remained simple -Earl of Arundel, was repeatedly committed to the Tower, as by necessity an -ill-wisher to Elizabeth, and eventually died there after ten weary years -of imprisonment. His initials are still to be found on the walls of one of -the chambers in the Beauchamp Tower. - -Fools never learn the lessons which Time tries so hard to beat into them. -Plotter succeeds plotter, and the rough lesson of the headsman seldom -teaches the conspirator's successor to cease from conspiring. - -To the Norfolks succeeded Dudley, the false Earl of Leicester, the black -or gipsy earl, as he was called from his swarthy Italian complexion. -Leicester, like the duke before him, plotted with Mary's Jesuits and -assassins, and at the same time contrived to keep in favour with his own -jealous queen, in spite of all his failures and schemings in Holland, and -his suspected assassinations of his enemies in England. Leicester died of -fever the year of the Armada (1588), on his return from the camp at -Tilbury, leaving Leicester Place to Robert Devereux, his step-son, the -Earl of Essex,[40] who succeeded to his favour at court, but was doomed to -an untimely death. - -It was to the great Lord of Kenilworth--that dark, mysterious man, who -perhaps deserved more praise than historians usually give him--that -Spenser dedicated his poem of "Virgil's Gnat." In his beautiful -"Prothalamion" on the marriage of Lady Elizabeth and Lady Catherine -Somerset, he speaks somewhat abjectly of Leicester, ingeniously contriving -to remind Essex of his father-in-law's bounty. "Near to the Temple," the -needy poet says, - - "Stands a stately place, - _Where I gayned giftes_ and the goodly grace - Of that great lord who there was wont to dwell, - Whose want too well now feels my friendless case; - But, ah! here fits not well - Old woes." - -Then the poet goes on to eulogise Essex, who, however, it is supposed, -after all allowed him to die in want. But there is a mystery about -Spenser's death. He returned from Ireland, beggared and almost -broken-hearted, in October or November 1599, and died in the January -following, just as Essex was preparing to start to Ireland. In that whirl -of ambition, the poor poet may perhaps have been rather overlooked than -wilfully slighted. This at least is certain, that he was buried in -Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer's tomb, the Earl of Essex defraying the -expenses of his public funeral. - -It was in his prison-house near the Temple that the hair-brained Earl of -Essex shut himself sulkily up, when Queen Elizabeth had given him a box on -the ears, after a dispute about the new deputy for Ireland, in which the -earl had shown a petulant violence unworthy of the pupil of Burleigh. - -Far too much sympathy has been shown with this rash, imperious, and -unbearable young noble. He was sent to Ireland, and there concluded a -disgraceful, wilful, and traitorous treaty with one of England's most -inveterate and dangerous enemies. He returned from that "cursedest of all -islands," as he called it, against express command, and was with -difficulty dissuaded from landing in open rebellion. Generous and frank he -may have been, but his submission to the mild and well-deserved punishment -of confinement to his own house was as base and abject as it was false and -hypocritical. - -Alarmed, mortified, and enraged at the duration of his banishment from -court, and at the refusal of a renewed grant for the monopoly of sweet -wines, Essex betook himself to open rebellion, urged on by ill-advisers -and his own reckless impatient spirit. He invited the Puritan preachers to -prayers and sermons; he plotted with the King of Scotland. It was arranged -at secret meetings at Drury House (then Sir Charles Daver's) to seize -Whitehall and compel the queen to dismiss Cecil and other ministers -hostile to Essex. - -Sir Christopher Blount was to seize the palace gates, Davies the hall, -Davers the guard-room and presence-chamber, while Essex, rushing in from -the Mews with some hundred and twenty adherents, was to compel the queen -to assemble a parliament to dismiss his enemies, and to fix the -succession. All these plans were proposed to Essex in writing--the -arch-conspirator was never himself present. - -The delay of letters from Scotland led to the premature outbreak of the -plot. An order was at once sent summoning Essex to the council, and the -palace guards were doubled. - -On Sunday, February 7, 1601, Essex, fearing instant arrest, assembled his -friends, and determined to arm and sally forth to St. Paul's Cross, where -the Lord Mayor and aldermen were hearing the sermon, and urge them to -follow him to the palace. On the Lord Keeper and other noblemen coming to -the house to know the cause of the assembly, Essex locked them into a back -parlour, guarded by musketeers, and followed by two hundred gentlemen, -drew his sword and rushed into the street like a madman "running a-muck." - -Temple Bar was opened for him; but at St. Paul's Cross he found no -meeting. The citizens crowded round him, but did not join his band. When -he reached the house of Sheriff Smith, the crafty Sheriff had stolen away. - -In the meantime Lord Burleigh and the Earl of Cumberland, with a herald, -had entered the City and proclaimed Essex a traitor; a thousand pounds -being offered for his apprehension. Despairing of success, the mad earl -then turned towards his own house, and finding Ludgate barricaded by a -strong party of citizens under Sir John Levison, attempted to force his -way, killing two or three citizens, and losing Tracy, a young friend of -his own. Then striking down to Queenhithe, the earl and some fifty -followers who were left took boat for Essex Gardens. - -On entering his house, he found that his treacherous confidant, Sir -Ferdinand Gorges, had made terms with the court and released the hostages. -Essex then, by the advice of Lord Sandys, resolved to fortify the place, -hold out to the last extremity, and die sword in hand. In a few minutes, -however, the Lord Admiral's troops surrounded the building. A parley -ensued between Sir Robert Sidney in the garden, and Essex and his rash -ally, Shakspere's patron, the Earl of Southampton, who were on the roof. -The earl's demands were proudly refused, but a respite of two hours was -given him, that the ladies and female servants might retire. About six -the battering train arrived from the Tower, and Essex then wisely -surrendered at discretion.[41] - -The night being very dark, and the tide not serving to pass the dangers of -London Bridge, Essex and Southampton were taken by boat to Lambeth Palace, -and the next morning to the Tower. - -Essex had fully deserved death. He was executed privately, by his own -request, at the Tower, February 25, 1601. Meyrick, his steward, and Cuffe, -his secretary, were hanged and quartered at Tyburn. Sir Charles Davers and -Sir Christopher Blount perished on Tower Hill. Other prisoners were fined -and imprisoned, and the Earl of Southampton pined in durance till the -accession of James I. (1603). - -Among the even older tenants of Essex House, we must not forget that -unhappy woman, the earl's mother, who, first as Lettice Knollys, then as -Countess of Essex, afterwards as Lady Leicester, and next as wife of Sir -Christopher Blount, was a barb in Elizabeth's side for thirty years. -Married as a girl to a noble husband, she gave up her honour to a seducer, -and there is reason to think that she consented to the taking of his life. -While Devereux lived, she deceived the queen by a scandalous amour, and, -after his death, by a clandestine marriage with the Earl of Leicester. -While Dudley lived, she wallowed in licentious love with Christopher -Blount, his groom of the horse. When her second husband expired in agony -at Cornbury, not an hour's gallop from the place in which Amy Robsart -died, she again mortified the queen by a secret union with her last -seducer, Blount. Her children rioted in the same vices. Essex himself, -with his ring of favourites, was not more profligate than his sister -Penelope, Lady Rich.[42] - -This sister was the (Platonic?) mistress of Sydney, whose stolen love for -her is pictured in his most voluptuous verse. On his death at Zuetphen, she -lived with Lord Montjoy, though her husband, Lord Rich, was still alive. -Nor was her sister Dorothy one whit better. After marrying one husband -secretly and against the canon, she wedded Percy, the wizard Earl of -Northumberland, whom she led the life of a dog, until he indignantly -turned her out of doors.[43] It is not easy, observes Mr. Dixon, except in -Italian story, to find a group of women so depraved and so detestable as -the mother and sisters of the Earl of Essex. - -Essex, the rash noble, who died at the untimely age of thirty-three, had a -dangerous, ill-tempered face, if we may judge by More's portrait of him. -He stooped in walking, danced badly, and was slovenly in his dress;[44] -yet being a generous, frank friend, an impetuous and chivalrous if not -wise soldier, and an enemy of Spain and the Cecils, he became a favourite -of the people. The legend of the ring sent by Essex to the queen,[45] and -maliciously detained by the Countess of Nottingham, we shall presently -discuss. No applications for mercy by Essex (and he made many during his -trial) affect the question of his deserving death. That the queen -consented with regret to the death of Essex, on the other hand, needs no -doubtful legend to serve as proof. - -Elizabeth had forgiven the earl's joining the Cadiz fleet against her -wish, she forgave his secret marriage, she forgave his shameful -abandonment of his Irish command and even his dishonourable treaty with -Tyrone, but she could not forgive an open and flagrant rebellion at a time -when she was so surrounded by enemies. - -An historical writer, gifted with an eminently analytical mind, Mr. -Hepworth Dixon, has lately, with great ingenuity, endeavoured to refute -the charges of ingratitude brought against Bacon for his time serving and -(to say the least) undue eagerness in aggravating the crimes of his old -and generous friend. There can be, however, no doubt that Bacon too soon -abandoned the unfortunate Essex, and, moreover, threw the weight of much -misapplied learning into the scale against the prisoner. No minimising of -the favours received by him from Essex can in my mind remove this stain -from Bacon's reputation. - -In Essex House was born a less brilliant but a happier and a more prudent -man--Robert, Earl of Essex, afterwards the well-known Parliamentary -general. A child when his father died on the scaffold, he was placed under -the care of his grandmother, Lady Walsingham, and was afterwards at Eton -under the severe Saville. A good, worthy, heavy lad, brought up a -Presbyterian, he was betrothed when only fourteen to Lady Frances Howard, -daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, who was herself only thirteen. - -The earl travelled on the Continent for four years, and on his return was -married at Essex House. It was for this inauspicious marriage that Ben -Jonson wrote one of his most beautiful and gorgeous masques, Inigo Jones -contributing the machinery, and Ferrabosco the music. The rough-grained -poet seems to have been delighted with the success of the entertainment, -for he says, "Nor was there wanting whatsoever might give to the furniture -a complement, either in riches or strangeness of the habits, delicacy of -dances, magnificence of the scene, or divine rapture of music."[46] - -The countess was already, even at this time, the mistress of Robert Carr, -the handsome minion of James I. She obtained a divorce from her husband in -1613, and espoused her infamous lover. The cruel poisoning of Sir Thomas -Overbury for opposing the new marriage followed; and the earl and -countess, found guilty, but spared by the weak king, lingered out their -lives in mutual reproaches and contempt, loathed and neglected by all. -Fate often runs in sequences--the earl was unhappy with his second wife, -from whom he also was divorced. - -Essex emerged from a country retirement to turn general for the -Parliament. Just, affable, and prudent, he was a popular man till he -became marked as a moderatist desirous for peace, and was ousted by the -artful "Self-denying Ordinance." If he had lived it is probable he would -either have lost his head or have fled to France and turned cavalier. His -death during the time that Charles I. remained a prisoner with the Scotch -army at Newcastle saved him from either fate. With him the Presbyterian -moderatists and the House of Peers finally lost even their little -remaining power. - -When the earl resigned his commission, the House of Commons went to Essex -House to return their ex-general thanks for his great services. A year -later they followed him to the grave (1646), little perhaps thinking how -bitterly the earl had reproached them for ingratitude, and what plans he -had devised to reform the army and to check Cromwell and Fairfax.[47] - -On the earl's death, his Royalist brother-in-law, the Marquis of Hertford, -attempted to seize his ready money and papers, but was frustrated by the -Parliament.[48] - -Whether the next earl, who on being arrested for sharing in the Rye-House -plot destroyed himself at the Tower, lived in his father's house, I do not -know, but the mansion, so unlucky to its owners, was occupied by families -of rank for some time after the Restoration, and then falling into neglect -and ruin, as fashion began to flow westward, was subdivided, and a street, -called Essex Street, was built on part of its site. - -Samuel Patterson, the bookseller and auctioneer, lived in Essex Street, in -1775, in rooms formerly the residence of Sir Orlando Bridgeman. He was -originally a bag-maker. Afterwards Charles Dibdin commenced his -entertainments in these rooms, and here his fine song of "Poor Jack" -became famous.[49] Patterson's youngest child was Dr. Johnson's godson, -and became a pupil of Ozias Humphrey.[50] Patterson wrote a book of -travels in Sterne's manner, but claimed a priority to that strange writer. - -George Fordyce, a celebrated epicurean doctor of the eighteenth century, -lived in the same street. For twenty years he dined daily at Dolly's -Chop-house, and at his solitary meal he always took a tankard of strong -ale, a quarter of a pint of brandy, and a bottle of port. After these -potations, he walked to his house and gave a lecture to his pupils.[51] - -Dr. Johnson, the year before he died, formed a club in Essex Street, at -the Essex Head, a tavern kept by an old servant of his friend, Thrale, the -brewer. It was less select than the Literary Club, but cheaper. Johnson, -writing to Sir Joshua Reynolds to join it, says, "the terms are lax and -the expences light--we meet thrice a week, and he who misses forfeits -twopence."[52] Sir John Hawkins spitefully calls it "a low ale-house -association;" but Windham, Daines Barrington, Horsley, Boswell, and -Brocklesby were members of it; for rich men were less luxurious than they -are now, and enjoyed the sociable freedom of a tavern. Sir Joshua refused -to join, probably because Barry, who had insulted him, and was very -pugnacious, had become a member.[53] It went on happily for many years, -says Boswell, whom Johnson, when he proposed him for election, called "a -clubable man." Towards the end of his life the great lexicographer grew -more and more afraid of solitude, and a club so near his home was probably -a great convenience to him. - -Near Devereux Court are the premises of the well-known tea-dealers, -Messrs. Twining. The graceful recumbent stone figures of Chinamen over the -Strand front have much elegance, and must have come from some good hand. -One of this family was a Colchester rector, and a translator of -Aristotle's _Poetics_. He was an excellent man, a good linguist and -musician, and a witty companion. He was contemporary with Gray and Mason, -the poets, at Cambridge. In the back parlour is a portrait of the founder -of the house. A century and a half ago ladies used to drive to the door of -Twining's and drink tiny cups of the new and fashionable beverage as they -sat in their coaches. There is an epigram extant, written either by -Theodore Hook or one of the Smiths; the point of it is, that if you took -away his T, Twining would be Wining. - -In 1652 Constantine, the Greek servant of a Levant merchant, opened in -Devereux Court a coffee-house, which became known as "The Grecian." In -1664-5 advertised his Turkey "coffee bery," chocolate, "sherbet," and tea, -as good and cheap, and announced his readiness to give gratuitous -instructions in the art of preparing the said liquors.[54] - -In the same year, a Greek named Pasqua Rosee had also established a house -in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, for the sale of "the coffee drink."[55] - -John Evelyn describes a Greek fellow-student, afterwards Bishop of Smyrna, -drinking coffee when he was at college in about 1637.[56] - -In April 1709 Steele, in No. 1 of the _Tatler_, announces that he shall -date all learned articles from the "Grecian," all gallantry from -"White's," all poetry from "Wills's," all foreign and domestic news from -"St. James's." - -In 1710-11 Addison, starting the "_Spectator_ along with Steele," tells us -his own grave face was well known at the Grecian; and in No. 49 (April -1711), the _Spectator_ describes the spleen and inward laughter with which -he views at the Grecian the young Templars come in, about 8 A.M., either -dressed for Westminster, and with the preoccupied air of assumed business, -or in gay cap, slippers, and particoloured dressing-gowns, rising early to -publish their laziness, and being displaced by busier men towards noon. -Dr. King relates a story of two hot-blooded young gentlemen quarrelling -one evening at this coffee-house about the accent of a Greek word. -Stepping out into Devereux Court, they fought, and one of them being run -through the body, died on the spot.[57] This Dr. King was principal of St. -Mary's Hall, Oxford, and a staunch Tory. It is he who relates the secret -visit of the Pretender to London. He died in 1763. - -Ralph Thoresby, the Leeds topographer, met Dr. Sloane, the secretary of -the Royal Society, by appointment at the Grecian in May 1712; and again in -June he describes retiring to the Grecian after a meeting of the Royal -Society, of which he was a fellow, with the president, Sir Isaac -Newton,[58] Dr. Halley, who published the _Principia_ for Newton, and -Keill, who opposed Leibnitz about the invention of Fluxions, and defended -Newton's doctrines against the Cartesians. (The Royal Society held its -meetings at this time in Crane Court, Fleet Street.) Roger North, -Attorney-General under James II., who died in 1733, describes in his -_Examen_ the Privy Council Board, as held at the Grecian coffee-house. The -Grecian was closed in 1843, and has been since turned into the Grecian -Chambers. On what was once the front of the coffee-house frequented by -Steele and Addison, there is a bust of Essex, with the date 1676. - -In this court, at the house of one Kedder, in 1678, died Marchmont -Needham, a vigorous but unprincipled turncoat and newspaper writer, who -three times during the civil wars changed his principles to save his -worthless neck. He was alternately the author of the _Mercurius -Britannicus_ for the Presbyterians, _Mercurius Pragmaticus_ for the king, -and _Mercurius Politicus_ for the Independents. The great champion of the -late usurper, as the Cavaliers called him, "whose pen, compared with -others', was as a weaver's beam," latterly practised as a physician, but -with small success.[59] - -There is a letter of Pope addressed to Fortescue, his "counsel learned in -the law," at Tom's coffee-house, in Devereux Court. Fortescue, the poet's -kind, unpaid lawyer, was afterwards (in 1738) Master of the Rolls. Pope's -imitation of the first satire of Horace, suggested by Bolingbroke, was -addressed to Mr. Fortescue, and published in 1733. This lawyer was the -author of the droll report in _Scriblerus_ of "Stradling _versus_ Styles," -wherein Sir John Swale leaves all his black and white horses to one -Stradling, but the question is whether this bequest includes Swale's -piebald horses. It is finally proved that the horses are all mares.[60] - -Dr. Birch, the antiquary, the dull writer but good talker, frequented -Tom's; and there Akenside--short, thin, pale, strumous, and lame, -scrupulously neat, and somewhat petulant, vain, and irritable--spent his -winter evenings, entangled in disputes and altercations, chiefly on -subjects of literature and politics, that fixed on his character the stamp -of haughtiness and self-conceit, and drew him into disagreeable -situations.[61] Akenside was a contradictory man. By turns he was placid, -irritable; simple, affected; gracious, haughty; magnanimous, mean; -benevolent, yet harsh, and sometimes even brutal. At times he manifested a -childlike docility, and at other times his vanity and arrogance made him -seem almost a madman.[62] - -Gay, in his _Trivia_, describes Milford Lane so faithfully that it might -pass for a yesterday's sketch of the same place. He writes-- - - "Where the fair columns of St. Clement stand, - Whose straitened bounds incroach upon the Strand; - Where the low pent-house bows the walker's head, - And the rough pavement wounds the yielding tread; - Where not a post protects the narrow space, - And strung in twines combs dangle in thy face. - Summon at once thy courage--rouse thy care; - Stand firm, look back, be resolute, beware! - Forth issuing from steep lanes, the collier's steeds - Drag the black load; another cart succeeds; - Team follows team, crowds heap'd on crowds appear." - -Stow mentions Milford Lane, but gives no derivation for its name.[63] The -coarse poem by Henry Savill, commonly attributed to the witty Earl of -Dorset, beginning-- - - "In Milford Lane, near to St. Clement's steeple."[64] - -gave the street for a time such a disagreeable notoriety as the pillory -gives to a rogue. - -Arundel House, in the Strand, was the old inn or town-house of the Bishops -of Bath, stolen by force in the rough, greedy times of Edward VI., by the -bad Lord Thomas Seymour, the admiral, and the brother of the Protector; -from him it derived the name of Seymour Place, and must have been -conveniently near to the ambitious kinsman who afterwards beheaded him. -This Admiral had married Henry VIII.'s widow, Catherine Parr; and she -dying in childbed, he began to woo, in his coarse boisterous way, the -young Princess Elizabeth, who had been living under the protection of her -mother-in-law, who was indeed generally supposed to have been poisoned by -the admiral. His marriage with Elizabeth would have smoothed his way to -the throne in spite of her father's cautious will. It was said that -Elizabeth always blushed when she heard his name. He died on the scaffold. -Old Bishop Latimer, in a sermon, declared "he was a wicked man, and the -realm is well rid of him."[65] It is certain that, whatever were his -plots, he had projected a marriage between Lady Jane Grey and the young -king. - -The admiral's house was bought, on its owner's fall, by Henry Fitz-Alan, -Earl of Arundel, for the nominal sum of L41: 6: 8, with several other -messuages and lands adjoining.[66] The earl dying in 1579, was succeeded -by his grandson, Philip Howard, son of the Duke of Norfolk, the owner of -Essex House adjoining, who was beheaded for his intrigues with Mary of -Scotland. He died in the Tower in 1598. The house then passed into the -keeping of Robert Cary, Earl of Monmouth,[67] during the minority of -Thomas Howard, Philip's son. - -In Arundel Palace, in 1603, died the Countess of Nottingham, sister of Sir -Robert Cary;[68] she was buried at Chelsea. It is of this countess that -Lady Spelman, a granddaughter of Sir Robert Cary, used to tell the -doubtful legend of the ring[69] given by Queen Elizabeth to Lord Essex, -which an acute writer of the present day believes to be a pure fabrication -of the times of James I. - -[Illustration: ARUNDEL HOUSE, 1646.] - -The story runs thus:--When the Countess Catherine was dying, she sent to -the Queen to tell her that she had a secret to reveal, without disclosing -which she could not die in peace. The Queen came, and the countess then -told her that when Essex was in the Tower, under sentence of death, he one -morning threw a ring from his window to a boy passing underneath, hiring -him to carry it to his friend Lady Scrope, the countess's sister, and beg -of her to present it in his name to the queen, who had promised to protect -him whenever he sent her that keepsake, and who was then waiting for some -such sign of his submission. The boy not clearly understanding the -message, brought the ring to the countess, who showed it to her husband, -and he insisted on her keeping it. The countess, having made this -disclosure, begged her majesty's forgiveness; but the queen answered, -"God may forgive you, but I never can!" and burst from the room in a -paroxysm of rage and grief. From that time Elizabeth became perturbed in -mind, refused to eat or sleep, and died a fortnight after the countess. -Now this is absurd. The queen never repented the death of that wrongheaded -traitor, and really died of a long-standing disease which had well-defined -symptoms.[70] - -At Arundel House lodged that grave, wise minister of Henry IV. of France, -the Duc de Sully, then only the Marquis de Rosny. He describes the house -with complacency as fine and commodious, and having a great number of -apartments on the same floor. It was really a mean and low building, but -commanding a fine prospect of the river and Westminster, so fine, indeed, -that Hollar took a view of London from the roof. The first night of his -arrival Sully slept at the French ambassador's house in Butcher Row -adjoining, a poor house with low rooms, a well staircase lit by a -skylight, and small casements.[71] - -[Illustration: ARUNDEL HOUSE, 1646.] - -In the time of James I., in whose reign the earldom was restored to Thomas -Howard, Arundel House became a treasury of art. The travelled earl's -collection comprised thirty-seven statues, one hundred and twenty-eight -busts, and two-hundred and fifty inscribed marbles, exclusive of -sarcophagi, altars, medals, gems, and fragments. Some of his noblest -relics, however, he was not allowed to remove from Rome. Of this proud and -princely amateur of art Lord Clarendon speaks with too obvious prejudice. -He describes him as living in a world of his own, surrounded by strangers, -and though illiterate, willing to be thought a scholar because he was a -collector of works of art. Yet the historian admits that he had an air of -gravity and greatness in his face and bearing. He affected an ancient and -grave dress; but Clarendon asserts that this was all outside, and that his -real disposition was "one of levity," as he was fond of childish and -despicable amusements. Vansomer's portraits of the earl and countess -contain views of the statue and picture galleries.[72] This illustrious -nobleman, whom the excellent Evelyn calls "my noble friend," died in 1646. -At the Restoration his house and marbles were restored to his grandson, -Mr. Henry Howard; the antiquities were then lying scattered about Arundel -Gardens, and were neglected and corroding, blanching with rain, and green -with damp, much to the horror of Evelyn and other antiquaries, who -regarded their fate with alarm and pity. - -The old Earl of Arundel (whom Clarendon disliked) had been a collector of -art in a magnificent and princely way. He despatched artist-agents to -Italy, and even to Asia Minor, to buy pictures, drawings, statues, votive -slabs, and gems. William Petty collected sculpture for him at Paros and -Delos, but the collections were lost off Samos in a storm. He collected -Holbein's and Albert Duerer's drawings, discovered the genius of Inigo -Jones, and brought Hollar from Prague. He left England just before the -troubles, having received many affronts from Charles's ministers, who had -neglected to restore his ancient titles, went to Padua, and there died. -The marbles Mr. Evelyn induced Mr. Howard, in 1667, to send to the -University of Oxford; the statues were also given to Oxford by a later -descendant; and the earl's library (originally part of that of the King of -Hungary) Mr. Evelyn persuaded the Duke of Norfolk to bestow on the Royal -Society.[73] - -The old earl was, I suspect, a proud, soured, and a rather arrogant, -formal person. In a certain dispute about a rectory, he once said to King -Charles I.: "Sir, this rectory was an appendant and a manour of mine until -my grandfather unfortunately lost both his life and seven lordships, for -the love he bore to your grandmother."[74] - -After the Great Fire of London, Mr. Howard lent the Royal Society rooms in -his house. In 1678 the palace was taken down, and the present Arundel, -Surrey, Howard, and Norfolk streets were erected in its stead. The few -marbles that remained were removed to Tart Hall, Westminster, and to -Cuper's Gardens across the river.[75] Tart Hall was the residence of the -Countess of Arundel: Cuper's Gardens belonged to a gardener of the Earl of -Arundel. The Duke of Norfolk originally intended to build a more -magnificent house on the old site, and even obtained an act of Parliament -for the purpose; but fashion was already setting westward, and the design -was abandoned.[76] - -In Arundel Street lived Rymer, the historical antiquary, who died here in -1715; John Anstis, the Garter king-at-arms, resided here in 1715-16;[77] -also Mrs. Porter, the actress, "over against the Blue Ball." - -Gay, in his delightful _Trivia_ sketches the "long Strand," and pauses to -mourn over the glories of Arundel House. His walk is from "the Temple's -silent walls," and he stays to look down at the site of the earl's -mansion-- - - ----"That narrow street, which steep descends, - Whose building to the shining shore extends; - Here Arundel's famed structure rear'd its frame-- - The street alone retains an empty name; - Where Titian's glowing paint the canvas warm'd, - And Raphael's fair design with judgment charm'd, - Now hangs the bellman's song, and pasted here - The coloured prints of Overton appear; - Where statues breathed, the work of Phidias' hands, - A wooden pump or lonely watch-house stands; - There Essex' stately pile adorned the shore; - There Cecil's, Bedford's, Villiers'--now no more." - -In the Strand, between Arundel and Norfolk Streets, in the year 1698, -lived Sir Thomas Lyttelton, Speaker of the House of Commons, and father of -Pope's friend, and the author of the _History of Henry the Second_, a -ponderous and pompous work. - -Next door to him lived the father of Bishop Burnet--a remarkable person, -for he was a poor but honest lawyer, born at Edinburgh in 1643. A -bookseller of the same name--a collateral descendant of the bishop whom -Swift hated so cordially--afterwards occupied the house. - -At the south-west corner of Norfolk Street, near the river, in his wild -days lodged the Quaker Penn, son of Cromwell's stout Bristol admiral. He -had been twice beaten and turned out of doors by his father for his -fondness for Nonconformist society and prayer-meetings, and for refusing -to stand uncovered in the presence of Charles II. or of the Duke of York, -of whom later he became the suspected favourite. We do not generally -associate the grave and fanatic Penn with a gay and licentious court, nor -do we portray him to ourselves as slinking away from hawk-eyed bailiffs; -and yet the venerated founder of repudiating Pennsylvania chose this house -when he was sued for debts, as being convenient for slipping unobserved -into a boat. In the eastern entrance he had a peep-hole, through which he -could reconnoitre any suspicious visitor. On one occasion a dun, having -sent in his name and waited an unconscionable time, knocked again. "Will -not thy master see me?" he said to the servant. The knave was at least -candid, for he replied: "Friend, he _has_ seen thee, and he does not like -thee."[78] - -In Norfolk Street, in Penn's old house, afterwards resided for thirty -years that truly good man, Dr. Richard Brocklesby, who in early life, -during the Seven Years' War, had practised as an army surgeon. He was a -friend of Burke and Dr. Johnson. To the former he left, or rather gave, a -thousand pounds, and to the latter he offered an annuity of a hundred -pounds a year, to enable him to travel for his health, and also apartments -in his own house for the sake of medical advice, which Johnson -affectionately and gratefully declined. The doctor was one of the most -generous and amiable of men; he attended the poor for nothing, and had -many pensioners. He died the day after returning from a visit to Burke at -Beaconsfield. He had been warned against the fatigue of this journey, but -had replied with true Christian philosophy, "My good friend, where's the -difference whether I die at a friend's house, at an inn, or in a -post-chaise? I hope I am prepared for such an event, and perhaps it would -be as well to elude the anticipation of it." - -Dr. Brocklesby was ridiculed by Foote, but Foote attacked virtue quite as -often as vice. He was the physician who had attended Lord Chatham when he -was struck down by illness in the House of Lords, a short time before his -death. - -In January 1698 Peter the Great arrived from Holland, and went straight to -a house prepared for him in Norfolk Street, near the water side. On the -following day he was visited by King William and the principal nobility. -Incommoded here by visitors, the Czar removed to Admiral Benbow's house at -Deptford, where he could live more retired. This Deptford house was Sayes -Place, afterwards the Victualling Office, and had once belonged to the -celebrated John Evelyn. - -The "Honest Shippen" of Pope--William Shippen, M.P.--lived also in Norfolk -Street: a brave, honest man, in an age when nearly every politician had -his price. It was of him Sir Robert Walpole remarked "that he would not -say who was corrupted, but he would say who was not corruptible, and that -was Shippen." - -Mortimer, a rough, picturesque painter, who was called "the English -Salvator Rosa," and imitated that unsatisfactory artist in a coarse, -sketchy kind of way, dwelt in this street. - -At No. 21 lived Albany Wallis, a friend and executor of Garrick. In this -street also Addison makes that delightful old country gentleman, Sir Roger -de Coverley, put up before he goes to Soho Square.[79] - -At No. 8, in 1795, lived Samuel Ireland, the father of the celebrated -literary impostor; and here were shown to George Chalmers, John Kemble, -and other Shaksperian scholars, the forged plays which the public -ultimately scented out as ridiculous. - -In 1796 Mr. W. H. Ireland published a full confession of his forgeries, -fully exonerating his father from all connivance in his foolish fraud, -claiming forgiveness for a boyish deception begun without evil intention -and without any thought of danger. "I should never have gone so far," he -says, "but that the world praised the papers too much, and thereby -flattered my vanity."[80] After the failure of "Vortigern," the father, -Mr. S. Ireland, still credulous, had written a pamphlet, accusing Malone, -his son's chief assailant, of mean malice and unbearable arrogance. - -The true story of the forgery is this. W. H. Ireland, then only eighteen, -was articled to a solicitor in New Inn, where he practised Elizabethan -handwriting for the sake of deceiving credulous antiquaries. A forged deed -exciting the admiration of his father, who was a collector of old tracts -and a worshipper of Shakspere, led him to continue his deceptions, and to -pretend to have discovered a hoard of Shaksperian MSS. A fellow clerk, one -Talbot, afterwards an actor, discovering the forgeries, Ireland made him -an accomplice. They then produced a "Profession of Faith," signed by -Shakspere, which Dr. Parr and Dr. Warton (brother of the poet) declared -contained "finer things" than all the Church Service. This foolish praise -set the secretive lawyer's clerk on writing original verse,--a poem to -Anne Hathaway, and the play of "Vortigern," the most recklessly impudent -of all his impostures. Boswell was the first to propose a certificate to -be signed by all believers in the productions. Dr. Parr, thinking -Boswell's writing too feeble, drew up another, which was signed by -twenty-one noblemen, authors, and "celebrated literary characters." -Boswell, characteristically enough, previous to signing his name, fell on -his knees, and, "in a tone of enthusiasm and exultation, thanked God that -he had lived to witness this discovery, and exclaimed that he could now -die in peace."[81] Lords Kinnaird, Somerset, and Lauderdale were the -noblemen. There were also present Bindley, Valpy, Pinkerton, Pye the poet -laureate, Matthew Wyatt, and the present author's grandfather, the Rev. -Nathaniel Thornbury, an intimate friend of Jenner and of Dr. Johnson, who -had at this time been twelve years dead. The elder Ireland, in his -pamphlet, alludes to the solemn and awful manner in which, before crowds -of eminent characters, his son attested the genuineness of his forgeries. -"I could not," says the honest fellow, "suffer myself to cherish the -slightest suspicion of his veracity."[82] - -Singularly enough Mr. Albany Wallis--(a solicitor, I believe), of Norfolk -Street,--who had given to Garrick a mortgage deed bearing Shakspere's -signature, became the most ardent believer in the unprincipled young -clerk's deceptions. - -The terms agreed upon for Ireland's forgery of "Vortigern" was L300 down, -and a division of the receipts, deducting charges, for sixty nights. The -play, however, lived only one night, for which the Irelands received their -half, L103. The commentators Malone and Steevens remained sceptical, and -Kemble was suspicious and cold in the cause, though he was to be the hero; -but the gulls and quidnuncs were numerous enough to cram the house, and -that most commonplace of poets, Sir James Bland Burges, wrote the -prologue. The final damnation of the play was secured by a rhapsody of -Vortigern's, a patch-work thing from "Richard II." and "Henry IV." The -fatal line-- - - "And when the solemn mockery is o'er," - -convulsed the house.[83] Mr. W. H. Ireland in later life was editor of the -_York Herald_, and died in 1835.[84] - -Another eminent historical antiquary, Dr. Birch, lived in Norfolk Street. -The son of a Quaker tradesman at Clerkenwell, he became a London clergyman -and an historian, famous for his Sunday evenings' conversaziones, and was -killed by a fall from his horse in 1766. He seems to have been a most -pleasant, generous, and honest man. He edited Bacon's _Letters and -Speeches_, and Thurloe's _State Papers_, etc. His chief work was his -_Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth_. He left books, manuscripts, and -money to the British Museum, for which let all scholars bless the good -man's memory. He appears to have been a student of boundless industry, as -from the Lambeth Library alone he transcribed with his own hand sixteen -quarto volumes. He was rector of St. Margaret Pattens in Fenchurch Street. -Dr. Birch must have been a kind husband, for his wife on her deathbed -wrote him the following tender letter:-- - - "This day I return you, my dearest life, my sincere, hearty thanks for - every favour bestowed on your most faithful and obedient wife, - - HANNAH BIRCH." - -We leave it to the watchful cynic to remark that the doctor had been -married only one year. It was of this worthy book-worm that Johnson -said--"Yes, sir, he is brisk in conversation, but when he takes up the pen -it benumbs him like a torpedo." - -Strype describes Surrey Street as replenished with good buildings, -especially that of Nevison Fox, Esq., towards the Strand, "which is a -fine, large, and curious house of his own building," and the two houses -that front the Thames, that on the east side being the Hon. Charles -Howard's, brother to the Duke of Norfolk. Both of these houses had -pleasant though small gardens towards the Thames.[85] - -In 1736 died here George Sale, the useful translator of the Mohammedan -Bible, the Koran, that strange compound of pure prayers and impure -plagiarisms from the laws of Moses. Sale had published his Koran in 1734, -and in the year of his death he joined Paul Whitehead, Dr. Birch, and Mr. -Strutt, in founding a "Society for the Encouragement of Learning." He -spent many years in writing for the _Universal History_, in which Bayle's -ten folio volumes were included. - -Edward Pierce, a sculptor, son of a painter of altar-pieces and -church-ceilings, and a pupil of Vandyke, lived at the corner of Surrey -Street, and was buried in the Savoy. He helped Sir Christopher Wren to -build St. Clement's church, and carved the four guardian dragons on the -Monument of London. The statue of Sir William Walworth at the fishmongers' -Hall is from his hand, and so is the bust of Thomas Evans in the hall of -the painters and stainers. He executed also busts of Cromwell, Wren, and -Milton.[86] - -The charming actress, Mrs. Bracegirdle, lived in Howard Street. She was -the belle and toast of London; every young man of mode was, or pretended -to be, in love with her; and the wits wrote verses upon her beauty, in -imitation of Sedley and Waller. Congreve tells us that it was the fashion -to avow a tenderness for her. Rowe, in an imitation of an ode of Horace, -urges the Earl of Scarsdale to marry her (though he had a wife living) and -set the town at defiance. - -Among this crowd of admirers was a Captain Hill, a half-cracked -man-about-town, a drunken, profligate bully, of low character, and a -friend of the infamous duellist, Lord Mohun. One of Mrs. Bracegirdle's -favourite parts was Statira, her lover Alexander being her friend and -neighbour, the eminent actor Mountfort. Cibber describes him in this -character as "great, tender, persistent, despairing, transported, -amiable." Hill, "that dark-souled fellow in the pit," as Leigh Hunt calls -him, mistook the frantic extravagance of stage-passion for real love, and -in a fit of mad jealousy swore to be revenged on Mountfort, and to carry -off the lady by force. Lord Mohun, always ready for any desperate -mischief, agreed to help him in his design. On the night appointed the -friends dined together, and having changed clothes, went to Drury Lane -Theatre at six o'clock; but as Mrs. Bracegirdle did not act that night, -they next took a coach and drove to her lodgings in Howard Street. They -then, finding that she had gone to supper with a Mr. Page, in Princes -Street, Drury Lane, went to his house and waited till she came out. She -appeared at last at the door, with her mother and brother, Mr. Page -lighting them out. - -Hill immediately seized her, and endeavoured, with the aid of some hired -ruffians, to drag her into the coach, where Lord Mohun sat with a loaded -pistol in each hand; but her brother and Mr. Page rushing to the rescue, -and an angry crowd gathering, Hill was forced to let go his hold and -decamp. Mrs. Bracegirdle and her escort then proceeded to her lodgings in -Howard Street, followed by Captain Hill and Lord Mohun on foot. On -knocking at the door, as it was said, to beg Mrs. Bracegirdle's pardon, -they were refused admittance; upon which they sent for a bottle of wine to -a neighbouring tavern, which they drank in the street, and then began to -patrol up and down with swords drawn, declaring they were waiting to be -revenged on Mountfort the actor. Messengers were instantly despatched to -warn Mountfort, both by Mrs. Bracegirdle's landlady and his own wife, but -he could not be found. The watch were also sent for, and they begged the -two ruffians to depart peaceably. Lord Mohun replied, "He was a peer of -the realm, that he had been drinking a bottle of wine, but that he was -ready to put up his sword if they particularly desired it: but as for his -friend, he had lost his scabbard." The cautious watch then went away. - -In the meantime the unlucky Mountfort, suspecting no evil, passed down the -street on his way home, heedless of warnings. On coming up to the -swordsmen, a female servant heard the following conversation:-- - -Lord Mohun embraced Mountfort, and said-- - -"Mr. Mountfort, your humble servant. I am glad to see you." - -"Who is this?--Lord Mohun?" said Mountfort. - -"Yes, it is." - -"What brings your lordship here at this time of night?" - -Lord Mohun replied-- - -"I suppose you were sent for, Mr. Mountfort?" - -"No, indeed, I came by chance." - -"Have you not heard of the business of Mrs. Bracegirdle?" - -"Pray, my lord," said Hill, breaking in, "hold your tongue. This is not a -convenient time to discuss this business." - -Hill seemed desirous to go away, and pulled Lord Mohun's sleeve; but -Mountfort, taking no notice of Hill, continued to address Lord Mohun, -saying he was sorry to see him assisting Captain Hill in such an evil -action, and begging him to forbear. - -Hill instantly gave the actor a box on the ear, and on Mountfort demanding -what that was for, attacked him sword in hand, and ran him through before -he had time to draw his weapon. Mountfort died the next day of the wound, -declaring with his last breath that Lord Mohun had offered him no -violence. Hill fled from justice, and Lord Mohun was tried for murder, but -unfortunately acquitted for want of evidence. - -That fortunate poet, Congreve, whom Pope declared to be one of the three -most honest-hearted and really good men in the Kit-cat Club, lived for -some time in Howard Street, where he was a neighbour and frequent guest of -Mrs. Bracegirdle. - -Congreve, on becoming acquainted with the Duchess of Marlborough, removed -from Howard Street to a better house in Surrey Street, where he died, -January 19, 1729. The career of this son of a Yorkshire officer had been -one long undisturbed triumph. His first play had been revised by Dryden -and praised by Southerne. Besides being commissioner of hackney-coach and -wine licences, he also held a place in the Pipe Office, a post in the -Custom House, and a secretaryship in Jamaica. He never quarrelled with the -wits: both Addison and Steele admired and praised him, and Voltaire -eulogises his comedies. - -It was here that Voltaire, while lodging in Maiden Lane, visited the gouty -and nearly blind dramatist, then infirm and on the verge of life. "Mr. -Congreve," he says, "had one defect, which was his entertaining too mean -an idea of his profession--that of a writer--though it was to this he owed -his fame and fortune. He spoke of his works as of trifles that were -beneath him, and hinted to me in our first conversation that I should -visit him upon no other footing than that of a gentleman who led a life of -plainness and simplicity. I answered, that _had he been so unfortunate as -to be a mere gentleman_ I should never have come to see him; and I was -very much disgusted at so unseasonable a piece of vanity." - -The body of Congreve lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and was -afterwards interred with great solemnity in Henry VII.'s Chapel. The Duke -of Bridgewater and the Earl of Godolphin were amongst those who bore the -pall. The monument was erected by the Duchess of Marlborough, to whom the -favoured poet had left L10,000. Above his body-- - - "The ancient pillars rear their marble heads - To bear aloft the arch'd and pond'rous roof, - By its own weight made steadfast and immoveable."[87] - -Congreve's bequest to the duchess of all his property, except L1000, -including L200 to Mrs. Bracegirdle (a legacy afterwards cancelled), -created much scandal. The shameless bookseller, Curll, instantly launched -forth a life of Congreve, professing to be written by one Charles Wilson, -Esq., but generally attributed to Oldmixon. The duchess's friends were -alarmed, and Arbuthnot interfered. Upon being told that some genuine -letters and essays were to be published in the work, Mrs. Bracegirdle or -the duchess[88] cried out with defiant affectation and a dramatic drawl, -"Not one single sheet of paper, I dare to swear." - -The duchess, who raised a monument in the Abbey to her brilliant but -artificial friend, is said to have had a wax image of him made to place on -her toilette table. "To this she would talk as to the living Mr. Congreve, -with all the freedom of the most _polite_ and unreserved -conversation."[89] - -Strand Lane used formerly to lead to a small landing-pier for wherries, -called Strand Bridge. In Stow's time the lane passed under a bridge down -to the landing-place.[90] A writer in the _Spectator_ describes how he -landed here on a summer morning, arriving with ten sail of apricot boats, -consigned to Covent Garden,[91] after having first touched at Nine Elms -for melons. In this lane there is a fine Roman bath which, if indeed -Roman, is the most western relic of Roman London, the centre of which was -on the east end of the Royal Exchange. - -No. 165 has been long used as a warehouse for the sale of Dr. Anderson's -pills. Dr. Patrick Anderson was physician to Charles I., and as early as -1649 a man named Inglis sold these quack pills at the Golden Unicorn, over -against the Maypole in the Strand. Tom Brown says, "There are at least a -score of pretenders to Anderson's Scotch pills, and the Lord knows who has -the true preparation." Brown died in 1704. Sir Walter Scott used to tell -one of his best stories about these pills. It dwelt on the passion for -them entertained by a certain hypochondriacal Lowland laird. Bland or -rough, old or young, no visitor at his house escaped a dose--"joost ane -leetle Anderson;" and his toady "the doer" used always to swallow a -brace.[92] - -The Turk's Head Coffee-house stood on the site of No. 142 Strand. Dr. -Johnson used to sup at this house to encourage the hostess, who was a -good civil woman, and had not too much business. July 28, 1763, Boswell -mentions supping there with Dr. Johnson; and again, on August 3, in the -same year, just before he set out for his wildgoose chase in Corsica.[93] -No. 132 was the shop of a bookseller named Bathoe. The first circulating -library in London was established here in 1740. - -Jacob Tonson, Dryden's grinding publisher and bookseller, lived at the -Shakspere's Head, over against Catherine Street, now No. 141 Strand, from -about 1712 till he died, in 1735-6. Tonson seems to have been rough, hard, -and penurious. The poet and publisher were perpetually squabbling, and -Dryden was especially vexed at his trying to force him to dedicate his -translation of Virgil to King William, and when he refused, making the -engraver of the frontispiece aggravate the nose of AEneas till it became "a -hooked promontory," like that of the Protestant king. It was to Tonson's -shop at Gray's Inn, however, that Dryden, on being refused money, probably -sent that terrible triplet to the obdurate bibliopole:-- - - "With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair, - With two left legs, and Judas-colour'd hair, - And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air."[94] - -"Tell the dog," said Dryden to his messenger, "that he who wrote those can -write more." But Tonson was perfectly satisfied with this first shot, and -surrendered at discretion. The irascible poet afterwards accused him of -intercepting his letters to his sons at Rome, and he confessed to -Bolingbroke on one occasion that he was afraid of Tonson's tongue.[95] - -Tonson's house, since rebuilt, was afterwards occupied by Andrew Millar, -the publisher and friend of Thomson, Fielding, Hume, and Robertson, and -after his death by Thomas Cadell, his apprentice, and the friend and -publisher of Gibbon the historian. The _Seasons_, _Tom Jones_, and the -Histories of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon were first published at this -house. Millar was a Scotchman, and distinguished his shop by the sign of -Buchanan's Head, afterwards the badge of Messrs. Blackwood. - -The _Illustrated London News_, whose office is near Somerset House, was -started in 1842 by Mr. Herbert Ingram, originally a humble newsvendor at -Northampton; an industrious man, who would run five miles with a newspaper -to oblige an old customer. In the first year he sold a million copies; in -the second, two; and in 1848, three millions. Dr. Mackay, the song-writer, -wrote leaders; Mr. Mark Lemon aided him; Mr. Peter Cunningham collected -his column of weekly chat; Thomas Miller, the basket-maker poet, was also -on his staff. Mr. Ingram obtained a seat in Parliament, and was eventually -drowned in a steamboat collision on Lake Michigan. - -[Illustration: PENN'S HOUSE, NORFOLK STREET, 1749.] - - - - -[Illustration: SOMERSET HOUSE FROM THE RIVER, 1746.] - - -CHAPTER IV. - -SOMERSET HOUSE. - - "And every day there passes by my side, - Up to its western reach, the London tide-- - The spring tides of the term. My front looks down - On all the pride and business of the town; - My other fair and more majestic face - For ever gazes on itself below, - In the best mirror that the world can show." - COWLEY. - - -That ambitious and rapacious noble the Protector Somerset, brother of -Queen Jane Seymour, and maternal uncle of Edward VI., the owner of more -than two hundred manors,[96] and who boasted that his own friends and -retainers made up an army of ten thousand men, determined to build a -palace in the Strand. For this purpose he demolished the parish church of -St. Mary, and pulled down the houses of the Bishops of Worcester, -Llandaff, and Lichfield. He also began to remove St. Margaret's, at -Westminster, for building materials, till his masons were driven away by -rioters. He destroyed a chapel in St. Paul's Churchyard, with a cloister -containing the "Dance of Death," and a charnel-house, the bones of which -he buried in unconsecrated ground,[97] and finally stole the stones of the -church of St. John of Jerusalem, near Smithfield,[98] and those of Strand -Inn (belonging to the Temple), where Occleve the poet, a contemporary of -Gower and Chaucer, had studied law. - -The unwise Protector determined in this building to rival Whitehall and -Hampton Court. It was begun probably about 1549, and no doubt remained -unfinished at his death. He had at that time lavished on it L50,000 of our -present money. - -The architect was John of Padua,[99] Henry VIII.'s architect, who built -Longleat, in Wiltshire, the seat of the Marquis of Bath, a magnificent -specimen of the Italian-Elizabethan style, and also the gates of Caius -College, at Cambridge. The Protector is said to have spent at one time -L100 a day in building, every stone he laid bringing him nearer to his own -narrow home. A plan of the house is still preserved in the Soane -Museum.[100] - -After the attainder of the duke, when the new palace became the property -of the crown, little was done to complete the building. The screen -prepared for the hall was bought for St. Bride's, where it was probably -destroyed in the Great Fire.[101] The Protector was a good friend to the -people, but he was weak and ambitious, and the plotters of Ely House had -no difficulty in dragging him to the scaffold. The minority of Edward -brought many of the Strand noblemen to the axe, but the fate of the -admiral and his brother did not deter their neighbours Northumberland, -Raleigh, Norfolk, and Essex. - -Elizabeth granted the keeping of Somerset House to her faithful cousin -Lord Hunsdon, for life,[102] and here she frequently would visit him, in a -jewelled farthingale, with Raleigh and Essex in her train. - -In 1616 that Scotch Solomon, James I., commanded the place to be called -Denmark House; and his queen kept her gay and not very decent court here, -so that Ben Jonson must have often seen his glorious masques acted in this -palace, to which his coadjutor Inigo Jones built a chapel, and made other -additions. Anne of Denmark and her maids-of-honour kept up here a -continual masquerade,[103] appearing in various dresses, and transforming -themselves to the delight of all whose interest it was to be delighted. - -Here too that impetuous queen, Henrietta Maria, resided with her wilful -and extravagant French household, whose insolence irritated and disgusted -the people and offended Charles the First. The king at last, losing -patience, summoned them together one evening and dismissed them all. They -behaved like sutlers at the sack of a town. They claimed fictitious debts; -they invented exorbitant bills; they greedily divided among each other the -queen's wardrobe and jewels, scarcely leaving her a change of linen. The -king paid nearly L50,000 to get rid of them; Madame St. George alone -claiming several thousand pounds besides jewels.[104] They still delayed -their departure; on which the king, at last roused, wrote the following -imperative letter to Buckingham:-- - - "STEENIE--I have received your letter by Dick Greame. This is my - answer. I command you to send all the French away to-morrow out of the - town, if you can by fair means (but stick not long in disputing), - otherways force them away--driving them away like so many wild beasts - until ye have shipped them; and the devil go with them. Let me hear no - answer, but of the performance of my command. So I rest - - "Your faithful, constant, loving friend, - "C. R. - - "Oaking, the seventh of August, 1626." - -As the French invented all sorts of vexatious delays, the yeomen of the -guard at last jostled them out, carting them off in nearly forty coaches. -They arrived at Dover after four days' tedious travelling, wrangling, and -bewailing. The squib did not burn out without one final detonation. As the -vivacious Madame St. George stepped into the boat, with perhaps some -insolent gesture of adieu, a man in the mob flung a stone at her French -cap. A gallant Englishman who was escorting her instantly quitted his -charge, ran the fellow through the body, and returned to the boat. The man -died on the spot, but no notice, it appears, was taken of the murderer. - -In Somerset House, at the Christmas masque of 1632-3, Charles's -high-spirited queen took part for the last time in a masque. Unfortunately -for Prynne, the next day out came his _Histriomastix_, with a scurrilous -marginal note, "Women actors notorious whores!" for which the stubborn -fanatic lost his ears. - -Queen Henrietta had, in Somerset House, an ostentatiously magnificent -Catholic chapel built by Inigo Jones, which became the scene of spectacles -that were gall and wormwood to the Puritans, who were already couching for -their spring. - -Their time came in March 1643, when Roundheads, grimly rejoicing, burnt -all the pictures, images, Jesuitical books, and tapestry.[105] - -Five of the unhappy queen's French Roman Catholic servants are entombed in -the cellars of the present building, under the great quiet square.[106] - -Here, close to his own handiwork, that distinguished architect, Inigo -Jones, who had lodgings in the palace, died in 1652. - -About the same time the House of Peers permitted the Protestant service to -be held in Somerset House instead of in Durham House. This drove out the -Quakers and Anabaptists, and prevented the pulling down of the palace and -the making of a street from the garden through the chapel and back-yard up -into the Strand.[107] - -The Protector's palace was the scene of a great and sad event in November -1658; for the body of Cromwell, who had died at Whitehall, lay in state -here for several days. He lay in effigy on a bed of royal crimson velvet, -covered with a velvet gown, a sceptre in his hand, and a crown upon his -head. The Cavaliers, whose spirits were recovering, were very angry at -this foolish display,[108] forgetting that it was not poor Oliver's own -doing; and the baser people, who follow any impulse of the day, threw dirt -in the night upon the blazoned escutcheon that was displayed over the -great gate of Somerset House. - -The year after, an Act was passed to sell all royal property, and Somerset -House was disposed of for L10,000. The Restoration soon stepped in and -annulled the bargain. After the return of the son who so completely -revenged upon us the death of his father, the luckless palace became the -residence of its former inhabitant, now older and gentler--the -queen-mother. She improved and beautified it. The old courtier, Waller, -only fifty-seven at the time, wrote some fulsome verses on the occasion. -He talks of her adorning the town as with a brave revenge, to show-- - - "That glory came and went with you." - -He mentions also the view from the palace:-- - - "The fair view her window yields, - The town, the river, and the fields." - -Cowley, the son of a Fleet Street grocer, flew still higher, larded his -flattery with perverted texts, like a Puritanised Cavalier time-server, -and wrote-- - - "On either side dwells Safety and Delight; - Wealth on the left and Power sits on the right." - -In May 1665, when the queen-mother, who had lived in Somerset House with -her supposed husband, the Earl of St. Albans, took her farewell of England -for a gayer court, Cowley wrote these verses to the setting sun, in hopes -to propitiate the rising sun; for here, too, lived Catherine of Braganza, -the unhappy wife of Charles II. - -There were strange scenes at Somerset House even during the queen-mother's -residence, for the old court gossip Pepys describes being taken one day to -the Presence-chamber.[109] He found the queen not very charming, but still -modest and engaging. Lady Castlemaine was there, Mr. Crofts, a pretty -young spark of fifteen (her illegitimate child), and many great ladies. By -and by in came the king and the Duke and Duchess of York. The conversation -was not a very decorous one; and the young queen said to Charles, "You -lie!" which made good sport, as the chuckling and delighted Pepys remarks, -those being the first English words he had heard her say; and the king -then tried to make her reply, "Confess and be hanged." - -In another place Pepys indignantly describes "a little proud, ugly, -talkative lady crying up the queen-mother's court as more decorous than -the king's;" yet the diary-keeper confesses that the former was the better -attended, the old nobility dreading, I suppose, the scandal of -Whitehall.[110] - -In 1670 Monk, Duke of Albemarle, having died at his lodgings in the -Cockpit, at Whitehall, lay in state in Somerset House, and was afterwards -buried with almost regal pomp in Henry VII.'s Chapel. - -In October 1678, the infamous devisers of the Popish plot connected -Somerset House and the attendants in the Queen's Chapel with the murder of -a City magistrate, the supposed Protestant martyr, Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, -who was found murdered in a field near Primrose Hill, "between Kilburn and -Hampstead," as it was then thought necessary to specify. The lying -witnesses, Prance and Bedloe, swore that the justice had been inveigled -into Somerset House under pretence of being wanted to keep the peace -between two servants who were fighting in the yard; that he was then -strangled, his neck broken, and his own sword run through his body. The -corpse was kept four days, then carried in a sedan-chair to Soho, and -afterwards on a horse to Primrose Hill, nearly three miles off. The -secrecy and convenient neighbourhood of the river for hiding a murdered -man seem never to have struck the rogues, who forgot even to "lie like -truth," so credulous and excited was the multitude. - -Waller, says Aubrey, though usually very temperate, was once made drunk at -Somerset House by some courtiers, and had a cruel fall when taking boat at -the water stairs, "'Twas a pity to use such a sweet man so -inhumanly."[111] Saville used to say that "nobody should keep him company -without drinking but Mr. Waller." - -In 1692 that poor ill-used woman and unhappy wife, Catherine of Braganza, -left Somerset House, and returned thence to Portugal, the home of her -happy childhood and happier youth. - -The palace, never the home of very happy inmates, then became a lodging -for foreign kings and ambassadors, and a home for a few noblemen and poor -retainers of the court, much as Hampton Court is now. Lewis de Duras, Earl -of Feversham, the incompetent commander at Sedgemoor, who lies buried at -the Savoy, lived here in 1708; and so did Lady Arlington, the widow of -Secretary Bennet, that butt of Killigrew and Rochester. In the reign of -George III., Charlotte Lennox, the authoress of the _Female Quixote_, had -apartments in Somerset House. - -Houses, like men, run their allotted courses. In 1775 the old palace, -which had been settled on the queen-consort in the event of her surviving -the king, was exchanged for Buckingham House; and the Government instantly -began to pull down the river-side palace, and erect new public offices -designed by Sir William Chambers, a Scotch architect, who had given -instruction in his art to George III., when Prince of Wales. - -In 1630, a row of fishmongers' stalls, in the middle of the street, over -against Denmark House (Somerset House), was broken down by order of -Government to prevent stalls from growing into sheds, and sheds into -dwelling houses, as had been the case in Old Fish Street, Saint Nicholas -Shambles, and other places.[112] - -On the 2d of February, 1659-60, Pepys tells us in his diary, that having -L60 with him of his lord's money, on his way from London Bridge, and -hearing the noise of guns, he landed at Somerset House, and found the -Strand full of soldiers. Going upstairs to a window, Pepys looked out and -saw the foot face the horse and beat them back, all the while bawling for -a free parliament and money. By and by a drum was heard to sound a march -towards them, and they all got ready again, but the new comers proving of -the same mind, they "made a great deal of joy to see one another."[113] -This was the beginning of Monk's change, for the king returned in the -following May. On the 18th of February two soldiers were hanged opposite -Somerset House for a mutiny, of which Pepys was an eye-witness. - -The prints of old Somerset House show a long line of battlemented wall -facing the river, and a turreted and partially arcaded front. There is -also a scarce view of the place by Hollar.[114] The river front has two -porticos. The chapel is to the left, and near it are the cloisters of the -Capuchins. The bowling-green seems to be to the right, between the two -rows of trees. The garden is formal. The royal apartments were on the -river side. The only memorial left of the outhouses of the old palace was -the sign of a lion in the wall of a house in the Strand, that is mentioned -in old records.[115] - -Dryden describes his two friends, Eugenius and Neander, landing at -Somerset Stairs, and gives us a pleasant picture of the summer evening, -the water on which the moonbeams played looked like floating quicksilver, -and some French people dancing merrily in the open air as the friends walk -onwards to the Piazza.[116] - -Of the old views of Somerset House, that of Moss is considered the best. -There is also an early and curious one by Knyff. A picture in Dulwich -Gallery (engraved by Wilkinson) represents the river front before Inigo -Jones had added a chapel for the queen of Charles I.[117] - -Sir William Chambers built the present Somerset House. The old palace, -when the clearance for the demolition began, presented a singular -spectacle.[118] At the extremity of the royal apartments two large -folding-doors joined Inigo Jones's additions to John of Padua's work. They -opened into a long gallery on the first floor of the water garden wing, at -the lower end of which was another gallery, making an angle which formed -the original river front, and extended to Strand Lane. This old part had -been long shut up, and was supposed to be haunted. The gallery was -panelled and floored with oak. The chandelier chains still hung from the -stucco ceilings. The furniture of the royal apartment was removed into -lumber-rooms by the Royal Academy. There were relics of a throne and -canopy; the crimson velvet curtains for the audience-chamber had faded to -olive colour; and the fringe and lace were there, but a few threads and -spangles had been peeled off them. There were also scattered about in -disorder, broken chairs, stools, couches, screens, and fire-dogs. - -In the older apartments much of Edward VI.'s furniture still remained. The -silk hangings of the audience-chamber were in tatters, and so were the -curtains, gilt-leather covers, and painted screens; one gilt chandelier -also remained, and so did the sconces. A door beyond, with difficulty -opened, led into a small tower on the first floor, built by Inigo Jones, -and used as a breakfast-room or dressing-room by Queen Catherine. It was a -beautiful octagonal domed apartment, with a tasteful cornice. The walls -were frescoed, and there were pictures on the ceiling. A door from this -place opened on the staircase and led to a bath-room, lined with marble, -on the ground floor. - -The painters of the day compared the ruined palace, characteristically -enough, to the gloomy precincts of the dilapidated castles in Mrs. -Radcliffe's wax-work romances. - -Sir William Chambers completed his work in about five years, clearing two -thousand a year. It cost more than half a million of money. The Strand -front is 135 feet long; the quadrangle 210 feet wide and 296 feet deep. -The main buildings are 54 feet deep and six stories high. They are faced -with Portland stone, now partly sooty black, partly blanched white with -the weather. The basement is adorned with rustic work, Corinthian -pilasters, balustrades, statues, masks, and medallions. The river terrace -was intended in anticipation of the possible embankment of the Thames. -Some critics think Chambers's great work heavy, others elegant but timid. -There is too much rustic work, and the whole is rather "cut up." The vases -and niches are unmeaning, and it was a great structural fault to make the -portico columns of the fine river side stand on a brittle-looking arch. - -It was to Somerset House that the Royal Academy came after the split in -the St. Martin's Lane Society. Here West exhibited his respectable -platitudes, Reynolds his grand portraits, and Lawrence his graceful, -brilliant, but meretricious pictures. In the great room of the Academy, at -the top of the building, Reynolds, Opie, Barrie, and Fuseli lectured. -Through the doorway to the right of the vestibule, Reynolds, Wilkie, -Turner, Flaxman, and Chantrey have often stepped. Under that bust of -Michael Angelo almost all our great men from Johnson to Scott must have -passed. - -Carlini, an Italian friend of Cipriani, executed the two central statues -on the Strand front of Somerset House, and also three of the nine colossal -key-stone masks--the rivers Dee, Tyne, and Severn. Carlini was one of the -unsuccessful candidates for the Beckford monument in Guildhall. When -Carlini was keeper of the Academy, he used to walk from his house in Soho -to Somerset Place, dressed in a deplorable greatcoat, and with a broken -tobacco pipe in his mouth; but when he went to the great annual Academy -dinner, he would make his way into a chair, full dressed in a purple silk -coat, and scarlet gold-laced waistcoat, with point-lace ruffles, and a -sword and bag.[119] Wilton, the sculptor, executed the two outer figures. - -Giuseppe Ceracchi, who carved some of the heads of the river gods for the -key-stones of the windows of the Strand front of Somerset House, was an -Italian, but it is uncertain whether he was born at Rome or in Corsica. He -gave the accomplished Mrs. Damer (General Conway's daughter) her first -lessons in sculpture, an art which she afterwards perfected in the studio -of the elder Bacon. Ceracchi executed the only bust in marble that -Reynolds ever sat for. A statue of Mrs. Damer, from a model by him, is now -in the British Museum. This sculptor was guillotined in 1801, for a plot -against Napoleon.[120] He is said to have lost his wits in prison, and to -have mounted the scaffold dressed as a Roman emperor. It was to Mrs. Damer -(the daughter of his old friend) that Horace Walpole, our most French of -memoir-writers, bequeathed his fantastic villa at Strawberry Hill, and its -incongruous but valuable curiosities. She is said to have sent a bust of -Nelson to the Rajah of Tanjore, who wished to spread a taste for English -art in India. - -The rooms round the quadrangle are hives of red-tapists. There are about -nine hundred Government clerks nestled away in them, and maintained at an -annual cost to us of about L275,000. There is the office of the Duchy of -Cornwall, and there are the Legacy Duty, the Stamps, Taxes, and Excise -Offices, the Inland Revenue Office, the Registrar General's Office -(created pursuant to 6 and 7 Will. IV., c. 86), part of the Admiralty and -the Audit Office, and lastly the Will Office. - -The east wing of Somerset House, used as King's College, was built in -1829. The bronze statue of George III., and the fine recumbent figure of -Father Thames, in the chief court, were cast by John Bacon, R.A. - -The office for auditing the public accounts existed, under the name of the -Office of the Auditors of the Imprests, as far back as the time of Henry -VIII. The present commission was established in 1785, and the salaries -formerly paid for the passing of accounts are now paid out of the Civil -List, all fees being abolished. The average annual cost of the office for -auditing some three hundred and fifty accounts is L50,000. There are six -commissioners, a secretary, and upwards of a hundred clerks. Almost all -the home and colonial expenditure is examined at this office. Edward -Harley and Arthur Maynwaring (the wit of the Kit-Cat Club) were the two -Auditors of the Imprests in the reign of Queen Anne. The Earl of Oxford, -the collector of MSS., obtained many curious public documents from his -brother. If he had taken the whole the nation would have been a gainer; -for the Government bought his collection for the British Museum, and all -that he left (except what Sir William Musgrave, a commissioner, scraped -together and gave to the British Museum) were barbarously destroyed by -Government, heedless of their historical value. Maynwaring's fees were -about L2000 a year. The present salary of a commissioner is L1200; the -chairman's salary is L500. In 1867 the western front of Somerset House was -added; it is from the designs of Pennethorne, to accommodate the clerks of -the Inland Revenue Department. - -The Astronomical Society, Geographical Society, and Geological Society, -were for many years sheltered in Somerset House, before removing -westwards. - -Hither, in 1782, from Crane Court, came the Royal Society. The entrance -door to the society's rooms, to the left of the vestibule, is marked out -by the bust of Sir Isaac Newton; Herschel, Davy, and Wollaston, as well as -Walpole and Hallam, must have passed here, for the same door leads to the -apartments of the Society of Antiquaries. - -This society, when burnt out of Aldersgate Street by the Great Fire, held -its meetings for a time in Arundel House. At first its doings were -trifling and sometimes absurd. Enthusiasts and pedants often made the -society ludicrous by their aberrations. Charles II. pretended to admire -their Baconic inductions, but must have laughed at Boyle's essays and -platitudes, and the hope of Wilkins, the Bishop of Chester, of flying to -the moon. Evelyn's suggestions were unpractical and dilettantish, and -Pepys's ramblings not over wise. We may be sure that there was food for -laughter, when Butler could thus sketch the occupations of these -philosophers:-- - - "To measure wind and weigh the air, - To turn a circle to a square, - And in the braying of an ass - Find out the treble and the bass, - If mares neigh _alto_, and a cow - In double diapason low." - -Yet how can we wonder that in the vast gold mines of the new philosophy -our wise men hesitated where first to sink their shafts? Cowley -chivalrously sprang forward to ward off from them the laughter and scorn -of the Rochesters and the Killigrews of the day, and to prove that these -initiative studies were not "impertinent and vain and small," nothing in -nature being worthless. He ends his fine, rambling ode with the following -noble simile:-- - - "Lo! when by various turns of the celestial dance, - In many thousand years, - A star so long unknown appears, - Though Heaven itself more beauteous by it grow, - It troubles and alarms the world below; - Does to the wise a star, to fools a meteor show."[121] - -The Royal Society's traditions belong more to Gresham College than to -Somerset House, the later home of our wise men. It originated in 1645, in -meetings held in Wood Street and Gresham College, suggested by Theodore -Hank, a German of the Palatinate. During the Civil War its discussions -were continued at Oxford. The present entrance-money is L10, and the -annual subscription is L4. The society consists at present of between 700 -and 800 fellows, and the anniversary is held every 30th of November, being -St. Andrew's Day. The Transactions of the society fill upwards of 150 -quarto volumes. The first president was Viscount Brouncker, and the -second Sir Joseph Williamson. Mr. William Spottiswoode is the present -president. The society possesses some valuable pictures, including three -portraits of Sir Isaac Newton--one by C. Jervas, presented by the great -philosopher himself, and hung over the president's chair; a second by D. -C. Marchand, and a third by Vanderbank; two portraits of Halley, by Thomas -Murray and Dahl; two of Hobbes, the great advocate of despotism--one taken -in 1663 (three years after the Restoration), and the other by Gaspars, -presented by Aubrey; Sir Christopher Wren, by Kneller; Wallis, by West; -Flamstead, by Gibson; Robert Boyle, by F. Kerseboom (a good likeness, says -Boyle); Pepys, the cruel expositor of his own weaknesses, by Kneller; Sir -A. Southwell, by the same portrait-painter; Dr. Birch, the great -historical compiler, by Wills (the original of the mezzotint done by Faber -in 1741, and bequeathed by Dr. Birch); Martin Folkes, the great -antiquarian, by Hogarth; Dr. Wollaston, the eccentric discoverer, by -Jackson; and Sir Humphrey Davy, by Sir Thomas Lawrence. - -Amongst the curiosities of the society are the silver-gilt mace presented -to the society by Charles II. in 1662--(long supposed to be the bauble -which Cromwell treated with such contempt); a solar dial, made by Sir -Isaac Newton himself when a boy; a reflecting telescope, made by Newton in -1671; the precious MS. of the _Principia_ in Newton's handwriting; a -silvery lock of Newton's hair; the MS. of the _Parentalia, or Memoirs of -the Family of the Wrens_, written by young Wren; the charter-book of the -society, bound in crimson velvet, and containing the signatures of the -founder and fellows; a Rumford fireplace, one of the earliest in use; and -a marble bust of Mrs. Somerville, the great mathematician and philosopher, -by Chantrey. The society gives annually two gold medals--one the Rumford, -the other the Copley medal, called by Sir Humphrey Davy "the ancient olive -crown of the Royal Society." - -The Geological Society has a museum of specimens and fossils from all -quarters of the globe. The number of its fellows is about 875, and the -time of meeting alternate Wednesday evenings from November till June. It -also publishes a quarterly journal. The entrance-money is six guineas, the -annual subscription two. - -The Society of Antiquaries was fairly started in 1707, by Wanley, Bagford, -and Talman, who agreed to meet together every Friday under penalty of -sixpence. It had originated about 1580, when it held its first sittings in -the Heralds' College; but it did not obtain a charter till 1751, both -Elizabeth and James being afraid of its meddling with royal prerogatives -and illustrious genealogies, and the Civil War having interrupted its -proceedings. Its first meeting was at the Bear Tavern, in the Strand. In -1739 the members were limited to one hundred, and the terms were one -guinea entrance and twelve shillings annually. The society agreed to -discuss antiquarian subjects, and chiefly those relating to English -history prior to James I. In 1751 George II. granted its members a -charter, and in 1777 George III. gave them apartments in Somerset House, -where they continued till their recent removal to Burlington House. The -terms now are eight guineas admission, and four guineas annually. The -_Archaeologia_, a journal of the society's proceedings, commenced in 1770. -The meetings are every Thursday evening from November to June, and the -anniversary meeting is the 23d of April. - -The museum of this society contains, among other treasures, the _Household -Book_ of the Duke of Norfolk; a large and valuable collection of early -proclamations and ballads; T. Porter's unique map of London (Charles I.); -a folding picture in panel, of the "Preaching at Old St. Paul's in 1616;" -early portraits of Edward IV. and Richard III., engraved for the third -series of _Ellis's Letters_; a three-quarter portrait of Mary I. with the -monogram of Lucas de Heere, and the date 1546; a curious portrait of the -Marquis of Winchester (who died 1571); the portrait by Sir Antonio More, -of Schorel, a Dutch painter; portraits of antiquaries--Burton, the -Leicestershire antiquary, Peter le Neve, Humphrey Wanley Baker, of St. -John's College, William Stukeley, George Vertue, and Edward, Earl of -Oxford, presented by Vertue; a Bohemian astronomical clock of gilt brass, -made in 1525 for Sigismund, King of Poland, and bought at the sale of the -effects of James Ferguson, the astronomer; and a spur of gilt brass, found -on Towton field, the scene of the bloody conflict between Edward IV. and -the Lancastrian forces. Upon the shank is engraved the following -posey--"En loial amour tout mon coer."[122] - -The Astronomical Society was instituted in 1820, and received the royal -charter in 1st William IV. The entrance-money is two guineas, and the -annual subscription the same amount. The annual general meeting is the -second Friday in February. A medal is awarded every year. The society has -a small but good mathematical library, and a few astronomical instruments. - -A little above the entrance door to "the Stamps and Taxes" there is a -white watch-face let into the wall. Local tradition declares it was left -there in votive gratitude by a labourer who fell from a scaffolding and -was saved by the ribbon of his watch catching in some ornament. It was -really placed there by the Royal Society as a meridian mark for a portable -transit instrument in a window of an ante-room.[123] - -A tradition of Nelson belongs to this quiet square. An old clerk at -Somerset House used to describe seeing the hero of the Nile pass on his -way to the Admiralty. Thin and frail, with only one arm, he would enter -the vestibule at a smart pace, and make direct for his goal, pushing -across the rough round stones of the quadrangle, instead of taking, like -others, the smooth pavement. Nelson always took the nearest way to the -object he wished to attain.[124] - -The Royal Academy soon found a home in Somerset House. Germs of this -institution are to be found as early as the reign of Charles I., when Sir -Francis Kynaston, a translator of Chaucer into Latin (_circa_ 1636), was -chosen regent of an academy in Covent Garden.[125] - -In 1643 that shifty adventurer, Sir Balthazar Gerbier, who had been fellow -ambassador with Rubens in Spain, started some quack establishment of the -same kind at Bethnal Green. He afterwards went to Surinam, was turned out -by the Dutch, came back, designed an ugly house at Hampstead Marshal, in -Berks, and died in 1667. - -In 1711 Sir Godfrey Kneller instituted a private art academy, of which he -became president. Hogarth, writing about 1760, says, that sixty years -before some artists had started an academy, but their leaders assuming too -much pomposity, a caricature procession was drawn on the walls of the -studio, upon which the society broke up in dudgeon. Sir James Thornhill, -in 1724, then set up an academy at his own house in Covent Garden, while -others, under Vanderbank, turned a neighbouring meeting-house into a -studio; but these rival confederations broke up at Sir James's death in -1734. - -Hogarth, his son-in-law, opened an academy, under the direction of Mr. -Moser, at the house of a painter named Peter Hyde, in Greyhound Court, -Arundel Street. In 1739 these artists removed to a more commodious house -in Peter's Court, St. Martin's Lane, where they continued till 1767, when -they removed to Pall Mall. - -In 1738 the Duke of Richmond threw open to art-students his gallery at -Whitehall, closed it again when his absence in the German war prevented -the paying of the premiums, was laughed at, and then re-opened it again. -It lasted some years, and Edwards, author of the _Anecdotes_, studied -there. - -In 1753 some artists meeting at the Turk's Head, Gerrard Street, Soho, -tried ineffectually to organise an academy; but in 1765 they obtained a -charter, and appointed Mr. Lambert president. - -In 1760 their first exhibition of pictures was held in the rooms of the -Society of Arts, and in 1761 there were two exhibitions, one at Spring -Gardens: for the latter Hogarth illustrated a catalogue, with a compliment -to the young king and a caricature of rich connoisseurs. - -In 1768 eight of the directors of the Spring Gardens Society, indignant at -Mr. Kirby being made president of the society in the place of Mr. Hayman, -resigned; and, co-operating with sixteen others who had been ejected, -secretly founded a new society. Wilton, Chambers, West, Cotes, and Moser, -were the leaders in this scheme, and Reynolds soon joined them, tempted, -it is supposed, by a promise of knighthood. - -West was the chief mover in this intrigue. The Archbishop of York, who had -tried to raise L3000 to enable the American artist to abandon -portrait-painting, had gained the royal ear, and West was painting the -"Departure of Regulus" for the king, who was even persuaded and flattered -into drawing up several of the laws of the new society with his own -hand.[126] The king, in the meantime, with unworthy dissimulation, -affected outwardly a complete neutrality between the two camps, presented -the Spring Gardens Society with L100, and even attended their exhibition. - -The king's patronage of the new society was disclosed to honest Mr. Kirby -(father of Mrs. Trimmer, and the artist who had taught the king -perspective) in a very malicious and mortifying manner, and the story was -related to Mr. Galt by West, with a quiet, cold spite, peculiarly his own. -Mr. Kirby came to the palace just as West was submitting his sketch for -"Regulus" to the king. West was a true courtier, and knew well how to make -a patron suggest his own subject. Kirby praised the picture, and hoped Mr. -West intended to exhibit it. The Quaker slily replied that that depended -on his majesty's pleasure. The king, like a true confederate, immediately -said, "Assuredly I shall be happy to let the work be shown to the public." -"Then, Mr. West," said the perhaps too arrogant president, "you will send -it to my exhibition?" "No!" said the king, and the words must have been -thunderbolts to poor Kirby; "it must go to _my_ exhibition."[127] "Poor -Kirby," says West, "only two nights before, had declared that the design -of forming such an institution was not contemplated. His colour forsook -him--his countenance became yellow with mortification--he bowed with -profound humility, and instantly retired, _nor did he long survive the -shock_!" - -Mr. West is wrong, however, in the last statement, for his rival did not -die till 1774. Mr. Kirby, a most estimable man, was originally a -house-painter at Ipswich. He became acquainted with Gainsborough, was -introduced by Lord Bute to the king, and wrote and edited some valuable -works on perspective, to one of which Hogarth contributed an inimitable -frontispiece. - -Sir Robert Strange says that much of this intrigue was carried out by Mr. -Dalton,[128] a print seller in Pall Mall, and the king's librarian, in -whose rooms the exhibition was held in 1767 and 1768. - -Thus an American Quaker, a Swiss, and a Swede--(a gold-chaser, a -coach-painter, an architect, and a third-rate painter, West)--ignobly -established the Royal Academy. Many eminent men refused to join the new -society. Allan Ramsay, Hudson, Scott the marine-painter, and Romney were -opposed to it. Engravers (much to the disgrace of the Academy) were -excluded; and worst of all, one of the new laws forbade any artist to be -eligible to academic honours who did not exhibit his works in the -Academy's rooms: thus depriving for ever every English artist of the right -to earn money by exhibiting his own works.[129] - -The proportion of foreigners in the Academy was very large. The two ladies -who became members (Angelica Kauffmann and Mrs. Moser) were both -Swiss.[130] - -The other unlucky society, deprived of its share of the St. Martin's Lane -casts, etc., and shut out from the Academy, furnished a studio over the -Cyder Cellars in Maiden Lane, struggled on till 1807, and then ceased to -exist.[131] - -The Academy, with all its tyranny and injustice, has still been useful to -English art in perpetuating annual exhibitions which attract purchasers. -But what did more good to English art than twenty academies was the king's -patronage of West, the spread of engraving, and the rise of middle-class -purchasers, who rendered it no longer necessary for artists to depend on -the caprice and folly of rich aristocratic patrons. - -One word more about the art oligarchy. The first officers of the new -society were--Reynolds, president; Moser, keeper; Newton, secretary; -Penny, professor of painting; Sandby, professor of architecture; Wale, -professor of perspective; W. Hunter, professor of anatomy; Chambers, -treasurer; and Wilson, librarian. Goldsmith was chosen professor of -history at a later period. - -The catalogue of the first exhibition of the Royal Academy contains the -names of only one hundred and thirty pictures: Hayman exhibited scenes -from _Don Quixote_; Rooker some Liverpool views; Reynolds some allegorised -portraits; Miss Kauffmann some of her tame Homeric figures; West his -"Regulus" (that killed Kirby), and a Venus and Adonis; Zuccarelli two -landscapes. - -In 1838, the first year after the opening of the National Gallery, 1382 -works of art, including busts and architectural designs, were exhibited. -Among the pictures then shown were--Stanfield's "Chasse Maree off the -Gulf-stream Light," "The Privy Council," by Wilkie; portraits of men and -dogs, by Landseer; "The Pifferari," "Phryne," and "Banishment of Ovid," by -Turner; "A Bacchante," by Etty; "Gaston de Foix," by Eastlake; Allan's -"Slave Market," Leslie's "Dinner Scene from the Merry Wives of Windsor;" -"A View on the Rhine," by Callcott; Shee's portrait of Sir Francis -Burdett; portraits by Pickersgill; Maclise's "Christmas in the Olden -Time," and "Olivia and Sophia fitting out Moses for the Fair;" "The -Massacre of the Innocents," by Hilton; and a picture by Uwins.[132] - -Angelica Kauffmann and Biaggio Rebecca helped to decorate the Academy's -old council-chamber at Somerset House. The paintings still exist. Rebecca -was an eccentric, conceited Italian artist, who decorated several rooms at -Windsor, and offended the worthy precise old king by his practical jokes. -On one occasion, knowing he would meet the king on his way to Windsor with -West, he stuck a paper star on his coat. The next time West came, the king -was curious to know who the foreign nobleman was he had seen--"Person of -distinction, eh? eh?"--and was doubtless vexed at the joke. - -Rebecca's favourite trick was to draw a half-crown on paper, and place it -on the floor of one of the ante-rooms at Windsor, laughing immoderately at -the eagerness with which some fat courtier in full dress, sword and bag, -would run and scuffle to pick it up.[133] - -Fuseli took his place as Keeper of the Academy in 1805. Smirke had been -elected, but George III., hearing that he was a democrat, refused to -confirm the appointment. Haydon, who called on Fuseli in Berners Street in -1805, when he had left his father the bookseller at Plymouth, describes -him as "a little white-headed, lion-faced man, in an old flannel -dressing-gown tied round his waist with a piece of rope, and upon his head -the bottom of Mrs. Fuseli's work-basket." His gallery was full of -galvanised devils, malicious witches brewing incantations, Satan bridging -chaos or springing upwards like a pyramid of fire, Lady Macbeth, Paolo and -Francesca, Falstaff and Mrs. Quickly. - -Elsewhere the impetuous Haydon sketches him vigorously. Fuseli was about -five feet five inches high, had a compact little form, stood firmly at his -easel, painted with his left hand, never held his palette upon his thumb, -but kept it upon his stone slab, and being very near-sighted and too vain -to wear glasses, used to dab his beastly brush into the oil, and sweeping -round the palette in the dark, take up a great lump of white, red, or -blue, and plaster it over a shoulder or a face; then prying close in, he -would turn round and say, "By Gode! dat's a fine purple! it's very like -Correggio, by Gode!" and then all of a sudden burst out with a quotation -from Homer, Tasso, Dante, Ovid, Virgil, or the Niebelungen, and say, -"Paint dat!" "I found him," says Haydon, "a most grotesque mixture of -literature, art, scepticism, indelicacy, profanity, and kindness. He put -me in mind of Archimago in Spenser."[134] - -When Haydon came first to town from Plymouth, he lodged at 342 -Strand,[135] near Charing Cross, and close to his fellow-student, the -good-natured, indolent, clever Jackson. The very morning he arrived he -hurried off to the Exhibition, and mistaking the new church in the Strand -for Somerset House, ran up the steps and offered his shilling to a beadle. -When he at last found the right house, Opie's _Gil Blas_ and Westall's -_Shipwrecked Sailor Boy_ were all the historical pictures he could find. - -Sir Joshua read his first discourse before the Academy in 1769. Barry -commenced his lectures in 1784, ended them in 1798, and was expelled the -Academy in 1799. Opie delivered his lectures in 1807, the year in which he -died. Fuseli began in 1801, and delivered but twelve lectures in all. - -It was on St. George's Day, 1771, that Sir Joshua Reynolds took the chair -at the first annual dinner of the Royal Academy. Dr. Johnson was there, -with Goldsmith and Horace Walpole. Goldsmith got the ear of the company, -but was laughed at by Johnson for professing his enthusiastic belief in -Chatterton's discovery of ancient poems. Walpole, who had believed in the -poet of Bristol till he was laughed at by Mason and Gray, began to banter -Goldsmith on his opinions, when, as he says, to his surprise and concern, -and the dashing of his mirth, he first heard that the poor lad had been to -London and had destroyed himself. Goldsmith had afterwards a quarrel with -Dr. Percy on the same subject. - -One day, while Reynolds was lecturing at Somerset House, the floor -suddenly began to give way. Turner, then a boy, was standing near the -lecturer. Reynolds remained calm, and said afterwards that his only -thought was what a loss to English art the death of that roomful would -have been. - -On the death of Mr. Wale, the Professor of Perspective, Sir Joshua was -anxious to have Mr. Bonomi elected to the post, but he was treated with -great disrespect by Mr. Copley and others, who refused to look at Bonomi's -drawings, which Sir Joshua (as some maintained, contrary to rule) had -produced at Fuseli's election as Academician. Reynolds at first threatened -to resign the presidency; but thought better of it afterwards. - -In the catalogues in 1808 Turner's name first appeared with the title of -Professor of Perspective attached to it. His lectures were bad, from his -utter want of language, but he took great pains with his diagrams, and his -ideas were often original. On one celebrated occasion Turner arrived in -the lecture-room late, and much perturbed. He dived first into one pocket, -and then into another; at last he ejaculated these memorable words: -"Gentlemen, I've been and left my lecture in the hackney-coach!"[136] - -In 1779 O'Keefe describes a visit paid to Somerset House to hear Dr. -William Hunter lecture on anatomy. He describes him as a jocose little -man, in "a handsome modest" wig. A skeleton hung on a pivot by his side, -and on his other hand stood a young man half stripped. Every now and then -he paused, to turn to the dead or the living example.[137] - -In 1765, when Fuseli was living humbly in Cranbourn Alley, and translating -Winckelmann, he used to visit Smollett, whose _Peregrine Pickle_ he was -then illustrating; and also Falconer, the author of _The Shipwreck_, who, -being poor, was allowed to occupy apartments in Somerset House.[138] The -poet was a mild, inoffensive man, the son of an Edinburgh barber. He had -been apprenticed on board a merchant vessel, after which he entered the -royal navy. In 1762 he published his well-known poem. He went out to India -in 1769, in the _Aurora_, which is supposed to have foundered in the -Mozambique Channel.[139] Falconer was a short thin man, with a -hard-featured, weather-beaten face and a forbidding manner; but he was -cheerful and generous, and much liked by his messmates. That hearty -sea-song, "Cease, rude Boreas," has been attributed to him. - -Fuseli succeeded Barry as Lecturer on Painting in 1799, and became Keeper -on the death of Wilton, the sculptor, in 1803. He died in 1825, aged -eighty-four, and was buried in St. Paul's, between Reynolds and Opie. -Lawrence, Beechey, Reinagle, Chalon, Jones, and Mulready followed him to -his stately grave. The body had previously been laid in state in Somerset -House, his pictures of "The Lazar House" and "The Bridging of Chaos" being -hung over the coffin. - -When Sir Joshua died, in 1792, his body lay in state in a velvet coffin, -in a room hung with sable, in Somerset House. Burke and Barry, Boswell and -Langton, Kemble and John Hunter, Towneley and Angerstein came to witness -the ceremony. - -Where events are so interwoven as they are in topographical history, I -hope to be pardoned if I am not always chronological in my arrangement, -for it must be remembered that I have anecdotes to attend to as well as -dates. Let me here, then, dilate on a cruel instance of misused academic -power. My story relates to a young genius as unfortunate as Chatterton, -yet guiltless of his lies and forgeries, who died heart-broken by neglect -more than half a century ago. - -[Illustration: SOMERSET HOUSE FROM THE STRAND, 1777.] - -Procter, a young Yorkshire clerk, came up to London in 1777, and became a -student of the Royal Academy. In 1783 he carried off a silver medal, and -the next year won the gold medal for an historical picture. When Procter -gained this last prize, his fellow-students, raising him on their -shoulders, bore him downstairs, and then round the quadrangle of Somerset -House, shouting out, "Procter! Procter!" Barry was delighted at this, and -exclaimed with an oath, "Bedad! the lads have caught the true spirit of -the ould Greeks." Sir Abraham Hume bought Procter's "Ixion," which was -praised by Reynolds. His colossal "Diomede" the poor fellow had to break -up, as he had no place to keep it in, and no one would buy it. In 1794 Mr. -West, wishing that Procter should go to Rome as the travelling student, -discovered him, after much inquiry, in poor lodgings in Maiden Lane. A day -or two afterwards he was found dead in his bed. The Academicians had been, -perhaps, just a little too late with their patronage.[140] - -And now, when through grey twilight glooms I steal a glance as I pass by -at that grave black figure of the river god, presiding solemn as -Rhadamanthus over the central quadrangle of Somerset House, I sometimes -dream I see little leonine Fuseli, stormy Barry, and courtly Reynolds -pacing together the dim quadrangle that on these autumnal evenings, when -the rifle drills are over, wears so lonely and purgatorial an aspect; and -far away from them, in murky corners, I fancy I hear muttering the ghosts -of Portuguese monks, while scowling at them, stalks by pale Sir -Edmondbury, with a sword run through his shadowy body. - - - - -[Illustration: JACOB TONSON'S BOOK-SHOP, 1742.] - - -CHAPTER V. - -THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE, CONTINUED). - - -On the Thames, off Somerset House, was a timber shed built on a strong -barge, and called "the Folly." In William III.'s reign it was anchored -higher up the stream, near the Savoy. Tom Brown calls it "a musical -summer-house." Its real name was "The Royal Diversion." Queen Mary -honoured it with her presence.[141] It was at first frequented by "persons -of quality," but latterly it became disreputable, and its orchestra and -refreshment alcoves were haunted by thieves, gamesters, and courtesans. - -Near the Savoy stood the palace of the bishops of Carlisle, which was -obtained by exchange with Henry VIII. for Rochester Place at Lambeth. The -English sultan gave it to his lucky favourite, Bedford, who took it as his -residence. In the reign of James I. the Earl of Worcester bought it; and -in 1627 the Duke of Beaufort let it to Lord Clarendon, while his ill-fated -house was building in Piccadilly. It was then rebuilt on a smaller scale -by the duke, and eventually burnt down in 1695.[142] The present Beaufort -Buildings were then erected. Beaufort House, which occupies the site of -one in which Cardinal Beaufort died, is now a printing-office. - -Blake, the mystical painter, died in 1828, at No. 3 Fountain Court, after -five years' residence there. In these dim rooms he believed he saw the -ghost of a flea, Satan himself looking through the bars of the staircase -window, to say nothing of hosts of saints, angels, evil spirits, and -fairies. Here also he wrote verse passionate as Shelley's and pure and -simple-hearted as Wordsworth's. Here he engraved, tinted, railed at -Woollett, and raved over his Dante illustrations; for though poor and -unknown, he was yet regal in his exulting self-confidence. Here, just -before his death, the old man sat up in bed, painting, singing, and -rejoicing. He died without a struggle.[143] - -The office of the _Sun_ is on this side the Strand. This paper was -established in 1792. Mr. Jerdan left the _Sun_ in 1816, selling his share -for L300. He had quarrelled with the co-proprietor, Mr. John Taylor, who -aspired to a control over him. In 1817 he set up the _Literary Gazette_, -the first exclusive organ of literary men.[144] The first editor of the -_Sun_ got an appointment in the West Indies. The paper was then edited by -Robert Clark, printer of the _London Gazette_, and afterwards by Jerdan, -assisted by Fladgate the facetious lawyer, Mulloch, and John Taylor. After -getting his sop in the pan of L300 a year from Government, that -low-principled satirist, Dr. Wolcot (Peter Pindar), wrote epigrams for it. - -Fountain Court was in Strype's time famous for an adjacent tavern from -which it derived its name. It was well paved, and its houses were -respectably inhabited.[145] The Fountain Tavern was renowned for its good -rooms, excellent vaults, "curious kitchen," and old wine. The Fountain -Club, of which Pulteney was a member (circa 1737), held its meetings in -this tavern, to oppose that fine old Whig gentleman Sir Robert -Walpole.[146] Sir Charles Hanbury Williams thus mentions it in one of his -lampoons:-- - - "Then enlarge on his cunning and wit, - Say how he harangued at the Fountain, - Say how the old patriots were bit, - And a mouse was produced by a mountain." - -Here Pulteney may have planned the _Craftsman_ with Bolingbroke, and -perhaps have arranged his duel with Lord Hervey, the "Sporus" of Pope. - -Dennis, the critic, mentions in his _Letters_ dining here with Loggen, the -painter, and Wilson, a writer praised by poor Otway in Tonson's first -_Miscellany_. "After supper," he says, "we drank Mr. Wycherly's health by -the name of Captain Wycherly."[147] This was the dramatist, the celebrated -author of _The Plain Dealer_ and _The Country Wife_. - -The great room of the Fountain Tavern was afterwards Akermann's well-known -picture shop; and is now Simpson's cigar divan. - -Charles Lillie, the perfumer recommended by Steele in the _Tatler_ (Nos. -92, 94), lived next door to the Fountain Tavern. He was burnt out and went -to the east corner of Beaufort Buildings in 1709. Good-natured Steele, -pitying him probably for his losses, praised his Barcelona snuff, and his -orange-flower water prepared according to the Royal Society's receipt. - -The Coal Hole, in this court, was so named by Rhodes, its first landlord, -from its having been originally the resort of coal-heavers. In his and -Edmund Kean's time it was respectably frequented. It was once the -"Evans's" of London, famous for steaks and ale; afterwards it sank to a -low den with _poses plastiques_ and ribald sham trials, that used to be -conducted by "Baron" Nicholson, a fat gross man, but not without a certain -unctuous humour, who is now dead. - -Edmund Kean, always low in his tastes, used to fly the society of men like -Lord Byron to come hither and smoke and drink. The dress, the ceremony, -and the compulsory good behaviour of respectable society made him silent -and melancholy.[148] He used to say that noblemen talked such nonsense -about the stage, and that only literary men understood the subject. - -The Kit-Cat Club was instituted in 1700, and died away about the year -1720. There were originally thirty-nine members, and they increased -gradually to the forty-eight whose portraits Kneller painted for their -secretary, Jacob Tonson, Dryden's bookseller. Their earliest rendezvous -was at the house of a pastry-cook, one Christopher Cat, in Shire Lane, -near Temple Bar. When he grew wealthier, the club removed with him to the -Fountain Tavern in the Strand. The club derived its name from the -celebrated mutton pie,[149] which had been christened after its -maker.[150] The first members were those Whig patriots who brought about -the Revolution and drove out King James. Their object was the -encouragement of literature and the fine arts, and the diffusion of -loyalty to the House of Hanover. They elected their "toast" for the year -by ballot. The lady's name, when chosen, was written on the club -drinking-glasses with a diamond. Among the more celebrated of the members -of this club were Kneller, Vanbrugh, Congreve, Addison, Garth, Steele, -Lord Mohun, the Duke of Wharton, Sir Robert Walpole, the Earl of -Burlington, the Earl of Bath, the Earl of Dorset, the Earl of Halifax, the -proud Duke of Somerset, and the Duke of Newcastle. - -In summer the Club met at Tonson's house at Barn Elms in Surrey, or at the -Upper Flask Tavern at Hampstead.[151] There seems to have been always some -doubt about the derivation of the name of the club; for an epigram still -extant, written either by Pope or Arbuthnot, attributes the name to the -fact of the members toasting "old Cats and young kits." Mr. Defoe mentions -the landlord's name as Christopher Catt,[152] while Ned Ward says that -though his name was Christopher, he lived at the sign of the Cat and -Fiddle. - -Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was once brought by her father to this club when -a child, and made the toast for the year. "Petted, praised, fondled, and -fed with sweetmeats," she used to say in her old age that it was the -happiest day of her life![153] - -No. 59 is Coutts's Bank. It was built for Mr. Coutts, in 1768, by the Adam -brothers--to whom we are indebted for the Adelphi. The old house of the -firm, of the date of Queen Anne, was situated in St. Martin's Lane. The -present house contains some fine marble chimney-pieces of the Cipriani and -Bacon school. The dining-room is hung with quaint Chinese subjects on -paper, sent to Mr. Coutts by Lord Macartney, while on his embassy to -China, in 1792-95. In another room hang portraits of some early friends of -this son of Mammon, including Dr. Armstrong, the poet and physician, -Fuseli's friend, by Reynolds. The strong rooms consist of cloistered -vaults, wherein the noblemen and rich commoners who bank in the house -deposit patents, title-deeds, and plate of fabulous value. - -Mr. Coutts was the son of a Dundee merchant. His first wife was a servant, -a Lancashire labourer's offspring. He had three daughters, one of whom -became the wife of Sir Francis Burdett, a second Countess of Guilford, and -a third Marchioness of Bute. On becoming acquainted with Miss Mellon, and -inducing her to leave the stage to avoid perpetual insults, Mr. Coutts -bought for her of Sir W. Vane Tempest, a small villa called Holly Lodge, -at the foot of Highgate Hill, for which he gave L25,000. His banking-house -strong rooms alone cost L10,000 building. The first deposit in the -enlarged house was the diamond aigrette that the Grand Signor had placed -in Nelson's hat. Mr. Coutts, though very charitable, was precise and -exact. On one occasion, there being a deficit of 2s. 10d. in the day's -accounts, the clerks were detained for hours, or, as is said, all night. -One of Coutts's clerks, who took the western walk, was discovered to be -missing with L17,000.[154] Rewards were offered, and the town placarded, -but all in vain. The next day, however, the note-case arrived from -Southampton. The clerk's story was, that on his way through Piccadilly, -being seized with a stupor, he had got into a coach in order to secure the -money. He had remained insensible the whole journey, and had awoke at -Southampton. Mr. Coutts gave him a handsome sum from his private purse, -but dismissed him. - -Coutts's Bank stands on nearly the centre of the site of the "New -Exchange." When the Adelphi was built in Durham Gardens, Mr. Coutts -purchased a vista to prevent his view being interrupted, stipulating that -the new street leading to the entrance should face this opening; and on -this space, up to the level of the Strand, he built his strong rooms. Some -years after, wishing to enlarge them, he erected over the office a -counting-house and a set of offices extending from William Street to -Robert Street, and threw a stone bridge over William Street to connect the -front and back premises. - -Mr. Coutts, late in life, married Harriet Mellon, who, after his death, -became the wife of the Duke of St. Albans, a descendant of Nell Gwynn, -that light-hearted wanton, whom nobody could hate. "Miss Mellon," says -Leigh Hunt, "was arch and agreeable on the stage; she had no genius; but -then she had fine eyes and a good-humoured mouth." The same gay writer -describes her when young as bustling about at sea-ports, selling tickets -for her benefit-night; but then, says the kindly apologist for everybody, -she had been left with a mother to support.[155] - -Edmund Kean, the great tragedian, was lodging at 21 Cecil Street when, -poor and unknown, he made his first great triumph as Shylock, at Drury -Lane; a few days after, his mantelpiece was strewn with bank-notes, and -his son Charles was seen sitting on the floor playing with a heap of -guineas.[156] This great actor brought the theatre, in sixty-eight nights -of 1814, no less than twenty thousand pounds. - -The last house on the west side of Cecil Street was inhabited in 1706 by -Lord Gray, and in 1721-4 by the Archbishop of York. In the opposite house -lived for many years Major-General Sir William Congreve, the inventor of -the rockets which bear his name, and a great friend and companion of -George IV., to whom he is said to have borne a striking personal -resemblance. Sir William was a descendant of Congreve the dramatist; and -he was the inventor of a number of successful projects and contrivances, -among which may be mentioned the engines employed in dredging the Thames. -The east side of Cecil Street is in the Savoy precinct, the west in the -parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. - -Dr. Wollaston was living in Cecil Street (No. 28) in the year 1800. This -eccentric philosopher, originally a physician, was born in 1766, and died -of brain disease in 1828. He discovered two new metals--palladium and -rhodium--and acquired more than L30,000, by inventing a plan to make -platinum malleable. He improved and invented the camera lucida, and was -the first to demonstrate the identity of galvanism and common -electricity. He carried on his experiments with the simplest instruments, -and never allowed even his most intimate friends to enter his laboratory. -When a foreign philosopher once called on him and asked to see his study, -he instantly produced, in his strange way, a small tray, on which were -some glass tubes and a twopenny blow-pipe. Once, shortly after inspecting -a grand galvanic battery, on meeting a brother philosopher in the street -he led him by the button into a mysterious corner, took from his pocket a -tailor's thimble, poured into it some liquid from a small phial, and -instantly heated a platinum wire to a white heat.[157] - -Salisbury Street, in the Strand, was originally built about 1678, but was -extensively rebuilt by Payne in the early part of the reign of George III. - -Old Salisbury House stood on the sites of Salisbury and Cecil Streets, -between Worcester House, now Beaufort Buildings, and Durham House, now the -Adelphi. It was so called after Sir Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, and -Lord High Treasurer to James I., who died 1612. Queen Elizabeth was -present at the house-warming. This Cecil was the bad minister of a bad -king. He was Raleigh's enemy and Bacon's; he was the foe of reform, and -the friend of Spain, from whom he received bribes, and the slave of vice. -Bacon painted this vicious hunchback in his _Essay on Deformity_. The -house was divided subsequently into Great and Little Salisbury House--the -latter being let to persons of quality. About 1678 it was pulled down, and -Salisbury Street built; but it proved too steep and narrow, and was not a -successful speculation.[158] The other part, next to Great Salisbury House -and over the Long Gallery, was turned into the "Middle Exchange." This -eventually gave way to Cecil Street,--a fair street, with very good -houses, fit for persons of repute.[159] - -On the death of Sackville the poet, Cecil took the white staff, being -already Premier-Secretary. His ambition stretched into every department of -the State. "He built a new palace at Hatfield, and a new Exchange in the -Strand. Countesses intrigued for him. His son married a Howard, his -daughter a Clifford. Ambassadors started for Italy, less to see Doges and -Grand Dukes than to pick up pictures and statues, and bronzes and -hangings, for his vast establishment at Hatfield Chase. His gardeners -travelled through France to buy up mulberries and vines. Salisbury House, -on the Thames, almost rivalled the luxurious villas of the Roman -cardinals; yet, under this blaze of worldly success, Cecil was the most -miserable of men. Friends grudged his rise; his health was broken; the -reins which his ambition drew into his hands were beyond the powers of a -single man to grasp; and the vigour of his frame, wasted by years of -voluptuous licence, failed him at the moment when the strain on his -faculties was at the full."[160] - -In Little Salisbury House lived William Cavendish, third Earl of -Devonshire, and father of the first Duke of Devonshire, one of the leaders -of the great revolution that drove out the Stuarts. Two or three days -after the Restoration, King Charles, passing in his coach through the -Strand, espied Hobbes, that mischievous writer in favour of absolute -power, standing at the door of his patron the earl. The king took off his -hat very kindly to the old man, gave him his hand to kiss, asked after his -health, ordered Cooper to take his portrait, and settled on him a pension -of L100 a year. Hobbes had been an assistant of Bacon, and a friend of Ben -Jonson and of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. He had taught Charles II. -mathematics, and corresponded with Descartes. - -In the street standing on the site of Sir Robert Cecil's house was the -residence of the famous Partridge, the cobbler, impudent sham-almanac -maker, and predecessor of our own Moore and Zadkiel, who had foretold the -death of the French king. To expose this noisy charlatan and upset his -ridiculous hap-hazard predictions, Swift with cruel and trenchant malice -reported and lamented his decease in the _Tatler_ (1708), to which he -contributed under the name of Bickerstaff. The article raised a laugh -that has not even quite died away in the present day. Partridge, furious -at his losses and the extinguishing of his ill-earned fame, knocked down a -hawker who passed his stall crying an account of his death. This happening -just as the joke was fading, revived it again, and finally ruined the -almanac of poor Partridge.[161] "The villain," says the poor outwitted -astrologer, "told the world I was dead, and how I died, and that he was -with me at the time of my death. I thank God, by whose mercy I have my -being, that I am still alive, and, excepting my age, as well as ever I was -in my life." He actually died in 1715. - -A little beyond Cecil Street formerly stood Ivy Bridge, under which there -was a narrow passage to the Thames, once forming a boundary line between -the Duchy of Lancaster and the City of Westminster. Near Ivy Bridge stood -the mansion of the Earls of Rutland. Opposite this spot Old Parr had -lodgings when he came to court to be shown to Charles I., and died of the -visit. Parr was a Shropshire labourer. He was born in 1483, and died aged -152. His grandson lived to 120, and in the year of his death had married a -widow. Parr's London lodging became afterwards the Queen's Head -public-house.[162] - -Mrs. Siddons was living at 149 Strand, during the time of her earlier -successes. Probably she returned there on that glorious October night of -1782, when she achieved her first great triumph in Southerne's tragedy of -_Isabella_, when her younger son, who acted with her, burst into tears, -overcome by the reality of the dying scene. "I never heard," she says, -"such peals of applause in all my life." She returned home solemnly and -calmly, and sat down to a frugal, neat supper with her father and husband, -in silence uninterrupted, except by exclamations of gladness from Mr. -Siddons. - -Durham Street marks the site of old Durham House, built by Hatfield, -Bishop of Durham, in 1345. In Henry IV.'s time wild Prince Hal lodged -there for some nights. - -In the reign of Henry VIII. Bishop Tunstall exchanged the house with the -king for one in Thames Street. Here, in 1550, lodged the French -ambassador, M. de Chastillon, and his colleagues. - -Edward VI. granted the house to his sister Elizabeth for life, and here -that princess bore the scorn and persecution of Bonner and his spies. On -Mary coming to the throne and finding Tunstall driven from the Strand and -without a shelter, she restored to him Durham House. This Tunstall led a -life of great vicissitudes. Henry VIII. had moved him from London to -Durham; Edward VI. had dissolved his bishopric altogether; Mary had -restored it; and Elizabeth again stripped him in 1559, the year in which -he died. - -The virgin queen kept the house some time in her own tenacious hands, but -in 1583 granted it to Raleigh, whom she had loaded with favours, and who, -in 1591, was Captain of the Guard, Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and -Lieutenant of Cornwall. - -On the death of Queen Elizabeth Raleigh's sun of fortune set for ever, and -that sly time-server Toby Matthew, Bishop of Durham, claimed the old town -house of the see, relying on Cecil's help and King James's dislike to the -great enemy of Spain. Sir Walter opposed him, but the king in council, -1603, recognised the claim, and stripped Raleigh of his possession. The -aggrieved man, in a letter of remonstrance to the Lord Keeper Egerton, -states that he had occupied the house about twenty years, and had expended -on it L2000 out of his own purse.[163] Raleigh did not die at Tower Hill -till 1618; but Durham House was never occupied again either by bishop or -noble, and five years after the stables of the house came down to make way -for the New Exchange. - -In Charles I.'s reign the Earl of Pembroke bought Durham Yard from the -Bishop of Durham for L200 a year, and built a handsome street leading to -the river.[164] The river front and the stables remained in ruins till the -Messrs. Adam built the Adelphi on the site of Raleigh's old turret study. -Ivy Street had been the eastward boundary of the bishop's domain.[165] - -The New Exchange was opened April 11, 1609, in the presence of King James -and his Danish queen. It was built principally through the intervention of -Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, who lived close by. It was called by the king -"Britain's Bourse," but it could not at first compete with the Royal -Exchange. At the Restoration, however, when Covent Garden grew into a -fashionable quarter, the New Exchange became more frequented than -Gresham's building in the city. - -In the year 1653 (Cromwell), the New Exchange was the scene of a tragedy. -Don Pantaleon de Saa, brother of the Portuguese ambassador, quarrelled -with a gentleman named Giraud, who was flirting with the milliners, and -who had used some contemptuous expression. The Portuguese, bent on -revenge, hired some bravos, who the next day stabbed to death a gentleman -whom they mistook for Mr. Giraud. They were instantly seized, and Don -Pantaleon was found guilty and executed. Singularly enough, the intended -victim perished on the same day on the same scaffold, having in the -meantime been condemned for a plot against the Protector. - -There are many legends existing about the New Exchange. Thomas Duffet, an -actor of Charles II.'s time, kept originally a milliner's shop here. At -the Eagle and Child, in Britain's Bourse, the first edition of _Othello_ -was sold in 1622. At the sign of the "Three Spanish Gypsies" lived Thomas -Radford, who sold wash-balls, powder, and gloves, and taught sempstresses. -His wife, the daughter of John Clarges, a farrier in the Savoy before or -after Radford's death, married General Monk, became the vulgar Duchess of -Albemarle, and was eventually buried in Westminster Abbey. At the sign of -the Fop's Head lived, in 1674, Will Cademan, a player and -play-publisher.[166] Henry Herringham, the chief London publisher before -Dryden's petty tyrant, Tonson, had his shop at the Blue Anchor in the -Lower Walk. Mr. and Mrs. Pepys frequented the New Exchange. Here the -Admiralty clerk's wife had "a mind to" a petticoat of sarcenet bordered -with black lace, and probably purchased it. Here also, in April, 1664, -Pepys and his friend Creed partook of "a most delicate dish of curds and -cream."[167] Both Wycherly and Etherege have laid scenes of their comedies -at the New Exchange; and here, too, Dryden's intriguing Mrs. Brainsick -pretends to visit her "tailor" to try on her new stays. - -This Strand Bazaar, in the time of William and Mary, was the scene of the -pretty story of the "White Widow." For several weeks a sempstress appeared -at one of the stalls, clothed in white, and wearing a white mask. She -excited great curiosity, and all the fashionable world thronged her stall. -This mysterious milliner was at last discovered to be no less a person -than the Duchess of Tyrconnel, widow of Talbot, the Lord Deputy of Ireland -under James II. Unable to obtain a secret access to her family, and almost -starving, she had been compelled to turn shopwoman. Her relatives provided -for her directly the story became known.[168] This duchess was the Frances -Jennings mentioned by Grammont, and sister to Sarah, Duchess of -Marlborough. - -This long arcade, leading from the Strand to the water stairs, was divided -into four parts--the outward walk below stairs, the inner walk below -stairs, the outward walk above stairs, and the inner walk above stairs. -The lower walk was a place of assignations. In the upper walk the air rang -with cries of "Gloves or ribands, sir?" "Very good gloves or ribands." -"Choice of fine essences."[169] Here Addison used to pace, watching the -fops and fools with a kindly malice.[170] The houses in the Strand, over -against the Exchange door, were often let to rich country families, who -glared from the balconies and stared from the windows.[171] - -Soon after the death of Queen Anne the New Exchange became disreputable. -No one would take stalls, so it was pulled down in 1737, and a frontage of -dwelling-houses and shops made to the Strand, facing what is now the -Adelphi Theatre. But we must return for a moment to old Durham House and a -few more of its earlier tenants. - -In Henry VIII.'s time Durham House had been the scene of great banquets -given by the challengers after the six days' tournament that celebrated -the butcher king's ill-omened marriage with that "Flemish mare," as he -used ungallantly to call Anne of Cleves. To these sumptuous feasts the -bruised and battered champions, together with all the House of Commons and -Corporation of London, were invited. To reward the challengers, among whom -was Oliver Cromwell's ancestor, Dick o' the Diamond, the burly king gave -them each a yearly pension of one hundred marks out of the plundered -revenues of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. - -Later a mint was established at Durham House by Sir William Sherrington, -to aid the Lord Admiral Seymour in his treasonable efforts against his -brother, the Protector, who finally offered him up a victim to his -ambition. Sherrington, however, escaped, and worked the mint for the -equally unfortunate Protector. - -But no loss of heads could warn the Strand noblemen. It was here that the -ambitious Duke of Northumberland married his son, Lord Guildford Dudley, -to poor meek-hearted Lady Jane Grey, who, the luckless queen of an hour, -longed only for her Greek books, her good old tutor Ascham, and the quiet -country house where she had been so happy. On that great day for the duke, -Lady Jane's sister also married Lord Herbert, and Lord Hastings espoused -Lady Catherine Dudley. It was from Durham House that the poor martyr of -ambition, Lady Jane, was escorted in pomp to the Tower, which was so soon -to be her grave. - -In 1560 Jean Nicot, a French ambassador, had carried tobacco from Lisbon -to Paris. In 1586[172] Drake brought tobacco from Raleigh's colony in -Virginia. Raleigh was fond of smoking over his books. His tobacco-box -still existed in 1715; it was of gilt leather, as large as a muff-case, -and contained cases for sixteen pipes.[173] There is a doubtful legend -about Raleigh's first pipe, the scene of which may be not unfairly laid at -Durham House, where Raleigh then lived. - -One day his servant, bringing in a tankard of spiced ale as usual into the -turret study, found Raleigh (it is said) smoking a pipe over his folios. -The clown, seeing smoke issue in clouds from his master's mouth, dropped -the tankard in a fright, and ran downstairs to shout to the family that -"master was on fire, and that he would be burnt to ashes if they did not -run directly to his help."[174] - -The stalwart, sour-faced Raleigh disported himself at Durham House in a -suit of clothes beset with jewels and valued at sixty thousand -pounds,[175] and in diamond court-shoes valued at six thousand six hundred -pieces of gold. Here he lived with his wife Elizabeth, and his two unlucky -sons Walter and Carew. Here, as he sat in his study in the little turret -that looked over the Thames,[176] he must have written against the -Spaniards, told his adventures in Virginia, and described his discovery of -the gold country of Guiana, his quarrel with Essex at Fayal, and the -capture of the rich caracks laden with gold, pearls, and cochineal. - -The estate of Durham Place was purchased from the Earl of Pembroke, about -1760, by four brothers of the name of Adam, sons of an architect at -Kirkaldy, who were patronised by the handsome and much-abused Earl of -Bute, and who built Caen Wood House, near Hampstead, afterwards the wise -Lord Mansfield's. Robert, the ablest of the brothers, had visited Palmyra, -and was supposed from those gigantic ruins to have borrowed his grand -spirit of construction, as well as much of that trivial ornament which he -might surely have found nearer home. When the brothers Adam began their -work, Durham Yard (the court-yard of Raleigh's old house) was a tangle of -small sheds, coal-stores, wine-vaults, and lay-stalls. They resolved to -leave the wharves, throw some huge arches over the declivity, connect the -river with the Strand, and over these vaults erect a series of well-built -streets, a noble river terrace, and lofty rooms for the newly-established -Society of Arts. - -In July 1768,[177] when the Adelphi Buildings were commenced, the Court -and City were at war, and the citizens, wishing to vex Bute, applied to -Parliament to prevent the brothers encroaching on the river, of which -sable stream the Lord Mayor of London is the conservator, but not the -purifier; but they lost their cause, and the worthy Scotchmen -triumphed.[178] - -The Scotch are a patriotic people, and stand bravely by their own folk. -The Adams sent to Scotland for workmen, whose labours they stimulated by -countless bagpipes; but the canny men, finding the bagpipes played their -tunes rather too quick, threw up the work, and Irishmen were then -employed. The joke of the day was, that the Scotchmen took their bagpipes -away with them, but left their _fiddles_![179] - -The Adelphi at once became fashionable. Garrick, then getting old, left -his house in Southampton Street to occupy No. 5, the centre building of -the terrace, and lived there till his death in 1779. Singularly enough, -this great and versatile actor had, on first coming to London with his -friend Johnson, started as a wine merchant below in Durham Yard. Here he -must have raved in "Richard," and wheedled as Abel Drugger; and in the -rooms at No. 5 half the celebrities of his century must have met. He died -in the "first floor back," and his widow died in the same house as long -after as 1822. The ceiling in the front drawing-room was painted by -Antonio Zucchi. A white marble chimney-piece in the same room is said to -have cost L300.[180] Garrick died after only nine years' residence in the -new terrace; but his sprightly widow, a theatrical critic to the last, -lived till she was past ninety, still an enthusiast about her husband's -genius. The first time she re-opened the house after Davy's death, Dr. -Johnson, Boswell, Sir Joshua, Mrs. Carter, and Mrs. Boscawen were present. -"She looked well," says Boswell; "and while she cast her eyes on her -husband's portrait, which was hung over the chimney-piece, said, that -death was now the most agreeable object to her." Worthy woman! and so she -honestly thought at the time; but she lived exactly forty-three years -longer in the same house. - -If there is a spot in London which Johnson's ghost might be expected to -revisit, it is that quiet and lonely Adelphi Terrace. At night no sound -comes to you but a shout from some passing barge, or the creak of a ship's -windlass. Here Johnson and Boswell once leant over, looking at the Thames. -The latter said, "I was thinking of two friends we had lost, who once -lived in the buildings behind us, Beauclerk and Garrick." "Ay, sir," -replied Johnson, seriously, "and two _such_ friends as cannot be -supplied." This is a recollection that should for ever hallow the Adelphi -Terrace to us. - -The Beauclerk above mentioned was one of the few rakes whom Johnson loved. -He was a friend of Langton, and as such had become intimate with the great -doctor. Topham Beauclerk was a man of acute mind and elegant manners, and -ardently fond of literature. He was of the St. Albans family, and had a -resemblance to swarthy Charles II., a point which pleased his elder -friend. The doctor liked his gay, young manner, and flattered himself much -as women do who marry rakes, that he should reform him in time. - -"What a coalition!" said Garrick, when he heard of the friendship; "why, I -shall have my old friend to bail out of the Round House." Beauclerk, says -Boswell, "could take more liberties with Johnson than any one I ever saw -him with;"[181] but, on the other hand, Beauclerk was not spared. On one -occasion Johnson said to him, "You never open your mouth, sir, without an -intention to give pain, and you have often given me pain--not from the -power of what you said, but from seeing your intention." At another time -he said, "Thy body is all vice, and thy mind all virtue." - -When the Adelphi was building, Garrick applied for the corner house of -Adam Street for his friend Andrew Beckett, the bookseller in the Strand, -and he obtained it. In this letter he calls the architects "the dear -Adelphi," and the western house "the corner blessing." Garrick's house was -for some years occupied by the Royal Literary Fund, but is now a Club. - -Garrick promised the brothers, if the request was granted, to make the -shop, as old Jacob Tonson's once was, the rendezvous of the first people -in England. "I have," he says, "a little selfishness in this request. I -never go to coffee-houses, seldom to taverns, and should constantly (if -this scheme takes place), be at Beckett's at one at noon and six at -night."[182] - -Garrick was a frequent visitor at the house of Mr. Thomas Beckett, the -bookseller, in Pall Mall, and he obtained the appointment of sub-librarian -at Carlton Palace for the son Andrew, who had written a comedy on the -_Emile_ of Rousseau at the age of fourteen, and produced a poem called -_Theodosius and Constantia_. For nearly ten years he wrote for the British -and Monthly Reviews. He was born in 1749, and died in 1843. His most -useful work is called _Shakspere Himself Again_, in which he released the -original text from much muddy nonsense of commentators. He complained -bitterly of Griffiths, of the _Monthly Review_, having given him only L45 -for four or five years' work--280 articles, produced after reading and -condensing 590 volumes; Mr. Griffiths' annual profit by the _Monthly_ -being no less than L2000. - -Into a house in John Street the Society of Arts, established in 1753 by -Mr. Shipley, an artist, moved, about 1772. This society still give -lectures and rewards, and does about as much good as ever it did. Art -must grow wild--it will not thrive in hot-houses. The great room is still -adorned with the six large pictures illustrating the "Progress of -Society," painted by poor, half-crazed Barry, the ill-educated artist, -who, too proud to paint cabinet pictures, could yet paint nothing larger -sound or well. - -Shipley, who established the society of Arts in imitation of one already -established at Dublin, was originally a drawing-master at Northampton. -From its commencement in 1753-4 to 1778 the society distributed in -premiums and bounties L24,616. A year after its foundation Josiah Wedgwood -began to infuse a classical and purer taste among the proprietors of the -Staffordshire potteries,[183] and employed Flaxman to draw some of his -designs, and was the first to improve the shape and character of our -simplest articles of use. - -Mr. Shipley was a brother of the Bishop of St. Asaph, and had studied -under a portrait-painter named Phillips. In 1738 the Society of Arts voted -their founder a gold medal for his public spirit. His school was continued -by a Mr. Pars. He died, aged upwards of ninety, in 1784.[184] - -Nollekens, the sculptor, learned drawing there, and Cosway, afterwards the -fashionable miniature-painter, was the errand-boy. The house was -subsequently inhabited by Rawle, the antiquary, a friend of fat, coarse, -clever Captain Grose.[185] - -Dr. Ward, the inventor of "Friar's Balsam," a celebrated quack doctor -ridiculed by Hogarth, left his statue by Carlini to the Society of Arts. -The doctor allowed Carlini L100 a year, so that he should work at this -statue for life.[186] - -This Joshua Ward, celebrated for his drop and pill, by which and his -balsam he made a fortune, was the son of a drysalter in Thames Street. -Praised by General Churchill and Lord Chief Baron Reynolds, he was called -in to prescribe for King George. The king recovering in spite of the -quack, "Spot" Ward was rewarded by a solemn vote of a credulous House of -Commons, and he obtained the privilege of being allowed to drive his -carriage through St. James's Park. Ward is conspicuous in one of Hogarth's -caricatures by a claret mark covering half his brazen face. - -The housekeeper at the Society of Arts in Haydon's time (1842) remembered -Barry at work on the frescoes that are so deficient in colour and taste, -but show such a fine grasp of mind. She said his violence was dreadful, -his oaths horrid, and his temper like insanity. In summer he came at five -and worked till dark; he then lit his lamp and went on etching till eleven -at night. He was seven years at his task. Burke and Johnson called once; -but no artist came to see him. He would have almost shot any painter who -dared to do so. He had his tea boiled in a quart pot, dined in Porridge -Island, and took milk for supper.[187] - -Years after Barry lay in state in the great room which his own genius had -adorned, and was buried in the Abbey; but few of the Academicians attended -his funeral. The Adelphi pictures have been recently lined and restored. - -Barry having vainly attempted to decorate St. Paul's, executed the -paintings now at the Society of Arts for his mere expenses, but -eventually, one way and another, cleared a considerable sum by them. He -painted them, as he said, to prove that Englishmen had a genius for high -art, music, and other refinements of life. They are fairly drawn, often -elegantly and reasonably well grouped, but bad in colour. The -heterogeneous dresses are jumbled together with bad taste--Dr. Burney in a -toupee floats among water-nymphs, and William Penn's wig and hat are -ludicrously obtrusive. The perspective is often "out," and the attitudes -are stiff; still, historically speaking, the pictures are large-minded and -interesting; and, in spite of his faults, one likes to think of the brave -Irishman busy on his scaffold, railing at Reynolds and defying everybody. -Barry was really a self-deceiver, like Haydon, and aimed far beyond his -powers. - -At Osborne's Hotel, in John Street, the King and Queen of the Sandwich -Islands resided while on a visit to England in the reign of George IV. A -comic song written on their arrival was once popular, though now -forgotten; and Theodore Hook produced a quaint epigram on their death by -small-pox, the point of which was, that one day Death, being hungry, -called for "two Sandwiches." The epigram was not without the unfeeling wit -peculiar to that heartless lounger at the clubs, who spent his life -amusing the great people, and who died at last a worn-out spendthrift, -_sans_ character, _sans_ everything. - -Of all London's charlatans, perhaps the most impudent was Dr. Graham, a -Scotchman, whose brother married Catherine Macaulay, the author of a -forgotten History of England, much vaunted by Horace Walpole. In or about -1780 this plausible cheat opened what he called a "Temple of Health," in a -central house in the Adelphi Terrace. His rooms were stuffed with glass -globes, marble statues, medico-electric apparatus, figures of dragons, -stained glass, and other theatrical properties. The air was drugged with -incense and strains of music. The priestess of this temple was said to be -no less a person than Emma Lyons, afterwards Lady Hamilton, the fatal -Cleopatra of Lord Nelson. She had been first a housemaid and afterwards a -painter's model. She was as beautiful as she was vulgar and abandoned. The -house was hung with crutches, ear-trumpets, and other trophies.[188] For -one night in the celestial bed, that secured a beautiful progeny, this -impostor obtained L100; for a supply of his elixir of life L1000 in -advance, and for his earth-baths a guinea each. Yet this arrant knave and -hypocrite was patronised by half the English nobility. Archenholz, a -German traveller, writing about 1784, describes Dr. Graham and his L60,000 -celestial bed. He dilates on the vari-coloured transparent glasses, and -the rich vases of perfume that filled the impudent quack's temple, the -half-guinea treatises on health, the _moonshine_ admitted into the rooms, -and the divine balm at a guinea a bottle. - -A magneto-electric bed, to be slept in for the small sum of L50 a night, -was on the second floor, on the right hand of the orchestra, and near the -hermitage. Electricity and perfumes were laid on in glass tubes from -adjoining reservoirs. The beds (there were two or three at least) rested -on six massy transparent columns. The perfumed curtains were of purple and -celestial blue, like those of the Grand Turk. Graham was blasphemous -enough to call this chamber his "Holy of Holies." His chief customers were -captains of privateers, nabobs, spendthrifts, and old noblemen. The farce -concluded in March 1784, when the rooms were shut for ever, and the temple -of Apollo, the immense electrical machine, the self-playing organ, and the -celestial bed, were sold in open daylight by a ruthless auctioneer.[189] - -Bannister "took off" Graham in a farce called _The Genius of Nonsense_, -produced at the Haymarket in 1780. His satin sofas on glass legs, his -celestial bed, his two porters in long tawdry greatcoats and immense -gold-laced cocked hats, distributing handbills at the door, while his -goddess of health was dying of a sore-throat from squalling songs at the -top of the staircase, were all hit off by a speaking harlequin, who also -caricatured the doctor's sliding walk and bobbing bows. The younger Colman -and Bannister had been to the Temple of Health on purpose to take the -quack's portrait.[190] - -Mr. Thomas Hill, the fussy, good-natured Hull of Theodore Hook's _Gilbert -Gurney_, lived for many years and finally died in the second floor of No. -1 James Street, Adelphi. He was the supposed prototype of the obtrusive -Paul Pry. It was Hill's boast always to have what you wanted. "Cards, sir? -Pooh! pooh! Nonsense! thousands of packs in the house." Liston made the -name of Paul Pry proverbial and world-wide. - -The names of the four Scotch brothers, John, Robert, James, and William -Adam, are preserved by the existing Adelphi Streets. When will any of our -streets be named after great thinkers? It is a disgrace to us to allow new -districts to be christened, without Government supervision, by worthless, -ignoble, and ridiculous names, confusing in their vulgar repetition. -Indifferent kings, and nobles not much better, give their names to half -the suburbs of London, while Shakespere is unremembered by the builders, -and Spenser and Byron have as yet no brick-and-mortar godchildren. - -[Illustration: OLD HOUSES ON THE SITE OF WELLINGTON STREET, 1742.] - -The eldest of the brothers, Robert Adam, died in 1792, and was buried in -the south aisle of Westminster Abbey. His pall was supported by the Duke -of Buccleuch, the Earl of Coventry, the Earl of Lauderdale, Lord Stormont, -Lord Frederick Campbell, and Mr. Pulteney. - -It was told as a joke invented against that fat butt, Sir William Curtis, -that at a public dinner some lover of royalty and Terence proposed the -healths of George IV. and the Duke of York as "the Adelphi," upon which -the alderman, who followed with the next toast, determining that the East -should not be far behind the West, rose and said that "as they were now on -the subject of streets, he would beg to propose Finsbury Square." But, -after all, why should we laugh at the poor alderman because he did not -happen to know Greek? That surely is a venial sin. - -And here, retracing our steps, we must make an episode and turn back down -the Savoy. - - - - -[Illustration: THE SAVOY FROM THE THAMES, 1650.] - - -CHAPTER VI. - -THE SAVOY. - - "Their leaders, John Ball, Jack Straw, and Wat Tyler, then marched - through London, attended by more than twenty thousand men, to the - PALACE OF THE SAVOY, which is a handsome building on the road to - Westminster, situated on the banks of the Thames, and belonging to the - Duke of Lancaster. They immediately killed the porters, pressed into - the house, and set it on fire."--_Froissart's Chronicles._ - - -A minute's walk down a turning on the south side of the Strand, and we are -in the precinct of an old palace, and standing on royal property. - -In a ramble by moonlight one cannot fail to meet under the churchyard -trees in the Savoy, John of Gaunt, who once lived there; John, King of -France, who died there; George Wither, the poet, and sweet Mistress Anne -Killigrew, who are buried there, and Chaucer, who was married there. - -Down that steep, dray-traversed street, now so dull and lonely, kings and -bishops, knights and ladies, have paced, and mobs have hurried with sword -and fire. Now it is a congeries of pickle warehouses, printing offices, -and glass manufactories. - -Simon de Montfort, that ambitious Earl of Leicester who married the sister -of Henry III., and whose father persecuted the Albigenses, dwelt in the -Savoy. Here he must have first won the barons, the people, and the humbler -clergy by his opposition to the extortions of the king and the bishops. -Here for a time he must have all but reigned, till that fatal August day -when he fell at Evesham. Simon was a friend of the monks, and after his -death endless miracles were said to have been wrought at his grave,[191] -as might have been expected. - -The Savoy derives its foreign name from a certain Peter, Earl of Savoy, -uncle of Eleanor, the daughter of Raymond, Count of Provence, and queen of -that good man, but weak monarch, Henry III. This earl was the leader of -that rapacious and insolent train of Frenchmen and Savoyards which -followed Queen Eleanor to England, and drove Simon de Montfort and his -impetuous barons to rebellion by their hunger for titles, lands, and -benefices. In 30 Henry III. the king granted to Peter, Earl of Richmond -and Savoy, all those houses in the Strand, adjoining the river, formerly -belonging to Brian de Lisle, upon paying yearly to the king's exchequer, -at the Feast of St. Michael, three barbed arrows for all services. - -In 1322 an Earl of Lancaster, then master of the Savoy, on the return of -the Spensers, formed an alliance with the Scots, and broke out into open -rebellion against Edward II. He was taken at Boroughbridge, led to -Pontefract, and there beheaded. As he was led to execution on a bridleless -pony, the mob pelted him with mud, taunting him as King Arthur--the royal -name he had assumed in his treasonable letters to the Scots.[192] - -Earl Peter, in due time growing weary of stormy England, and sighing for -his cool Savoy mountains, transferred his mansion to the provost and -chapter of Montjoy (Fratres de Monte Jovis) at Havering-atte-Bower, a -small village in Essex. At the death of the foolish king, his widow -purchased the palace of the Savoy of the Montjoy chapter, as a residence -for her son Edmund, afterwards Earl of Lancaster, to whom had been given -the chief estates of the defeated Montfort. - -His son Henry, Duke of Lancaster, repaired and partly rebuilt the palace, -at an expense of upwards of 50,000 marks. From this potent lord it -descended to Edward III.'s son, John of Gaunt (Ghent), who lived here in -the splendour befitting the son of Edward III., the uncle of Richard II., -and the father of a prince hereafter to become Henry IV. - -It was in the chapel of this river-side palace (about 1360, Edward III.) -that our great poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, married Philippa, daughter of a -knight of Hainault and sister to a mistress of the Duke's. He mentions his -marriage in his poem of _The Dream_.[193] He says harmoniously-- - - "On the morrow, - When every thought and every sorrow - Dislodg'd was out of mine heart, - With every woe and every smart, - Unto a tent prince and princess - Methought brought me and my mistress. - - * * * * * - - With ladies, knighten, and squiers, - And a great host of ministers, - Which tent was church parochial." - -Those marriage bells have long since rung, the smoke of that incense has -long since risen to heaven, yet we seldom pass the Savoy without thinking -how the poet and his fair Philippa went - - "To holy church's ordinance, - And after that to dine and dance, - ... and divers plays." - -It was to his great patron--"time-honoured" Lancaster, claimant, through -his wife, of the throne of Castile--that Chaucer owed all his court -favours, his Genoese embassy, his daily pitcher of wine, his wardship, his -controllership, and his annuity of twenty marks. It was in this palace he -must have imbibed his attachment to Wickliffe, and his hatred of all proud -and hypocritical priests. - -Buildings seem, like men, to be born under special stars. It was the fate -of the Savoy to enjoy a hundred and forty years of splendour, and then to -sink into changeless poverty and desolation. It was also its ill fate to -be once sacked and once burnt. In 1378, under Richard II., its first -punishment overtook it. John Wickliffe, a Yorkshireman, had been appointed -rector of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, by the favour of John of Ghent, -who was delighted with a speech of Wickliffe in Parliament denying that -King John's tribute to the Pope necessarily bound King Edward III. The -Papal bull for Wickliffe's prosecution did not reach England till the -king's death, but Wickliffe was cited on the 19th of February, 1378, to -appear before the Bishop of London at St. Paul's. In the interval before -his appearance he had promised the Parliament, at their request, to prove -the legality of its refusal to pay tribute to the Pope. - -On the day appointed Wickliffe appeared in Our Lady's Chapel, accompanied -by the Earl Marshall, Percy, and the Duke of Lancaster, who openly -encouraged him, to the horror of the populace and the bitter rage of the -priests. A quarrel instantly began by Courtenay, the Bishop of London, -opposing a motion of the Earl Marshall that Wickliffe should be allowed a -seat. The proud duke, pale with anger, whispered fiercely to the bishop -that, "rather than take such language from him, he would drag him out of -the church by the hair of his head." The threat was heard by an unfriendly -bystander, and it passed round the church in whispers. Rumour, with her -thousand babbling tongues, was soon busy in the churchyard, where the -people had assembled, eager for the reformer's condemnation. They -instantly broke forth like hounds which have recovered a scent. It was at -once proposed to break into the church and pull the duke from the -judgment-seat. When he appeared at the door, he was received with ominous -yells, and was chased and pelted by the mob. Furious and beside himself -with rage, he instantly proceeded to Westminster, where the Parliament was -sitting, and moved that from that day forth all the privileges of the -citizens of London should be annulled, that they should no longer elect a -mayor or sheriff, and that Lord Percy should possess the entire -jurisdiction over them--a severe penalty, it must be owned, for pelting a -duke with mud. - -The following day, the citizens, hearing of this insolent proposal, -snatched up their arms, and swore to take the proud duke's life. After -pillaging the Marshalsea, where Lord Percy resided, they poured down on -the Savoy and killed a priest whom they took to be Percy in disguise. They -then broke all the furniture and threw it into the Thames, leaving only -the bare walls standing. While the mob were shouting at the windows, -feeding the river with torrents of spoiled wealth, or cutting the beds and -tapestry to pieces, the duke and Lord Percy, who had been dining with John -of Ypres, a merchant in the City, escaped in disguise by rowing up the -river to Kingston in an open boat. Eventually, at the entreaties of the -Bishop of London, who pleaded the sanctity of Lent, the rioters dispersed, -having first hung up the duke's arms in a public place as those of a -traitor. The Londoners finally appeased their opponent by carrying to St. -Paul's a huge taper of wax, blazoned with the duke's arms, which was to -burn continually before the image of Our Lady in token of reconciliation. - -This John of Gaunt, fourth son[194] of Edward III., married Blanche, -daughter of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, who died of the plague in 1360, John -succeeding to the title in right of his wife. He married his daughter -Philippa to the King of Portugal, and his daughter Catharine to the Infant -of Spain. From Henry Plantagenet, fourth Earl and first Duke of -Lancaster, the Savoy descended to this John of Ghent, who married that -amiable princess, Blanche Plantagenet, daughter and co-heir of Earl Henry. - -Into this same king-haunted precinct John of France, after the slaughter -at Poitiers, was brought with chivalrous and almost ostentatious humility -by the Black Prince. One thousand nine hundred English lances had routed -with great slaughter eight thousand French. The lanes and moors of -Maupertuis were choked with dead knights; the French king had been -wounded, beaten to the ground, and taken prisoner, together with his son -Philip, by a gentleman of Artois.[195] Sailing from Bordeaux, the Black -Prince arrived at Sandwich with his prisoner, and was received at -Southwark by the citizens of London on May 5, 1357. Triumphal arches were -erected, and tapestry hung from every window. The King of France rode like -a conqueror on a richly trapped cream-coloured horse, while by his side -sat the young prince on a small black palfrey. Some hours elapsed before -the procession could reach Westminster Hall, where King Edward was -surrounded by his prelates, knights, and barons. When John entered, our -king arose, embraced him, and led him to a splendid banquet prepared for -him. The palace of the Savoy was allotted to King John and his son, till -his removal to Windsor. - -Here the royal Frenchman may have been when he heard the tidings of the -ferocity of the Jacquerie, and of the dreadful riots in his capital. To -the Savoy he returned when his son, the Duke of Anjou, broke his parole -and fled to Paris, desirous to exculpate himself of this dishonour, and to -arrange for a crusade to recover Cyprus from the Turk.[196] To his -council, dissuading him from returning, like a second Regulus, to -captivity and perhaps death, the king addressed these memorable words--"If -honour were banished from every other place, it should at least find an -asylum in the breast of kings." - -John was affectionately received by the chivalrous Edward, and again -returned to his old quarters in the Savoy, with his hostages of the blood -royal--"the three lords of the fleur-de-lys." Here he spent several weeks -in giving and receiving entertainments; but before he could proceed to -business, he was attacked with a dangerous illness, and expired in 1364. -His obsequies were performed with regal magnificence, and his corpse was -sent with a splendid retinue to be interred at St. Denis. - -When treaties are broken by statesmen, or unjust wars declared, let the -reader go to the Savoy, and think of that brave promise-keeper, King John -of France. - -During the latter years of King Edward III., John of Gaunt became very -unpopular. "The good Parliament" (1376) remonstrated against the expense -of his unsuccessful wars in Spain, Scotland, and France, and against the -excessive taxation. The duke imprisoned the Speaker, and banished wise -William of Wyckeham from the king's person, but in vain attempted to alter -the law of succession. - -In Wat Tyler's rebellion the duke's palace was the first to be destroyed. -A refusal to pay oppressive poll-tax led to a riot at Fobbing, a village -in Essex; from this place the flame spread like wildfire through the whole -county, and the people rose, led by a priest named Jack Straw. At -Dartford, a tiler bravely beat out the brains of a tax-collector who had -insulted his daughter. Kent instantly rose, took Rochester Castle, and -massed together at Maidstone, under Wat, a tiler, and Ball, a preacher. In -a few days a hundred thousand men, rudely armed with clubs, bills, and -bows, poured over Blackheath and hurried on to London.[197] In Southwark -they demolished the Marshalsea and the King's Bench; then they sacked -Lambeth Palace, destroyed Newgate, fired the house of the Knights -Hospitallers at Clerkenwell, and that of the Knights of St. John at -Highbury, and seizing the Tower, beheaded an archbishop and several -knights. All Flemings hidden in churches were dragged out and put to -death. Yet, with all this intoxication of new liberty, the claims of -these Kentish men were simple and just. They demanded--The abolition of -slavery; the reduction of rent to fourpence an acre; the free liberty of -buying and selling in all fairs and markets; and lastly a general pardon. - -At the great bivouacs at Mile End and on Tower Hill, Wat Tyler's men -required all recruits to swear to be true to King Richard and the Commons, -and to admit no monarch of the name of John.[198] This last clause of the -oath was aimed at John of Gaunt, to whom the people attributed all their -misery. On June 13, 1381, a deluge of billmen, bowmen, artisans, and -ploughmen rolled down on the Savoy. The duke was at the time negotiating -with the Scots on the Borders, while his castles of Leicester and Tutbury -were being plundered. The attack was sudden, and there was no defence. A -proclamation had previously been made by Wat Tyler, that, as the common -object was justice and not plunder, any one found stealing would be put to -death. - -For beauty and stateliness of building, as well as all manner of princely -furniture, there was, says Holinshed, no palace in the realm comparable to -the duke's house that the Kentish and Essex men burnt and marred. They -tore the silken and velvet hangings; they beat up the gold and silver -plate, and threw it into the Thames; they crushed the jewels and mortars, -and poured the dust into the river. One of the men--unfortunate -rogue!--being seen to slip a silver cup into the breast of his doublet, -was tossed into the fire and burnt to death, amid shouts and "fell -cries."[199] The cellars were ruthlessly plundered, probably in spite of -Wat Tyler, and thirty-two of the poor wretches, buried under beams and -stones, were either starved or suffocated. In the wildest of the storm, -some barrels were at last found which were supposed to contain money. They -were flung into the huge bonfire; in an instant they exploded, blew up the -great hall, shook down several houses, killed many men, and reduced the -palace to ruins. That was on the 13th; on the 15th, the Essex men had -dispersed; and Wat Tyler, the impetuous reformer, during a conference -with the king in Smithfield, was slain by a sudden blow from the sword of -Lord Mayor Walworth. - -John of Gaunt died at the Bishop of Ely's palace in Holborn, at Christmas -1398--his old home being now a ruin--and he was buried on the north side -of the high altar of Saint Paul's, beside the Lady Blanche, his first -wife. Instantly on his death, the wilful young king, to the rage of the -people, seized on all his uncle's lands, rents, and revenues, and banished -the duke's attorney, who resisted his shameless theft. Amongst this pile -of plunder the Savoy must have also passed. - -The Savoy had bloomed, and after the bloom came in its due time the "sere -and yellow leaf." The precinct must have remained a waste during the Wars -of the Roses;[200] but its blackened ruins preached their silent lesson in -vain to the turbulent and tormented Londoners. - -In the reign of that dark and wily king, Henry VII., sunshine again fell -on the Savoy. That prince, who was fond of erecting convents, founded on -the old site a hospital, intended to shelter one hundred poor almsmen. It -was not, however, finished when he died, nor was it completed till the -fifteenth year of his son's reign (1524), the year in which the French -were driven out of Italy. - -The hospital, which was dedicated to John the Baptist, was in the form of -a cross, and over the entrance-gate, facing the Strand, was the following -insipid inscription:-- - - "_Hospitium hoc inopi turba Savoia vocatum, - Septimus Henricus solo fundavit ab imo._" - -The master and four brethren were to be priests and to officiate in turns, -standing day and night at the gate to invite in and feed any poor or -distressed persons who passed down the river-side road. If those so -received were pilgrims or travellers, they were to be dismissed the next -morning with a letter of recommendation to the next hospital, and with -money to defray their expenses on the journey. - -In the reign of Edward VI., part of the revenues of the new hospital, to -the value of six hundred pounds, was transferred to Bridewell prison and -Christ's Hospital school for poor orphan children; for already abuses had -crept in, and indiscriminate charity had led to its usual melancholy -results. The old palace had become no mere shelter for the deserving poor, -but a den of loiterers, sham cripples, and vagabonds of either sex, who -begged all day in the fields and came to the Savoy to sleep and sup.[201] - -Queen Mary, whose Spanish blood made her a friend to all monastic -institutions, re-endowed the unlucky place with fresh lands; but it went -on in its old courses till the twelfth year of Elizabeth, who suddenly -pounced in her own stern way on the nest of rogues, and, to the terror of -sinecurists, deprived Thomas Thurland, then master, of his office, for -corruption and embezzlement of the hospital estates. - -We hear nothing more of the unlucky and neglected Hospital of St. John -till the Restoration, when Dr. Henry Killigrew was appointed master, much -to the chagrin and disappointment of the poet Cowley, to whom the sinecure -had been promised by Charles I. and Charles II. - -Cowley, the clever son of a London stationer, had been secretary to the -queen-mother, but returning as a spy to England, was apprehended, and upon -that made his peace with Cromwell. This latter fact the Royalists never -forgave, and considering his play of _The Cutter of Colman Street_ as -caricaturing the old roystering Cavalier officers, they damned his comedy, -lampooned him, and gave the Savoy to Killigrew, father of the court wit. -Upon this the mortified poet wrote his poem of "The Complaint,"[202] -wherein he calls the Savoy the Rachel he had served with "faith and labour -for twice seven years and more," and querulously describes himself as left -alone gasping on the naked beach, while all his fellow voyagers had -marched up to possess the promised land. The poem, though ludicrously -querulous, contains some lines, such as the following, which are truly -beautiful. The muse is reproaching the truant poet. - - "Art thou returned at last," said she, - "To this forsaken place and me, - Thou prodigal who didst so loosely waste, - Of all thy youthful years, the good estate? - Art thou return'd here to repent too late, - And gather husks of learning up at last, - Now the rich harvest-time of life is past, - And winter marches on so fast?" - -With this farewell lament Cowley withdrew "from the tumult and business of -the world," to his long-coveted retirement[203] at pleasant, green -Chertsey, where, seven years after, he died. - -The Savoy, always an abused sinecure, that made the master a rogue and its -inmates professional beggars, was finally suppressed in the reign of Queen -Anne.[204] It was then used as a barrack for five hundred soldiers, and as -a deserters' prison, till the approaches to Waterloo Bridge rendered its -removal necessary. - -Savoy Street occupies the site of the old central Henry VII.'s Tudor gate. -Coal wharves cover the site of the ancient front of the hospital, and the -houses in Lancaster Place, leading to Waterloo Bridge, another part of its -area. - -In 1661, the year after the restoration of Charles II., a celebrated -conference between the Church of England bishops and the Presbyterian -divines took place, with very small result, in the Bishop of London's -lodgings in the Savoy. Among the twelve bishops were Sheldon and Gauden, -the author of _Ikon Basilike_: among the Presbyterians Baxter, Calamy, and -Reynolds. They were to revise the Liturgy, and to discuss rules and forms -of prayer; but there was so much distrust and reserve on both sides, that -at the end of two months the conference came to an untimely end.[205] It -was the bishops' hour of triumph, and no concessions could be expected -from them after their many mortifications. In the same year Charles II. -established a French church in the Savoy, and Dr. Durel preached the first -sermon to the foreign residents in London, July 14, 1661.[206] - -In Queen Anne's time, after its suppression, the Savoy became, like the -Clink and Whitefriars, a sanctuary for fraudulent debtors. On one -occasion, in 1696, a creditor entering that nest of thieves to demand a -debt, was tarred and feathered, carried in a wheelbarrow into the Strand, -and there bound to the May-pole; but some constables coming up dispersed -the rabble and rescued the tormented man from his persecutors.[207] - -Strype, writing about 1720 (George I.), describes the Savoy as a great -ruinous building, divided into several apartments. In one a cooper stored -his hoops and butts; in another there were rooms for deserters, pressed -men, Dutch recruits, and military prisoners. Within the precinct there was -the king's printing-press, where gazettes, proclamations, and Acts of -Parliament were printed; and also a German Lutheran church, a French -Protestant church, and a Dissenting chapel; besides "harbours for refugees -and poor people."[208] The worthy writer thus describes the hall of the -old hospital:-- - -"In the midst of its buildings is a very spacious hall, the walls three -foot broad, of stone without and brick and stone inward. The ceiling is -very curiously built with wood, having knobs in one place hanging down, -and images of angels holding before their breasts coats of arms, but -hardly discoverable. One is a cross gules between four stars, or else -mullets. It is covered with lead, but in divers places open to the -weather. Towards the east end of the hall is a fair cupola with glass -windows, but all broken, which makes it probable the hall was as long -again, since cupolas are wont to be built about the middle of great -halls." - -In 1754 (George II.) clandestine marriages were performed at the Savoy -church; and the advantages of secrecy, privacy, and access by water were -boldly advertised in the papers of the day. The _Public Advertiser_ of -January 2, 1754, contains the following impudent and touting -advertisement:-- - -"BY AUTHORITY.--Marriages performed with the utmost privacy, secrecy, and -regularity, at the ancient royal chapel of St. John the Baptist in the -Savoy, where regular and authentic registers have been kept from the time -of the Reformation (being two hundred years and upwards) to this day. The -expense not more than one guinea, the five shilling stamp included. There -are five private ways by land to this chapel, and two by water." - -At this time the Savoy was still a large cruciform building, with two rows -of mullioned windows facing the Thames; a court to the north of it was -called the Friary. The north front, the most ornamented, had large pointed -windows and embattled parapets, lozenged with flint. - -At the west end, in 1816, stood the guard-house, or military prison, its -gateway secured by a strong buttress, and embellished with Henry VII.'s -arms and the badges of the rose and the portcullis: above these were two -hexagonal oriel windows. - -In 1816, when the ruins were to be removed, crowds thronged to see the -remains of John of Gaunt's old palace.[209] The workmen found it difficult -to destroy the mossy and ivy-covered walls and the large north window; the -masses of flint, stone, and brick being eight or ten feet thick. The -screw-jack was powerless to destroy the work of Chaucer's time. The masons -had to dig, pickaxe holes, and loosen the foundations, then to drive -crowbars into the windows and fasten ropes to them, so as to pull the -stones inwards. The outer buttresses would in any other way have defied -armies. - -Some of the stone was soft and white. This, according to tradition, was -that brought from Caen by Queen Mary. The industrious costermongers -discovered this, and cut it into blocks to sell as hearthstones. A fire -about 1777 had thrown down much of the hospital, so that the old level was -fifteen or twenty feet deeper. The vaults and subterranean passages were -unexplored. The wells were filled up. The workmen then pulled down the -German chapel, which stood next Somerset House, and the red-brick house in -the Savoy Square that was used for barracks. "The entrance," says a writer -of 1816, "to the Strand or Waterloo Bridge will be spacious, and the -houses in the Strand now only stop the opening."[210] - -The Chapel of St. Mary, Savoy, is a late and plain Perpendicular -structure, with a fine coloured ceiling. This small, quiet chapel holds a -silent congregation of illustrious dead. - -[Illustration: THE SAVOY CHAPEL.] - -Here are interred Sir Robert and Lady Douglas (temp. James I.); the -Countess of Dalhousie, daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, Lieutenant of the -Tower, and sister to that admirable wife, Mrs. Hutchinson, who died in -1663; William Chaworth, who died in 1582, a member of that Nottinghamshire -family, one of whom, Lord Byron's predecessor, killed in a tavern duel; -and Mrs. Anne Killigrew, who died in 1685, the paintress and poetess on -whom Dryden wrote an extravagant but glorious ode, beginning-- - - "That youngest virgin daughter of the skies, - Made in the last promotion of the blest."[211] - -This accomplished young lady was daughter of Dr. Henry Killigrew, and -niece of Thomas Killigrew the wit, of whom Denham, the poet, bitterly -said-- - - "Had Cowley ne'er spoke, Killigrew ne'er writ, - Combined in one they'd made a matchless wit." - -The father of Mistress Killigrew was author of a tragedy called _The -Conspiracy_, which both Ben Jonson and Lord Falkland eulogised. Even old -Anthony Wood says, in his own quaint way, that this lady "was a Grace for -beauty, and a Muse for wit."[212] - -We must add to this list Sir Richard and Lady Rokeby, who died in 1523, -and Gawin Douglas, that good Bishop of Dunkeld who first translated Virgil -into Lowland Scotch. He was pensioned by Henry VIII., was a friend of -Polydore Virgil, and died of the plague in London in 1521. The brass is on -the floor, about three feet south of the stove in the centre of the -chapel.[213] - -Dr. Cameron, the last victim executed for the daring rebellion of 1745, -lies here also in good company among knights and bishops. His monument, by -M. L. Watson, was not erected till 1846. Here, too, is that great admiral -of Elizabeth--George, third Earl of Cumberland, who used to wear the glove -which his queen had given him, set in diamonds, in his tilting helmet. He -died in the Duchy House in the Savoy, October 3, 1605; but his bowels -alone were buried here, the rest of his body lies at Skipton. He was the -father of the brave, proud Countess, who, when Charles II.'s secretary -pressed on her notice a candidate for Appleby, wrote that celebrated -cannon-shot of a letter:-- - - "I have been bullied by an usurper; I have been neglected by a court, - but I will not be dictated to by a subject. Your man shan't stand. - - "ANNE, DORSET, PEMBROKE, AND MONTGOMERY." - -Here also there is a tablet to the memory of Richard Lander, the -traveller, originally a servant of that energetic discoverer Captain -Clapperton, who was the first to cross Africa from Tripoli and Benin. -Lander had the honour also of first discovering the course of the Niger. -He died in February 1834, from a gunshot-wound, at Fernando Po, aged only -thirty-one. Such are the lion-men who extend the frontiers of English -commerce. - -In the Savoy reposes a true poet, but an unhappy man--George Wither, the -satirist and idyllist, who died in 1667, and lies here between the east -door and the south end of the chapel.[214] He was one of Cromwell's -major-generals, and had a hard time of it after the Restoration. It was to -save Wither's life that Denham used that humorous petition--"As long as -Wither lives I should not be considered the worst poet in England." - -Wither anticipated Wordsworth in simple earnestness and a regard for the -humblest subjects. The soldier-poet himself says-- - - "In my former days of bliss, - Her divine skill taught me this: - That from everything I saw - I could some invention draw, - And raise pleasure to her height - Through the meanest object's sight, - By the murmur of a spring, - By the least bough's rustling."[215] - -These charming lines were written when Wither lay in the Marshalsea, -imprisoned for writing a satire--_Abuses stripped and whipped_. - -In the same church lies one of the smallest of military heroes--Lewis de -Duras, Earl of Feversham, who died in the reign of Queen Anne. He was -nephew of the great Turenne, and was one of the few persons present when -Charles II. received extreme unction. He commanded, or rather followed, -King James II.'s troops at Sedgemoor, in 1685, and at that momentous -crisis "thought only of eating and sleeping."[216] Upon this shambling -general the Duke of Buckingham wrote one of his latest lampoons.[217] - -In 1552 the first manufactory of glass in England was established at the -old Savoy House. It was here that, in 1658, the Independents met and drew -up their famous Declaration of Faith. In 1671 the Royal Society's -publications were printed here. In Dryden's time, the wounded English -sailors who had been mangled by Van Tromp's and De Ruyter's shot were -nursed here. The good and witty Fuller, who wrote the _Worthies_ lectured -here. Half-crazed Alexander Cruden, who compiled the laborious Concordance -to the Bible, lived here; and here grinding Jacob Tonson had a warehouse. - -In 1843 the Queen repaired the Savoy Chapel, in virtue of her being the -patron of it. The duty, indeed, fell upon the Crown, for the chapel stood -in the Liberty of the Duchy of Lancaster, and the office of the Duchy is -in Lancaster Place, to the right as you approach Waterloo Bridge. - -In July 1864 the Savoy Chapel was unfortunately destroyed by a fire -occasioned by an explosion of gas. The coloured ceiling, the altar window, -containing a figure of St. John the Baptist, and a solitary niche with -some tabernacle work at the east end, all perished. It was shortly -afterwards restored and decorated afresh throughout, at the cost of Her -Majesty. - -Mr. George Augustus Sala has admirably sketched the present condition of -the Precinct,--its almost solemn silence and its gravity,--its loneliness, -as of Juan Fernandez, Norfolk Island, or Key West,[218] although on the -very verge of the roaring world of London, and but five minutes' walk from -Temple Bar. - -The royal property is chiefly covered now by shops, public-houses, and -printing-offices. The Precinct still retains traditions of the vagabond -squatters who, till about the middle of the last century, assumed -possession of the ruinous tenements in the Savoy, till the Footguards -turned them out, and the houses were pulled down, rebuilt, and let to -respectable tenants. - -The old churchyard has long since been sealed up by the Board of Health, -but the trees and grass still flourish round the old stones. Clean-shaved, -nattily dressed actors come to this quiet purlieu to study their parts. -Musicians of theatrical orchestras, penny-a-liners, and printers haunt the -bar of the Savoy tavern. Those quiet houses with the white door-steps, -shining brass plates and green blinds, are inhabited by accountants' -clerks, retired and retiring small tradesmen, and commission agents -interested in pale ale, pickles, and Wallsend coals. - -"So," says Mr. Sala, "run the sands of life through this quiet hour-glass; -so glides the life away in the old Precinct. At its base a river runs for -all the world; at its summit is the brawling, raging Strand; on either -side are darkness and poverty and vice, the gloomy Adelphi arches, the -Bridge of Sighs that men call Waterloo. But the Precinct troubles itself -little with the noise and tumult; it sleeps well through life without its -fitful fever." - -Wearied of its old grandeur, pondering, as old men ponder, over its dead -kings--for Wat Tyler and his Kentish men need no Riot Act to quiet them -now--the Savoy and its crowned ghosts drift on with our methodical planet, -meekly awaiting the death-blow that time must some day inflict. - -Tait Wilkinson's father was a minister of the Savoy. Garrick helped to -transport him by informing against him for illegally performing the -marriage ceremony. In return, Garrick helped forward the son--"an exotic," -as he called him, rather than an actor--but a wonderful mimic, not only of -voice and manner, but even of features. He used to reproduce Foote's -imitations of the older actors--as Mathews afterward imitated Wilkinson, -who in his time had imitated Foote, to that impudent buffoon's great -vexation. - -The _Examiner_, whose office is near Waterloo Bridge, was started by Leigh -Hunt and his brother John in 1808. It began by boldly asserting the -necessity for reform, lampooning the Regent, and attacking the cant and -excesses of Methodism. In 1812 both the Hunts were found guilty of having -called the Prince Regent "the Prince of Whales" and "a fat Adonis of -fifty," and were sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Horsemonger Lane -gaol, and to pay a fine of L500. At a later period, Hazlitt joined the -paper, and wrote for it the essays reprinted (in 1817) under the title of -_The Round Table_.[219] Close to it is the office of the _Spectator_, -another paper of the same calibre and class, and more important than the -_Examiner_ now, though its early history is not so interesting. - -Waterloo Bridge, one of those marvels built by the industrious -simple-hearted John Rennie, was opened by the Prince Regent in 1817. Dupin -declared it was a colossal monument worthy of Sesostris or the Caesars; and -what most struck Canova in England was that the foolish Chinese Bridge -then in St. James's Park should be the production of the Government, while -Waterloo Bridge was the result of mere private enterprise.[220] The bridge -did not settle more than a few inches after the centres were struck. - -The project of erecting the Strand Bridge, as it was first called, was -started by a company in 1809, a joint-stock-fever year. Rennie received -L1000 a year for himself and assistants, or L7: 7s. a day, and expenses. -The bridge consists of nine arches, of 120 feet span, with piers 20 feet -thick, the arches being plain semi-ellipses, with their crowns 30 feet -above high water. Over the points of each pier are placed Doric column -pilasters, after a design taken from the Temple of Segesta in Sicily. In -the construction of the bridge the chief features of Rennie's management -were the following:--The employment of coffer-dams in founding the piers; -new methods of constructing, floating, and fixing the centres; the -introduction and working of Aberdeen granite to an extent before unknown; -and the adoption of elliptical stone arches of an unusual width. - -Nearly all the bur stone was brought to the bridge by one horse, called -"Old Jack." On one occasion the driver, a steady man, but too fond of his -morning dram, kept "Old Jack" waiting a longer time than usual at the -public-house, upon which he poked his head in at the open door, and gently -drew out his master by the coat collar.[221] - -Rennie, the architect of the three great London bridges, the engineer of -the Plymouth Breakwater and of the London and East India Docks, and a -drainer of the Fens, was the son of a small farmer in East Lothian, and -was born in 1761.[222] - -[Illustration: THE SAVOY PRISON, 1793.] - - - - -[Illustration: DURHAM HOUSE, 1790.] - - -CHAPTER VII. - -FROM THE SAVOY TO CHARING CROSS. - - -Old York House stood on the site of Buckingham and Villiers Streets. In -ancient times, York House had been the inn of the Bishops of Norwich. -Abandoned to the crown, King Henry VIII. gave the place to that gay knight -Charles Brandon, the husband of his beautiful sister Mary, the Queen of -France. When the Church rose again and resumed its scarlet pomp, the house -was given to Queen Mary's Lord Chancellor, Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of -York, in exchange for Suffolk House in Southwark, which was presented by -Queen Mary to the see of York in recompense for York House, Whitehall, -taken from Wolsey by her father. On the fall of that minister, once more a -change took place, and the house passed to the Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas -Bacon, who rented it of the see of York. - -In this house the great Francis Bacon was born, on the 22d of January, -1561. York House stood near the royal palace, from which it was parted by -lanes and fields. Its courtyard and great gates opened to the street. The -main front, with its turrets and water stair, faced the river. The garden, -falling by an easy slope to the Thames, commanded a view as far south as -the Lollards' Tower at Lambeth, as far east as London Bridge. "All the gay -river life[223] swept past the lawn, the salmon-fishers spreading their -nets, the watermen paddling gallants to Bankside, and Shakspere's theatre, -the city barges rowing past in procession, and the queen herself, with her -train of lords and ladies, shooting by in her journeys from the Tower to -Whitehall Stairs. From the lattice out of which he gazed, the child could -see over the palace roof the pinnacles and crosses of the old abbey." - -The Lord Keeper Pickering died at York House in 1596, and Lord Chancellor -Egerton in 1616 or 1617. In 1588 it is supposed the Earl of Essex tried to -obtain the house, as Archbishop Sandys wrote to Burghley begging him to -resist some such demand. Essex was in ward here for six months, fretting -under the care of Lord Keeper Egerton. - -"York House was the scene," says a clever pleader for a great man's good -fame, "of Bacon's gayest hours, and of his sharpest griefs--of his highest -magnificence, and of his profoundest prostration. In it his studious -childhood passed away. In it his father died. On going into France, to the -court of Henry IV., he left it a lively, splendid home; on his return from -that country, he found it a house of misery and death. From its gates he -wandered forth with his widowed mother into the world. Though it passed -into other hands, his connection with it never ceased. Under Egerton its -gates again opened to him. It was the scene of that inquiry into the Irish -treason when he was the queen's historian. During his courtship of Alice -Barnham, York House was his second home. In one of its chambers he watched -by the sick-bed of Ellesmere, and on Ellesmere's surrender of the Seals, -presented the dying Chancellor with the coronet of Brackley. It became his -own during his reign as Keeper and Chancellor. From it he dated his great -Instauration; in its banqueting-hall he feasted poets and scholars; from -one of its bed-rooms he wrote his Submission and Confession; in the same -room he received the Earls of Arundel, Pembroke, and Southampton, as -messengers from the House of Lords; there he surrendered the Great Seal. -To regain York House, when it had passed into other hands, was one of the -warmest passions of his heart, and the resolution to retain it against the -eager desires of Buckingham was one of the secret causes of his fall." - -"No," said the fallen great man; "York House is the house wherein my -father died and wherein I first breathed, and there will I yield my last -breath, if it so please God, and the king will give me leave."[224] - -Some of the saddest and some of the happiest events of Bacon's life must -have happened in the Strand. From thence he rode, sumptuous in purple -velvet from cap to shoe, along the lanes to Marylebone Chapel, to wed his -bride Alice Barnham. - -York House was famous for its aviary, on which Bacon had expended L300. It -was in the garden here that we are told the Chancellor once stood looking -at the fishers below throwing their nets. Bacon offered them so much for a -draught, but they refused. Up came the net with only two or three little -fish; upon which his lordship told them that "hope was a good breakfast, -but an ill supper."[225] - -It was on the death of his friend, Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, and on his -own installation, that Bacon bought the lease of York House from the -former's son, the first Earl of Bridgewater. He found the rooms vast and -naked. His friends and votaries furnished the house, giving him books and -drawings, stands of arms, cabinets, jewels, rings, and boxes of money. -Lady Caesar contributed a massive gold chain, and Prince Charles a diamond -ring. - -Bacon, when young, had been often taken to court by his father; and the -queen, delighting in the gravity and wisdom of the boy, used to call him -her "young Lord Keeper." Even then his mind was philosophically observant; -and it is said that he used to leave his playmates in St. James's Fields -to try and discover the cause of the echo in a certain brick conduit.[226] - -At Durham House, on January 22, 1620, the year in which he published his -_magnum opus_, the _Novum Organon_, and a twelvemonth before his disgrace, -Bacon gave a grand banquet to his friends. Ben Jonson was one of the -guests, and is supposed to have himself recited a set of verses, in which -he says-- - - "Hail th' happy genius of the ancient pile! - How comes it that all things so about thee smile,-- - The fire, the wine, the men?--and in the midst - Thou stand'st as if some mystery thou didst. - - "England's High Chancellor, the destined heir, - In his soft cradle to his father's chair, - Whose even thread the Fates spin round and full, - Out of their choicest and their richest wool. - 'Tis a brave cause of joy. * * - Give me a deep-crowned bowl, that I may sing, - In raising him, the wisdom of my king." - -Who till he dies can boast of having been happy? The year after, the -king's anger fell like an axe upon the great courtier. Solitary and -comfortless at Gorhambury, Bacon petitioned the Lords in almost abject -terms to be allowed to return to York House, where he could advance his -studies and consult his physicians, creditors, and friends, so that "out -of the carcass of dead and rotten greatness, as out of Samson's lion, -there may be honey gathered for future times." Sir Edward Sackville prayed -him in vain to remove his straitest shackles by surrendering York House to -the king's favourite; and so did his creditor, Mr. Meautys, who, says -Bacon, used him "coarsely," and meant "to saw him asunder." "The great -lords," says Meautys, "long to be in York House. I know your lordship -cannot forget they have such a savage word among them as _fleecing_." This -word has grown tame in modern times, but it had a terrible significance in -those days, when it hinted at flaying. - -An episode about Bacon's younger days may be pardoned here. The Gray's Inn -Chambers occupied by Bacon were in Coney Court, looking over the gardens -and past St. Pancras Church to Hampstead Hill. They are no longer -standing. The site of them was No. 1 Gray's Inn Square. Bacon began to -keep his terms at the age of eighteen, in June 1579. His uncle Burleigh -was bencher in this inn, and his cousins, Robert, Cecil, and Nicholas -Trott, students. In his latter days, when Attorney-General, and even when -Lord Chancellor, he retained a lease of his old rooms in Coney Court. He -was called to the bar when he was twenty-one, in 1582; and as soon as he -was called he appeared in Fleet Street in his serge and bands, as a sign -that he was going to practise for his bread. At the close of his first -session, however, he was raised to the bench. Bacon always remained -attached to Gray's Inn; he laid out the gardens, planted the elm-trees, -raised the terrace, pulled down and rebuilt the chambers, dressed the dumb -show, led off the dances, and invented the masques.[227] - -After Lord Bacon's disgrace, the first Duke of Buckingham of the Villiers -family borrowed the house from Toby Mathew, the courtly archbishop of -York, in hopes of a final exchange, which did eventually take place.[228] -In 1624, two years before Bacon's death, a bill was passed to enable the -king to exchange some lands for York House, so coveted by his proud -favourite. Buckingham soon partially pulled down the old mansion, and -lined the walls of his temporary structure with huge mirrors. Here he -entertained the foreign ambassadors. Of all his splendour, the only relic -left is the water gate usually ascribed to Inigo Jones. - -This Duke of Buckingham, the "Steenie" of King James, and of Scott's -_Fortunes of Nigel_, was the younger son of a poor knight, who won James -I. by his personal beauty, vivacity, and accomplishments--by his dancing, -jousting, leaping, and masquerading. At first page, cupbearer, and -gentleman of the bedchamber, he rose to power on the disgrace of Carr. - -It was at York House--"Yorschaux," as he calls it, with the usual -insolence and carelessness of his nation--that Bassompierre visited the -duke in 1626. He praises the mansion as more richly fitted up than any -other he had ever seen.[229] Yet the duke did not live here, but at -Wallingford House, on the site of the Admiralty, keeping York House for -pageants and levees, till Felton's knife severed his evil soul from his -body, August 23, 1628. His son, the Zimri of Dryden, was born at -Wallingford House. - -The "superstitious pictures" at York House were sold in 1645,[230] and the -house given by Cromwell to General Fairfax, whose daughter married the -second and last Duke of Buckingham, of the Villiers line, the favourite of -Charles II., the rival of Rochester, the plotter with Shaftesbury, the -selfish profligate who drove Lee into Bedlam and starved Samuel Butler. - -In 1661 the galleries of York House were famous for the antique busts and -statues that had belonged to Rubens on his visit to this country, when he -painted James I. in jackboots being hauled heavenward by a flock of -angels. In the riverside gardens--not far, I presume, from the water -gate--stood John of Bologna's "Cain and Abel," which the King of Spain had -given to Prince Charles on his luckless visit to Madrid, and which Charles -had bestowed on his dangerous favourite.[231] - -The great rooms, even then emblazoned with the lions and peacocks of the -Villiers and Manners families, were traversed by Evelyn, who describes the -house and gardens as much ruined through neglect. Pepys also, who thrust -his nose into every show-place, went to York House when the Russian -ambassador was there, and rapturously and poetically vows he saw "the -remains of the noble soul of the late Duke of Buckingham appearing in the -house in every place, in the door-cases and the windows,"[232]--odd places -for a noble soul to make its abode! - -The Duke of Buckingham, in King Charles's days, had turned York House into -a treasury of art. He bought Rubens's private collection of pictures for -L10,000, Sir Henry Wotten having purchased them for him at Venice. He had -seventeen Tintorets, and thirteen works of Paul Veronese. For an "Ecce -Homo" by Titian, containing nineteen figures as large as life, he refused -L7000 from the Earl of Arundel. During the Civil Wars the pictures were -removed by his son to Antwerp, and there sold by auction. - -Who can look down Buckingham Street in the twilight, and see the pediment -of the old water gate of the duke's house, without repeating to himself -the scourging lines of Dryden when he drew Buckingham as Zimri?-- - - "A man so various that he seem'd to be - Not one but all mankind's epitome; - Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong; - Was everything by turns, and nothing long; - But, in the course of one revolving moon, - Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon."[233] - -In vain Settle eulogised the mercurial and licentious spendthrift. -Settle's verse is forgotten, but we all remember Pope's ghastly but -exaggerated picture of the rake's death in "the worst inn's worst room"-- - - "No wit to flatter left of all his store, - No fool to laugh at, which he valued more, - There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends, - And fame, this lord of useless thousand ends." - -The first Duke of Buckingham, to judge by Clarendon, who was the friend of -all friends of absolutism, must have been a man of magnificent generosity -and "flowing courtesy," a staunch friend, and a desperate and unrelenting -hater; but he was an enemy of the people; and had he survived the knife of -Felton he must have been the first of a faithless king's bad counsellors -to perish on the scaffold. - -[Illustration: THE WATER GATE, 1860.] - -The second duke was a base-tempered, shameless profligate, a fickle, -dishonest intriguer, who perished at last, a poor worn-out man, in a -farmer's house in Yorkshire, from a cold caught while hunting. He was the -author of several obscene lampoons, from which Swift took some hints; and -he was the godfather of a mock tragedy, _The Rehearsal_, in which he was -helped by Martin Clifford and Butler, the author of _Hudibras_, the latter -of whom he left to starve. Baxter, it is true, drops a redeeming word or -two on behalf of the gay scoundrel; but then Buckingham had intrigued with -the Puritans. - -York Stairs, the only monument of Zimri's splendour left, stand now in the -middle of the gardens of the new Embankment. Till the Embankment was made, -the gate was approached by a small enclosed terrace planted with lime -trees. The water gate consists of a central archway and two side windows. -Four rusticated columns support an arched pediment and two couchant lions -holding shields. On a scroll are the Villiers arms. On the street side -rise three arches, flanked by pilasters and an entablature, on which are -four stone globes. Above the keystone of the arches are shields and -anchors. In the centre are the arms of Villiers impaling those of Manners. -The Villiers' motto, _Fidei coticula crux_, "The cross is the whetstone of -faith," is inscribed on the frieze. The gate, as it now stands, is -ridiculous, and is almost buried in the soil. It would be a charity to -remove it to a water-side position. - -In 1661, on the day of the great affray at the Tower Wharf between the -retinues of the French and Spanish ambassadors, arising out of a dispute -for precedence, Pepys saw the latter return to York House in triumph, -guarded with fifty drawn swords, having killed several Frenchmen. "It is -strange," says the amusing quidnunc, "to see how all the city did rejoice, -and, indeed, we do naturally all love the Spanish and hate the French." -Worthy man! the fact was, all time-servers were then agog about the queen -who was expected from Portugal. From York House Pepys went peering about -the French ambassador's, and found his retainers all like dead men and -shaking their heads. "There are no men in the world," he says, "of a more -insolent spirit when they do well, and more abject if they miscarry, than -these people are."[234] - -In 1683 the learned and amiable John Evelyn, being then on the Board of -Trade, took a house in Villiers Street for the winter, partly for business -purposes, partly to educate his daughters.[235] Evelyn's works gave a -valuable impetus to art and agriculture. - -Addison's jovial friend, that delightful writer, Sir Richard Steele, lived -in Villiers Street from 1721 to 1724, after the death of his wife, the -jealous "Prue." Here he wrote his _Conscious Lovers_. The big, -swarthy-faced ex-trooper, so contrasting with his grave and colder friend -Addison, is a salient personage in the English Temple of Fame. - -Duke Street, built circa 1675,[236] was named from the last Duke of -Buckingham. Humphrey Wanley, the great Harleian librarian, lived here, and -the son of Shadwell, the poet and Dryden's enemy, who was an eminent -physician, and inherited much of his father's excellent sense. - -In 1672 the "chemyst, statesman, and buffoon" Duke of Buckingham sold York -House and gardens for L30,000 to a brewer and woodmonger, who pulled it -down and laid out the present streets, naming them, with due respect to -rank and wealth, even in a rascal, George Street, Villiers Street, Duke -Street, and Buckingham Street. In 1668 their rental was L1359: 10s.[237] - -In Charles II.'s time waterworks were started at York Buildings by a -company chartered to supply the West end with water, but they failed, -being in advance of the time. The company, however, did not concentrate -its energies on waterworks; it gave concerts, bought up forfeited estates -in Scotland, and started many wild and eccentric projects, in some of -which Steele figured prominently. The company has long been forgotten, -though kept in memory by a tall water tower, which was standing in the -reign of George III. - -In Buckingham Street, built in 1675, Samuel Pepys, the diarist, came to -live in 1684. The house, since rebuilt, was the last on the west side, and -looked on the Thames. It had been his friend Hewer's before him. A view of -the library shows us the tall plain book-cases, and a central window -looking on the river. Pepys, the son of an army tailor, and as fond of -dress and great people as might be expected of a tailor's son, was for a -long time Secretary of the Admiralty under Charles II. He was President of -the Royal Society; and it is largely to his five folio books of ballads -that we owe Dr. Percy's useful compilation, _The Relics of Ancient -Poetry_. Pepys died in 1703, at the house of his friend Hewer, at Clapham. - -Pepys's house (No. 14) became afterwards, in the summer of 1824, the home -of Etty, the painter, and remained so till within a few months of his -death in 1849. Etty first took the ground floor (afterwards occupied by -Mr. Stanfield), then the top floor; the special object of his ambition -being to watch sunsets over the river, which he loved as much as Turner -did, who frequently said, "There is finer scenery on its banks than on -those of any river in Italy." Its ebb and flow, Etty used to declare, was -like life, and "the view from Lambeth to the Abbey not unlike Venice." In -those river-side rooms the artists of two generations have -assembled--Fuseli, Flaxman, Holland, Constable, and Hilton--then Turner, -Maclise, Dyce, Herbert, and all the younger race. Etty's rooms looked on -to a terrace, with a small cottage at one end; the keeper once was a man -named Hewson, supposed to be the original Strap of _Roderick Random_.[238] -An amiable, dreamy genius was the son of the miller and gingerbread-maker -of York. - -The witty Earl of Dorset lived in this street in 1681. - -Opposite Pepys's house, and on the east side (left-hand corner), was a -house where Peter the Great lodged when in England. Here, after rowing -about the Thames, watching the boat-building, or pulling to Deptford and -back, this brave half-savage used to return and spend his rough evenings -with Lord Caermarthen, drinking a pint of hot brandy and pepper, after -endless flasks of wine. It was certainly "brandy for heroes" in this case. - -Lord Caermarthen was at this time Lord President of the Council, and had -been appointed Peter's cicerone by King William. The Russian czar was a -hard drinker, and on one occasion is said to have drunk a pint of brandy, -a bottle of sherry, and eight flasks of sack, after which he calmly went -to the play. While in York Buildings, the rough czar was so annoyed with -the vulgar curiosity of intrusive citizens, that he would sometimes rise -from his dinner and leave the room in a rage. Here the Quakers forced -themselves upon him, and presented him with _Barclay's Apology_, after -which the czar attended their meeting in Gracechurch Street. He once asked -them of what use they were in any kingdom, since they would not bear arms. -On taking his farewell of King William, Peter drew a rough ruby, valued at -L10,000, from his waistcoat pocket, and presented it to him screwed up in -brown paper.[239] He went back just in time to crush the Strelitzes, -imprison his sister Sophia, and wage war on Charles XII. The great -reformer was only twenty-six years old when he visited England. - -In 1706 Robert Harley, Esq., afterwards Swift's great patron and Earl of -Oxford, lived here;[240] and (1785) John Henderson, the actor, died in -this street. - -Walter, Lord Hungerford, of Farleigh Castle, Somerset, took the Duke of -Orleans prisoner at Agincourt. He was Lord High Steward of Henry V. and -one of the executors to his will, and Lord High Treasurer in the reign of -Henry VI. This illustrious noble was the son of Sir Thomas de Hungerforde, -who in 51 Edward III. was the first to take the chair as Speaker of the -House of Commons. - -Hungerford Market covered the site of the seat of the Hungerford family. -Pepys mentions a fire at the house of old Lady Hungerford in Charles II.'s -time. - -Sir Edward (her husband), created a Knight of the Bath at the coronation -of Charles II., pulled down the old mansion and divided it in 1680 into -several houses, enclosing also a market-place. On the north side of the -market-house was a bust of one of the family in a full-bottomed wig.[241] -It grew a disused and ill-favoured place before 1833. When a new market -(Fowler, architect) was opened, it was intended to put an end to the -monopoly of Billingsgate. The old market had at first answered well for -fruit and vegetables, as there was no need of porters from the water side; -but by 1720 Covent Garden had beaten it off.[242] It attempted too much in -rivalling at once Leadenhall and Billingsgate, and failed--only a few -fishmongers lingering on to the last. - -In 1845 a suspension bridge, crossing from Hungerford to Lambeth (built -under Mr. I. K. Brunel's supervision), was opened. It consisted of three -spans, and two brick towers in the Italian style; the main span, at the -time of its erection, was larger than that of any other in the country, -and only second to that of the bridge at Fribourg. It cost L110,000, and -consumed more than 10,000 tons of iron.[243] - -In the same year the bridge was sold to the original proprietors for -L226,000, but the purchase was never carried out. It was replaced in 1864 -by a railway bridge, and the market itself was filled up by an enormous -railway station. The market had sunk to zero years before. In 1850 some -rogue of a speculator had opened in it a pretended exhibition of the -surplus articles rejected for want of room from the glass palace in Hyde -Park. It proved a total failure, and swallowed up a vast sum of money and -a fine northern estate or two. Latterly it had become a gratuitous -music-hall, a billiard-room, and a penny-ice house, conducted by an -Italian. - -The railway station, built by Mr. Barry, the son of the architect of the -New Houses of Parliament, faces the Strand. It is of a most creditable -design, and the high Mansard roofs, which surmounted the hotel which forms -its front, are of a freer and grander character than those of any modern -London building. A model of the Eleanor Cross has been erected in the -courtyard in front of it. This building is one of the first omens of -better things that we have yet seen in our still terribly mean and ugly -city. - -Craven Street was called Spur Alley till 1742.[244] Grinling Gibbons, the -great wood-carver, born at Rotterdam, and whose genius John Evelyn -discovered, lived here after leaving the Belle Sauvage Yard. Here he must -have fashioned those fragile strings of birds and fruit and flowers that -adorn so many city churches, and the houses of so many English noblemen. -At No. 7, in 1775, lodged the great Benjamin Franklin, then no longer a -poor printer, but the envoy of the American colonies. Here Lords Howe and -Stanhope visited him to propose terms from Lords Camden and Chatham, but -unfortunately only in vain.[245] That weak and unfortunate man, the Rev. -Mr. Hackman, who shot Miss Ray, the actress and the mistress of Lord -Sandwich, who had encouraged his suit, lived in this street. - -James Smith, one of the authors of the _Rejected Addresses_,--a series of -parodies rivalled only by those of _Bon Gaultier_, lived at No. 27. It was -on his own street that he wrote the well-known epigram--[246] - - "In Craven Street, Strand, the attorneys find place, - And ten dark coal barges are moor'd at its base. - Fly, Honesty, fly! seek some safer retreat: - There's _craft_ in the river and _craft_ in the street." - -But Sir George Rose capped this in return, retorting in extemporaneous -lines, written after dinner:-- - - "Why should Honesty fly to some safer retreat, - From attorneys and barges?--'od rot 'em! - For the lawyers are _just_ at the top of the street, - And the barges are _just_ at the bottom." - -James Smith, the intellectual hero of this street, the son of a solicitor -to the Ordnance, was born in 1775. In 1802 he joined the staff of the -_Pic-Nic_ newspaper, with Combe, Croker, Cumberland, and that mediocre -poet, Sir James Bland Burgess. It changed its name to the _Cabinet_, and -died in 1803. From 1807 to 1817 James Smith contributed to the _Monthly -Mirror_ his "Horace in London." In 1812 came out the _Rejected Addresses_, -inimitable parodies by himself and his brother, not merely of the manner -but of the very mode of thought of Wordsworth, Cobbett, Southey, -Coleridge, Crabbe, Lord Byron, Scott, etc. The copyright, originally -offered to Mr. Murray for L20, but declined, was purchased by him in 1819, -after the sixteenth edition, for L131; so much for the foresight of -publishers. The book has since deservedly gone through endless editions, -and has not been approached even by the talented parody writers of -_Punch_. Those who wish to see the story of this publication in detail, -must hunt it up in the edition of the _Addresses_ illustrated by George -Cruickshank. - -Mr. Smith was the chief deviser of the substance of the _Entertainments_ -of the elder Charles Mathews. He wrote the _Country Cousins_ in 1820, and -in the two succeeding years the _Trip to France_ and the _Trip to -America_. For these last two works the author received a thousand pounds. -"A thousand pounds!" he used to ejaculate, shrugging his shoulders, "and -all for nonsense."[247] - -James Smith was just the man for Mathews, with his slight frameworks of -stories filled up with songs, jokes, puns, wild farcical fancies, and -merry conceits, and here and there among the motley, with true touches of -wit, pathos, and comedy, and faithful traits of life and character, such -as only a close observer of society and a sound thinker could pen. - -He was lucky enough to obtain a legacy of L300 for a complimentary epigram -on Mr. Strahan, the king's printer. Being patted on the head when a boy by -Chief-Justice Mansfield, in Highgate churchyard, and once seeing Horace -Walpole on his lawn at Twickenham, were the two chief historical events of -Mr. Smith's quiet life. The four reasons that kept so clever a man -employed on mere amateur trifling were these--an indolent disinclination -to sustained work, a fear of failure, a dislike to risk a well-earned -fame, and a foreboding that literary success might injure his practice as -a lawyer. His favourite visits were to Lord Mulgrave's, Mr. Croker's, -Lord Abinger's, Lady Blessington's, and Lord Harrington's. - -Pretty Lady Blessington used to say of him, that "James Smith, if he had -not been a _witty_ man, must have been a _great_ man." He died in his -house in Craven Street, with the calmness of a philosopher, on the 24th of -December 1839, in the sixty-fifth year of his age.[248] Fond of society, -witty without giving pain, a bachelor, and therefore glad to escape from a -solitary home, James Smith seems to have been the model of a diner-out. - -Caleb Whitefoord, a wine merchant in Craven Street, and an excellent -connoisseur in old pictures, was one of the legacy-hunters who infested -the studio of Nollekens, the miserly sculptor of Mortimer Street. He was a -foppish dresser, and was remarkable for a dashing three-cornered hat, with -a sparkling black button and a loop upon a rosette. He wore a wig with -five tiers of curls, of the Garrick cut, and he was one of the last to -wear such a monstrosity. This crafty wine merchant used to distribute -privately the most whimsical of his _Cross Readings_, _Ship News_, and -_Mistakes of the Press_--things in their day very popular, though now -surpassed in every number of _Punch_. Some of the best were the -following:--"Yesterday Dr. Pretyman preached at St. James's,--and -performed it with ease in less than sixteen minutes." "Several changes are -talked of at Court,--consisting of 9050 triple bob-majors." "Dr. Solander -will, by Her Majesty's command, undertake a voyage--round the head-dress -of the present month." "Sunday night.--Many noble families were -alarmed--by the constable of the ward, who apprehended them at cards." A -simple-hearted age could laugh heartily at these things: would that we -could! - -It has often been asserted that Goldsmith's epitaph on Whitefoord was -written by the wine merchant himself, and sent to the editor of the fifth -edition of the Poems by a convenient common friend. It is not very -pointed, and the length of the epitaph is certainly singular, -considering that the poet dismissed Burke and Reynolds in less than -eighteen lines. - -Adam built an octagon room in Whitefoord's house in order to give his -pictures an equal light; and Mr. Christie adopted the idea when he fitted -up his large room in King Street, St. James's.[249] - -Goldsmith is said to have been intimate with witty, punning Caleb -Whitefoord, and certain it is his name is found in the postscript to the -poem of _Retaliation_, written by Oliver on some of his friends at the St. -James's Coffee-house. These were the Burkes, fretful Cumberland, Reynolds, -Garrick, and Canon Douglas. In this poem Goldsmith laments that Whitefoord -should have confined himself to newspaper essays, and contented himself -with the praise of the printer of the _Public Advertiser_; he thus sums -him up:-- - - "Rare compound of oddity, frolic, and fun, - Who relish'd a joke and rejoiced in a pun; - Whose temper was generous, open, sincere; - A stranger to flattery, a stranger to fear. - - * * * * * - - "Merry Whitefoord, farewell! for thy sake I admit - That a Scot may have humour--I'd almost said wit; - This debt to thy memory I cannot refuse, - Thou best-humour'd man with the worst-humour'd Muse." - -Whitefoord became Vice-President of the Society of Arts. - -Anthony Pasquin (Williams), a celebrated art critic and satirist of Dr. -Johnson's time, was articled to Matt Darley, the famous caricaturist of -the Strand, to learn engraving.[250] - -The old name of Northumberland Street was Hartshorne Lane or Christopher -Alley.[251] Here Ben Jonson lived when he was a child, and after his -mother had taken a bricklayer for her second husband. - -At the bottom of this lane Sir Edmondbury Godfrey had his wood wharf. This -fact shows how much history is illustrated by topography, for the -residence of the unfortunate justice explains why it should have been -supposed that he had been inveigled into Somerset House. - -In 1829 Mr. Wood, who kept a coal wharf, resided in Sir Edmondbury's old -premises at the bottom of Northumberland Street. It was here the court -justice's wood-wharf was, but his house was in Green's Lane, near -Hungerford Market.[252] During the Great Plague Sir Edmondbury had been -very active; on one occasion, when his men refused to act, he entered a -pest-house alone to apprehend a wretch who had stolen at least a thousand -winding-sheets. Four medals were struck on his death. There is also a -portrait of the unlucky woodmonger in the waiting-room adjoining the -Vestry of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.[253] He wore, it seems, a full black -wig, like Charles II. - -Three men were tried for his murder--the cushion-man at the Queen's -Chapel, the servant of the treasurer of the chapel, and the porter of -Somerset House. The truculent Scroggs tried the accused, and those -infamous men, Oates, Prance, and Bedloe, were the false witnesses who -murdered them. The prisoners were all executed. Sir Edmondbury's corpse -was embalmed and borne to its funeral at St. Martin's from Bridewell. The -pall was supported by eight knights, all justices of the peace, and the -aldermen of London followed the coffin. Twenty-two ministers marched -before the body, and a great Protestant mob followed. Dr. William Lloyd -preached the funeral sermon from the text 2 Sam. iii. 24. The preacher was -guarded in the pulpit by two clergymen armed with "Protestant flails." - -[Illustration: YORK STAIRS, WITH THE HOUSES OF PEPYS AND PETER THE GREAT, -AFTER CANALETTI (CIRCA 1745).] - -In July 1861, No. 16 Northumberland Street, then an old-fashioned, -dingy-looking house, with narrow windows, which had been divided into -chambers, was the scene of a fight for life and death between Major Murray -and Mr. Roberts, a solicitor and bill-discounter; the latter attempted the -life of the former for the sake of getting possession of his mistress, to -whom he had lent money. Under pretext of advancing a loan to the Grosvenor -Hotel Company, of which the major was a promoter, he decoyed him into a -back room on the first floor of No. 16, then shot him in the back of the -neck, and immediately after in the right temple. The major, feigning to be -dead, waited till Roberts's back was turned, then springing to his feet -attacked him with a pair of tongs, which he broke to pieces over his -assailant's head. He then knocked him down with a bottle which lay near, -and escaped through the window, and from thence by a water-pipe to the -ground. Roberts died soon afterwards, but Major Murray recovered, and the -jury returning a verdict of "Justifiable Homicide," he was released. The -papers described Roberts's rooms as crowded with dusty Buhl cabinets, -inlaid tables, statuettes, and drawings. These were smeared with blood and -wine, while on the glass shades of the ornaments a rain of blood seemed -to have fallen. - -The embankment, which here is very wide, and includes several acres of -garden on the spot where the Thames once flowed, has largely altered the -character of the streets below the Strand and the river, destroying the -picturesque wharves and spoiling the appearance of the Water Gate, which -is half buried in gravel and flowers, like the Sphynx in Egypt. Between it -and the Thames now stands Cleopatra's Needle, brought over to England at -great cost of money and life, and set up here in 1878. - - - - -[Illustration: CROCKFORD'S FISH SHOP.] - - -CHAPTER VIII. - - THE NORTH SIDE OF THE STRAND, FROM TEMPLE BAR TO CHARING CROSS, WITH - DIGRESSIONS ON THE SOUTH. - - -The upper stratum of the Strand soil is composed of a reddish yellow -earth, containing coprolites. Below this runs a seam of leaden-coloured -clay, mixed with a few martial pyrites, calcined-looking lumps of iron -and sulphur with a bright silvery fracture. - -A petition of the inhabitants of the vicinity of the King's Palace at -Westminster (8 Edward II.) represents the footway from Temple Bar to their -neighbourhood as so bad that both rich and poor men received constant -damage, especially in the rainy season, the footway being interrupted by -_bushes and thickets_. A tax was accordingly levied for the purpose, and -the mayor and sheriffs of London and the bailiff of Westminster were -appointed overseers of the repairs. - -In the 27th of Edward III. the Knights Templars were called upon to -repair[254] "the bridge of the new Temple," where the lords who attended -Parliament took water on their way from the City. Workmen constructing a -new sewer in the Strand, in 1802, discovered, eastward of St. -Clement's,[255] a small, one-arched stone bridge, supposed to be the one -above alluded to, unless it was an arch thrown over some gully when the -Strand was a mere bridle-road. - -In James I.'s time, Middleton, the dramatist, describes a lawyer as -embracing a young spendthrift, and urging him to riot and excess, telling -him to make acquaintance with the Inns of Court gallants, and keep rank -with those that spent most; to be lofty and liberal; to lodge in the -Strand; in any case, to be remote from the handicraft scent of the -City.[256] - -It is but right to remind the reader that within the last few years the -whole of that part of the north side of the Strand lying between Temple -Bar and St. Clement's Inn, including what was once known as Pickett -Street, and extending backward almost as far as Lincoln's Inn, has been -demolished, in order to make room for the new Law Courts, which are now -fast rising towards completion. - -The house which immediately adjoined Temple Bar on the north side, to the -last a bookseller's, stood on the site of a small pent-house of lath and -plaster, occupied for many years by Crockford as a shell-fish shop. Here -this man made a large sum of money, with which he established a gambling -club, called by his name, on the west side of St. James's Street. It was -shut up at Crockford's death in 1844, and, having passed through sundry -phases, is now the Devonshire Club. Crockford would never alter his shop -in his lifetime; but at his death the quaint pent-house and James I. -gable[257] were removed, and a yellow brick front erected. - -That great engraver, William Faithorne, after being taken prisoner as a -Royalist at Basing in the Civil Wars, went to France, where he was -patronised by the Abbe de Marolles. He returned about 1650, and set up a -shop--where he sold Italian, Dutch, and English prints, and worked for -booksellers--without Temple Bar, at the sign of the Ship, next the Drake -and opposite the Palsgrave Head Tavern. He lived here till after 1680. -Grief for his son's misfortunes induced consumption, of which he died in -1691. Flatman wrote verses to his memory. _Lady Paston_ is thought his -_chef d'oeuvre_.[258] - -Ship Yard, now swept away, had been granted to Sir Christopher Hatton in -1571. Wilkinson gives a fine sketch of an old gable-ended house in Ship -Yard, supposed to have been the residence of Elias Ashmole, the celebrated -antiquarian. Here, probably, he stored his alchemic books and those -treasures of the Tradescants which he gave to Oxford. - -In 1813 sundry improvements projected by Alderman Pickett led to the -removal of one of the greatest eye-sores in London--Butcher Row. This -street of ragged lazar-houses extended in a line from Wych Street to -Temple Bar. They were overhanging, drunken-looking, tottering -tenements,[259] receptacles of filth, and invitations to the cholera. In -Dr. Johnson's time they were mostly eating-houses. - -This stack of buildings on the west side of Temple Bar was in the form of -an acute-angled triangle; the eastern point, nearest the Bar, was formed -latterly by a shoemaker's and a fishmonger's shop, with wide fronts; its -western point being blunted by the intersection of St. Clement's -vestry-room and almshouse. On both sides of it resided bakers, dyers, -smiths, combmakers, and tinplate-workers. - -The decayed street had been a flesh-market since Queen Elizabeth's time, -when it flourished. A scalemaker's, a fine-drawer's, and Betty's -chophouse, were all to be found there.[260] The whole stack was built of -wood, and was probably of about the age of Edward VI. The ceilings were -low, traversed by huge unwrought beams, and dimly lit by small casement -windows. The upper stories overhung the lower, according to the old London -plan of widening the footway. - -It was at Clifton's Eating-house, in Butcher Row, in 1763, that that -admirable gossip and useful parasite, Boswell, with a tremor of foolish -horror, heard Dr. Johnson disputing with a petulant Irishman about the -cause of negroes being black. - -"Why, sir," said Johnson, with judicial grandeur, "it has been accounted -for in three ways--either by supposing that they were the posterity of -Ham, who was cursed; or that God first created two kinds of men, one black -and the other white; or that by the heat of the sun the skin is scorched, -and so acquires a sooty hue. This matter has been much canvassed among -naturalists, but has never been brought to any certain issue."[261] - -What the Irishman's arguments were, Boswell of course forgot, but as his -antagonist became warm and intemperate, Johnson rose and quietly walked -away. When he had retired, the Irishman said--"He has a most ungainly -figure, and an affectation of pomposity unworthy of a man of genius." -(This very same evening Boswell and his deity first supped together at the -Mitre.) It was here, many years later, that Johnson spent pleasant -evenings with his old college friend Edwards,[262] whom he had not seen -since the golden days of youth. Edwards, a good, dull, simple-hearted -fellow, talked of their age. "Don't let us discourage one another," said -Johnson, with quiet reproof. It was this same worthy fellow who amused -Burke at the club by saying--"You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have -tried in my time to be a philosopher too, but I don't know how it was, -cheerfulness was always breaking in." This was a wise blunder, worthy of -Goldsmith, the prince of wise blunderers. - -It was in staggering home from the Bear and Harrow in Butcher Row, through -Clare Market, that Lee, the poet, lay down or fell on a bulk, and was -stifled in the snow (1692). - -Nat Lee was the son of a Hertfordshire rector; a pupil of Dr. Busby, a -coadjutor of Dryden, and an unsuccessful actor. He drank himself into -Bedlam, where, says Oldys, he wrote a play in twenty-five acts.[263] Two -of his maddest lines were-- - - "I've seen an unscrewed spider spin a thought - And walk away upon the wings of angels." - -The Duke of Buckingham, who brought Lee up to town,[264] neglected him, -and his extreme poverty no doubt drove him faster to Moorfields. Poor -fellow! he was only thirty-five when he died. He is described as -stout,[265] handsome, and red faced. The Earl of Pembroke, whose daughter -married a son of the brutal Judge Jefferies, was Lee's chief patron. The -poet, when visiting him at Wilton, drank so hard that the butler is said -to have been afraid he would empty the cellar. Lee's poetry, though noisy -and ranting, is full of true poetic fire,[266] and in tenderness and -passion the critics of his time compared him to Ovid and Otway. - -Thanks to the alderman, whose name is forgotten, though it well deserved -to live,--the streets, lanes, and alleys which once blocked up St. -Clement's Church, like so many beggars crowding round a rich man's door, -were swept away, and the present oval railing erected. The enlightened -Corporation at the same time built the big, dingy gateway of Clement's -Inn--people at the time called it "stupendous;"[267] and to it were added -the restored vestry-room and almshouse. The south side of the Strand was -also rebuilt, with loftier and more spacious shops. In the reign of Edward -VI. this beginning of the Strand had been a mere loosely-built suburban -street, the southern houses, then well inhabited, boasting large gardens. - -There is a fatality attending some parts of London. In spite of Alderman -Pickett and his stupendous arch of stucco, the new houses on the north -side did not take well. They were found to be too large and expensive; -they became under-let,[268] and began by degrees to relapse into their old -Butcher Row squalor; the tide of humanity setting in towards Westminster -flowing away from them to the left. As in some rivers the current, for no -obvious reason, sometimes bends away to the one side, leaving on the other -a broad bare reach of grey pebble, so the human tide in the Strand has -always, in order to avoid the detour of the twin streets (Holywell and -Wych), borne away to the left. - -It is probable that Palsgrave Place, on the south side, just beyond -Child's bank, in Temple Bar without, marks the site of the Old Palsgrave's -Head Tavern. The Palsgrave was that German prince who was afterwards King -of Bohemia, and who married the daughter of James I. - -No. 217 Strand, on the south side, was Snow's, the goldsmith. Gay has -preserved his memory in some pleasant verses. It was, a few years ago, the -bank of those most decent of defrauders, Strachan, Paul, and Bates, and -through them proved the grave of many a fortune. Next to it, westwards, -is Messrs. Twinings bank, and their still more ancient tea shop. - -The Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand (south side), afterwards the -Whittington Club, and now the Temple Club, is described by Strype as a -"large and curious house," with good rooms and other conveniences for -entertainments.[269] Here Dr. Johnson occasionally supped with Boswell, -and bartered his wisdom for the flattering Scotchman's inanity. In this -same tavern the sultan of literature quarrelled with amiable but -high-spirited Percy about old Dr. Mounsey; and here, when Sir Joshua -Reynolds was gravely and calmly upholding the advantages of wine in -stimulating and inspiring conversation, Johnson said, with good-natured -irony, "I have heard none of these drunken--nay, drunken is a coarse -word--none of these _vinous flights_!"[270] - -St. Clement's is one of Wren's fifty churches, and it was built by Edward -Pierce, under Wren's superintendence.[271] It took the place of an old -church mentioned by Stow, that had become old and ruinous, and was taken -down circa 1682, during the epidemic for church-building after the Great -Fire. - -This church has many enemies and few friends. One of its bitterest haters -calls it a "disgusting fabric," obtruded dangerously and inconveniently -upon the street. A second opponent describes the steeple as fantastic, the -portico clumsy and heavy, and the whole pile poor and unmeaning. Even -Leigh Hunt abuses it as "incongruous and ungainly."[272] - -There have been great antiquarian discussions as to why the church is -called St. Clement's "Danes." Some think there was once a massacre of the -Danes in this part of the road to Westminster; others declare that Harold -Harefoot was buried in the old church; some assert that the Danes, driven -out of London by Alfred, were allowed to settle between Thorney Island -(Westminster) and Ludgate, and built a church in the Strand; so, at -least, we learn, Recorder Fleetwood told Treasurer Burleigh. The name of -Saint Clement was taken from the patron saint of Pope Clement III., the -friend of the Templars, who dwelt on the frontier line of the City. - -In 1725 there was a great ferment in the parish of St. Clement's, in -consequence of an order from Dr. Gibson, Bishop of London, to remove at -once an expensive new altar-piece painted by Kent, a fashionable -architectural quack of that day; who, however, with "Capability Brown," -had helped to wean us from the taste for yew trees cut into shapes, Dutch -canals, formal avenues, and geometric flower-beds. - -Kent was originally a coach-painter in Yorkshire, and was patronised by -the Queen, the Duke of Newcastle, and Lord Burlington. He helped to adorn -Stowe, Holkham, and Houghton. He was at once architect, painter, and -landscape gardener. In the altar-piece, the vile drawing of which even -Hogarth found it hard to caricature, the painter was said to have -introduced portraits of the Pretender's wife and children. The "blue -print," published in 1725, was followed by another representing Kent -painting Burlington Gate. The altar-piece was removed, but the nobility -patronised Kent till he died, twenty years or so afterwards. We owe him, -however, some gratitude, if, according to Walpole, he was the father of -modern gardening. - -The long-limbed picture caricatured by Hogarth was for some years one of -the ornaments of the coffee-room of the Crown and Anchor in the Strand. -Thence it was removed to the vestry-room of the church, over the old -almshouses in the churchyard. After 1803 it was transported to the new -vestry-room on the north side of the churchyard.[273] - -In the old church Sir Robert Cecil, the first Earl of Salisbury, was -baptized, 1563; as were Sir Charles Sedley, the delightful song-writer and -the oracle of the licentious wits of his day, 1638-9; and the Earl of -Shaftesbury, the son of that troublous spirit "Little Sincerity," and -himself the author of the _Characteristics_. - -The church holds some hallowed earth: in St. Clement's was buried Sir John -Roe, who was a friend of Ben Jonson, and died of the plague in the sturdy -poet's arms. - -Dr. Donne's wife, the daughter of Sir George More, and who died in -childbed during her husband's absence at the court of Henri Quatre, was -buried here. Her tomb, by Nicholas Stone, was destroyed when the church -was rebuilt. Donne, on his return, preached a sermon here on her death, -taking the text--"Lo! I am the man that has seen affliction." John Lowin, -the great Shaksperean actor, lies here. He died in 1653. He acted in Ben -Jonson's "Sejanus" in 1605, with Burbage and Shakspere. Tradition reports -him to have been the favourite Falstaff, Hamlet, and Henry VIII. of his -day.[274] Burbage was the greatest of the Shaksperean tragedians, and -Tarleton the drollest of the comedians; but Lowin must have been as -versatile as Garrick if he could represent Hamlet's vacillations, and also -convey a sense of Falstaff's unctuous humour. Poor mad Nat Lee, who died -on a bulk in Clare Market close by, was buried at St. Clement's, 1692; and -here also lies poor beggared Otway, who died in 1685. In the same year as -Lee, Mountfort, the actor, whom Captain Hill stabbed in a fit of jealousy -in Howard Street adjoining, was interred here. - -In 1713 Thomas Rymer, the historiographer of William III. and the compiler -of the _Foedera_ and fifty-eight manuscript volumes now in the British -Museum, was interred here. He had lived in Arundel Street. In 1729 James -Spiller, the comedian of Hogarth's time, was buried at St. Clement's. A -butcher in Clare Market wrote his epitaph, which was never used. Spiller -was the original Mat of the Mint in the "Beggars' Opera." His portrait, by -Laguerre, was the sign of a public-house in Clare Market.[275] - -In this church was probably buried, at the time of the Plague, Thomas -Simon, Cromwell's celebrated medallist. His name, however, is not on the -register.[276] - -Mr. Needham, who was buried at St. Clement's with far better men, was an -attorney's clerk in Gray's Inn, who, in 1643, commenced a weekly paper. He -seems to have been a mischievous, unprincipled hireling, always ready to -sell his pen to the best bidder. - -It is not for us in these later days to praise a church of the Corinthian -order, even though its southern portico be crowned by a dome and propped -up with Ionic pillars. Its steeple of the three orders, in spite of its -vases and pilasters, does not move me; nor can I, as writers thought it -necessary to do thirty years ago,[277] waste a churchwarden's unreasoning -admiration on the wooden cherubim, palm-branches, and shields of the -chancel; nor can even the veneered pulpit and cumbrous galleries, or the -Tuscan carved wainscot of the altar draw any praise from my reluctant -lips. - -The arms of the Dukes of Norfolk and the Earls of Arundel and Salisbury, -in the south gallery, are worthy of notice, because they show that these -noblemen were once inhabitants of the parish. - -Among the eminent rectors of St. Clement's was Dr. George Berkeley, son of -the Platonist bishop, the friend of Swift, to whom Pope attributed "every -virtue under heaven." He died in 1798. It was of his father that Atterbury -said, he did not think that so much knowledge and so much humility existed -in any but the angels and Berkeley.[278] - -Dr. Johnson, the great and good, often attended service at St. Clement's -Church. They still point out his seat in the north gallery, near the -pulpit. On Good Friday, 1773, Boswell tells us he breakfasted with his -tremendous friend (Dr. Levett making tea), and was then taken to church by -him. "Dr. Johnson's behaviour," he says, "was solemnly devout. I never -shall forget the tremulous earnestness with which he pronounced the awful -petition in the Litany, 'In the hour of death and in the day of judgment, -good Lord, deliver us.'"[279] - -Eleven years later the doctor writes to Mrs. Thrale, "after a confinement -of 129 days, more than the third part of a year, and no inconsiderable -part of human life, I this day returned thanks to God in St. Clement's -Church for my recovery--a recovery, in my 75th year, from a distemper -which few in the vigour of youth are known to surmount." - -Clement's Inn (of Chancery), a vassal of the Inner Temple, derives its -name from the neighbouring church, and the "fair fountain called Clement's -Well,"[280] the Holy Well of the neighbouring street pump. - -Over the gate is graven in stone an anchor without a stock and a capital C -couchant upon it.[281] This device has reference to the martyrdom of the -guardian saint of the inn, who was tied to an anchor and thrown into the -sea by order of the emperor Trajan. Dugdale states that there was an inn -here in the reign of Edward II. - -There is, indeed, a tradition among antiquaries, that as far back as the -Saxon kings there was an inn here for the reception of penitents who came -to the Holy Well of St. Clement's; that a religious house was first -established, and finally a church. The Holy Lamb, an inn at the west end -of the lane, was perhaps the old Pilgrims' Inn. In the Tudor times the -Clare family, who had a mansion in Clare Market, appears to have occupied -the site. From their hands it reverted to the lawyers. As for the well, a -pump now enshrines it, and a low dirty street leads up to it. This is -mentioned in Henry II.'s time[282] as one of the excellent springs at a -small distance from London, whose waters are "sweet, healthful, and clear, -and whose runnels murmur over the shining pebbles: they are much -frequented," says the friend of Archbishop Becket, "both by the scholars -from the school (Westminster) and the youth from the City, when on a -summer's evening they are disposed to take an airing." It was seven -centuries ago that the hooded boys used to play round this spring, and at -this very moment their descendants are drinking from the ladle or -splashing each other with the water, as they fill their great brown -pitchers. The spring still feeds the Roman Bath in the Strand already -mentioned. - - "For men may come, and men may go, - But I flow on for ever."[283] - -The hall of St. Clement's Inn is situated on the south side of a neat -small quadrangle. It is a small Tuscan building, with a large florid -Corinthian door and arched windows, and was built in 1715. In the second -irregular area there is a garden, with a statue of a kneeling black figure -supporting a sun-dial on the east side.[284] It was given to the inn by an -Earl of Clare, but when is unknown. It was brought from Italy, and is said -to be of bronze, but ingenious persons having determined on making it a -blackamoor, it has been painted black. A stupid, ill-rhymed, cumbrous old -epigram sneers at the sable son of woe flying from cannibals and seeking -mercy in a lawyers' inn. The first would not have eaten him till they had -slain him; but lawyers, it is well known, will eat any man alive.[285] - -Poor Hollar, the great German engraver, lived in 1661 just outside the -back door of St. Clement's, "as soon as you come off the steps, and out of -that house and dore at your left hand, two payre of stairs, into a little -passage right before you." He was known for "reasons' sake" to the people -of the house only as "the Frenchman limner." Such was the direction he -sent to that gossiping Wiltshire gentleman, John Aubrey. - -The inn has very probably reared up a great many clever men; but it is -chiefly renowned for having fostered that inimitable old bragging twaddler -and country magistrate, the immortal Justice Shallow. Those chimes that -"in a ghostly way by moonlight still bungle through Handel's psalm tunes, -hoarse with age and long vigils"[286] as they are, must surely be the same -that Shallow heard. How deliciously the old fellow vapours about his wild -times! - -"Ha, Cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that that this knight and I have -seen!--Ha, Sir John, said I well?" - -_Falstaff_--"We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow." - -_Shal._--"That we have, that we have, that we have; in faith, Sir John, we -have; our watchword was--Hem, boys!--Come, let's to dinner; come, let's to -dinner. Oh, the days that we have seen!--Come, come."[287] - -And before that, how he glories in the impossibility of being detected -after bragging fifty-five years! This man, as Falstaff says, "lean as a -man cut after supper out of a cheese-paring," was once mad Shallow, lusty -Shallow, as Cousin Silence, his toady, reminds him. - -"By the mass," says again the old country gentleman, "I was called -anything, and I would have done anything, indeed, and roundly too. There -was I and little John Doit of Staffordshire, and black George Barnes of -Staffordshire, and Francis Pickbone, and Will Squele, a Cotswold man: you -had not four such swinge-bucklers in all the inns of court again." - -And thus he goes maundering on with dull vivacity about how he played Sir -Dagonet in Arthur's Show at Mile End, and once remained all night -revelling in a windmill in St. George's Fields. - -A curious record of Shakspere's times serves admirably to illustrate -Shallow's boast. In Elizabeth's time the eastern end of the Strand was the -scene of frequent disturbances occasioned by the riotous and unruly -students of the inns of court, who paraded the streets at night to the -danger of peaceable passengers. One night in 1582, the Recorder himself, -with six of the honest inhabitants, stood by St. Clement's Church to see -the lanterns hung out, and to try and meet some of the brawlers, the -Shallows of that time. About seven at night they saw young Mr. Robert -Cecil, the Treasurer's son, pass by the church and salute them civilly, on -which they said, "Lo, you may see how a nobleman's son can use himself, -and how he pulleth off his cap to poor men--our Lord bless him!" Upon -which the Recorder wrote to his father, like a true courtier, making -capital of everything, and said, "Your lordship hath cause to thank God -for so virtuous a child." - -Through the gateway in Pickett Street, a narrow street led to New Court, -where stood the Independent Meeting House in which the witty Daniel -Burgess once preached. The celebrated Lord Bolingbroke was his pupil, and -the Earl of Orrery his patron. He died 1712, after being much ridiculed by -Swift and Steele for his sermon of _The Golden Snuffers_, and for his -pulpit puns in the manner followed by Rowland Hill and Whitfield. This -chapel was gutted during the Sacheverell riots, and repaired by the -Government. Two examples of Burgess's grotesque style will suffice. On one -occasion, when he had taken his text from Job, and discoursed on the "Robe -of Righteousness," he said-- - -"If any of you would have a good and cheap suit, you will go to Monmouth -Street; if you want a suit for life, you will go to the Court of Chancery; -but if you wish for a suit that will last to eternity, you must go to the -Lord Jesus Christ and put on His robe of righteousness."[288] On another -occasion, in the reign of King William, he assigned as a motive for the -descendants of Jacob being called Israelites, that God did not choose that -His people should be called _Jacobites_. - -Daniel Burgess was succeeded in his chapel by Winter and Bradbury, both -celebrated Nonconformists. The latter of these was also a comic preacher, -or rather a "buffoon," as one of Dr. Doddridge's correspondents called -him. It was said of his sermons that he seemed to consider the Bible to be -written only to prove the right of William III. to the throne. He used to -deride Dr. Watts's hymns from the pulpit, and when he gave them out always -said-- - - "Let us sing one of Watts's whims." - -Bat Pidgeon, the celebrated barber of Addison's time, lived nearly -opposite Norfolk Street. His house bore the sign of the Three Pigeons. -This was the corner house of St. Clement's churchyard, and there Bat, in -1740, cut the boyish locks of Pennant[289]. In those days of wigs there -were very few hair-cutters in London. - -The father of Miss Ray, the singer, and mistress of old Lord Sandwich, is -said to have been a well-known staymaker in Holywell Street, now -Booksellers' Row. His daughter was apprenticed in Clerkenwell, from whence -the musical lord took her to load her with a splendid shame. On the day -she went to sing at Covent Garden in "Love in a Village," Hackman, who had -left the army for the church, waited for her carriage at the Cannon -Coffee-house in Cockspur Street. At the door of the theatre, by the side -of the Bedford Coffee-house, Hackman rushed out, and as Miss Ray was being -handed from her carriage he shot her through the head, and then attempted -his own life[290]. Hackman was hanged at Tyburn, and he died declaring -that shooting Miss Ray was the result of a sudden burst of frenzy, for he -had planned only suicide in her presence. - -The Strand Maypole stood on the site of the present church of St. Mary le -Strand, or a little northward towards Maypole Alley, behind the Olympic -Theatre. In the thirteenth century a cross had stood on this spot, and -there the itinerant justices had sat to administer justice outside the -walls. A Maypole stood here as early as 1634[291]. Tradition says it was -set up by John Clarges, the Drury Lane blacksmith, and father of General -Monk's vulgar wife. - -The Maypole was Satan's flag-staff in the eyes of the stern Puritans, who -dreaded Christmas pies, cards, and dances. Down it came when Cromwell went -up. The Strand Maypole was reared again with exulting ceremony the first -May day after the Restoration. The parishioners bought a pole 134 feet -high, and the Duke of York, the Lord High Admiral, lent them twelve seamen -to help to raise it. It was brought from Scotland Yard with drums, music, -and the shouts of the multitude; flags flying, and three men bare-headed -carrying crowns.[292] The two halves being joined together with iron -bands, and the gilt crown and vane and king's arms placed on the top, it -was raised in about four hours by means of tackle and pulleys. The Strand -rang with the people's shouts, for to them the Maypole was an emblem of -the good old times. Then there was a morris dance, with tabor and pipe, -the dancers wearing purple scarfs and "half-shirts." The children laughed, -and the old people clapped their hands, for there was not a taller Maypole -in Europe. From its summit floated a royal purple streamer; and half way -down was a sort of cross-trees or balcony adorned with four crowns and the -king's arms. It bore also a garland of vari-coloured favours, and beneath -three great lanterns in honour of the three admirals and all seamen, to -give light in dark nights. On this spot, a year before, the butchers of -Clare Market had rung a peal with their knives as they burnt an -emblematical Rump.[293] - -In the year 1677 a fatal duel was fought under the Maypole, which had been -snapped by a tempest in 1672.[294] One daybreak Mr. Robert Percival, a -notorious duellist, only nineteen years of age, was found dead under the -Maypole, with a deep wound in his left breast. His drawn and bloody sword -lay beside him. His antagonist was never discovered, though great rewards -were offered. The only clue was a hat with a bunch of ribbons in it, -suspected to belong to the celebrated Beau Fielding, but it was never -traced home to him. The elder brother, Sir Philip Percival, long after, -violently attacked a total stranger whom he met in the streets of Dublin. -The spectators parted them. Sir Philip could account for his conduct only -by saying he felt urged on by an irresistible conviction that the man he -struck at was his brother's murderer.[295] - -The Maypole, disused and decaying, was pulled down in 1713, when a new -one, adorned with two gilt balls and a vane, was erected in its stead. In -1718 the pole, being found in the way of the new church, was given to Sir -Isaac Newton as a stand for a large French telescope that belonged to his -friend Mr. Pound, the rector of Wanstead. - -Saint Mary-le-Strand was begun in 1714, and consecrated in 1723-4.[296] It -was one of the fifty ordered to be built in Queen Anne's reign. The old -church, pulled down by that Ahab, the Protector Somerset, to make room for -his ill-omened new palace, stood considerably nearer to the river. - -Gibbs, the shrewd Aberdeen architect, who succeeded to Wren and Vanbrugh, -and became famous by building St. Martin's Church, reared also St. Mary's. -Gibbs, according to Walpole, was a mere plodding mechanic. He certainly -wanted originality, simplicity, and grace. St. Mary's is broken up by -unmeaning ornament; the pagoda-like steeple is too high,[297] and crushes -the church, instead of as it were blossoming from it. One critic (Mr. -Malton) alone is found to call St. Mary's pleasant and picturesque; but I -confess to having looked on it so long that I begin almost to forget its -ugliness. - -Gibbs himself tells us how he set to work upon this church. It was his -first commission after his return from Rome. As the site was a very public -one, he was desired to spare no cost in the ornamentation, so he framed it -of two orders, making the lower walls (but for the absurd niches to hold -nothing) solid, so as to keep out the noises of the street. There was at -first no steeple intended, only a small western campanile, or bell-turret; -but, eighty feet from the west front, there was to be erected a column 250 -feet high, crowned by a statue of Queen Anne. This absurdity was forgotten -at the death of that rather insipid queen, and the stone still lying -there, the thrifty parish authorities, unwilling to waste the materials, -resolved to build a steeple. The church being already twenty feet from the -ground, it was necessary to spread it north and south, and so the church, -originally square, became oblong. - -Pope calls St. Mary's Church bitterly the church that-- - - Collects "the _saints_ of Drury Lane."[298] - -Addison describes his Tory fox-hunter's horror on seeing a church -apparently being demolished, and his agreeable surprise when he found it -was really a church being built.[299] - -St. Mary's was the scene of a tragedy during the proclamation of the short -peace in 1802. Just as the heralds came abreast of Somerset House, a man -on the roof of the church pressed forward too strongly against one of the -stone urns, which gave way and fell into the street, striking down three -persons: one of these died on the spot; the second, on his way to the -hospital; and the third, two days afterwards. A young woman and several -others were also seriously injured. The urn, which weighed two hundred -pounds, carried away part of the cornice, broke a flag-stone below, and -buried itself a foot deep in the earth. The unhappy cause of this mischief -fell back on the roof and fainted when he saw the urn fall. He was -discharged, no blame being attached to him. It was found that the urn had -been fastened by a wooden spike, instead of being clamped with iron.[300] - -The church has been lately refitted in an ecclesiastical style, and filled -with painted windows. There are no galleries in its interior. The ceiling -is encrusted with ornament. It contains a tablet to the memory of James -Bindley, who died in 1818. He was the father of the Society of -Antiquaries, and was a great collector of books, prints, and medals. - -New Inn, in Wych Street, is an inn of Chancery, appertaining to the Middle -Temple. It was originally a public inn, bearing the sign of Our Lady the -Virgin, and was bought by Sir John Fineux, Chief Justice of the King's -Bench, in the reign of King Edward IV., to place therein the students of -the law then lodged in St. George's Inn, in the little Old Bailey, which -was reputed to have been the most ancient of all the inns of -Chancery.[301] - -Sir Thomas More, the luckless minister of Henry VIII., was a member of -this inn till he removed to Lincoln's Inn. When the Great Seal was taken -from this wise man, he talked of descending to "New Inn fare, wherewith -many an honest man is well contented."[302] Addison makes the second best -man of his band of friends (after Sir Roger de Coverley) a bachelor -Templar; an excellent critic, with whom the time of the play is an hour of -business. "Exactly at five he passes through New Inn, crosses through -Russell Court, and takes a turn at Wills's till the play begins. He has -his shoes rubbed and his periwig powdered at the barber's as you go into -the Rose."[303] - -Wych Street derives its name from the old name for Drury Lane--_via de -Aldewych_. Till some recent improvements were effected in its tenants, it -bore an infamous character, and was one of the disgraces of London. - -The Olympic Theatre, in Wych Street, was built in 1805 by Philip Astley, a -light horseman, who founded the first amphitheatre in London on the garden -ground of old Craven House. It was opened September 18, 1806, as the -Olympic Pavilion, and burnt to the ground March 29, 1849. It was built out -of the timbers of the captured French man-of-war, _La Ville de Paris_, in -which William IV. went out as midshipman. The masts of the vessel formed -the flies, and were seen still standing amidst the fire after the roof -fell in. In 1813 it was leased by Elliston, and called the Little Drury -Lane Theatre. Its great days were under the rule of Madame Vestris,[304] -who, both as a singer and an actress, contributed to its success. More -recently it was under the able and successful management of the late Mr. -Frederick Robson. Born at Margate in 1821, he was early in life -apprenticed to a copperplate engraver in Bedfordbury. He appeared first, -unsuccessfully, at a private theatre in Catherine Street, and played at -the Grecian Saloon as a comic singer and low comedian from 1846 to 1849. -In 1853 he joined Mr. Farren at the Olympic. He there acquired a great -reputation in various pieces--"The Yellow Dwarf," "To oblige Benson," "The -Lottery Ticket," and "The Wandering Minstrel,"--the last being an old -farce originally written to ridicule the vagaries of Mr. Cochrane. - -Lyon's Inn, an inn of Chancery belonging to the Inner Temple, was -originally a hostelry with the sign of the Lion. It was purchased by -gentlemen students in Henry VIII.'s time, and converted into an inn of -Chancery.[305] - -It degenerated into a haunt of bill-discounters and Bohemians of all -kinds, good and bad, clever and rascally, and remained a dim, mouldy place -till 1861, when it was pulled down. Its site is now occupied by the Globe -Theatre. Just before the demolition of the inn, when I visited it, a -washerwoman was hanging out wet and flopping clothes on the site of Mr. -William Weare's chambers. - -On Friday, 24th of October 1823, Mr. William Weare, of No. 2 Lyon's Inn, -was murdered in Gill's Hill Lane, Hertfordshire, between Edgware and St. -Alban's. His murderer was Mr. John Thurtell, son of the Mayor of Norwich, -and a well-known gambler, betting man, and colleague of prize-fighters. -Under pretence of driving him down for a shooting excursion, Thurtell shot -Weare with a pistol, and when he leaped out of the chaise, pursued him -and cut his throat. He then sank the body in a pond in the garden of his -friend and probable accomplice, Probert, a spirit merchant, and afterwards -removed it to a slough on the St. Alban's road. His confederate, Hunt, a -public singer, turned king's evidence, and was transported for life. -Thurtell was hanged at Hertford. He pleaded that Weare had robbed him of -L300 with false cards at Blind Hookey, and he had sworn revenge; but it -appeared that he had planned several other murders, and all for money. -Probert was afterwards hanged in Gloucestershire for horse-stealing. - -At the sale of the building materials some Jews were observed to be very -eager to acquire the figure of the lion that adorned one of the walls. -There were various causes assigned for this eagerness. Some said that a -Jew named Lyons had originally founded the inn; others declared that the -lion was considered to be an emblem of the Lion of the tribe of Judah. -Directly the auctioneer knocked it down the Jewish purchaser drew a knife, -mounted the ladder, and struck his weapon into the lion. "S'help me, Bob!" -said he, in a tone of disgust, "if they didn't tell me it was lead, and -it's only stone arter all!" - -Gay, who speaks of the dangers of "mazy Drury Lane," gives Catherine -Street a very bad character. He describes the courtesans, with their -new-scoured manteaus and riding-hoods or muffled pinners, standing near -the tavern doors, or carrying empty bandboxes, and feigning errands to the -Change.[306] The street is now almost entirely occupied by newspaper -publishers. The _Morning Herald_, the _Court Journal_, the _Naval and -Military Gazette_, the _Gardener's Gazette_, the _Builder_, the _Weekly -Register_, and the _Court Gazette_, all either are or have been published -in Catherine Street. Scott's Sanspareil Theatre was opened here about 1810 -for the performance of operettas, dancing, and pantomimes.[307] In -September 1741 a man named James Hall was executed at the end of Catherine -Street. - -The Maypole close to St. Mary's Church is said to have been the first -place in London where hackney coaches were allowed to stand. Coaches were -first introduced into England from Hungary in 1580 by Fitzalan, Earl of -Arundel; but for a time they were thought effeminate. The Thames watermen -especially railed against them, as might be expected. In the year 1634, a -Captain Baily who had accompanied Raleigh in his famous expedition to -Guiana, started four hackney coaches, with drivers in liveries, at the -Maypole; but as, in the year 1613, sixty hackney coaches from London[308] -plied at Stourbridge fair, perhaps there had been coach-stands in the -streets before Baily's time. In 1625 there were only twenty coaches in -London; in 1666, under Charles II., the number had so increased that the -king issued a proclamation complaining of the coaches blocking up the -narrow streets and breaking up the pavement, and forbade coach-stands -altogether. - -Peter Molyn Tempest, the engraver of "The Cries of London," published at -the end of King William's reign, lived in the Strand opposite Somerset -House. "The Cries" were designed by Marcellus Laroon, a Dutch painter -(1653-1702), who painted draperies for Kneller.[309] He was celebrated for -his conversation pieces and his knack of imitating the old masters. -Tempest's quaint advertisement of the "Cries" in the _London Gazette_, May -28 and 31, 1688, runs thus:-- - -"There is now published the Cryes and Habits of London, lately drawn after -the life in great variety of actions, curiously engraved upon fifty -copper-plates, fit for the ingenious and lovers of art. Printed and sold -by P. Tempest, over against Somerset House, in the Strand." - -The _Morning Chronicle_, whose office was opposite Somerset House, was -started in 1770. It was to Perry, of the _Morning Chronicle_, that -Coleridge, when penniless and about to enlist in a cavalry regiment, sent -a poem and a request for a guinea, which he got. Hazlitt was theatrical -critic to this paper, succeeding Lord Campbell in the post. In 1810 David -Ricardo began his letters on the depreciation of the currency in the -_Chronicle_. James Perry, whose career we have no room to follow, lived in -great style at Tavistock House, the house afterwards occupied for many -years by Mr. Charles Dickens. _The Sketches by Boz_ of Charles Dickens -first appeared in the columns of the _Chronicle_. The last _Morning -Chronicle_ appeared on Wednesday, March 19, 1862. Latterly the paper was -said to have been in the pay of the Emperor of France. - -No. 346, at the east corner of Wellington Street, now the office of the -_Law Times_, the _Queen_, and the _Field_, was Doyley's celebrated -warehouse for woollen articles. Dryden, in his _Kind Keeper_, speaks of -"Doyley" petticoats; Steele, in his _Guardian_,[310] of his "Doyley" suit; -while Gay, in the _Trivia_, describes a "Doyley" as a poor defence against -the cold. - -Doyley's warehouse stood on the ancient site of Wimbledon House, built by -Sir Edward Cecil, son to the first Earl of Exeter, and created Viscount -Wimbledon by Charles I. The house was burnt to the ground in 1628, and the -day before the viscount had had part of his house at Wimbledon -accidentally blown up by gunpowder. Pennant, when a boy, was brought by -his mother to a large glass shop, a little beyond Wimbledon House; the old -man who kept it remembered Nell Gwynne coming to the shop when he was an -apprentice; her footman, a country lad, got fighting in the street with -some men who had abused his mistress.[311] - -Mr. Doyley was a much respected warehouseman of Dr. Johnson's time, whose -family had resided in their great old house, next to Hodsall the banker's, -at the corner of Wellington Street, ever since Queen Anne's time. The -dessert napkins called Doyleys derived their name from this firm. Mr. -Doyley's house was built by Inigo Jones, and forms a prominent feature in -old engravings of the Strand, as it had a covered entrance that ran out -like a promontory into the carriage-way. It was pulled down about -1782.[312] Mr. Doyley, a man of humour and a friend of Garrick and -Sterne, was a frequenter of the Precinct Club, held at the Turk's Head, -opposite his own house. The rector of St. Mary's attended the same club, -and enjoyed the seat of honour next the fire. - -[Illustration: THE OLD ROMAN BATH, STRAND.] - -Not far from this stood the Strand Bridge, which crossed the street, and -received the streams flowing from the higher grounds down Catharine Street -to the Thames. Strand Lane, hard by on the south, famous still for its old -Roman bath, passed under the arch, and led to a water stair or landing -pier. Addison, in his bright pleasant way, describes landing there one -morning with ten sail of apricot boats, after having put in at Nine Elms -for melons, consigned by Mr. Cuffe of that place to Sarah Sewell and -Company at their stall in Covent Garden.[313] - -The _Morning Post_, whose office is in Wellington Street, was started in -1772; when almost defunct it was bought in 1796 by Daniel Stuart, and -Christie the auctioneer, who gave only L600 for copyright, house, and -plant. Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, Wordsworth, and Mackintosh all wrote for -Stuart's paper. Coleridge commenced his political papers in 1797, and on -his return from Germany (November 1799) joined the badly-paid staff, but -refused to become a parliamentary reporter. Fox declared in the House of -Commons that Coleridge's essays had led to the rupture of the peace of -Amiens, an announcement which led to a pursuit by a French frigate, when -the poet left Rome, where he then was, and sailed from Leghorn. Lamb wrote -facetious paragraphs at sixpence a-piece.[314] The _Morning Post_ soon -became second only to the _Chronicle_, and the great paper for -booksellers' advertisements. It is mentioned by Byron as the organ of the -aristocracy and of West End society, and it has maintained that position -to the present time with little change. - -The _Athenaeum_, whose office is in Wellington Street, is identified with -the name of Mr. (afterwards) Sir C. Wentworth Dilke. He was born in 1789, -and was originally in the Navy Pay Office. He bought the paper, which had -been unsuccessful since 1828 under its originator, that shifty adventurer, -Mr. J. S. Buckingham, and also under Mr. John Sterling. Under his care it -gradually grew into a sound property, and became what it now is, the -_Times_ of weekly papers. Its editor, Mr. Hervey, the author of many -well-known poems, was replaced in 1853 by Mr. Hepworth Dixon, under whom -it steadily throve, till his retirement in 1871. - -A little farther up the street is the office of _All the Year Round_, a -weekly periodical which, in 1859, took the place of _Household Words_, -started by Mr. Charles Dickens in 1850. It contains essays by the best -writers of the day, graphic descriptions of current events, and continuous -stories. Mrs. Gaskell, Mr. Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, Lord Lytton, -Mr. Sala, and Mr. Dickens himself, are among those who have published -novels in its pages. - -The original Lyceum was built in 1765 as an exhibition-room for the -Society of Arts, by Mr. James Payne, an architect, on ground once -belonging to Exeter House. The society splitting, and the Royal Academy -being founded at Somerset House in 1768, the Lyceum Society became -insolvent. Mr. Lingham, a breeches-maker, then purchased the room, and let -it out to Flockton for his Puppet-show and other amusements. About 1794 -Dr. Arnold partly rebuilt it as a theatre, but could not obtain a licence -through the opposition of the winter houses.[315] It was next door to the -shop of Millar the publisher. - -The Lyceum in 1789-94 was the arena of all experimenters--of Charles -Dibdin and his "Sans Souci," of the ex-soldier Astley's feats of -horsemanship, of Cartwright's "Musical Glasses," of Philipstal's -successful "Phantasmagoria." Lonsdale's "Egyptiana" (paintings of Egyptian -scenes, by Porter, Mulready, Pugh, and Cristall), with a lecture, was a -failure. Here Ker Porter exhibited his large pictures of Lodi, Acre, and -the siege of Seringapatam. Then came Palmer with his "Portraits," Collins -with his "Evening Brush," Incledon with his "Voyage to India," Bologna -with his "Phantascopia," and Lloyd with his "Astronomical Exhibition." -Subscription concerts, amateur theatricals, debating societies, and -schools of defence were also tried here. One day it was a Roman Catholic -chapel; next day the "Panther Mare and Colt," the "White Negro Girl," or -the "Porcupine Man" held their levee of dupes and gapers in its changeful -rooms.[316] - -In 1809 Dr. Arnold's son obtained a licence for an English opera-house. -Shortly afterwards the Drury Lane company commenced performing here, their -own theatre having been burnt. Mr. T. Sheridan was then manager. In 1815 -Mr. Arnold erected the predecessor of the present theatre, on an enlarged -scale, at an expense of nearly L80,000, and it was opened in 1816. In 1817 -the experiment of two short performances on the same evening was -unsuccessfully tried. On April 1, 1818, Mr. Mathews, the great comedian, -began here his entertainment called "Mail-coach Adventures," which ran -forty nights. - -The Beef-steak Club was established in the reign of Queen Anne (before -1709).[317] The _Spectator_ mentions it, 1710-11. The club met in a noble -room at the top of Covent Garden Theatre, and never partook of any dish -but beef-steaks. Their Providore was their president and wore their badge, -a small gold gridiron, hung round his neck by a green silk riband.[318] -Estcourt had been a tavern-keeper, and is mentioned in a poem of -Parnell's, who was himself too fond of wine. He died in 1712. Steele gives -a delightful sketch of him. He had an excellent judgment, he was a great -mimic, and he told an anecdote perfectly well. His well-turned compliments -were as fine as his smart repartees. "It is to Estcourt's exquisite talent -more than to philosophy," says Steele, "that I owe the fact that my person -is very little of my care, and it is indifferent to me what is said of my -shape, my air, my manner, my speech, or my address. It is to poor Estcourt -I chiefly owe that I am arrived at the happiness of thinking nothing a -diminution of myself but what argues a depravity of my will." - -The kindly essay ends beautifully. "None of those," says the true-hearted -man, "will read this without giving him some sorrow for their abundant -mirth, and one gush of tears for so many bursts of laughter. I wish it -were any honour to the pleasant creature's memory that my eyes are too -much suffused to let me go on." - -Later, Churchill and Wilkes, those partners in dissoluteness and satire, -were members of this social club. After Estcourt, that jolly companion, -Beard the singer, became president of this jovial and agreeable company. - -It was an old custom at theatres to have a Beef-steak Club that met every -Saturday, and to which authors and wits were invited. In 1749 Mr. -Sheridan, the manager, founded one at Dublin. There were fifty or sixty -members, chiefly noblemen and members of Parliament, and no performer was -admitted but witty Peg Woffington, who wore man's dress, and was president -for a whole season.[319] - -A Beef-steak Society was founded in 1735 by John Rich, the great -harlequin, and manager of Covent Garden Theatre, and George Lambert, the -scene-painter.[320] Lambert, being much visited by authors, wits, and -noblemen, whilst painting, and being too hurried to go to a tavern, used -to have a steak cooked in the room, inviting his guests to share his snug -and savoury but hurried meal. The fun of these accidental and impromptu -dinners led to a club being started, which afterwards moved to a more -convenient room in the theatre. After many years the place of meeting was -changed to the Shakspere Tavern, where Mr. Lambert's portrait, painted by -Hudson, Reynolds's pompous master, was one of the decorations of the -club-room.[321] They then returned to the theatre, but being burned out in -1812, adjourned to the Bedford. Lambert was the merriest of fellows, yet -without buffoonery or coarseness. His manners were most engaging, he was -social with his equals, and perfectly easy with richer men.[322] He was -also a great leader of fun at old Slaughter's artist-club. - -The club throve down to about 1869, when it was dissolved; steaks were -perennial as a dish, whatever the wit may have been, to the last. -Twenty-four noblemen and gentlemen, each of whom might bring a friend, -partook of a five o'clock dinner of steaks in a room of their own behind -the scenes at the Lyceum Theatre every Saturday from November till June. -They called themselves "The Steaks," disclaimed the name of "Club," and -dedicated their hours to "Beef and Liberty," as their ancestors did in the -anti-Walpole days.[323] - -Their room was a little typical Escurial. The doors, wainscot, and floor, -were of stout oak, emblazoned with gridirons, like a chapel of St. -Laurence. The cook was seen at his office through the bars of a vast -gridiron, and the original gridiron of the society (the survivor of two -terrific fires) held a conspicuous position in the centre of the ceiling. -This club descended lineally from Wilkes's and from Lambert's. To the end -there was Attic salt enough to sprinkle over "the Steaks," and to justify -the old epicure's lines to the club:-- - - "He that of honour, wit, and mirth partakes, - May be a fit companion o'er beef-steaks; - His name may be to future times enrolled - In Estcourt's book, whose gridiron's framed of gold."[324] - -Its gridiron and other treasures were sold by auction, and fetched -fabulous prices. - -Dr. William King, the author of the above quoted verses, was an indolent, -wrong-headed genius. Some three years after the Restoration he took part -against the irascible Bentley in the dispute about the Epistles of -Phalaris, satirised Sir Hans Sloane, and supported Sacheverell. He wrote -_The Art of Cookery_, _Dialogues of the Dead_, _The Art of Love_, and -_Greek Mythology for Schools_. Recklessly throwing up his Irish Government -appointment, he came to London. There Swift got him appointed manager of -the _Gazette_; but being idle, and fond of the bottle, he resigned his -office in six months, and went to live at a friend's house in the garden -grounds between Lambeth and Vauxhall. He died in 1712, in lodgings -opposite Somerset House, procured for him by his relation, Lord Clarendon. -He was buried in the north cloisters of Westminster Abbey, close to his -master, Dr. Knipe, to whom he had dedicated his _School Mythology_. - -Mr. T. P. Cooke obtained some of his early triumphs at the Lyceum as -Frankenstein, and at the Adelphi as Long Tom Coffin. His serious pantomime -in the fantastic monster of Mrs. Shelley's novel is said to have been -highly poetical. He made his debut in 1804, at the Royalty Theatre, and -soon afterwards left Astley's to join Laurent, the manager of the Lyceum. -This best of stage seamen since Bannister's time was born in 1780, and -died only recently. - -Madame Lucia Elizabeth Vestris had the Lyceum in 1847. This fascinating -actress was the daughter of Francesco Bartolozzi, the engraver, and was -born in 1797. She married the celebrated dancer, Vestris, in 1813, and in -1813 appeared at the King's Theatre, in Winter's opera of "Proserpina." In -1820, after a wild and disgraceful life in Paris, she appeared at Drury -Lane as Lilla, Adela, and Artaxerxes, and exhibited the archness, and -vivacity of Storace without her grossness. In a burlesque of "Don -Giovanni," as "Paul" and as "Apollo," she was much abused by the critics -for her wantonness of manner and dress, but she still won her audiences by -her sweet and powerful contralto, and by her songs, "The Light Guitar" and -"Rise, gentle Moon." Harley played Leporello to her under Mr. Elliston's -management. After this she took to "first light comedy" and melodrama, and -married Mr. Charles Mathews. The theatre was burnt down in 1830, and -rebuilt soon afterwards. Madame Vestris herself died in 1856. - -"That little crowded nest" of shops and wild beasts,[325] Exeter Change, -stood where Burleigh Street now stands, but extended into the main road, -so that the footpath of the north side of the Strand ran directly through -it.[326] It was built about 1681,[327] and contained two walks below and -two walks above stairs, with shops on each side for sempsters, milliners, -hosiers, etc. The builders were very sanguine, but the fame of the New -Exchange (now the Adelphi) blighted it from the beginning;[328] the shops -next the street alone could be let; the rest lay unoccupied. The Land Bank -had rooms here. The body of the poet Gay lay in state in an upper room, -afterwards used for auctions. In 1721 a Mr. Normand Corry exhibited here a -damask bed, with curtains woven by himself; admission two shillings and -sixpence. About 1780 Lord Baltimore's body lay here in state, preparatory -to its interment at Epsom. - -This infamous lord, of unsavoury reputation, had married a daughter of the -Duke of Bridgewater: he lived on the east side of Russell Square, and was -notorious for an unscrupulous profligacy, rivalling even that of the -detestable Colonel Charteris. In 1767 his agents decoyed to his house a -young woman named Woodcock, a milliner on Tower Hill. After suffering all -the cruelty which Lovelace showed to Clarissa, the poor girl was taken to -Lord Baltimore's house at Epsom, where her disgrace was consummated. The -rascal and his accomplices were tried at Kingston in 1768, but -unfortunately acquitted through an informality in Miss Woodcock's -deposition. The disgraced title has since become extinct. - -The last tenants of the upper rooms were Mr. Cross and his wild beasts. -The Royal Menagerie was a great show in our fathers' days. Leigh Hunt -mentions that one day at feeding time, passing by the Change, he saw a -fine horse pawing the ground, startled at the roar of Cross's lions and -tigers.[329] The vast skeleton of Chunee, the famous elephant, brought to -England in 1810, and exhibited here, is to be seen at the College of -Surgeons in Lincoln's Inn Fields. In 1826, after a return of an annual -paroxysm, aggravated by inflammation of the large pulp of one of his -tusks, Chunee became dangerous, and it was necessary to kill him. His -keeper first threw him buns steeped in prussic acid, but these produced no -effect. A company of soldiers was then sent for, and the monster died -after upwards of a hundred bullets had pierced him. In the midst of the -shower of lead, the poor docile animal knelt down at the well-known voice -of his keeper, to turn a vulnerable point to the soldiers. At the College -of Surgeons the base of his tusk is still shown, with a spicula of ivory -pressing into the pulp. - -De Loutherbourg, after Garrick's retirement, left Covent Garden and -exhibited his _Eidophusikon_ in a room over Exeter Change. The stage was -about six feet wide and eight feet deep. The first scene was the view -from One-tree Hill in Greenwich Park. The lamps were above the proscenium, -and had screens of coloured glass which could be rapidly changed. His best -scenes were the loss of the _Halsewell_ East Indiaman and the rising of -Pandemonium. A real thunder-storm once breaking out when the shipwreck -scene was going on, some of the audience left the room, saying that "the -exhibition was presumptuous." Gainsborough was such a passionate admirer -of the _Eidophusikon_ that for a time he spent every evening at -Loutherbourg's exhibition.[330] - -Mr. William Clarke, a seller of hardware (steel buttons, buckles, and -cutlery), was proprietor of Exeter Change for nearly half a century. He -was an honest and kind man, much beloved by his friends, and known to -everybody in Johnson's time. When he became infirm he was allowed by King -George the special privilege of riding across St. James's Park to -Buckingham Gate, his house being in Pimlico. He died rich. - -Another character of Clarke's age was old Thomson, a music-seller, and a -good-natured humourist. He was deputy organist at St. Michael's, Cornhill, -and had been a pupil of Boyce. His shop was a mere sloping stall, with a -little platform behind it for a desk, rows of shelves for old pamphlets -and plays, and a chair or two for a crony. Thomson furnished Burney and -Hawkins with materials for their histories of music. It was said that -there was not an air from the time of Bird that he could not sing. Poor -soured Wilson used to be fond of sitting with Thomson and railing at the -times. Garrick and Dr. Arne also frequented the shop.[331] - -The nine o'clock drum at old Somerset House and the bell rung as a signal -for closing Exeter Change were once familiar sounds to old Strand -residents: but alas! times are changed; and they are heard no more. - -It was in Thomson's shop that the elder Dibdin (Charles), together with -Hubert Stoppelaer, an actor, singer, and painter, planned the Patagonian -Theatre, which was opened in the rooms above. The stage was six feet wide, -the puppet actors only ten inches high. Dibdin wrote the pieces, composed -the music, helped in the recitations, and accompanied the singers on a -small organ. His partner spoke for the puppets and painted the scenes. -They brought out "The Padlock" here. The miniature theatre held about 200 -people.[332] - -Exeter Hall was built by Mr. Deering, in 1831, for various charitable and -religious societies that had scruples about holding their meetings in -taverns or theatres. It stands a little west of the site of the "old -Change." The front, with its two massy plain Greek pillars, is a good -instance of making the most of space, though it still looks as if it were -riding "bodkin" between the larger houses. The building contains two -halls--one that will hold eight hundred persons, and another, on the upper -floor, able to hold three thousand. The latter is a noble room, 131 feet -long by 76 wide, and contains the Sacred Harmonic Society's gigantic -organ. There are also nests of offices and committee-rooms. In May the -white neckcloths pour into Exeter Hall in perfect regiments. - -In the Strand, near Exeter House, lived the beautiful Countess of -Carlisle, a beauty of Charles I.'s court, immortalised by Vandyke, -Suckling, and Carew. She paid L150 a year rent, equal to L600 of our -current money.[333] - -Exeter Street had no western outlet when first built; for where the street -ends was the back wall of old Bedford House. Dr. Johnson, after his -arrival with Garrick from Lichfield, lodged here, in a garret, at the -house of Norris, a staymaker. In this garret Johnson wrote part at least -of that sonorous tragedy, "Irene." He used to say he dined well and with -good company for eightpence, at the Pine Apple in the street close by. -Several of the guests had travelled. They met every day, but did not know -each other's names. The others paid a shilling, and had wine. Johnson paid -sixpence for a cut of meat (a penny for bread, a penny to the waiter), -and was served better than the rest, for the waiter that is forgotten is -apt also to forget. - -In Cecil's time Bedford House became known as Exeter House. From hence, in -1651, Cromwell, the Council of State, and the House of Commons followed -General Popham's body to its resting-place at Westminster.[334] It was -while receiving the sacrament on Christmas Day at the chapel of Exeter -House that that excellent gentleman, Evelyn, and his wife were seized by -soldiers, warned not to observe any longer the "superstitious time of the -Nativity," and dismissed with pity. - -In Exeter House lived that shifty and unscrupulous turncoat, Antony Ashley -Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, the great tormentor of Charles II., and the -father of the author of the _Characteristics_, who was born here 1670-1, -and educated by the amiable philosopher Locke. "The wickedest fellow in my -dominions," as Charles II. once called "Little Sincerity," afterwards -removed hence about the time of the Great Fire to Aldersgate Street, in -order to be near his City intriguers. After the Great Fire, till new -offices could be built, the Court of Arches, the Admiralty Court, etc., -were held in Exeter House. The property still belongs to the Cecil family. - -That great statesman, Burleigh, Bacon's uncle, lived on the site of the -present Burleigh Street. He was of birth so humble that his father could -only be entitled a gentleman by courtesy. Slow but sure of judgment, -silent, distrustful of brilliant men, such as Essex and Raleigh, he made -himself, by unremitting skill, assiduity, and fidelity, the most trusted -and powerful person in Queen Elizabeth's privy council. Here, fresh from -his frets with the rash Essex, the old wily statesman pondered over the -fate of Mary of Scotland, or strove for means to foil Philip of Spain and -his Armada. Here also lived his eldest son, Sir Thomas Cecil, subsequently -the second Lord Burleigh and Earl of Exeter, who died 1622, whose daughter -married the heir of Lord Chancellor Hatton, the dancing chancellor. -Burleigh Street replaced the old house in 1678, when Salisbury Street was -built. - -The "Little Adelphi" Theatre was opened in 1806 under the name of the -"Sans Souci" by Mr. John Scott, a celebrated colour-maker, famous for a -certain fashionable blue dye. The entertainments (optical and mechanical) -were varied by songs, recitations, and dances, the proprietor's daughter -being a clever amateur actress. Its real success did not begin till 1821, -when Pierce Egan's dull and rather vulgar book of London low life, _Tom -and Jerry_, was dramatised--Wrench as Tom, Reeve as Jerry. Subsequently -Power, the best Irishman that trod the boards in London, appeared here in -melodrama. In 1826 Terry and Yates became joint lessees and managers. -Ballantyne and Scott backed up Terry, Sir Walter being always eager for -money. Scott eventually had to pay L1750 for the speculative printer; he -seems from the outset to have entertained fears of Terry's failure.[335] -Here Keely too made his first hit as Jemmy Green. - -In 1839 Mr. Rice, "the original Jim Crow," was playing at the -Adelphi.[336] This Mr. Rice was an American actor who had studied the -drolleries of the Negro singers and dancers, especially those of one Jim -Crow, an old boatman who hung about the wharfs of Vicksburg, the same town -on the Mississippi that has lately stood so severe a siege. He initiated -among us negro tunes and negro dances. This was the fatal beginning of -those "negro entertainments," falsely so called. - -In 1808 Mr. Mathews gave his first entertainment, "The Mail-coach -Adventures," at Hull. Mr. James Smith had strung together some sketches of -character, and written for him those two celebrated comic songs, "The Mail -Coach" and "Bartholomew Fair." In 1818 Mr. Mathews, unfortunately for his -peace of mind, sold himself for seven years to a very sharp practiser, Mr. -Arnold, of the Lyceum, for L1000 a year, liable to the deduction of L200 -fine for any non-appearance. This becoming unbearable, Mr. Arnold made a -new agreement, by which he took to himself L40 every night, and shared the -rest with Mr. Mathews, who also paid half the expenses.[337] The shrewd -manager made L30,000 by this first speculation. Rivalling Mr. Dibdin, the -wonderful mimic appeared in plain evening dress with no other apparent -preparation than a drawing-room scene, a small table covered with a green -cloth, and two lamps. His first entertainment included "Fond Barney, the -Yorkshire Idiot" and the "Song of the Royal Visitors," full of droll -Russian names. In 1819 he produced "The Trip to Paris." In 1820 he brought -out "The Country Cousins," with the two celebrated comic songs, "The White -Horse Cellar," and "O, what a Town!--what a Wonderful Metropolis!" both -full of the most honest and boisterous fun. In 1821 Peake wrote for him -the "Polly Packet," introducing a caricature of Major Thornton, the great -sportsman, as Major Longbow. The entertainment was called "Earth, Air, and -Water," and contained the song of "The Steam-Boat." - -In 1824 Mr. Mathews gave his "Trip to America," with Yankee songs, negro -imitations, and that fine bit of pathos, "M. Mallet at the Post-Office." -In 1825 appeared his "memorandum Book," and in 1826 his "Invitations," -with the "Ruined Yorkshire Gambler (Harry Ardourly)," and "A Civic Water -Party." - -In 1828 he opened the Adelphi Theatre in partnership with Mr. Yates, -playing the drunken Tinker in Mr. Buckstone's "May Queen," and singing -that prince of comic songs, "The Humours of a Country Fair," written for -him by his son Charles. Mr. Moncrief wrote his "Spring Meeting for 1829," -and Mr. Peake his "Comic Annual for 1830." In 1831 his son Charles aided -Mr. Peake in producing an entertainment, and again in 1832. In 1833 his -health began to fail; he lost much money in bubble companies, and had an -action brought against him for L30,000. In 1833 Mr. Peake and Mr. Charles -Mathews wrote the "At Home." Subsequently the great mimic went to -America, whence he returned in 1838, only to die a few months after.[338] - -Leigh Hunt praises Mr. Mathews's valets and old men, but condemns his -nervous restlessness and redundance of bodily action. While Munden, -Liston, and Fawcett could not conceal their voices, Mathews rivalled -Bannister in his powers of mimicry. His delineation of old age was -remarkable for its truthfulness and variety. Leigh Hunt confesses that -till Mathews acted Sir Fretful Plagiary, he had ranked him as an actor of -habits and not of passions, and far inferior to Bannister and Dowton; but -the extraordinary blending of vexation and conceit in Sheridan's -caricature of Cumberland proved Mathews, Mr. Hunt allowed, to be an actor -who knew the human heart.[339] - -In 1820 Hazlitt criticised Mathews's third entertainment, "The Country -Cousins," a melange of songs, narrative, ventriloquism, imitations, and -character stories. He had left Covent Garden on the ground that he had not -sufficiently frequent opportunities for appearing in legitimate comedy. -The severe critic says, "Mr. Mathews shines particularly neither as an -actor nor a mimic of actors; but his forte is a certain general tact and -versatility of comic power. You would say he is a clever performer--you -would guess he is a cleverer man. His talents are not pure, but mixed. He -is best when he is his own prompter, manager, performer, orchestra, and -scene-shifter."[340] - -Hazlitt then goes on to accuse his "subject" of a want of taste, of his -gross and often superficial surprises, and of his too restless disquietude -to please. "Take from him," says Hazlitt, "his odd shuffle in the gait, a -restless volubility of speech and motion, a sudden suppression of -features, or the continued repetition of a cant phrase with unabated -vigour, and you reduce him to almost total insignificance." It should be -said that his "shuffle" was rather a "limp." - -As a mimic of other actors, the same writer says Mathews often failed. He -gabbled like Incledon, entangled himself like Tait Wilkinson, croaked like -Suett, lisped like Young, but he could make nothing of John Kemble's -"expressive, silver-tongued cadences." He blames him more especially for -turning nature into pantomime and grimace, and dealing too much with -worn-out topics, like Cockneyisms, French blunders, or the ignorance of -country people in stage-coaches, Margate hoys, and Dover packet-boats. In -another place the severe critic, who could be ill-tempered if he chose, -blames Mathews for many of his songs, for his meagre jokes, dry as -scrapings of "Shabsuger cheese," and for his immature ventriloquism. "His -best imitations," says Hazlitt, "were founded on his own observation, and -on the absurd characteristics of chattering footmen, drunken coachmen, -surly travellers, and garrulous old men. His old Scotchwoman, with her -pointless story, was a portrait equal to Wilkie or Teniers, as faithful, -as simple, as delicately humorous, with a slight dash of pathos, but -without one particle of caricature, vulgarity, or ill-nature." His best -broad jokes were these: the abrupt proposal of a mutton-chop to a man who -was sea-sick, and the convulsive marks of abhorrence with which he -received it; and the tavern beau who was about to swallow a lighted candle -for a glass of brandy-and-water as he was going drunk to bed. Poor -Wiggins, the fat, hen-pecked husband, who, unwieldy and helpless, is -pursued by a rabble of boys, was one of his best characters. Hazlitt -mentions also as a stroke of true genius his imitation of a German family, -the wife grumbling at her husband returning drunk, and the little child's -paddling across the room to its own bed at its father's approach.[341] - -Terry, who in 1825 joined partnership with Yates, and died in 1829, was a -quiet, sensible actor, praised in his Mephistopheles, and even in King -Lear. His Peter Teazle was inferior to Farren's, and his Dr. Cantwell came -after Dowton's. - -Yates was born in 1797. He made his debut at Covent Garden as Iago in -1818. He was very versatile, and triumphed alternately in tragedy, -comedy, farce, and melodrama. A critic of 1834 says, "Mr. Yates is -occasionally capital, and always respectable. In burlesque he is -excellent, but a little too broad, and given to an exaggeration which is -sometimes vulgar. He is a better buck than fop, and a better rake than -either, were he more refined." - -John Reeve was another of the Adelphi celebrities. He was born in 1799, -and was originally a clerk at a Fleet Street banking-house. He appeared -first at Drury Lane in 1819 as Sylvester Daggerwood. His imitations were -pronounced perfect, and he soon rose to great celebrity in broad farce, -burlesque, and the comic parts of melodrama. Lord Grizzle, Bombastes, and -Pedrillo, were favourite early characters of his. He was considered too -heavy for Caleb Quotem, and not quiet enough for Paul Pry. Liston excelled -him in the one, and Harley in the other. - -Benjamin Webster was born at Bath in 1800. He took the management of the -Haymarket in 1837, and built the New Adelphi Theatre in 1858. In melodrama -Mr. Webster excels. His best parts are--Lavater, Tartuffe, Belphegor, -Triplet, and Pierre Leroux in "The Poor Stroller." He is excellent in poor -authors and strolling players, and achieved a great triumph in Mr. Watts -Philips's play of "The Dead Heart." He is energetic and forcible, but he -has a bad hoarse voice, and he protracts and details his part so -elaborately as often to become tedious. - -In 1844 Madame Celeste, who in 1837 had appeared at Drury Lane on her -return from America, was directress of the Adelphi. She then left and took -the Lyceum, which she held until the close of 1860-1. - -The old Adelphi closed in June 1858. Although a small and incommodious -house, it had long earned a special fame of its own. It began its career -with "True Blue Scott," and went on with Rodwell and Jones during the "Tom -and Jerry" mania, when young men about town wrenched off knockers, knocked -down old men who were paid to apprehend thieves, and attended beggars' -suppers. Under Terry and Yates, Buckstone and Fitzball produced pieces in -which T. P. Cooke, O. Smith, Wilkinson, and Tyrone Power shone (this -actor was drowned in 1841). There also flourished Wright, Paul Bedford, -Mrs. Yates, and Mrs. Keeley, in "The Pilot," "The Flying Dutchman," "The -Wreck Ashore," "Victorine," "Rory O'More," and "Jack Sheppard,"[342]--the -last of these a play to be branded as a demoralising apotheosis of a -clever thief. - -In 1844 Mr. Webster became proprietor of the Adelphi, and Madame Celeste, -a good melodramatic actress, became the directress. Then was brought out -that crowning triumph of the theatre, "The Green Bushes," by Mr. -Buckstone--a tremendous success. - -Among the greatest "hits" at the Adelphi have been of later years Mr. -Watts Philips's "Dead Heart," a powerful melodrama of the French -Revolution period, Miss Bateman's "Leah," an American-German play of the -old school, and "The Colleen Bawn," Mr. Boucicault's clever dramatic -version of poor Gerald Griffin's novel, full of fine melodramatic -situations. - -The old town house of the Earls of Bedford stood on the site of the -present Southampton Street, and was taken down in 1704, in Queen Anne's -reign. It was a large house with a courtyard before it, and a spacious -garden with a terrace walk.[343] Before this house was built the Bedford -family lived at the opposite side of the Strand, in the Bishop of -Carlisle's inn, which, in 1598, was called Russell or Bedford House.[344] -In 1704 the family removed to Bloomsbury. The neighbouring streets were -christened by this family. Russell Street bears their family name, and -Tavistock Street their second title. - -Garrick lived at No. 36 Southampton Street before he went to the Adelphi. -In 1755, to give himself some rest, he brought out a magnificent ballet -pantomime, called "The Chinese Festival," composed by "the great Noverre." -Unfortunately for Garrick, war had just broken out between England and -France, and the pit and gallery condemned the Popish dancers in spite of -King George II. and the quality. Gentlemen in the boxes drew their swords, -leaped down into the pit, and were bruised and beaten. The galleries -looked on and pelted both sides. The ladies urged fresh recruits against -the pit, and each fresh levy was mauled. The pit broke up benches, tore -down hangings, smashed mirrors, split the harpsichords, and storming the -stage, cut and slashed the scenery.[345] The rioters then sallied out to -Mr. Garrick's house (now Eastey's Hotel) in Southampton Street, and broke -every window from basement to garret. - -Mrs. Oldfield, who lived in Southampton Street, was the daughter of an -officer, and so reduced as to be obliged to live with a relation who kept -the Mitre Tavern in St. James's Market. She was overheard by Mr. Farquhar -reading a comedy, and recommended by him to Sir John Vanbrugh. She was -excellent as Lady Brute and also as Lady Townley. She died in 1730; her -body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and was afterwards buried in -the Abbey. Lord Hervey and Bubb Doddington supported her pall. Her corpse, -by her own request, was richly adorned with lace--a vanity which Pope -ridiculed in those bitter lines-- - - "One would not sure be ugly when one's dead; - And, Betty, give this cheek a little red." - -In 1712 Arthur Maynwaring, in his will, describes this street as New -Southampton Street. - -Bedford Street was first so named in 1766 by the Paving Commissioners. The -lower part of the street was called Half-Moon Street; after the fire of -London it became fashionable with mercers, lacemen, and drapers.[346] The -lower part of the street is in the parish of St. Martin's in the Fields, -the upper in that of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. In the overseers' accounts -of St. Martin's mention is made of the names of persons who were fined in -1665 for drinking on the Lord's Day at the Half-Moon Tavern in this -street, also for carrying linen, for shaving customers, for carrying home -venison or a pair of shoes, and for swearing. Sir Charles Sedley and the -Duke of Buckingham were fined by the Puritans in 1657-58 for riding in -their coaches on that day.[347] Ned Ward, the witty publican, in his -_London Spy_, mentions the Half-Moon Tavern in this street. - -On the eastern side of the same street, in 1645, lived Remigius van -Limput, a Dutch painter, who, at the sale of King Charles's pictures, -bought Vandyke's florid masterpiece, now at Windsor, of the king on -horseback. After the Restoration he was compelled to disgorge it. Had this -grand picture been the portrait of any better king, Cromwell would not -have parted with it. - -The witty bulky Quin lived here from 1749 to 1752. It was in 1749 that -this great tragedian, reappearing after a retirement, performed in his -friend Thomson's posthumous play of "Coriolanus." Good-natured Quin had -once rescued the fat lazy poet from a sponging-house. It was about this -time that the great elocutionist was instructing Prince George in -recitation. When, afterwards, as king, he delivered his first speech -successfully in Parliament, the actor exclaimed triumphantly, "Sir, it was -I taught the boy." - -On the west side, at No. 15, lived Chief "Justice" Richardson, the -humourist. He died in 1635. The interior of the house is ancient. Sir -Francis Kynaston, an esquire of the body to Charles I., and author of -_Leoline and Sydanis_, lived in this street in 1637. He died in 1642. The -Earl of Chesterfield, one of Grammont's gay and heartless gallants, lived -in Bedford Street in 1656. In the same street, in his old age, at the -house of his son, a rich silk-mercer, dwelt Kynaston, the great actor of -Charles II.'s time, so well known for his female characters. Thomas -Sheridan, the lecturer on elocution, the son of Swift's friend, and the -father of the wit and orator, lived in Bedford Street, facing Henrietta -Street and the south side of Covent Garden. Here Dr. Johnson often visited -him. "One day," says Mr. Whyte, "we were standing together at the -drawing-room window expecting Johnson, who was to dine with us.[348] Mr. -Sheridan asked me could I see the length of the garden. 'No, sir.' 'Take -out your opera-glass then: Johnson is coming, you may know him by his -gait.' I perceived him at a good distance, walking along with a peculiar -solemnity of deportment, and an awkward, measured sort of step. At that -time the broad flagging at each side of the streets was not universally -adopted, and stone posts were in fashion to prevent the annoyance of -carriages. Upon every post, as he passed along, I could observe he -deliberately laid his hand; but missing one of them, when he had got to -some distance he seemed suddenly to recollect himself, and immediately -returning back, carefully performed the accustomed ceremony, and resumed -his former course, not omitting one, till he gained the crossing. This, -Mr. Sheridan assured me, however odd it might appear, was his constant -practice, but why or wherefore he could not inform me." This eccentric -habit of Johnson, the result of hypochondriacal nervousness, is also -mentioned by Boswell. - -[Illustration: EXETER CHANGE, 1821.] - -Richard Wilson, the great landscape-painter--"Red-nosed Dick," as he was -familiarly called--was a great ally of Mortimer, "the English Salvator." -They used to meet over a pot of porter at the Constitution, Bedford -Street. Mortimer, who was a coarse joker, used to make Dr. Arne, the -composer of "Rule Britannia," who had a red face and staring eyes, very -angry by telling him that his eyes looked like two oysters just opened for -sauce, and put on an oval side dish of beetroot. - -Close to the Lowther Arcade there is one of those large cafes that are -becoming features in modern London. It was started by an Italian named -Carlo Gatti. There you may see refugees of all countries, playing at -dominoes, sipping coffee, or groaning over the wrongs of their native land -and their own exile. No music is allowed in this large hall, because it -might interfere with the week-day services at St. Martin's Church. - - - - -[Illustration: TITUS OATES IN THE PILLORY.] - - -CHAPTER IX. - -CHARING CROSS. - - -On July 20, 1864, was laid the first stone of the great Thames Embankment, -which now forms the wall of our river from Blackfriars to Westminster. A -couple of flags fluttered lazily over the stone as a straggling procession -of the members of the Metropolitan Board of Works moved down to the -wooden causeway leading to the river. For two years about a thousand men -were at work on it night and day. Iron caissons were sunk below the mud, -deep in the gravel, and within ten feet of the clay which is the real -foundation of London, and the Victoria Embankment rose gradually into -being. It was opened by Royalty in the summer of 1870. This scheme, -originally sketched out by Wren, was designed by Colonel Trench, M.P., and -also by Martin the painter; but it was never carried out until the days of -Lord Palmerston and the Metropolitan Board of Works. Its piers, its -flights of steps, its broad highway covering a railway, its gardens, its -terraces, are complete; and when the buildings along it are finished -London may for the first time claim to compare itself in architectural -grandeur with Nineveh, Rome, or modern Paris. - -Northumberland House, which faced Charing Cross, covering the site of -Northumberland Avenue, was a good but dull specimen of Jacobean -architecture; it was built by Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, son of -the poet Earl of Surrey, about 1605.[349] Walpole attributes the building -to Bernard Jansen, a Fleming, and an imitator of Dieterling, and to Gerard -Christmas, the designer of Aldersgate. Jansen probably built the house, -which was of brick, and Christmas added the stone frontispiece, which was -profusely ornamented with rich carved scrolls, and an open parapet worked -into letters and other devices. John Thorpe is also supposed to have been -associated in the work; and plans of both the quadrangles of this enormous -palace are preserved among the _Soane MSS._[350] Jansen was the architect -of Audley End, in Essex, one of the wonders of the age. Thorpe built -Burghley. The front was originally 162 feet long, the court 82 feet -square; as Inigo Jones has noted in a copy of _Palladio_ preserved at -Worcester College, Oxford. - -The Earl of Northampton left the house by his will, in 1614, to his -nephew, Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, who died in 1626. This was the -father of the memorable Frances, Countess of Essex and Somerset; and from -him the house took the name of Suffolk House, till the marriage in 1642 of -Elizabeth, daughter of Theophilus, second Earl of Suffolk, with Algernon -Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland, when it changed its name accordingly. - -Dorothy, sister of the rash and ungrateful Earl of Essex, whose violence -and follies nothing less than the executioner's axe could cure, married -the "wizard" Earl of Northumberland, as he was called, whom "she led the -life of a dog, till he indignantly turned her out of doors." He was -afterwards engaged in the Gunpowder Plot, being angry with the Government -that had overlooked him. "His name was used and his money spent by the -conspirators; one of his servants hired the vault, and procured the lease -of Vineyard House. Thomas Percy, his kinsman and steward, supped with him -on the very night of the plot. His servant, Sir Dudley Carleton, who hired -the house, was thrust into the Tower, and the earl joined him there not -long after; but Cecil was either unable or unwilling to touch his -life."[351] Northumberland, with Cobham and Raleigh, had before this -engaged in schemes with the French against the Government. Thomas Percy -had been beheaded for plotting with Mary. Henry Percy had shot himself -while in the Tower, on account of the Throckmorton Conspiracy. Compounding -for a fine of L11,000, the earl devoted himself in the Tower to scientific -and literary pursuits, and gave annuities to six or seven eminent -mathematicians, who ate at his table. In 1611 he was again examined, and -finally released in 1617. The king's favourite, Hay, afterwards Earl of -Carlisle, had married the earl's daughter Lucy against his will, which so -irritated him that he was with difficulty persuaded to accept his own -release, because it was obtained through the intercession of Hay. - -Joceline Percy, son of Algernon, dying in 1670, without issue male, -Northumberland House became the property of his only daughter Elizabeth -Percy, the heiress of the Percy estates. Her first husband was Henry -Cavendish, Earl of Ogle; her second, Thomas Thynne, of Longleat, in -Wilts, who was shot in his coach in Pall Mall, on Sunday, February 12, -1681-2; her third husband was Charles Seymour, the _proud_ Duke of -Somerset, who married her in 1682. This lady was twice a widow and three -times a wife before the age of seventeen. - -The "proud" duke and duchess lived in great state and magnificence at -Northumberland House. The duchess died in 1722, and the duke followed in -1748. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Algernon, Earl of Hertford, and -the seventh Duke of Somerset, who was created Earl of Northumberland in -1749, with remainder, failing issue male, to his son-in-law, Sir Hugh -Smithson, who in 1766 was raised to the dukedom. The lion which country -cousins for two centuries remember to have crowned the central gateway of -the duke's house, represented the Percy crest. It is of this stiff-tailed -animal, for the exact angle of the tail is treated by heralds as a matter -of the most vital importance, that the old story imputed to Sheridan is -told. Probably some audacious wit did once collect a London crowd by -declaring that its tail wagged--but certainly it was not Sheridan. - -Tom Thynne, or, as he was called, "Tom of Ten Thousand," was shot at the -east end of Pall Mall, opposite the Opera Arcade, by Borosky, a Polish -soldier urged on by Count Koenigsmark, a Swedish adventurer, son of one of -Gustavus's old generals, and who was enraged with Thynne for having just -married the youthful widow of the Earl of Ogle, Lady Elizabeth Percy. -Thynne was a favourite of the Duke of Monmouth. Shaftesbury had been -lately released from the Tower, in spite of Dryden's onslaught on him as -"Achitophel," on the foolish duke as "Absalom," and on Thynne as -"Issachar," his wealthy western friend. The three murderers were hanged in -Pall Mall, but their master strangely escaped, partly owing to the -influence of Charles II. The count, who had shown great courage at Tangier -against the Moors, and had boarded a Turkish galley at his eminent peril, -died in 1686, at the battle of Argos in the Morea. His younger brother was -assassinated at Hanover, on suspicion of an intrigue with Sophia of Zell, -the young and beautiful wife of the Elector, afterwards George I. of -England.[352] - -The Earl of Northampton, Surrey's son, who built Northumberland House (as -Osborne, who loved scandal, says with Spanish gold), seems to have been an -unscrupulous time-server, flatterer, and parasite. In 1596 he wrote to -Burleigh, and spoke of his reverend awe at his lordship's "piercing -judgment;" yet a year after he writes a plotting letter to Burleigh's -great enemy, Essex, and says: "Your lordship by your last purchase hath -almost enraged the dromedary that would have won the Queen of Sheba's -favour by bringing pearls. If you could once be so fortunate in dragging -old Leviathan (Burghley) and his rich tortuosum colubrum (Sir Robert -Cecil), as the prophet termeth them, out of their den of mischievous -device, the better part of the world would prefer your virtue to that of -Hercules." The earl became a toady and creature of the infamous Carr, Earl -of Somerset, and is thought to have died just in time to escape -prosecution for the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury in the Tower.[353] - -It was shortly before Suffolk House changed its name that it became the -scene of one of Lord Herbert of Cherbury's mad Quixotic quarrels. His -chivalrous lordship had had sundry ague fits, which had made him so lean -and yellow that scarce any man could recognise him. Walking towards -Whitehall he one day met a Mr. Emerson, who had spoken very disgraceful -words of Lord Herbert's friend, Sir Robert Harley. Lord Herbert therefore, -sensible of the dishonour, took Emerson by his long beard, and then, -stepping aside, drew his sword; Captain Thomas Scriven being with Lord -Herbert, and divers friends with Mr. Emerson. All who saw the quarrel -wondered at the Welsh nobleman, weak and "consumed" as he was, offering to -fight; however, Emerson ran and took shelter in Suffolk House, and -afterwards complained to the Lords in Council, who sent for Lord Herbert, -the lean, yellow Welsh Quixote, but did not so much reprehend him for -defending the honour of his friend as for adventuring to fight, being at -the same time in such weak health.[354] - -Algernon, the tenth Earl of Northumberland, is called by Clarendon "the -proudest man alive." He had been Lord High Admiral to King Charles I., and -was appointed general against the Scotch Covenanters, but, being unable to -take the command from ill health, gave up his commission. He gradually -fell away from the king's cause, but nevertheless refused to continue High -Admiral against the king's wish. He treated the Dukes of York and -Gloucester and the Princess Elizabeth with "such consideration" that they -were removed from his care, and from that time he turned Royalist again. - -Sir John Suckling refers to Suffolk House in his exquisite little poem on -the wedding of Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, with Lady Margaret Howard, -daughter of the Earl of Suffolk. The well known poem begins-- - - "At Charing-cross, hard by the way - Where we (thou know'st) do sell our hay, - There is a house with stairs." - -And then the gay and graceful poet goes on to sketch Lady Margaret-- - - "Her lips were red, and one was thin, - Compared with that was next her chin. - Some bee had stung it newly." - -And then follows that delightful, fantastic simile, comparing her feet to -little mice creeping in and out her petticoat.[355] Sir John was born in -1609. - -The oldest part of Northumberland House was the Strand entrance. This was -crowned, as stated above, by a frieze or balustrade of large stone -letters, probably including the name and titles of the earl and the -glorified name of the architect. At the funeral of Anne of Denmark, 1619, -a young man, named Appleyard, was killed by the fall of the letter S[356] -from the house, which was then occupied by the Earl of Strafford, Lord -Treasurer. The house was originally only three sides of a quadrangle, the -river side remaining open to the gardens; but traffic and noise -increasing, the quadrangle was completed along the river side and the -principal apartments. There is a drawing by Hollar of the house in his -time, and another, a century later, by Canaletti. The new front towards -the gardens was spoiled by a clumsy stone staircase, which was attributed -to Inigo Jones, but probably incorrectly. - -The date, 1746, on the facade referred to the repairs made in that year, -and the letters "A. S. P. N." stood for Algernon Somerset, Princeps -Northumbriae. The lion over the gateway was said to be a copy of one by -Michael Angelo; it is now at Sion House, Isleworth. The gateway was -covered with ornaments and trophies. Double ranges of grotesque pilasters -enclosed eight niches on the sides, and there was a bow window and an open -arch above the chief gate. Between each of the fourteen niches in the -front there were trophies of crossed weapons, and the upper stories had -twenty-four windows, in two ranges, and pierced battlements. Each wing -terminated in a little cupola, and the angles had rustic quoins. The -quadrangle within the gate was simpler and in better taste, and the house -was screened from the river by elm trees.[357] - -There used to be a schoolboy tradition, prevalent at King's College in the -author's time, that one of the niches in the front of Northumberland House -was of copper and movable. So far the story was true; but the tradition -went on to relate how, once upon a time, a certain enemy of the house of -Percy obtained secret admission by this niche and murdered one of the -dukes, his enemy. History is, however, fortunately, quite silent on this -subject. - -In February 1762 Horace Walpole and a party of quality set out from -Northumberland House to hear the ghost in Cock Lane that Dr. Johnson -exposed, and that Hogarth and Churchill ridiculed with pen and pencil. -The Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, and Lord Hertford, -all returned from the Opera with Horace Walpole, then changed their dress, -and set out in a hackney coach. It rained hard, and the lane and house -were "full of mob." The room of the haunted house, small and miserable, -was stuffed with eighty persons, and there was no light but one tallow -candle. As clothes-lines hung from the ceiling, Walpole asked drily if -there was going to be rope-dancing between the acts. They said the ghost -would not come till 7 A.M., when only 'prentices and old women remained. -The party stayed till half-past one. The Methodists had promised -contributions, provisions were sent in like forage, and the neighbouring -taverns and ale-houses were making their fortunes.[358] - -On May 14, 1770, poor Chatterton, who suffered so terribly for the -deceptions of his ambitious boyhood, writes from the King's Bench (for the -present) that a gentleman who knew him at the Chapter coffee-house, in -Paternoster Row--frequented by authors and publishers--would have -introduced him to the young Duke of Northumberland as a companion in his -intended general tour, "but, alas! I spake no tongue but my own."[359] But -this is taken from a most questionable work, full of fictions and -forgeries. Its author was a Bristol man, who afterwards fled to America. -He also wrote a series of Conversations with the poets of the Lake school, -many of which are too obviously imaginary. - -On March 18, 1780, the Strand front of Northumberland House was totally -destroyed by fire. The apartments of Dr. Percy, the Duke's kinsman and -chaplain, afterwards Bishop of Dromore and editor of the _Reliques of -Ancient Poetry_ were consumed; but great part of his library escaped. - -Goldsmith's simple-hearted ballad of _Edwin and Angelina_ was originally -"printed for the amusement of the Countess of Northumberland." Two years -after, Kenrick accused him in the papers of plagiarising it from Percy's -pasticcio from Shakspere in the _Reliques_, which was probably written in -1765.[360] - -It is probable that Goldsmith often visited Percy, when acting as chaplain -at Northumberland House. Sir John Hawkins, indeed, describes meeting the -poet waiting for an audience in an outer room. At his own audience Hawkins -mentioned that the doctor was waiting. On their way home together, -Goldsmith told Hawkins that his lordship said that he had read the -_Traveller_ with delight, that he was going as Lord Lieutenant to Ireland, -and should be glad, as Goldsmith was an Irishman, to do him any kindness. -Hawkins was enraptured at the rich man's graciousness. But Goldsmith had -mentioned only his brother, a clergyman there, who needed help. "As for -myself," he added, bitterly, "I have no dependence on the promises of -great men. I look to the booksellers for support; they are my best -friends, and I am not inclined to forsake them for others." "Thus," says -Hawkins, "did this idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his -fortunes and put back the hand that was held out to assist him." The earl -told Percy, after Goldsmith's death, that had he known how to help the -poet he would have done so, or he would have procured him a salary on the -Irish establishment that would have allowed him to travel. Let men of the -world remember that the poet a few days before had been forced to borrow -15s. 6d. to meet his own wants. - -This conversation took place in 1765. In 1771, when Goldsmith was stopping -at Bath with his good-natured friend Lord Clare, he blundered by mistake -at breakfast time into the next door on the same Parade, where the Duke -and Duchess of Northumberland were staying. As he took no notice of them, -but threw himself carelessly on a sofa, they supposed there was some -mistake, and therefore entered into conversation with him, and when -breakfast was served up, invited him to stay and partake of it. The poet, -hot, stammering, and irrecoverably confused, withdrew with profuse -apologies for his mistake, but not till he had accepted an invitation to -dinner. This story, a parallel to the laughable blunder in _She Stoops to -Conquer_, was told by the duchess herself to Dr. Percy. - -It was probably of the first of these interviews that Goldsmith used to -give the following account:-- - -"I dressed myself in the best manner I could, and, after studying some -compliments I thought necessary on such an occasion, proceeded to -Northumberland House, and acquainted the servants that I had particular -business with the duke. They showed me into an ante-chamber, where, after -waiting some time, a gentleman, very elegantly dressed, made his -appearance. Taking him for the duke, I delivered all the fine things I had -composed, in order to compliment him on the honour he had done me; when to -my fear and astonishment, he told me I had mistaken him for his master, -who would see me immediately. At that instant the duke came into the -apartment, and I was so confounded on the occasion that I wanted words -barely sufficient to express the sense I entertained of the duke's -politeness, and went away exceedingly chagrined at the blunder I had -committed."[361] - -Dr. Waagen, the picture critic, seems to have been rather dazzled at the -splendour of Northumberland House. He praises the magnificent staircase, -lighted from above and reaching up through three stories, the white marble -floors, the balustrades and chandeliers of gilt bronze, the cabinets of -Florentine mosaic, and the arabesques of the drawing-room.[362] The great -picture of the duke's collection was the Cornaro family, by Titian; I -believe from the Duke of Buckingham's collection. It is a splendid -specimen of the painter's middle period and golden tone. The faces of the -kneeling Cornari are grand, simple, senatorial, and devout. There was also -a Saint Sebastian, by Guercino, "clear and careful," and large as life; a -fine Snyders and Vandyke; many copies by Mengs (particularly "The School -of Athens"); and a good Schalcken, with his usual candlelight effect. The -gem of all the English pictures was one by Dobson, Vandyke's noble pupil. -It contained the portrait of the painter and those of Sir Balthasar -Gerbier, the architect, and Sir Charles Cotterell. The colour is as rich -and juicy as Titian's, the drapery learned and graceful, the faces are -full of fire and spirit. Dobson died at the age of thirty-six. Sir Charles -was his patron.[363] Vandyke is said to have disinterred Dobson from a -garret, and recommended him to the king. Gerbier was a native of Antwerp, -a painter, architect, and ambassador. This picture of Dobson was bought at -Betterton's sale for L44.[364] The gallery of the Duke of Northumberland -was removed in 1875, when the house was demolished, to Sion House. - -Northumberland House was connected with, at all events, one period of -English history. In the year 1660, when General Monk was in quarters at -Whitehall, the Earl of Northumberland, in the name of the nobility and -gentry of England, invited him here to the first conference in which the -restoration of the Stuarts was publicly talked of. Algernon Percy, the -tenth earl, had been Lord High Admiral under Charles I. - -That staunch, brave, crotchety man, Sir Harry Vane the younger (the son of -Lord Strafford's enemy), lived next door to Northumberland House, -eastwards, in the Strand. The house in Charles II.'s time became the -official residence of the Secretary of State, and Mr. Secretary Nicholas -dwelt there, when meetings were held to found a commonwealth and put down -that foolish, good-natured, incompetent Richard Cromwell. To the great -Protector, Vane was a thorn in the flesh, for he wanted a republic when -the nation required a stronger and more compact government. Oliver's -exclamation, "Oh, Sir Harry Vane! Sir Harry Vane!--The Lord deliver me -from Sir Harry Vane!" expresses infinite vexation with an impracticable -person. Vane was a "Fifth-monarchy man," and believed in universal -salvation. He must have been a good man, or Milton would never have -addressed the sonnet to him in which he says-- - - "Therefore, on thy firm hand Religion leans - In peace, and reckons thee her eldest son." - -Sir Harry left behind him some very tough and dark treatises on prophecy, -and other profound matters that few but angels or fools dare to meddle -with. - -There is a foolish tradition that Charing Cross was so named originally by -Edward I. in memory of his _chere reine_. Peele, one of the glorious band -of Elizabethan dramatists, helped to spread this tradition. He makes King -Edward say-- - - "Erect a rich and stately carved cross, - Whereon her statue shall with glory shine; - And henceforth see you call it Charing Cross. - For why?--the _chariest_ and the choicest queen - That ever did delight my royal eyes - There dwells in darkness."[365] - -The inconsolable widower, however, in spite of his costly grief, soon -married again. - -The truth is, there are in England one or two Charings; one of them is a -village thirteen miles from Maidstone. "_Ing_" means meadow in Saxon.[366] -The meaning of "_Char_" is uncertain; it may be the contraction of the -name of some long-forgotten landowner, "rich in the possession of -dirt."[367] The Anglo-Saxon word _cerre_--a turn (says Mr. Robert -Ferguson, an excellent authority), is retained in the name given in -Carlisle and other northern towns to the chares, or _wynds_--small -streets. In King Edward's time Charing was bounded by fields, both north -and west. There has been a good deal of nonsense, however, written about -"the pleasant village of Charing." In Aggas's map, published under -Elizabeth, Hedge Lane (now Whitcombe Street) is a country lane bordered -with fields; so is the Haymarket, and all behind the Mews up to St. -Martin's Lane is equally rural. - -Horne Tooke[368] derives the word Charing from the Saxon verb _charan_--to -turn; but the etymology is still doubtful, however much the river may bend -on its way to Westminster. However, doubtless, the place was named -Charing as far back as the Saxon times. - -It was Peele also who kept alive the old tradition of Queen Eleanor -sinking at Charing Cross and rising again at Queenhithe. When falsely -accused of _her crimes_, his heroine replies in the words of a rude old -ballad well known in Elizabeth's time-- - - "If that upon so vile a thing - Her heart did ever think, - She wished the ground might open wide, - And therein she might sink. - - With that at Charing Cross she sank - Into the ground alive, - And after rose with life again, - In London at Queenhithe."[369] - -The Eleanor crosses were erected at Lincoln, Geddington, Northampton, -Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, Waltham, Cheap, and -Charing. Three only now remain,--Northampton, Geddington, and Waltham. -Charing Cross was probably the most costly; it was octagonal, and was -adorned with statues in tiers of niches, which were crowned with -pinnacles. It was begun by Master Richard de Crundale, "cementarius," but -he died about 1293, before it was finished, and the work went on under the -supervision of Roger de Crundale. Richard received about L500 for his -work, exclusive of materials furnished him, and Roger L90: 7: 5. The stone -was brought from Caen, and the marble steps from Corfe in Dorsetshire. -Only one foreigner was employed on all the crosses, and he was a -Frenchman. The Abbot Ware brought mosaics, porphyry, and perhaps designs -from Italy, but there is no proof that he brought over Cavallini. A -replica of the original cross, designed by Mr. Barry, has been erected at -the west end of the Strand, opposite the Charing Cross Railway Station and -Hotel. - -The cluster of houses at Charing acquired the name of Cross from the -monument set up by Edward I. to the memory of his gentle, pious, and -brave wife Eleanor, the sister of Alphonso, King of Castille. This good -woman was the daughter of Ferdinand III., and after the death of her -mother, heiress of Ponthieu. She bore to her fond husband four sons and -eleven daughters, of whom only three are supposed to have survived their -father. - -Queen Eleanor died at Hardley, near Lincoln, in 1290. The king followed -the funeral to Westminster, and afterwards erected a cross to his wife's -memory at every place where the corpse rested for the night. In the -circular which the king sent on the occasion to his prelates and nobles, -he trusts that prayers may be offered for her soul at these crosses, so -that any stains not purged from her, either from forgetfulness or other -causes, may through the plenitude of the Divine grace be removed.[370] It -was Queen Eleanor who, when Edward was stabbed at Acre, by an emissary of -the Emir of Joppa, according to a Spanish historian,[371] sucked the -poison from the wounds at the risk of her own life. - -This warlike king, who subdued Wales and Scotland, who expelled the Jews -from England, who hunted Bruce, hanged Wallace, and who finally died on -his march to crush Scotland, had a deep affection for his wife, and strove -by all that art could do to preserve her memory. - -Old Charing Cross was long supposed to have been built from the designs of -Pietro Cavallini, a contemporary of Giotto. He is said to have assisted -that painter in the great mosaic picture over the chief entrance of St. -Peter's. But there is little ground for accepting the tradition as true, -though asserted by Vertue, as we learn from Horace Walpole's 'Anecdotes.' -Cavallini was born in 1279, and died in 1364. The monument to Henry III. -at the Abbey, and the old paintings round the chapel of St. Edward are -also attributed to this patriarch of art by Vertue.[372] - -Queen Eleanor had three tombs--one in Lincoln Cathedral, over her viscera; -another in the church of the Blackfriars in London, over her heart; a -third in Westminster Abbey, over the rest of her body. The first was -destroyed by the Parliamentarians; the second probably perished at the -dissolution of the monasteries; the third has escaped. It is a valuable -example of the thirteenth century beau-ideal. The tomb was the work of -William Torel, a London goldsmith. The statue is not a portrait statue any -more than the statue of Henry III. by the same artist. Torel seems to have -received for his whole work about L1700 of our money.[373] - -The beautiful cross, with its pinnacles and statues, was demolished in -1647 under an order of the House of Commons, which had remained dormant -for three years; and at the same time fell its brother cross in Cheapside. - -The Royalist ballad-mongers, eager to catch the Puritans tripping, -produced a lively street song on the occasion, beginning-- - - "Undone, undone the lawyers are, - They wander about the town, - Nor can find the way to Westminster, - Now Charing Cross is down. - At the end of the Strand they make a stand, - Swearing they are at a loss, - And chaffing say that's not the way, - They must go by Charing Cross." - -The ballad-writer goes on to deny that the Cross ever spoke a word against -the Parliament, though he confesses it might have inclined to Popery; for -certain it was that it "never went to church." - -The workmen were engaged for three months in pulling down the Cross.[374] -Some of the stones went to form the pavement before Whitehall; others were -polished to look like marble, and were sold to antiquaries for -knife-handles. The site remained vacant for thirty-one years. - -After the Restoration Charing Cross was turned into a place of execution. -Here Hugh Peters, Cromwell's chaplain, and Major-General Harrison, the -sturdy Anabaptist, Colonel Jones, and Colonel Scrope were executed. They -all died bravely, without a doubt or a fear. - -Harrison was the son of a Staffordshire farmer, and had fought bravely at -the siege of Basing; he had been major-general in Scotland; had helped -Cromwell at the disbanding of the Rump; had served in the Council of -State; and finally having expressed honest Anabaptist scruples about the -Protectorate, had been imprisoned to prevent rebellion. Cromwell's son -Oliver had been captain in Harrison's regiment.[375] As he was led to the -scaffold some base scullion called out to the brave old Ironside, "Where -is your good _old_ cause now?" Harrison replied with a cheerful smile, -clapping his hand on his breast, "Here it is, and I am going to seal it -with my blood." When he came in sight of the gallows he was transported -with joy; his servant asked him how he did? He answered, "Never better in -my life." His servant told him, "Sir, there is a crown of glory prepared -for you."[376] "Yes," replied he, "I see." When he was taken off the -sledge, the hangman desired him to forgive him. "I do forgive thee," said -he, "with all my heart, as it is a sin against me," and told him he wished -him all happiness; and further said, "Alas, poor man, thou dost it -ignorantly; the Lord grant that this sin may not be laid to thy charge!" -and putting his hand into his pocket he gave him all the money he had; and -so parting with his servant, hugging him in his arms, he went up the -ladder with an undaunted countenance. The cruel rabble observing him -tremble in his hands and legs, he took notice of it, and said, "Gentlemen, -by reason of some scoffing that I do hear, I judge that some do think I am -afraid to die by the shaking I have in my hands and knees. I tell you -_No_; but it is by reason of much blood I have lost in the wars, and many -wounds I have received in my body, which caused this shaking and weakness -in my nerves. I have had it this twelve years. I speak this to the praise -and glory of God. He hath carried me above the fear of death, and I value -not my life, because I go to my Father, and I am assured I shall take it -again. Gentlemen, take notice, that for being an instrument in that cause -(an instrument of the Son of God) which hath been pleaded amongst us, and -which God hath witnessed to by many appeals and wonderful victories, I am -brought to this place to suffer death this day, and if I had ten thousand -lives I could freely and cheerfully lay them down all to witness to this -matter." - -Then he prayed to himself with tears, and having ended, the hangman pulled -down his cap, but he thrust it up and said, "I have one word more to the -Lord's people. Let them not think hardly of any of the good ways of God -for all this, for I have found the way of God to be a perfect way, and He -hath covered my head many times in the day of battle. By my God I have -leaped over a wall, by my God I have run through a troop, and by my God I -will go through this death, and He will make it easy to me. Now, into thy -hands, O Lord Jesus, I commit my spirit." - -After he was hanged they cut down this true martyr, and stripping him, -slashed him open in order to disembowel him. In the last rigour of his -agony this staunch soldier is said to have risen up and struck the -executioner. - -Three days after, Carew and Cook were hanged at the same place, rejoicing -and praying cheerfully to the last. As Cook parted from his wife he said -to her, "I am going to be married in glory this day. Why weepest -thou?--let them weep who part and shall never meet again." - -On the 17th, Thomas Scot perished at the same place. His last words -were--"God engaged me in a cause not to be repented of--I say, in a cause -not to be repented of." - -Jones and Scrope (both old men) were drawn in one sledge. Their grave yet -cheerful and courageous countenances caused great admiration and -compassion among the crowd. Observing one of his friend's children weeping -at Newgate, Colonel Jones took her by the hand. He said, "Suppose your -father were to-morrow to be King of France, and you were to tarry a little -behind, would you weep so? Why, he is going to reign with the King of -kings." When he saw the sledge, he said, "It is like Elijah's fiery -chariot, only it goes through Fleet Street." The night before he suffered, -he told a friend the only temptation he had was lest he should be too much -transported, and so neglect and slight his life, so greatly was he -satisfied to die in such a cause. Another friend he grasped in his arms -and said, "Farewell! I could wish thee in the same condition as myself, -that our souls might mount up to heaven together and share in eternal -joys." To another friend he said, "Ah, dear heart! if we had perished -together in that storm going to Ireland, we had been in heaven to welcome -honest Harrison and Carew; but we will be content to go after them--we -will go after." It is added that "the executioner, having done his part -upon three others that day, was so surfeited with blood and sick, that he -sent his boy to finish the tragedy on Colonel Jones." - -Hugh Peters was much afraid while in Newgate lest his spirits should fail -him when he saw the gibbet and the fire, but his courage did not fail him -in that hour of great need. On his way to execution he looked about and -espied a man to whom he gave a piece of gold, having bowed it first, and -desired him to carry that as a token to his daughter, and to let her know -that her father's heart was as full of comfort as it could be, and that -before the piece should come into her hands he should be with God in -glory. - -While Cook was being hanged they made Peters sit within the rails to -behold his death. While sitting thus, one came to him and upbraided the -old preacher with the king's death, and bade him repent. Peters replied, -"Friend, you do not well to trample upon a dying man: you are greatly -mistaken--I had nothing to do in the death of the king." - -When Mr. Cook was cut down and about to be quartered, Colonel Turner told -the sheriff's men to bring Mr. Peters nearer to see the body. By and by -the hangman came to him, rubbing his bloody hands, and tauntingly asked -him, "Come, how do you like this--how do you like this work?" To whom Mr. -Peters calmly replied, "I am not, I thank God, terrified at it--you may do -your worst." - -Being upon the ladder, he spoke to the sheriff and said, "Sir, you have -here slain one of the servants of God before mine eyes, and have made me -to behold it on purpose to terrify and discourage me, but God hath made it -an ordinance to me for my strengthening and encouragement." - -When he was going to die, he said, "What, flesh! art thou unwilling to go -to God through the fire and jaws of death? Oh! this is a good day. He is -come that I have long looked for, and I shall soon be with Him in glory." -And he smiled when he went away. "What Mr. Peters said further it could -not be taken, in regard his voice was low at the time and the people -uncivil." - -In May 1685 that consummate scoundrel Titus Oates came to the pillory at -Charing Cross. He had been condemned to pay a thousand marks fine, to be -stripped of his gown, to be whipped from Newgate to Tyburn, from Aldgate -to Newgate, and to stand in the pillory at the Royal Exchange and before -Westminster Hall. He was also condemned to stand one hour in the pillory -at Charing Cross every 10th of August, and there an eye-witness describes -seeing him in 1688.[377] - -In 1666 and 1667 an Italian puppet-player set up his booth at Charing -Cross, and there and then probably introduced "Punch and Judy" into -England. He paid a small rent to the overseers of St. Martin's parish, and -is called in their books "Punchinello." In 1668 we learn that a Mr. Devone -erected a small playhouse in the same place.[378] - -There is still extant a song written to ridicule the long delay in setting -up the king's statue, and it contains an allusion to "Punch"-- - - "What can the mistry be, why Charing Cross - These five months continues still blinded with board? - Dear Wheeler, impart--wee are all att a loss, - Unless Punchinello is to be restored."[379] - -The royal statue at Charing Cross is the work of Hubert Le Soeur, a -Frenchman and a pupil of the famous John of Bologna, the sculptor of the -"Rape of the Sabines" in the Loggia at Florence. Le Soeur's copy of the -"Fighting Gladiator," which is praised by Peacham in his "Compleat -Gentleman," once at the head of the canal in St. James's Park, is now at -Hampton Court. Le Soeur also executed the monuments of Sir George -Villiers, and Sir Thomas Richardson the judge, in Westminster Abbey. - -The original contract for the brazen equestrian statue, a foot larger than -life, is dated 1630. The sculptor was to receive L600. The agreement was -drawn up by Sir Balthasar Gerbier for the purchaser, the Lord High -Treasurer Weston. Yet the existing statue was not cast till 1633, and the -above-mentioned agreement speaks of it as to be erected in the Lord -Treasurer's garden at Roehampton; so that the agreement may not refer to -the same work, although it certainly specifies that the sculptor shall -"take advice of his Maj. riders of greate horses, as well for the shape of -the horse and action as for the graceful shape and action of his Maj. -figure on the same."[380] - -The present statue was cast in 1633, on a piece of ground near the church -in Covent Garden, and not being actually erected when the Civil War broke -out, it was sold by the Parliament to John Rivet, a brazier, living at -"the Dial, near Holburn Conduit," with strict orders to break it up. But -the man, being a shrewd Royalist, produced some fragments of old brass, -and hid the statue underground till the Restoration. Rivet refusing to -deliver up the statue after Charles's return, a replevin was served upon -him to compel its surrender. The dispute, however, lasted many years, and -he probably pleaded compensation. The statue was erected in its present -position about 1674, by an order from the Earl of Danby, afterwards Duke -of Leeds. Le Soeur died, it is supposed, before the statue was erected. - -Horace Walpole, who praises the "commanding grace of the figure," and the -"exquisite form of the horse,"[381] incorrectly says, "The statue was made -at the expense of the family of Howard, Lord Arundel, who have still the -receipt to show by whom and for whom it was cast." - -There is still extant a very rare large sheet print of the statue, -engraved in the manner and time of Faithorne, but without name or date. -The inscription beneath it describes the statue as almost ten feet high, -and as "preserved underground," with great hazard, charge, and care, by -John Rivet, a brazier.[382] - -John Rivet may have been a patriot, but he was certainly a shrewd one. To -secure his concealed treasure he had manufactured a large quantity of -brass handles for knives and forks, and advertised them as being forged -from the destroyed statue. They sold well; the Royalists bought them as -sad and precious relics; the Puritans as mementos of their triumph. He -doubled his prices, and still his shop was crowded with eager customers, -so that in a short time he realised a considerable fortune.[383] - -The brazier, or the brazier's family, probably sold the statue to Charles -II. at his restoration. The Parliament voted L70,000 for solemnising the -funeral of Charles I., and for erecting a monument to his memory.[384] -Part of this sum went for the pedestal, but whether the brazier or his kin -were rewarded is not known. Charles II. probably spent most of the money -on his pleasures. - -There is a fatality attending the verses of most time-serving poets. -Waller never wrote a court poem well but when he lauded that great man, -the Protector. When the statue of "the Martyr" was set up, _fourteen -years_ after the Restoration--so tardy was filial affection--Waller wrote -the following dull and unworthy lines about the statue of a faithless -king:-- - - "That the first Charles does here in triumph ride, - See his son reign where he a martyr died, - And people pay that reverence as they pass - (Which then he wanted) to the sacred brass - Is not th' effect of gratitude alone, - To which we owe the statue and the stone; - But Heaven this lasting monument has wrought, - That mortals may eternally be taught - Rebellion, though successful, is but vain, - And kings so kill'd rise conquerors again. - This truth the royal image does proclaim - Loud as the trumpet of surviving fame." - -Andrew Marvell, one of the most powerful of lampoon writers, and the very -Gillray of political satirists, wrote some bitter lines on the statue of -the so-called Martyr at Charing Cross, lines which in an earlier reign -would have cost the honest daring poet his ears, if not his head. - -There was an equestrian stone statue of Charles II. at Woolchurch -(Woolwich?), and the poet imagines the two horses, the one of stone and -the other of brass, talking together one evening, when the two riders, -weary of sitting all day, had stolen away together for a chat. - - "WOOLCHURCH.--To see Dei gratia writ on the throne, - And the king's wicked life says God there is none. - - CHARING.--That he should be styled Defender of the Faith - Who believes not a word what the Word of God saith. - - WOOLCHURCH.--That the Duke should turn Papist and that church defy - For which his own father a martyr did die. - - CHARING.--Tho' he changed his religion, I hope he's so civil - Not to think his own father has gone to the devil." - -Upon the brazen horse being asked his opinion of the Duke of York, it -replies with terrible truth and force:-- - - "The same that the frogs had of Jupiter's stork. - With the Turk in his head and the Pope in his heart, - Father Patrick's disciple will make England smart. - If e'er he be king, I know Britain's doom: - We must all to the stake or be converts to Rome. - Ah! Tudor! ah! Tudor! of Stuarts enough. - None ever reigned like old Bess in her ruff. - - * * * * * - - WOOLCHURCH.--But can'st thou devise when kings will be mended? - - CHARING.--When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended." - -In April 1810 the sword, buckles, and straps fell from the statue.[385] -The king's sword was stolen on the day on which Queen Victoria went to -open the Royal Exchange. - -London has its local traditions as well as the smallest village. There is -a foolish story that the sculptor of Charles I. and his steed committed -suicide in vexation at having forgotten to put a girth to the horse. The -myth has arisen from the supposition of there being no girth, and -retailers of such stories, Mr. Leigh Hunt included, did not take the -trouble to ascertain whether there was or was not a girth. Unfortunately -for the story there is a girth, and it is clearly visible. - -The pedestal, by some assigned to Marshal, by others to Grinling Gibbons, -the great wood-carver, and a Dutchman by birth, is seventeen feet high, -and is enriched with the arms of England, trophies of armour, cupids, and -palm-branches. It is erected in the centre of a circular area, thirty feet -in diameter, raised one step from the roadway, and enclosed with iron -rails. The lion and unicorn are much mutilated, and the trophies are -honeycombed and corroded by the weather. It has not been generally -observed that on the south side of the pedestal two weeping children -support a crown of thorns, and that the same emblem is repeated on the -opposite side, below the royal arms. - -In 1727 (1st George II.) that infamous rogue, Edmund Curll, the publisher -of all the filth and slander of his age, stood in the pillory at Charing -Cross for printing a vile work called _Venus in a Cloyster_. He was not, -however, pelted or ill-used; for, with the usual lying and cunning of his -reptile nature, he had circulated printed papers telling the people that -he stood there for daring to vindicate the memory of Queen Anne. The mob -allowed no one to touch him; and when he was taken down they carried him -off in triumph to a neighbouring tavern.[386] - -Archenholz, an observant Prussian officer who was in England in 1784, -tells a curious anecdote of the statue at Charing Cross. During the war in -which General Braddock was defeated by the French in America, about the -time when Minorca was in the enemy's hands, and poor Byng had just fallen -a victim to popular fury, an unhappy Spaniard, who did not know a word of -English, and had just arrived in England, was surrounded by a mob near -Whitehall, who took him by his dress for a French spy. One of the rabble -instantly proposed to mount him on the king's horse. The idea was adopted. -A ladder was brought, and the miserable Spaniard was forced upon its back, -to be loaded with insults and pelted with mud. Luckily for the stranger, -at that moment a cabinet minister happening to pass by, stopped to inquire -the cause of the crowd. On addressing the man in French he discovered the -mistake, and informed the mob. They instantly helped the man down, and the -minister, taking him in his coach to the Spanish ambassador, apologised in -the name of the nation for a mistake that might have been fatal.[387] - -In June 1731 Japhet Crook, _alias_ Sir Peter Stranger, who had been found -guilty of forging the writings to an estate, was sentenced to imprisonment -for life.[388] He was condemned to stand for one hour in the pillory at -Charing Cross. He was then seated in an elbow-chair; the common hangman -cut off both his ears with an incision knife, and then delivered them to -Mr. Watson, a sheriff's officer. He also slit both Crook's nostrils with a -pair of scissors, and seared them with a hot iron, pursuant to the -sentence. A surgeon attended on the pillory and instantly applied styptics -to prevent the effusion of blood. The man bore the operations with -undaunted courage. He laughed on the pillory, and denied the fact to the -last. He was then removed to the Ship Tavern at Charing Cross, and thence -taken back to the King's Bench prison, to be confined there for life.[389] - -This Crook had forged the conveyance, to himself, of an estate, upon which -he took up several thousand pounds. He was at the same time sued in -Chancery for having fraudulently obtained a will and wrongfully gained an -estate. In spite of losing his ears, he enjoyed the ill-gained money in -prison till the day of his death, and then quietly left it to his -executor. He is mentioned by Pope in his 3d epistle, written in 1732. -Talking of riches, he says-- - - "What can they give?--to dying Hopkins heirs? - To Chartres vigour? Japhet nose and ears?"[390] - -It was in this essay that, having been accused of attacking the Duke of -Chandos, Pope first began to attack vices instead of follies, and, in -order to prevent mistakes, boldly to publish the names of the malefactors -whom he gibbeted. - -Crook had been a brewer on Tower Hill. The 2d George II., c. 25, made -forgery a felony; and the first sufferer under the new law was Richard -Cooper, a Stepney victualler, who was hanged at Tyburn, in June 1731, six -days only after the older and luckier thief had stood in the pillory. - -In 1763 Parsons, the parish-clerk of St. Sepulchre's, and the impudent -contriver of the "Cock Lane ghost" deception, mounted here to the same bad -eminence. Parsons's child, a cunning little girl of twelve years, had -contrived to tap on her bed in a way that served to convey what were -supposed to be supernatural messages. It proved to be a plot devised by -Parsons out of malice against a gentleman of Norfolk who had sued him for -a debt. This gentleman was a widower, who had taken his wife's sister as -his mistress--a marriage with her being forbidden by law--and had brought -her to lodge with Parsons, from whence he had removed her to other -lodgings, where she had died suddenly of small-pox. The object of Parsons -was to obtain the ghost's declaration that she had been poisoned by -Parsons's creditor. The rascal was set three times in the pillory and -imprisoned for a year in the King's Bench. The people, however, singularly -enough, did not pelt the impudent rogue, but actually collected money for -him. - -There is a rare sheet-print of Charing Cross by Sutton Nicholls, in the -reign of Queen Anne. It shows about forty small square stone posts -surrounding the pedestal of the statue. The spot seems to have been a -favourite standing-place for hackney coaches and sedan chairs. Every house -has a long stepping-stone for horsemen at a regulated distance from the -front. - -In 1737 Hogarth published his four prints of the "Times of the Day."[391] -The scene of _Night_ is laid at Charing Cross; it is an -illumination-night. Some drunken Freemasons and the Salisbury "High-flyer" -coach upset over a street bonfire near the Rummer Tavern, fill up the -picture, which is curious as showing the roadway much narrower than it is -now, and impeded with projecting signs above and bulkheads below. - -The place is still further immortalised in the old song-- - - "I cry my matches by Charing Cross, - Where sits a black man on a black horse." - -In a sixpenny book for children, published about 1756, the absurd figure -of King George impaled on the top of Bloomsbury Church is contrasted with -that of King Charles at the Cross. - - "No longer stand staring, - My friend, at Cross Charing, - Amidst such a number of people; - For a man on a horse - Is a matter of course, - But look! here's a king on a steeple."[392] - -It was at Robinson's coffee-house, at Charing Cross, that that clever -scamp, vigorous versifier, and, as I think, great impostor, Richard -Savage, stabbed to death a Mr. Sinclair in a drunken brawl. Savage had -come up from Richmond to settle a claim for lodgings, when, meeting two -friends, he spent the night in drinking, till it was too late to get a -bed. As the three revellers passed Robinson's, a place of no very good -name, they saw a light, knocked at the door, and were admitted. It was a -cold, raw, November night; and hearing that the company in the parlour -were about to leave, and that there was a fire there, they pushed in and -kicked down the table. A quarrel ensued, swords were drawn, and Mr. -Sinclair received a mortal wound. The three brawlers then fled, and were -discovered lurking in a back-court by the soldiers who came to stop the -fray. The three men were taken to the Gate House at Westminster, and the -next morning to Newgate. That cruel and bullying judge, Page, hounded on -the jury at the trial in the following violent summing up:--"Gentlemen of -the jury, you are to consider that Mr. Savage is a very great man, a much -greater man than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he wears very fine -clothes, much finer than you or I, gentlemen of the jury; that he has -abundance of money in his pocket, much more money than you or I, gentlemen -of the jury; but, gentlemen of the jury, is it not a very hard case, -gentlemen of the jury, that Mr. Savage should therefore kill you or me, -gentlemen of the jury?" - -The verdict was of course "Guilty," for these homicides during tavern -brawls had become frightfully common, and quiet citizens were never sure -of their lives. Sentence of death was recorded against him. Eventually a -lady at court interceded for the poet, who escaped with six months' -imprisonment in Newgate, which he certainly well deserved. - -There is every reason to suppose from the researches of Mr. W. Moy Thomas, -that Savage was an impostor. He claimed to be the illegitimate son of the -Countess of Macclesfield by Lord Rivers. The lady had an illegitimate -child born in Fox Court, Gray's Inn Lane in 1697; but this child, there -is reason to think, died in 1698.[393] Savage imposed on Dr. Johnson and -other friends with stories of being placed at school and apprenticed to a -shoemaker in Holborn by his countess mother, until among his nurse's old -letters he one day accidentally discovered the secret of his birth. There -is no proof at all of his being persecuted by the countess, whose life he -rendered miserable by insults, lampoons, abuse, slander, and begging -letters. - -Pope has embalmed Page in the _Dunciad_ just as a scorpion is preserved in -a spirit-bottle:-- - - "Morality by her false guardians drawn, - Chicane in furs, and Casuistry in lawn, - Gasps as they straighten at each end the cord, - And dies when Dulness gives her _Page_ the word."[394] - -And again, with equal bitterness and truth, in his _Imitations of -Horace_:-- - - "Slander or poison dread from Delia's rage, - Hard words or hanging if your judge be Page." - -This "hanging judge," who enjoyed his ermine and his infamy till he was -eighty, first obtained preferment by writing political pamphlets. He was -made a Baron of the Exchequer in 1718, a Justice of the Common Pleas in -1726, and in 1727 transferred to the Court of King's Bench. Page was so -illiterate that he commenced one of his charges to the grand jury of -Middlesex with this remarkable statement: "I dare venture to affirm, -gentlemen, on my own knowledge, that England never was so happy, both _at -home and abroad_, as it now is." Horace Walpole mentions that when Crowle, -the punning lawyer, was once entering an assize court, some one asked him -if Judge Page was not "just behind." Crowle replied, "I don't know, but I -am sure he never was just before."[395] - -The various mews, now stables, about London, derive their name from the -enclosure where falcons in the Middle Ages were kept to mew (_mutare_, -Minshew) their feathers. The King's Mews stood on the site of the present -Trafalgar Square. In the 13th Edward II. John de la Becke had the custody -of the Mews "apud Charing, juxta Westminster." In the 10th Edward III. -John de St. Albans succeeded Becke. In Richard II.'s time the office of -king's falconer, a post of importance, was held by Sir Simon Burley, who -was constable of the castles of Windsor, Wigmore, and Guilford, and also -of the royal manor of Kennington. This Sir Simon had been selected by the -Black Prince as guardian of Richard II., and he also negotiated his -marriage. One of the complaints of Wat Tyler and his party was that he had -thrown a burgher of Gravesend into Rochester Castle. The Duke of -Gloucester had him executed in 1388, in spite of Richard's queen praying -upon her knees for his life. At the end of this reign or in the first year -of Henry IV., the poet Chaucer was clerk of the king's works and also of -the Mews at Charing; and here, from his fluttering, angry little feathered -subjects, he must have drawn many of those allusions to the brave sport of -hawking to be found in the immortal _Canterbury Tales_. - -The falconry continued at Charing till 1534 (26th Henry VIII.), when the -king's fine stabling, with many horses and a great store of hay, being -destroyed by fire, the Mews was rebuilt and turned into royal stables, in -the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary.[396] - -M. St. Antoine, the riding-master, whose portrait Vandyke painted, -performed his caracoles and demi-tours at the Mews. Here Cromwell -imprisoned Lieut.-Colonel George Joyce, who, when plain cornet, had -arrested the king at Holmby. An angry little Puritan pamphlet of four -pages, published in 1659, gives an account of Cromwell's troubles with the -fractious Joyce, and how he had resolved to cashier him and destroy his -estate. - -The colonel was carried by musqueteers to the common Dutch prison at the -Mews, and seems to have been much tormented by Cavalier vermin. There he -remained ten days, and was then removed to another close room, where he -fell sick from the "evil smells," and remained so for ten weeks, refusing -all the time to lay down his commission, declaring that he had been -unworthily dealt with, and that all that had been sworn against him was -false. - -There was at the Mews gate a celebrated old book shop, opened in 1750 by -Mr. Thomas Payne, who kept it alive for forty years. It was the rendezvous -of all noblemen and scholars who sought rare books. It may be remarked, by -the way, that booksellers' shops have always been the haunts of wits and -poets. Dodsley, the ex-footman, gathered round him the wisest men of his -age, as Tonson had also done before him; while, as for John Murray's back -parlour, it was in Byron's and Moore's days a very temple of the Muses. - -In Charles II.'s time the famous but ugly horse Rowley lived at the Mews, -and gave a nickname to his swarthy royal master. - -In 1732 that impudent charlatan, Kent, rebuilt the Mews, which was only -remarkable after that for sheltering for a time Mr. Cross's menagerie, -when first removed from Exeter Change in 1829. - -The National Gallery, one of the poorest buildings in London (which is -saying a good deal), was built between 1832 and 1838, from the designs of -a certain unfortunate Mr. Wilkins, R.A. It is not often that Fortune is so -malicious as to give an inferior artist such ample room to show his -inability. The vote for founding the Gallery passed in Parliament in April -1824. The columns of the portico were part of the screen of Carlton -House--interesting memorials of a debasing regency, and, if possible, of a -worse reign. The site has been called "the finest in Europe:" it is, -however, a fine site, which is more than can be said of the building that -covers it. The front is 500 feet long. In the centre is a portico, on -stilts, with eight Corinthian columns approached by a double flight of -steps; a low squat dome not much larger than a washing basin; and two -pepper-castor turrets that crown the eyesore of London. Though on high -ground--very high ground for a rather flat city--the architect, pinched -for money, contrived to make the building lower than the grand portico of -St. Martin's Church, and even than the houses of Suffolk Place. - -One of the last occasions on which William IV. appeared in public was in -1837, before the opening of the first Academy Exhibition here in May. The -good-natured king is said to have suggested calling the square -"Trafalgar," and erecting a Nelson monument. A subscription was opened, -and the Duke of Buccleuch was appointed chairman. - -The square was commenced in 1829, but was not completed till after 1849. -The Nelson column was begun in 1837, and the statue set up in November -1843. Three premiums were offered for the three best designs, and Mr. -Railton carried off the palm. Upwards of L20,480 were subscribed, and, -L12,000 it was thought would be required to complete the monument.[397] It -was originally intended to expend only L30,000 upon the whole.[398] Alas -for estimates so sanguine, so fallacious! the granite work alone cost -upwards of L10,000. - -Mr. Railton chose a column, after mature reflection; although triumphal -columns are bad art, and the invention of a barbarous people and a corrupt -age.[399] He rejected a temple, as too expensive and too much in the way; -a group of figures he condemned as not visible at a distance; he finally -chose a Corinthian column as new, as harmonious, and as uniting the -labours of sculptor and architect. - -The column, with its base and pedestal, measures 193 feet. The fluted -shaft has a torus of oak leaves. The capital is copied from the fine -example of Mars Ultor at Rome; from it rises a circular pedestal wreathed -with laurel, and surmounted by a statue of Nelson, eighteen feet high, and -formed of two blocks of stone from the Granton quarry. The great pedestal -is adorned with four bassi-relievi, eighteen feet square each, -representing four of Nelson's great victories. It is difficult to say -which is tamest of the four. That of "Trafalgar" is by Mr. Carew; the -"Nile," by Mr. Woodington; "St. Vincent," by Mr. Watson; and "Copenhagen," -by Mr. Ternouth. - -The pedestal is raised on a flight of fifteen steps, at the angles of -which are placed couchant lions from the designs of Sir Edwin Landseer. -They are forged out of French cannon. The capital is of the same costly -material, which, considering the brave English blood it has cost, should -have been painted crimson. Many years passed by after the commission was -given to Sir Edwin Landseer before they were placed _in situ_. - -The cocked hat on Mr. Baily's statue has been somewhat unjustly ridiculed, -and so has the coil of rope or pigtail supporting the hero. - -The bronze equestrian statue of George IV., at the north-east end of the -square, is by Chantrey. It was ordered by the king in 1829. The price was -to be 9000 guineas, but the worthy monarch never paid the sculptor more -than a third of that sum; the rest was given by the Woods and Forests out -of the national taxes, and the third instalment in 1843, after Chantrey's -death, by the Lords of the Treasury. It is a sprightly and clever statue, -but of no great merit. It should have been paid for by William IV., just -as the Nelson statue should have been erected by Parliament, the honour -being one due to Nelson from an ungrateful nation. This statue of George -IV. was originally intended to crown the arch in front of Buckingham -Palace--an arch that cost L80,000, and that was hung with gates that cost -3000 guineas. The so-called Chartist riots of 1848 were commenced by boys -destroying the hoarding round the base of the Nelson monument. - -The fountains in the centre of the Square are of Peterhead granite, and -were made at Aberdeen. They are mean, despicable, and unworthy of the -noble position which they occupy. Some years ago there was a fuss about an -Artesian well that was to feed these stone punch-bowls with inexhaustible -gushes of silvery water. This supply has dwindled down to a sort of -overflow of a ginger-beer bottle once a day. I blush when I take a -foreigner to see Trafalgar Square, with its squat domes, its mean statues, -its tame bassi-relievi, and its disgraceful fountains. - -I will not trust myself to criticise the statues of Napier and Havelock. -The figures are poor, and unworthy of the fiery soldier and the Christian -hero they misrepresent. They should be in the Abbey. Why has the Abbey -grown, like the Court, less receptive than ever? What passport is there -into the Abbey, where such strange people sleep, if the conquest of Scinde -and the relief of Lucknow will not take a body there. - -But to return to the National Gallery. Mr. G. Agar-Ellis, afterwards Lord -Dover, first proposed a National Gallery in Parliament in 1824; Government -having previously purchased thirty-eight pictures from Mr. Angerstein for -L57,000. This collection included "The Raising of Lazarus," by Del Piombo. -It is supposed that Michael Angelo, jealous of Raphael's -"Transfiguration," helped Sebastian in the drawing of his cartoon, which -was to be a companion picture for Narbonne Cathedral. It was purchased -from the Orleans Gallery for 3500 guineas.[400] - -In 1825 some pictures were purchased for the Gallery from Mr. Hamlet. -These included the "Bacchus and Ariadne" of Titian, for L5000. This golden -picture (extolled by Vasari) was painted about 1514 for the Duke of -Ferrara. Titian was then in the full vigour of his thirty-seventh -year.[401] - -In the same year "La Vierge au Panier" of Correggio was purchased from Mr. -Nieuwenhuy, a picture-dealer, for L3800. It is a late picture, and hurt in -cleaning. It was one of the gems of the Madrid Gallery. - -In 1826, Sir George Beaumont presented sixteen pictures, valued at 7500 -guineas. These included one of the finest landscapes of Rubens, "The -Chateau," which originally cost L1500, and Wilkie's _chef-d'oeuvre_, that -fine Raphaelesque composition, "The Blind Fiddler." - -In 1834 the Rev. William Holwell Carr left the nation thirty-five -pictures, including fine specimens of the Caracci, Titian, Luini, -Garofalo, Claude, Poussin, and Rubens. - -Another important donation was that of the great "Peace and War," bought -for L3000 by the Marquis of Stafford, and given to the nation. It was -originally presented to Charles I., by Rubens, who gave unto the king not -as a painter but as almost a king. - -The British Institution also gave three esteemed pictures by Reynolds, -Gainsborough, and West, and a fine Parmigiano. - -But the greatest addition to the collection was made in 1834, when -L11,500[402] were given for the two great Correggios, the "Ecce Homo" and -the "Education of Cupid," from the Marquis of Londonderry's collection. To -the "Ecce Homo" Pungileoni assigns the date 1520, when the great master -was only twenty-six. It once belonged to Murat. The "Education of Cupid," -which once belonged to Charles I., has been a good deal retouched.[403] - -In 1836 King William IV. presented to the gallery six pictures; in 1837 -Colonel Harvey Ollney gave seventeen; in 1838 Lord Farnborough bequeathed -fifteen, and R. Simmons, Esq., fourteen. The last pictures were chiefly of -the Netherlands school. In 1854 the nation possessed two hundred and -sixteen pictures, and of these seventy only had been purchased. - -In 1857 that greatest of all landscape-painters, Joseph M. W. Turner, left -the nation 362 oil-paintings, and about 19,000 sketches (including 1757 -water-colour drawings of value). In his will this eccentric man -particularly desired that two of his pictures--a Dutch coast-scene and -"Dido Building Carthage"--should be hung between Claude's "Sea-Port" and -"Mill." - -The will was disputed, and the engravings and the money, all but L20,000, -went to the next of kin. - -The diploma pictures (that formerly were annually exhibited to the public) -are of great interest. They were given by various members of the Royal -Academy at their elections. That of the parsimonious Wilkie--"Boys digging -for Rats" (fine as Teniers)--is remarkably small. There is a very fine -graceful portrait of Sir William Chambers, the architect, by Reynolds, and -one still more robust and glowing of Sir Joshua by himself. He is in his -doctor's robes. There is a splendid but rather pale Etty--"A Satyr -surprising a Nymph;" and a fine vigorous picture by Briggs, of "Blood -stealing the Crown." - -In 1849, Robert Vernon, Esq., nobly left the nation one hundred and -sixty-two fine examples of the English school. These are now removed to -the Kensington Museum. - -Of the pictures given by Turner to the nation, the masterpieces are the -"Temeraire" and the "Escape of Ulysses,"--both triumphs of colour and -imagination. The one is a scene from the _Odyssey_; the other represents -an old man-of-war being towed to its last berth--a scene witnessed by the -artist himself while boating near Greenwich. The works of Turner may be -divided very fairly into three eras: those in which he imitated the Dutch -landscape-painters, the period when he copied idealised Nature, and the -time when he resorted from eccentricity or indifference to reckless -experiments in colour and effect--most of them quite unworthy of his -genius. Not in drawing the figure, but in aerial perspective, did Turner -excel. The great portfolios of drawings that he left the nation show with -what untiring and laborious industry he toiled. In habits sordid and mean, -in tastes low and debased, this great genius, the son of a humble -hairdresser in Maiden Lane, succeeded in attaining an excellence in -landscape, fitful and unequal it is true, but often rising to poetic -regions unknown to Claude, Ruysdael, Vandervelde, Salvator, or Backhuysen. - -Ever since the modern pictures were removed to South Kensington, there has -been a constant effort to transfer the ancient pictures and to abandon the -National Gallery to the Royal Academy--a rich society, making L5000 or -L6000 a year, which its members cannot spend, and which tenants the -national building only by permission. To remove the pictures from the -centre of London is to remove them from those who cannot go far to see -them, to the neighbourhood of rich people who do not need their teaching, -and who have picture-galleries of their own. - -In 1859, twenty pictures were bequeathed to the gallery by Mr. Jacob Bell, -and a few years later twenty-two others were added as a gift by Her -Majesty. The last great addition is the presentation of ninety-four -pictures by Mr. Wynn Ellis. But in spite of all these treasures, acquired -by purchase or by bequest, the nation cannot boast that its gallery does -justice to our taste or national wealth. It is still lamentably deficient -in more than one department; and there are not wanting those who assert -that the Royal Academy stifles art rather than promotes it. It is regarded -by the outside world as a close-borough, in which the interests of the -public and of students are postponed to those of its Associates and -Members, the A.R.A.'s and R.A.'s of the age. - -The building in which the collection is deposited was erected at the -national expense, from the designs of Mr. William Wilkins, R.A., and -opened to the public in 1838. It was considerably altered and enlarged in -1860, and in 1869 five other rooms were added by the surrender to the -Trustees of those hitherto appropriated by the Royal Academy. In 1876 a -new wing was added, after a design by Mr. E. M. Barry, R.A., and the whole -collection is now under one roof. - -The Royal College of Physicians is a large classic building at the -north-west corner of Trafalgar Square. It was built in 1823 from the -designs of Sir Robert Smirke. The college was founded in 1518 by Dr. -Linacre, the successor to Shakspeare's Dr. Butts, and physician to Henry -VII. From Knightrider Street the doctors moved to Amen Corner, and thence -to Warwick Lane, between Newgate Street and Paternoster Row. The number of -fellows, originally thirty, is now as unlimited as the "dira cohors" of -diseases that the college has to encounter. - -In the gallery above the library there are seven preparations made by the -celebrated Harvey when at Padua--"learned Padua." There are also some -excellent portraits--Harvey, by Jansen; Sir Thomas Browne, the author of -_Religio Medici_; Sir Theodore Mayerne, the physician of James I.; Sir -Edmund King, who, on his own responsibility, bled Charles II. during a -fit; Dr. Sydenham, by Mary Beale; Doctor Radcliffe, William III.'s doctor, -by Kneller; Sir Hans Sloane, the founder of the British Museum, by -Richardson, whom Hogarth rather unjustly ridiculed; honest Garth (of the -"Dispensary"), by Kneller; Dr. Freind, Dr. Mead, Dr. Warren (by -Gainsborough); William Hunter, and Dr. Heberden. - -There are also some valuable and interesting busts--George IV., by -Chantrey (a _chef-d'oeuvre_); Dr. Mead, by the vivacious Roubilliac; Dr. -Sydenham, by Wilton; Harvey, by Scheemakers; Dr. Baillie, by Chantrey, -from a model by Nollekens; Dr. Babington, by poor Behnes. One of the -treasures of the place is Dr. Radcliffe's gold-headed cane, which was -successively carried by Drs. Mead, Askew, Pitcairn, and Baillie. There is -also a portrait-picture by Zoffany of Hunter delivering a lecture on -anatomy to the Royal Academy. Any fellow can give an order to see this -hoarded collection, which should be thrown open to the public on certain -days. It is selfish and utterly wanting in public spirit to keep such -treasures in the dark. - -The wits buzzed about Charing Cross between 1680 and 1730 as thick as bees -round May flowers. In this district, between those years, stood "The -Elephant," "The Sugarloaf," "The Old Man's Coffee-house," "The Old Vine," -"The Three Flower de Luces," "The British Coffee-house," "The Young Man's -Coffee-house," and "The Three Queens." - -There is an erroneous tradition that Cromwell had a house on the site of -Drummond's bank. He really lived farther south, in King Street. When the -bank was built, the houses were set back full forty yards more to the -west, upon an open square place called "Cromwell's Yard."[405] - -Drummond's is said to have gained its fame by advancing money secretly to -the Pretender. Upon this being known, the Court withdrew all their -deposits. The result was that the Scotch Tory noblemen rallied round the -house and brought in so much money that the firm soon became leading -bankers, dividing the West End custom with Messrs. Coutts. - -Craig's Court, on the east side of Charing Cross, was built in 1702. It is -generally supposed to have been named after the father of Mr. Secretary -Craggs, the friend of Pope and Addison: Mr. Cunningham, an excellent and -reliable authority, says that as early as the year 1658 there was a James -Cragg living on the "water side," in the Charing Cross division of St. -Martin's-in-the-Fields. The Sun Fire-office was established in this court -in 1726; and here is Cox and Greenwood's, the largest army agency office -in Great Britain. - -Locket's, the famous ordinary, so called from Adam Locket, the landlord in -1674, stood on the site of Drummond's bank. An Edward Locket succeeded to -him in 1688, and remained till 1702.[406] In 1693 the second Locket took -the Bowling-green House at Putney Heath. That fair, slender, genteel Sir -George Etherege, whom Rochester praises for "fancy, sense, judgment, and -wit," frequented Locket's, and displayed there his courtly foppery, which -served as a model for his own Dorimant, and that prince and patriarch of -fops Sir Fopling Flutter. Sir George was always gentle and courtly, and -was compared in this to Sedley. - -He once got into a violent passion at the ordinary, and abused the -"drawers" for some neglect. This brought in Mrs. Locket, hot and fuming. -"We are so provoked," said Sir George, "that even I could find it in my -heart to pull the nosegay out of your bosom, and fling the flowers in your -face." This mild and courteous threat turned his friends' anger into a -general laugh. - -Sir George having run up a long score at Locket's, added to the injury by -ceasing to frequent the house. Mrs. Locket began to dun and threaten him. -He sent word back by the messenger that he would kiss her if she stirred a -step in it. When Mrs. Locket heard this, she bridled up, called for her -hood and scarf, and told her anxious husband that she'd see if there was -any fellow alive who had the impudence! "Prythee, my dear, don't be so -rash," said her milder husband; "you don't know what a man may do in his -passion."[407] - -Wycherly, that favourite of Charles II. till he married his titled wife, -writes in one of his plays (1675), "Why, thou art as shy of my kindness as -a Lombard Street alderman of a courtier's civility at Locket's."[408] -Shadwell too, Dryden's surly and clever foe, says (1691), "I'll answer you -in a couple of brimmers of claret at Locket's at dinner, where I have -bespoke an admirable good one."[409] - -A poet of 1697 describes the sparks, dressed by noon hurrying to the Mall, -and from thence to Locket's.[410] Prior proposes to dine at a crown a head -on ragouts washed down with champagne; then to go to court; and lastly he -says[411]-- - - "With evening wheels we'll drive about the Park, - Finish at Locket's, and reel home i' the dark." - -In 1708, Vanbrugh makes Lord Foppington doubtful whether he shall return -to dinner, as the noble peer says--"As Gad shall judge me I can't tell, -for 'tis possible I may dine with some of our House at Lacket's."[412] - -And in the same play the very energetic nobleman remarks--"From thence -(the Park) I go to dinner at Lacket's, where you are so nicely and -delicately served that, stap my vitals! they shall compose you a dish no -bigger than a saucer shall come to fifty shillings. Between eating my -dinner and washing my mouth, ladies, I spend my time till I go to the -play." - -In 1709 the epicurean and ill-fated Dr. King, talking of the changes in -St. James's Park, says-- - - "For Locket's stands where gardens once did spring, - And wild ducks quack where grasshoppers did sing."[413] - -Tom Brown also mentions Locket's, for he writes--"We as naturally went -from Mann's Coffee-house to the Parade as a coachman drives from Locket's -to the play-house." - -Prior, the poet, when his father the joiner died, was taken care of by his -uncle, who kept the Rummer Tavern at the back of No. 14 Charing Cross, two -doors from Locket's. It was a well-frequented house, and in 1685 the -annual feast of the nobility and gentry of St. Martin's parish was held -there. Prior was sent by the honest vintner to study under the great Dr. -Busby at Westminster: and in a window-seat at the Rummer the future poet -and diplomatist was found reading Horace, according to Bishop Burnet, by -the witty Earl of Dorset, who is said to have educated him. Prior, in the -dedication of his poems to the earl's son, proves his patron to have been -a paragon. Waller and Sprat consulted Dorset about their writings. Dryden, -Congreve, and Addison praised him. He made the court read _Hudibras_, the -town praise Wycherly's "Plain Dealer," and Buckingham delay his -"Rehearsal" till he knew his opinion. Pope imitated his "Dorinda," and -King Charles took his advice upon Lely's portraits. - -One of Prior's gayest and pleasantest poems seems to prove, however, that -Fleetwood Shepherd was a more essential patron than even the earl. The -poet writes-- - - "Now, as you took me up when little, - Gave me my learning and my vittle, - Asked for me from my lord things fitting, - Kind as I'd been your own begetting, - Confirm what formerly you've given, - Nor leave me now at six and seven, - As Sunderland has left Mun Stephen." - -And again, still more gaily-- - - "My uncle, rest his soul! when living, - Might have contrived me ways of thriving, - Taught me with cider to replenish - My vats or ebbing tide of Rhenish; - So when for hock I drew pricked white-wine, - Swear't had the flavour, and was right wine; - Or sent me with ten pounds to Furni- - val's Inn, to some good rogue attorney, - Where now, by forging deeds and cheating, - I'd found some handsome ways of getting. - All this you made me quit to follow - That sneaking, whey-faced god, Apollo; - Sent me among a fiddling crew - Of folks I'd neither seen nor knew, - Calliope and God knows who, - I add no more invectives to it: - You spoiled the youth to make a poet." - -That rascally housebreaker, Jack Sheppard, made his first step towards the -gallows by the robbery of two silver spoons at the Rummer Tavern. This -young rogue, whose deeds Mr. Ainsworth has so mischievously recorded, was -born in 1701, and ended his short career at Tyburn in 1724.[414] The -Rummer Tavern is introduced by Hogarth into his engraving of "Night." The -business was removed to the water side of Charing Cross in 1710, and the -new house burnt down in 1750. In 1688, Samuel Prior offered ten guineas -reward for the discovery of some persons who had accused him of clipping -coin.[415] - -Mrs. Centlivre, whom Pope pilloried in the _Dunciad_[416] was the daughter -of a Lincolnshire gentleman, who, being a Nonconformist, fled to Ireland -at the Restoration to escape persecution. Being left an orphan at the age -of twelve, she travelled to London on foot to seek her fortune. In her -sixteenth year she married a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox, who, however, did -not live more than a twelvemonth after. She afterwards wedded an officer -named Carrol, who was killed in a duel soon after their marriage. Left a -second time a widow, she then took to dramatic writing for a subsistence, -and from 1700 to 1705 produced six comedies, to one of which--"The -Gamester"--the poet Rowe contributed a prologue. She next tried the stage; -and while performing Alexander the Great, at Windsor, won the heart of Mr. -Centlivre, "a Yeoman of the Mouth," or principal cook to Queen Anne, who -married her. She lived happily with her husband for eighteen years, and -wrote some good, bustling, but licentious plays. "The Busybody," and -"Wonder; a Woman keeps a Secret," act well. - -In May, 1716, Mrs. Centlivre visited her native town of Holbeach for her -health, and on King George's birthday[417] invited all the pauper widows -of the place to a tavern supper. The windows were illuminated, the -church-bells were set ringing, there were musicians playing in the room, -the old women danced, and most probably got drunk, the enthusiastic -loyalist making them all fall on their knees and drink the healths of the -royal family, the Duke of Marlborough, Mr. Walpole, the Duke of Argyle, -General Cadogan, etc. etc. She ended the feast by sending the ringers a -copy of stirring verses denouncing the Jacobites;-- - - "Disdain the artifice they use - To bring in mass and wooden shoes - With transubstantiation: - Remember James the Second's reign, - When glorious William broke the chain - Rome had put on this nation." - -This clever but not too virtuous woman died at her house in Buckingham -Court, Spring Gardens, December 1, 1723.[418] - -Pope's dislike to Mrs. Centlivre is best explained by one of his own notes -to the _Dunciad_:--"She (Mrs. C.) wrote many plays and a song before she -was seven years old: she also wrote a ballad against Mr. Pope's _Homer_ -before he began it." And why should not an authoress have expressed her -opinion of Mr. Pope's inability to translate Homer? - -Mrs. Centlivre is rather bitterly treated by Leigh Hunt, who says that -she, "without doubt, wrote the most entertaining dramas of intrigue, with -a genius infinitely greater, and a modesty infinitely less, than that of -her sex in general; and she delighted, whenever she could not be obscene, -to be improbable."[419] - -Milton lodged at one Thomson's, next door to the Bull-head Tavern at -Charing Cross, close to the opening to the Spring Gardens, during the time -he was writing his book _Joannis Philippi Angli Defensio_.[420] - -The Golden Cross ran up beside the King's Mews a little east of its -present site; it was the "Bull and Mouth" of the West End till railways -drew travellers from the old roads; it then became a railway parcel -office. Poor reckless Dr. Maginn wrote a ballad lamenting the change, in -which he mourned the Mews Gate public-house, Tom Bish and his lotteries, -and the barrack-yard. He curses Nash and Wyatville, and then bursts -forth-- - - "No more I'll eat the juicy steak - Within its boxes pent, - When in the mail my place I take, - For Bath or Brighton bent. - - "No more the coaches I shall see - Come trundling from the yard, - Nor hear the horn blown cheerily - By brandy-sipping guard. - King Charles, I think, must sorrow sore, - E'en were he made of stone, - When left by all his friends of yore - (Like Tom Moore's rose) alone. - - "No wonder the triumphant Turk - O'er Missolonghi treads, - Roasts bishops, and in bloody work - Snips off some thousand heads! - No wonder that the Crescent gains, - When we the fact can't gloss, - That we ourselves are at such pains - To trample down the Cross! - - "Oh! London won't be London long, - For 'twill be all pulled down, - And I shall sing a funeral song - O'er that time-honoured town. - One parting curse I here shall make, - And then lay down my quill, - Hoping Old Nick himself may take - Both Nash and Wyatville."[421] - -Till late in the last century a lofty straddling sign-post and a long -water-trough, just such as still adorn country towns, stood before this -inn.[422] - -Charing Cross Hospital, one of those great charities that atone for so -many of the sins of London, relieved, in the year 1878, 15,854 necessitous -persons, including more than 1000 cases of severe accident, while above -1500 persons were admitted on the recommendation of governors and -subscribers.[423] Surely, if anything can redeem our national vices, our -selfishness, our commercial dishonesty, our unjust wars, and our -unrighteous conquests, it must be such vast charities as these. - -One authority represents that great scholar and divine, Dr. Isaac Barrow, -the friend of Newton, as having died "in mean lodgings at a saddler's near -Charing Cross, an old, low, ill-built house, which he had used for many -years." Barrow was then Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Roger North, -however, says that he died of an overdose of opium, and "ended his days in -London in a prebendary's house that had a little stair to it out of the -cloisters, which made him call it a _man's nest_."[424] Barrow died in -1677, and was buried in the Abbey. Rhodes, the bookseller and actor, lived -at the Ship at Charing Cross. He had been wardrobe-keeper at the -Blackfriars Theatre; and in 1659 he reopened the Cockpit Theatre in Drury -Lane. - -On September 7, 1650, as that dull, learned man, Bulstrode Whitelock, one -of the Commissioners for the Great Seal, was going in his coach towards -Chelsea, a messenger from Scotland stopped him about Charing Cross, and -cried, "Oh, my lord, God hath appeared gloriously to us in Scotland; a -glorious day, my lord, at Dunbar in Scotland." "I asked him," says -Whitelock, "how it was. He said that the General had routed all the Scots -army, but that he could not stay to tell me the particulars, being in -haste to go to the House."[425] - -Lord Dartmouth relates a story in Burnet of Sir Edward Seymour the -Speaker's coach breaking down at Charing Cross, in Charles II.'s time. He -instantly, with proud coolness, ordered the beadles to stop the next -gentleman's coach that passed and bring it to him. The expelled gentleman -was naturally both surprised and angry; but Sir Edward gravely assured him -that it was far more proper for him than for the Speaker of the House of -Commons to walk the streets, and accordingly left him to do so without any -further apology.[426] - -Horace Walpole was a diligent attender at the State Trials of 1746. The -day "poor brave old" Balmerino retracted his plea, asked pardon, and -desired the Peers to intercede for mercy, Walpole tells us that his -lordship stopped the coach at Charing Cross as he returned to the Tower, -carelessly to buy "honey-blobs," as the Scotch call gooseberries. - -But we must not leave Charing Cross without specially remembering that -when Boswell dared to praise Fleet Street as crowded and cheerful, Dr. -Johnson replied in a voice of thunder, "Why, sir, Fleet Street _has_ a -very animated appearance; but I think the full tide of existence is at -Charing Cross."[427] - -Nearly where the Post Office at Charing Cross now stands, there was once -(of all things in the world) a hermitage. Even Prince George of Denmark -might have been pardoned by James II., his sour father-in-law, for making -his invariable reply, "Est-il possible?" to this statement. Yet the patent -rolls of the 47th Henry III. grant permission to William de Radnor, Bishop -of Llandaff, to lodge, with all his retainers, within the precinct of the -Hermitage at Charing, whenever he came to London.[428] - -Opposite this stood the ancient Hospital of St. Mary Roncevalles. It was -founded by William Marechal, Earl of Pembroke, a son, I believe, of the -early English conqueror of Ireland. It was suppressed by Henry V. as an -alien priory, restored by Edward IV., and finally suppressed by Edward -VI., who granted it to Sir Thomas Carwarden, to be held in free soccage of -the honour of Westminster. - -The mesh and labyrinth of obscure alleys and lanes running between the -bottom of St. Martin's Lane and Bedford Street, towards Bedfordbury, with -old Round Court, so called in mockery, for its centre, were swept away by -the besom of improvement in 1829, when Trafalgar Square was begun, never -to be finished. In Elizabeth's or James's time, gallants who had cruised -in search of Spanish galleons wittily nicknamed these Straits "the -Bermudas," from their narrow and intricate channels. Here the valorous -Captain Bobadill must have lived in Barmecidal splendour, and have taught -his dupes the true conduct of the weapon. Justice Overdo mentions the -Bermudas with a righteous indignation. "Look," says that great legal -functionary, "into any angle of the town, the Streights or the Bermudas, -where the quarrelling lesson is read, and how do they entertain the time -but with bottled ale and tobacco?"[429] How natural for Drake's men to -give such a name to a labyrinth of devious alleys! At a subsequent period -the cluster of avenues exchanged the title of _Bermudas_ for that of the -_C'ribbee Islands_, the learned possessors corrupting the name into a -happy allusion to the arts cultivated there.[430] - -Gay, writing in 1715, describes the small streets branching from Charing -Cross as resounding with the shoeblacks' cry, "Clean your honour's shoes?" -Great improvements were made in 1829-30, when the present arcade leading -from West Strand to St. Martin's Church, and inhabited chiefly by German -toymen, was built and named after Lord Lowther then Chief Commissioner of -the Woods and Forests.[431] The Strand was also widened, and many old -tottering houses were removed. - -Porridge Island was the cant name for a paved alley near St. Martin's -Church, originally a congeries of cookshops erected for the workmen at the -new church, and destroyed when the great rookery there was pulled down in -1829. It was a part of Bedfordbury, and derived its name from being full -of cookshops, or "slap-bangs," as street boys called such odorous places. -A writer in _The World_, in 1753, describes a man like Beau Tibbs, who had -his dinner in a pewter plate from a cookshop in Porridge Island, and with -only L100 a year was foolish enough to wear a laced suit, go every evening -in a chair to a rout, and return to his bedroom on foot, shivering and -supperless, vain enough to glory in having rubbed elbows with the quality -of Brentford.[432] - -It was in Round Court, in the centre of the key shops, herb shops, and -furniture warehouses of Bedfordbury that, in 1836, Robson the actor was -apprenticed to a Mr. Smellie, a copperplate engraver, and the printer of -the humorous caricatures of Mr. George Cruikshank.[433] - -The Swan at Charing Cross, over against the Mews, flourished in 1665, when -Marke Rider was the landlord. The token of the house bore the figure of a -swan holding a sprig in its mouth. Its memory is embalmed in a curious -extempore grace once said by Ben Jonson before King James. These are the -verses:-- - - "Our king and queen the Lord God bless, - The Palsgrave and the Lady Besse; - And God bless every living thing - That lives and breathes, and loves the king; - God bless the Council of Estate, - And Buckingham the fortunate; - God bless them all, and keep them safe, - And God bless me, and God bless Ralph." - -The schoolmaster king being mighty inquisitive to know who this Ralph was, -Ben told him it was the drawer at the Swan Tavern, who drew him good -canary. For this drollery the king gave Ben a hundred pounds.[434] The -story is probably true, for it is confirmed by Powell the actor.[435] - -The street signs of London were condemned in the second year of George -III.'s reign; but the sweeping Act for their final removal was not passed -till nine years later. In 1762, Bonnel Thornton (aided by Hogarth) opened -an exhibition of street signs in Bow Street[436] in ridicule of the Spring -Gardens exhibition. But as early as 1761 the street signs seem to have -been partially removed as dangerous obstructions. A writer in a -contemporary paper says,[437] "My master yesterday sent me to take a place -in the Canterbury stage; he said that when I came to Charing Cross I -should see which was the proper inn by the words on the sign. I rambled -about, but could see no sign at all. At last I was told that there used to -be such a sign under a little golden cross which I saw at a two pair of -stairs window. I entered and found the waiter swearing about innovations. -He said that the members of Parliament were unaccountable enemies to signs -which used to show trades; that, for his master's part, he might put on -sackcloth, for nobody came to buy sack. 'If,' said he, 'any of the signs -were too large, could they not have limited their size without pulling -down the sign-posts and destroying the painted ornaments of the Strand?' -On my return I saw some men pulling with ropes at a curious sign-iron, -which seemed to have cost some pounds: along with the iron down came the -leaden cover to the pent-house, which will cost at least some pounds to -repair." - -This was written the year of the first Act (2d George III.), and was -probably a groan from some one interested in the existence of the abuse. -The inferior artists gained much money from this source. Mr. Wale, one of -the first Academicians, painted a Shakspere five feet high[438] for a -public-house at the north-west corner of Little Russell Street, Covent -Garden. The picture was enclosed in a sumptuous carved gilt frame, and was -suspended by rich foliated ironwork. A London street a hundred years ago -must have been one long grotesque picture-gallery. - -When the meat is all good it is difficult to know where to insert the -knife. In travelling, how hard it is to turn back almost in sight of some -Promised Land of which one has often dreamed! Like that traveller I feel, -when I find it necessary in this chapter to confine myself strictly to the -legends, traditions, and history of Charing Cross proper, leaving for -other opportunities Spring Gardens, the story of the greater part of which -belongs more to St. James's Park, Whitehall, and Scotland Yard. - -[Illustration: THE KING'S MEWS, 1750.] - - - - -[Illustration: BARRACK AND OLD HOUSES ON SITE OF TRAFALGAR SQUARE, 1826.] - - -CHAPTER X. - -ST. MARTIN'S LANE. - - -Saint Martin's Lane, extending from Long Acre to Charing Cross, was built -before 1613, and then called the West Church Lane. The first church was -built here by Henry VIII. The district was first called St. Martin's Lane -about 1617-18.[439] - -Sir Theodore Mayerne, physician to James I., lived on the west side of -this lane. Mayerne was the godson of Beza, the great Calvinist reformer, -and one of Henry IV.'s physicians. He came to England after that king's -death. He then became James I.'s doctor, and was blamed for his treatment -of Prince Henry, whom many thought to have been poisoned. He was -afterwards physician to Charles I., and nominally to Charles II.; but he -died in 1655, five years before the Restoration. He gave his library to -the College of Physicians, and is said to have disclosed some of his -chemical secrets to the great enameller, Petitot.[440] Mayerne died of -drinking bad wine at a Strand tavern, and foretold the time of his death. - -A good story is told of Sir Theodore, which is the more curious because it -records the fashionable fee of those days. A friend consulting Mayerne, -and expecting to have the fee refused, ostentatiously placed on the table -two gold broad pieces (value six-and-thirty shillings each). Looking -rather mortified when Mayerne swept them into his pouch, "Sir." said Sir -Theodore, gravely, "I made my will this morning, and if it should become -known that I refused a fee the same afternoon I might be deemed _non -compos_."[441] - -Near this fortunate doctor, honoured by kings, lived Sir John Finett, a -wit and a song-writer, of Italian extraction. He became Master of the -Ceremonies to Charles I., and wrote a pedantic book on the treatment of -ambassadors, and other questions of precedency, of the gravest importance -to courtiers, but to no one else. He died in 1641. - -Two doors from Mayerne and five from Finett, from 1622 to 1634, lived -Daniel Mytens, the Dutch painter. On Vandyke's arrival Mytens grew jealous -and asked leave to return to the Hague. But the king persuaded him to -stay, and he became friendly with his rival, who painted his portrait. -There are pictures by this artist at Hampton Court. Prince Charles gave -him his house in the lane for twelve years at the peppercorn rent of 6d. a -year. - -Next to Sir John Finett lived Sir Benjamin Rudyer, and on the same side -Abraham Vanderoort, keeper of the pictures to Charles I., and necessarily -an acquaintance of Mytens and Vandyke. - -Carew Raleigh, son of the great enemy of Spain, and born in the Tower, -lived in this lane, on the west side, from 1636 to 1638, and again in -1664. This unfortunate man spent all his life in writing to vindicate his -father's memory, and in efforts to recover his Sherborne estate. In 1659, -by the influence of General Monk, he was made Governor of Jersey. - -The chivalrous wit, Sir John Suckling, dwelt in St. Martin's-in-the-Fields -in 1641, the year in which he joined in a rash plot to rescue Strafford -from the Tower. He fled to France, and died there in poverty the same -year, in the thirty-second year of his age. Suckling had served in the -army of Gustavus Adolphus, and was famous for his sparkling repartee. -There is an exquisite quaint grace about his poem of "The Wedding," which -has its scene at Charing Cross. - -Dr. Thomas Willis, a great physician of his day, who died here in 1678, -was grandfather of Browne Willis, the antiquary. Dr. Willis was a friend -of Wren, and a great anatomist and chemist. He mapped out the nerves very -industriously, and in his _Cerebri Anatome_ forestalled many future -phrenological discoveries.[442] - -In the same year that eccentric charlatan, Sir Kenelm Digby, was living in -the lane. The son of one of the gunpowder conspirators, and the -"Mirandola" of his age, he was one of Ben Jonson's adopted sons.[443] He -was generous to the poets; he understood ten or twelve languages; he -shattered the Venetian galleys at Scanderoon; he studied chemistry, and -professed to cure wounds with sympathetic powder. He held offices of -honour under Charles I., in France became a friend of Descartes, and after -the Restoration was an active member of the Royal Society. He was born, -won his naval victory, and died on the same day of the month. Ben Jonson, -in a poem on him, calls him "prudent, valiant, just, and temperate," and -adds quaintly-- - - "His breast is a brave palace, a broad street, - Where all heroic ample thoughts do meet, - Where Nature such a large survey hath ta'en, - As others' souls to _his dwelt in a lane_." - -I cannot here help observing that the ridiculous story about Ben Jonson in -his old age refusing money from Charles I., and rudely sending back word -"that the king's soul dwelt in a lane," must have originated in some -careless or malicious perversion of this line of the rough old poet's. - -"Immortal Ben" wrote ten poems on the death of Sir Kenelm's wife, who was -the daughter of Sir Edward Stanley, and, it is supposed, the mistress of -the Earl of Dorset. Randolph, Habington, and Feltham also wrote elegies on -this beautiful woman, who was found dead in her bed, accidentally -poisoned, it is supposed, by viper wine, or some philtre or cosmetic given -her by her experimentalising husband in order to heighten her beauty.[444] -In one of Ben Jonson's poems there are the following incomparable verses -about Lady Venetia:-- - - "Draw first a cloud, all save her neck, - And out of that make day to break, - Till like her face it do appear, - And men may think all light rose there." - -And again-- - - "Not swelling like the ocean proud, - But stooping gently as a cloud, - As smooth as oil pour'd forth, and calm - As showers, and sweet as drops of balm." - -Sir Kenelm, when imprisoned in Winchester House, in Southwark, wrote an -attack on Sir Thomas Browne's sceptical work _Religio Medici_. He also -produced a book on cookery, and a commentary on the _Faerie Queen_. This -strange being was buried in Christ Church, Newgate Street. - -St. Martin's-in-the-Fields is an ancient parish, but it was first made -independent of St. Margaret's, Westminster, in 1535, by that tyrant Henry -VIII., who, justly afraid of death, disliked the ceaseless black funeral -processions of the outlying people of St. Martin's passing the courtly -gate of Whitehall, and who therefore erected a church near Charing Cross, -and constituted its neighbourhood into a parish.[445] In 1607, that -unfortunate youth of promise, Henry Prince of Wales, added a chancel to -the very small church, which soon proved insufficient for the growing and -populous suburb. But though so modern, this parish formerly included in -its vast circle St. Paul's Covent Garden, St. James's Piccadilly, St. -Anne's Soho, and St. George's Hanover Square. It extended its princely -circle as far north as Marylebone, as far south as Whitehall, as far east -as the Savoy, and as far west as Chelsea and Kensington. When first rated -to the poor in Queen Elizabeth's time it contained less than a hundred -rateable persons. The chief inhabitants lived by the river side or close -to the church. Pall Mall and Piccadilly were then unnamed, and beyond the -church westward were St. James's Fields, Hay-hill Farm, Ebury Farm, and -the Neat houses about Chelsea.[446] - -In 1638 this overgrown parish, had carved out of it the district of St. -Paul's, Covent Garden; in 1684, St. James's, Westminster; and in 1686, St. -Anne's, Soho. But even in 1680, Richard Baxter, with brave fervour, -denounced what he called "the greatest cure in England,"[447] with its -population of forty thousand more persons than the church could -hold--people who "lived like Americans, without hearing a sermon for many -years." From such parishes of course crept forth Dissenters of all creeds -and colours. In 1826 the churchyard was removed to Camden Town, and the -street widened, pursuant to 7 George IV. c. 77. - -That shrewd native of Aberdeen, Gibbs--a not unworthy successor of -Wren--came to London at a fortunate time. Wren was fast dying; Vanbrugh -was neglected; there was room for a new architect, and no fear of -competition. His first church, St. Martin's, was a great success. Though -its steeple was heavy and misplaced, and the exterior flat and without -light or shade,[448] the portico was foolishly compared to that of the -Parthenon, and was considered unique for dignity and unity of combination. -The interior was so constructed as to render the introduction of further -ornaments or of monuments impossible. Savage did but express the general -opinion when he wrote with fine pathos-- - - "O Gibbs! whose art the solemn fanes can raise, - Where God delights to dwell and man to praise." - -The church was commenced in 1721 and finished in 1726, at a cost of -L36,891: 10: 4, including L1500 for an organ. - -With all its faults, it is certainly one of the finest buildings in -London, next to St. Paul's and the British Museum; but its cardinal fault -is the unnatural union of the Gothic steeple and the Grecian portico. The -one style is Pagan, the other Christian; the one expresses a sensuous -contentment with this earth, the other mounts towards heaven with an -eternal aspiration. The steeple leaps like a fountain from among lesser -pinnacles that all point upwards. The Grecian portico is a cave of level -shadow and of philosophic content. - -St. Martin's Church enshrines the dust of some illustrious persons. Here -lies Nicholas Hilliard, the miniature-painter to Queen Elizabeth, and who -died in 1619. He was a very careful painter, in the manner of Holbein. The -great Isaac Oliver was his pupil. He must have had some trouble with the -manly queen when she began to turn into a hag and to object to any shadow -in her portraits. Near him, in 1621, was buried Paul Vansomer, a Flemish -painter, celebrated for his portraits of James I. and his Danish queen. -And here rests, too, a third and greater painter, William Dobson, -Vandyke's protege, who, born in an unlucky age, and forgotten amid the -tumult of the Civil War, died in 1646, in poverty, in his house in St. -Martin's Lane. Dobson had been apprenticed to a picture-dealer, and was -discovered in his obscurity by Vandyke, whose style he imitated, giving -it, however, a richer colour and more solidity. Charles I. and Prince -Rupert both sat to him for their portraits. In this church reposes Sir -Theodore Mayerne, an old court physician. His conserve of bats and -scrapings of human skulls could not keep him from the earthy bed it seems. -Nicholas Stone, the sculptor, who died 1647, sleeps here (Stone's son was -Cibber's master), all unknown to the learned Thomas Stanley, who died in -1678, and was known for his _History of Philosophy_ and translation of -AEschylus. Here, also, is John Lacey--first a dancing-master, afterwards a -trooper, lastly a comedian. He died in 1681. Charles II. was a great -admirer of Lacey, but unfortunately more so of Nell Gwynn, who also came -to sleep here in 1687. Poor Nell! with her good-nature and simple -frankness, she stands out, wanton and extravagant as she was, in pleasant -contrast with the proud painted wantons of that infamous court. - -If the dead could shudder, Secretary Coventry, who was buried here the -year before Nell, must have shuddered at the neighbourhood in which he -found himself; for he was the son of Lord Keeper Coventry, who died at -Durham House in 1639-40. He had been Commissioner to the Treasury, and had -given his name to Coventry Street. This great person became a precedent of -burial to the Hon. Robert Boyle. This wise and good man, whom Swift -ridiculed, was the inventor of the air-pump, and one of the great -promoters of the Royal Society and of the Society for the Propagation of -the Gospel. He died in 1691, and his funeral sermon was preached by -Swift's _bete noir_, that fussy time-server, Bishop Burnet. - -In the churchyard lies a far inferior man, Sir John Birkenhead, who died -in 1679. He was a great pamphlet-writer for the Royalists, and Lawes set -some of his verses to music.[449] He left directions that he should not be -buried within the church, as coffins were often removed. In or out of the -church was buried Rose, Charles II.'s gardener, the first man to grow a -pine-apple in England--a slice of which the king graciously handed to Mr. -Evelyn. - -Worst of all--a scoundrel, and fool among sensible men--here lies the -bully and murderer, Lord Mohun, who fell in a duel in Hyde Park with the -Duke of Hamilton, immortalised in Mr. Thackeray's _Esmond_. Mohun died -in 1712. Here also, in 1721, came that vile and pretentious French -painter, Louis Laguerre, whom Pope justly satirised. He was brought over -by Verrio, and painted the "sprawling" "Labours of Hercules" at Hampton -Court. He died of apoplexy at Drury Lane Theatre. That clever and -determined burglar, Jack Sheppard, is said to have been buried in St. -Martin's in 1724. Farquhar, the Irish dramatist, author of "The Beaux' -Stratagem," was interred here in 1707. Roubilliac, the French sculptor, -who lived close by, was also buried in this spot, and Hogarth attended his -funeral. - -Mr. J. T. Smith, author of the _Life of Nollekens_, speaking of his own -visits to the vaults of St. Martin's Church, says, "It is a curious fact -that Mrs. Rudd requested to be placed near the coffins of the Perreaus. -Melancholy as my visits to this vault have been, I frankly own that -pleasant recollections have almost invited me to sing, 'Did you ne'er hear -of a jolly young waterman?' when passing by the coffin of my father's old -friend, Charles Bannister."[450] - -Mr. F. Buckland that delightful writer on natural history, who visited the -same charnel-house in his search for the body of the great John Hunter, -describes the vaults as piled with heaps of leaden coffins, horrible to -every sense; but as I write from memory, I will not give the ghastly -details. - -That indefatigable and too restless exposer of abuses, Daniel Defoe, wrote -a pamphlet in 1720 entitled "Parochial Tyranny; or, the Housekeeper's -Complaint against the Exactions of Select Vestries." In this pamphlet he -published one of the bills of the vestry of St. Martin's in 1713, which -contains the following impudent items:-- - - "Spent at May meetings or visitation L65 0 4 - - Ditto at taverns, with ministers, justices, - overseers, &c. 72 19 7 - - Sacrament bread and wine 88 10 0 - - Paid towards a robbery 21 14 0 - - Spent for dinner at the Mulberry Gardens 49 13 4" - -In 1818 the churchwardens' dinner cost L56: 18s. Archdeacon Potts' sermon -on the death of Queen Charlotte not selling, the parish paid the loss, -L48: 12: 9. In 1813 the vestry charged the parish L5 for petitioning -against the Roman Catholics. - -The Thames watermen have a plot set apart for themselves in St. Martin's -Churchyard. These amphibious and pugnacious beings were formerly notorious -for their powers of sarcasm, though Dr. Johnson on a celebrated occasion -put one of them out of countenance. In spite of coaches and sedan -chairs--their horror in the times of the "Water Poet," who must often have -ferried Shakspere over to the Globe Theatre at the Bankside--they -continued till the days of omnibuses and cheap cabs, rowing and singing, -rejoicing in their scarlet tunics, and skimming to and fro over the Thames -like swallows. - -There is a Westminster tradition of a waterman who pretended to be deaf, -and who was much employed by lovers, barristers who wished to air their -eloquence, and young M.P.s who wanted to recite their speeches -undisturbed. - -In 1821 died Copper Holms, a well-known character on the river. He lived, -with his wife and children, somewhere along the shore in an ark, which he -had artfully framed from a West-country vessel, and which, coppers and -all, cost him L150. The City brought an action to compel him to remove the -obstruction. The honest fellow was buried in "The Waterman's Churchyard," -on the south side of St. Martin's Church.[451] - -In 1683 Dr. Thomas Tenison, vicar of the parish, afterwards Archbishop of -Canterbury, lived in this street; he died at Lambeth in 1715. He founded -in this parish a school and library. Though Swift did say he was "hot and -heavy as a tailor's iron," he seems to have been one of the best and most -tolerant of men, notwithstanding he attacked Hobbes and Bellarmine with -his pen. He worked bravely during the plague, and was princely in his -charities during the dreadful winter of 1683. It was he who prepared -Monmouth for death, and smoothed Queen Mary's dying pillow. He was a -steady friend of William of Orange. - -Two doors from Slaughter's, on the west side, but lower down, lived -Ambrose Philips, from 1720 to 1724. Pope laughed at his "Pastorals," which -had been overpraised by Tickell. Though a friend of Addison and Steele, -his sprightly but effeminate copies of verses procured him from Henry -Carey the name of "Namby Pamby." His "Winter Scene," a sketch of a Danish -winter, is, however, admirable. - -Ambrose Philips was laughed at for advertising in the _London Gazette_, of -January 1714, for contributions to a _Poetical Miscellany_. He was a -Leicestershire man, and chiefly remarkable for translating Racine's -"Distressed Mother." When the Whigs came into power under George I. he was -put into the commission of the peace, and made a Commissioner of the -Lottery. He afterwards became Registrar of the Prerogative Court at -Dublin, wrote in the _Free Thinker_, and died in 1749. Pope laughed at the -small poet as-- - - "The bard whom pilfered Pastorals renown, - Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown, - Just writes to make his barrenness appear, - And strains from hide-bound brains eight lines a year."[452] - -It was always one of Pope's keenest strokes to call a man poor. Philips, -in 1714, had industriously translated the _Thousand and One Days_, a -series of Persian tales, and gained very honourably earned money. The wasp -of Twickenham, whose malice never grew old, sketched Philips again as -"Macer," a simple, harmless fellow, who borrowed ends of verse, and whose -highest ambition was "to wear red stockings and to dine with Steele." -Ambrose, naturally indignant to hear himself accused of stealing the -little fame he had, very spiritedly hung up a birch at the bar of Button's -Coffee-house, with which he threatened to chastise the AEsop of the age if -he dared show himself, but Pope wisely stayed at home.[453] - -The first house from the corner of Newport Street, on the right hand going -to Charing Cross, was occupied by Beard, the celebrated public singer, who -in 1738-9 married Lady Henrietta Herbert, the only daughter of the Earl -Waldegrave. After her death the widower married the daughter of Mr. John -Rich, the inventor of English pantomime, the best harlequin that probably -ever lived, and the patentee of Covent Garden Theatre from 1732 to 1762. -The parlour of the house had two windows facing the south towards Charing -Cross. Here Mr. J. T. Smith describes his father smoking a pipe with Beard -and George Lambert, the latter the founder of the Beef-steak Club and the -clever scene-painter of Covent Garden Theatre. The fire of 1808 destroyed -most of Lambert's work with the theatre.[454] - -Next to this house stood "Old Slaughter's" Coffee-house, the great haunt -of artists from Hogarth to Wilkie. Towards the end of its existence it was -the head-quarters of naval and military officers before the establishment -of West End Clubs. It was pulled down in 1844 to make way for the new -street between Long Acre and Leicester Square. The original landlord, John -Slaughter, started it in 1692, and died about 1740.[455] It first became -known as "Old Slaughter's" in 1760, when an opposition set up in the -street under the name of "Young" or "New Slaughter's." - -There is a foolish tradition that the coffee-house derived its name from -being frequented by the butchers of Newport Market. Mr. Smith gives a -charming chapter on the frequenters of this old haunt of Dryden and -afterwards of Pope. The first he mentions was Mr. Ware, the architect, who -published a folio edition of Palladio, the great Italian architect of -Elizabeth's time. Ware was originally a chimney-sweeper's boy in Charles -Court, Strand; but being one day seen chalking houses on the front of -Whitehall, a gentleman passing became his patron, educated him, and sent -him to Italy. His bust was one of Roubilliac's best works. His skin is -said to have retained the stain of soot to the day of his death.[456] - -Gravelot, who kept a drawing-school in the Strand, nearly opposite -Southampton Street, was another frequenter of Old Slaughter's. Henri -Francois Bourignon Gravelot was born in Paris in 1699, and died in that -city in 1773. His drawings were always minutely finished, and his designs -tasteful, particularly those which he etched himself for Sir John Hanmer's -small edition of Shakspere. He found an excellent engraver in poor Charles -Grignon, Le Bas' pupil, who in his old age was driven off the field, fell -into poverty, and so remained till he died in 1810, aged 94. - -John Gwynn, the architect, who lived in Little Court, Castle Street, -Leicester Fields, also frequented this house. He built the bridge at -Shrewsbury, and wrote a work on London improvements, which his friend Dr. -Johnson revised and prefaced. The doctor also wrote strongly in favour of -Gwynn's talent and integrity when he was unsuccessfully competing with -Mylne for the erection of old Blackfriars Bridge. - -Hogarth, too, "used" Slaughter's, and came there to rail at the "black old -masters," the follies of patrons, and the knavery of dealers. Here he -would banter and brag, and sketch odd faces on his thumb-nail. Perhaps the -"Midnight Conversation" was partly derived from convivial scenes in St. -Martin's Lane. - -Roubilliac, the eccentric French sculptor, was another habitue of the -place. His house and studio were opposite on the east side of the lane, -and were approached by a long passage and gateway. Here his friends must -have listened to his rhapsodies in broken English about his great statues -of Handel, Sir Isaac Newton, and that of Shakspere now at the British -Museum, which cost Garrick, who left it to the nation, three hundred -guineas.[457] - -That pompous and wretched portrait-painter, Hudson, Reynolds's master and -Richardson's pupil, used also to frequent Slaughter's. Hudson was the most -ignorant of painters, yet he was for a time the fashion. He painted the -portraits of the members of the Dilettanti Society, and was a great and -ignorant collector of Rembrandt etchings. Hogarth used to call him, in his -brusque way, "a fat-headed fellow." - -Here Hogarth would meet his own engraver, M'Ardell, who lived in Henrietta -Street. One of the finest English mezzotints in respect of brilliancy is -Hogarth's portrait of Captain Coram, the brave old originator of the -Foundling Hospital, by M'Ardell. His engravings after Reynolds are superb. -That painter himself said that they would immortalise him.[458] - -Here, also, came Luke Sullivan, another of Hogarth's engravers, from the -White Bear, Piccadilly. His etching of "The March to Finchley" is -considered exquisite.[459] Sullivan was also an exquisite -miniature-painter, particularly of female heads. He was a handsome, -lively, reckless fellow, and died in miserable poverty. - -At Slaughter's, too, Hogarth must have met the unhappy Theodore Gardelle, -the miniature-painter, who afterwards murdered his landlady in the -Haymarket and burnt her body. Hogarth is said to have sketched him in his -ghostly white cap on the day of his execution. Gardelle, like Greenacre, -pleaded that he killed the woman by an accidental blow, and then destroyed -the body in fear. Foote notices his gibbet in _The Mayor of Garratt_. - -Old Moser, keeper of the drawing academy in Peter's Court--Roubilliac's -old rooms--was often to be seen at the same haunt. Moser was a German -Swiss, a gold-chaser and enameller; he became keeper of the Royal Academy -in 1768. His daughter painted flowers. - -That great painter, poor old Richard Wilson, neglected and almost starved -by the senseless art-patrons of his day, occasionally came to Slaughter's, -probably to meet his countryman, blind Parry, the Welsh harper and great -draught-player. - -And, last of all, we must mention Nathanael Smith, the engraver, and Mr. -Rawle, the accoutrement maker in the Strand, and the inseparable companion -of Captain Grose, the great antiquary, on whom Burns wrote poems--a -learned, fat, jovial Falstaff of a man, who compiled an indecorous but -clever slang dictionary. It was at Rawle's sale that Dickey Suett bought -Charles II.'s black wig, which he wore for years in "Tom Thumb." - -Nos. 76 and 77 St. Martin's Lane were originally one house, built by -Payne, the architect of Salisbury Street and the original Lyceum. He built -two small houses in his garden for his friends Gwynn, the competitor for -Blackfriars Bridge, and Wale, the Royal Academy lecturer on perspective, -and well-known book-illustrator. The entrances were in Little Court, -Castle Street. In old times the street on this side, from Beard's Court, -to St. Martin's Court, was called the Pavement; but the road has since -been heightened three feet. - -Below Payne's, in Hogarth's time, lived a bookseller named Harding, a -seller of old prints, and author of a little book on the _Monograms of Old -Engravers_. It was to this shop that Wilson, the sergeant painter, took an -etching of his own, which was sold to Hudson as a genuine Rembrandt. That -same night, by agreement, Wilson invited Hogarth and Hudson to supper. -When the cold sirloin came in, Scott, the marine-painter, called out, "A -sail, a sail!" for the beef was stuck with skewers bearing impressions of -the new Rembrandt, of which Hudson was so proud.[460] - -Nos. 88 and 89 were built on the site of a large mansion, the staircase of -which was adorned with allegorical figures. It was here that Hogarth's -particular friend, John Pine, lived. Pine was the engraver and publisher -of the scenes from the Armada tapestry in the House of Lords, now -destroyed. He was a round, fat, oily man; and Hogarth drew him, much to -his annoyance, as the fat friar eyeing the beef at the "Gate of Calais." -His son Robert, who painted one of the best portraits of Garrick, and -carried off the hundred guinea prize of the Society of Arts for his -picture of the "Siege of Calais," also lived here, and, after him, Dr. -Gartshore. - -The house No. 96, on the west side, was Powell the colourman's in 1828; it -had then a Queen Anne door-frame, with spread-eagle and carved foliage and -flowers, like the houses in Carey Street and Great Ormond Street, and a -shutter sliding in grooves in the old-fashioned way. Mr. Powell's mother -made for many years annually a pipe of wine from the produce of a vine -nearly a hundred feet long.[461] This house had a large staircase, painted -with figures in procession, by a French artist named Clermont, who claimed -one thousand guineas for his work, and received five hundred. Behind the -house was the room which Hogarth has painted in "Marriage a la Mode." The -quack is Dr. Misaubin, whose vile portrait the satirist has given. The -savage fat woman is his Irish wife. Dr. Misaubin, who lived in this house, -was the son of a pastor of the Spitalfields French Church. The quack -realised a great fortune by a famous pill. His son was murdered; his -grandson squandered his money, and died in St. Martin's Workhouse. - -No. 104 was at one time the residence of Sir James Thornhill, Hogarth's -august father-in-law, a poor yet pretentious painter, who decorated St. -Paul's. He painted the staircase wall with allegories that were existing -some years since in good condition. The junior Van Nost, the sculptor, -afterwards lived here--the same artist who took that mask of Garrick's -face which afterwards belonged to the elder Mathews. After him, before -1768, came Hogarth's convivial artist-friend, Francis Hayman, who -decorated Vauxhall and illustrated countless books. Perhaps it was here -that the Marquis of Granby, before sitting to the painter, had a round or -two of sparring. Sir Joshua Reynolds, too, a graver and colder man, came -to live here before he went to Great Newport Street. - -New Slaughter's, at No. 82 in 1828, was established about 1760, and was -demolished in 1843-44, when the new avenue of Garrick Street was made -between Long Acre and Leicester Square. It was much frequented by artists -who wished cheap fare and good society. Roubilliac was often to be found -here. Wilkie long after enjoyed his frugal dinners here at a small cost. -He was always the last dropper-in, and was never seen to dine in the house -before dark. The fact is, the patient young Scotchman always slaved at his -art till the last glimpse of daylight had disappeared below the red roofs. - -Upon the site of the present Quakers' Meeting-house in St. Peter's Court, -St. Martin's Lane, stood Roubilliac's first studio after he left Cheere. -Here he executed, with ecstatic raptures at his own genius, his great -statue of Handel for Vauxhall. Here afterwards a drawing academy was -started, Mr. Michael Moser being chosen the keeper. Reynolds, Mortimer, -Nollekens, and M'Ardell were among the earliest members. Hogarth presented -to it some of his father-in-law's casts, but opposed the principle of -cheap education to young artists, declaring that every foolish father -would send his boy there to keep him out of the streets, and so the -profession would be overstocked. In this academy the students sat to each -other for drapery, and had also male and female models--sometimes in -groups. - -Amongst the early members of the St. Martin's Lane Academy were the -following:--Moser, afterwards keeper of the Academy; Hayman, Hogarth's -friend; Wale, the book-illustrator; Cipriani, famous for his book-prints; -Allan Ramsay, Reynolds's rival; F. M. Newton; Charles Catton, the prince -of coach-painters; Zoffany, the dramatic portrait-painter; Collins, the -sculptor, who modelled Hayman's "Don Quixote;" Jeremy Meyer; William -Woollett, the great engraver; Anthony Walker, also an engraver; Linnel, a -carver in wood; John Mortimer, the Salvator Rosa of that day; Rubinstein, -a drapery-painter and drudge to the portrait-painters; James Paine, son of -the architect of the Lyceum; Tilly Kettle, who went to the East, painted -several rajahs, and then died near Aleppo; William Pars, who was sent to -Greece by the Dilettanti Society; Vandergutch, a painter who turned -picture-dealer; Charles Grignon, the engraver; C. Norton, Charles -Sherlock, and Charles Bibb, also engravers; Richmond, Keeble, Evans, -Roper, Parsons, and Black, now forgotten; Russell, the crayon-painter; -Richmond Cosway, the miniature-painter, a fop and a mystic; W. Marlowe, a -landscape-painter; Messrs. Griggs, Rowe, Dubourg, Taylor, Dance, and -Ratcliffe, pupils of gay Frank Hayman; Richard Earlom, engraver of the -"Liber Veritatis" of Claude for the Duke of Richmond; J. A. Gresse, a fat -artist who taught the queen and princesses drawing; Giuseppe Marchi, an -assistant of Reynolds; Thomas Beech; Lambert, a sculptor, and pupil of -Roubilliac; Reed, another pupil of the same great artist, who aided in -executing the skeleton on Mrs. Nightingale's monument, and was famous for -his pancake clouds; Biaggio Rebecca, the decorator; Richard Wilson, the -great landscape-painter; Terry, Lewis Lattifere, John Seton, David Martin, -Burgess; Burch, the medallist; John Collett, an imitator of Hogarth; -Nollekens, the sculptor; Reynolds, and, of course, Hogarth himself, the -_primum mobile_.[462] - -No. 112 was in old times one of those apothecaries' shops with bottled -snakes in the windows. It was kept by Leake, the inventor of a -"diet-drink" once as famous as Lockyer's pill. - -Frank Hayman, one of these St. Martin's Lane worthies, was originally a -scene-painter at Drury Lane. He was with Hogarth at Moll King's when -Hogarth drew the girl squirting brandy at the other for his picture in the -_Rake's Progress_. Hayman was a Devonshire man, and a pupil of Brown. When -he buried his wife, a friend asked him why he spent so much money on the -funeral. "Oh, sir," replied the droll, revelling fellow, "she would have -done as much or more for me with pleasure." - -Quin and Hayman were inseparable boon companions. One night, after -"beating the rounds," they both fell into the kennel. Presently Hayman, -sprawling out his shambling legs, kicked his bedfellow Quin. "Hallo! what -are you at now?" growled the Welsh actor. "At? why, endeavouring to get -up, to be sure, for this don't suit my palate." "Pooh!" replied Quin, -"remain where you are; the watchman will come by shortly, and he will -_take us both up_!"[463] - -No. 113 was occupied by Thomas Major, a die-engraver to the Stamp Office, -a pupil of Le Bas, and an excellent reproducer of subjects from Teniers. -He was also an engraver of landscapes after pictures by Ferg, one of the -artists employed with Sir James Thornhill at the Chelsea china -manufactory. - -The old watch-house or round-house used to stand exactly opposite the -centre of the portico of Gibbs's church.[464] There is a rare etching -which represents its front during a riot. Stocks, elaborately carved with -vigorous figures of a man being whipped by the hangman, stood near the -wall of the watch-house. The carving, much mutilated, was preserved in the -vaults under the church. - -Near the stocks, with an entrance from the King's Mews, stood "the Barn," -afterwards called "the Canteen," which was a great resort of the chess, -draught, and whist players of the City. - -At the south-west corner of St. Martin's Lane was the shop of Jefferys, -the geographer to King George III. - -No. 20 was a public-house, latterly the Portobello, with Admiral Vernon's -ship, well painted by Monamy, for its sign. The date, 1638, was on the -front of this house, now removed. - -No. 114 stands on the site of the old house of the Earls of Salisbury. -Before the alterations of 1827 there were vestiges of the old building -remaining. It has been a constant tradition in the lane, that in this -house, in James II.'s reign, the seven bishops were lodged before they -were conveyed to the Tower. - -Opposite old Salisbury House stood a turnpike, and the tradition in the -lane is that the Earl of Salisbury obtained its removal as a nuisance. At -that time the church was literally in the fields. The turnpike-house -stood (circa 1760) on the site of No. 28, afterwards (in 1828) Pullen's -wine-vaults. The Westminster Fire Office was first established in St. -Martin's Lane, between Chandos Street and May's Buildings. - -The White Horse livery-stables were originally tea-gardens,[465] and south -of these was a hop-garden. The oldest house in the lane overhung the White -Horse stables, and was standing in 1828. - -No. 60 was formerly Chippendale's, the great upholsterer and -cabinet-maker, whose folio work was the great authority in the trade -before Mr. Hope's classic style overthrew for a time that of Louis -Quatorze. - -No. 63 formerly led to Roubilliac's studio. Here, in 1828, the Sunday -paper _The Watchman_, was printed. - -It must have been here, in the sculptor's time, that Garrick, coming to -see how his Shakspere statue progressed, drew out a two-foot rule, and put -on a tragic and threatening face to frighten a great red-headed -Yorkshireman, who was sawing marble for Roubilliac; but who, to his -surprise, merely rolled his quid, and coolly said, "What trick are you -after next, my little master?" Upon the honest sculptor's death, Read, one -of his pupils, a conceited pretender, took the premises in 1762, and -advertised himself as "Mr. Roubilliac's successor." - -Read executed the poor monuments of the Duchess of Northumberland and of -Admiral Tyrrell, now in Westminster Abbey. His master used to say to Read -when he was bragging, "Ven you do de monument, den de varld vill see vot -von d-- ting you vill make." Nollekens used to say of the admiral's -monument, "That figure going to heaven out of the sea looks for all the -world as if it were hanging from a gallows with a rope round its -neck."[466] - -No. 70 was formerly the house where Mr. Hone held his exhibition when his -picture of "The Conjuror," intended to ridicule Sir Joshua Reynolds as a -plagiarist, and to insult Miss Angelica Kaufmann, was refused admittance -at Somerset House. Mr. Nathanael Hone was a miniature-painter on enamel, -who attempted oil pictures and grew envious of Reynolds. Hone was a tall, -pompous, big, erect man, who wore a broad brimmed hat and a lapelled coat, -punctiliously buttoned up to his chin. He walked with a measured, stately -step, and spoke with an air of great self-importance--in this sort of way: -"Joseph Nollekens, Esq., R.A., how--do--you--do?"[467] - -The corner house of Long Acre, now 72, formed part of the extensive -premises of Mr. Cobb, George III.'s upholsterer--a proud, pompous man, who -always strutted about his workshops in full dress. It was Dance's portrait -of Mr. Cobb, given in exchange for a table, that led to Dance's -acquaintance with Garrick. One day in the library at Buckingham House, old -King George asked Cobb to hand him a certain book. Instead of doing so, -mistaken Cobb called to a man who was at work on a ladder, and said, -"Fellow, give me that book." The king instantly rose and asked the man's -name. "Jenkins," replied the astonished upholsterer. "Then," observed the -good old king, "Jenkins shall hand me the book."[468] - -Alderman Boydell, the great encourager of art, when he first began with -half a shop, used to etch small plates of landscapes in sets of six for -sixpence. As there were few print-shops then in London, he prevailed upon -the proprietors of toy-shops to put them in their windows for sale. Every -Saturday he went the round of the shops to see what had been done, or to -take more. His most successful shop was "The Cricket-Bat," in Duke's -Court, St. Martin's Lane.[469] - -Abraham Raimbach, the engraver, was born in Cecil Court, St. Martin's -Lane, in 1776. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in his early period, lived nearly -opposite May's Buildings. He afterwards went to Great Newport Street, -where he first met Dr. Johnson. - -O'Keefe describes being in a coffee-house in St. Martin's Lane on the very -morning when the famous No. 45 came out. The unconscious newsman came in, -and, as a matter of course, laid the paper on the table before him. About -the year 1777 O'Keefe was standing talking with his brother at Charing -Cross, when a slender figure in a scarlet coat with a large bag, and -fierce three-cocked hat, crossed the way, carefully choosing his steps, -the weather being wet--it was John Wilkes.[470] - -When Fuseli returned to London in 1779, after his foreign tour, he resided -with a portrait painter named Cartwright, at No. 100 St. Martin's -Lane,[471] and he remained there till his marriage with Miss Rawlins in -1788, when he removed to Foley Street. Here he commenced his acquaintance -with Professor Bonnycastle, and produced his popular picture of "The -Nightmare" (1781), by which the publisher of the print realised L500. Here -also he revised Cowper's version of the _Iliad_, and became acquainted -with Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Moore, the author of _Zeluco_. - -May's Buildings bear the date of 1739. Mr. May, who built them, lived at -No. 43, which he ornamented with pilasters and a cornice. This house used -to be thought a good specimen of architectural brickwork. - -The club of "The Eccentrics," in May's Buildings, was, in 1812, much -frequented by the eloquent Richard Lalor Sheil, by William Mudford, the -editor of the _Courier_, a man of logical and sarcastic power,--and by -"Pope Davis," an artist, in later years a great friend of the unfortunate -Haydon. "Pope Davis" was so called from having painted, when in Rome, a -large picture of the "Presentation of the Shrewsbury Family to the -Pope."[472] - -The Royal Society of Literature, at 4 St. Martin's Place, Charing Cross, -was founded in 1823, "for the advancement of literature," on which at -present it has certainly had no very perceptible influence. It was -incorporated by royal charter Sept. 13, 1826. George IV. gave 1000 guineas -a year to this body, which rescued the last years of Coleridge's wasted -life from utter dependence, and placed Dr. Jamieson above want. William -IV. discontinued the lavish grant of a king who was generous only with -other people's money, and was always in debt; and since that the somewhat -effete society has sunk into a Transaction Publishing Society, or rather a -club with an improving library. Sir Walter Scott's opposition to the -society was as determined as Hogarth's against the Royal Academy. "The -immediate and direct favour of the sovereign," said Scott, who had a -superstitious respect for any monarch, "is worth the patronage of ten -thousand societies." Literature wants no patronage now, thank God, but -only intelligent purchasers; and whether a king does or does not read an -author's work, is of small consequence to any writer. - -[Illustration: OLD SLAUGHTER'S COFFEE-HOUSE.] - -Admission to the Royal Society of Literature is obtained by a certificate, -signed by three members, and an election by ballot. Ordinary members pay -three guineas on admission, and two guineas annually, or compound by a -payment of twenty guineas. The society devotes itself for the most part to -the study of Greek and Latin inscriptions and Egyptian literature.[473] -This learned body also professes to fix the standard of the English -language; to read papers on history, poetry, philosophy, and philology; to -correspond with learned men in foreign countries; to reward literary -merit; and to publish unedited remains of ancient literature. - -St. Martin's Lane has seen many changes. Cranbourne Alley is gone with all -its bonnet-shops, and the Mews and C'ribbee Islands are no more, but there -still remain a few old houses, with brick pilasters and semi-Grecian -pediments, to remind us of the days of Fuseli and Reynolds, Hayman and Old -Slaughter's, Hogarth and Roubilliac. I can assure my readers that a most -respectable class of ghosts haunts the artist quarter in St. Martin's -Lane. - - - - -[Illustration: SALISBURY AND WORCESTER HOUSES, 1630.] - - -CHAPTER XI. - -LONG ACRE AND ITS TRIBUTARIES. - - -At the latter end of 1664, says Defoe, two men, said to be Frenchmen, died -of the plague at the Drury Lane end of Long Acre. Dr. Hodges, however, a -greater authority than Defoe, who wrote fifty-seven years after the event, -says merely that the pestilence broke out in Westminster, and that two or -three persons dying, the frightened neighbours removed into the City, and -there carried the contagion. He, however, distinctly states that the pest -came to us from Holland, and most probably in a parcel of infected goods -from Smyrna.[474] - -According to Defoe, the family with which the Frenchmen had lodged -endeavoured to conceal the deaths; but the rumour growing, the Secretary -of State heard of it, and sent two physicians and a surgeon to inspect the -bodies. They certifying that the men had really died of the plague, the -parish clerk returned the deaths to "the Hall," and they were printed in -the weekly bill of mortality. "The people showed a great concern at this, -and began to be alarmed all over the town."[475] At Christmas Dr. Hodges -attended a case of plague, and shortly afterwards a proclamation was -issued for placing watchmen day and night at the doors of infected houses, -which were to be marked with a red St. Andrew cross and the subscription -"Lord have mercy upon us!"[476] By the next September the terrible disease -had risen to its height, and the deaths ranged as high as 12,000 a week, -and in the worst night after the bonfires had been burned in the street, -to 4000 in the twelve hours.[477] - -Great Queen Street, so called after Henrietta Maria, the imprudent but -brave wife of Charles I., was built about 1629, before the troubles. Howes -(editor of Stow) speaks in 1631, of "the new fair buildings leading into -Drury Lane."[478] Many of the houses were built by Webb, one of Inigo -Jones's scholars. The south was the fashionable side, looking towards the -Pancras fields; most of the north side houses must, therefore, be of a -later date. According to one authority Inigo Jones himself built Queen -Street, at the cost of the Jesuits, designing it for a square, and leaving -in the middle a niche for the statue of Queen Henrietta. "The stately and -magnificent houses," begun on the other side near Little Queen Street, -were not continued. There were fleurs-de-luce placed on the walls in -honour of the queen.[479] - -George Digby, the second Earl of Bristol, lived in Great Queen Street, in -a large house with seven rooms on a floor, a long gallery, and gardens. -Evelyn describes going to see him (probably there), to consult about the -site of Greenwich Hospital, with Denham the poet and surveyor, and one of -Inigo Jones's clerks. Digby was a Knight of the Garter, who first wrote -against Popery and then converted himself. He persecuted Lord Strafford, -yet then turning courtier, lived long enough to persecute Lord Clarendon. -Grammont, Bussy, and Clarendon all decry the earl; and Horace Walpole -writes wittily of him--"With great parts, he always hurt himself and his -friends; with romantic bravery, he was always an unsuccessful commander. -He spoke for the Test Act, though a Roman Catholic, and addicted himself -to astrology on the birthday of true philosophy."[480] - -In 1671 Evelyn describes the earl's house as taken by the Commissioners of -Trade and Plantations, of which he was one, and furnished with tapestry -"of the king's." The Duke of Buckingham, the earl of Sandwich (Pepys's -patron), the Earl of Lauderdale, Sir John Finch, Waller the poet, and -saturnine Colonel Titus (the author of the terrible pamphlet against -Cromwell, _Killing no Murder_) were the new occupants. - -They sat, says Evelyn, at the board in the council chamber, a very large -room furnished with atlases, maps, charts, and globes. The first day's -debate was an ominous one: it related to the condition of New England, -which had grown rich, strong, and "very independent as to their regard to -Old England or his majesty. The colony was able to contest with all the -other plantations,[481] and there was fear of her breaking from her -dependence. Some of the council were for sending a menacing letter, but -others who better understood the peevish and touchy humour of that colony -were utterly against it." A few weeks afterwards Evelyn was at the -council, when a letter was read from Jamaica, describing how Morgan, the -Welsh buccaneer, had sacked and burned Panama; the bravest thing of the -kind done since Drake. Morgan, who cheated his companions and stole their -spoil, afterwards came to England, and was, like detestable Blood, -received at court. - -Lord Chancellor Finch, Earl of Nottingham, who lived in Great Queen -Street, presided as Lord High Steward at Lord Strafford's trial, at which -Evelyn was present, noticing the ill-bred impudence of Titus Oates.[482] -Finch was the son of a recorder of London, and died in 1681. He was living -here when that impudent thief, Sadler, stole the mace and purse, and -carried them off in procession. - -The choleric and Quixotic Lord Herbert of Cherbury lived in Great Queen -Street, in a house on the south side, a few doors east of Great Wyld -Street. Here he began his wild Deistic work, _De Veritate_, published in -Paris in 1624, and in London three years before his death. He says that he -finished this rhapsody in France, where it was praised by Tilenus, an -Arminian professor at Sedan, and an opponent of the Calvinists, which -procured him a pension from James I., and also from the learned Grotius -when he came to Paris, after his escape in a linen-chest from the -Calvinist fortress of Louvestein. Urged to publish by friends, Lord -Herbert, afraid of the censure his book might receive, was relieved from -his doubts by what his vanity and heated imagination pleased to consider a -vision from heaven. - -This Welsh Quixote says, "Being thus doubtful in my chamber one fair day -in the summer, my casement being open towards the south, the sun shining -clear and no wind stirring, I took my book, _De Veritate_, in my hand, and -kneeling on my knees, devoutly said these words: 'Oh, thou eternal God, -author of the light which now shines upon me, and giver of all inward -illuminations, I do beseech thee of thy infinite goodness to pardon a -greater request than a sinner ought to make. I am not satisfied enough -whether I shall publish this book, _De Veritate_. If it be for thy glory, -I beseech thee to give me some sign from heaven; if not, I shall suppress -it!' I had no sooner spoken these words, but a _loud though gentle -noise_[483] came from the heavens (for it was like nothing on earth), -which did so comfort and cheer me that I took my petition as granted. And -this (however strange it may seem) I protest before the eternal God is -true. Neither am I in any way superstitiously deceived herein, since I did -not only hear the noise, but in the serenest sky that ever I saw--being -without _all_ cloud--did, to my thinking, see the place from whence it -came." - -The noise was probably some child falling from a chair overhead, or a -chest of drawers being moved in an upper room; and if it _had_ been -thunder in a clear sky, it was no more than Horace once heard. Heaven does -not often express its approval of Deistical books. Lord Herbert, doubted -of general, and yet believed in individual revelation. What crazy vanity, -to think the work of an amateur philosopher of sufficient importance for a -special revelation,[484] that (in his own opinion) had been denied to a -neglected world! Lord Herbert, though refused the sacrament by Usher, bore -it very serenely, asked what o'clock it was, then said, "An hour hence I -shall depart," turned his head to the other side, and expired.[485] He had -moved to this quarter from King Street. Lord Herbert, though he wrote a -Life to vindicate that brutal tyrant Henry VIII., was inconsistent enough -to join the Parliament against a less wise but more illegal king, Charles -I. When I pass down Queen Street, wondering whether that southern window -of the Welsh knight's vision was on the front of the south side, or on the -back of the southern side of the street, I sometimes think of those soft -lines of his upon the question "whether love should continue for ever?" - - "Having interr'd her infant birth, - The watery ground that late did mourn - Was strew'd with flowers for the return - Of the wish'd bridegroom of the earth. - - "The well-accorded birds did sing - Their hymns unto the pleasant time, - And in a sweet consorted chime, - Did welcome in the cheerful spring." - -And then on my return home, I get out brave old Ben Jonson, and read his -lines addressed to this last of the knights:-- - - "... and on whose every part - Truth might spend all her voice, Fame all her art. - Whether thy learning they would take, or wit, - Or valour, or thy judgment seasoning it, - Thy standing upright to thyself, thy ends - Like straight, thy piety to God and friends." - -Sir Thomas Fairfax, general of the Parliament, probably lived here, as he -dated from this street a printed proclamation of the 12th of February -1648. - -Sir Godfrey Kneller, the great portrait painter of William and Mary's -reign, but more especially of Queen Anne's time, once lived in a house in -this street. Sir Godfrey, though a humorist, was the vainest of men, and -was made rather a butt by his friends Pope and Gay. Kneller was the son of -a surveyor at Luebeck, and intended for the army. King George I., who -created him a baronet, was the last of the sovereigns who sat to him. Sir -Godfrey was the successor of Sir Peter Lely in England, but was still more -slight and careless in manner. His portraits may be often known by the -curls being thrown behind the back, while in Lely's portraits they fall -over the shoulders and chest. Kneller was a humorist, but very vain, as a -man might well be whom Dryden, Pope, Addison, Prior, Tickell, and Steele -had eulogised in verse. On one occasion, when Pope was sitting watching -Kneller paint, he determined to fool him "to the top of his bent." "Do you -not think, Sir Godfrey," said the little poet, slily, "that, if God had -had your advice at the creation, he would have made a much better world?" -The painter turned round sharply from his easel, fixed his eyes on Pope, -and laying one hand on his deformed shoulder, replied, "Fore Gott, Mister -Pope, I theenk I shoode." - -There was wit in all Kneller's banter, and even when his quaint sayings -told against himself, they seemed to reflect the humour of a man conscious -of the ludicrous side of his own vanity. To his tailor who brought him his -son to offer him as an apprentice emulative of Annibale Caracci, whose -father had also sat cross-legged, Sir Godfrey said, grandly, "Dost thou -think, man, I can make thy son a painter? No; God Almighty only makes -painters." To a low fellow whom he overheard cursing himself he said, "God -damn you? No, God may damn the Duke of Marlborough, and perhaps Sir -Godfrey Kneller; but do you think he will take the trouble of damning such -a scoundrel as you?"[486] - -Gay on one occasion read some verses to Sir Godfrey (probably those -describing Pope's imaginary welcome from Greece) in which these outrageous -lines occur-- - - "What can the extent of his vast soul confine-- - A painter, critic, engineer, divine?" - -Upon which Kneller, remembering that he had been intended for a soldier, -and perhaps scenting out the joke, said, "Ay, Mr. Gay, all vot you 'ave -said is very faine and very true, but you 'ave forgot von theeng, my good -friend. Egad, I should have been a general of an army, for ven I vos in -Venice there vos a _girandole_, and all the Place of St. Mark vos in a -smoke of gunpowder, and I did like the smell, Mr. Gay--should have been a -great general, Mr. Gay."[487] - -His dream, too, was related by Pope to Spence as a good story of the -German's droll vanity. Kneller thought he had ascended by a very high hill -to heaven, and there found St. Peter at the gate, dealing with a vast -crowd of applicants. To one he said, "Of what sect was you?" "I was a -Papist." "Go you there." "What was you?" "A Protestant." "Go you there." -"And you?" "A Turk." "Go you there." In the meantime St. Luke had descried -the painter, and asking if he was not the famous Sir Godfrey Kneller, -entered into conversation with him about his beloved art, so that Sir -Godfrey quite forgot about St. Peter till he heard a voice behind him--St. -Peter's--call out, "Come in, Sir Godfrey, and take whatever place you -like."[488] - -Pope is said to have ridiculed his friend under the name of Helluo.[489] -He certainly laughed at his justice in dismissing a soldier who had stolen -a joint of meat, and blaming the butcher who had put it in the rogue's -way. Whenever he saw a constable, followed by a mob, coming up to his -house at Whitton, he would call out to him, "Mr. Constable, you see that -turning; go that way; you will find an ale-house, the sign of the King's -Head: go and make it up."[490] - -Jacob Tonson got pictures out of Kneller, covetous as he was, by praising -him extravagantly, and sending him haunches of fat venison and dozens of -cool claret. Sir Godfrey used to say to Vandergucht, "Oh, my goot man, -this old Jacob loves me. He is a very goot man, for you see he loves me, -he sends me goot things. The venison vos fat." Old Geckie, the surgeon, -however, got a picture or two even cheaper, for he sent no present, but -then his praises were as fat as Jacob's venison.[491] - -Sir Godfrey used to get very angry if any doubt was expressed as to the -legitimacy of the Pretender. "His father and mother have sat to me about -thirty-six times a-piece, and I know every line and bit of their faces. -Mine Gott, I could paint King James _now_ by memory. I say the child is so -like both, that there is not a feature in his face but what belongs to -either father or mother--nay, the nails of his fingers are his -mother's--the queen that was. Doctor, you may be out in your letters, but -I cannot be out in my lines."[492] - -Kneller had intended Hogarth's father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill, to -paint his staircase at Whitton, but hearing that Newton was sitting to -him, he was in dudgeon, declared that no portrait-painter should paint -his house, and employed "sprawling" Laguerre instead. - -Kneller's prices were fifteen guineas for a head, twenty if with only one -hand, thirty for a half, and sixty for a whole length. He painted much too -fast and flimsily, and far too much by the help of foreign assistants--in -fact, avowedly to fill his kitchen. In thirty years he made a large -fortune, in spite of losing L20,000 in the South Sea Bubble. His wigs, -drapery, and backgrounds were all painted for him. He is said to have left -at his death 500 unfinished portraits.[493] His favourite work, the -portrait of a Chinese converted and brought over by Couplet, a Jesuit, is -at Windsor. But Walpole preferred his Grinling Gibbons at Houghton. - -Kneller left his house in Great Queen Street to his wife, and after her -decease to his godson Godfrey Huckle, who took the name of Kneller. -Amongst the celebrated persons painted by Kneller in his best manner were -Bolingbroke, Wren, Lady Wortley Montague, Pope, Locke, Burnet, Addison, -Evelyn, and the Earl of Peterborough. The brittleness of this man's fame -is another proof that he who paints merely for his time must perish with -his time. - -Conway House was in Great Queen Street. Lord Conway, an able soldier, -brought up by Lord Vere, his uncle, was an epicure, who by his agreeable -conversation was very acceptable at the court of Charles I.[494] He had -the misfortune to be utterly routed by the Scotch at Newburn--a defeat -which gave them Newcastle. The previous Lord Conway was that Secretary of -State of whom James I. said, "Steenie has given me two proper servants--a -secretary (Conway) who can neither write nor read, and a groom of the -bedchamber (Mr. Clarke, a one-handed man) who cannot truss my -points."[495] It had been well for England if this sottish pedant had had -no worse servants than Conway and Clarke. Raleigh might then have been -spared, and Overbuy would not have been poisoned. - -Lord Conway, whose son, General Conway, was such an idol of Horace -Walpole, lived in the family house in Great Queen Street. - -Winchester House was not far off. Lord Pawlet figures in all the early -scenes of the Civil War. He was one of the first nobles to raise forces in -the West for the wrong-headed king. On one occasion Basing House was all -but lost by a plot hatched between Waller and the Marquis of Winchester's -brother, but it was detected in time to save that important place. Basing, -after three months' siege by a conjunction of Parliament troops from -Hampshire and Essex, was gallantly succoured by Colonel Gage. The -Marchioness, a lady of great honour and alliance, being sister to the Earl -of Essex and to the lady Marchioness of Hertford, enlisted all the Roman -Catholics in Oxford in this dashing adventure.[496] Basing was, however, -eventually stormed and taken by Cromwell, who put most of the garrison to -the sword. William, the fourth marquis, died 1628, and was succeeded by -his son, who was the father of Charles, created in 1689 Duke of Bolton, a -title that became extinct in 1794. - -John Greenhill, a Long Acre celebrity, was one of the most promising of -Lely's scholars. He painted portraits, among others, of Locke, -Shaftesbury, and Davenant. He also drew in crayons, and engraved. It is -said that Lely was jealous of him, and would not let his pupil see him -paint, till Greenhill's handsome wife was sent to Sir Peter to sit for her -portrait, which cost twelve broad pieces or L15. Greenhill, at first -industrious, became acquainted with the players, and fell into debauched -courses. Coming home drunk late one night from the Vine Tavern, he fell -into the kennel in Long Acre, and was carried to Perrey Walton's, the -royal picture-cleaner, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he had been lodging, -and died in his bed that night (1676), in the flower of his age. He was -buried at St. Giles's, and shameless Mrs. Aphra Behn, who admired his -person and his paintings, wrote a long elegy on his death. Sir Peter is -said to have settled L40 a year on Greenhill's widow and children, but she -died mad soon after her husband.[497] - -In June 1718 Ryan, an actor of Lincoln's Inn Theatre, was supping at the -Sun in Long Acre, and had placed his sword quietly in the window, when a -bully named Kelly came up and made passes at him, provoking him to a duel. -The young actor took his sword, drew it, and passed it through the -rascal's body. The act being one of obvious self-defence, he was not -called to serious account for it. This Ryan had acted with Betterton. -Addison especially selected him as Marcus in his "Cato," and Garrick -confessed he took Ryan's Richard as his model.[498] - -Some years after, Ryan, by this time the Orestes, Macduff, Iago, Cassio, -and Captain Plume of the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, in passing down -Great Queen Street, after playing Scipio in "Sophonisba," was fired at by -a footpad, and had his jaw shattered. "Friend," moaned the wounded man, -"you have killed me, but I forgive you." The actor, however, recovered to -resume his place upon the boards, and generous Quin gave him L1000 in -advance that he had put him down for in his will. He died in 1760. - -Hudson, a wretched portrait-painter, although the master of Sir Joshua -Reynolds, lived in a house now divided into two, Nos. 55 and 56. -Portrait-painting, being unable to sink lower than Hudson, turned and -began to rise again. When Reynolds in later years took a villa on Richmond -Hill, somewhat above that of Hudson, he said, "I never thought I should -live to look down on my old master." Hudson's house was afterwards -occupied by that insipid poet, Hoole, the translator of Tasso and of -Ariosto. - -The old West End entrance of this street, a narrow passage known as the -"Devil's Gap," was taken down in 1765. - -Martin Folkes, an eminent scholar and antiquarian, was born in Great Queen -Street in 1690. He was made vice-president of the Royal Society by Newton -in 1723, and in 1727, on Sir Isaac's death, disputed the presidentship -with Sir Hans Sloane,--a post which he eventually obtained in 1741, on the -resignation of Sir Hans. Folkes was a great numismatist, and seems to -have been a generous, pleasant man. He died in 1784. The sale of his -library, prints, and coins lasted fifty-six days. He was, as Leigh Hunt -remarks, one of "the earliest persons among the gentry to marry an -actress,"[499] setting by that means an excellent example. His wife's name -was Lucretia Bradshaw. - -Miss Pope, of Queen Street, had a face grave and unpromising, but her -humour was dry and racy as old sherry. Churchill, in the "Rosciad," -mentions her as vivaciously advancing in a jig to perform as Cherry and -Polly Honeycomb. Later she grew into an excellent Mrs. Malaprop.[500] - -This good woman, well-bred lady, and finished actress, lived for forty -years in Queen Street, two doors east of Freemasons' Tavern; there, the -Miss Prue, and Cherry, and Jacinta, and Miss Biddy of years before, the -friend of Garrick and the praised of Churchill, sat, surrounded by -portraits of Lord Nuneham, General Churchill, Garrick, and Holland, and -told the story of her first love to Horace Smith. - -An attachment had sprung up between her and Holland, but Garrick had -warned her of the man's waywardness and instability. Miss Pope would not -believe the accusations till one day, on her way to see Mrs. Clive at -Twickenham, she beheld the unfaithful Holland in a boat with Mrs. -Baddeley, near the Eel-pie Island. She accused him at the next rehearsal, -he would confess no wrong, and she never spoke to him again but on the -stage. "But I have reason to know," said the old lady, shedding tears as -she looked up at her cruel lover's portrait, "that he never was really -happy." - -Miss Pope left Queen Street at last, finding the Freemasons too noisy -neighbours, especially after dinner. "Miss Pope," says Hazlitt, "was the -very picture of a duenna or an antiquated dowager in the latter spring of -beauty--the second childhood of vanity; more quaint, fantastic, and -old-fashioned, more pert, frothy, and light-headed than can be -imagined."[501] - -It was not very easy to please poor soured Hazlitt, whose opinion of women -had not been improved by his having been jilted by a servant girl. This -good woman, Miss Pope, died at Hadley in 1801, her latter life having been -embittered by the loss of her brother and favourite niece. - -The Freemasons' Hall, built by T. Sandby, architect, was opened in 1776, -by Lord Petre, a Roman Catholic nobleman, with the usual mysterious -ceremonials of the order. The annual assemblies of the lodges had -previously been held in the halls of the City's companies. The tavern was -built in 1786, by William Tyler, and has since been enlarged. In the -tavern public meetings and dinners take place, chiefly in May and June. -Here a farewell banquet was given to John Philip Kemble, and a public -dinner on his birthday, to James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. All the -waiters in this tavern are Masons. The house has been lately enlarged. Its -new great Hall was inaugurated by the dinner given to Charles Dickens by -his friends on his departure for America in November 1857. - -Isaac Sparkes, a famous Irish comedian about 1774, was an old, fat, -unwieldy man, with a vast double chin, and large, bushy, prominent -eyebrows. When in London, he established in Long Acre a Club, which was -frequented by Lord Townshend, Lord Effingham, Lord Lindore, Captain -Mulcaster, Mr. Crewe of Cheshire, and "other nobles and fashionables." -Sparkes, who dressed well and had a commanding presence, probably presided -over it, as he did at Dublin clubs, dressed in robes as Lord Chief Justice -Joker.[502] - -In one of the grand old houses in Great Queen Street, on the right hand as -one goes towards Lincoln's Inn Fields, occupied before 1830 by Messrs. -Allman the booksellers, died Lewis the comedian, famous to the last, as -Leigh Hunt tells us, for his invincible airiness and juvenility. "Mr. -Lewis," says the same veteran play-goer, "displayed a combination rarely -to be found in acting--that of the fop and the real gentleman. With a -voice, a manner, and a person all equally graceful and light, with -features at once whimsical and genteel, he played on the top of his -profession like a plume. He was the Mercutio of the age, in every sense of -the word mercurial. His airy, breathless voice, thrown to the audience -before he appeared, was the signal of his winged animal spirits; and when -he gave a glance of his eye or touched with his finger another man's ribs, -it was the very _punctum saliens_ of playfulness and innuendo. We saw him -take leave of the public, a man of sixty-five, looking not more than half -the age, in the character of the Copper Captain; and heard him say, in a -voice broken with emotion, that for the space of thirty years he had not -once incurred their displeasure."[503] - -Benjamin Franklin, when first in England, worked at the printing-office of -Mr. Watts, in Little Wild Street, after being employed for twelve months -at one Palmer's, in Bartholomew Close. He lodged close by in Duke Street, -opposite the Roman Catholic Chapel, with a widow, to whom he paid -three-and-sixpence weekly. His landlady was a clergyman's daughter, who -had married a Catholic, and abjured Protestantism. She and Franklin were -much together, as he kept good hours and she was lame and almost confined -to her room. Their frugal supper often consisted of nothing but half an -anchovy, a small slice of bread and butter each, and half a pint of ale -between them. On Franklin proposing to leave for cheaper lodgings, she -consented to let him retain his room at two shillings a week. In the attic -of the house lived a voluntary nun. She was a lady who early in life had -been sent to the Continent for her health, but unable to bear the climate, -had returned home to live in seclusion on L12 a year, devoting the rest of -her income to charity, and subsisting, healthy and cheerful, on nothing -but water-gruel. Her presence was thought a blessing to the house, and -several tenants in succession had charged her no rent. She permitted the -occasional visits of Franklin and his landlady; and the brave American -lad, while he pitied her superstition, felt confirmed in his frugality by -her example. - -During his first weeks with Mr. Watts, Franklin worked as a pressman, -drinking only water while his companions had their five pints of porter -daily. The "Water American," as he was called, was, however, stronger than -his colleagues, and tried to persuade some of them that strong beer was -not necessary for strong work. His argument was that bread contained more -materials of strength than beer, and that it was only corn in the beer -that produced the strength in the liquid. - -Born to be a reformer, Franklin persuaded the _chapel_ to alter some of -their laws; he resisted impositions, and conciliated the respect of his -fellows. He worked as a pressman, as he had done in America, for the sake -of the exercise. He used, he tells us, to carry up and down stairs with -one hand a large _form_ of type, while the other fifty men required both -hands to do the same work. - -Franklin's fellow pressman drank every day a pint of beer before -breakfast, a pint with bread and cheese for breakfast, a pint between -breakfast and dinner, one at dinner, one again at six in the afternoon, -and another after his day's work; and all this he declared to be necessary -to give him strength for the press. "This custom," said the King of Common -Sense, "seemed to me abominable." Franklin, however, failed to make a -convert of this man, and he went on paying his four or five shillings a -week for the "cursed beverage," destined probably, poor devil, to remain -all his life in a state of voluntary wretchedness, serfdom, and poverty. - -A few of the men consented to follow Franklin's example, and renouncing -beer and cheese, to take for breakfast a basin of warm gruel, with butter, -toast, and nutmeg. This did not cost more than a pint of beer--"namely, -three halfpence"--and at the same time was more nourishing and kept the -head clearer. Those who gorged themselves with beer would sometimes run up -a score and come to the Water American for credit, "their light being -out." Franklin attended at the great stone table every Saturday evening to -take up the little debts, which sometimes amounted to thirty shillings a -week. "This circumstance," says Franklin in his autobiography, "added to -the reputation of my being a tolerable _gabber_--or, in other words, -skilful in the art of burlesque--kept up my importance in the 'chapel.' I -had, besides, recommended myself to the esteem of my master by my -assiduous application to business, never observing 'Saint' Monday. My -extraordinary quickness in composing always procured me such work as was -most urgent, and which is commonly best paid; and thus my time passed away -in a very pleasant manner."[504] - -Franklin, like a truly great man, was quietly proud of the humble origin -from which he had risen; and when he came to England as the agent and -ambassador of Massachusetts, he paid a visit to his work-room in Wild -Street, and going to his old friend the press, said to the two workmen -busy at it, "Come, my friends, we will drink together; it is now forty -years since I worked like you at this very press as a journeyman printer." - -Wild House stood on the site of Little Wild Street. The Duchess of Ormond -was living there in 1655.[505] - -On the day when King James II. escaped from London the mob grew unruly, -and assembled in great force to pull down houses where either mass was -said or priests lodged. Don Pietro Ronguillo, the Spanish ambassador, who -lived at Wild House, and whom Evelyn mentions as having received him with -"extraordinary civility" (March 26, 1681), had not thought it necessary to -ask for soldiers, though the rich Roman Catholics had sent him their money -and plate as to a sanctuary, and the plate of the Chapel Royal was also in -his care. But the house was sacked without mercy; his noble library -perished in the flames; the chapel was demolished; the pictures, rich -beds, and furniture were destroyed,--the poor Spaniard making his escape -by a back door.[506] His only comfort was that the sacred Host in his -chapel was rescued.[507] - -In 1780 another savage and thievish Protestant mob, under Lord George -Gordon, assembled in St. George's Fields to petition Parliament against -the Test Act, which relieved Roman Catholics from many vexatious penalties -and unjust disabilities on condition of their taking their oaths of -allegiance and disbelief in the infamous doctrines of the Jesuits. The mob -assembled on the 2d of June, and jostled and insulted the Peers going to -the House of Lords. The same evening the people demolished the greater -part of the Roman Catholic Chapel in Duke Street. On Monday they stripped -the house and shop of Mr. Maberly, of Little Queen Street, who had been a -witness at the trial of some rioters. On Tuesday they passed through Long -Acre and burnt Newgate, releasing three hundred prisoners, and the same -day destroyed the house of Justice Cox in Great Queen Street.[508] In -these street riots seventy-two private houses and four public gaols were -burnt, and more than four hundred rioters perished. - -At the above-named chapel Nollekens, the eminent sculptor, was baptized in -1737. The present chapel is much resorted to on Sundays by the Irish poor -and foreigners, who live about Drury Lane. - -Nicholas Stone, the great monumental sculptor, lived in Long Acre. In 1619 -Inigo Jones began the new Banqueting House at Whitehall, and replaced the -one destroyed by fire six months before. This master mason was Nicholas -Stone,[509] the sculptor of the fine monument to Sir Francis Vere in -Westminster Abbey. His pay was 4s. 10d. a day. Stone also designed Dr. -Donne's splendid monument in St. Paul's. Roubilliac was a great admirer of -the kneeling knight at the north-west corner of Vere's tomb. He used to -stand and watch it, and say, "Hush! hush! he vill speak presently." Mr. J. -T. Smith seems to think that the Shakspere monument at Stratford is in -this sculptor's manner.[510] Inigo Jones, who had been fined for having -borne arms at the siege of Basing House, joined with Nicholas Stone in -burying their money near Inigo's house in Scotland Yard; but as the -Parliament encouraged servants to betray such hidden treasures, the -partners removed their money and hid it again with their own hands in -Lambeth Marsh. - -Oliver Cromwell, when member for Cambridge, lived from 1637 to 1643, on -the south side of Long Acre, two doors from Nicholas Stone the sculptor. - -John Taylor, the "Water-Poet" an eccentric poetaster, kept a public-house -in Phoenix Alley, now Hanover Court, near Long Acre. He was a Thames -waterman, who had fought at the taking of Cadiz, and afterwards travelled -to Germany and Scotland as a servant to Sir William Waade. He was then -made collector of the wine-dues for the lieutenant of the Tower, and wrote -a life of Old Parr, and sixty-three volumes of satire and jingling -doggerel, not altogether without vivacity and vigour. He called himself -"the King's Water Poet" and "the Queen's Waterman;" and in 1623 wrote a -tract called "The World runs on Wheels"--a violent attack on the use of -coaches. "I dare truly affirm," says the writer, "that every day in any -term (especially if the court be at Whitehall) they do rob us of our -livings and carry five hundred and sixty fares daily from us." In this -quaint pamphlet Taylor gives a humorous account of his once riding in his -master's coach from Whitehall to the Tower. "Before I had been drawn -twenty yards," he says, "such a timpany of pride puft me up that I was -ready to burst with the wind-cholic of vaine glory." He complains -particularly of the streets and lanes being blocked with carriages, -especially Blackfriars and Fleet Street or the Strand after a masque or -play at court; the noise deafening every one and souring the beer, to the -injury of the public health. It is Taylor who mentions that William -Boonen, a Dutchman, first introduced coaches into England in 1564, and -became Queen Elizabeth's coachman. "It is," he says, "a doubtful question -whether the devil brought tobacco into England in a coach, or brought a -coach in a fog or mist of tobacco." Nor did Taylor rest there, for he -presented a petition to James I., which was submitted to Sir Francis -Bacon and other commissioners, to compel all play-houses to stand on the -Bankside, so as to give more work to watermen. In the Civil War, Taylor -went to Oxford and wrote ballads for the king. On his return to London, he -settled in Long Acre with a mourning crown for a sign;[511] but the -Puritans resenting this emblem, he had his own portrait painted instead -with this motto-- - - "There's many a head stands for a sign: - Then, gentle reader, why not mine?" - -Taylor was born in 1580, and died in 1654; and the following epitaph was -written on the vain, honest fellow, who was buried at St. -Martin's-in-the-Fields:-- - - "Here lies the Water-poet, honest John, - Who rowed on the streams of Helicon; - Where having many rocks and dangers past, - He at the haven of Heaven arrived at last."[512] - -From 1682 to 1686 John Dryden lived in Long Acre, on the north side, in a -house facing what formerly was Rose Street. His name appears in the -rate-books as "John Dryden, Esq."--an unusual distinction--and the sum he -paid to the poor varied from 18s. to L1.[513] It was here he resided when -he was beaten, one December evening in 1679, by three ruffians hired by -the Earl of Rochester and the Duchess of Portsmouth. Sir Walter Scott -makes the poet live at the time in Gerard Street; but no part of Gerard -Street was built in 1679. Rochester had the year before ridiculed Dryden -as "Poet Squab," and believed that Dryden had helped Mulgrave in -ridiculing him in his clumsy "Essay on Satire." The best lines of this -dull poem are these:-- - - "Of fighting sparks Fame may her pleasure say, - But 'tis a bolder thing to run away. - The world may well forgive him all his ill, - For every fault does prove his penance still; - Falsely he falls into some dangerous noose, - And then as meanly labours to get loose." - -A letter from Rochester to a friend, dated November 21, in the above year, -is still extant, in which he names Dryden as the author of the satire, and -concludes with the following threat:--"If he (Dryden) falls on me at the -blunt, which is his very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him, if you -please, and _leave the repartee to Black Will with a cudgel_."[514] - -Dryden offered a reward of fifty pounds for the discovery of the men who -cudgelled him, depositing the money in the hands of "Mr. Blanchard, -goldsmith, next door to Temple Bar," but all in vain. The Rose Alley -satire, the Rose Alley ambuscade, and the Dryden salutation, became -established jokes with Dryden's countless enemies. Even Mulgrave himself, -in his _Art of Poetry_ said of Dryden coldly-- - - "Though praised and punished for another's rhymes, - His own deserve as great applause sometimes." - -And, in a conceited note, the amateur poet described the libel as one for -which Dryden had been unjustly "_applauded and wounded_." But these lines -and this note Mulgrave afterwards suppressed. - -Poor Otway, whom Rochester had satirised, and who had accused Dryden of -saying of his _Don Carlos_ that, "Egad, there was not a line in it he -would be author of," stood up bravely for Dryden as an honest satirist in -these vigorous verses:-- - - "Poets in honour of the truth should write, - With the same spirit brave men for it fight. - - * * * * * - - From any private cause where malice reigns, - Or general pique all blockheads have to brains." - -Dryden never took any poetical revenge on Rochester, and in the prefatory -essay to his _Juvenal_ he takes credit for that forbearance.[515] - -Edward (more generally known as Ned) Ward was the landlord of -public-houses alternately in Moorfields, Clerkenwell, Fulwood's Rents, and -Long Acre. He was born in 1667, and died 1731. He was a High Tory, and -fond of the society of poets and authors.[516] Attacked in the _Dunciad_, -he turned _Don Quixote_ into Hudibrastic verse, and wrote endless songs, -lampoons, coarse clever satires, and _Dialogues on Matrimony_ (1710). - -The father of Pepys's long-suffering wife lived in Long Acre; and the -bustling official describes, with a stultifying exactitude, his horror at -a visit which he found himself forced to pay to a house surrounded by -taverns. - -Dr. Arbuthnot, in a letter to Mr. Watkins, gives Bessy Cox--a woman in -Long Acre whom Prior would have married when her husband died--a -detestable character. The infatuated poet left his estate between his old -servant Jonathan Drift, and this woman, who boasted that she was the -poet's Emma,--another virago, Flanders Jane, being his Chloe.[517] - -It is said of this careless, pleasant poet, that after spending an -intellectual evening with Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, in order -to unbend, he would smoke a pipe and drink a bottle of ale with a common -soldier and his wife in Long Acre. Cibber calls the man a butcher;[518] -other writers make him a cobbler or a tavern-keeper, which is more likely. -The shameless husband is said to have been proud of the poet's preference -for his wife. Pope, who was remorseless at the failings of friends, calls -the woman a wretch, and said to Spence, "Prior was not a right good man; -he used to bury himself for whole days and nights together with this poor -mean creature, and often drank hard." This person, who perhaps is -misrepresented--and where there is a doubt the prisoner at the bar should -always have the benefit of it--was the Venus of the poet's verse. To her -Prior wrote, after Walpole tried to impeach him:-- - - "From public noise and faction's strife, - From all the busy ills of life, - Take me, my Chloe, to thy breast, - And lull my wearied soul to rest. - - "For ever in this humble cell [ale-house] - Let thee and I [me], my fair one, dwell; - None enter else but Love, and he - Shall bar the door and keep the key." - -Prior was the son of a joiner,[519] and was brought up, as before -mentioned, by his uncle, a tavern-keeper at Charing Cross, where the -clever waiter's knowledge of Horace led to his being sent to college by -the Earl of Dorset. Abandoning literature, he finally became our -ambassador to France. He died in retirement in 1721. - -It was in a poor shoemaker's small window in Long Acre,--half of it -devoted to boots, half to pictures--that poor starving Wilson's fine -classical landscapes were exposed, often vainly, for sale. Here, from his -miserable garret in Tottenham Court Road, the great painter, peevish and -soured by neglect, would come swearing at his rivals Barret and Smith of -Chichester. I can imagine him, with his tall, burly figure, his red face, -and his enormous nose, striding out of the shop, thirsting for porter, and -muttering that, if the pictures of Wright of Derby had fire, his had air. -Yet this great painter, whose works are so majestic and glowing, so fresh, -airy, broad, and harmonious, was all but starved. The king refused to -purchase his "Kew Gardens," and the very pawnbrokers grew weary of taking -his Tivolis and Niobes as pledges, far preferring violins, flat-irons, or -telescopes. - -It was in Long Acre that that delightful idyllic painter, Stothard, was -born in 1755. His father, a Yorkshireman, kept an inn in the street.[520] -Sent for his health into Yorkshire, and placed with an old lady who had -some choice engravings, he began to draw. The first subject that he ever -painted was executed with an oyster-shell full of black paint, borrowed -from the village plumber and glazier. This little man was the father of -many a Watteau lover and tripping Boccaccio nymph. That genial and -graceful artist, who illustrated Chaucer, _Robinson Crusoe_, and _The -Pilgrim's Progress_, had the road to fame pointed out to him first by -that little black man. - -On the accession of King George I. the Tories had such sway over the -London mobs, that the friends of the Protestant succession resolved to -found cheap tavern clubs in various parts of the City in order that -well-affected tradesmen might meet to keep up their spirit of loyalty, and -serve as focus-points of resistance in case of Tory tumults. - -Defoe, a staunch Whig, describes one of these assemblies in Long Acre, -which probably suggested the rest. At the Mughouse Club in Long Acre, -about a hundred gentlemen, lawyers, and tradesmen met in a large room, at -seven o'clock on Wednesday and Saturday evenings in the winter, and broke -up soon after ten. A grave old gentleman, "in his own grey hairs,"[521] -and within a few months of ninety, was the president, and sat in an -"armed" chair, raised some steps above the rest of the company, to keep -the room in order. A harp was played all the time at the lower end of the -room, and every now and then one of the company rose and entertained the -rest with a song. Nothing was drunk but ale, and every one chalked his -score on the table beside him. What with the songs and drinking healths -from one table to another, there was no room for politics or anything that -could sour conversation. The members of these clubs retired when they -pleased, as from a coffee-house. - -Old Sir Hans Sloane's coach, made by John Aubrey, Queen Anne's coachmaker, -in Long Acre, and given to him by her for curing her of a fit of the gout, -was given by Sir Hans to his old butler, who set up the White Horse Inn -behind Chelsea Church, where it remained for half a century.[522] - -Charles Catton, one of the early Academicians, was originally a coach and -sign painter. He painted a lion as a sign for his friend, a celebrated -coachmaker, at that time living in Long Acre.[523] A sign painted by -Clarkson, that hung at the north-east corner of Little Russell Street -about 1780, was said to have cost L500, and crowds used to collect to -look at it. - -Lord William Russell was led from Holborn into Little Queen Street on his -way to the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. As the coach turned into this -street, Lord Russell said to Tillotson, "I have often turned to the other -hand with great comfort, but I now turn to this with greater." He referred -to Southampton House, on the opposite side of Holborn, which he inherited -through his brave and good wife, the grand-daughter of Shakspere's early -patron. - -In the year 1796 Charles Lamb resided with his father, mother, aunt, and -sister in lodgings at No. 7 Little Queen Street, a house, I believe, -removed to make way for the church. Southey describes a call which he made -on them there in 1794-5. The father had once published a small quarto -volume of poetry, of which "The Sparrow's Wedding" was his favourite, and -Charles used to delight him by reading this to him when he was in his -dotage. In 1797 Lamb published his first verses. His father, the -ex-servant and companion of an old Bencher in the Temple, was sinking into -the grave; his mother had lost the use of her limbs, and his sister was -employed by day in needlework, and by night in watching her mother. Lamb, -just twenty-one years old, was a clerk in the India House. On the 22d of -September[524] Miss Lamb, who had been deranged some years before by -nervous fatigue, seized a case-knife while dinner was preparing, chased a -little girl, her apprentice, round the room, and on her mother calling to -her to forbear, stabbed her to the heart. Lamb arrived only in time to -snatch the knife from his sister's hand. He had that morning been to -consult a doctor, but had not found him at home. The verdict at the -inquest was "Insanity," and Mary Lamb was sent to a mad-house, where she -soon recovered her reason. Poor Lamb's father and aunt did not long -survive. Not long after, Lamb himself was for six weeks confined in an -asylum. There is extant a terrible letter in which he describes rushing -from a party of friends who were supping with him soon after the horrible -catastrophe, and in an agony of regret falling on his knees by his -mother's coffin, asking forgiveness of Heaven for forgetting her so -soon.[525] - -There is no doubt that poor Lamb played the sot over his nightly grog; but -he had a noble soul, and let us be lenient with such a man-- - - "Be to his faults a little blind, - And to his virtues very kind." - -He abandoned her whom he loved, together with all meaner ambitions, and -drudged his years away as a poor, ignoble clerk, in order to maintain his -half-crazed sister; for this purpose--true knight that he was, though he -never drew sword--he gave all that he had--HIS LIFE! Peace, then! peace be -to his ashes! - -[Illustration: LYON'S INN, 1804.] - - - - -[Illustration: CRAVEN HOUSE, 1790] - - -CHAPTER XII. - -DRURY LANE. - - -The Roll of Battle Abbey tells us that the founder of the Drury family -came into England with that brave Norman robber, the Conqueror, and -settled in Suffolk.[526] - -From this house branched off the Druries of Hawstead, in the same county, -who built Drury House in the time of Elizabeth. It stood a little behind -the site of the present Olympic Theatre. Of another branch of the same -family was that Sir Drue Drury, who, together with Sir Amias Powlett, had -at one time the custody of Mary, Queen of Scots. - -Drury Lane takes its name from a house probably built by Sir William -Drury, a Knight of the Garter, and a most able commander in the desultory -Irish wars during the reign of Elizabeth, who fell in a duel with John -Burroughs, fought to settle a foolish quarrel about some punctilio of -precedency.[527] In this house, in 1600, the imprudent friends of rash -Essex resolved on the fatal outbreak that ended so lamentably at Ludgate. -The Earl of Southampton then resided there.[528] The plots of Blount, -Davis, Davers, etc., were communicated to Essex by letter. It was noticed -that at his trial the earl betrayed agitation at the mention of Drury -House, though he had carefully destroyed all suspicious papers. - -Sir William's son Robert was a patron of Dr. Donne, the religious poet and -satirist, who in 1611 had apartments assigned to him and his wife in Drury -House. Donne, though the son of a man of some fortune, was foolish enough -to squander his money when young, and in advanced life was so wanting in -self-respect as to live about in other men's houses, paying for his food -and lodging by his wit and conversation. He lived first with Lord -Chancellor Egerton, Bacon's predecessor, afterwards at Drury House and -with Sir Francis Wooley at Pitford, in Surrey. After his clandestine -marriage with Lady Ellesmere's niece, Donne's life was for some time a -hard and troublesome one. - -"Sir Robert Drury," says Isaac Walton, "a gentleman of a very noble estate -and a more liberal mind, assigned Donne and his wife a useful apartment in -his own large house in Drury Lane, and rent free; he was also a cherisher -of his studies, and such a friend as sympathised with him and his in all -their joys and sorrows."[529] - -Sir Robert, wishing to attend Lord Hay as King James's ambassador at his -audiences in Paris with Henry IV., begged Donne to accompany him. But the -poet refused, his wife being at the time near her confinement and in poor -health, and saying that "her divining soul boded some ill in his absence." -But Sir Robert growing more urgent, and Donne unwilling to refuse his -generous friend a request, at last obtained from his wife a faint consent -for a two months' absence. On the twelfth day the party reached Paris. Two -days afterwards Donne was left alone in the room where Sir Robert and -other friends had dined. Half an hour afterwards Sir Robert returned, and -found Mr. Donne still alone, "but in such an ecstasy, and so altered in -his looks," as amazed him. After a long and perplexed pause, Donne said, -"I have had a dreadful vision since I saw you; I have seen my dear wife -pass by me twice in this room with her hair hanging about her shoulders -and a dead child in her arms;" to which Sir Robert replied, "Sure, sir, -you have slept since I saw you, and this is the result of some melancholy -dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake." Donne assured -his friend that he had not been asleep, and that on the second appearance -his wife stopped, looked him in the face, and then vanished. - -The next day, however, neither rest nor sleep had altered Mr. Donne's -opinion, and he repeated the story with only a more deliberate and -confirmed confidence. All this inclining Sir Robert to some faint belief, -he instantly sent off a servant to Drury House to bring him word in what -condition Mrs. Donne was. The messenger returned in due time, saying that -he had found Mrs. Donne very sad and sick in bed, and that after a long -and dangerous labour she had been delivered of a dead child; and upon -examination, the delivery proved to have been at the very day and hour in -which Donne had seen the vision. Walton is proud of this late miracle, so -easily explainable by natural causes; and illustrates the sympathy of -souls by the story of two lutes, one of which, if both are tuned to the -same pitch, will, though untouched, echo the other when it is played. - -Far be it from me to wish to ridicule any man's belief in the -supernatural; but still, as a lover of truth, wishing to believe what -_is_, whether natural or supernatural, without confusing the former with -the latter, let me analyse this pictured presentiment. An imaginative man, -against his sick wife's wish, undertakes a perilous journey. Absent from -her--alone--after wine and friendly revel feeling still more lonely--in -the twilight he thinks of home and the wife he loves so much. Dreaming, -though awake, his fears resolve themselves into a vision, seen by the -mind, and to the eye apparently vivid as reality. The day and hour happen -to correspond, or he persuades himself afterwards that they do correspond -with the result, and the day-dream is henceforward ranked among -supernatural visions. Who is there candid enough to write down the -presentiments that do not come true? And after all, the vision, to be -consistent, should have been followed by the death of Mrs. Donne as well -as the child. - -Some verses are pointed out by Isaac Walton as those written by Donne on -parting from her for this journey. But there is internal evidence in them -to the contrary; for they refer to Italy, not to Paris, and to a lady who -would accompany him as a page, which a lady in Mrs. Donne's condition -could scarcely have done. I have myself no doubt that the verses cited -were written to his wife long before, when their marriage was as yet -concealed. With what a fine vigour the poem commences!-- - - "By our first strange and fatal interview, - By all desires which thereof did ensue, - By our long-striving hopes, by that remorse - Which my words' masculine persuasive force - Begot in thee, and by the memory - Of hurts which spies and rivals threaten me!" - - * * * * * - -And how full of true feeling and passionate tenderness is the dramatic -close!-- - - "When I am gone dream me some happiness, - Nor let thy looks our long-hid love confess; - Nor praise nor dispraise me; nor bless nor curse - Openly love's force; nor in bed fright thy nurse - With midnight startings, crying out, 'Oh! oh! - Nurse! oh, my love is slain! I saw him go - O'er the white Alps alone; I saw him, I, - Assailed, taken, fight, stabbed, bleed, and die.'" - -The verses really written on Donne's leaving for Paris begin with four -exquisite lines-- - - "As virtuous men pass mild away, - And whisper to their souls to go, - Whilst some of their sad friends do say, - 'The breath goes now,' and some say 'No!'" - -A later verse contains a strange conceit, beaten out into pin-wire a page -long by a modern poet--[530] - - "If we be two, we are two so - As stiff twin compasses are two; - Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show - To move, but does if t'other do." - -Donne was the chief of what Dr. Johnson unwisely called "the metaphysical -school of poetry." Dryden accuses Donne of perplexing the fair sex with -nice speculations.[531] His poems, often pious and beautiful, are -sometimes distorted with strange conceits. He has a poem on a flea; and in -his lines on Good Friday he thus whimsically expresses himself:-- - - "Who sees God's face--that is, self-life--must die: - What a death were it then to see God die! - It made his own lieutenant, Nature, shrink; - It made his footstool crack and the sun wink. - Could I behold those hands, which span the Poles, - And tune all sphears at once, pierced with those holes!"[532] - -This imitator of the worst faults of Marini was made Dean of St. Paul's by -King James I., who delighted to converse with him. The king used to say, -"I always rejoice when I think that by my means Donne became a divine." He -gave the poet the deanery one day as he sat at dinner, saying "that he -would carve to him of a dish he loved well, and that he might take the -dish (the deanery) home to his study and say grace there to himself, and -much good might it do him." - -Shortly before his death Donne dressed himself in his shroud, and standing -there, with his eyes shut and the sheet opened, "To discover his thin, -pale, and death-like face," he caused a curious painter to take his -picture. This picture he kept near his bed as a ghostly remembrance, and -from this Nicholas Stone, the sculptor, carved his effigy, which still -exists in St. Paul's, having survived the Great Fire, though the rest of -his tomb and monument has perished. - -Drury House took the name of Craven House when rebuilt by Lord Craven. -There is a tradition in Yorkshire, where the deanery of Craven is -situated, that this chivalrous nobleman's father was sent up to London by -the carrier, and there became a mercer or draper. His son was not unworthy -of the staunch old Yorkshire stock. He fought under Gustavus Adolphus -against Wallenstein and Tilly, and afterwards attached himself to the -service of the unfortunate King and Queen of Bohemia, and won wealth and a -title for his family, which the Wars of the Roses had first reduced to -indigence. - -The Queen of Bohemia had been married in 1613 to Frederic, Count Palatine -of the Rhine, only a few months after the death of Prince Henry her -brother. The young King of Spain had been her suitor, and the Pope had -opposed her match with a Protestant. She was married on St. Valentine's -Day; and Donne, from his study in Drury Lane, celebrated the occasion by a -most extravagant epithalamion in which is to be found this outrageous -line-- - - "Here lies a She sun, and a He moon there." - -The poem opens prettily enough with these lines-- - - "Hail, Bishop Valentine, whose day this is! - All the air is thy diocese; - And all the chirping choristers - And other birds are thy parishioners. - Thou marry'st every year - The lyrique lark and the grave whispering dove." - -At seventeen Sir William Craven had entered the service of the Prince of -Orange. On the accession of Charles I. he was ennobled. At the storming of -Creuzenach he was the first of the English Cavaliers to mount the breach -and plant the flag. It was then that Gustavus said smilingly to him, "I -perceive, sir, you are willing to give a younger brother a chance of -coming to your title and estate." At Donauwert the young Englishman again -distinguished himself. In the same month that Gustavus fell at Lutzen, the -Elector Palatine died at Mentz. While Grotius interceded for the Queen of -Bohemia, Lord Craven fought for her in the vineyards of the -Palatinate.[533] In consequence, perhaps, of Richelieu's intrigues, four -years elapsed before Charles I. took compassion on the children of his -widowed sister, whose cause the Puritans had loudly advocated. When -Charles and Rupert did go to England, they went under the care of the -trusty Lord Craven, who was to try to recover the arrears of the widow's -pension. On their return to Germany, to campaign in Westphalia, Rupert and -Lord Craven were taken prisoners and thrown into the castle at Vienna--a -confinement that lasted three years, a long time for brave young soldiers -who, like the Douglas, "preferred the lark's song to the mouse's squeak." - -Later in the Civil War we find this same generous nobleman giving L50,000 -to King Charles, at a time when he was a beggar and a fugitive. Cromwell, -enraged at the aid thus ministered to an enemy, accused the Cavalier of -enlisting volunteers for the Stuart, and instantly, with stern -promptitude, sequestered all his English estates except Combe Abbey. In -the meantime Lord Craven served the State and his queen bravely, and -waited for better times. It was this faithful servant who consoled the -royal widow for her son's ill-treatment, the slander heaped upon her -daughter, and the incessant vexations of importunate creditors. - -The Restoration brought no good news for the unfortunate queen. Charles, -afraid of her claims for a pension, delayed her return to England, till -the Earl of Craven generously offered her a house next his own in Drury -Lane. She found there a pleasant and commodious mansion, surrounded by a -delightful garden.[534] It does not appear that she went publicly to -court, or joined in the royal revelries; but she visited the theatres with -her nephew Charles and her good old friend and host, and she was reunited -to her son Rupert. - -In the autumn of 1661, the year after the Restoration, she removed to -Leicester House, then the property of Sir Robert Sydney, Earl of -Leicester, and in the next February she died.[535] Evelyn mentions a -violent tempestuous wind that followed her death, as a sign from Heaven to -show that the troubles and calamities of this princess and of the royal -family in general had now all blown over, and were, like the ex-queen, to -rest in repose. - -She left all her books, pictures, and papers to her incomparable old -friend and benefactor. The Earl of Leicester wrote to the Earl of -Northumberland a cold and flippant letter to announce the departure of -"his royal tenant;" and adds, "It seems the Fates did not think it fit I -should have the honour, which indeed I never much desired, to be the -landlord of a queen." Charles, who had grudged the dethroned queen even -her subsistence, gave her a royal funeral in Westminster Abbey. - -At the very time when she died Lord Craven was building a miniature -Heidelberg for her at Hampstead Marshall, in Berkshire, under the advice -of that eminent architect and charlatan, Sir Balthasar Gerbier. But the -palace was ill-fated, like the poor queen, for it was consumed by an -accidental fire before it could be tenanted. The arrival of the Portuguese -Infanta, a princess scarcely less unfortunate than the queen just dead, -soon erased all recollections of King James's ill-starred daughter. - -The biographers of the Queen of Bohemia do not claim for her beauty, wit, -learning, or accomplishments; but she seems to have been an affectionate, -romantic girl, full of vivacity and ambition, who was ripened by sorrow -and disappointment into an amiable and high-souled woman. - -It was always supposed that the Queen of Bohemia was secretly married to -Lord Craven, as Bassompierre was to a princess of Lorraine. A base and -abandoned court could not otherwise account for a friendship so -unchangeable and so unselfish. There is also a story that when Craven -House was pulled down, a subterranean passage was discovered joining the -eastern and western sides. Similar passages have been found joining -convents to monasteries; but, unfortunately for the scandalmongers, they -are generally proved to have been either sewers or conduits. The "Queen of -Hearts," as she was called--the princess to whose cause the chivalrous -Christian of Brunswick, the knight with the silver arm, had solemnly -devoted his life and fortunes--the "royal mistress" to whom shifty Sir -Henry Wotton had written those beautiful lines-- - - "You meaner beauties of the night, - That poorly entertain our eyes - More by your number than your light, - What are ye when the moon doth rise?" - -was at "last gone to dust." Her faithful servant, the old soldier of -Gustavus, survived her thirty-five years, and lived to follow to the grave -his foster-child in arms, Prince Rupert, whose daughter Ruperta was left -to his trusty guardianship. - -In 1670, on the death of the stolid and drunken Duke of Albemarle, Charles -II. constituted Lord Craven colonel of the Coldstreams. Energetic, -simple-hearted, benevolent, this good servant of a bad race became a -member of the Royal Society, lived in familiar intimacy with Evelyn and -Ray, improved his property, and employed himself in gardening. - -Although he had many estates, Lord Craven always showed the most -predilection for Combe Abbey, the residence of the Queen of Bohemia in her -youth. To judge by the numerous dedications to which his name is prefixed, -he would appear to have been a munificent patron of letters, especially -of those authors who had been favourites of Elizabeth of Bohemia.[536] - -On the accession of James, Lord Craven, true as ever, was sworn of the -Privy Council; but soon after, on some mean suspicion of the king, was -threatened with the loss of his regiment. "If they take away my regiment," -said the staunch old soldier, "they had as good take away my life, since I -have nothing else to divert myself with." In the hurry of the Popish -catastrophe it was not taken away. But King William proved Craven's -loyalty to the Stuarts by giving his regiment to General Talmash. - -The unemployed officer now expended his activity in attending riots and -fires. Long before, when the Puritan prentices had pulled down the houses -of ill-fame in Whettone Park and in Moorfields, Pepys had described the -colonel as riding up and down like a madman, giving orders to his men. -Later Lord Dorset had spoken of the old soldier's energy in a gay ballad -on his mistress-- - - "The people's hearts leap wherever she comes, - And beat day and night like my Lord Craven's drums." - -In King William's reign the veteran was so prompt in attending fires that -it used to be said his horse smelt a fire as soon as it broke out. - -Lord Craven died unmarried in 1697, aged 88, and was buried at Binley, -near Coventry. The grandson of a Wharfdale peasant had ended a well-spent -life. His biographer, Miss Benger, well remarks:--"If his claims to -disinterestedness be contemned of men, let his cause be (left) to female -judges,--to whose honour be it averred, examples of nobleness, generosity -and magnanimity are ever delightful, because to their purer and more -susceptible souls they are (never) incredible."[537] - -Drury House was rebuilt by Lord Craven after the Queen's death. It -occupied the site of Craven Buildings and the Olympic Theatre. Pennant, -ever curious and energetic, went to find it, and describes it in his -pleasant way as a "large brick pile," then turned into a public-house -bearing the sign of the Queen of Bohemia, faithful still to the worship of -its old master. - -The house was taken down in 1809, when the Olympic Pavilion was built on -part of its gardens. The cellars, once stored with good Rhenish from the -Palatinate, and sack from Cadiz, still exist, but have been blocked up. -Palsgrave Place, near Temple Bar, perpetuates the memory of the unlucky -husband of the brave princess. - -It was Lord Craven who generously founded pest-houses in Carnaby Street, -soon after the Great Plague. There were thirty-six small houses and a -cemetery. They were sold in 1772 to William, third Earl of Craven, for -L1200. It may be remembered that in the _Memoirs of Scriblerus_ a room is -hired for the dissection of the purchased body of a malefactor, near the -St. Giles's pest-fields, and not far from Tyburn Road, Oxford Street. The -Earl was their founder. - -On the end wall at the bottom of Craven Buildings there was formerly a -large fresco-painting of the Earl of Craven, who was represented in -armour, mounted on a charger, and with a truncheon in his hand. This -portrait had been twice or thrice repainted in oil, but in Brayley's time -was entirely obliterated.[538] This fresco is said to have been the work -of Paul Vansomer, a painter who came to England from Antwerp about 1606, -and died in 1621. He painted the Earl and Countess of Arundel, and there -are pictures by him at Hampton Court. He also executed the pleasant and -quaint hunting scene, with portraits of Prince Henry and the young Earl of -Essex, now at St. James's Palace.[539] - -Mr. Moser, keeper of the Royal Academy, a chaser of plate, cane-heads, and -watch-cases, afterwards an enameller of watch-trinkets, necklaces, and -bracelets, lived in Craven Buildings, which were built in 1723 on part of -the site of Craven House. He died in his apartments in Somerset House in -1783. - -It was in Short's Gardens, Drury Lane, "in a hole," that Charles Mathews -the elder made one of his first attempts as an actor. - -Clare House Court, on the left hand going up Drury Lane, derived its name -from John Holles, second Earl of Clare, whose town house stood at the end -of this court. His son Gilbert, the third Earl, died in 1689, and was -succeeded by his son, John Holles, created Marquis of Clare and Duke of -Newcastle in 1694. He died in 1711, when all his honours became extinct. -The corner house has upon it the date 1693.[540] - -In the reign of James I., when Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, lived at -Ely House, in Holborn, he used to pass through Drury Lane in his litter on -his way to Whitehall, Covent Garden being then an enclosed field, and this -district and the Strand the chief resorts of the gentry. The ladies, -knowing his hours, would appear in their balconies or windows to present -their civilities to the old man, who would bend himself as well as he -could to the humblest posture of respect. One day, as he passed by the -house of Lady Jacob in Drury Lane, she presented herself: he bowed to her, -but she only gaped at him. Curious to see if this yawning was intentional -or accidental, he passed the next day at the same hour, and with the same -result. Upon which he sent a gentleman to her to let her know that the -ladies of England were usually more gracious to him than to encounter his -respects with such affronts. She answered that she had a mouth to be -stopped as well as others. Gondomar, finding the cause of her distemper, -sent her a present, an antidote which soon cured her of her strange -complaint.[541] This Lady Jacob became the wife of the poet Brooke. - -That credulous gossip, the Wiltshire gentleman, Aubrey, tells a quaint -story of a duel in Drury Lane, in probably Charles II.'s time, which is a -good picture of such rencontres amongst the hot-blooded bravos of that -wild period. - -"Captain Carlo Fantom, a Croatian," he says, "who spoke thirteen -languages, was a captain under the Earl of Essex. He had a world of cuts -about his body with swords, and was very quarrelsome. He met, coming late -at night out of the Horseshoe Tavern in Drury Lane, with a lieutenant of -Colonel Rossiter, who had great jingling spurs on. Said he, 'The noise of -your spurs doe offend me; you must come over the kennel and give me -satisfaction.' They drew and passed at each other, and the lieutenant was -runne through, and died in an hour or two, and 'twas not known who killed -him."[542] - -About this time John Lacy, Charles II.'s favourite comedian, the Falstaff -of Dryden's time, lived in Drury Lane from 1665 till his death in 1681. -The ex-dancing-master and lieutenant dwelt near Cradle Alley and only two -doors from Lord Anglesey. - -Drury Lane, though it soon began to deteriorate, had fashionable -inhabitants in Charles II.'s time. Evelyn, that delightful type of the -English gentleman, mentions in his _Diary_ the marriage of his niece to -the eldest son of Mr. Attorney Montague at Southampton Chapel, and talks -of a magnificent entertainment at his sister's "lodgings" in Drury Lane. -Steele, however, branded its disreputable districts; Gay[543] warned us -against "Drury's mazy courts and dark abodes;" and Pope laughed at -building a church for "the saints of Drury Lane," and derided its proud -and paltry "drabs." The little sour poet, snugly off and well housed, -delighted to sneer, with a cruel and ungenerous contempt, at the poverty -of the poor Drury Lane poet who wrote for instant bread:-- - - "'Nine years!' cries he, who, high in Drury Lane, - Lull'd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane, - Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before Term ends, - Obliged by hunger and request of friends." - -To ridicule poverty, and to treat misfortune as a punishable crime, is the -special opprobrium of too many of the heroes of English literature. - -Hogarth has shown us the poor poet of Drury Lane; Goldsmith has painted -for us the poor author, but in a kindlier way, for he must have -remembered how poor he himself and Dr. Johnson, Savage, Otway, and Lee had -been. Pope, in his notes to the _Dunciad_, expressly says that the poverty -of his enemies is the cause of all their slander. Poverty with him is -another name for vice and all uncleanness. Goldsmith only laughs as he -describes the poor poet in Drury Lane in a garret, snug from the Bailiff, -and opposite a public-house famous for Calvert's beer and Parsons's "black -champagne." The windows are dim and patched; the floor is sanded. The damp -walls are hung with the royal game of goose, the twelve rules of King -Charles, and a black profile of the Duke of Cumberland. The rusty grate -has no fire. The mantelpiece is chalked with long unpaid scores of beer -and milk. There are five cracked teacups on the chimney-board; and the -poet meditates over his epics and his finances with a stocking round his -brows "instead of bay." - -Early in the reign of William III. Drury Lane finally lost all traces of -its aristocratic character. - -Vinegar Yard, in Drury Lane, was originally called Vine Garden Yard. Vine -Street, Piccadilly, Vine Street, Westminster, and Vine Street, Saffron -Hill, all derived their names from the vineyards they displaced; but there -is great reason to suppose that in the Middle Ages orchards and -herb-gardens were often classified carelessly as "vineyards." English -grapes might produce a sour, thin wine, but there was never a time when -home-made wine superseded the produce of Montvoisin, Bordeaux, or Gascony. -Vinegar Yard was built about 1621.[544] In St Martin's Burial Register -there is an entry, "1624, Feb. 4: Buried Blind John out of Vinagre Yard." -Clayrender's letter in Smollett's _Roderick Random_ is written to her -"dear kreetur" from "Winegar Yard, Droory Lane." This fair charmer must -surely have lived not far from Mr. Dickens's inimitable Mrs. Megby. The -nearness of Vinegar Yard to the theatre is alluded to by James Smith in -his parody on Sir Walter Scott in the _Rejected Addresses_. - -General Monk's gross and violent wife was the daughter of his servant, -John Clarges, a farrier in the Savoy. Her mother, says Aubrey, was one of -the five women-barbers[545] that lived in Drury Lane. She kept a -glove-shop in the New Exchange before her marriage, and as a seamstress -used to carry the general's linen to him when he was in the Tower. - -Pepys hated her, because she was jealous of his patron, Lord Sandwich, and -called him a coward. He calls her "ill-looking" and "a plain, homely -dowdy," and says that one day, when Monk was drunk, and sitting with -Troutbeck, a disreputable fellow, the duke was wondering that Nan Hyde, a -brewer's daughter, should ever have come to be Duchess of York. "Nay," -said Troutbeck, "ne'er wonder at that, for if you will give me another -bottle of wine I will tell you as great if not a greater miracle, and that -was that our Dirty Bess should come to be Duchess of Albemarle."[546] - -Nell Gwynn was born in Coal Yard, on the east side of Drury Lane,[547] the -next turning to the infamous Lewknor Lane, which used to be inhabited by -the orange-girls who attended the theatres in Charles II.'s reign. It was -in this same lane that Jonathan Wild, the thief-taker, whom Fielding -immortalises, afterwards lived. In a coarse and ruthless satire written by -Sir George Etherege after Nell's death, the poet calls her a "scoundrel -lass," raised from a dunghill, born in a cellar, and brought up as a -cinder-wench in a coalyard.[548] - -Nelly was the vagabond daughter of a poor Cavalier captain and fruiterer, -who is said to have died in prison at Oxford. She began life by selling -fish in the street, then turned orange-girl at the theatres, was promoted -to be an actress, and finally became a mistress of Charles II. Though not -as savage-tempered as the infamous Lady Castlemaine, Nelly was almost as -mischievous, and quite as shameless. She obtained from the king L60,000 -in four years.[549] She bought a pearl necklace at Prince Rupert's sale -for L4000. She drank, swore, gambled, and squandered money as wildly as -her rivals. Nelly was small, with a good-humoured face, and "eyes that -winked when she laughed."[550] She was witty, reckless, and good-natured. -The portrait of her by Lely, with the lamb under her arm, shows us a very -arch, pretty, dimply little actress. The present Duke of St. Alban's is -descended from her.[551] - -In 1667 Nell Gwynn was living in Drury Lane, for on May day of that year -Pepys says--"To Westminster, in the way meeting many milkmaids with -garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler between them; and saw -pretty Nelly standing at her lodging's door in Drury Lane, in her -smock-sleeves and boddice, looking upon one. She seemed a mighty pretty -creature." Nelly had not then been long on the stage, and Pepys had hissed -her a few months before being introduced to her by dangerous Mrs. Knipp. -In 1671 Evelyn saw Nelly, then living in Pall Mall, "looking out of her -garden on a terrace at the top of the wall," and talking too familiarly to -the king, who stood on the green walk in the park below.[552] - -Poor Nell was not "allowed to starve," but ended an ill life by dying of -apoplexy. There is no authority for the name of "Nell Gwynn's Dairy" given -to a house near the Adelphi. - -That infamous and perjured scoundrel, and the murderer of so many innocent -men, Titus Oates, was the son of a popular Baptist preacher in Ratcliffe -Highway, and was educated at Merchant Taylor's. Dismissed from the Fleet, -of which he was chaplain, for infamous practices, he became a Jesuit at -St. Omer's, and came back to disclose the sham Popish plot, for which -atrocious lie he received of the Roman Catholic king, Charles II., L1200 a -year, an escort of guards, and a lodging in Whitehall. Oates died in -1705. He lodged for some time in Cockpit Alley, now called Pitt Place. - -It was in the Crown Tavern, next the Whistling Oyster, and close to the -south side of Drury Lane Theatre, that _Punch_ was first projected by Mr. -Mark Lemon and Mr. Henry Mayhew in 1841; and its first number was -"prepared for press" in a back room in Newcastle Street, Strand. Great -rivers often have their sources in swampy and obscure places, and our -good-natured satirist has not much to boast of in its birthplace. To -_Punch_ Tom Hood contributed his immortal "Song of the Shirt," and -Tennyson his scorching satire against Bulwer and his "New Timon;" almost -from the first, Leech devoted to it his humorous pencil, and Albert Smith -his perennial store of good humour and drollery. Amongst its other early -contributors should be mentioned Mr. Gilbert A. a Beckett, Mr. W. H. -Wills, and Douglas Jerrold. - -Zoffany, the artist, lived for some time in poverty in Drury Lane. Mr. -Audinet, father of Philip Audinet the engraver, served his time with the -celebrated clockmaker, Rimbault, who lived in Great St. Andrew's Street, -Seven Dials. This worthy excelled in the construction of the clocks called -at that time "Twelve-tuned Dutchmen," which were contrived with moving -figures, engaged in a variety of employments. The pricking of the barrels -of those clocks was performed by Bellodi, an Italian, who lived hard by, -in Short's Gardens, Drury Lane. This person solicited Rimbault in favour -of a starving artist who dwelt in a garret in his house. "Let him come to -me," said Rimbault. Accordingly Zoffany waited upon the clockmaker, and -produced some specimens of his art, which were so satisfactory that he was -immediately set to work to embellish clock-faces, and paint appropriate -backgrounds to the puppets upon them. From clock-faces the young painter -proceeded to the human face divine, and at last resolved to try his hand -upon the visage of the worthy clockmaker himself. He hit off the likeness -of the patron so successfully, that Rimbault exerted himself to serve and -promote him. Benjamin Wilson, the portrait-painter, who at that time lived -at 56 Great Russell Street, a house afterwards inhabited by Philip -Audinet, being desirous of procuring an assistant who could draw the -figure well, and being, like Lawrence, deficient in all but the head, -found out the ingenious painter of clock-faces, and engaged him at the -moderate salary of forty pounds a year, with an especial injunction to -secrecy. In this capacity he worked upon a picture of Garrick and Miss -Bellamy in "Romeo and Juliet," which was exhibited under the name of -Wilson. Garrick's keen eye satisfied him that another hand was in the -work; so he resolved to discover the unknown painter. This discovery he -effected by perseverance: he made the acquaintance of Zoffany and became -his patron, employing him himself and introducing him to his friends; and -in this way his bias to theatrical portraiture became established. -Garrick's favour met with an ample return in the admirable portraits of -himself and contemporaries, which have rendered their personal appearance -so speakingly familiar to posterity both in his pictures and the admirable -mezzotinto scrapings of Earlom. Zoffany was elected among the first -members of the Royal Academy in 1768. - -The old Cockpit, or Phoenix Theatre, stood on the site of what is now -called Pitt Place. Early in James I.'s reign it had been turned into a -playhouse, and probably rebuilt.[553] - -On Shrove Tuesday 1616-17 the London prentices, roused to their annual -zeal by a love of mischief and probably a Puritan fervour, sacked the -building, to the discomfiture of the harmless players. Bitter, -narrow-headed Prynne, who notes with horror and anger the forty thousand -plays printed in two years for the five Devil's chapels in London,[554] -describes the Cockpit as demoralising Drury Lane, then no doubt wealthy, -and therefore supposed to be respectable. In 1647 the Cockpit Theatre was -turned into a schoolroom; in 1649 Puritan soldiers broke into the house, -which had again become a theatre, captured the actors, dispersed the -audience, broke up the seats and stage, and carried off the dramatic -criminals in open day, in all their stage finery, to the Gate House at -Westminster. - -Rhodes, the old prompter at Blackfriars, who had turned bookseller, -reopened the Cockpit on the Restoration. The new Theatre in Drury Lane -opened in 1663 with the "Humorous Lieutenant" of Beaumont and Fletcher. -This was the King's Company under Killigrew. Davenant and the Duke of -York's company found a home first in the Cockpit, and afterwards in -Salisbury Court, Fleet Street. - -The first Drury Lane Theatre was burnt down in 1672. Wren built the new -house, which opened in 1674 with a prologue by Dryden. Cibber gives a -careful account of Wren's Drury Lane, the chief entrance to which was down -Playhouse Passage. Pepys blamed it for the distance of the stage from the -boxes, and for the narrowness of the pit entrances.[555] The platform of -the stage projected very forward, and the lower doors of entrance for the -actors were in the place of the stage-boxes.[556] - -In 1681 the two companies united, leaving Portugal Street to the lithe -tennis-players and Dorset Gardens to the brawny wrestlers. Wren's theatre -was taken down in 1791; its successor, built by Holland, was opened in -1794, and destroyed in 1809. The present edifice, the fourth in -succession, is the work of Wyatt, and was opened in 1812.[557] - -Hart, Mohun, Burt, and Clun were all actors in Killigrew's company. Hart, -who had been a captain in the army, was dignified as Alexander, -incomparable as Catiline, and excellent as Othello. He died in 1683. -Mohun, whom Nat Lee wrote parts for, and who had been a major in the Civil -War, was much applauded in heroic parts, and was a favourite of -Rochester's. Burt played Cicero in Ben Jonson's "Catiline;" and poor Clun, -who was murdered by footpads in Kentish Town, was great as Iago, and as -Subtle in "The Alchymist." - -From Pepys's memoranda of visits to Drury Lane we gather a few facts about -the licentious theatre-goers of his day. After the Plague, when Drury Lane -had been deserted, the old gossip went there, half-ashamed to be seen, and -with his cloak thrown up round his face.[558] The king flaunts about with -his mistresses, and Pepys goes into an upper box to chat with the -actresses and see a rehearsal, which seems then to have followed and not -preceded the daily performance.[559] He describes Sir Charles Sedley, in -the pit, exchanging banter with a lady in a mask. Three o'clock seems to -have been about the time for theatres opening.[560] The king was angry, he -says, with Ned Howard for writing a play called "The Change of Crowns," in -which Lacy acted a country gentleman who is astonished at the corruption -of the court. For this Lacy was committed to the porter's lodge; on being -released, he called the author a fool, and having a glove thrown in his -face, returned the compliment with a blow on Howard's pate with a cane; -upon which the pit wondered that Howard did not run the mean fellow -through; and the king closed the house, which the gentry thought had grown -too insolent. - -August 15, 1667, Pepys goes to see the "Merry Wives of Windsor," which -pleased our great Admiralty official "in no part of it." Two days after he -weeps at the troubles of Queen Elizabeth, but revives when that dangerous -Mrs. Knipp dances among the milkmaids, and comes out in her nightgown to -sing a song. Another day he goes at three o'clock to see Beaumont and -Fletcher's "Scornful Lady," but does not remain, as there is no one in the -pit. In September of the same year he finds his wife and servant in an -eighteenpenny seat. In October 1667 he ventures into the tiring-room where -Nell was dressing, and then had fruit in the scene-room, and heard Mrs. -Knipp read her part in "Flora's Vagaries," Nell cursing because there were -so few people in the pit. A fortnight after he contrives to see a new -play, "The Black Prince," by Lord Orrery; and though he goes at two, finds -no room in the pit, and has for the first time in his life to take an -upper four-shilling-box. November 1, he proclaims the "Taming of the -Shrew" "a silly old play." November 2, the house was full of Parliament -men, the House being up. One of them choking himself while eating some -fruit, Orange Moll thrust her finger down his throat and brought him to -life again. - -Pepys condemns Nell Gwynn as unbearable in serious parts, but considers -her beyond imitation as a madwoman. In December 1667 he describes a poor -woman who had lent her child to the actors, but hearing him cry, forced -her way on to the stage and bore it off from Hart. - -It would seem from subsequent notes in the _Diary_, that to a man who -stopped only for one act at a theatre, and took no seat, no charge was -made. - -In February 1668 Pepys sees at Drury Lane "The Virgin Martyr," by -Massinger, which he pronounces not to be worth much but for Becky -Marshall's acting; yet the wind music when the angel descended "wrapped -up" his soul so, that, remarkably enough, it made him as sick as when he -was first in love, and he determined to go home and make his wife learn -wind music. May 1, 1668, he mentions that the pit was thrown into disorder -by the rain coming in at the cupola. May 7 of the same year, he calls for -Knipp when the play is over, and sees "Nell in her boy's clothes, mighty -pretty." "But, Lord!" he says, "their confidence! and how many men do -hover about them as soon as they come off the stage! and how confident -they are in their talk!" - -On May 18, 1668, Pepys goes as early as twelve o'clock to see the first -performance of that poor play, Sir Charles Sedley's "Mulberry Garden," at -which the king, queen, and court did not laugh. While waiting for the -curtain to pull up, Pepys hires a boy to keep his place, slips out to the -Rose Tavern in Russell Street, and dines off a breast of mutton from the -spit. - -On September 15, 1668, there is a play--"The Ladies a la Mode"--so bad -that the actor who announced the piece to be repeated fell a-laughing, as -did the pit. Four days after Pepys sits next Shadwell, the poet, -admiring Ben Jonson's extravagant comedy, "The Silent Woman." - -In January 1669 he sat in a box near "that merry jade Nell," who, with a -comrade from the Duke's House, "lay there laughing upon people." - -"Les Horaces" of Corneille he found "a silly tragedy." February 1669 -Beetson, one of the actors, read his part, Kynaston having been beaten and -disabled by order of Sir Charles Sedley, whom he had ridiculed. The same -month Pepys went to the King's House to see "The Faithful Shepherdess," -and found not more than L10 in the house. - -A great leader in the Drury Lane troop was Lacy, the Falstaff of his day. -He was a handsome, audacious fellow, who delighted the town as "Frenchman, -Scot, or Irishman, fine gentleman or fool, honest simpleton or rogue, -Tartuffe or Drench, old man or loquacious woman." He was King Charles's -favourite actor as Teague in "The Committee," or mimicking Dryden as Bayes -in "The Rehearsal." - -The greatest rascal in the company was Goodman--"Scum Goodman," as he was -called--admirable as Alexander and Julius Caesar. He was a dashing, -shameless, impudent rogue, who used to boast that he had once taken "an -airing" on the road to recruit his purse. He was expelled Cambridge for -slashing a picture of the Duke of Monmouth. He hired an Italian quack to -poison two children of his mistress, the infamous Duchess of Cleveland, -joined in the Fenwick plot to kill King William, and would have turned -traitor against his fellow conspirators had he not been bought off for -L500 a year, and sent to Paris, where he disappeared. - -Haines, one of Killigrew's band, was an impudent but clever low comedian. -In Sparkish, in "The Country Wife," he was the very model of airy -gentlemen. His great successes were as Captain Bluff in Congreve's "Old -Bachelor," Roger in "AEsop," and "the lively, impudent, and irresistible -Tom Errand" in Farquhar's "Constant Couple," "that most triumphant comedy -of a whole century."[561] - -The stories told of Joe Haines are good. He once engaged a simple-minded -clergyman as "chaplain to the Theatre Royal," and sent him behind the -scenes ringing a big bell to call the actors to prayers. "Count" Haines -was once arrested by two bailiffs on Holborn Hill at the very moment that -the Bishop of Ely passed in his carriage. "Here comes my cousin, he will -satisfy you," said the ready-witted actor, who instantly stepped to the -carriage window and whispered Bishop Patrick--"Here are two Romanists, my -lord, inclined to become Protestants, but yet with some scruples of -conscience." The anxious bishop instantly beckoned to the bailiffs to -follow him to Ely Place, and Joe escaped; the mortified bishop paying the -money out of sheer shame. Haines died in 1701. - -Amongst the actresses at this house were pretty but frail Mrs. Hughes, the -mistress of Prince Rupert, and Mrs. Knipp, Pepys's dangerous friend, who -acted rakish fine ladies and rattling ladies'-maids, and came on to sing -as priestess, nun, or milkmaid. Anne Marshall, the daughter of a -Presbyterian divine, acquired a reputation as Dorothea in "The Virgin -Martyr," and as the Queen of Sicily in Dryden's "Secret Love." - -But Nell Gwynn was the chief "toast" of the town. Little, pretty, -impudent, and witty, she danced well, and was a good actress in comedy and -in characters where "natural emotion bordering on insanity" was to be -represented.[562] Her last original part was that of Almahide in Dryden's -"Conquest of Granada," where she spoke the prologue in a straw hat as -large as a waggon-wheel. - -Leigh Hunt says that "Nineteen out of twenty of Dryden's plays were -produced at Drury Lane, and seven out of Lee's eleven; all the good plays -of Wycherly, except 'The Gentleman Dancing Master;' two of -Congreve's--'The Old Bachelor' and 'The Double Dealer;' and all -Farquhar's, except 'The Beau's Stratagem.'"[563] Dryden's impurity and -daring bombast were the attractions to Drury Lane, as Otway's -sentimentalism and real pathos were to the rival house. Lee's splendid -bombast was succeeded by Farquhar's gay rakes and not too virtuous women. - -Doggett, who was before the public from 1691 to 1713, was a little lively -Irishman, for whom Congreve wrote the characters of Fondlewife, Sir Paul -Pliant, and Ben. He was partner in the theatre with Cibber and Wilkes from -1709 to 1712, but left when Booth was taken into the firm. He was a -staunch Whig, and left an orange livery and a badge to be rowed for yearly -by six London watermen. - -The queen of comedy, Mrs. Oldfield, flashed upon the town first as Lady -Betty Modish in Cibber's "Careless Husband," in 1704-5. When quite a girl -she was overheard by Farquhar reading "The Scornful Lady" of Beaumont and -Fletcher to her aunt, who kept the Mitre Tavern in St. James's Market. -Farquhar introduced her to Vanbrugh, and Vanbrugh to Rich. "She excelled -all actresses," says Davies, "in sprightliness of wit and elegance of -manner, and was greatly superior in the clear, sonorous, and harmonious -tones of her voice." Her eyes were large and speaking, and when intended -to give special archness to some brilliant or gay thought, she kept them -mischievously half shut. Cibber praises Mrs. Oldfield for her unpresuming -modesty, and her good sense in not rejecting advice--"A mark of good -sense," says the shrewd old manager, "rarely known in any actor of either -sex but herself. Yet it was a hard matter to give her any hint that she -was not able to take or improve."[564] With all this merit, she was -tractable and less presuming in her station than several that had not half -her pretensions to be troublesome. This excellent actress was not fond of -tragedy, but she still played Marcia in "Cato;" Swift, who attended the -rehearsals with Addison, railed at her for her good-humoured carelessness -and indifference; and Pope sneered at her vanity in her last moments. It -is true that she was buried in kid gloves, tucker, and ruffles of best -lace. Mrs. Oldfield lived first with a Mr. Maynwaring, a rough, -hard-drinking Whig writer, to whom Addison dedicated one of the volumes of -the _Spectator_; and after his death with General Churchill, one of the -Marlborough family. Nevertheless, she went to court and habitually -associated with ladies of the highest rank. Society is cruel and -inconsistent in these matters. Open scandal it detests, but to secret vice -it is indifferent. - -Mrs. Oldfield died in 1730, lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and -when she was borne to her grave in the Abbey, Lord Hervey (Pope's -"Sporus"), Lord Delawarr, and that toady Bubb Doddington, supported her -pall. The late Earl of Cadogan was the great-grandson of Anne -Oldfield.[565] This actress, so majestic in tragedy, so irresistible in -comedy, was generous enough to give an annuity to poor, hopeless, scampish -Savage. - -Robert Wilkes, a young Irish Government clerk, obtained great successes as -Farquhar's heroes, Sir Harry Wildair, Mirabel, Captain Plume, and Archer. -He played equally well the light gentlemen of Cibber's comedies. Genest -describes him as buoyant and graceful on the stage, irreproachable in -dress, his every movement marked by "an ease of breeding and manner." This -actor also excelled in plaintive and tender parts. Cibber hints, however, -at his professional conceit and overbearing temper. Wilkes on one occasion -read "George Barnwell" to Queen Anne at the Court at St. James's. He died -in 1732. - -Barton Booth, who was at Westminster School with Rowe the poet, identified -himself with Addison's Cato. His dignity, pathos, and energy as that lover -of liberty led Bolingbroke to present him on the first night with a purse -of fifty guineas. The play was translated into four languages; Pope gave -it a prologue; Garth decked it with an epilogue; while Denis proved it, to -his own satisfaction, to be worthless. Aaron Hill tells us that statistics -proved that Booth could always obtain from eighteen to twenty rounds of -applause during the evening. When playing the Ghost to Betterton's Hamlet, -Booth is said to have been once so horror-stricken as to be unable to -proceed with his part. He often took inferior Shaksperean parts, and was -frequently indolent; but if he saw a man whose opinion he valued among the -audience he fired up and played to him. This petted actor and manager died -in 1733. - -Colley Cibber, to judge from Steele's criticisms, must have been admirable -as a beau, whether rallying pleasantly, scorning artfully, ridiculing, or -neglecting.[566] Wilkes surpassed him in beseeching gracefully, -approaching respectfully, pitying, mourning, and loving. In the part of -Sir Fopling Flutter in "The Fool of Fashion," played in 1695, Cibber wore -a fair, full-bottomed periwig which was so much admired that it used to be -brought on the stage in a sedan and put on publicly. To this wonder of the -town Colonel Brett, who married Savage's mother, took a special fancy. -"The beaux of those days," says Cibber, "had more of the stateliness of -the peacock than the pert of the lapwing." The colonel came behind the -scenes, first praised the wig, and then offered to purchase it. On -Cibber's bantering him about his anxiety for such a trifle, the gay -colonel began to rally himself with such humour that he fairly won Cibber, -and they sat down at once, laughing, to finish their bargain over a -bottle. - -Quin's career began at Dublin in 1714, and ended at Bath in 1753. From -1736 to 1741 he was at Drury Lane. From Booth's retirement till the coming -of Garrick, Quin had no rival as Cato, Brutus, Volpone, Falstaff, Zanga, -etc. His Macbeth, Othello, and Lear were inferior. Davies says, the tender -and the violent were beyond his reach, but he gave words weight and -dignity by his sensible elocution and well-regulated voice. His movements -were ponderous and his action languid. Quin was generous, witty, a great -epicure, and a careless dresser. It was his hard fate, though a -warm-hearted man, to be equally warm in temper, and to kill two -adversaries in duels that were forced upon him. Quin was a friend of -Garrick and of Thomson the poet, and a frequent visitor at Allen's house -at Prior Park, near Bath, where Pope, Warburton, and Fielding visited. - -Some of Quin's jests were perfect. When Warburton said, "By what law can -the execution of Charles I. be justified?" Quin replied, "By all the laws -he had left them." No wonder Walpole applauded him. The bishop bade the -player remember that the regicides came to violent ends, but Quin gave him -a worse blow. "That, your lordship," he said, "if I am not mistaken, was -also the case with the twelve apostles." Quin could overthrow even Foote. -They had at one time had a quarrel, and were reconciled, but Foote was -still a little sore. "Jemmy," said he, "you should not have said that I -had but one shirt, and that I lay in bed while it was washed." "Sammy," -replied the actor, "I never _could_ have said so, for I never knew that -you had a shirt to wash." Quin died in 1766, and Garrick wrote an epitaph -on his tomb in Bath Abbey, ending with the line-- - - "To this complexion we must come at last." - -Garrick appeared first at Goodman's Fields Theatre, in 1741, as King -Richard. In eight days the west flocked eastward, and, as Davies tells us, -"the coaches of the nobility filled up the space from Temple Bar to -Whitechapel." Pope came up from Twickenham to see if the young man was -equal to Betterton. Garrick revolutionised the stage. Tragedians had -fallen into a pompous "rhythmical, mechanical sing-song,"[567] fit only -for dull orators. Their style was overlaboured with art--it was mere -declamation. The actor had long ceased to imitate nature. Garrick's first -appearance at Drury Lane was in 1742. Cumberland, then at Westminster -School, describes his sight of Quin and Garrick, and the first impressions -they produced on him. Garrick was Lothario, Mrs. Cibber Calista, Quin -Horatio, and Mrs. Pritchard Lavinia. Quin, when the curtain drew up, -presented himself in a green velvet coat, embroidered down the seams, an -enormous full-bottomed periwig, rolled stockings, and high-heeled square -shoes.[568] "With very little variation of cadence, and in a deep full -tone, accompanied by a sawing kind of action which had more of the senate -than the stage in it, he rolled out his heroics with an air of dignified -indifference that seemed to disdain the plaudits that were bestowed upon -him. Mrs. Cibber, in a key high-pitched but sweet withal, sang or rather -recitatived Rowe's harmonious strains. But when, after long and anxious -expectation, I first beheld little Garrick, then young and light and alive -in every muscle and every feature, come bounding on the stage and pointing -at the wittol Altamont and heavy-paced Horatio, heavens! what a -transition!--it seemed as if a whole century had been swept over in the -passage of a single scene." And yet, according to fretful Cumberland, "the -show of hands" was for Quin, though, according to Davies, the best judges -were for Garrick. And when Quin was slow in answering the challenge, -somebody in the gallery called out, "Why don't you tell the gentleman -whether you will meet him or not?" Garrick's repertory extended to one -hundred characters, of which he was the original representative of -thirty-six. Of his comic characters, Ranger and Abel Drugger were the -best--one was irresistibly vivacious, the other comically stupid. - -Garrick, who mutilated Shakespere and wrote clever verses and useful -theatrical adaptations, was a vain, sprightly man, who got the reputation -of reforming stage costume, although it was Macklin, pugnacious and -courageous, who first dared to act Macbeth dressed as a Highland chief, -and felt proud of his own anachronism. Garrick had, in fact, a dislike to -really truthful costume. He dared to play Hotspur in laced frock and -Ramillies wig.[569] In truth, it was neither Garrick nor Macklin who -originated this reform, but the change of public opinion and the widening -of education. West, in spite of ridicule and condemnation, dared to dress -the soldiers in his "Death of Wolfe" in English uniform, instead of in the -armour of stage Romans. Burke said of Garrick that he was the most acute -observer of nature he had ever known. Garrick could assume any passion at -the moment, and could act off-hand Scrub or Richard, Brute or Macbeth. He -oscillated between tragedy and comedy; he danced to perfection; he was -laborious at rehearsals, and yet all that he did seemed spontaneous. In -Fribble he imitated no fewer than eleven men of fashion so that every one -recognised them. Garrick died in 1779, and was buried in _the_ Abbey. -"Chatham," says Dr. Doran, the actor's admirable biographer, "had -addressed him living in verse, and peers sought for the honour of -supporting the pall at his funeral."[570] That he was vain and -over-sensitive there can be no doubt; but there can be also no doubt that -he was generous, often charitable, delightful in society, and never, like -Foote, eager to give pain by the exercise of his talent. As an actor, -Garrick has not since been equalled in versatility and equal balance of -power; nor has any subsequent actor attained so high a rank among the -intellect of his age. - -Kitty Clive, born in 1711, took leave of the stage in 1769. She was one of -the best-natured, wittiest, happiest, and most versatile of actresses, -whether as "roguish chambermaid, fierce virago, chuckling hoyden, brazen -romp, stolid country girl, affected fine lady, or thoroughly natural old -woman."[571] Fielding, Garrick, and Walpole delighted in Kitty Clive. -After years of quadrille at Purcell's, and cards and music at the villa at -Teddington which Horace Walpole lent her, Kitty Clive died suddenly, -without a groan, in 1785. - -Woodward was excellent in fops, rascals, simpletons, and Shakesperean -light characters. His Bobadil, Marplot, and Touchstone were beyond -approach. Shuter, originally a billiard-marker, came on the stage in 1744, -and quitted it in 1776. His grimace and impromptu were much praised. - -Samuel Foote, born at Truro in 1720, having failed in tragedy, and not -been very successful in comedy, started his entertainments at the -Haymarket in 1747. He died in 1777. His history belongs to the records of -another theatre. - -Spanger Barry in 1748-9 acted Hamlet and Macbeth alternately with Garrick. -Davies says that Barry could not perform such characters as Richard and -Macbeth, but he made a capital Alexander. "He charmed the ladies by the -soft melody of his love complaints and the noble ardour of his courtship." -Only Mrs. Cibber excelled him in the expression of love, grief, -tenderness, and jealous rage. Tall, handsome, and dignified, Barry -undoubtedly ran Garrick close in the part of Romeo, artificial as -Churchill in the _Rosciad_ declares him to have been. A lady once said, -"that had she been Juliet she should have expected Garrick to have stormed -the balcony, he was so impassioned; but that Barry was so eloquent, -tender, and seductive, that she should have come down to him."[572] In -Lear, the town said that Barry "was every inch a king" but Garrick "every -inch King Lear." Barry was amorous and extravagant. He delighted in giving -magnificent entertainments, and treated Mr. Pelham in so princely a style -that that minister (with not the finest taste) rebuked him for his lavish -hospitality. - -The brilliant and witching Peg Woffington was the daughter of a small -huckster in Dublin, and became a pupil of Madame Violante, a rope-dancer. -In 1740 she came out at Covent Garden, and soon won the town as Sir Harry -Wildair. She played Lady Townley and Lady Betty Modish with "happy ease -and gaiety."[573] She rendered the most audacious absurdities pleasing by -her beautiful bright face and her vivacity of expression. Peg quarrelled -with Kitty Clive and Mrs. Cibber, and detested that reckless woman George -Anne Bellamy. This witty and enchanting actress, as generous and -charitable as Nell Gwynn with all her faults, was struck by paralysis -while acting Rosalind at Covent Garden, and died in 1760. - -During his career from 1691 to his retirement in 1733, clever, careless -Colley Cibber originated nearly eighty characters, chiefly grand old fops, -inane old men, dashing soldiers, and impudent lacqueys. His Fondlewife, -Sir Courtly Nice, and Shallow were his best parts. "Of all English -managers," says Dr. Doran, "Cibber was the most successful. Of the English -actors, he is the only one who was ever promoted to the laureateship or -elected a member of White's Club." Even Pope, who hated him and got some -hard blows from him, praised "The Careless Husband;" Walpole, who despised -players, praised Colley; and Dr. Johnson approved of his admirably written -_Apology_. - -Cibber's daughter, Mrs. Clarke, led a wild and disreputable life, became a -waitress at Marylebone, and died in poverty in 1760. Colley's son -Theophilus, the best Pistol ever seen on the stage, and the original -George Barnwell, was drowned in crossing the Irish Sea. - -His wife was a sister of Dr. Arne, the composer. In tragedy she was -remarkable for her artless sensibility and exquisite variety of -expression. As Ophelia she moved even Tate Wilkinson. She was one of the -first actresses to make the woes of the grand tragedy queen natural. She -died in 1766, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. - -Mrs. Pritchard, that "inspired idiot," as Dr. Johnson called her in his -contempt for her ignorance, seems to have been a virtuous woman. She left -the stage in 1768. Though plain, and in later years very stout, Mrs. -Pritchard was admired in tragedy for her perfect pronunciation and her -force and dignity as the Queen in "Hamlet," and as Lady Macbeth. She was -also a good comedian in playful and witty parts. She was, however, not -very graceful, and inclined to rant. - -When Mrs. Cibber died in 1765, Mrs. Yates succeeded to her fame, with Mrs. -Barry for a rival, till Mrs. Siddons came from Bath and unseated both. -Mrs. Yates was wanting in pathos, but in pride and scorn as Medea, or in -hopeless grief as Constance, she was unapproachable. She died in 1787. - -George Anne Bellamy, the reckless and the unfortunate, was the daughter of -a Quakeress, with whom Lord Tyrawley ran away from school. Dr. Doran says, -"What with the loves, caprices, charms, extravagances, and sufferings of -Mrs. Bellamy, she excited the wonder, admiration, pity, and contempt of -the town for thirty years."[574] Now she was squandering money like a -Cleopatra; now she was crouching on the wet steps of Westminster Bridge, -brooding over suicide. "The Bellamy," says the critic, was only equal to -"the Cibber" in expressing the ecstasy of love. This follower of the old -school of intoners was the original Volumnia of Thomson, the Erixene of -Dr. Young, and the Cleone of the honest footman poet and publisher -Dodsley. She took her farewell benefit in 1784. - -In 1778 Miss Farren appeared at Drury Lane. She was the daughter of a poor -vagabond strolling player. Walpole says she was the most perfect actress -he had ever seen; and he spoke well of her fine ladies, of whom he was a -judge. Adolphus, not easily appeased, praised her irresistible graces and -"all the indescribable little charms which give fascination to the women -of birth and fashion." She was gay as Lady Betty Modish, sentimental as -Cecilia or Indiana, and playful as Rosara in the "Barber of Seville." In -1797 the little girl who had been helped over the ice to the lock-up at -Salisbury, to hand up a bowl of milk to her father when a prisoner -there,[575] took leave of the stage in the part of Lady Teazle, and -married the Earl of Derby, who had buried his wife just six weeks before. - -In 1798 Mrs. Abington, "the best affected fine lady of her time," retired -from the stage of Drury Lane. She was the daughter of a common soldier, -and as a girl was known as "Nosegay Fan," and had sold flowers in St. -James's Park. She first appeared at Drury Lane in 1756-7. - -Poor Mrs. Robinson, the "Perdita" so heartlessly betrayed by the Prince of -Wales, was driven on to the stage in 1776 by her husband, a handsome -scapegrace who had run through his fortune. She passed from the stage in -1780, and died, forgotten, poor, and paralytic, in 1800. - -In 1767 Samuel Reddish, Canning's stepfather, first appeared at Drury Lane -as Lord Townley. He was a reasonably good Edgar and Posthumus, but failed -in parts of passion. He went mad in 1779. In this group of minor actors we -may include Gentleman Smith, a good Charles Surface, who retired from the -stage in 1786; Yates, whose forte was old men and Shakspere's fools -(1736-1780); Dodd, who, from 1765 to 1796, was the prince of fops and old -men (Master Slender and Master Stephen were said to die with him); and -lastly, that great comic actor, John Palmer, who died on the stage in -1798, as he was playing the Stranger. He was the original representative -of plausible Joseph Surface. "Plausible," he used to say, "am I? You rate -me too highly. The utmost I ever did in that way was that I once persuaded -a bailiff who had arrested me to bail me." Once when making friends with -Sheridan after a quarrel, Palmer said to the author, "If you could but see -my heart, Mr. Sheridan!" to which Sheridan replied, "Why, Jack, you forgot -I wrote it." "Jack Palmer," says Lamb, "was a gentleman with a slight -infusion of the footman."[576] He had two voices, both plausible, -hypocritical, and insinuating. - -Henderson was engaged by Sheridan for Drury Lane in 1777. As Falstaff this -humorous friend of Gainsborough was seldom equalled. His defects were a -woolly voice and a habit of sawing the air. Dr. Doran says, "he was the -first actor who, with Sheridan, gave public readings" at Freemasons' Hall; -and his recitation of "John Gilpin" gave impetus to the sale of the -narrative of that adventurous ride.[577] Henderson died in 1785, aged only -thirty-eight, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. - -Mrs. Siddons, the daughter of an itinerant actor, was born in 1755. After -strolling and becoming a lady's-maid, she married a poor second-rate actor -of Birmingham. She appeared first at Drury Lane in 1775 as Portia. Her -first real triumph was in 1780, as Isabella in Southerne's tragedy. The -management gave her Garrick's dressing-room, and some legal admirers -presented her with a purse of a hundred guineas. Soon afterwards, as Jane -Shore, she sent many ladies in the audience into fainting fits. This great -actress closed her career in 1812 with Lady Macbeth, her greatest triumph. -She is said to have made King George III. shed tears. He admired her -especially for her repose. "Garrick," he used to say, "could never stand -still. He was a great fidget." No actress received more homage in her time -than Mrs. Siddons. Reynolds painted his name on the hem of her garment in -his portrait of her as the Tragic Muse. Dr. Johnson kissed her hand and -admired her genius. In comedy Mrs. Siddons failed; her rigorous Grecian -face was not arch. "In comedy" says Colman, "she was only a frisking -grig." "Those who knew her best," says Dr. Doran, "have recorded her -grace, her noble carriage, divine elocution and solemn earnestness, her -grandeur, her pathos, her correct judgment." Erskine studied her cadences -and tones. According to Campbell, she increased the heart's capacity for -tender, intense, and lofty feelings. This lofty-minded actress, as Young -calls her, died in 1831. - -Her elder brother, John Kemble, first appeared at Drury Lane, in 1783, as -Hamlet. In 1788-9 he succeeded King as manager of the theatre, and -continued so till 1801. In Coriolanus and Cato, Kemble was pre-eminent, -but his Richard and Sir Giles were inferior to Cook's and Kean's. In -comedy he failed, except in snatches of dignity or pathos. As an actor -Kemble was sometimes heavy and monotonous. He had not the fire or -versatility of Garrick, or the wild passion of Edmund Kean. As Hamlet he -was romantic, dignified, and philosophic. In his Rolla he delighted -Sheridan and Pitt; in Octavian he drew tears from all eyes. He excelled -also in Coeur de Lion, Penruddock, and the Stranger. In private life he -was always majestic and gravely convivial. When Covent Garden was burnt -down in 1808, he bore the loss bravely, and on the night of the opening -the generous Duke of Northumberland sent him back his bond for L10,000 to -be committed to the flames. Walpole, who saw Kemble, preferred him to -Garrick in Benedick, and to Quin in Maskwell. Kemble took his solemn -farewell of the stage in 1817 as Coriolanus, and died at Lausanne in 1823. -Leigh Hunt, an excellent dramatic critic, paints the following picture of -Kemble: "A figure of melancholy dignity, dealing out a most measured -speech in sepulchral tones and a pedantic pronunciation, and injuring -what he has made you feel by the want of feeling it himself."[578] John -Kemble's brother Charles acted well in Mercutio, Young Mirabel, and -Benedick. He remained on the stage till 1836. - -George Frederick Cooke, whose life was one perpetual debauch, and whose -career on the stage extended from 1801 to 1812, when he died at Boston, -did not, I think, appear at Drury Lane. His laurels were won chiefly at -Covent Garden. - -Master Betty, born in 1791 at Shrewsbury, elegant, and quick of memory, -appeared at Drury Lane in 1804, fretted his little hour upon the stage, -and earned a fortune with which he prudently retired in 1808. He lived -till 1876. - -King, the original representative of Sir Peter Teazle, Lord Ogleby, Puff, -and Dr. Cantwell, began his London career at Drury Lane in 1748. He left -the stage in 1802. His best characters were Touchstone and Ranger, and in -these parts he was always arch, rapid, and versatile. Hazlitt discourses -on King's old, hard, rough face, and his shrewd hints and tart replies. - -Dickey Suett was a favourite low comedian from 1780 to 1805, when he died. -He was a tall, thin, ungainly man, too much addicted to grimace, -interpolations, and practical jokes. He drank hard, and suffered from -mental depression. Hazlitt calls him "the delightful old croaker, the -everlasting Dickey Gossip of the stage."[579] Lamb describes his "Oh, la!" -as irresistible; "he drolled upon the stock of those two syllables richer -than the cuckoo." Shakspere's jesters "have all the true Suett stamp--a -loose and shambling gait, and a slippery tongue."[580] - -Miss Pope, who left the stage in 1808, had played with Garrick and Mrs. -Clive. She was the original Polly Honeycomb, Miss Sterling, Mrs. Candour, -and Tilburina. In youth she played hoydens, chambermaids, and half-bred -ladies, with a dash and good-humour free from all vulgarity, and in old -age she took to duennas and Mrs. Heidelburg. In 1761 Churchill mentions -her as "lively Pope," and in 1807 Horace Smith describes her as "a bulky -person with a duplicity of chin." - -In 1741 the theatre, which had been rebuilt by Wren in 1674, in a cheap -and plain manner, became ruinous, and was enlarged and almost rebuilt by -the Adams. In 1747 Garrick became the manager, and Dr. Johnson, as a -friend, wrote the celebrated address beginning with the often-quoted -lines-- - - "When Learning's triumph o'er her barbarous foes - First reared the stage, immortal Shakspere rose. - - * * * * * - - Each change of many-coloured life he drew, - Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new; - Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, - And panting Time toiled after him in vain." - -In 1775, the year in which "The Duenna" was brought out at Covent Garden, -Garrick made known his wish to sell a moiety of the patent of this -theatre. In June 1776 a contract was signed, Mr. Sheridan taking -two-fourteenths of the whole for L10,000, Mr. Linley the same, and Dr. -Ford three-fourteenths at L15,000.[581] How Sheridan raised the money no -one ever knew. - -Sheridan's first contribution to this new stage was an alteration of -Vanbrugh's licentious comedy of "The Relapse," which he called "A Trip to -Scarborough," and brought out in 1777. The same year the brilliant -manager, then only six-and-twenty, produced the finest and most popular -comedy in the English language, "The School for Scandal." On the last slip -of this miracle of wit and dramatic construction Sheridan wrote--"Finished -at last, thank God!--R. B. SHERIDAN." Below this the prompter added his -devout response--"Amen.--W. HOPKINS."[582] Garrick was proud of the new -manager, and boasted of his budding genius.[583] - -In 1778 Sheridan bought out Mr. Lacy for more than L45,000, and Dr. Ford -for L77,000. In 1779 Garrick died, and Sheridan wrote a monody to his -memory, which was delivered by Mrs. Yates after the play of "The West -Indian." Slander attributed the finest passage in this monody to Tickell, -just as it had before attributed Tickell's bad farce to Sheridan. - -Dowton, who appeared in 1796 as Sheva, was felicitous in good-natured -testy old men, and also in crabbed and degraded old villains. His Dr. -Cantwell and Sir Anthony Absolute were in the true spirit of old comedy. -Leigh Hunt praises Dowton's changes from the irritable to the yielding, -and from the angry to the tender. - -Willy Blanchard was natural and unaffected, but mannered. - -Mathews first appeared in London in 1803. He excelled in valets and old -men, and drew tears as M. Mallet, the poor emigre who is disappointed -about a letter. - -Liston made his debut at the Haymarket in 1805 as Sheepface. Leigh Hunt -praises his ignorant rustics, and condemns his old men. He sets him down -as a painter of emotions, and therefore more intellectual than Fawcett and -less farcical than Munden. Liston was a hypochondriac; below his fun there -was always an under-current of melancholy, "as though," says Dr. Doran, -mysteriously, "he had killed a boy when, under the name of Williams, he -was usher at the Rev. Dr. Burney's at Gosport."[584] - -In 1807 Jones and Young made their first appearances, but not at Drury -Lane. Young originated Rienzi, and played Hamlet, Falstaff, and Captain -Macheath. Jones was a stage rake of great excellence. - -Among the actresses before Kean, we may mention Miss Brunton, afterwards -Countess of Craven, and Mrs. Davison, a good Lady Teazle. - -Lewis, who left the stage in 1809, was a draper's son. He died in 1813, -and out of part of his fortune the new church at Ealing was erected. He -played Young Rapid and Jeremy Diddler, and created the Hon. Tom -Shuffleton in "John Bull." His restless style suited Morton and Reynolds's -comedies, and he succeeded in "all that was frolic, gay, humorous, -whimsical, eccentric, and yet elegant." He was manager of Covent Garden -for twenty-one years, and made everyone do his duty by kindness and good -treatment. Leigh Hunt sketches Lewis admirably, with his "easy -flutter,"[585] short knowing respiration, and complacent liveliness. Lewis -played the gentleman with more heart than Elliston. He seemed polite, not -from vanity, but rather from a natural irresistible wish to please. He had -all the laborious carelessness of action, important indifference of voice, -and natural vacuity of look that are requisite for the lounger.[586] His -defects were a habit of shaking his head and drawing in of the breath. His -"flippant airiness," "vivacious importance," and "French flutter" must -have been in their way perfect. "Gay, fluttering, hair-brained Lewis!" -says Hazlitt; "nobody could break open a door, or jump over a table, or -scale a ladder, or twirl a cocked hat, or dangle a cane, or play a -jockey-nobleman or a nobleman's jockey like him."[587] - -Here a moment's pause for an anecdote. When a riot took place at Drury -Lane in 1740 about the non-appearance of a French dancer, the first -symptoms of the outbreak were the ushering of ladies out of the pit. A -noble marquis gallantly proposed to fire the house. The proposal was -considered, but not adopted. The bucks and bloods then proceeded to -destroy the musical instruments and fittings, to break the panels and -partitions, and pull down the royal arms. The offence was finally condoned -by the ringleading marquis sending L100 to the manager. - -Charles Lamb describes Drury Lane in his own delightful way. The first -play he ever saw was in 1781-2, when he was six years old. "A portal, now -the entrance," he writes, "to a printing-office, at the north end of Cross -Court was the pit entrance to old Drury; and I never pass it without -shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening -when I passed through it to see my first play. The afternoon was wet: with -what a beating heart did I watch from the window the puddles! - -"It was the custom then to cry, ''Chase some oranges, 'chase some -nonpareils, 'chase a bill of the play?' But when we got in, and I beheld -the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, the breathless -anticipations I endured! The boxes, full of well-dressed women of quality, -projected over the pit. The orchestra lights arose--the bell sounded -once--it rang the second time--the curtain drew up, and the play was -'Artaxerxes;' 'Harlequin's Invasion' followed." - -The next play Lamb went to was "The Lady of the Manor," followed by a -pantomime called "Lunn's Ghost." Rich was not long dead. His third play -was "The Way of the World" and "Robinson Crusoe." Six or seven years after -he went (with what changed feelings!) to see Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. -"Comparison and retrospection," he says, "soon yielded to the present -attraction of the scene, and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, -the most delightful of all recreations."[588] - -Handsome Jack Bannister, who played in youth with Garrick, and in later -years with Edmund Kean, was the model for the Uncle Toby in Leslie's -picture. Natural, honest, as Hamlet, he was also good as Walter in "The -Children of the Wood." Inimitable "in depicting heartiness," says Dr. -Doran, "ludicrous distress, grave or affected indifference, honest -bravery, insurmountable cowardice, a spirited young or an enfeebled yet -impatient old fellow, mischievous boyishness, good-humoured vulgarity, -there was no one of his time who could equal him."[589] Bannister left the -stage with a handsome fortune. Hazlitt says finely of him that his -"gaiety, good-humour, cordial feeling, and natural spirits shone through -his characters and lighted them up like a transparency."[590] His kind -heart and honest face were as well known as his good-humoured smile and -buoyant activity. "Jack," says Lamb, "was beloved for his sweet, -good-natured moral pretensions." He gave us "a downright concretion of a -Wapping sailor, a jolly warm-hearted Jack Tar." - -Mrs. Jordan's mother was the daughter of a Welsh clergyman who had eloped -with an officer. The debutante came out at Drury Lane in 1785 as the -heroine of "The Country Girl." In 1789 she became the mistress of the Duke -of Clarence. Good-natured, and endowed with a sweet clear voice, she -played rakes with the airiest grace, and excelled in representing arch, -buoyant girls, spirited, buxom, lovable women, and handsome hoydens. The -critics complained of her as vulgar. Late in life she retired to France, -and died in 1815. "Her wealth," says Dr. Doran, "was lavished on the Duke -of Clarence, who left her to die untended; but when he became king he -ennobled all her children, the eldest being made Earl of Munster." -Hazlitt, speaking of Mrs. Jordan, says eloquently, her voice "was a -cordial to the heart, because it came from it full, like the luscious -juice of the rich grape. To hear her laugh was to drink nectar. Her smile -was sunshine; her talking far above singing; her singing was like the -twanging of Cupid's bow. Her body was large, soft, and generous like the -rose. Miss Kelly, if we may accept the judgment of Hazlitt, was in -comparison a mere dexterous, knowing chambermaid. Jordan was all -exuberance and grace. It was her capacity for enjoyment, and the contrast -she presented to everything sharp, angular, and peevish, that delighted -the spectator. She was Cleopatra turned into an oyster wench."[591] -Charles Lamb praises Mrs. Jordan for her tenderness in such parts as -Ophelia, Helena, and Viola, and for her "steady, melting eye."[592] - -Robert William Elliston was the son of a Bloomsbury watchmaker, and was -born in 1774. He appeared in London first in 1797, and obtained a triumph -as Sir Edward Mortimer, a part in which Kemble had failed. He is praised -by Dr. Doran as one of the best of stage gentlemen, not being so reserved -and languid as Charles Kemble. All the qualities that go to the making of -a gallant were conspicuous in his Duke Aranza--self-command, kindness, -dignity, good-humour, a dash of satire, and true amatory fire; but then -his voice was too pompously deep in soliloquy, and he was too genteel in -low comedy. As a stage lover he was impassioned, tender, and courteous, -yet he would persist in one uniform dress--blue coat, white waistcoat, and -white knee-breeches. Yet, though a self-deceiving and pompous humbug, -Charles Lamb reverenced him and Leigh Hunt admired his acting. In turn -proprietor of the Olympic, the Surrey, and Drury Lane theatres, Elliston -outlived his fame and fortune. When acting George IV. in a sham coronation -procession, having taken too much preliminary wine, he became so affected -at the delight of the audience that he gave them his grandest benediction -in these affecting words, "Bless you, my people!" When Douglas Jerrold -saved the Surrey Theatre by his "Black-eyed Susan," Elliston declared such -services should be acknowledged by a presentation of plate--not by -himself, however, but by Jerrold's own friends. Elliston's last appearance -was in 1826, and he died in 1831. - -Hull, a heavy, useful, and intelligent actor, left the stage in 1807. -Holman, an exaggerating actor, had a career that lasted from 1784 to 1800. -Munden, the broadest of farceurs and drollest of grimacers, appeared first -in 1790 as Sir Francis Gripe, and last, in 1823, as Sir Robert Bramble and -Dozey. His Crack in "The Turnpike Gate" was one of his greatest parts; but -I am afraid he would be now thought too much of the buffoon. Charles Lamb -devotes a whole essay to the subject of Munden's acting as Cockletop, Sir -Christopher Curry, Old Dornton, and the Cobbler of Preston. He says of -him: "When you think he has exhausted his battery of looks in -unaccountable warfare with your gravity, suddenly he sprouts out an -entirely new set of features, like Hydra. He, and he alone, makes faces. -In the grand grotesque of farce, Munden stands out as single and -unaccompanied as Hogarth. Can any man wonder like him, any man see ghosts -like him, or fight with his own shadow?"[593] - -Lamb praises Dodd for a face formally flat in Foppington, frothily pert in -Fattle, and blankly expressive of no meaning in Acres and Fribble.[594] - -In 1792 Sheridan's affairs began to get entangled. The surveyors reported -the theatre unsafe and incapable of repair, and it was therefore resolved -to build a new one at a cost of L150,000 by means of 300 shares at L500 -each. In the meantime, while Sheridan was paying interest for his loan, -the company was playing at an enormous expense on borrowed stages; and the -careless and profuse manager, his prudent wife now dead, was maintaining -three establishments--one at Wanstead, one at Isleworth, and one in Jermyn -Street. In 1794 a new Theatre was built by Henry Holland. - -In 1798 that masterpiece of false, hysterical German sentiment, "The -Stranger" (translated from Kotzebue), was rewritten by Sheridan, and -brought out at his own theatre. This was one of the earliest importations -of the Germanism that Canning afterwards, for political purposes, so -pungently denounced in the _Anti-Jacobin_. The great success of "The -Stranger," and the false taste it had implanted, induced Sheridan, in -1799, to bring out the play of "Pizarro." He wrote scarcely anything in it -but the speech of Rolla, which is itself an amplification of a few lines -of the original. - -The new theatre was to have cost L75,000, and the L150,000 subscribed for -was to have paid the architect and defrayed the mortgage debts. The -theatre, however, cost more than L150,000; only part of the debt was paid -off, and a claim of L70,000 remained upon the property.[595] - -On the 24th of February 1809, while the House of Commons was occupied with -Mr. Ponsonby's motion on the conduct of the war in Spain, the debate was -interrupted by a great glare of light through the windows. When the cause -was ascertained, so much sympathy was felt for Sheridan that it was -proposed to adjourn; but Sheridan calmly rose and said, "that whatever -might be the extent of his private calamity, he hoped it would not -interfere with the public business of the country." He then left the -house, and is said to have reached Drury Lane just in time to find all -hope of saving his property abandoned. According to one story he coolly -proceeded to the Piazza Coffee-house and discussed a bottle of wine, -replying to a friend who praised his philosophic calmness, "Why, a man may -surely be allowed to take a glass of wine _at his own fireside_."[596] He -is said to have been most grieved at the loss of a harpsichord that had -belonged to his wife. - -Encouraged by the opening presented, and at the tardiness of shareholders -to rebuild, speculators now proposed to erect a third theatre; but this -design Sheridan and his friends defeated, and Mr. Whitbread, the great -brewer of Chiswell Street, Finsbury, who afterwards destroyed himself, -exerted his energies in the rebuilding of it. - -By the new agreement of 1811, Sheridan was to receive for his moiety -L24,000, and an additional sum of L4000 for the property of the -fruit-offices and the reversion of boxes and shares; his son also -receiving his quarter of the patent property. Out of this sum the claims -of the Linley family and other creditors were to be satisfied. - -Overwhelmed with debt, dogged by bailiffs, hurried to and from -sponging-houses, Sheridan, now a broken-down man, died in 1816, -reproaching the committee with his last breath for refusing to lend him -more money. - -The new theatre, built by Mr. B. Wyatt, had been opened in October 1812, -the performances consisting of "Hamlet" and "The Devil to Pay." The house -held 800 persons less than its predecessor. The proprietors being anxious -to have an opening address equal to that of Dr. Johnson, advertised for a -suitable poem, and professed a desire for an open and free competition. -The verses were, like Oxford competition poems, to be marked with a word, -number, or motto, and the appended sealed paper containing the name of -the writer was not to be opened unless the poem was successful. They -offered twenty guineas as the prize, and extended the time for sending in -the poems. The result was an avalanche of mediocrity, till the secretary's -desk and the treasury-office ran over with poems. The proprietors were in -despair, when Lord Holland prevailed on Lord Byron to write an address, at -the risk, as the poet feared, "of offending a hundred rival scribblers and -a discerning public." The poem was written and accepted, and delivered on -the special night by Mr. Elliston, who performed the part of Hamlet. The -address was voted tame by the newspapers, with the exception of the -following passage-- - - "As soars this fane to emulate the last, - Oh, might we draw our omens from the past? - Some hour propitious to our prayers, may boast - Names such as hallow still the dome we lost. - On Drury first your Siddons' thrilling art - O'erwhelmed the gentlest, stormed the sternest heart; - On Drury Garrick's latest laurels grew; - Here your last tears retiring Roscius drew, - Sigh'd his last thanks, and wept his last adieu." - -The brothers Smith eagerly seized this fine opportunity for parody, and -the "Rejected Addresses" made all London shake with laughter. - -The leaden statue of Shakspere over the entrance of old Drury Lane was -executed by Cheere of Hyde Park Corner--"the leaden figure man" formerly -so celebrated--from a design by Scheemakers, a native of Antwerp and the -master of Nollekens. When this sculptor first went to Rome to study, he -travelled on foot, and had to sell his shirts by the way in order to -procure funds. Mr. Whitbread, one of Sheridan's creditors, gave the figure -to the theatre.[597] - -Mr. Whitbread and a committee had erected the house and purchased the old -patent rights by means of a subscription of L400,000. Of this L20,000 was -paid to Sheridan, and a like sum to the other holders of the patent. The -creditors of the old house took a quarter of what they claimed in full -payment, and the Duke of Bedford abandoned a claim of L12,000. The company -consisted of Elliston, Dowton, Bannister, Rae, Wallack, Wewitzer, Miss -Smith, Mrs. Davison, Mrs. Glover, Miss Kelly, and Miss Mellon. Mr. C. -Kemble and Grimaldi were at the other house, that the next season boasted -a strong company--John and Charles Kemble, Conway, Terry, and Matthews. At -Drury Lane no new piece was brought out except Coleridge's "Remorse." At -Covent Garden there was played "Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp." - -At Drury Lane, says Dr. Doran, neither new pieces nor new players -succeeded, till on the 20th of January 1814, the play-bills announced the -first appearance of an actor from Exeter, whose coming changed the evil -fortunes of the house, scared the old correct, dignified, and classical -school of actors, and brought again to the memories of those who could -look back as far as Garrick the fire, nature, impulse, and terrible -earnestness--all, in short, but the versatility, of that great master in -his art. This player was Edmund Kean. - -Kean was born in 1787. He was the son of a low and worthless actress, -whose father, George Saville Carey, a poor singer, reciter, and mimic, -hanged himself. The father of Carey was a dramatist and song-writer, the -natural son of the great Lord Halifax, who died in 1695. Kean's father is -unknown: he may have been Aaron Kean the tailor, or Moses Kean the -builder. In early life the genius was cabin-boy, strolling player, dancer -on the tight-rope, and elocutionist at country fairs. His first -appearance, as Shylock, in 1814, was a triumph. That night he came home -and promised his wife a carriage, and his son Charles (then in his cradle) -an education at Eton. In Richard III. he soon attained great triumphs. He -was audacious, sneering, devilish, almost supernatural in his cruelty and -hypocrisy. His Hamlet, though graceful and earnest, was inferior to his -Othello; but Kemble thought that the latter was a mistake, Othello being -palpably "a slow man." When Southey saw Kean and Young, he said, "It is -the arch-fiend himself." When Kean played Sir Giles Overreach, and -removed it from Kemble's repertory, his wife received him on his return -from the theatre with the anxious question, "What did Lord Essex think of -it?" The triumphant reply is well known: "D---- Lord Essex, Mary! the pit -rose at me." - -In 1822, after a visit to America, Kean appeared with his rival Young in a -series of characters, though he never liked "the Jesuit," as he used to -call Young. In 1827, Kean's son Charles appeared as Norval at Drury Lane, -while his father, now sinking fast, was acting at Covent Garden. In 1833 -Kean, shattered and exhausted, played Othello to his son's Iago, and died -two months after. - -Hazlitt has a fine comparison between Kean and Mrs. Siddons. Mrs. Siddons -never seemed to task her powers to the utmost. Her least word seemed to -float to the end of the stage; the least motion of her hand commanded -obedience. "Mr. Kean," he says, "is all effort, all violence, all extreme -passion; he is possessed with a fury and demon that leaves him no repose, -no time for thought, nor room for imagination.[598] Mr. Kean's imagination -appears not to have the principles of joy or hope or love in it. He seems -chiefly sensible to pain and to the passion that springs from it, and to -the terrible energies of mind or body which are necessary to grapple with -or to avert it."[599] - -The new theatre had small success under its committee of proprietors, and -soon became involved in debt and unable to pay the performers. In 1814 it -was let to the highest bidder, Elliston, who took it at the yearly rental -of L10,300, and expended L15,000 on repairs. Captain Polhill afterwards -became the lessee, and sunk in it large sums of money. The two next -lessees, Messrs. Bunn and Hammond, became bankrupts. Towards the middle of -1840 the house was reopened, after a closing of some months, for the then -new entertainments of promenade concerts. - -Grimaldi, the son of Queen Charlotte's dentist, was born in 1779. He made -his debut at Drury lane in a "Robinson Crusoe" pantomime in 1781, and -retired from the stage in 1828. His first part of any importance was -Orson. He remained at Drury Lane for nearly five-and-twenty years, and -then played alternately at Covent Garden and Sadler's Wells every night. -"He was the very beau-ideal of thieves," says a critic of the time: -"robbery became a science in his hand; you forgave the larceny from the -humour with which Joe indulged his irresistible weakness."[600] He was -famous for his rich ringing laugh, his complacent chuckle, the roll of his -eyes, the drop of his chin, and his elongated respiration. But we must go -back to the singers. - -Mrs. Crouch, the great singer, and the daughter of a Gray's Inn Lane -attorney, was articled to Mr. Linley, patentee of Drury Lane, in 1779, and -in 1780 made her debut as Mandane. In 1785 she married a lieutenant in the -navy, but returned to the stage in 1786, to be eclipsed by Mrs. -Billington. In 1787 she acted with Kelly at Drury Lane in the opera of -"Richard Coeur de Lion," and in the same year, in the character of Selima, -sang the once popular song of "No Flower that blows is like the Rose." In -1788 she played Lady Elinor in "The Haunted Tower" at Drury Lane. She died -in 1804. - -Mrs. Billington, the daughter of a German musician, was born in London in -1765. In 1801-2 she sang alternately at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. She -died in 1818. Bianchi wrote for this lady the opera of "Inez de Castro." -She is said to have played and sung at sight Mozart's "Clemenza di Tito;" -her voice ranged from D to G in altissimo. She indulged too much in -ornament, but was especially celebrated for her "Soldier tired of War's -Alarms." - -John Braham, a Jew pencil-boy--so the musical _on dit_ goes--was brought -up by a singer at the Duke's Place Synagogue. He made his debut in 1787. -He appeared first, in 1796, in Storace's opera of "Mahmoud," at Drury -Lane. The compass of his song, "Let Glory's Clarion," extended over -seventeen notes. He died in 1856. - -Storace, born in 1763, died in 1796. He was the son of an Italian -double-bass player, was engaged by Linley to compose for Drury Lane, and -for that theatre wrote the following operas:--"The Siege of Belgrade," -1792: "Lodoiska," 1794; and "The Iron Chest," 1796. This brilliant young -man wrote chiefly for Braham and Kelly. - -Madame Storace made her debut at Drury Lane, in 1789, in her brother's -comic opera of "The Haunted Tower." - -Bishop, who was born about 1780, produced his opera of "The Mysterious -Bride" at Drury Lane in 1808. In 1809, the night preceding the fire, -Bishop produced his first great success, "The Circassian Bride," the score -of which was burnt. After being long at Covent Garden, Bishop, in 1826, -produced his "Aladdin" at Drury Lane to compete with Weber's "Oberon" at -Covent Garden. In 1827 he adapted Rossini's "Turco in Italia;" and in -1830, for Drury Lane, he adapted Rossini's "William Tell." - -Michael Kelly, born in 1762, made his first appearance at Drury Lane in -1787. In his jovial career Kelly composed "The Castle Spectre," "Blue -Beard" (the march in which is very pompously oriental and fine), "Of Age -To-morrow," "Deaf and Dumb," etc. He also wrote many Italian, English, and -French songs, and had a good tenor voice. He became superintendent of -music at the Drury Lane Theatre, and died in 1826. He was an agreeable -man, and much esteemed by George IV. Parkes accuses him of a want of -knowledge of harmony, and of stealing from the Italians. - -In May 1836 Madame Malibran (de Beriot) appeared at Drury Lane as Isolina -in Balfe's "Maid of Artois," which was a great success. At the close of -the season she went abroad. Returned in September, she sang at the -Manchester Festival, and after a duet with Madame Caradori Allen, was -taken ill, and died a few days after. This gifted woman, the daughter of a -Spanish Jew (an opera-singer), was born in 1808. - -To return to our last batch of actors. James Wallack, born in 1792, began -to be known about 1816, and in 1820 was principal tragedian at Drury -Lane. His Hamlet, Rolla, and Romeo were very manly and bearable. He -afterwards became stage-manager at Drury Lane, and was praised for his -light comedy. - -Charles Young, who played with Kean at Drury Lane, was a dignified but -rather cold actor. Booth appeared also with Kean in 1817, and again in -1820 with Wallack and Cooper. - -Mrs. Mardyn (the supposed mistress of Lord Byron) appeared on the Drury -Lane stage in 1815. She was boisterous, but so full of girlish gaiety and -reckless wildness that she became for a short time the favourite of the -town. She failed, however, when she reappeared in 1833 in a tragic part. - -Charming Mrs. Nisbett, "that peach of a woman," as Douglas Jerrold used to -call her, died in 1858, aged forty-five. The daughter of a drunken Irish -officer who took to the stage, she married an officer in the Life Guards -in 1831; but on the death of her husband by an accident, she returned to -her first love in 1832, and reappeared at Drury Lane. Her great triumph -was "The Love Chase," which was produced at the Haymarket in 1837, and ran -for nearly one hundred nights. It was worth going a hundred miles to hear -Mrs. Nisbett's merry, ringing, silvery laugh. - -Irish Johnstone, who died in 1828, is described by Hazlitt as acting at -Drury Lane, "with his supple knees, his hat twisted round in his hand, his -good-humoured laugh, his arched eyebrows, his insinuating leer, and his -lubricated brogue curling round the ear like a well-oiled -moustachio."[601] - -Oxberry quitted Drury Lane with Elliston in 1820. In 1821 he took the -Craven's Head Chop-house in Drury Lane, where he used to say to his -guests, "We vocalise on a Friday, conversationalise on a Sunday, and -chopise every day." His best characters were Leo Luminati, Slender, and -Abel Day. Emery surpassed him in Tyke, Little Knight, and Robin Roughhead. - -Farren, who was born about 1787, made his debut at Covent Garden in 1818. -He was for some time at Drury Lane, and latterly manager of the Olympic. -In old men he took the place of Dowton. His finest performance was Lord -Ogleby, but in his prime he excelled also in Sir Peter Teazle, Sir Anthony -Absolute, Sir Fretful Plagiary, and the Bailie Nicol Jarvie. - -John Pritt Harley was the son of a silk-mercer, and originally a clerk in -Chancery Lane. He was born in 1786 or 1790. He made his debut at the -Lyceum in 1815, in "The Devil's Bridge." His first appearance at Drury -Lane was in 1815, as Lissardo in "The Wonder." In farce he was -good-humoured, bustling, and droll; and he excelled in Caleb Quotem, Peter -Fidget, Bottom, and many Shaksperean characters. He died only a year or -two ago, repeating, it is said, this line of one of his old parts: "I have -an exposition of sleep come upon me." - -Miss Kelly, born in 1790, was at the Lyceum in 1808, and went from thence -to Drury Lane. She sang in operas, and was admirable in genteel comedy and -domestic tragedy. Her romps were scarcely inferior to Mrs. Jordan's; her -waiting-maids were equal to Mrs. Orger's. Charles Lamb, writing in 1818, -says of her-- - - "Your tears have passion in them, and a grace, - A genuine freshness which our hearts avow; - Your smiles are winds whose ways we cannot trace, - That vanish and return we know not how." - -Miss Kelly was twice shot at while acting. In both cases the cruel -assailants were rejected admirers. - -In 1850 Mrs. Glover took her farewell benefit at Drury Lane; Farren and -Madame Vestris taking parts in the performance--Mrs. Glover playing Mrs. -Malaprop. She was born in 1779, and had made her first appearance as -Elvina in good Hannah More's dull tragedy, at Covent Garden, in 1797. -Beautiful in youth, Mrs. Glover had gracefully passed from sighing Juliets -and maundering Elvinas into Mrs. Heidelbergs, Mrs. Candours, and the Nurse -in "Romeo and Juliet." - -Robert Keeley, who was brought up a compositor, was born in Grange Court, -Carey Street, in 1794. He acted at Drury Lane as early as 1819, and at the -Adelphi as early as 1826 as Jemmy Green in "Tom and Jerry." In 1834 we -find the critics ranking him below Liston and Reeve, but he was very -popular in his representations of cowardly fear and stupid chuckling -astonishment. He left the stage for several years before his death. Miss -Helen Faucit, born in 1816, was the original heroine of Sir Bulwer -Lytton's and Mr. Browning's plays. Her Beatrice, Imogen, and Rosalind were -admirable, and her Antigone was a great success. She retired from the -stage in 1851, when she married Mr. Theodore Martin, the accomplished -translator of Horace and Catullus, and the joint author with Professor -Aytoun of those admirable burlesque ballads of "Bon Gaultier." - -William Charles Macready, the son of a Dublin upholsterer, appeared in -London first in 1816. Kean approved his Orestes, and he soon advanced to -Rob Roy, Virginius, and Coriolanus. He then removed to Drury Lane, and -distinguished himself as Caius Gracchus and William Tell, in two of Mr. -Sheridan Knowles's plays. He reappeared at Drury Lane in 1826. The critics -said that he failed in Rolla and Hamlet, but excelled in Rob Roy, -Coriolanus, and Richard. He himself preferred his own Hamlet. They -complained that he had a burr in his enunciation, and a catching of the -breath--that he was too fond of declamation and violent transitions; -others thought him too heavy and colloquial. In 1826 he went to America, -where the fatal riot of Forrest's partisans occurred, and twenty-two men -were killed. His season closed at Drury Lane in 1843. His benefit took -place in 1851, and he then retired from the stage to live the life of a -quiet, useful country gentleman in the west of England. He died in 1873, -and lies buried at Kensal Green. - -Mr. Charles Kean, struggling with a bad voice and a mean figure, had a -hard fight for success, and won it only by the most dauntless -perseverance. Born in 1811, he appeared for the first time upon the boards -as Norval, in 1827. After repeated failures in London and much success in -the provinces and America, Mr. Kean accepted an engagement at Drury Lane -in 1838--Mr. Bunn offering him L50 a night. He succeeded in Hamlet, and -was presented with a silver vase of the value of L200. In Richard and Sir -Giles Overreach he also triumphed. In 1843 Mr. Kean renewed his engagement -with Mr. Bunn. Before retiring from the stage and starting for Australia, -Mr. and Mrs. Kean performed for many nights at Drury Lane. Charles Kean -died in 1868. - -Miss Ellen Tree first performed at Drury Lane as Violante in "The Wonder." -She married Mr. C. Kean in 1842, and aided him in those -antiquarianly-correct spectacles that for a time rendered a scholarly, -careful, but scarcely first-rate actor popular in the metropolis. - -We have room in this brief and imperfect _resume_ of theatrical history -for only two pictures of Drury Lane. One is in 1800, when George III. was -fired at by Hatfield as he entered the house to witness Cribber's comedy -of "She Would and She Would Not." When the Marquis of Salisbury would have -drawn him away, the brave, obstinate king said--"Sir, you discompose me as -well as yourself: I shall not stir one step." The queen and princesses -were in tears all the evening, but George III. sat calm and collected, -staring through his single-barrel opera-glass. In 1783 the king, queen, -and Prince of Wales went to Drury Lane to see Mrs. Siddons play Isabella. -They sat under a dome of crimson velvet and gold. The king wore a -Quaker-coloured dress with gold buttons, while the handsome scapegrace -prince was adorned in blue Genoa velvet. - -Mr. Planche, the accomplished writer of extravaganzas and the _Somerset -Herald_, brought out his burlesque of "Amoroso, King of Little Britain," -at Drury Lane in 1818. He afterwards wrote the libretto of "Maid Marian" -for Mr. Bishop, and that of "Oberon" for Weber. In 1828 his "Charles XII." -was produced at Drury Lane. - -On Mr. Falconer's clever imitative experiments we have no room to dilate. -The "Peep o' Day," a piece which reproduced all the "Colleen Bawn" -effects, was the best. - -And now leaving the theatres for meaner places, we pass on to the district -of the butchers. Clare Market stands on a spot formerly called Clement's -Inn Fields, and was built by the Earl of Clare, who lived close by, in -1657. The family names, Denzil, Holles, etc., are retained in the -neighbouring streets. - -This market became notorious in Pope's time for the buffoonery, noisy -impudence, and extravagances of Orator Henley, a sort of ecclesiastical -outlaw of a not very religious age, who tried to make his impudence and -conceit pass for genius. This street-orator, the son of a Leicestershire -vicar, was born in 1692. After going to St. John's College, Cambridge, he -returned home, kept a school, wrote a poem called "Esther," and began a -Universal Grammar in ten languages. Heated by an itch for reforming, and -tired of the country, or driven away, as some say, by a scandalous -embarrassment, he hurried to London, and for a short time did duty at a -chapel in Bedford Row. During this time, under the Earl of Macclesfield's -patronage, he translated Pliny's epistles, Vertot's works, and -Montfaucon's Italian travels. He then competed for a lecturership in -Bloomsbury, but failed, the parishioners not disliking his language or his -doctrine, but complaining that he threw himself about too much in the -pulpit. - -Now, "regular action" was one of Henley's peculiar prides. The rejection -hurt his vanity and nearly drove him crazy. Losing his temper, he rushed -into the vestry-room. "Blockheads!" he roared, "are _you_ qualified to -judge of the degree of action necessary for a preacher of God's Word? Were -you able to read, or had got sufficient sense, you sorry knaves, to -understand the renowned orator of antiquity, he would tell you almost the -only requisite of a public speaker was ACTION, ACTION, ACTION. But I -despise and defy you: _provoco ad populum_; the public shall decide -between us." He then hurried from the room, soon afterwards published his -probationary discourse, and taking a room in Newport Market, started as -quack divine and public lecturer. - -But he first consulted the eccentric and heretical Whiston, whom Swift -bantered so ruthlessly--Whiston being, like Henley, a Leicestershire -man--as to whether he should incur any legal penalties by officiating as a -separatist from the Church of England. Whiston, himself an expelled -professor, tried to dissuade the Orator from his wild project. -Disagreement and abuse followed, and the correspondence ended with the -following final bomb-shell from the violent demagogue:-- - - "To Mr. WILLIAM WHISTON, - - "Take notice that I give you warning not to enter my room in Newport - Market, at your peril. - - "JOHN HENLEY."[602] - -The Orator patronised divinity on Sundays, and secular subjects on -Wednesdays and Fridays. The admittance was one shilling. He also published -outrageous pamphlets and a weekly farrago called The _Hyp-Doctor_, -intended to antidote _The Craftsman_, and for which pompous nonsense Sir -Robert Walpole is said to have given him L100 a year. He also attacked -eminent persons, even Pope, from his pulpit. Every Saturday an -advertisement of the subject of his next week's oration appeared in the -_Daily Advertiser_, preceded by a sarcastic or libellous motto, and -sometimes an offer that if any one at home or abroad could be found to -surpass him, he would surrender his Oratory at once to his conqueror. - -In 1729 Henley, growing perhaps more popular, removed to Clare Market, -where the butchers became his warm partisans and served as his body-guard. -The following are two of his shameless advertisements:-- - -"At the Oratory in Newport Market, to-morrow, at half an hour after ten, -the sermon will be on the Witch of Endor. At half an hour after five, the -theological lecture will be on the conversion and original of the Scottish -nation and of the Picts and Caledonians, St. Andrew's relics and -panegyric, and the character and mission of the Apostles. - -"On Wednesday, at six or near the matter, take your chance, will be a -medley oration on the history, merits, and praise of confusion and of -confounders, in the road and out of the way. - -"On Friday will be that on Dr. Faustus and Fortunatus and conjuration. -After each the Chimes of the Times, Nos. 23 and 24." - -Very shortly afterwards he advertised from Clare Market:-- - -1. "The postil will be on the turning of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. -2. The sermon will be on the necessary power and attractive force which -religion gives the spirit of a man with God and good spirits. - -2. "At five--1. The postil will be on this point:--In what language our -Saviour will speak the last sentence to mankind. - -3. "The lecture will be on Jesus Christ's sitting at the right hand of -God; where that is; the honours and lustre of his inauguration; the -learning, criticism, and piety of that glorious article. - -"The Monday's orations will shortly be resumed. On Wednesday the oration -will be on the skits of the fashions, or a live gallery of family pictures -in all ages; ruffs, muffs, puffs manifold; shoes, wedding-shoes, -two-shoes, slip-shoes, heels, clocks, pantofles, buskins, pantaloons, -garters, shoulder-knots, periwigs, head-dresses, modesties, tuckers, -farthingales, corkins, minnikins, slammakins, ruffles, round-robins, fans, -patches; dame, forsooth, madam, my lady, the wit and beauty of my granmum; -Winnifred, Joan, Bridget, compared with our Winny, Jenny, and Biddy: fine -ladies and pretty gentlewomen; being a general view of the _beau monde_ -from before Noah's flood to the year '29. On Friday will be something -better than last Tuesday. After each a bob at the times." - -This very year, 1729, the _Dunciad_ was published, and in it this Rabelais -of the pulpit had, of course, his niche. Pope had been accused of taking -the bread out of people's mouths. He denies this, and asks if "Colley -(Cibber) has not still his lord, and Henley his butchers;" and ends with -these lines, which, however, had no effect, for Henley went on ranting for -eighteen years longer-- - - "But where each science lifts its modern type, - History her pot, Divinity his pipe; - While proud Philosophy repines to show, - Dishonest sight! his breeches rent below,-- - Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, - Tuning his voice and balancing his hands. - How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! - How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung! - Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain, - While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach in vain. - O great restorer of the good old stage, - Preacher at once and zany of the age! - O worthy thou of Egypt's wise abodes! - A decent priest when monkeys were the gods. - But Fate with butchers placed thy priestly stall, - Meek modern faith to murder, hack, and maul, - And bade thee live to crown Britannia's praise - In Toland's, Tindal's, and in Woolston's days."[603] - -In another place he says-- - - "Henley lay inspired beside a sink, - And to mere mortals seemed a priest in drink." - -Pope often attacked Henley in the _Grub Street Journal_, and the Orator -retaliated. A year or two after the _Essay on Man_ was published, Henley -(Dec. 1737) announced a lecture, "Whether Mr. Pope be a man of sense, in -one argument--'Whatever is is right.'" If whatever is is right, Henley -thought that nothing could be wrong; ergo, he himself was not a proper -object of satire. - -Henley's pulpit was covered with velvet and gold lace, and over his altar -was written, "The PRIMITIVE Eucharist." A contemporary journalist -describes him entering his pulpit suddenly, like a harlequin, through a -sort of trap-door at the back, and "at one large leap jumping into it and -falling to work," beating his notions into the butcher-audience -simultaneously with his hands, arms, legs, and head. - -In one of his arrogant puffs, he boasts that he has singly executed what -"would sprain a dozen of modern doctors of the tribe of Issachar;" that no -one dares to answer his challenges; that he can write, read, and study -twelve hours a day and not feel the yoke; and write three dissertations a -week without help, and put the Church in danger. He struck medals for his -tickets, with a star rising to the meridian upon them, and the vain -superscription "Ad summa" ("To the heights"), and below, "Inveniam viam -aut faciam" ("I will find a way or make one"). - -When the Orator's funds grew low, his audacity and impudence rose to their -climax. He once filled his chapel with shoemakers, whom he had attracted -by advertising that he could teach a method of making shoes with wonderful -celerity. His secret consisted in cutting the tops off old boots. His -motto to this advertisement was "Omne majus continet in se minus" ("The -greater includes the less"). - -In 1745 Henley was cited before the Privy Council for having used -seditious expressions in one of his lectures. Herring, then Archbishop of -York, had been arming his clergy, and urging every one to volunteer -against the Pretender. The Earl of Chesterfield, then Secretary of State, -urged on Henley the impropriety of ridiculing such honest exertions at a -time when rebellion actually raged in the very heart of the kingdom. "I -thought, my lord," said Henley, "that there was no harm in cracking a joke -on a _red herring_." - -During his examination, the restorer of ancient eloquence requested -permission to sit, on account of a rheumatism that was generally supposed -to be imaginary. The earl tried to turn the outlaw divine into ridicule; -but Henley's eccentric answers, odd gestures, hearty laughs, strong voice, -magisterial air, and self-possessed face were a match for his somewhat -heartless lordship. - -Being cautioned about his disrespectful remarks on certain ministers, -Henley answered gravely, "My lords, I must live." Lord Chesterfield -replied, "I don't see the necessity," and the council laughed. Upon this -Henley, remembering that the joke was Voltaire's, was somewhat irritated. -"That is a good thing, my lord," he exclaimed, "but it has been said -before." A few days after the Orator, being reprimanded and cautioned, was -dismissed as an impudent but entertaining fellow.[604] - -Dr. Herring whom the rogue ridiculed was a worthy man, who in 1747, on the -death of Potter, became Archbishop of Canterbury, and died in 1757. Swift -hated Herring for condemning the "Beggars' Opera" in a sermon at Lincoln's -Inn, and wrote accordingly: "The 'Beggars' Opera' will probably do more -good than a thousand sermons of so stupid, so injudicious, and so -prostitute a divine."[605] - -In 1748 Dr. Cobden, the Court chaplain, an odd but worthy man, incurred -the resentment of King George II. by preaching before him a sermon -entitled "A Persuasive to Chastity"--a virtue not popular then at St. -James's. He resigned his post in 1752. The text of this obnoxious sermon -was, "Take away the wicked from before the king." Henley's next Saturday's -motto was-- - - "Away with the wicked before the king, - Away with the wicked behind him; - His throne it will bless - With righteousness, - And we shall know where to find him." - -If any of the Orator's old Bloomsbury friends ever caught his eye among -the audience, he would gratify his vanity and rankling resentment by a -pause. He would then say, "You see, sir, all mankind are not exactly of -your opinion; there are, you perceive, a few sensible persons in the world -who consider me as not totally unqualified for the office I have -undertaken." His abashed adversaries, hot and confused, and with all eyes -turned on them, would retreat precipitately, and sometimes were pushed out -of the room by Henley's violent butchers. - -The Orator figures in two caricatures, attributed, as Mr. Steevens thinks, -wrongly to Hogarth. In one he is christening a child; in another he is on -a scaffold with a monkey by his side. A parson takes the money at the -door, while a butcher is porter. Modesty is in a cloud, Folly in a coach, -and there is a gibbet prepared for poor Merit. - -Henley, who latterly grew coarse, brutal, and drunken, died October 14, -1756. The _Gentleman's Magazine_ merely announces his death thus:--"Rev. -Orator Henley, aged 64." "Nollekens" Smith says that he died mad. - -It is somewhat uncertain where his Oratory stood: some say in Duke Street; -others, in the market. It was probably in Davenant's old theatre, at the -Tennis Court in Vere Street.[606] - -The beginning of one of this buffoon's ribald sermons has been preserved, -and is worth quoting to prove the miserable claptrap with which he amused -his rude audience. The text is taken from Jeremiah xvi. 16, "I will send -for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after that -I will send many hunters, and they shall hunt." - -"The former part of the text seems, as Scripture is written for our -admonition, on whom the ends of the world are come (an end of all we have -in the world), to relate to the _Dutch_, who are to be fished by us -according to Act of Parliament; for the word 'herrings' in the Act has a -figurative as well as a literal sense, and by a metaphor means Dutchmen, -who are the greatest stealers of herrings in the world; so that the drift -of the statute is, that we are to fish for Dutchmen, and catch them, -either by nets or fishing-rods in return for their repeated catching of -Englishmen, then transport them in some of Jonathan Forward's close -lighters and sell them in the West Indies, to repair the loss which our -South Sea Company endure by the Spaniards denying them the assiento, or -sale of negroes."[607] - -Among other wild sermons of Henley, we find discourses on "The Tears of -Magdalen," "St. Paul's Cloak," and "The Last Wills of the Patriarchs." He -left behind him 600 MSS., which he valued at one guinea a-piece, and 150 -volumes of commonplaces and other scholarly memoranda. They were sold for -less than L100. They had been written with great care. When Henley was -once accused that he _did all_ for lucre, he retorted "that some do -nothing for it." He once filled his room by advertising an oration on -marriage. When he got into his pulpit he shook his head at the ladies, and -said "he was afraid they oftener came to church to get husbands than to -hear the preacher." On one occasion two Oxonians whom he challenged came -followed by such a strong party that the butchers were overawed, and -Henley silently slunk away by a door behind the rostrum.[608] - -There are still popular preachers in London as greedy of praise and as -basely eager for applause as Orator Henley. Equally great buffoons, and -men equally low in moral tone, still fill some pulpits, and point the way -to a path they may never themselves take. To such unhappy self-deceivers -we can advise no better cure than a moonlight walk in Clare Market in -search of the ghost of Orator Henley. - -There was in Hogarth's time an artists' club at the Bull's Head, Clare -Market. Boitard etched some of the characters. Hogarth, Jack Laguerre, -Colley Cibber, Denis the critic (?), Boitard, Spiller the comedian, and -George Lambert, were members. Laguerre gave Spiller's portrait to the -landlord, and drew a caricature procession of his "chums." The inn was -afterwards called the "Spiller's Head." One of the wags of the club wrote -an epitaph on Spiller, beginning-- - - "The butchers' wives fall in hysteric fits, - For sure as they're alive, poor Spiller's dead; - But, thanks to Jack Laguerre, we've got his head. - - * * * * * - - He was an inoffensive, merry fellow, - When sober hipped, blithe as a bird when mellow."[609] - -The Bull's Head Tavern in Clare Market, the same place in which Hogarth's -club was held, had previously been the favourite resort of that -illustrious Jacobite, Dr. Radcliffe, who is said to have killed two -queens. Swift did not like this overbearing, ignorant, and surly humorist, -who, however, rejoiced in doing good, and left a vast sum of money to the -University of Oxford. When Bathurst, the head of Trinity College, asked -Radcliffe where his library was, he pointed to a few vials, a skeleton, -and a herbal, and replied, "There is Radcliffe's library."[610] - -[Illustration: DRURY LANE THEATRE, 1806.] - -Mrs. Bracegirdle, that excellent and virtuous actress, used to be in the -habit (says Tony Ashton) of frequently going into Clare market and giving -money to the poor unemployed basketwomen, insomuch that she could not pass -that neighbourhood without thankful acclamations from people of all -degrees. - -In 1846 there were in and about Clare Market, about 26 butchers who -slaughtered from 350 to 400 sheep weekly in the stalls and cellars. The -number killed was from 50 to 60 weekly--but in winter sometimes as many as -200. But the butchers' market has now become almost a thing of the past. - -Joe Miller formerly lay buried in a graveyard on the south side of -Portugal Street, but the graveyard is now turned to other purposes. At the -corner of Portugal Street and Lincoln's Inn Fields is the "Black Jack" -Inn, a hostelry whose name is connected with some of Jack Sheppard's -feats. - - - - -[Illustration: OLD ST. GILES'S--CHURCH LANE AND DYOT STREET, 1869.] - - -CHAPTER XIII. - -ST. GILES'S. - - -That ancient Roman military road (the Watling Street) came from Edgeware, -and passing over Hyde Park and through St. James's Park by Old Palace -Yard, once the Wool Staple, it reached the Thames. Thence it was continued -to Canterbury and the three great seaports. - -Another Roman road, the _Via Trinobantica_, which began at Southampton and -ended at Aldborough, ran through London, crossed the Watling Street at -Tyburn, and passed along Oxford Street. In latter times, says Dr. -Stukeley, the road was changed to a more southerly direction, and Holborn -was formed, leading to Newgate or the Chamberlain's Gate. - -One of the earliest tolls ever imposed in England is said to have had its -origin in St. Giles's.[611] In 1346 Edward III. granted to the Master of -the Hospital of St. Giles and to John de Holborne, a commission empowering -them to levy tolls for two years (one penny in the pound on their value) -on all cattle and merchandise passing along the public highways leading -from the old Temple, _i.e._ Holborn Bars, to the Hospital of St. Giles's, -and also along the Charing Road and another highway called Portpool, now -Gray's Inn Lane. The money was to be used in repairing the roads, which, -by the frequent passing of carts, wains, horses, and cattle, had become so -miry and deep as to be nearly impassable. The only persons exempted were -to be lords, ladies, and persons belonging to religious -establishments.[612] - -Henry V. ascended the throne in 1413, and astonished his subjects by -suddenly casting off his slough of vice, and becoming a self-restrained, -virtuous, and high-spirited king. His first care was to forget party -distinctions, and to put down the Lollards, or disciples of Wickliffe, -whom the clergy denounced as dangerous to the civil power. As a good -general secures the rear of his army before he advances, so the young king -was probably desirous to guard himself against this growing danger before -he invaded Normandy and made a clutch at the French crown. - -Arundel, the primate, urged him to indict Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, -the head of the Lollard sect. The king was averse to a prosecution, and -suggested milder means. At a conference, therefore, appointed before the -bishops and doctors in 1414, the following articles were handed Oldcastle -as tests, and the unorthodox lord was allowed two days to retract his -heresies. He was required to confess that at the sacrament the material -bread and wine are turned into Christ's very body and Christ's very -blood; that every Christian man ought to confess to an ordained priest; -that Christ ordained St. Peter and his successors as his vicars on earth; -that Christian men ought to obey the priest; and that it is profitable to -go on pilgrimages and to worship the relics and images of saints. "This is -determination of Holy Church. _How feel ye this article?_" With these -stern words ended every dogma proposed by the primate. - -Lord Cobham, who was much esteemed by the king, and had been a good -soldier under his father, repeatedly refused to profess his belief in -these tenets. The archbishop then delivered the heretic to the secular -arm, to be put to death, according to the usage of the times. The night -previous to his execution, however, Lord Cobham escaped from the Tower and -fled to Wales, where he lay hid for four years while Agincourt was being -fought, and where he must have longed to have been present with his true -sword. - -Soon after his escape, the frightened clergy spread a report that he was -in St. Giles's Fields, at the head of twenty thousand Lollards, who were -resolved to seize the king and his two brothers, the Dukes of Bedford and -Gloucester. For this imaginary plot thirty-six persons were hanged or -burnt; but the names of only three are recorded, and of these Sir Roger -Acton is the only person of distinction. - -A reward of a thousand marks was offered for Lord Cobham, and other -inducements were held out by Chicheley, the Primate Arundel's successor. -Four years, however, elapsed before the premature Protestant was -discovered and taken by Lord Powis in Wales.[613] After some blows and -blood a country-woman in the fray breaking Cobham's leg with a stool, he -was secured and sent up to London in a horse-litter. He was sentenced to -be drawn on a hurdle to the gallows in St. Giles's Fields, and to be -hanged over a fire, in order to inflict on him the utmost pain. - -He was brought from the Tower on the 25th of December 1418, and his arms -bound behind him. He kept a very cheerful countenance as he was drawn to -the field where his assumed treason had been committed. When he reached -the gallows, he fell devoutly on his knees and piously prayed God to -forgive his enemies. The cruel preparations for his torment struck no -terror in him, nor shook the constancy of the martyr. He bore everything -bravely as a soldier, and with the resignation of a Christian. Then he was -hung by the middle with chains and consumed alive in the fire, praising -God's name as long as his life lasted. - -He was accused by his enemies of holding that there was no such thing as -free will; that all sin was inevitable; and that God could not have -prevented Adam's sin, nor have pardoned it without the satisfaction of -Christ.[614] - -Fuller says of him: "Stage-poets have themselves been very bold with, and -others very merry at, the memory of Sir John Oldcastle (Lord Cobham), whom -they have fancied a boon companion or jovial roysterer, and yet a coward -to boot, contrary to the credit of the chronicles, owning him to be a -martial man of merit. Sir John Falstaff hath derided the memory of Sir -John Oldcastle, and of late is substituted buffoon in his place; but it -matters us little what petulant priests or what malicious poets have -written against him." - -The gallows had been removed from the Elms at Smithfield in 1413, the -first year of Henry V.; but Tyburn was a place of execution as early as -1388.[615] The St. Giles's gallows was set up at the north corner of the -hospital wall, between the termination of High Street and Crown Street, -opposite to where the Pound stood. - -The manor of St. Giles was anciently divided from Bloomsbury by a great -fosse called Blemund's Ditch. The Doomsday Book contains no mention of -this district, nor indeed of London at all, except of ten acres of land -nigh Bishopsgate, belonging to St. Paul's, and a vineyard in Holborn, -belonging to the Crown. This yard is supposed to have stood on the site of -the Vine Tavern (now destroyed), a little to the east of Kingsgate -Street.[616] - -Blemund's Ditch was a line of defence running nearly parallel with the -north side of Holborn, and connecting itself to the east with the Fleet -brook. It was probably of British origin.[617] On the north-west of -London, in the Roman times, there were marshes and forests, and even as -late as Elizabeth, Marylebone and St. John's Wood were almost all chase. - -The manor was crown property in the Norman times, for Matilda, daughter of -Malcolm king of Scotland and the queen of Henry I., built a leper hospital -there, and dedicated it to St. Giles. The same good woman erected a -hospital at Cripplegate, and another at St. Katharine's, near the Tower, -and founded a priory within Aldgate. The hospital of St. Giles sheltered -forty lepers, one clerk, a messenger, the master, and several matrons; the -queen gave 60s. a year to each leper. The inmates of lazar hospitals were -in the habit of begging in the market-places. - -The patron saint, St. Giles, was an Athenian of the seventh century, who -lived as a hermit in a forest near Nismes. One day some hunters, pursuing -a hind that he had tamed, struck the Greek with an arrow as he protected -it, but the good man still went on praying, and refused all recompense for -the injury. The French king in vain attempted to entice the saint from his -cell, which in time, however, grew first into a monastery, and then into a -town.[618] - -This hospital was built on the site of the old parish church, and it -occupied eight acres. It stood a little to the west of the present church, -where Lloyd's Court stands or stood; and its gardens reached between High -Street and Hog Lane, now Crown Street, to the Pound, which used to stand -nearly opposite to the west end of Meux's Brewhouse. It was surrounded by -a triangular wall, running in a line with Crown Street to somewhere near -the Cock and Pye Fields (afterwards the Seven Dials), in a line with -Monmouth Street, and thence east and west up High Street, joining near the -Pound. - -Unwholesome diet and the absence of linen seem to have encouraged -leprosy, which was probably a disease of Eastern origin. In 1179 the -Lateran Council decreed that lepers should keep apart, and have churches -and churchyards of their own. It was therefore natural to build hospitals -for lepers outside large towns. King Henry II., for the health of the -souls of his grandfather and grandmother, granted the poor lepers a second -60s. each to be paid yearly at the feast of St. Michael, and 30s. more out -of his Surrey rents to buy them lights. He also confirmed to them the -grant of a church at Feltham, near Hounslow. In Henry III.'s reign, Pope -Alexander IV. issued a bull to confirm these privileges. Edward I. granted -the hospital two charters in 1300 and 1303; and in Edward II.'s reign so -many estates were granted to it that it became very rich. Edward III. made -St. Giles a cell of Burton St. Lazar in Leicestershire. This annexation -led to quarrels, and to armed resistance against the visitations of Robert -Archbishop of Canterbury. In this reign the great plague broke out, and -the king commanded the wards of the city to issue proclamations and remove -all lepers. It is strange that St. Giles's should have been the resort of -pariahs from the very beginning. - -Burton St. Lazar (a manor sold in 1828 for L30,000) is still celebrated -for its cheeses. It remained a flourishing hospital from the reign of -Stephen till Henry VIII. suppressed it. St. Giles's sank in importance -after this absorption, and finally fell in 1537 with its larger brother. -By a deed of exchange the greedy king obtained forty-eight acres of land, -some marshes, and two inns. Six years after the king gave St. Giles's to -John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, High Admiral of England, who fitted up the -principal part of the hospital for his own residence. Two years after Lord -Lisle sold the manor to Wymond Carew, Esq. The mansion was situated -westward of the church and facing it. It was afterwards occupied by the -celebrated Alice, Duchess of Dudley, who died there in the reign of -Charles II., aged ninety. This house was subsequently the residence of -Lord Wharton. It divided Lloyd's Court from Denmark Street. - -The master's house, "The White House," stood on the site of Dudley Court, -and was given by the duchess to the parish as a rectory-house. The wall -which surrounded the hospital gardens and orchards was not entirely -removed till 1639. - -Early in the fourteenth century the parish of St. Giles, including the -hospital inmates, numbered only one hundred inhabitants. In King John's -reign it was laid out in garden plots and cottages. In Henry III.'s reign -it was a scattered country village, with a few shops and a stone cross, -where the High Street now is. As far back as 1225 a blacksmith's shop -stood at the north-west end of Drury Lane, and remained there till its -removal in 1575. - -In Queen Elizabeth's reign the Holborn houses did not run farther than Red -Lion Street; the road was then open as far as the present Hart Street, -where a garden wall commenced near Broad Street, St. Giles's, and the end -of Drury Lane, where a cluster of houses on the right formed the chief -part of the village, the rest being scattered houses. The hospital -precincts were at this time surrounded by trees. Beyond this, north and -south, all was country; and avenues of trees marked out the Oxford and -other roads. There was no house from Broad Street, St. Giles's, to Drury -House at the top of Wych Street.[619] - -The lower part of Holborn was paved in the reign of Henry VI., in 1417; -and in 1542 (33d Henry VIII.) it was completed as far as St. Giles's, -being very full of pits and sloughs, and perilous and noisome to all on -foot or horseback. The first increase of buildings in this district was on -the north side of Broad Street. Three edicts of 1582, 1593, and 1602 -evince the alarm of Government at the increase of inhabitants and prohibit -further building under severe penalties. The first proclamation, dated -from Nonsuch Palace, in Surrey, assigns the reason of these -prohibitions:--1. The difficulty of governing more people without new -officers and fresh jurisdictions. 2. The difficulty of supplying them with -food and fuel at reasonable rates. 3. The danger of plague and the injury -to agriculture. Regulations were also issued to prevent the further -resort of country people to town, and the lord mayor took oaths to enforce -these proclamations. But London burst through these foolish and petty -restraints as Samson burst the green withs. In 1580 the resident -foreigners in the capital had increased from 3762 to 6462 persons, the -majority being Dutch who had fled from the Spaniards, and Huguenots who -had escaped from France after the massacre of St. Bartholomew. St. Giles's -grew, especially to the east and west, round the hospital. The girdle wall -was mostly demolished soon after 1595. Holborn, stretching westward, with -its fair houses, lodgings for gentlemen, and inns for travellers,[620] had -nearly reached it. In Aggas's map, cattle graze amid intersecting -footpaths, where Great Queen Street now is. There were then only two or -three houses in Covent Garden, but in 1606 the east side of Drury Lane was -built; in the assessment of 1623 upwards of twenty courtyards and alleys -are mentioned; and 100 houses were added on the north side of St. Giles's -Street, 136 in Bloomsbury, 56 on the west side of Drury Lane, and 71 on -the south side of Holborn.[621] The south and east sides of the hospital -site had been the slowest in their growth. After the Great Fire, these -still remained gardens, but the north side, nearer Oxford Road, was -already occupied. The first inhabitants of importance were Mr. Abraham -Speckart and Mr. Breads, in the reigns of James I. and Charles I., and -afterwards Sir William Stiddolph. New Compton Street was originally called -Stiddolph Street, but afterwards changed its name when Charles II. gave -the adjoining marsh-land to Mr. Francis Compton, who built on the old -hospital land a continuation of Old Compton Street. Monmouth Street, -probably named after the foolish and unfortunate duke, was also built in -this reign. - -In 1694, in the reign of William III., a Mr. Neale, a lottery promoter, -took on lease the Cock and Pye Fields--then the resort of gambling boys, -thieves, and beggars, and a sink of filth and cesspools--and built the -neighbouring streets, placing in the centre a Doric pillar with seven -dials on it; afterwards a clock was added.[622] This same Mr. Thomas Neale -took a large piece of ground on the north side of Piccadilly from Sir -Thomas Clarges, agreeing to lay out L10,000 in building; but he failed to -carry out his design, and Sir Walter Clarges, after great trouble, got the -lease out of his hands, and Clarges Street was then built.[623] - -In 1697 many hundreds of the 14,000 French refugees who fled from Louis -XIV.'s dragoons after the cruel revocation of the Edict of Nantes settled -about Long Acre, the Seven Dials, and Soho. In Strype's time (Queen Anne's -reign), Stacie Street, Kendrick Yard, Vinegar Yard, and Phoenix Street, -were mostly occupied by poor French people; indigent marquises and -starving countesses. - -In the reign of Queen Anne, St. Giles's increased with great rapidity--St. -Giles's Street and Broad Street from the Pound to Drury Lane, the -south-east side of Tottenham Court Road, Crown Street, the Seven Dials, -and Castle Street were completed; the south side of Holborn was also -finished from Broad Street to a little east of Great Turnstile, and, on -the north side, the street spread to two doors east of the Vine -Tavern.[624] The Irish had already begun to debase St. Giles's; the French -refugees completed the degradation and hopelessness, and spread like a mud -deluge towards Soho. - -In 1640 there are in the parish books several entries of money paid to -soldiers and distressed men who had lost everything they had in Ireland:-- - - Paid to a poor Irishman, and to a prisoner come - over from Dunkirk L0 1 0 - - Paid for a shroud for an Irishman that died at - Brickils 0 2 6 - -In 1640, 1642, and 1647, there constantly occur donations to poor Irish -ministers and plundered Irish. Clothes were sent by the parish into -Ireland. There is one entry-- - - Paid to a poor gentleman undone by the burning of a city - in Ireland; having licence from the lords to collect L0 3 0 - -The following entries are also curious and characteristic:-- - - 1642.--To Mrs. Mabb, a poet's wife, her husband being - dead L0 1 0 - - Paid to Goody Parish, to buy her boys two - shirts; and Charles, their father, a waterman - at Chiswick, to keep him at L20 a - year from Christmas 0 3 0 - - 1648.--Gave to the Lady Pigot, in Lincoln's Inn - Fields, poor and deserving relief 0 2 6 - - 1670.--Given to the Lady Thornbury, being poor - and indigent 0 10 0 - - 1641.--To old Goodman Street and old Goody - Malthus, very poor ------ - - 1645.--To Mother Cole and Mother Johnson, xiid. - a-piece 0 2 0 - - 1646.--To William Burnett, in a cellar in Raggedstaff - Yard, being poor and very sick 0 1 6 - - To Goody Sherlock, in Maidenhead-fields - Lane, one linen-wheel, and gave her - money to buy flax 0 1 0 - -There are also some interesting entries showing what a sink for the -poverty of all the world the St. Giles's cellars had become, even before -the Restoration. - - 1640.--Gave to Signor Lifecatha, a distressed - Grecian ------ - - 1642.--To Laylish Milchitaire, of Chimaica, in - Armenia, to pass him to his own country, - and to redeem his sons in slavery under - the Turks L0 5 0 - - 1654.--Paid towards the relief of the mariners, - maimed soldiers, widows and orphans of - such as have died in the service of Parliament 4 11 0 - -These were for Cromwell's soldiers; and this year Oliver himself gave L40 -to the parish to buy coals for the poor. - - 1666.--Collected at several times towards the relief - of the poor sufferers burnt out by the late - dreadful fire of London L25 8 4 - -In 1670 nearly L185 was collected in this parish towards the redemption of -slaves. - -After 1648 the Irish are seldom mentioned by name. They had grown by this -time part and parcel of the district, and dragged all round them down to -poverty. In 1653 an assistant beadle was appointed specially to search out -and report all new arrivals of chargeable persons. In 1659 a monthly -vestry-meeting was instituted to receive the constable's report as to new -vagrants. - -In 1675 French refugees began to increase, and in 1679-1680, 1690 and 1692 -fresh efforts were made to search out and investigate the cases of all -new-comers. In 1710 the churchwardens reported to the commissioners for -building new churches, that "a great number of French Protestants were -inhabitants of the parish." - -Well-known beggars of the day are frequently mentioned in the parish -accounts, as for instance-- - - 1640.--Gave to Tottenham Court Meg, being very - sick L0 1 0 - - 1642.--Gave to the ballad-singing cobbler 0 1 0 - - 1646.--Gave to old Friz-wig 1 6 0 - - 1657.--Paid the collectors for a shroud for old Guy, - the poet 0 2 6 - - 1658.--Paid a year's rent for Mad Bess 1 4 6 - - 1642.--Paid to one Thomas, a traveller 0 0 6 - - To a poor woman and her children, almost - starved 0 5 6 - - 1645.--For a shroud for Hunter's child, the blind - beggar-man 0 1 6 - - 1646.--Paid and given to a poor wretch, name forgot 0 1 0 - - Given to old Osborn, a troublesome fellow 0 1 3 - - Paid to Rotton, the lame glazier, to carry - him towards Bath 0 3 0 - - 1647.--To old Osborne and his blind wife 0 0 6 - - To the old mud-wall maker 0 0 6 - -In 1665 the plague fell heavily on St. Giles's, already dirty and -overcrowded. The pest had already broken out five times within the eighty -years beginning in 1592; but no outbreak of this Oriental pest in London -had carried off more than 36,000 persons. The disease in 1665, however, -slew no fewer than 97,306 in ten months.[625] In St. Giles's the plague of -1592 carried off 894 persons; in 1625 there died of the plague about 1333; -but in 1665 there were swept off from this parish alone 3216. The plague -of 1625 seemed to have alarmed London quite as much as its successor, for -we find that in St. Giles's no assessment could be made, as the richer -people had all fled into the country. A pest-house was fitted up in -Bloomsbury for the nine adjoining parishes, and this was afterwards taken -by St. Giles's for itself. The vestry appointed two examiners to inspect -infected houses. Mr. Pratt, the churchwarden, who advanced money to -succour the poor when the rich deserted them, was afterwards paid forty -pounds for the sums he had generously disbursed at his own risk. In 1642 -the entries in the parish books show that the disease had again become -virulent and threatening. The bodies were collected in carts by -torchlight, and thrown without burial service into large pits. Infected -houses were padlocked up, and watchmen placed to admit doctors or persons -bringing food to the searchers, who at night brought out the dead. - -The following entries (for 1642) in the parish books seem to me even more -terrible than Defoe's romance written fifty years after the events:-- - - Paid for the two padlocks and hasps for visited - houses L0 2 6 - - Paid Mr. Hyde for candles for the bearers 0 10 0 - - " to the same for the night-cart and cover 7 9 0 - - " to Mr. Mann for links and candles for the - night-bearers 0 10 0 - -The next year the plague still raged, and the same precautions seem to -have been taken as afterwards in 1665, showing that the terrible details -of that punishment of filth and neglect were not new to London citizens. - -The entries go on:-- - - To the bearers for carrying out of Crown Court a woman - that died of the plague L0 1 6 - - Sent to a poor man shut up in Crown Yard of the plague 0 1 6 - -Then follow sums paid for padlocks and staples, graves and links:-- - - Paid and given Mr. Lyn, the beadle, for a piece of good - service to the parish in conveying away of a visited - household to Lord's Pest House, forth of Mr. Higgins's - house at Bloomsbury L0 1 6 - - Received of Mr. Hearle (Dr. Temple's gift) to be given - to Mrs. Hockey, a minister's widow, shut up in the - Crache Yard of the plague 0 10 0 - -But now came the awful pestilence of 1665; the streets were so deserted -that grass grew in them, and nothing was to be seen but coffins, -pest-carts, link-men, and red-crossed doors. The air resounded with the -tolling of bells, the screams of distracted mourners crying from the -windows, "Pray for us!" and the dismal call of the searchers, "Bring out -your dead!"[626] - -The plague broke out in its most malignant form among the poor of St. -Giles's;[627] and Dr. Hodges and Sir Richard Manningham, both first-rate -authorities on this subject, agree in this assertion. - -In August 1665 an additional rate to the amount of L600 was levied. -Independent of this, very large sums were subscribed by persons resident -in, or interested in, the parish. The following are a few of the items:-- - - Mr. Williams, from the Earl of Clare L10 0 0 - - Mr. Justice (Sir Edmondbury) Godfrey, from the - Lord Treasurer 50 0 0 - - Earl Craven and the rest of the justices, towards - the visited poor, at various times 449 16 10 - - Earl Craven towards the visited poor 40 3 0 - -There are also these ominous entries:-- - - August.--Paid the searchers for viewing the corpse - of Goodwife Phillips, who died of the - plague L0 0 6 - - Laid out for Goodman Phillips and his - children, being shut up and visited 0 5 0 - - Laid out for Lylla Lewis, 3 Crane Court, - being shut up of the plague; and laid - out for the nurse, and for the nurse and - burial 0 18 6 - -In July 1666 the constables, etc. were ordered to make an account of all -new inmates coming to the parish, and to take security that they would not -become burdensome. They were also directed to be careful to prevent the -infection spreading for the future by a timely guard of all "that are or -hereafter may happen to be visited." - -"During the plague time," says an eye-witness, "nobody put on black or -formal mourning, yet London was all in tears. The shrieks of women and -children at the doors and windows of their houses where their dearest -relations were dying, or perhaps dead, were enough to pierce the stoutest -hearts. At the west end of the town it was a surprising thing to see those -streets which were usually thronged now grown desolate; so that I have -sometimes gone the length of a whole street (I mean bye streets), and have -seen nobody to direct me but watchmen[628] sitting at the doors of such -houses as were shut up; and one day I particularly observed that even in -Holborn the people walked in the middle of the street, and not at the -sides--not to mingle, as I supposed, with anybody that came out of -infected houses, or meet with smells and scents from them." - -Dr. Hodges, a great physician, who shunned no danger, describes even more -vividly the horrors of that period. "In the streets," he says, "might be -seen persons seized with the sickness, staggering like drunken men; here -lay some dozing and almost dead; there others were met fatigued with -excessive vomiting, as if they had drunk poison; in the midst of the -market, persons in full health fell suddenly down as if the contagion was -there exposed to sale. It was not uncommon to see an inheritance pass to -three heirs within the space of four days. The bearers were not sufficient -to inter the dead."[629] - -It is supposed that till the Leper Hospital was suppressed, the St. -Giles's people used the oratory there as their parish church. Leland does -not mention any other church, although he lived and wrote about the time -of the suppression, and even made an effort to save the monastic MSS. by -proposing to have them placed in the king's library. The oratory had -probably a screen walling off the lepers from the rest of the -congregation. It boasted several chantry chapels, and a high altar at the -east end, dedicated to St. Giles, before which burnt a great taper called -"St. Giles's light," and towards which, about A.D. 1200, one William -Christemas bequeathed an annual sum of twelvepence. There was also a -Chapel of St. Michael, appropriated to the infirm, and which had its own -special priest. - -In the reign of Charles I. the south aisle of the hospital church was full -of rubbish, lumber, and coffin-boards; and Lady Dudley put up a screen to -divide the nave from the chancel. In 1623 the church became so ruinous -that it had to be rebuilt at an expense of L2068: 7: 2. Among the -subscribers appear the names of the Duchess of Lennox, Sir Anthony -Ashleye, Sir John Cotton, and the players at "the Cockpit playhouse." The -415 householders of the parish subscribed L1065: 9s., the donations -ranging from the L250 of the Duchess of Dudley to Mother Parker's -twopence. - -Nearly five years elapsed before the new church was consecrated. On the -9th of June 1628 Pym brought a charge against the rector, Dr. Mainwaring, -for having preached two obnoxious sermons, entitled "Religion" and -"Allegiance," and accused the imprudent time-server of persuading citizens -to obey illegal commands on pain of damnation, and framing, like Guy Faux, -a mischievous plot to alter and subvert the Government.[630] The third -sermon in which Mainwaring defended his two first, the stern Commons found -upon inquiry[631] had been printed by special command of the king. It was -as full of mischief as a bomb-shell. It held that on any exigency all -property was transferred to the sovereign; that the consent of Parliament -was not necessary for the imposition of taxes; and that the divine laws -required compliance with every demand which a prince should make upon his -subjects. For these doctrines the Commons impeached Mainwaring; the -sentence pronounced on him was, that he should be imprisoned during the -pleasure of the House, that he should be fined L1000, to the king, make -submission of his offence, be suspended from lay and ecclesiastical office -for three years, and that his sermons be called in and burnt. - -On June 20 the courtly preacher came to the House, and on his knees -submitted himself in sorrow and repentance for the errors and -indiscretions he had been guilty of in preaching the sermons "rashly, -scandalously, and unadvisedly." He further acknowledged the three sermons -to be full of dangerous passages and aspersions, and craved pardon for -them of God and the king. No sooner was the session over than the wilful -king pardoned him, promoted him to the deanery of Winchester, and some -years after to the bishopric of St. David's.[632] - -The new church was consecrated on the 26th of January 1630. Bishop Laud -performed the ceremony, and was entertained at the house of a Mr. -Speckart, near the church. There were two tables sufficient to seat -thirty-two persons. The broken churchyard wall was fenced up with boards, -the altar hung with green velvet, a rail made to keep the mob from the -west door, and a train of constables, armed with bills and halberts, -appointed to maintain order if the Puritans became threatening. The new -rector, Dr. Heywood, had been chaplain to Laud, and was probably of the -High Church party. Like his expelled predecessor, he had been chaplain to -one of the most arbitrary of kings. In 1640 the Puritans, gaining -strength, petitioned Parliament against him, stating that he had set up -crucifixes and images of saints, likewise organs, "with other confused -music, etc., hindering devotion and maintained at the great and needless -charge of the parish." They described the carved screen as particularly -obnoxious, and they objected to the altar rail, the chancel carpet, the -purple velvet in the desk, the needlework covers of the books, the -tapestry, the lawn cloth, the bone lace of the altar cloths, and the -taffeta curtains on the walls. These "popish and superstitious" ornaments -were sold by order of Parliament, all but the plate and the great bell. -The surplices were given away. The twelve apostles were washed off the -organ-loft, and the painted glass was taken down from the windows. The -screen was sold for forty shillings, and the money given to the poor. The -Covenant was framed and hung up in the church, and five shillings given to -a pewterer for a new basin cut square on one side for baptisms. The blue -velvet carpet, embroidered cushions, and blue curtains were sold, and so -were the communion rails. In 1647 Lady Dudley's pew was lined with green -baize and supplied with two straw mats. In 1650 the king's arms were taken -out of the windows, and a sun-dial was substituted. The organ-loft was let -as a pew. - -The Restoration soon followed on these paltry excesses of a low-bred -fanaticism. The ringers of St. Giles's rang a peal for three days running. -The king's arms in the vestry and the windows were restored. Galleries -were erected for the nobility. In 1670 a brass chandelier of sixteen -branches was bought for the church, and an hour-glass for the pulpit. - -In 1718 the old hospital church had become damp and unwholesome. The -grave-ground had risen eight feet, so that the church lay in a pit. -Parliament was therefore petitioned that St. Giles's should be one of the -fifty new churches. It was urged that a good church facing the High -Street, the chief thoroughfare for all persons who travelled the Oxford -or Hampstead roads, would be a great ornament. The petitioners also -contended that St. Giles's already spent L5300 a year on the poor, and -that a new rate would impoverish many industrious persons. The Duke of -Newcastle, the Lord Chancellor, and other eminent parishioners strenuously -supported the petition, which, on the other hand, was warmly opposed by -the Archbishop of York, five bishops, and eleven temporal peers. The -opposition contended that the parish was well able to repair the present -church; that the fund given for building new churches was never meant to -be devoted to rebuilding old ones; and that so far from the parish not -requiring church accommodation, St. Giles's contained 40,000 persons, a -number for which three new churches would be barely sufficient.[633] -Eleven years longer the church remained a ruin, when in 1729 the -commissioners granted L8000 for a new church, provided that the parish -would settle L350 a year on the rector of the new parish of Bloomsbury. - -The architect of the new church, opened in 1734, was Henry Flitcroft. The -roof is supported by Ionic pillars of Portland stone. The steeple is 160 -feet high, and consists of a rustic pedestal supporting Doric pilasters; -over the clock is an octangular tower, with three-quarter Ionic columns -supporting a balustrade with vases. The spire is octangular and belled. -This hideous production of Greek rules was much praised by the critics of -1736. They called it "simple and elegant." They considered the east end as -"pleasing and majestic," and found nothing in the west to object to but -the smallness and poverty of the doors. The steeple they described as -"light, airy, and genteel."[634] whether taken with the body of the church -or considered as a _separate building_. - -In 1827 the clock of St. Giles's Church was illuminated with gas, and the -novelty and utility of the plan "attracted crowds to visit it from the -remotest parts of the metropolis."[635] - -St. Giles's Churchyard was enlarged in 1628, and again soon after the -Restoration. The garden plot from which the new part was divided was -called Brown's Gardens. In 1670 we find the sexton agreeing, on condition -of certain windows he had been allowed to introduce into the side of his -house, facing the churchyard, to furnish the rector and churchwardens, -every Tuesday se'nnight after Easter, with two fat capons ready dressed. - -In 1687 the Resurrection Gate, or Lich Gate, as it was called, and which -still exists, was erected at a cost of L185: 14: 6. It stood for many -years farther to the west than the old gate, and contains a heap of -dully-carved figures in relievo, abridged from Michael Angelo's "Last -Judgment," and crowded under a large "compass pediment." It has lately, -however, been replaced in its old position. This work was much admired and -celebrated, but "Nollekens" Smith says that it is poor stuff. - -Pennant, always shrewd and vivacious, was one of the first writers who -exposed the disgraceful and dangerous condition of the London churchyards. -He describes seeing at St Giles's a great square pit with rows of coffins -piled one upon the other, exposed to sight and smell, awaiting the -mortality of the night. "I turned away," he says, "disgusted at the scene, -and scandalised at the want of police which so little regards the health -of the living as to permit so many putrid corpses, packed between some -slight boards, dispersing their dangerous effluvia over the capital."[636] - -In 1808 a new burial-ground for St. Giles's parish was consecrated in St. -Pancras's. It stands in grim loneliness between the Hampstead Road and -College Street, Camden Town. - -The graves of John Flaxman, the sculptor, and his wife and sister, are -marked by an altar tomb of brick, surmounted by a thick slab of Portland -stone. Near it is the ruinous tomb of ingenious, faddling Sir John Soane, -the architect to the Bank of England. It is a work of great pretension, -"but cut up into toy-shop prettiness, with all the peculiar defects of -his style and manner." Two black cypresses mark the grave.[637] - -A few eminent persons are buried in the old St. Giles's Churchyard. -Amongst these, the most illustrious is George Chapman, who produced a fine -though rugged translation of the _Iliad_ which is to Pope's what heart of -oak is to veneer, and who died in 1634 aged seventy-seven, and lies buried -here. Inigo Jones generously erected an altar tomb to his memory at his -own expense; it is still to be seen in the external southern wall of the -church. The monument is old; but the inscription is only a copy of all -that remained visible of the old writing. That chivalrous visionary, Lord -Herbert of Cherbury, was also buried here, and so was James Shirley, the -dramatist, who died in 1666. The latter was the last of the great -ante-Restoration play-writers, and of a thinner fibre than any of the -rest, except melancholy Ford. - -Richard Pendrell, the Staffordshire farmer, "the preserver and conductor -of King Charles II. after his escape from Worcester Fight," has an altar -tomb to his memory raised in this churchyard. After the Restoration, -Richard came to town, to be in the way, I suppose, of the good things then -falling into Cavaliers' mouths, and probably settled in St. Giles's to be -near the Court. The story of the Boscobel oak was one with which the -swarthy king delighted to buttonhole his courtiers. Pendrell died in 1671, -and had a monument erected to his memory on the south-east side of the -church. The black marble slab of the old tomb forms the base of the -present one. The epitaph is in a strain of fulsome bombast, considering -the king who was preserved showed his gratitude to Heaven only by a long -career of unblushing vice, and by impoverishing and disgracing the foolish -country that called him home. It begins thus:-- - - "Hold, passenger! here's shrouded in this hearse - Unparalleled Pendrell thro' the universe. - Like when the eastern star from heaven gave light - To three lost kings, so he in such dark night - To Britain's monarch, lost by adverse war, - On earth appeared a second eastern star." - -The dismal poet ends by assuring the world that Pendrell, the king's -pilot, had gone to heaven to be rewarded for his good steering. In 1702 a -Pendrell was overseer in this parish. About 1827 a granddaughter of this -Richard lived near Covent Garden, and still enjoyed part of the family -pension. In 1827 Mr. John Pendrell, another descendant of Richard, died at -Eastbourne.[638] His son kept an inn at Lewes, and was afterwards clerk at -a Brighton hotel. - -The only monument at present of interest in the church is a recumbent -figure of the Duchess Dudley, the great benefactor of the parish, created -a duchess in her own right by Charles I. She died 1669. The monument was -preserved by parochial gratitude when the church was rebuilt, in -consideration of the duchess's numerous bequests to the parish. She was -buried at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire. This pious and charitable lady was -the daughter of Sir Thomas Leigh of Stoneleigh, and she married Sir Robert -Dudley, son of the great Earl of Leicester, who deserted her and his five -daughters, and went and settled in Florence, where he became chamberlain -to the Grand Duchess. Clever and unprincipled as his father, Sir Robert -devised plans for draining the country round Pisa, and improving the port -of Leghorn. He was outlawed, and his estates at Kenilworth, etc. were -confiscated and sold for a small sum to Prince Henry; but Charles I. -generously gave them back to the duchess. - -In her funeral sermon, Dr. Boreman says of this good woman: "She was a -magazine of experience.... I have often said she was a living chronicle -bound up with the thread of a long-spun age. And in divers incidents and -things relating to our parish, I have often appealed to her stupendous -memory as to an ancient record.... In short, I would say to any desirous -to attain some degree of perfection, 'Vade ad Sancti Egidii oppidum, et -disce Ducinam Dudleyam'--('Come to St. Giles, and inquire the character of -Lady Dudley')."[639] - -The oldest monument remaining in the churchyard in 1708 was dated 1611. It -was a tombstone, "close to the wall on the south side, and near the west -end," and was to the memory of a Mrs. Thornton.[640] Her husband was the -builder of Thornton Alley, which was probably his estate. The following -painful lines were round the margin of the stone:-- - - "Full south this stone four foot doth lie - His father John and grandsire Henry - Thornton, of Thornton, in Yorkshire bred, - Where lives the fame of Thornton's being dead." - -Against the east end of the north aisle of the church was the tombstone of -Eleanor Steward, who died 1725, aged 123 years and five months. - -That good and inflexible patriot, Andrew Marvell, the most poignant -satirist of King Charles II., died in 1678, and is buried in St. Giles's. -Marvell was Latin secretary to Milton, and in the school of that good -man's house learnt how a true patriot should live. It is recorded that one -day when he was dining in Maiden Lane, one of Charles II.'s courtiers came -to offer him L1000 as a bribe for his silence. Marvell refused the gift, -took off the dish-cover, and showed his visitor the humble half-picked -mutton-bone on which he was about to dine. He was member for -Kingston-upon-Hull for nearly twenty years, and was buried at last at the -expense of his constituents. They also voted a sum of money to erect a -monument to him with a harmless epitaph; to this, however, the rector of -the time, to his own disgrace, refused admittance. Thompson, the editor of -Marvell's works, searched in vain in 1774 for the patriot's coffin. He -could find no plate earlier than 1722. - -In the same church with this fixed star rests that comet, Sir Roger -l'Estrange. His monument was said to be the grandest in the church. Sir -Roger died in 1704, aged eighty-eight. - -In 1721, after an ineffectual treaty for Dudley Court, where the -parsonage-house had once stood, a piece of ground called Vinegar Yard was -purchased for the sum of L2252: 10s. as a burial-ground, hospital, and -workhouse for the parish of St. Giles's. At that time St. Giles's relieved -about 840 persons, at the cost of L4000 a year. Of this number there were -162 over seventy years of age, 126 parents overburthened with children, -183 deserted children and orphans, 70 sick at parish nurses', and 300 men -lame, blind, and mad. - -The Earl of Southampton granted land for five almshouses in St. Giles's in -1656.[641] The site was in Broad Street, nearly at the north end of -Monmouth and King Streets, where they stood until 1782, at which period -they were pulled down to widen the road. The new almshouses were erected -in a close, low, and unhealthy spot in Lewknor's Lane. - -In the year 1661 Mr. William Shelton left lands for a school for fifty -children in Parker's Lane, between Drury Lane and Little Queen Street. The -tenements, before he bought them, had been in the occupation of the Dutch -ambassador. The premises were poor houses, and a coach-house and stables -in the occupation of Lord Halifax. In 1687, the funds proving inadequate, -the school was discontinued; but in 1815, after being in abeyance for -fifty-three years, it was re-opened in Lloyd's Court.[642] - -The select vestry of St. Giles's was much badgered in 1828 by the excluded -parishioners. There were endless errors in the accounts, and items -amounting to L90,000 were found entered only in pencil. The special pleas -put in by the attorneys of the vestry covered 175 folios of writing. - -Hog Lane, built in 1680, was rechristened in 1762 Crown Street, as an -inscription on a stone let into the wall of a house at the corner of Rose -Street intimates.[643] Strype calls it a "place not over well built or -inhabited." The Greeks had a church here, afterwards a French refugee -place of worship, and subsequently an Independent chapel. It stood on the -west side of the lane, a few doors from Compton Street; and its site is -now occupied by St. Mary's Church and clergy-house. Hogarth laid the scene -of his "Noon" in Hog Lane, at the door of this chapel; but the houses -being reversed in the engraving, the truth of the picture is destroyed. -The background contains a view of St. Giles's Church. The painter -delighted in ridiculing the fantastic airs of the poor French gentry, and -showed no kindly sympathy with their honest poverty and their sufferings. -It was to St. Giles's that Hogarth came to study poverty and also vice. A -scene of his "Harlot's Progress" is in Drury Lane, close by. Tom Nero, in -the "Four Stages of Cruelty," is a St. Giles's charity-boy, and we see him -in the first stage tormenting a dog near the church. Hogarth's "Gin -Street" is situated in St. Giles's. The scenes of all the most hideous and -painful of his works are in this district. - -"Nollekens" Smith, writing of St. Giles's, says: "I recollect the building -of most of the houses at the north end of New Compton Street--so named in -compliment to Bishop Compton, Dean of St. Paul's. I also remember a row of -six small almshouses, surrounded by a dwarf brick wall, standing in the -middle of High Street. On the left hand of High Street, passing into -Tottenham Court Road, there were four handsome brick houses, probably of -Queen Anne's time, with grotesque masks as keystones to the first-floor -windows. Nearly on the site of the new "Resurrection Gate," in which the -basso-relievo is, stood a very small old house towards Denmark Street, -which used to totter, to the terror of passers by, whenever a heavy -carriage rolled through the street."[644] - -Exactly where Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road meet in a right -angle, a large circular boundary-stone was let into the pavement. Here -when the charity-boys of St. Giles's walked the boundaries, those who -deserved flogging were whipped, in order to impress the parish frontier on -their memories. - -The Pound originally stood in the middle of the High Street, whence it was -removed in 1656 to make way for the almshouses. It had stood there when -the village really required a place to imprison straying cattle. The -latest pound stood in the broad space where the High Street, Tottenham -Court Road, and Oxford Street meet; it occupied a space of about -thirty-feet, and was removed in 1768. It must have faced Meux's Brewery. -An old song that celebrates this locality begins-- - - "At Newgate steps Jack Chance was found, - And bred up near St. Giles's Pound." - -Criminals on their way to Tyburn used to "halt at the great gate of St. -Giles's Hospital, where a bowl of ale was provided as their last -refreshment in this life."[645] A similar custom prevailed at York, which -gave rise to the proverb, "The saddler of Bawtry was hung for leaving his -liquor," meaning that if the impatient man had stopped to drink, his -reprieve would have arrived in time.[646] - -Bowl Yard was built about 1623, and was then surrounded by gardens. It is -a narrow court on the south side of High Street, over against Dyot Street, -now George Street. There was probably here a public-house, the Bowl, at -which in later time ale was handed to the passing thieves. - -Swift, in a spirited ballad describes "clever Tom Clinch," who rode -"stately through Holborn to die in his calling," stopping at the George -for a bottle of sack, and promising to pay for it "_when he came back_." -No one has sketched the highwayman more perfectly than the Irish prelate. -Tom Clinch wears waistcoat, stockings, and breeches of white, and his cap -is tied with cherry ribbon. He bows like a beau at the theatre to the -ladies in the doors and to the maids in the balconies, who cry, "Lackaday, -he's a proper young man." He swears at the hawkers crying his last speech, -kicks the hangman when he kneels to ask his pardon, makes a short speech -exhorting his comrades to ply their calling, and so carelessly and -defiantly takes his leave of an ungrateful world. - -"Rainy Day" Smith describes,[647] when a boy of eight years old, being -taken by Nollekens, the sculptor, to see that notorious highwayman John -Rann, alias "Sixteen-string Jack," on his way to execution at Tyburn, for -robbing Dr. Bell, chaplain to the Princess Amelia, in Gunnersbury Lane, -near Brentford, in 1774. Rann was a smart fellow, and had been a coachman -to Lord Sandwich, who then lived at the south-east corner of Bedford Row, -Covent Garden. The undaunted malefactor wore a bright pea-green coat, and -carried an immense nosegay, which some mistress of the highwayman had -handed him, according to custom, as a last token, from the steps of St. -Sepulchre's Church. The sixteen strings worn by this freebooter at his -knees were reported to be in ironical allusion to the number of times he -had been acquitted. On their return home, Nollekens, stooping to the boy's -ear, assured him that had his father-in-law, Mr. Justice Welch, been then -High Constable, they could have walked all the way to Tyburn beside the -cart.[648] - -Holborn used to be called "the Heavy Hill" because it led thieves from -Newgate to Tyburn. Old fat Ursula, the roast-pig seller in Ben Jonson's -_Bartholomew Fair_ talks of ambling afoot to hear Knockhem the footpad -groan out of a cart up the Heavy Hill. This was in James I.'s time. Dryden -alludes to it in the same way in 1678,[649] and in 1695 Congreve's Sir -Sampson[650] mentions the same doleful procession. In 1709 (Queen Anne) -Tom Browne mentions a wily old counsellor in Holborn who used to turn out -his clerks every execution day for a profitable holiday, saying, "Go, you -young rogues, go to school and improve." - -St. Giles's was always famous for its inns.[651] One of the oldest of -these was the Croche House, or Croche Hose (Cross Hose), so called from -its sign--the Crossed Stockings. The sign, still used by hosiers, was a -red and white stocking forming a St. Andrew's Cross. This inn belonged to -the hospital cook in 1300, and was given by him to the hospital. It stood -at the north of the present entrance to Compton Street, and was probably -destroyed before the reign of Henry VIII. - -The Swan on the Hop was an inn of Edward III.'s time; it stood eastward of -Drury Lane and on the south side of Holborn.[652] - -The White Hart is described in Henry VIII.'s time as possessing eighteen -acres of pasture. It stood near the Holborn end of Drury Lane, and existed -till 1720. In Aggas's Plan it appears surrounded on three sides by a wall. -It was bounded on the east by Little Queen Street, and was divided from -Holborn by an embankment. A court afterwards stood on its site. - -The Rose is mentioned as early as Edward III.'s reign. It was near -Lewknor's Lane, and stood not far from the White Hart. - -The Vine was an inn till 1816. It was on the north side of Holborn, a -little to the east of Kingsgate Street. It is supposed to have stood on -the site of a vineyard mentioned in Doomsday Book. It was originally a -country roadside inn, with fields at the back. It became an infamous -nuisance. The house that replaced it was first occupied by a -timber-merchant, and afterwards by Probert, the accomplice of Thurtell, -who, escaping death for the murder of Mr. Weare, was soon after hanged for -horse-stealing in Gloucestershire. It was at this trial that the -prisoner's keeping a gig was adduced as an incontestible proof of his -respectability--a fact immortalised, almost to the weariness of a -degenerate age, by Mr. Thomas Carlyle. The inn was once called the -Kingsgate Tavern, from its having stood near the king's gate or turnpike -in the adjoining street. - -The Cock and Pye Inn stood at the west corner of what was once a mere or -marshland. The fields surrounding it, now Seven Dials, were called from -it the Cock and Pye Fields. - -The Maidenhead Inn stood in Dyot Street, and formed part of Lord -Mountjoy's estates in Elizabeth's time. It was the house for parish -meetings in Charles II.'s reign. It then became a resort for mealmen and -farmers, and latterly a brandy-shop and beggars' haunt of the vilest sort. -It was finally turned into a stoneyard. Dyot Street, so called after Sir -John Dyot, who left it by wish to the poor, though it was afterwards a -poor and even dangerous locality, must have been respectable in 1662, when -a Presbyterian chapel was built there for Joseph Read, Baxter's friend, an -ejected minister from Worcestershire. Read was taken up under the -Conventicles Act in 1677, and endured much persecution, but was restored -to his congregation on the accession of James II. From 1684 to 1708 the -building was used as a chapel of ease to St. Giles's Church. At the close -of the last century men would hurry along Dyot Street as through a -dangerous defile. There was a legend current of a banker's clerk who, -returning from his round, with his book of notes and bills fastened by the -usual chain, as he passed down Dyot Street felt a cellar door sinking -under him. Conscious of his danger, he made a spring forward, dashed down -the street, and escaped the trap set for him by the thieves. It may be -added that Dyot Street gave the name to a song sung by Liston in the -admirable burlesque of "Bombastes Furioso." - -Irish mendicants--the poorest, dirtiest, and most unimprovable of all -beggars--began to crowd into St. Giles's about the time of Queen -Elizabeth.[653] - -The increase of London soon attracted country artisans and country -beggars. The closing of the monasteries had filled England with herds of -sturdy and dangerous vagrants not willing to work, and by no means -inclined to starve. The new-comers resorting to the suburbs of London to -escape the penalties of infringing the City jurisdiction, the -stout-hearted queen ordered all persons within three miles of London -gates to forbear from allowing any house to be occupied by more than one -family. - -A proclamation of 1583 alludes to the very poor and the beggars, who lived -"heaped up" in small tenements and let lodgings. A subsequent warning -orders the suppression of the great multitude of Irish vagrants, many of -whom haunted the courts under pretence of suits; by day they mixed with -disbanded soldiers from the Low Countries and other impostors and beggars, -and at night committed robberies and outrages. St. Giles's was then one of -the great harbours for these "misdemeaned persons." On one occasion a mob -of these rogues surrounded the queen as she was riding out in the evening -to Islington to take the air. That same night Fleetwood, the Recorder, -issued warrants, and in the morning went out himself and took seventy-four -rogues, including some blind rich usurers, who were all sent to Bridewell -for speedy punishment. - -James I. pursued the same crusade against vagrants, forbidding new -buildings in the suburbs, and ordering all newly raised structures to be -pulled down. The beadles had to attend every Sunday at the vestry to -report all new inmates, and who lodged them, and to take up all idlers; -the constables in 1630 were also required to give notice of such persons -to the churchwardens every month. In an entry in St. Giles's parish books -in 1637 "families in cellars" are first mentioned.[654] The locality -afterwards became noted for these dens, and "a cellar in St. Giles's" -became a proverbial phrase to signify the lowest poverty. - -In 1640 Irishmen are first mentioned by name, and money was paid to take -them back again to their native land. - -Sir John Fielding, brother of the great novelist, who was an active -Westminster magistrate in his time and a great hunter down of highwaymen, -in a pamphlet on the increase of crime in London, lays special stress on -the vicious poverty of St. Giles's. He gives a statement on the authority -of Mr. Welch, the High Constable of Holborn, of the overcrowding of the -miserable lodgings where idle persons and vagabonds were sheltered for -twopence a night. One woman alone owned seven of these houses, which were -crowded with twopenny beds from cellar to garret. In these beds both -sexes, strangers or not, lay promiscuously, the double bed being a -halfpenny cheaper. To still more wed vice to poverty, these lodging-house -keepers sold gin at a penny a quartern, so that no beggar was so poor that -he could not get drunk. No fewer than seventy of these vile houses were -found open at all hours, and in one alone, and not the largest, there were -counted fifty-eight persons sleeping in an atmosphere loathsome if not -actually poisonous. - -This Judge Welch was the father of Mrs. Nollekens, and a brave and -benevolent man. He was a friend of Dr. Johnson and of Fielding, whom he -succeeded in his justiceship, Mr. Welch having on one occasion heard that -a notorious highwayman who infested the Marylebone lanes was sleeping in -the first floor of a house in Rose Street, Long Acre, he hired the tallest -hackney-coach he could find, drove under the thief's window, ascended the -roof, threw up the sash, entered the room, actually dragged the fellow -naked out of bed on to the roof of the coach, and in that way carried him -down New Street and up St. Martin's Lane, amidst the huzzas of an immense -throng which followed him, to Litchfield Street, Soho.[655] - -Archenholz, the German traveller, writing circa 1784, describes the -streets of London as crowded with beggars. "These idle people," says this -curious observer, "receive in alms three, four, and even five shillings a -day. They have their clubs in the parish of St. Giles's, where they meet, -drink and feed well, read the papers, and talk politics. One of my friends -put on one day a ragged coat, and promised a handsome reward to a beggar -to introduce him to his club. He found the beggars gay and familiar, and -poor only in their rags. One threw down his crutch, another untied a -wooden leg, a third took off a grey wig or removed a plaister from a sound -eye; then they related their adventures, and planned fresh schemes. The -female beggars hire children for sixpence and sometimes even two -shillings a day: a very deformed child is worth four shillings." In the -same parish the pickpockets met to dine and exchange or sell snuff-boxes, -handkerchiefs, and other stolen property. - -About fifty years before, says Archenholz, there had been a pickpockets' -club in St. Giles's, where the knives and forks were chained to the table -and the cloth was nailed on. Rules were, however, decorously observed, and -chairmen chosen at their meetings. Not far from this house was a -celebrated gin-shop, on the sign-post of which was written, "Here you may -get drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, and straw for nothing." -The cellars of this public-spirited man were never empty. - -Archenholz also sketches the conjurors who told fortunes for a shilling. -They wore black gowns and false beards, advertised in the newspapers, and -painted their houses with magical figures and planetary emblems.[656] - -In 1783 Mr. J. T. Smith describes how he made for Mr. Crowle, the -illustrator of Pennant, a sketch of Old Simon, a well-known character, who -took his station daily under one of the gate piers of the old red and -brown brick gateway at the northern end of St. Giles's Churchyard, which -then faced Mr. Remnent's timber-yard. This man wore several hats, and was -remarkable for a long, dirty, yellowish white beard. His chapped fingers -were adorned with brass rings. He had several coats and waistcoats--the -upper wrap-rascle covering bundles of rags, parcels of books, canisters of -bread and cheese, matches, a tinder-box, meat for his dog, scraps from -_Fox's Book of Martyrs_, and three or four dog's-eared, thumbed, and -greasy numbers of the _Gentleman's Magazine_. From these random leaves he -gathered much information, which he retailed to persons who stopped to -look at him. Simon and his dog lodged under a staircase in an old -shattered building in Dyot Street, known as "Rat's Castle." It was in this -beggars' rendezvous that Nollekens the sculptor used to seek models for -his Grecian Venuses. Rowlandson etched Simon several times in his usual -gross but droll manner.[657] There was also a whole-length print of him -published by John Seago, with this monumental inscription--"Simon Edy, -born at Woodford, near Thrapston, Northamptonshire, in 1709. Died May -18th, 1783." - -Simon had had several dogs, which, one after the other, were stolen, and -sent for sale at Islington, or killed for their teeth by men employed by -the dentists. The following anecdote is told of his last and most faithful -dog:--Rover had been a shepherd's dog at Harrow, and having its left eye -struck out by a bullock's horn, was left with Simon by its master, a -Smithfield drover. The beggar tied him to his arm with a long string, -cured him, and then restored him to the drover. After that, the dog would -stop at St. Giles's porch every market-day on its way after the drover to -the slaughter-house in Union Street, and receive caresses from the hand -which had bathed its wound. Rover would then yelp for joy and gratitude, -and scamper off to get up with the erring bullocks. At last poor Simon -missed the dog for several weeks; at the end of that time it appeared one -morning at his feet, and with its one sorrowful and uplifted eye implored -Simon's protection by licking his tawny beard. His master the drover was -dead. Simon was only too glad to adopt Rover, who eventually followed him -to his last home. - -There was an elegy printed for good-natured, inoffensive old Simon, with a -woodcut portrait attached. The Hon. Daines Barrington is said to have -never passed the old mendicant without giving him sixpence. - -Mr. J. T. Smith, himself afterwards Curator of the Prints at the British -Museum, published some curious etchings of beggars and street characters -in 1815. Amongst them are ragged men carrying placards of "The Grand -Golden Lottery;" strange old-clothesmen in cocked hats and two-tier wigs; -itinerant wood-merchants; sellers of toys, such as "young lambs" or live -haddock; flying piemen in pig tails and shorts; women in gipsy hats; -door-mat sellers; vendors of hot peas, pickled cucumbers, lemons, -windmills (toys); and, last and least, Sir Harry Dimsdale, the dwarf Mayor -of Garratt. - -The condition of the beggars of St. Giles in 1815 we gather pretty -accurately from the evidence given by Mr. Sampson Stevenson, overseer of -the parish, and by trade an ironmonger at No. 11 King Street, Seven Dials, -before a committee of the House of Commons, the Right Honourable George -Rose in the chair. - -Mr. Stevenson's shop was not more than a few yards from one of the -beggars' chief rendezvous, and he had therefore been enabled to closely -study their habits. The inn had lost its licence, as the landlord -encouraged thieves; and he had made inquiries of petition-writers, the -highest class of mendicants. He had gone frequently into the bar of the -Fountain in King Street, another of their haunts, to watch their -goings-on. The pretended sailors never carried anything on their backs, as -they only begged or extorted money; but the other rogues, who made it -their practice to ask for food and clothing, always carried a knapsack to -put it in. They returned laden with shoes and clothes, which they would -sell in Monmouth Street. They had been heard to say that they had made -three or four shillings a day by begging shoes alone.[658] Their mode of -obtaining charity was to go barefoot and scarify their heels so that the -blood might show. They went out two or three together, or more, and -invariably changed their routes each day. Mr. Stevenson had seen them pull -out their money and share it. Victuals, he believed, they threw away; but -everything else they sold. They would stop at the Fountain till the house -closed, or till they got drunk, began to fight, and were turned out by the -publican, who feared the losing his licence. They probably went to even -lower places to finish their revel. - -"They teach other," he said, "different modes of extortion. They are of -the worst character, and overwhelm you with cursing and abuse if you -refuse them money. There is one special rascal, Gannee Manos, who is -scarcely three months in the year out of gaol. He always goes barefoot, -and scratches his ankles to make them bleed. He is the greatest collector -of shoes and clothes, as he goes the most naked to excite compassion." -Another man had been known in the streets for fifteen or twenty years. He -generally limped or passed as a cripple; but Mr. Stevenson has seen him -fencing and jumping about like a pugilist. He went without a hat, with -bare arms, and a canvas bag on his back. He generally began by singing a -song, and he carried primroses or something in his hand. He pretended to -be scarcely able to move one foot before the other; but if a Bow Street -officer or a beadle came in sight, he was off as quick as any one. There -was another man, an Irishman who had had a good education, and had been in -the medical line; he wrote a beautiful hand, and drew up petitions for -beggars at sixpence or a shilling each. - -"These men come out by twenties and thirties from the bottom of Dyot -Street, and then branch off five or six together. The one who has still -some money left starts them with a pint or half a pint of gin. They have -all their divisions, and they quarter the town into sections. Some of them -collect three, four, or five children, paying sixpence a day for each, and -then they go begging in gangs, setting the children crying to excite -people's sympathies. The Irish sometimes have the impudence to bring these -children to the board and claim relief, and swear the children are their -own. In a short time they are found out; but till the discovery their -landlords will swear their story is true. Sometimes, by giving their own -country people something, the landlords help to detect them. But even in -cases where the children are their own, they will not work when they have -once got into the habit of begging. If they will not come into the -workhouse, their relief is instantly stopped. - -"They spend their evenings drinking, after dining at an eating-house. -Deserving people never beg: they are ashamed of it. They do not eat broken -victuals. They have seldom any lodgings. There are houses where forty or -fifty of them sleep. A porter stands at the door and takes the money. In -the morning there is a general muster to see they have stolen nothing, and -then the doors are unlocked. For threepence they have clean straw, for -fourpence something more decent, and for sixpence a bed. These are all -professional beggars; they beg every day, even Sundays. They will not -work; they get more money by begging. Sometimes during hard frosts they -pretend to beg for work; but their children are sent out early by their -parents to certain prescribed stations to beg, sometimes with a broom. If -they do not bring home more or less according to their size, they are -beaten. A large family of children is a revenue to these people." - -When beggars did not get enough for their subsistence, Mr. Stevenson -believed that they had a fund amongst themselves, as they so seldom -applied for relief. The Irish were generally afraid to apply, for fear of -being returned to their own country. Beggars had been heard to brag of -getting six, seven, and eight shillings a day, or more; and if one got -more than the others, he divided it with the rest. Mr. Stevenson concluded -his evidence by saying that there were so many low Irish in St. Giles's, -that out of L30,000 a year collected in that parish by poor-rate, L20,000 -went to this low and shifting population, that decreased in summer and -increased in winter. - -From one or two specimens culled from the London newspapers in 1829 we do -not augur much improvement in the character and habits of the St. Giles's -beggars. On the 12th of July 1829 John Driscoll, an old professional -mendicant, was brought up at the Marylebone Police-office, charged with -begging, annoying respectable persons, and even following fashionably -dressed ladies into shops. In his pockets were found a small sum of money, -some ham sandwiches, and an invitation ticket signed "Car Durre, -chairman." It requested the favour of Mr. Driscoll's company on Monday -evening next, at seven o'clock, at the Robin Hood, Church Street, St. -Giles's, for the purpose of taking supper with others in his line of -calling or profession. Mr. Rawlinson said he supposed that an alderman in -chains would grace the beggars' festive board, but he would at least -prevent the prisoner forming one of the party on Monday, and sent him to -the House of Correction for fourteen days.[659] - -The same day one of those men who chalk "I am starving" on the pavement -was also sent to the treadmill for fourteen days. Francis Fisher, the -prisoner in question, was one of a gang of forty pavement chalkers. In the -evening, "after work," these men changed their dress, and with their -ladies enjoyed themselves over a good supper, brandy and water, and -cigars. In the winter time, when they excited more compassion, their -average earnings were ten shillings a day. This would make L20 a day for -the gang, and no less than L7300 a year. - -Monmouth Street is generally supposed to have derived its name from the -Duke of Monmouth, Charles II.'s natural son, whose town house stood close -by in Soho Square. It was perhaps named from Carey, Earl of Monmouth, who -died in 1626, and his son, who died in 1661: they were both parishioners -of St. Giles's.[660] It was early known as the great mart for old clothes, -but was superseded in later times by Holy Well Street, which in its turn -was displaced by the Minories. Lady Mary Wortley alludes to the lace coats -hung up for sale in Monmouth Street like Irish patents. Even Prior, in his -pleasant metaphysical poem of "Alma," says-- - - "This looks, friend Dick, as Nature had - But exercised the salesman's trade, - As if she haply had sat down - And cut out clothes for all the town, - Then sent them out to Monmouth Street, - To try what persons they would fit." - -Gay also alludes to this Jewish street in the following distich in his -"Trivia"-- - - "Thames Street gives cheeses, Covent Garden fruits, - Moorfields old books, and Monmouth Street old suits." - -Most of the shops in Monmouth Street were occupied by Jew dealers in 1849, -and horse-shoes were then to be seen nailed under the door-steps of the -cellars to scare away witches.[661] - -Mr. Charles Dickens in his _Sketches by Boz_, published in 1836-7, -describes Seven Dials and Monmouth Street as they then appeared. The maze -of streets, the unwholesome atmosphere, the men in fustian spotted with -brickdust or whitewash, and chronically leaning against posts, are all -painted by this great artist with the accuracy of a Dutch painter. The -writer boldly plunges into the region of "first effusions and last dying -speeches, hallowed by the names of Catnach and of Pitts," and carries us -at once into a fight between two half-drunk Irish termagants outside a -gin-shop. He then takes us to the dirty straggling houses, the dark -chandler's shop, the rag and bone stores, the broker's den, the -bird-fancier's room as full as Noah's ark, and completes the picture with -a background of dirty men, filthy women, squalid children, fluttering -shuttlecocks, noisy battledores, reeking pipes, bad fruit, more than -doubtful oysters, attenuated cats, depressed dogs, and anatomised fowls. -Every house has, he says, at least a dozen tenants. The man in the shop is -in the "baked jemmy" line, or deals in firewood and hearthstones. An Irish -labourer and his family occupy the back kitchen, while a jobbing -carpet-beater is in the front. In the front one pair there's another -family, and in the back one pair a young woman who takes in tambour-work. -In the back attic is a mysterious man who never buys anything but coffee, -penny loaves, and ink, and is supposed to write poems for Mr. Warren.[662] - -The Monmouth Street inhabitants Mr. Dickens describes as a peaceable, -thoughtful, and dirty race, who immure themselves in deep cellars or small -back parlours, and seldom come forth till the dusk and cool of the -evening, when, seated in chairs on the pavement, smoking their pipes, they -watch the gambols of their children as they revel in the gutter, a happy -troop of infantine scavengers. - -"A Monmouth Street laced coat" was a byword a century ago, but still we -find Monmouth Street the same. Pilot coats, double-breasted check -waistcoats, low broad-brimmed coachmen's hats, and skeleton suits, have -usurped the place of the old attire; but Monmouth Street, said Charles -Dickens, is still "the burial-place of the fashions, and we love to walk -among these extensive groves of the illustrious dead, and indulge in the -speculations to which they give rise."[663] - -In 1816 there were said to be 2348 Irish people resident in St. Giles's; -but an Irish witness before a committee of the House declared there were -6000 Irish, and 3000 children in the neighbourhood of George Street alone. -In 1815 there were 14,164 Irish in the whole of London.[664] The Irish -portion of the parish of St. Giles's was known by the name of the Holy -Land in 1829. - -[Illustration: THE SEVEN DIALS.] - - - - -[Illustration: LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS THEATRE, 1821.] - - -CHAPTER XIV. - -LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. - - -Lincoln's Inn, originally belonging to the Black Friars before they -removed Thames-ward, derives its name from Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, -to whom it was given by Edward I., and whose town house or inn stood on -the same site in the reign of Edward I. Earl Henry died in 1312, the year -in which Gaveston was killed, and his monument was one of the stateliest -in the old church. His arms are still those of the inn and of its -tributaries, Furnival's and Thavies inns. There is yet extant an old -account of the earl's bailiff, relating to the sale of the fruit of his -master's garden. The noble's table was supplied and the residue sold. The -apples, pears, large nuts, and cherries, the beans, onions, garlic, and -leeks, produced a profit of L9: 2: 3 (about L135 in modern money). The -only flowers were roses. The bailiff, it appears, expended 8s. a year in -purchasing small fry, frogs, and eels, to feed the pike in the pond or -vivary.[665] - -Part of the Chancery Lane side of Lincoln's Inn was in 1217 and 1272 "the -mansion house" of William de Haverhill, treasurer to King Henry III. He -was attainted for treason, and his house and lands were confiscated to the -king, who then gave his house to Ralph Neville, Chancellor of England and -Bishop of Chichester, who built there "a fair house;" and the Bishops of -Chichester inhabited it there till Henry VII.'s time, when they let it to -law students, reserving lodgings for themselves, and it fell into the -hands of Judge Sulyard and other feoffees. This family held it till -Elizabeth's time, when Sir Edward Sulyard, of Essex, sold the estate to -the Benchers,[666] who then began enlarging their frontier and building. - -The plain Tudor gateway with the two side towers soaked with black smoke, -the oldest part of the existing structure, was built in 1518 by Sir Thomas -Lovell, a member of this inn and treasurer of the household to Henry VII., -when great alterations took place in the inn. What thousands of wise men -and rogues have passed under its murky shadow! None of the original -building is left. The Black Friars' House fronted the Holborn end of the -Bishop's Palace.[667] The chambers adjoining the Gate House are of a later -date and it was at these that Mr. Cunningham thinks Ben Jonson -worked.[668] - -The chapel, of debased Perpendicular Gothic, was built by Inigo Jones, and -consecrated in 1623, Dr. Donne the poet preaching the consecration sermon. -The stained glass was the work of a Mr. Hale of Fetter Lane. The twelve -apostles, Moses, and the prophets still glow like immortal flowers, -bright as when Donne, or Ussher, watched the light they shed. One of the -windows bears the name of Bernard van Linge, the same man probably who -executed the windows at Wadham College, Oxford.[669] Noy, the -Attorney-General and creature of Charles I., a friend of Laud, and the -proposer of the writ for ship-money, put up the window representing John -the Baptist, rather an ominous saint, surely, in Charles's time. Noy died -in 1634, before the storm which would certainly have carried his head off. -He left his money to a prodigal son, who was afterwards killed in a -duel,--"Left to be squandered, and I hope no better from him," says the -dying man, bitterly. It was Noy who decided the curious case of the three -graziers who left their money with their hostess. One of them afterwards -returned and ran off with the money; upon which the other two sued the -woman, denying their consent. Mr. Noy pleaded that the money was ready to -be given up directly the three men came together and claimed it.[670] -Rogers tells this story in his poem of "Italy," and gives it a romantic -turn. - -Laud, always restless for novelties that could look like Rome, and yet not -be Rome, referred to the Lincoln's Inn windows at his trial. He wondered -at a Mr. Brown objecting to such things, considering he was not of -Lincoln's Inn, "where Mr. Prynne's zeal had not yet beaten down the images -of the apostles in the fair windows of that chapel, which windows were set -up new long since the statute of Edward VI.; and it is well known," says -that enemy of the Puritans, "that I was once resolved to have returned -this upon Mr. Brown in the House of Commons, but changed my mind, lest -thereby I might have set some furious spirit at work to destroy those -harmless goodly windows, to the just dislike of that worthy society."[671] - -The crypt under the chapel rests on many pillars and strong-backed arches, -and, like the cloisters in the Temple, was intended as a place for -student-lawyers to walk in and exchange learning. Butler describes -witnesses of the straw-bail species waiting here for customers,[672] just -as half a century ago they used to haunt the doors of Chancery Lane -gin-shops. On a June day in 1663 Pepys came to walk under the chapel by -appointment, after pacing up and down and admiring the new garden then -constructing. - -The great Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England in Henry VIII.'s time, -had chambers at Lincoln's Inn when he was living in Bucklersbury after his -marriage. This was about 1506. He wrote his _Utopia_ in 1516. King Henry -grew so fond of More's learned and witty conversation, that he used to -constantly send for him to supper, and would walk in the garden at Chelsea -with his arm round his neck. More was beheaded in 1535 for refusing to -take the oath of succession and acknowledge the legality of the king's -divorce from Catherine of Arragon. Erasmus, who knew More well, inscribed -the "Nux" of Ovid to his son. More's skull is still preserved, it is said, -in the vault of St. Dunstan's Church at Canterbury.[673] More's daughter, -Margaret Roper, was buried with it in her arms. - -Dr. Donne, the divine and poet, whose mother was distantly related to Sir -Thomas More and to Heywood the epigrammatist, was a student at Lincoln's -Inn in his seventeenth year, but left it to squander his father's fortune. -He was a friend of Bacon, with whom he lived for five years, and also of -Ben Jonson, who corresponded with him. When young, Donne had written a -thesis to prove that suicide is no sin. "That," he used to say in later -years, "was written by Jack Donne, not by Dr. Donne." - -This same poet was for two years preacher at Lincoln's Inn; so was the -charitable and amiable Tillotson in 1663. The latter, after preaching the -doctrine of non-resistance before King Charles II., was nicknamed "Hobbes -in the pulpit;" he and Dr. Burnet both tried in vain to force the same -doctrine on Lord William Russell when he was preparing for death. -Tillotson, who was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 1691 by King William, -was a valued friend of Locke. Addison considered Tillotson's three folio -volumes of sermons to be the standard of English, and meant to make them -the ground-work of a dictionary which he had projected. Warburton, a -sterner critic, denies that the sermons are oratorical like Jeremy -Taylor's, or thoughtful like Barrow's, but yet confesses them to be clear, -rational, equable,[674] and certainly not without a noble simplicity. - -Among the most eminent students of Lincoln's Inn we must remember Sir -Matthew Hale. After a wild and vain youth, Hale suddenly commenced -studying sixteen hours a day,[675] and became so careless of dress that he -was once seized by a pressgang. The sight of a friend who fell down in a -fit from excessive drinking led to this honest man's renouncing all -revelry and becoming unchangeably religious. Noy directed him in his -studies; he became a friend of Selden, and was one of the counsel for -Strafford, Laud, and the king himself. Nevertheless, he obtained the -esteem of Cromwell, who was tolerant of all shades of goodness. He died -1675-6. When a nobleman once complained to Charles II. that Hale would not -discuss with him the arguments in his cause then before him, Charles -replied, "Ods fish, man! he would have treated me just the same." - -Lord Chancellor Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere, was of Lincoln's Inn. -His son became Earl of Bridgewater. He was a friend of Lord Bacon, and had -a celebrated dispute with Chief Justice Coke as to whether "the Chancery -can relieve by subpoena after a judgment at law in the same cause." -Prudent, discreet, and honest, Ellesmere was esteemed by both Elizabeth -and James, and died at York House in 1617. Bishop Hacket says of him that -"He neither did, spoke, nor thought anything in his life but what deserved -praise."[676] It is said that many persons used to go to the Chancery -Court only to see and admire his venerable presence. - -Sir Henry Spelman was admitted of Lincoln's Inn. He was a friend of -Dugdale, and one of our earliest students of Anglo-Saxon. He wrote much -on civil law, sacrilege, and tithes. Aubrey tells us that he was thought a -dunce at school, and did not seriously sit down to hard study till he was -about forty. This eminent scholar died in 1641, and was interred with -great solemnity in Westminster Abbey. - -Shaftesbury, the subtle and dangerous, and one of the restorers of the -king he afterwards worked so hard to depose, was of Lincoln's Inn. - -Ashmole, the great herald, antiquary, and numismatist, originally a London -attorney, was married in Lincoln's Inn Chapel, in 1668, to the daughter of -his great colleague in topography and heraldry, Sir William Dugdale, the -part compiler of the _Monasticon_. - -In the chapel was buried Alexander Brome, a Royalist attorney, a -translator of Horace, and a great writer of sharp songs against "The -Rump," who died in 1666. Here also--in loving companionship with him only -because dead--rests that irritable Puritan lawyer, William Prynne. He -twice lost an ear in the pillory, besides being branded on the cheek. He -ultimately opposed Cromwell and aided the return of Charles, for which he -was made Keeper of the Tower Records. His works amount to forty folio and -quarto volumes. He left copies of them to the Lincoln's Inn library. -Needham calls him "the greatest paper-worm that ever crept into a -library." He died in his Lincoln's Inn chambers in 1669. Wood computes -that Prynne wrote as much as would amount to a sheet for every day of his -life. His epitaph had been erased when Wood wrote the _Athenae Oxonienses_ -in 1691. - -In the same chapel lies Secretary Thurloe, the son of an Essex rector and -the faithful servant of Cromwell. He was admitted of Lincoln's Inn in -1647, and in 1654 was chosen one of the masters of the upper bench. He -died suddenly in his chambers in Lincoln's Inn in 1668. Dr. Birch -published several folio volumes of his _State Papers_. He seems to have -been an honest, dull, plodding man. Thurloe's chambers were at No. 24 in -the south angle of the great court leading out of Chancery Lane, formerly -called the Gatehouse Court, but now Old Buildings--the rooms on the left -hand of the ground-floor. Here Thurloe had chambers from 1645 to 1659. -Cromwell must have often come here to discuss dissolutions of Parliament -and Dutch treaties. State papers sufficient to fill sixty-seven folio -volumes were discovered in a false ceiling in the garret by a clergyman -who had borrowed the chambers of a friend during the long vacation. He -disposed of them to Lord Chancellor Somers.[677] Cautious old Thurloe had -perhaps sown these papers, hoping to reap the harvest under some new -Cromwellian dynasty that never came. - -Rushworth the historian was a barrister of Lincoln's Inn. During the Civil -Wars he was assistant clerk to the House of Commons. After the Restoration -he became secretary to the Lord Keeper, but falling into distress, died in -the King's Bench in 1690. His eight folio volumes of _Historical -Collections_ are specially valuable.[678] - -Sir John Denham also studied in this pasturing-ground of English genius; -and here, after squandering all his money in gaming, he wrote an essay -upon the vice that brings its own punishment. In 1641, when his tragedy of -"The Sophy" appeared, Waller said that Denham had broken out like the -Irish rebellion, threescore thousand strong. In 1643 appeared his -"Cooper's Hill" which the lampooners declared the author had bought of a -vicar for forty pounds.[679] He became mad for a short time at the close -of life, and was then ridiculed by Butler, so says Dr. Johnson. He died in -1668, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. Denham and Waller smoothed -the way for Dryden,[680] and founded the Pope school of highly polished -artificial verse. Denham's noble apostrophe to the river Thames is all but -perfect. - -George Wither, one of our fine old poets of a true school, rougher but -more natural than Denham's, the son of a Hampshire farmer, entered at -Lincoln's Inn. Sent to the Marshalsea for his just but indiscreet satires, -he turned soldier, fought against the Royalists, and became one of -Cromwell's dreaded major-generals. He was in Newgate for a long time after -the Restoration, and died in 1667. When taken prisoner by Charles, Sir -John Denham obtained his release on the humorous pretext that, while -Wither lived, he (Denham) would not be the worst poet in England.[681] - -In No. 1 New Square, Arthur Murphy, the friend of Dr. Johnson, resided for -twenty-three years. He became a member of the inn in 1757. In 1788 he sold -his chambers, and retired from the bar. As a journalist he was ridiculed -by Wilkes and Churchill. His plays, "The Grecian Daughter" and "Three -Weeks after Marriage," were successful. He also translated Tacitus and -Sallust. He died in 1805.[682] - -Judge Fortescue, a great English lawyer of the time of Henry VI., was a -student of this inn. He wrote his great work, _De Laudibus Legum Angliae_ -to educate Prince Edward when in banishment in Lorraine. This pious, -loyal, and learned man, after being nominal Chancellor, returned to -retirement in England, and acknowledged Edward IV. - -The Earl of Mansfield belonged to the same illustrious inn. For elegance -of mind, for honesty and industry, and for eloquence, he stands -unrivalled. The proceedings against Wilkes, and the destruction of his -house in Bloomsbury by the fanatical mob of 1780, were the chief events of -his useful life. - -Spencer Perceval was of Lincoln's Inn. A son of the Earl of Egmont, he -became a student here in 1782. In Parliament he supported Pitt and the war -against Napoleon. In 1801, under the Addington ministry, he became -Attorney-General, and persecuted Peltier for a libel on Bonaparte during -the peace of Amiens. On the death of the Duke of Portland he was raised to -the head of the Treasury, where he continued till May 1812, when he was -shot through the heart in the lobby of the House of Commons by Bellingham, -a bankrupt merchant of Archangel, who considered himself aggrieved because -ministers had not taken his part and claimed redress for his losses from -the Russian Government. Perceval was a shrewd, even-tempered lawyer, -fluent and industrious, who, had time been permitted him, might possibly -have proved more completely than he did his incapacity for high -ministerial command. - -George Canning became a student at Lincoln's Inn in 1781. His father was a -bankrupt wine-merchant who died of a broken heart. His mother was a -provincial actress. His relation, Sheridan, introduced him to Fox, Grey, -and Burke, the latter of whom, it is said, induced him to make politics -his profession. He made his maiden speech, attacking Fox and supporting -Pitt, in 1794. Late in life he gradually began to support some liberal -measures. In 1827 he became First Lord of the Treasury, and died a few -months afterwards in the zenith of his power. - -Lord Lyndhurst was also one of the glories of this inn. The trial of Dr. -Watson for treason, in 1817, first gained for this son of an American -painter a reputation which, joined with his prudent conduct in the trial -of Cashman the rioter led to his being appointed Solicitor-General in -1818. From that he rose in rapid succession, to the posts of -Attorney-General, Master of the Rolls, Lord Chancellor, and Lord -Lyndhurst. Old, eccentric, "irrepressible" Sir Charles Wetherell was -Copley's fellow-advocate in Watson's case, that ended in the prisoner's -acquittal.[683] In 1827, when Abbott became Lord Tenterden, Copley -accepted the Great Seal, displacing Lord Eldon, and joined Canning's -cabinet, becoming Lord Lyndhurst. In 1830 he became Chief Baron of the -Exchequer. - -Charles Pepys, Lord Cottenham, born 1781, was called to the bar by the -Society of Lincoln's Inn in 1804. He was appointed King's Counsel in 1826, -was made Solicitor-General in 1834, succeeded Sir John Leach as Master of -the Rolls in the same year, and was elevated to the woolsack in 1836. This -Chancellor, who was a very excellent lawyer, was descended from a branch -of the family of Samuel Pepys, author of the celebrated _Diary_. - -Sir E. Sugden was a member of Lincoln's Inn. He was born in the year 1781. -He was the son of a Westminster hairdresser who became rich by inventing a -substitute for hair-powder. He was created Lord St. Leonards on the -formation of a Conservative ministry in 1852, when he accepted the Great -Seal. - -Lord Brougham also studied in Lincoln's Inn. He was born in 1778, and -started the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1802. In 1820 he defended Queen -Caroline; but it would take a volume to follow the career of this -impetuous and versatile genius. His struggles for law-reform, for Catholic -emancipation, for abolition of slavery, for the education of the people, -and for Parliamentary reform, are matters of history. In his old age, -though still vigorous, Lord Brougham grew tamer, and condemned the armed -emancipation of slaves practised by the Northern States in the present -American war. He died at his residence at Cannes in the South of France in -1868. - -Cottenham and Campbell were students in Lincoln's Inn; so was that -eccentric reformer Jeremy Bentham, who was called to the bar in 1722, and -was the son of a Houndsditch attorney; and so was Penn, the founder of -Pennsylvania. - -That "luminary of the Irish Church,"[684] Archbishop Ussher, was preacher -at Lincoln's Inn in 1647, the society giving the good man handsome rooms -ready furnished. He continued to preach there for eight years, till his -eyesight began to fail. He died in 1655, and was buried, by Cromwell's -permission, with great magnificence, in Erasmus's chapel in Westminster -Abbey. His library of 10,000 volumes, bought of him by Cromwell's -officers, was given by Charles II. to Dublin College. Ussher, when only -eighteen, was the David who discomfited in public dispute the learned -Jesuit Fitz-Simons. He saw Charles beheaded from the roof of a house on -the site of the Admiralty. - -Dr. Langhorne, the joint translator with his brother of the _Lives of -Plutarch_, was assistant preacher at Lincoln's Inn. An imitator of -Sterne, and a writer in Griffiths's _Monthly Review_, he was praised by -Smollett and abused by Churchill. Langhorne's amiable poem, _The Country -Justice_, was praised by Scott. He died in 1779. - -That fiery controversialist Warburton was preacher at Lincoln's Inn in -1746, and the same year preached and published a sermon on the Highland -rebellion. He was the son of an attorney at Newark-upon-Trent. His _Divine -Legation_ was an effort to show that the absence of allusions in the -writings of Moses to a system of rewards and punishments was a proof of -their divine origin. The book is full of perverse digressions. His edition -of Shakspere is, perhaps, to use a fine expression of Burke, "one of the -poorest maggots that ever crept from the great man's carcase." Pope left -half his library to Warburton, who had suggested to him the conclusion of -the _Dunciad_. Wilkes, Bolingbroke, Dr. Louth, and Churchill were all by -turns attacked by this arrogant knight-errant. Warburton died in 1779. - -Reginald Heber, afterwards the excellent Bishop of Calcutta, was appointed -preacher at Lincoln's Inn in 1822, the year before he sailed for India. In -1826 this good man was found dead in his bath at Trichinopoly. The sudden -death of this energetic missionary was a great loss to East Indian -Christianity. In the "company of the preachers" we must not forget the -excellent Dr. Van Mildert, afterwards Bishop of Durham, and Dr. Thomson -the present Archbishop of York. - -In the old times the Lord Chancellor held his sittings in the great hall -of Lincoln's Inn. Here, too, at the Christmas revels, the King of the -Cockneys administered _his_ laws. Jack Straw, a sort of rebellious rival, -was put down, with all his adherents, as a bad precedent for the Essexes -and Norfolks of the inn, by wary Queen Elizabeth, who always kept a firm -grip on her prerogative. In the same reign absurd sumptuary laws, vainly -trying to fix the quicksilver of fashion, forbade the students to wear -long hair, long beards, large ruffs, huge cloaks, or big spurs. The fine -for wearing a beard of more than a fortnight's growth was three shillings -and fourpence.[685] In her father's time beards had been prohibited under -pain of double commons. - -In the old hall, replaced by the new Tudor building, stood one of -Hogarth's most pretentious but worst pictures, "Paul preaching before -Felix," an ill-drawn and ludicrous caricature of epic work. The society -paid for it. It is now rolled up and hid away with as much contumely as -Kent's absurdity at St. Clement's when Hogarth parodied it. - -The new hall of Lincoln's Inn was built by Mr. P. Hardwick, the architect -of the St. Katherine Docks, and was opened by the Queen in person in 1845. -It is a fine Tudor building of red brick, with stone dressings. The hall -is 120 feet, the library 80 feet long. The contract was taken for L55,000, -but its cost exceeded that sum. The library contains the unique fourth -volume of Prynne's _Records_, which the society bought for L335 at the -Stow sale in 1849, and all Sir Matthew Hale's bequests of books and MSS.: -"a treasure," says that "excellent good man," as Evelyn calls him[686] in -his will, "that is not fit for every man's view." The hall contains a -fresco representing the "Lawgivers of the World," by Watts. The gardens -were much curtailed by the erection of the hall, and their quietude -destroyed. Ben Jonson talks of the walks under the elms.[687] Steele seems -to have been fond of this garden when he felt meditative. In May 1709, he -says much hurry and business having perplexed him into a mood too -thoughtful for company, instead of the tavern "I went into Lincoln's Inn -Walk, and having taken a round or two, I sat down, according to the -allowed familiarity of these places, on a bench." In a more thoughtful -month (November) of the same year he goes again for a solitary walk in the -garden, "a favour that is indulged me by several of the benchers, who are -very intimate friends, and grown old in the neighbourhood." It was this -bright frosty night, when the whole body of air had been purified into -"bright transparent aether," that Steele imagined his vision of "The -Return of the Golden Age." - -Brave old Ben Jonson was the son of a Scotch gentleman in Henry VIII.'s -service, who, impoverished by the persecutions of Queen Mary, took orders -late in life. His mother married for the second time a small builder or -master bricklayer. He went to Westminster school, where Camden, the great -antiquary, was his master. A kind patron sent him to Cambridge.[688] He -seems to have left college prematurely, and have come back to London to -work with his father-in-law.[689] - -There is an old tradition that he worked at the garden-wall of Lincoln's -Inn next to Chancery Lane, and that a knight or bencher (Sutton, or -Camden), walking by, hearing him repeat a passage of Homer, entered into -conversation with him, and finding him to have extraordinary wit, sent him -back to college; or, as Fuller quaintly puts it, "some gentlemen pitying -that his parts should be buried under the rubbish of so mean a calling, -did by their bounty manumise him freely to follow his own ingenious -inclinations."[690] - -Gifford sneers at the story, for the poet's own words to Drummond of -Hawthornden were simply these:--"He could not endure the occupation of a -bricklayer," and therefore joined Vere in Flanders, probably going with -reinforcements to Ostend in 1591-2.[691] He there fought and slew an -enemy, and stripped him in sight of both armies. On his return, he became -an actor at a Shoreditch theatre. His enemies, the rival satirists, -frequently sneer at the quondam profession of Ben Jonson, and describe him -stamping on the stage as if he were treading mortar. For myself, I admire -brave, truculent old Ben, and delight even in his most crabbed and -pedantic verse, and therefore never pass Lincoln's Inn garden without -thinking of Shakspere's honest but rugged friend--"a bear only in the -coat." - -On June 27, 1752, there was a dreadful fire in New Square, which -destroyed countless historical treasures, including Lord Somers's original -letters and papers. - -At No. 2 and afterwards at No. 6 New Square, Lincoln's Inn, which is built -on Little Lincoln's Inn Fields, and forms no part of the Inn of court, -lived Sir Samuel Romilly. This "great and amiable man," as Tom Moore calls -him, killed himself in a fit of melancholy produced by overwork joined to -the loss of his wife, "a simple, gay, unlearned woman." Sir Samuel was a -stern, reserved man, and she was the only person in the world to whom he -could unbosom himself. When he lost her, he said, "the very vent of his -heart was stopped up."[692] - -It was in Old Square, Lincoln's Inn, that Benjamin Disraeli, born in -December 1805, much too erratic for Plowden and Coke, used to come to -study conveyancing at the chambers of Mr. Bassevi. He is described as -often arriving with Spenser's _Faerie Queen_ under his arm, stopping an -hour or two to read, and then leaving. This led, as might be expected, not -to the woolsack but to the authorship of _Coningsby_. His Premiership and -his Patent of Peerage as Lord Beaconsfield, are due to other causes. - -Whetstone Park, now a small quiet passage, full of printing-offices and -stables, between Great Turnstile and Gate Street, derived its name from a -vestryman of the time of Charles I. It is now chiefly occupied by mews, -but was once filled by infamous houses and low brandy-shops. - -In 1671, the Duke of Monmouth, the Duke of Grafton, and the Duke of St. -Alban's, three of King Charles II.'s illegitimate sons, killed here a -beadle in a drunken brawl. A street-ballad was written on the occasion, -more full of spite against the corrupt court than of sympathy with the -slain man. In poor doggerel the Catnach of 1671 describes the watch coming -in, disturbed from sleep, to appease their graces-- - - "Straight rose mortal jars, - 'Twixt the night blackguard and (the) silver stars; - Then fell the beadle by a ducal hand, - For daring to pronounce the saucy 'Stand!'" - -Sadly enough, the silly fellow's death led to a dance at Whitehall being -put off,-- - - "Disappoints the queen, 'poor little chuck!'"[693] - -and all the brisk courtiers in their gay coats bought with the nation's -subsidies. - -The last two lines are vigorous, sarcastic, and worthy of a humble -imitator of Dryden. The poet sums up-- - - "Yet shall Whitehall, the innocent and good, - See these men dance, all daubed with lace and blood." - -In 1682 the misnamed "Park" grew so infamous, that a countryman, having -been decoyed into one of the houses and robbed, went into Smithfield and -collected an angry mob of about 500 apprentices, who marched on Whetstone -Park, broke open the houses, and destroyed the furniture. The constables -and watchmen, being outnumbered, sent for the king's guard, who dispersed -them and took eleven of them. Nevertheless, the next night another mob -stormed the place, again broke in the doors, smashed the windows, and cut -the feather-beds to pieces. - -Lincoln's Inn Fields formed part of the ancient Fickett's Fields, a plot -of ground of about ten acres, extending formerly from Bell Yard to -Portugal Street and Carey Street. It seems to have been used in the Middle -Ages for jousts and tournaments by the Templars and Knights of St. John of -Jerusalem, to the priory of which last order it belonged till Henry VIII. -dissolved the monasteries, when it was granted to Anthony Stringer. In an -inquest of the time of James I. it is described as having two gates for -horses and carriages at the east end--one gate leading into Chancery Lane, -the other gate at the western end.[694] - -Queen Elizabeth, afraid that London was growing unwieldly, issued several -proclamations against further building. James I., still more timid and -conservative, and not thoroughly acquainted with his own capital, issued a -like absurd ukase in 1612, by the desire of the benchers and students of -Lincoln's Inn, forbidding the erection of new houses in these fields. But -no royal edict can prevent a demand for creating a supply, and as the -building still went on, a commission was appointed in 1618 to lay out the -square in a regular plan. Bacon, then Lord Chancellor, and many noblemen, -judges, and masters in Chancery, were on this commission, and Inigo Jones, -the king's Surveyor-General, drew up the scheme. The report of this body, -given by Rymer, sets out that in the last sixteen years there had been -more building near and about the City of London than in ages before, and -that as these fields were much surrounded by the dwellings and lodgings of -noblemen and gentlemen of quality, "all small cottages and closes shall be -paid for and removed, and the square shall be reduced," both for -sweetness, uniformity, and comeliness, as an ornament to the City, and for -the health and recreation of the inhabitants, into walks and partitions, -as Mr. Inigo Jones should in his map devise.[695] - -There is a tradition that the area of the square, according to Inigo -Jones's plan, was to have been made the exact dimensions of the base of -the great pyramid of Geezeh. The tradition is probably true, for the area -of the pyramid is 535,824 square feet, and that of Lincoln's Inn Fields -550,000.[696] The height of the pyramid was 756 feet. - -The plan proved too costly, and the subscriptions began probably to fail; -but in the course of time noblemen and others began to build for -themselves, but without much regard to uniformity. - -The elevation of Inigo's plan for the Fields, painted in oil colours, is -still preserved at Wilton House, near Salisbury. The view is taken from -the south, and the principal feature in the elevation is Lindsey House in -the centre of the west side, whose stone facade, still existing, stands -boldly out from the brick houses which support it on either side. The -internal accommodation of Lindsey House was never good.[697] - -These fields in Charles I.'s time became the haunt of wrestlers, bowlers, -beggars, and idle boys; and here, in 1624, Lilly the astrologer, then -servant to a mantua-maker in the Strand, spent his time in bowling with -Wat the cobbler, Dick the blacksmith, and such idle apprentices. Hither, -after the Restoration, came every sort of villain--the Rufflers, or maimed -soldiers, who told lies of Edgehill and Naseby, and who surrounded the -coaches of charitable lords; "Dommerers," or sham dumb men; "Mumpers," or -sham broken gentlemen; "Whipjacks," or sham seamen with bound-up legs; -"Abram-men," or sham idiots; "Fraters," or rogues with forged patents; -"Anglers," wild rogues, "Clapper-dudgeons,"[698] and men with gambling -wheels of fortune. - -In Queen Anne's reign Gay sketches the dangers of night in these fields; -he warns his readers to avoid the lurking thief, by day a beggar, or -else-- - - "The crutch, which late compassion moved, shall wound - Thy bleeding head, and fell thee to the ground. - -Nor trust the linkman," he adds, "along the lonely wall, or he'll put out -his light and rob you, but-- - - "Still keep the public streets where oily rays - That from the crystal lamp o'erspread the ways." - -The south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields was built and named three years -before the Restoration, by Sir William Cowper, James Cowper, and Robert -Henley. In 1668 Portugal Row, as it was called, but not from Charles's -queen,[699] was extremely fashionable. There were then living here such -noble and noted persons as Lady Arden, William Perpoint, Esq., Sir Charles -Waldegrave, Lady Fitzharding, Lady Diana Curzon, Serjeant Maynard, Lord -Cardigan, Mrs. Anne Heron, Lady Mordant, Richard Adams, Esq., Lady Carr, -Lady Wentworth, Mr. Attorney Montagu, Lady Coventry, Judge Welch, and Lady -Davenant.[700] - -Mr. Serjeant Maynard was the brave old Presbyterian lawyer, then -eighty-seven, who replied to the Prince of Orange, when he said that he -must have outlived all the men of law of his time--"Sir, I should have -outlived the law itself had not your highness come over." - -Lady Davenant was the widow of Sir William Davenant, the Oxford -innkeeper's son, the poet and manager, who, aided by Whitlocke and -Maynard, was allowed in Cromwell's time to perform operas at a theatre in -Charterhouse Square. After the Restoration he had the theatre in Portugal -Street. He died in 1668, insolvent. His poems were published by his widow, -and dedicated to the Duke of York in 1673. - -Lord Cardigan was the father of the infamous Countess of Shrewsbury, who -is said, disguised as a page, to have held her lover the Duke of -Buckingham's horse while he killed her husband in a duel near Barn Elms. -The Earl of Rochester lived in the house next the Duke's Theatre,[701] -which stood behind the present College of Surgeons, as Davenant says in -one of his epilogues-- - - "The prospect of the sea cannot be shown, - Therefore be pleased to think that you are all - Behind the row which men call Portugal." - -In September 1586 Ballard, Babington, and other conspirators against the -life of Queen Elizabeth were put to death in Lincoln's Inn Fields. -Babington was a young man of good family, who had been a page to the Earl -of Shrewsbury, and had plotted to rescue Mary and assassinate Elizabeth. -His plot discovered, he had fled to St. John's Wood for concealment. Seven -of these plotters were hanged on the first day, and seven on the second. -The last seven were allowed to die, by special grace, before being -disembowelled by the executioner. - -It was through these fields that, one spring night in 1676-7, Thomas -Sadler, an impudent and well-known thief, rivalling the audacity of Blood, -having with some confederates stolen the mace and purse of Lord Chancellor -Finch from his house in Great Queen Street, bore them in mock procession -on their way to their lodgings in Knightrider Street, Doctors' Commons. -Sadler was hanged at Tyburn for this theft. - -Lord William Russell was son of William, Earl of Bedford, by Lady Ann -Carr, daughter of Carr, Earl of Somerset. He was beheaded in the centre of -Lincoln's Inn Fields, July 21, 1683, the last year but two of the reign of -King Charles II., for being, as it was alleged, engaged in a plot to -attack the guards and kill the king, on his return from Newmarket races, -at the Rye House Farm, in a by-road near Hoddesdon in Hertfordshire, about -seventeen miles north-east of London. - -The Whig party, in their eagerness to restrain the Papists and exclude the -Duke of York from the throne, had gone too far, and their zeal for the -Dissenters had produced a violent reaction in the High Church party. -Charles and the Duke, taking advantage of the return tide, began to -persecute the Dissenters, denounce Shaftesbury, assail the liberties of -the City, and finally dissolved the Parliament. Soon after this, that -subtle politician, Shaftesbury, finding it impossible to rouse the Duke of -Monmouth, Essex, or Lord Russell, denounced them all as sold and deceived, -and fled to Holland. - -After his flight, meetings of his creatures were held at the chambers of -one West, an active talking man. Keeling, a vintner of decaying business, -betrayed the plot, as also did Lord Howard, a man so infamous that Charles -himself said "he would not hang the worst dog he had upon his evidence." -Keeling and his brother swore that forty men were hired to intercept the -king, but that a fire at Newmarket, which had hastened Charles's return, -had defeated their plans. Goodenough, an ex-sheriff, had told them that -the Duke of Monmouth and other great men were to raise 4000 soldiers and -L20,000. The brothers also swore that Goodenough had told them that Lord -Russell had joined in the design of killing the king and the duke. - -Lord Russell acted with great composure. He would not fly, refused to let -his friends surrender themselves to share his fortunes, and told an -acquaintance that "he was very sensible he should fall a sacrifice."[702] -When he appeared at the council, the king himself said that "nobody -suspected Lord Russell of any design against his own person, but that he -had good evidence of his being in designs against his government." The -prisoner denied all knowledge of the intended insurrection, or of the -attempt to surprise the guards. - -The infamous Jeffries was one of the counsel for his prosecution. Lord -Russell argued at his trial, that, allowing he had compassed the king's -death, which he denied, he had been guilty only of a conspiracy to levy -war, which was not treason except by a recent statute of Charles II., the -prosecutions upon which were limited to a certain time, which had -elapsed,[703] so that both law and justice were in this case violated. - -The truth seems to be that Lord Russell was a true patriot, of a slow and -sober judgment, a taciturn, good man, of not the quickest intelligence, -who had allowed himself to listen to dangerous and random talk for the -sake of political purposes. He wished to debar the duke from the throne, -but he had never dreamt of accomplishing his purpose by murder. It has -since been discovered that Sidney, doing evil that good might come, had -accepted secret-service money from France, and that Russell himself had -interviews with French agents. Lord John Russell explains away this charge -very well. Charles was degraded enough to take money from France. The -patriots, told that Louis XIV. wished to avoid a war, intrigued with the -French king to maintain peace, fearing that if Charles once raised an army -under any pretence, he would first employ it to obtain absolute power at -home, which it is most probable he would have done.[704] On the whole, -these disingenuous interviews must be lamented; they could not and they -did not lead to good. It has been justly regretted also that Lord Russell -on his trial did not boldly denounce the tyranny of the court, and show -the necessity that had existed for active opposition. - -After sentence the condemned man wrote petitions to the king and duke, -which were unjustly sneered at as abject. They really, however, contain no -promise but that of living beyond sea and meddling no more in English -affairs. Of one of them at least, Burnet says it was written at the -earnest solicitation of Lady Rachel; and Lord Russell himself said, with -regret, "This will be printed and sold about the streets as my submission -when I am led out to be hanged." He lamented to Burnet that his wife beat -every bush and ran about so for his preservation; but he acquiesced in -what she did when he thought it would be afterwards a mitigation of her -sorrow. - -When his brave and excellent wife, the daughter of Charles I.'s loyal -servant, Southampton, who was the son of Shakspere's friend, begged for -her husband's life, the king replied, "How can I grant that man six weeks, -who would not have granted me six hours?"[705] - -There is no scene in history that "goes more directly to the heart," says -Fox, "than the story of the last days of this excellent man." The night -before his death it rained hard, and he said, "Such a rain to-morrow will -spoil a great show," which was a dull thing on a rainy day. He thought a -violent death only the pain of a minute, not equal to that of drawing a -tooth; and he was still of opinion _that the king was limited by law, and -that when he broke through those limits, his subjects might defend -themselves and restrain him_.[706] He then received the sacrament from -Tillotson with much devotion, and parted from his wife with a composed -silence; as soon as she was gone he exclaimed, "The bitterness of death is -past," saying what a blessing she had been to him, and what a misery it -had been if she had tried to induce him to turn an informer. He slept -soundly that night and rose in a few hours, but would take no care in -dressing. He prayed six or seven times by himself, and drank a little tea -and some sherry. He then wound up his watch, and said, "Now I have done -with time and shall go into eternity." When told that he should give the -executioner ten guineas, he said, with a smile, that it was a pretty thing -to give a fee to have his head cut off. When the sheriffs came at ten -o'clock, Lord Russell embraced Lord Cavendish, who had offered to change -clothes with him and stay in his place in prison, or to attack the coach -with a troop of horse and carry off his friend; but the noble man would -not listen to either proposal. - -In the street some in the crowd wept, while others insulted him. He said, -"I hope I shall quickly see a better assembly." He then sang, half to -himself, the beginning of the 149th Psalm. As the coach turned into Little -Queen Street, he said, looking at his own house, "I have often turned to -the one hand with great comfort, but now I turn to this with greater," and -then a tear or two fell from his eyes. As they entered Lincoln's Inn -Fields he said, "This has been to me a place of sinning, and God now makes -it the place of my punishment." When he came to the scaffold, he walked -about it four or five times: then he prayed by himself, and also with -Tillotson; then he partly undressed himself, laid his head down without -any change of countenance, and it was cut off in two strokes. Lord -William's walking-stick and a cotemporary account of his death are kept at -Woburn Abbey. - -Lady Rachel Russell, the excellent wife of this patriot, had been his -secretary during the trial. She spent her after-life, not in unwisely -lamenting the inevitable past, but in doing good works, and in educating -her children. Writing two months after the execution to Dr. Fritzwilliams, -this noble woman says:[707] "_Secretly_, my heart mourns and cannot be -comforted, because I have not the dear companion and sharer of all my joys -and sorrows. I want him to talk with, to walk with, to eat and sleep with. -All these things are irksome to me now; all company and meals I could -avoid, if it might be.... When I see my children before me, I remember -the pleasure he took in them: this makes my heart shrink." - -In 1692 Lady Russell appears to have regained her composure. But she had -other trials in store: for in 1711 she lost her only son, the Duke of -Bedford, in the flower of his age, and six months afterwards one of her -daughters died in childbed. - -It is said that, in his hour of need, James II. was mean enough to say to -the Duke of Bedford, "My lord, you are an honest man, have great credit, -and can do me signal service." "Ah, sir," replied the duke, with a grave -severity, "I am old and feeble now, but I once had a _son_." - -The Sacheverell riots culminated in these now quiet Fields. In 1710 Daniel -Dommaree, a queen's waterman, Francis Willis, a footman, and George -Purchase, were tried at the Old Bailey for heading a riot during the -Sacheverell trial and pulling down meeting-houses. This Sacheverell was an -ignorant, impudent incendiary, the adopted son of a Marlborough -apothecary, and was impeached by the House of Commons for preaching at St. -Andrew's, Holborn, sermons denouncing the Revolution of 1688. His sermons -were ordered to be burnt, and he was sentenced to be suspended for three -years. Atterbury helped the mischievous firebrand in his ineffectual -defence, and Swift wrote a most scurrilous letter to Bishop Fleetwood, who -had lamented the excesses of the mob. Sacheverell had been at Oxford with -Addison, who inscribed a poem to him. During the trial, a mob marched from -the Temple, whither they had escorted Sacheverell, pulled down Dr. -Burgess's meeting-house, and threw the pulpit, sconces, and gallery pews -into a fire in Lincoln's Inn Fields, some waving curtains on poles, -shouting, "High Church standard!" "Huzza! High Church and Sacheverell!" -"We will have them all down!" They also burnt other meeting-houses in -Leather Lane, Drury Lane, and Fetter Lane, and made bonfires of the -woodwork in the streets. They were eventually dispersed by the -horse-grenadiers and horse-guards and foot. Dommaree was sentenced to -death, but pardoned; Willis was acquitted; and Purchase was pardoned.[708] - -Wooden posts and rails stood round the Fields till 1735, when an Act was -passed to enable the inhabitants to make improvements, to put an iron gate -at each corner, and to erect dwarf walls and iron palisades.[709] Before -this time grooms used to break in horses on this spot. One day while -looking at these centaurs, Sir Joseph Jekyll, who had brought a very -obnoxious bill into Parliament in 1736 in order to raise the price of gin, -was mobbed, thrown down, and dangerously trampled on. His initials, "J. -J.," figure under a gibbet chalked on a wall in one of Hogarth's -prints.[710] Macaulay's _History_ contains a very highly coloured picture -of these Fields. A comparison of the passage with the facts from which it -is drawn would be a useful lesson to all historical students who love -truth in its severity.[711] - -Newcastle House stands at the north-west angle of the Fields, at the -south-eastern corner of Great Queen Street. It derived its name from John -Holles, Duke of Newcastle, a relative of the noble families of Vere, -Cavendish, and Holles. This duke bought the house before 1708, but died in -1711 without issue, and was succeeded in the house by his nephew, the -leader of the Pelham administration under George II. - -The house had been bought by Lord Powis about 1686. It was built for him -by Captain William Winde, a scholar of Webbe's, the pupil and executor of -Inigo Jones.[712] William Herbert, first Marquis of Powis, was outlawed -and fled to St. Germain's to James II., who made him Duke of Powis. -Government had thought of buying the house when it was inhabited by the -Lord Keeper, Sir Nathan Wright,[713] and to have settled it officially on -the Great Seal. It was once the residence of Sir John Somers, the Lord -Chancellor. - -In 1739 Lady Henrietta Herbert, widow of Lord William Herbert, second son -of the Marquis of Powis, and daughter of James, first Earl of Waldegrave, -was married to Mr. John Beard,[714] who seems to have been a fine singer -and a most charitable, estimable man. Lady Henrietta's grandmother was the -daughter of James II. by the sister of the great Duke of Marlborough. Dr. -Burner speaks of Beard's great knowledge of music and of his intelligence -as an actor.[715] In an epitaph on him, still extant, the writer says-- - - "Whence had that voice such magic to control? - 'Twas but the echo of a well-tuned soul; - Through life his morals and his music ran - In symphony, and spoke the virtuous man. - ... Go, gentle harmonist! our hopes approve, - To meet and hear thy sacred songs above; - When taught by thee, the stage of life well trod, - We rise to raptures round the throne of God." - -Beard, excellent both in oratorios and serious and comic operas, became -part proprietor of Covent Garden Theatre, and died in 1791. - -The Duke of Newcastle's crowded levees were his pleasure and his triumph. -He generally made people of business wait two or three hours in the -ante-chamber while he trifled with insignificant favourites in his closet. -When at last he entered the levee room, he accosted, hugged, embraced, and -promised everything to everybody with an assumed cordiality and a -degrading familiarity.[716] - -"Long" Sir Thomas Robertson was a great intruder on the duke's time; if -told that he was out, he would come in to look at the clock or play with -the monkey, in hopes of the great man relenting. The servants, at last -tired out with Sir Thomas, concocted a formula of repulses, and the next -time he came the porter, without waiting for his question, began--"Sir, -his grace is gone out, the fire has gone out, the clock stands, and the -monkey is dead."[717] - -Sir Timothy Waldo, on his way from the duke's dinner-table to his own -carriage, once gave the cook, who was waiting in the hall, a crown. The -rogue returned it, saying he did not take silver. "Oh, don't you, indeed?" -said Sir Timothy, coolly replacing it in his pocket; "then I don't give -gold." Jonas Hanway, the great opponent of tea-drinking, published eight -letters to the duke on this subject,[718] and the custom began from that -time to decline. But Hogarth had already condemned the exaction. - -The duke was very profuse in his promises, and a good story is told of the -result of his insincerity. At a Cornish election, the duke had obtained -the turning vote for his candidate by his usual assurances. The elector, -wishing to secure something definite, had asked for a supervisorship of -excise for his son-in-law on the present holder's death. "The moment he -dies," said the premier, "set out post-haste for London; drive directly to -my house in the Fields: night or day, sleeping or waking, dead or alive, -thunder at the door; the porter will show you upstairs directly; and the -place is yours." A few months after the old supervisor died, and up to -London rushed the Cornish elector. - -Now that very night the duke had been expecting news of the death of the -King of Spain, and had left orders before he went to bed to have the -courier sent up directly he arrived. The Cornish man, mistaken for this -important messenger, was instantly, to his great delight, shown up to the -duke's bedroom. "Is he dead?--is he dead?" cried the duke. "Yes, my lord, -yes," answered the aspirant, promptly. "When did he die?" "The day before -yesterday, at half-past one o'clock, after three weeks in his bed, and -taking a power of doctor's stuff; and I hope your grace will be as good as -your word, and let my son-in-law succeed him." "_Succeed him!_" shouted -the duke; "is the man drunk or mad? Where are your despatches?" he -exclaimed, tearing back the bed-curtains; and there, to his vexation, -stood the blundering elector, hat in hand, his stupid red face beaming -with smiles as he kept bowing like a joss. The duke sank back in a -violent fit of laughter, which, like the electric fluid, was in a moment -communicated to his attendants.[719] It is not stated whether the Cornish -man obtained his petition. - -There is an agreement in all the stories of the duke, who was thirty years -Secretary of State, and nearly ten years First Lord of the Treasury, -"whether told," says Macaulay, "by people who were perpetually seeing him -in Parliament and attending his levees in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or by Grub -Street writers, who had never more than a glimpse of his star through the -windows of his gilded coach."[720] Smollett and Walpole mixed in different -society, yet they both sketch the duke with the same colours. Smollett's -Newcastle runs out of his dressing-room with his face covered with -soapsuds to embrace the Moorish envoy. Walpole's Newcastle pushes his way -into the Duke of Grafton's sick-room to kiss the old nobleman's plaisters. -"He was a living, moving, talking caricature. His gait was a shuffling -trot, his utterance a rapid stutter. He was always in a hurry--he was -never in time; he abounded in fulsome caresses and in hysterical tears. -His oratory resembled that of Justice Shallow--it was nonsense -effervescent with animal spirits and impertinence. 'Oh yes, yes, to be -sure--Annapolis must be defended; troops must be sent to Annapolis. Pray, -where is Annapolis?'--'Cape Breton an island! Wonderful! Show it me on the -map. So it is, sure enough. My dear sir, you always bring us good news. I -must go and tell the king that Cape Breton is an island.' His success is a -proof of what may be done by a man who devotes his whole heart and soul to -one object. His love of power was so intense a passion, that it almost -supplied the place of talent. He was jealous even of his own brother. -Under the guise of levity, he was false beyond all example." "All the able -men of his time ridiculed him as a dunce, a driveller, a child, who never -knew his own mind for an hour together, and yet he overreached them all -round." If the country had remained at peace, this man might have been at -the head of affairs till a new king came with fresh favourites and a -strong will; "but the inauspicious commencement of the Seven Years' War -brought on a crisis to which Newcastle was altogether unequal. After a -calm of fifteen years, the spirit of the nation was again stirred to its -inmost depths." - -This is strongly etched, but Macaulay was too fond of caricature for a -real lover of truth. Walpole, recounting this greedy imbecile's disgrace, -reviews his career much more forcibly, for in a few words he shows us how -great had been the power which this chatterer's fixed purpose had -attained. The memoir-writer describes the duke as the man "who had begun -the world by heading mobs against the ministers of Queen Anne; who had -braved the heir-apparent, afterwards George I., and forced himself upon -him as godfather to his son; who had recovered that prince's favour, and -preserved power under him, at the expense of every minister whom that -prince preferred; who had been a rival of another Prince of Wales for the -chancellorship of Cambridge; and who was now buffeted from a fourth court -by a very suitable competitor (Lord Bute), and reduced in his tottery old -age to have recourse to those mobs and that popularity which had raised -him fifty years before." - -Lord Bute was mean enough to compliment the old duke on his retirement. -The duke replied, with a spirit that showed the vitality of his ambition: -"Yes, yes, my lord, I am an old man, but yesterday was my birthday, and I -recollected that Cardinal Fleury _began_ to be prime-minister of France -just at my age."[721] - -Newcastle House, now occupied by the Society for Promoting Christian -Knowledge, was, for forty years or more, inhabited by Sir Alan Chambre, -one of King George III.'s judges. The society, then lodged in Bartlett's -Buildings, in Holborn, derived its first name from that place, and at Sir -Alan's death they purchased the house and site. - -About the centre of the west side of the square, in Sir Alan's time, lived -the Earl and Countess of Portsmouth. The earl was half-witted, but was -always well-conducted and quite producible in society under the guidance -of his countess, a daughter of Lord Grantley. - -Near Surgeons' Hall, at the same epoch, lived the first Lord Wynford, Lord -Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, better known as Serjeant Best. A -quarrel between this irritable lawyer and Serjeant Wilde, afterwards Lord -Chancellor Truro, one of the most stalwart gladiators who ever won a name -and title in the legal arena, gave rise to an epigram, the point of which -was--"That Best was wild, and Wilde was best." - -In 1774, when Lord Clive had rewarded Wedderburn, his defender, with lacs -of rupees and a villa at Mitcham, the lawyer had an elegant house in -Lincoln's Inn Fields, not far from the Duke of Newcastle's,--"a quarter," -says Lord Campbell, "which I recollect still the envied resort of legal -magnates." - -Wedderburn, afterwards better known as Lord Chancellor Loughborough, had a -special hatred for Franklin, and loaded him with abuse before a committee -of the Privy Council, for having sent to America letters from the -Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, urging the Government to employ -military force to suppress the discontents in New England.[722] The effect -of Wedderburn's brilliant oratory in Parliament was ruined, says Lord -Campbell, by "his character for insincerity."[723] When George III. heard -of his death, he is reported to have said, "He has not left a greater -knave behind him in my dominions;" upon which Lord Thurlow savagely said, -with his usual oath, "I perceive that his majesty is quite sane at -present." Wedderburn was a friend of David Hume; his humanity was -eulogised by Dr. Parr, but he was satirised by Churchill in the _Rosciad_. - -Montague, Earl of Sandwich, the great patron of Pepys, lived in Lincoln's -Inn Fields, paying L250 a year rent.[724] Pepys calls it "a fine house, -but deadly dear."[725] He visits him, February 10, 1663-4, and finds my -lord very high and strange and stately, although Pepys had been bound for -L1000 with him, and the shrewd cit naturally enough did not like my lord -being angry with him and in debt to him at the same time. The earl was a -distant cousin of Pepys, and on his marriage received him and his wife -into his house, and took Pepys with him when he went to bring home Charles -II., when he was elected one of the Council of State and General at Sea. -He brought the queen-mother to England and took her back again. He also -brought the ill-fated queen from Portugal, and became a privy-councillor, -and was sent as ambassador to Spain. He seems to have been not untainted -with the vices of the age. He was in the great battle where Van Tromp was -killed, and in 1668 he took forty-five sail from the Dutch at sea, and -that is the best thing known of him. He died in 1672, and was buried in -great state. - -Inigo Jones built only the west side of the square. No. 55 was the -residence of Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey, a general of King Charles. It -is described in 1708 as a handsome building of the Ionic order, with a -beautiful and strong Court Gate, formed of six spacious brick piers, with -curious ironwork between them, and on the piers large and beautiful -vases.[726] The open balustrade at the top bore six urns. - -The Earl of Lindsey was shot at Edgehill in 1642, when a reckless and -intemperate charge of Rupert had led to the total defeat of the -unsupported foot. His son, Lord Willoughby, was taken in endeavouring to -rescue his father. Clarendon describes the earl as a lavish, generous, yet -punctilious man, of great honour and experience in foreign war. He was -surrounded by Lincolnshire gentlemen, who served in his regiment out of -personal regard for him. He was jealous of Prince Rupert's interference, -and had made up his mind to die. As he lay bleeding to death he reproved -the officers of the Earl of Essex, many of them his old friends, for their -ingratitude and "foul rebellion."[727] - -The fourth Earl of Lindsey was created Duke of Ancaster, and the house -henceforward bore that now forgotten name. It was subsequently sold to the -proud Duke of Somerset, the same who married the widow of the Mr. Thynne -whom Count Koenigsmarck murdered. - -In the early part of George III.'s reign Lindsey House became a sort of -lodging-house for foreign members of the Moravian persuasion. The -staircase, about 1772, was painted with scenes from the history of the -Herrnhuthers. The most conspicuous figures were those of a negro -catechumen in a white shirt, and a missionary who went over to Algiers to -preach to the galley-slaves, and died in Africa of the plague. There was -also a painting of a Moravian clergyman being saved from a desert rock on -which he had been cast.[728] - -Repeated mention of the Berties is made in Horace Walpole's pleasant -_Letters_. Lord Robert Bertie was third son of Robert the first Duke of -Ancaster and Kesteven. He was a general in the army, a colonel in the -Guards, and a lord of the bedchamber. He married Lady Raymond in 1762, and -died in 1782. - -The proud Duke of Somerset, in 1748, left to his eldest daughter, Lady -Frances, married to the Marquis of Granby, three thousand a year, and the -fine house built by Inigo Jones in Lincoln's Inn Fields, which he had -bought of the Duke of Ancaster for the Duchess, hoping that his daughter -would let her mother live with her.[729] In July 1779 the Duke of -Ancaster, dying of drinking and rioting at two-and-twenty, recalls much -scandal to Walpole's mind. He had been in love with Lady Honoria, -Walpole's niece; but Horace does not regret the match dropping through, -for he says the duke was of a turbulent nature, and, though of a fine -figure, not noble in manners. Lady Priscilla Elizabeth Bertie, eldest -sister of the duke, married the grandson of Peter Burrell, a merchant, who -became husband of the Lady Great Chamberlain of England, and inherited a -barony and half the Ancaster estate.[730] "The three last duchesses," -goes on the cruel gossip, "were never sober." "The present -duchess-dowager," he adds, "was natural daughter of Panton, a disreputable -horse-jockey of Newmarket. The other duchess was some lady's woman, or -young lady's governess." Mr. Burrell's daughters married Lord Percy and -the Duke of Hamilton. - -In 1791 Walpole writes to Miss Berry to describe the marriage of Lord -Cholmondeley with Lady Georgiana Charlotte Bertie: "The men were in frocks -and white waistcoats. The endowing purse, I believe, has been left off -ever since broad pieces were called in and melted down. We were but -eighteen persons in all.... The poor duchess-mother wept excessively; she -is now left quite alone,--her two daughters married, and her other -children dead. She herself, I fear, is in a very dangerous way. She goes -directly to Spa, where the new married pair are to meet her. We all -separated in an hour and a half."[731] - -Alfred Tennyson in early life had fourth-floor chambers at No. 55, and -there probably his friend Hallam, whose early death he laments in his _In -Memoriam_ spent many an hour with him. There, in the airy regions of -Attica, in a low-roofed room, the single window of which is darkened by a -huge stone balustrade--a gloomy relic of past grandeur--the young poet may -have recited the majestic lines of his "King Arthur," or the exquisite -lament of "Mariana," and there he may have immortalised the "plump -head-waiter of the Cock," in Fleet Street. Mr. John Foster, the author of -many sound and delightful historical biographies, had also chambers in -this house. - -No. 68, on the west side, stands on the site of the approach to the -stables of old Newcastle House. Here Judge Le Blanc lived, and at his -death the house was occupied by Mr. Thomas Le Blanc, Master of Trinity -Hall, Cambridge. - -At No. 33, on the same side as the Insolvent Debtors' Court, dwelt Judge -Park, a man much beloved by his friends; in his early days, as a young -and poor Scotch barrister, he had lived in Carey Street till his house -there was burnt down. He used to say that his great ambition in youth had -been to one day live at No. 33 in the Fields, at that time occupied by -Chief Justice Willis; but in later days, as a judge, leaving the former -goal of his ambition, he migrated to Bedford Square, where he died. - -Nos. 40 and 42, on the south side, form the Museum of the College of -Surgeons, incorporated in 1800. The Grecian front is a most clever -contrivance by Sir John Soane. The building contains the incomparable -anatomical collection of the eminent John Hunter, bought by the Government -for L15,000 and given to the College of Surgeons on condition of its being -opened to the public. John Hunter died in 1793; and the first courses of -lectures in the new building were delivered by Sir Everard Home and Sir -William Blizard, in 1810. The Museum was built by Barry in 1835, and cost -about L40,000.[732] It is divided into two rooms, the normal and abnormal. -The total number of specimens is upwards of 23,000. The collection is -unequalled in many respects; every article is authentic and in perfect -preservation. The largest human skeleton is that of Charles O'Brien, the -Irish giant, who died in Cockspur Street, Charing Cross, in 1783, aged -twenty-two. It measures eight feet four inches. By its side, in ghastly -contrast, is the bony sketch of Caroline Crachami, a Sicilian dwarf who -died in 1824, aged ten years. There is also a cast of the hand of Patrick -Cotter, another Irish giant, who measured eight feet seven and a half -inches. Nor must we overlook the vast framework of Chunee, the elephant -that went mad with toothache at Exeter Change, and was shot by a company -of riflemen in 1826. The sawn base of the inflamed tusk shows a spicula of -ivory pressing into the nervous pulp. Toothache is always terrible, but -only imagine a square foot of it! - -Very curious too, are the jaw of the extinct sabre-toothed tiger, and the -skeleton of a gigantic extinct Irish deer found under a bed of shell-marl -in a peat bog near Limerick. The antlers are seven feet long, eight feet -across, and weigh seventy-six pounds. The height of the animal (measured -from his skull) was seven feet six inches. Amongst other horrors, there is -a cast of the fleshy band that united the Siamese twins, and one of a -woman with a long curved horn growing from her forehead. There are also -many skulls of soldiers perforated and torn with bullets, the lead still -adhering to some of the bony plates of the crania. But the wonder of -wonders is the iron pivot of a trysail-mast that was driven clean through -the chest of a Scarborough lad. The boy recovered in five months, and not -long after went to work again. It is a tough race that rules the sea. - -There are also fragments of the skeleton of a rhinoceros discovered in a -limestone cavern at Oreston during the formation of the Plymouth -Breakwater. In a recess from the gallery stands the embalmed body of the -wife of Martin Van Butchell, an impudent Dutch quack doctor. It is -coarsely preserved, and is very loathsome to look at. It was prepared in -1775 by Dr. W. Hunter and Mr. Cruikshank, the vascular system being -injected with oil of turpentine and camphorated spirits of wine, and -powdered nitre and camphor being introduced into the cavities. On the case -containing the body is an advertisement cut from an old newspaper, stating -the conditions which Dr. Van Butchell required of those who came to see -the body of his wife. At the feet of Mrs. Van Butchell is the shrunken -mummy of her pet parrot. - -The pictures include the portrait of John Hunter by Reynolds, which Sharp -engraved: it has much faded. There is also a posthumous bust of Hunter by -Flaxman, and one of Clive by Chantrey. Any Fellow of the College can -introduce a visitor, either personally or by written order, the first four -days of the week. In September the Museum is closed. It would be much more -convenient for students if some small sum were charged for admission. It -is now visited but by two or three people a day, when it should be -inspected by hundreds. - -That great surgeon, John Hunter, was the son of a small farmer in -Lanarkshire. He was born in 1728, and died in 1793. In early life he went -abroad as an army-surgeon to study gunshot-wounds; and in 1786 he was -appointed deputy surgeon-general to the army. In 1772 he made discoveries -as to the property of the gastric juice. He was the first to use cutting -as a cure for hydrophobia, and to distinguish the various species of -cancer. He kept at his house at Brompton a variety of wild animals for the -purposes of comparative anatomy, was often in danger from their violence, -and as often saved by his own intrepidity. Sir Joseph Banks divided his -collection between Hunter and the British Museum. Unequalled in the -dissecting-room, Hunter was a bad lecturer. He was an irritable man, and -died suddenly during a disputation at St. George's Hospital which vexed -him. His death is said to have been hastened by fear of death from -hydrophobia, he having cut his hand while dissecting a man who had died of -that mysterious disease. Hunter used to call an operation "opprobrium -medici." - -In Portugal Row, as the southern side of the square used to be called, -lived Sir Richard Fanshawe, the translator of the _Lusiad_ of Camoens, and -of Guarini's _Pastor Fido_. Sir Richard was our ambassador in Spain; but -Charles, wishing to get rid of Lord Sandwich from the navy, recalled -Fanshawe, on the plea that he had ventured to sign a treaty without -authority. He died in 1666, on the intended day of his return, of a -violent fever, probably caused by vexation at his unmerited disgrace. Sir -Richard appears to have been a religious, faithful man and a good scholar, -but born in unhappy times and to an ill fate. Charles I. had very justly a -great respect for him. His wife was a brave, determined woman, full of -affection, good sense, and equally full of hatred and contempt for Lord -Sandwich, Pepys's friend, who had supplanted her husband in the embassy. - -On one occasion, on their way to Malaga, the Dutch trading vessel in which -she and her husband were was threatened by a Turkish galley which bore -down on them in full sail. The captain, who had rendered his sixty guns -useless by lumbering them up with cargo, resolved to fight for his L30,000 -worth of goods, and therefore armed his two hundred men and plied them -with brandy. The decks were partially cleared, and the women ordered below -for fear the Turks might think the vessel a merchant-ship and board it. -Sir Richard, taking his gun, bandolier, and sword, stood with the ship's -company waiting for the Turks.[733] But we must quote the brave wife's own -simple words:--"The beast the captain had locked me up in the cabin. I -knocked and called long to no purpose, until at length the cabin-boy came -and opened the door. I, all in tears, desired him to be so good as to give -me the blue thrum cap he wore and his tarred coat, which he did, and I -gave him half-a-crown; and putting them on, and flinging away my -night-clothes, I crept up softly and stood upon the deck by my husband's -side, as free from fear as, I confess, from discretion; but it was the -effect of that passion which I could never master. By this time the two -vessels were engaged in parley, and so well satisfied with speech and -sight of each other's forces, that the Turks' man-of-war tacked about and -we continued our course. But when your father saw me retreat, looking upon -me, he blessed himself and snatched me up in his arms, saying, 'Good God! -that love can make this change!' and though he seemingly chid me, he would -laugh at it as often as he remembered that journey." This same vessel, a -short time after, was blown up in the harbour with the loss of more than a -hundred men and all the lading.[734] - -This brave, good woman showed still greater fortitude when her husband -died and left her almost penniless in a strange country. She had only -twenty-eight doubloons with which to bring home her children, and sixty -servants, and the dead body of her husband. She, however, instantly sold -her carriages and a thousand pounds' worth of plate, and setting apart the -queen's present of two thousand doubloons for travelling expenses, started -for England. "God," she says, in her brave, pious way, "did hear, and -see, and help me, and brought my soul out of trouble." - -In 1677 Lady Fanshawe took a house in Holborn Row, the north side of the -square, and spent a year lamenting "the dear remembrances of her past -happiness and fortune; and though she had great graces and favours from -the king and queen and whole court, yet she found at the present no -remedy."[735] - -Lord Kenyon lived at No. 35 in 1805. Jekyll was fond of joking about -Kenyon's stinginess, and used to say he died of eating apple-pie crust at -breakfast to save the expense of muffins; and that Lord Ellenborough, who -succeeded on Kenyon's death to the Chief Justiceship, always used to bow -to apple-pie ever afterwards which Jekyll called his "apple-pie-ety." The -princesses Augusta and Sophia once told Tom Moore, at Lady Donegall's that -the king used to play tricks on Kenyon and send the despatch-box to him at -a quarter past seven, when it was known the learned lord was in bed to -save candlelight.[736] Lord Ellenborough used to say that the final word -in "Mors janua vitae" was mis-spelled _vita_ on Kenyon's tomb to save the -extra cost of the diphthong.[737] George III. used to say to Kenyon, "My -Lord, let us have a little more of your good law, and less of your bad -Latin." - -Lord Campbell, who gives a very pleasant sketch of Chief Justice Kenyon, -with his bad temper and bad Latin, his hatred of newspaper writers and -gamblers, and his wrath against pettifoggers, describes his being taken in -by Horne Tooke, and laughs at his ignorantly-mixed metaphors. He seems to -have been a respectable second-rate lawyer, conscientious and upright. "He -occupied," says Lord Campbell, "a large gloomy house, in which I have seen -merry doings when it was afterwards transferred to the Verulam Club." The -tradition of this house was that "it was always Lent in the kitchen and -Passion Week in the parlour." On some one mentioning the spits in Lord -Kenyon's kitchen, Jekyll said, "It is irrelevant to talk about the spits, -for nothing _turns_ upon them." The judge's ignorance was profound. It is -reported that in a trial for blasphemy the Chief Justice, after citing the -names of several remarkable early Christians, said, "Above all, gentlemen, -need I name to you the Emperor Julian, who was so celebrated for the -practice of every Christian virtue that he was called Julian the -Apostle?"[738] On another occasion, talking of a false witness, he is -supposed to have said, "The allegation is as far from truth as 'old -Boterium from the northern main'--a line I have heard or met with, God -knows where."[739] - -Lord Erskine lived at No. 36, in 1805, the year before he rose at once to -the peerage and the woolsack, and presided at Lord Melville's trial. He -did not hold the seals many months, and died in 1823. This great Whig -orator was the youngest son of the Earl of Buchan. He was a midshipman and -an ensign before he became a student at Lincoln's Inn. He began to be -known in 1778; in 1781 he defended Lord George Gordon, in 1794 Horne -Tooke, Hardy, Thelwall, and afterwards Tom Paine. - -The house that contains the Soane Museum, No. 13 on the north side, was -built in 1812, and, consisting of twenty-four small apartments crammed -with curiosities, is in itself a marvel of fantastic ingenuity. Every inch -of space is turned to account. On one side of the picture-room are -cabinets, and on the other movable shutters or screens, on which pictures -are also hung; so that a small area, only thirteen feet long and twelve -broad, contains as much as a gallery forty-five feet long and twenty feet -broad. A Roman altar once stood in the outer court. - -It is a disgrace to the trustees that this curious museum is kept so -private, and that such impediments are thrown in the way of visitors. It -is open only two days a week in April, May, and June, but at certain -seasons a third day is granted to foreigners, artists, and people from the -country. To obtain tickets, you are obliged to get, some days before you -visit, a letter from a trustee, or to write to the curator, enter your -name in a book, and leave your card. All this vexatious hindrance and -fuss has the desired effect of preventing many persons from visiting a -museum left, not to the trustees or the curator, but to the nation--to -every Englishman. In order to read the books, copy the pictures, or -examine the plans and drawings, the same tedious and humiliating form must -be gone through. - -The gem of all the Soane treasures is an enormous transparent alabaster -sarcophagus, discovered by Belzoni in 1816 in a tomb in the valley of -Beban el Molook, near Thebes. It is nine feet four inches long, three feet -eight inches wide, two feet eight inches deep, and is covered without and -within with beautifully-cut hieroglyphics. It was the greatest discovery -of the runaway Paduan Monk, and was undoubtedly the cenotaph or -sarcophagus of a Pharaoh or Ptolemy. It was discovered in an enormous tomb -of endless chambers, which the Arabs still call "Belzoni's tomb." On the -bottom of the case is a full-length figure in relief, of Isis, the -guardian of the dead. Sir John Soane gave L2000 for this sarcophagus to -Mr. Salt, Consul General of Egypt and Belzoni's employer. The raised lid -is broken into nineteen pieces. The late Sir Gardner Wilkinson considered -this to be the cenotaph of Osirei, the father of Rameses the Great. But -the forgotten king for whom the Soane sarcophagus was really executed was -Seti, surnamed Meni-en-Ptah, the father of Rameses the Great; he is called -by Manetho Sethos.[740] Dr. Lepsius dates the commencement of his reign -B.C. 1439. Dr. Brugsch places it twenty years earlier. Mr. Sharpe, with -that delightful uncertainty characteristic of Egyptian antiquaries, drags -the epoch down two hundred years later. Seti was the father of the Pharaoh -who persecuted the Israelites, and he made war against Syria. His son was -the famous Rameses. All three kings were descended from the Shepherd -Chiefs. The most beautiful fragment in Karnak represents this monarch, -Seti, in his chariot, with a sword like a fish-slice in one hand, while in -the other he clutches the topknots of a group of conquered enemies, -Nubian, Syrian, and Jewish. The work is full of an almost Raphaelesque -grace. - -After this come some of Flaxman's and Banks's sketches and models, a cast -of the shield of Achilles by the former, and one of the Boothby monument -by the latter. There is also a fine collection of ancient gems and -intaglios, pure in taste and exquisitely cut, and a set of the Napoleon -medals, selected by Denon for the Empress Josephine, and in the finest -possible state. We may also mention Sir Christopher Wren's watch, some -ivory chairs, and a table from Tippoo Saib's devastated palace at -Seringapatam, and a richly-mounted pistol taken by Peter the Great from a -Turkish general at Azof in 1696. The latter was given to Napoleon by the -Russian emperor at the treaty of Tilsit in 1807, and was presented by him -to a French officer at St. Helena. The books, too, are of great interest. -Here is the original MS. copy of the _Gierusalemme Liberata_, published at -Ferrara in 1581, and in Tasso's own handwriting; the first four folio -editions of Shakspere, once the property of that great actor and -Shaksperean student John Philip Kemble; a folio of designs for Elizabethan -and Jacobean houses by the celebrated architect John Thorpe; Fauntleroy -the forger's illustrated copy of Pennant's _London_, purchased for six -hundred and fifty guineas; a Commentary on Paul's Epistles, illuminated by -the laborious Croatian, Giulio Clovio (who died in 1578), for Cardinal -Grimani. Vasari raves about the minute finish of this painter. - -The pictures, too, are good. There are three Canalettis full of that Dutch -Venetian's clear common sense; the finest, a view on the Grand Canal--his -favourite subject--and "The Snake in the Grass," better known as "Love -unloosing the Zone of Beauty," by Reynolds. There is a sadly faded replica -of this in the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg. This one was purchased at -the Marchioness of Thomond's sale for L500. The "Rake's Progress," by -Hogarth, in eight pictures, was purchased by Sir John in 1802 for L598. -These inimitable pictures are incomparable, and display the fine, pure, -sober colour of the great artist, and his broad touch so like that of Jan -Steen. - -The Soane collection also boasts of Hogarth's four "Election" pictures, -purchased at Garrick's sale for L1732 10s. They are rather dark in tone. -There is also a fine but curious Turner, "Van Tromp's Barge entering the -Texel;" a portrait by Goma of Napoleon in 1797, when emaciated and -haggard, and a fine miniature of him in 1814, when fat and already on the -decline, both physically and mentally, by Isabey the great -miniature-painter, taken at Elba in 1814. In the dining-room is a portrait -of Soane by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and in the gallery under the dome a bust -of him by Chantrey. - -Sir John Soane was the son of a humble Reading bricklayer, and brought up -in Mr. Dance's office. Carrying off a gold and silver medal at the -Academy, he was sent as travelling student to Rome. In 1791 he obtained a -Government employment, in 1800 enlarged the Bank of England, and in 1806 -became Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy. He built the -Dulwich Gallery, and in 1826 the Masonic Hall in Great Queen Street. In -1827 he gave L1000 to the Duke of York's monument. At the close of his -life he left his collection of works of art, valued at L50,000, to the -nation, and died in 1837,[741] leaving his son penniless. In 1835 the -English architects presented Sir John with a splendid medal in token of -their approbation of his conduct and talents. - -The Literary Fund Society, instituted in 1790, and incorporated in 1818, -had formerly rooms at No. 4 Lincoln's Inn Fields. The society was -established in order to aid authors of merit and good character who might -be reduced to poverty by unavoidable circumstances, or be deprived of the -power of exertion by enfeebled faculties or old age. George IV. and -William IV. both contributed one hundred guineas a year to its funds, and -this subscription is continued by our present Queen. The society -distributed L1407 in 1846. The average annual amount of subscriptions and -donations is about L1100. The Literary Fund Society moved afterwards to -73 Great Russell Street. Some years ago a split occurred in this society. -Charles Dickens and Mr. C. W. Dilke, the proprietor of the _Athenaeum_, -objecting to the wasteful expense of the management, seceded from it; the -result of this secession was the founding of the Guild of Literature, and -the collection of L4000 by means of private theatricals--a sum which, -unfortunately, still lies partly dormant. The Fund is now domiciled in -Bloomsbury. - -Both Pepys and Evelyn praise the house of Mr. Povey in Lincoln's Inn -Fields as a prodigy of elegant comfort and ingenuity. The marqueterie -floors, "the perspective picture in the little closet," the grotto -cellars, with a well for the wine, the fountains and imitation porphyry -vases, his pictures and the bath at the top of the house, seem to have -been the abstract of all luxurious ease. - -Names were first put on doors in London in 1760, some years before the -street-signs were removed. In 1764 houses were first numbered; the -numbering commenced in New Burlington Street, and Lincoln's Inn Fields was -the second place numbered. - -In Carey Street lived that excellent woman Mrs. Hester Chapone, who -afterwards removed to Arundel Street. She was a friend of Mrs. Carter, who -translated Epictetus, and of Mrs. Montagu, the Queen of the Blue -Stockings. She was one of the female admirers who thronged round -Richardson the novelist, and she married a young Templar whom he had -introduced to her. It was a love match, and she had the misfortune of -losing him in less than ten months after their marriage. Her celebrated -letters on _The Improvement of the Mind_, published in 1773, were written -for a favourite niece, who married a Westminster Clergyman and died in -childbed. Though Mrs. Chapone's letters are now rather dry and -old-fashioned, reminding us of the backboards of a too punctilious age, -they contain some sensible and well-expressed thoughts. Here is a sound -passage:--"Those ladies who pique themselves on the particular excellence -of neatness are very apt to forget that the decent order of the house -should be designed to promote the convenience and pleasure of those who -are to be in it; and that if it is converted into a cause of trouble and -constraint, their husbands' guests would be happier without it."[742] - -Gibbons's Tennis Court stood in Vere Street, Clare Market; it was turned -into a theatre by Thomas Killigrew. Ogilby the poet, started a lottery of -books at "the old theatre" in June 1668. He describes the books in his -advertisements as "all of his own designment and composure." - -"The Duke's Theatre" stood in Portugal Street, at the back of Portugal -Row. It was pulled down in 1835 to make room for the enlargement of the -Museum of the College of Surgeons. Before that it had been the china -warehouse of Messrs. Spode and Copeland.[743] There had been, however, -frailer things than china in the house in Pepys's time. Here, the year of -the Restoration, came Killigrew with the actors from the Red Bull, -Clerkenwell, and took the name of the King's Company. Three years later -they moved to Drury Lane. Davenant's company then came to Portugal Street -in 1662, deserting their theatre, once a granary, in Salisbury Court. They -played here till 1671, when they returned to their old theatre, then -renovated under the management of Charles Davenant and the celebrated -Betterton, the great tragedian. They afterwards united in Drury Lane, and -again fell apart. In 1695 a company, headed by Betterton, with Congreve -for a partner, re-opened the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It then -became celebrated for pantomimes under Rich, the excellent harlequin. On -his removal to Covent Garden it was deserted, re-opened by Gifford from -Goodman's Fields, and finally ceased to be a theatre about 1737, so that -its whole life did not extend to more than one generation. - -Actresses first appeared in London in Prynne's time. Soon after the -Restoration a lady of Killigrew's company took the part of Desdemona. In -January 1661 Pepys saw women on the stage at the Cockpit Theatre: the play -was Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beggars' Bush." The prologue to "Othello" in -1660 contains the following line:[744]-- - - "Our women are defective and so sized, - You'd think they were some of the guard disguised; - For, to speak truth, men act that are between - Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen, - With bone so large, and nerve so uncompliant, - That, when you call Desdemona, enter giant." - -The Puritans were now happily in the minority, and so the attempt -succeeded. Davenant did not bring forward his actresses till June 1661, -when he produced his "Siege of Rhodes." Kynaston, Hart, Burt, and Clun, -famous actors of Charles II.'s time, were all excellent representatives of -female characters. - -It was at the Duke's Theatre, in 1680, that Nell Gwynn who was present, -being reviled by one of the audience, and William Herbert, who had married -a sister of one of the king's mistresses, taking up Nell's quarrel--a -sword fight took place between the two factions in the house. This -hot-blooded young gallant Herbert grew up to be Earl of Pembroke and first -plenipotentiary at Ryswick. - -The chief ladies at the Duke's House were Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Davies, and -Mrs. Saunderson. The first of these ladies, generally known as "Roxalana," -from a character of that name in the "Siege of Rhodes," resisted for a -long time the addresses of Aubrey de Vere, the last Earl of Oxford, a -wicked brawling roysterer, and a disgrace to his name, who at last -obtained her hand by the cruel deception of a sham marriage. The pretended -priest was a trumpeter, the witness a kettle-drummer in the king's -regiment. The poor creature threw herself in vain at the king's feet and -demanded justice, but gradually grew more composed upon an annuity of a -thousand crowns a year.[745] - -As for Mrs. Davies, who danced well and played ill, she won the -susceptible heart of Charles II. by her singing the song, "My lodging is -on the cold, cold ground." "Through the marriage of the daughter of Lord -Derwentwater with the eighth Lord Petre," says Dr. Doran, "the blood of -the Stuarts and of Moll Davies still runs in their lineal descendant, the -present and twelfth lord."[746] - -Mrs. Saunderson became the excellent wife of the great actor Betterton. -For about thirty years she played the chief female characters, especially -in Shakspere's plays, with great success. She taught Queen Anne and her -sister Mary elocution, and after her husband's death received a pension of -L500 a year from her royal pupil. - -In 1664 Pepys went to Portugal Street to see that clever but impudent -impostor, the German Princess, appear after her acquittal at the Old -Bailey for inveigling a young citizen into a marriage, acting her own -character in a comedy immortalising her exploit. - -In February 1666-7 Pepys goes again to the Duke's Playhouse, and observes -there Rochester the wit and Mrs. Stewart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond, -the same lady whose portrait we retain as Britannia on the old -halfpennies. "It was pleasant," says the tuft-hunting gossip, "to see how -everybody rose up when my Lord John Butler, the Duke of Ormond's son, came -into the pit, towards the end of the play, who was a servant to Mrs. -Mallett, and now smiled upon her and she on him."[747] - -The same month, 1667-8, Pepys revisits the Duke's House to see Etherege's -new play, "She Would if She Could." He was there by two o'clock, and yet -already a thousand people had been refused at the pit. The fussy -public-office man, not being able to find his wife, who was there, got -into an eighteenpenny box, and could hardly see or hear. The play done, it -being dark and rainy, Pepys stays in the pit looking for his wife and -waiting for the weather to clear up. And there for an hour and a half sat -also the Duke of Buckingham, Sedley, and Etherege talking; all abusing the -play as silly, dull, and insipid, except the author, who complained of the -actors for not knowing their parts. - -In May 1668 Pepys is again at this theatre in the balcony box, where sit -the shameless Lady Castlemaine and her ladies and women; on another -occasion he sits below the same group, and sees the proud lady look like -fire when Moll Davies ogles the king her lover. In another place he -observes how full the pit is, though the seats are two shillings and -sixpence a piece, whereas in his youth he had never gone higher than -twelvepence or eighteenpence.[748] - -Kynaston, the greatest of the "boy-actresses," was chiefly on this stage -from 1659 to 1699. Evadne was his favourite female part. Later in life he -took to heroic characters. Cibber says of him: "He had something of a -formal gravity in his mien, which was attributed to the stately step he -had been so early confined to. But even that in characters of superiority -had its proper graces; it misbecame him not in the part of Leon in -Fletcher's 'Rule a Wife,' which he executed with a determined manliness -and honest authority. He had a piercing eye, and in characters of heroic -life a quick imperious vivacity in his tone of voice that painted the -tyrant truly terrible. There were two plays of Dryden in which he shone -with uncommon lustre; in 'Arungzebe,' he played Morat, and in 'Don -Sebastian' Muley Moloch. In both these parts he had a fierce lion-like -majesty in his port and utterance that gave the spectator a kind of -trembling admiration."[749] Kynaston died in 1712, and left a fortune to -his son, a mercer in Covent Garden, whose son became rector of Aldgate. - -James Nokes was Kynaston's contemporary in Portugal Street. Leigh Hunt -calls him something between Liston and Munden. Dryden mentions him, in a -political epistle to Southerne, as indispensable to a play. Cibber says, -"The ridiculous solemnity of his features was enough to have set the whole -bench of Bishops into a titter." In his ludicrous distresses he sank into -such piteous pusilanimity that one almost pitied him. "When he debated any -matter by himself he would shut up his mouth with a dumb, studious pout, -and roll his full eye into a vacant amazement."[750] He died in 1692, -leaving a fortune and an estate near Barnet. - -But the great star of Portugal Street was Betterton, the Garrick of his -age. His most admired part was Hamlet; but Steele especially dilates on -his Othello. He acted his Hamlet from traditions handed down by Davenant -of Taylor, whom Shakspere himself is said to have instructed. Cibber says -that there was such enchantment in his voice alone that no one cared for -the sense of the words; and he adds, "I never heard a line in tragedy come -from Betterton wherein my judgment, my ear, and my imagination, were not -fully satisfied." This great man, who created no fewer than 130 -characters, was a friend of Dryden, Pope, and Tillotson. Kneller's -portrait of him is at Knowle;[751] A copy of it by Pope is preserved in -Lord Mansfield's gallery at Caen Wood. When he died, in 1710, Steele wrote -a "Tatler" upon him, in which he says "he laboured incessantly, and lived -irreproachably. He was the jewel of the English stage." He killed himself -by driving back the gout in order to perform on his benefit night, and his -widow went mad from grief. Betterton acted as Colonel Jolly in Colman's -"Cutter of Coleman Street," as Jaffier in Otway's _chef d'oeuvre_, as fine -gentlemen in Congreve's vicious but gay comedies, as a hero in Rowe's -flatulent plays, and as Sir John Brute in Vanbrugh's great comedy. - -Mrs. Barry was one of the best actresses in Portugal Street. She was the -daughter of an old Cavalier colonel, and was instructed for the stage by -Rochester, whose mistress she became. Dryden pronounced her the best -actress he had ever seen. Her face and colour varied with each passion, -whether heroic or tender. "Her mien and motion," says Cibber, "were superb -and gracefully majestic, her voice full, clear, and strong." In scenes of -anger, defiance, or resentment, while she was impetuous and terrible, she -poured out the sentiment with an enchanting harmony. She was so versatile -that she played Lady Brute as well as Zara or Belvidera. For her King -James II. originated the custom of actors' benefits. After a career of -thirty-eight years on the boards, she died at Acton in 1713. Kneller's -picture represents her with beautiful eyes, fine hair drawn back from her -forehead, "the face full, fair, and rippling with intellect,"[752] but her -mouth a little awry.[753] - -Mrs. Mountfort also appeared in Portugal Street before the two companies -united at Drury Lane in 1682. She was the best of male coxcombs, stage -coquettes, and country dowdies, a vivacious mimic, and of the most -versatile humour. Cibber sketches her admirably as Melantha in "Marriage a -la Mode:"--"She is a fluttering, finished impertinent, with a whole -artillery of airs, eyes, and motions. When the gallant recommended by her -father brings his letter of introduction, down goes her dainty diving body -to the ground, as if she were sinking under the conscious load of her own -attractions; then she launches into a flood of fine language and -compliment, still playing her chest forward in fifty falls, and rising -like a swan upon waving water; and to complete her impertinence, she is so -rapidly fond of her own wit that she will not give her lover leave to -praise it;[754] and at last she swims from him with a promise to return in -a twinkling." - -The virtuous, good, and discreet Mrs. Bracegirdle was another favourite in -Portugal Street. For her Congreve, who affected to be her lover, wrote his -Araminta and Cynthia, his Angelica, his Almeria, and his Millamant in "The -way of the world." All the town was in love with her youth, cheerful -gaiety, musical voice, the happy graces of her manner, her dark eyes, -brown hair, and expressive, rosy-brown face. Her Statira justified Nat -Lee's frantic Alexander for all his rant; and "when she acted Millamant, -all the faults, follies, and affectation of that agreeable tyrant were -venially melted down into so many charms and attractions of a conscious -beauty." Mrs. Bracegirdle was on the stage from 1680 to 1707. She lived -long enough to warn Cibber against envy of Garrick, and died in 1748. - -Three of Congreve's plays, "Love for Love," "The Mourning Bride," and "The -Way of the World," came out in Portugal Street. Steele, in the _Tatler_, -No. 1, mentions "Love for Love" as being acted for Betterton's -benefit--Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Doggett taking parts. He -describes the stage as covered with gentlemen and ladies, "so that when -the curtain was drawn it discovered even there a very splendid audience." -"In Dryden's time," says Steele, "You used to see songs, epigrams, and -satires in the hands of every person you met [at the theatre]; now you -have only a pack of cards, and instead of the cavils about the turn of the -expression, the elegance of style and the like, the learned now dispute -only about the truth of the game." - -Poor Mountfort, the most handsome, graceful, and ardent of stage lovers, -the most admirable of courtly fops, and the best dancer and singer of the -day, strutted his little hour in Portugal Street till run through the body -by Lord Mohun's infamous boon companion. His career extended from 1682 to -1695. He was only thirty-three when he died. - -The last proprietor of the theatre was Rich, an actor who, failing in -tragedy, turned harlequin and manager, and became celebrated for producing -spectacles, ballets, and pantomimes. Under the name of Lun he revelled as -harlequin, and was admirable in a scene where he was hatched from an egg. - -Pope, always sore about theatrical matters, describes this manager's -pompousness in the _Dunciad_ (book iii.):-- - - "At ease - 'Midst storm of paper fierce hail of pease, - And proud his mistress' order to perform, - Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." - -Rich's great success was the production of Gay's _Beggars' Opera_ in -1727-8. This piece brought L2000 to the author, and for a time drove the -Italian Opera into the shade. It ran sixty-three nights the first season, -and then spread to all the great towns in Great Britain. Ladies carried -about the favourite songs engraved on their fan-mounts, and they were also -printed on fire-screens and other furniture. Miss Lavinia Fenton, who -acted Polly, became the idol of the town; engravings of her were sold by -thousands: her life was written, and collections were made of her -jests.[755] Eventually she married the Duke of Bolton. Sir Robert Walpole -laughed at the satire against himself, and "Gay grew rich, and Rich gay," -as the popular epigram went. Hogarth drew the chief scene with Walker as -Macheath, and Spiller as Mat o' the Mint. Swift was vexed to find his -Gulliver for the time forgotten. - -The custom of allowing young men of fashion to have chairs upon the stage -was an intolerable nuisance to the actors before Garrick. In 1721 it led -to a desperate riot at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre. Half-a-dozen -beaux, headed by a tipsy earl, were gathered round the wings, when the -earl reeled across the stage where Macbeth and his lady were then acting, -to speak to a boon companion at the opposite side. Rich the manager, vexed -at the interruption, forbade the earl the house, upon which the earl -struck Rich and Rich the earl. Half-a-dozen swords at once sprang out and -decreed that Rich must die; but Quin and his brother actors rushed to the -rescue with bare blades, charged the coxcombs, and drove them through the -stage-door into the kennel. The beaux returning to the front, rushed into -the boxes, broke the sconces, slashed the hangings, and threatened to burn -the house; upon which doughty Quin and a party of constables and watchmen -flung themselves on the rioters and haled them to prison. The actors, -intimidated, refused to re-open the house till the king granted them a -guard of soldiers, a custom that has not long been discontinued. It was -not till 1780 that the habit of admitting the vulgar, noisy, and turbulent -footmen gratis was abandoned.[756] - -Macklin, afterwards the inimitable Shylock and Sir Pertinax, played small -parts at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre till 1731, when a short speech as -Brazencourt, in Fielding's "Coffee-house Politicians," betrayed the true -actor. He lived till over a hundred, so long that he did not leave Covent -Garden till after Braham's appearance, and Braham many of our elder -readers have seen.[757] - -Macklin, an Irishman, and in early life a Dragoon officer, was irritable, -restless, and pugnacious; he obtained his first triumph at Drury Lane, as -Shylock in 1741. In stern malignity, no one has surpassed Macklin. His -acting was hard, but manly and weighty, though his features were rather -rigid. He naturally condemned Garrick's action and gesture as -superabundant. His Sir Pertinax was excellent in its sly and deadly -suppleness. He was also admirable in Lovegold, Scrub, Peachem, Polonius, -and many Irish characters. - -Quin was at Portugal Street as early as 1718-19. There he first "delighted -the town by his chivalry as Hotspur, his bluntness as Clytus, his -fieriness as Bajazet, his grandeur as Macbeth, his calm dignity as Brutus, -his unctuousness as Falstaff, his duplicity as Maskwell, and his coarse -drollery as Sir John Brute."[758] It was just before this, that locked in -a room and compelled to fight, he had killed Bowen, who was jealous of his -acting as Bajazet. When Rich refused to give Quin more than L300 a year, -he joined the Drury Lane company, where he instantly got L500 per annum. - -When Rich grew wealthy enough to hire a new theatre in Covent Garden, he -left Portugal Street. Almost the last play acted there was "The -Anatomist," by Ravenscroft, a second-rate author of Dryden's time. - -The mob attributed the flight of Rich from the old theatre to the -appearance of a devil during the performance of the pantomime of -"Harlequin and Dr. Faustus," a play in which demons abound. The -supernumerary spirit ascending by the roof instead of leaving by the door -with his paid companions, was believed to have so frightened manager Rich -that, taking the warning against theatrical profanity to heart, he never -had the courage to open the theatre again.[759] The legend is curious, as -it proves that even in 1732 the old Puritan horror of theatricals had not -quite died out, and that at that period the poorer part of the audience -was still ignorant enough to attribute mechanical tricks to supernatural -interference. - -Garrick, in one of his prologues, speaks of Rich, under the name of Lun-- - - "When Lun appeared with matchless art and whim, - He gave the power of speech to every limb; - Though masked and mute, convey'd his quick intent, - And told in frolic gestures all he meant; - But now the motley coat and sword of wood - Require a tongue to make them understood." - -Every motion of Rich meant something. His "statue scene" and "catching the -butterfly" were moving pictures. His "harlequin hatched from an egg by -sun-heat" is highly spoken of; Jackson calls it "a masterpiece of dumb -show." From the first chipping of the egg, his receiving of motion, his -feeling the ground, his standing upright, to his quick harlequin trip -round the broken egg, every limb had its tongue. Walpole says, "His -pantomimes were full of wit, and coherent, and carried on a story." Yet -Rich was so ignorant that he called a 'turban' a 'turbot,' and an -'adjective' an 'adjutant.' - -Spiller, who died of apoplexy in Portugal Street, in 1729-30 as he was -playing in the "Rape of Proserpine," was inimitable in old men. This was -the year that Quin played Macheath for his benefit, and Fielding brought -out his inimitable "Tom Thumb" at the Haymarket, to ridicule the bombast -of Thomson and Young. - -King's College Hospital, which occupies a large portion of the southern -side of Carey Street, is connected with the medical school of King's -College, and is supported by voluntary contributions. For each guinea a -year a subscriber may recommend one in and two out patients. Contributors -acquire the same right for every donation of ten guineas. Annual -subscribers of three guineas, or donors of thirty guineas, are governors -of the hospital. The house is surrounded by a population of nearly 400,000 -persons, of whom about 20,000 annually receive relief. In one year 363 -poor married women have been attended in confinements at their own houses. - -The last memorial of a gay generation, passed like last year's swallows, -was a headstone that used to stand in the burial-ground belonging to St. -Clement's, now the site of King's College Hospital. The slab rose from -rank green grass that was sprinkled with dead cats, worn-out shoes, and -fragments of tramps' bonnets; in summer it was half hid by a clump of -sunflowers.[760] It kept dimly alive the memory of Joe Miller, a taciturn -actor, in whose mouth Mottley, the poet put his volume of jokes that had -been raked from every corner of the town. Mottley was a place-seeker and a -writer of stilted tragedies and a bad comedy, for whose benefit night -Queen Caroline, wife of George II., condescended to sell tickets at her -own drawing-room.[761] Miller appears to have been an honest, and stupid -fellow, but some good sayings are embalmed in the rather coarse book which -bears his name. His portrait represents Joe as a broad-nosed man with -large saucer eyes, a big absurd mouth, and a look of comic stolid -surprise. He died in 1738, and the Jest Book was published the year after, -price one shilling. - -Joe Miller made his first appearance on the stage in 1715, at Drury Lane, -in Farquhar's comedy of "A trip to the Jubilee." He also played Clodpole -in Betterton's "Amorous Widow," Sir H. Gubbin in Steele's "Tender -Husband," La Foole in Ben Jonson's "Epicene," and above all Sir Joseph -Whittol in Congreve's "Old Bachelor." Hogarth designed a benefit ticket -for this play. As Ben in "Love for Love," Cibber cut out Joe Miller. In -1721 Joe opened a booth at Bartholomew Fair with Pinkethman. His last -great success was as the Miller in Dodsley's farce of "The King and the -Miller of Mansfield." Stephen Duck, the Wiltshire thresher, afterwards a -popular preacher, wrote his epitaph. Joe Miller's monument is still -carefully preserved in one of the rooms in King's College Hospital. John -Mottley, his editor, was the son of a Colonel Mottley, a Jacobite who -followed James into France. His son was placed in the Excise Office, and -grew up a place-hunter. He wrote a bad tragedy called "The Imperial -Captives," and was promised a commissionership of wine licenses by Lord -Halifax, and a place in the Exchequer by Sir Robert Walpole, but received -nothing from either. He compiled the Jest-Book, it is said partly from the -recollection of the comedian's conversations,[762] but it is doubtful if -this is true. The compilation (once so useful to diners-out) went through -three editions in 1739, and at about the thirteenth edition was reprinted, -after thirty years, by Barker, of Russell Street, Covent Garden.[763] - -The Grange public-house close by, with its picturesque old courtyard, is -mentioned by Davenant, in his "Playhouse to Let," as an inn patronised by -poets and actors. - -The Black Jack public-house in Portsmouth Street was Joe Miller's -favourite haunt. Some paintings on its walls still testify to the -occasional presence of artists of the last century. This inn used to be -called "The Jump," from that adroit young scoundrel Jack Sheppard having -once jumped from one of its first-floor windows to escape the armed -emissaries of that still greater thief, the thief-taker, Mr. Jonathan -Wild. - -When paviours dig deep under the Strand they find the fossil remains of -antediluvian monsters. A church in the street bears a name that carries us -back to the times of the Saxons and the Danes. In one lane there is a -Roman bath, in another there are the nodding gable-ends of houses at which -Beaumont and Fletcher may have looked, and which Shakspere and Ben Jonson -must have visited. So the Present is built out of the Past. The Strand -teems with associations of every period of history. The story of St. -Giles's parish alone should embrace the whole records of London vagrancy. -The chronicle of Lincoln's Inn Fields embraces reminiscences of half our -great lawyers. In the chapter on St. Martin's Lane I have been glad to -note down some interesting incidents in the careers of many of our -greatest painters. Long Acre leads us to Dryden, Cromwell, Wilson, and -Stothard. At Charing Cross we have stopped to see how brave men can die -for a good cause. - -A thorough history of our great city, considered in every aspect, would -almost be a condensed history of the world. I offer these pages to my -readers only as a humble contribution to the history of London. - -[Illustration: THE BLACK JACK, PORTSMOUTH STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.] - -Our commercial wealth and the vastness of our maritime enterprise is shown -in nothing more than by the distance from which we fetch our commonest -articles of consumption--tea from China, sugar from the West Indies, -coffee from Ceylon, oil from the farthest nooks of Italy, chocolate from -Mexico. An Englishman need not be very rich in order to consume samples -of all these productions of different hemispheres at a single meal. - -In the same manner many books of far-divided ages have gone to form the -patchwork of the present volume; I am like the merchant who sends his -ships to collect in different harbours, and across wide and adverse seas, -the materials that he needs. In this busy and overworked age there are -many persons who have no time themselves to make such voyages, no patience -to traverse such seas, even if they possessed the charts: it is for them I -have written, and it is from them I hope for some kind approval. - - - - -APPENDIX. - - "The West End seems to me one vast cemetery. Hardly a street but has - in it a house once occupied by dear friends with whom I had daily - intercourse: if I stopped and knocked now, who would know or take - interest in me? _The streets to me are peopled with shadows: the city - is as a city of the dead._" - - SAMUEL ROGERS. - - -THE STRAND (SOUTH SIDE).--p. 25. - - "I often shed tears in the motley Strand for fulness of joy at such - multitude of life."--CHARLES LAMB'S _Letters_, vol. i. - -The Strand is three-quarters of a mile long. Van de Wyngerede's view, -1543, shows straggling houses on the south side, but on the north side all -is open to Covent Garden. There were three water-courses, crossed by -bridges. Haycock's Ordinary, near Palsgrave Place, was much frequented in -the seventeenth century by Parliament men and town gallants. No. 217 was -the shop of Snow, a wealthy goldsmith who withstood the South Sea Bubble -without injury. Gay describes him during the panic with black pen behind -his ear. He says to Snow-- - - "Thou stoodst (an Indian king in size and hue); - Thy unexhausted shop was our Peru." - -The Robin Hood Debating Society held its meetings in Essex Street. Burke -spoke here, and Goldsmith was a member. The great Cottonian Library was -kept in Essex House from 1712 to 1730, on the site of the Unitarian -Chapel, built about 1774. Mr. Lindsey, Dr. Disney, Mr. Belsham -(Priestley's successor) preached here, and after Mr. Belsham the Rev. -Thomas Madge. At George's Coffee-house, now 213 Strand, Foote describes -the town wits meeting in 1751. Shenstone was a frequenter of this house, -and came here to read pamphlets--the subscription being one shilling. The -Grecian Coffee-house was used by Goldsmith and the Irish and Lancashire -Templars. Milford Lane was so named from an adjacent ford over the Thames. -A windmill stood near St. Mary's Church, temp. James I. Sir Richard Baker, -the worthy old chronicler whom Sir Roger de Coverley so admired, lived in -this lane in 1632-9. The old houses were taken down in 1852. No. 191 was -the shop of William Godwin, bookseller, the author of _Caleb Williams_, -and the friend of Lamb and Shelley.--Strype mentions the Crown and Anchor -Tavern. Here, in 1710, was instituted the Academy of Ancient Music. Here, -on Fox's birthday, in 1798, 2000 guests were feasted. Johnson and Boswell -occasionally supped here, and here the Royal Societies were held. In -Surrey Street, in a large garden-house at the east end fronting the river, -lived the Hon. Charles Howard, the eminent chemist who discovered the -process of sugar-refining _in vacuo_. - -At No. 169, now the Strand Theatre, Barker, an artist, exhibited the -panorama--his own invention--suggested to him when sketching under an -umbrella on the Calton Hill. No. 217, now a branch of the London and -Westminster Bank, was formerly Paul, Strahan, and Bates's,[764] who in -1858 disposed of their customers' securities to the amount of L113,625, -and were sentenced to fourteen years' penal servitude. The drinking -fountain opposite St. Mary's Church is a product of a most useful -association. The first fountain erected under its auspices was opened in -April 1859, by Lord John Russell, Lord Carlisle, and Mr. Gurney.--At No. -147 was published the _Sphinx_, and Jan. 2, 1828, No. 1 of the _Athenaeum_. -No. 149 is the shop once belonging to Mr. Mawe, the mineralogist, who was -succeeded by James Tennant, Professor of Mineralogy at King's College. At -No. 132 Strand (site of Wellington Street), the first circulating library -in London was started by a Mr. Wright, in 1740. Opposite Southampton -Street, from 1686 to late in the last century, lived Vaillant, the eminent -foreign bookseller. No. 143 was the site of the first office of the -_Morning Chronicle_ (Perry succeeding Woodfall in 1789). Lord Campbell and -Hazlitt were theatrical critics to this paper. Mr. Dickens was a -parliamentary reporter, Mr. Serjeant Spankie an editor, Campbell the poet -a contributor. On Perry's death, in 1821, it was purchased by Mr. Clement -for L42,000. The _Mirror_, the first cheap illustrated periodical was also -published at this office. At No. 1 lived Rudolph Ackermann, the German -printseller, who introduced lithography and annuals. He illuminated his -gallery when gas was a novelty. Aaron Hill was born in a dwelling on the -site of the present Beaufort House; Lord Clarendon lived here while his -unlucky western house was building; and here, in 1660, the Duke of York -married the chancellor's daughter. - -The York Buildings Water Company failed in 1731. Hungerford Hall and its -panoramic pictures were burnt in 1854. At No. 18 Strand, in 1776, the -elder Mathews the comedian was born; Dr. Adam Clarke and Rowland Hill used -to visit his father, who was a religious bookseller. No. 7 Craven Street -(Franklin's old house) was long occupied by the Society for the Relief of -Persons imprisoned for Small Debts. In Northumberland Court, once known as -"Lieutenants' Lodgings," Nelson once lodged. - - -NORFOLK STREET.--p. 44. - -Mr. Dickens has sketched Norfolk Street in his own inimitable way. -"Norfolk is a delightful street to lodge in, provided you don't go lower -down (Mrs. Lirriper dates from No. 81); but of a summer evening, when the -dust and waste paper lie in it, and stray children play in it, and a kind -of gritty calm and bake settles on it, and a peal of church-bells is -practising in the neighbourhood, it is a trifle dull; and never have I -seen it since at such a time, and never shall I see it ever more at such a -time, without seeing the dull June evening when that forlorn young -creature sat at her open corner window on the second, and me at my open -corner window (the other corner) on the third."[765] - - -THE STRAND THEATRE.--p. 53. - -The Strand Theatre, No. 169, formerly called Punch's Playhouse, was -altered in 1831 for Rayner, the low comedian, and Mrs. Waylett, the -singer. Here were produced many of Douglas Jerrold's early plays. Under -Miss Swanborough's management, Miss Marie Wilton, arch and witty as -Shakspere's Maria, delighted the town. Here poor Rogers, now dead, was -inimitable in burlesque female characters. - - -THE SOMERSET COFFEE-HOUSE.--p. 56. - -The bold and redoubtable Junius (now pretty well ascertained, after much -inkshed, to be Sir Philip Francis) occasionally left his letters for -Woodfall at the bar of the Somerset Coffee-house at the east corner of the -entrance to King's College. His other houses of call were the bar of the -New Exchange, and now and then Munday's in Maiden Lane. - - -SOMERSET HOUSE.--p. 56. - -The School of Design, formerly located in Somerset House, was established -in 1857, under the superintendence of the Board of Trade, for the -improvement of ornamental art, with regard more especially to our staple -English manufactures. The school is now incorporated with the Science and -Art Schools at South Kensington, which have been established, under -Government, in connection with South Kensington Museum. - - -KING'S COLLEGE.--p. 56. - -King's College and School (to the latter of which the author owes some -gratitude for a portion of his education) form a proprietary institution -that occupies an east wing of Somerset House which was built to receive -it. The college was founded in 1828; its fundamental principle is, that -instruction in religion is an indispensable part of instruction, without -which knowledge "will be conducive neither to the happiness of the -individual nor the welfare of the State." The college education is divided -into five departments:--1. Theology. 2. General Literature and Science. 3. -Applied Sciences. 4. Medicine. 5. The School. A certificate of good -conduct, signed by his last instructor, is required of each pupil on -entry. The age for admission is from nine to sixteen years. A limited -number of matriculated students can live within the walls. Each proprietor -can nominate two pupils--one to the school, and one to the college. The -museum once contained the celebrated calculating machine of the late Mr. -Charles Babbage. This scientific toy was given by the Commissioners of the -Woods and Forests. It is now at South Kensington. The collection of -mechanical models and philosophical instruments was formed by George III. -and presented to the college by Queen Victoria. - - -HELMET COURT.--p. 56. - -Helmet Court-so called from the Helmet Inn-is over against Somerset House. -The inn is enumerated in a list of houses and taverns made in the reign of -James I.[766] When the King of Denmark came to see his daughter, he was -lodged in Somerset House, and new kitchen-ranges were set up at the Helmet -and the Swan at the expense of the Crown. Henry Condell, a fellow-actor -with Shakspere, left his houses in Helmet Court to "Elizabeth, his -well-beloved wife."[767] - - -BEAUFORT BUILDINGS.--p. 83. - -Charles Dibdin, born 1745, the author of 1300 songs, gave his musical -entertainments at the Lyceum, and at Scott and Idle's premises in the -Strand. Latterly, assisted by his pupils, he conducted public musical -soirees at Beaufort Buildings. - - -COUTTS'S BANK.--p. 86. - -Mr. Coutts died in 1822. He was a pallid, sickly, thin old gentleman, who -wore a shabby coat and a brown scratch-wig.[768] He was once stopped in -the street by a good-natured man, who insisted on giving him a guinea. The -banker, however, declined the present with thanks, saying he was in no -"immediate want." Miss Harriet Mellon first appeared at Drury Lane in -1795, as Lydia Languish. Mr. Coutts married Miss Mellon in 1815. She made -her last appearance at Drury Lane, early in the same year, as Audrey. She -left the bulk of her fortune to Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts, whose gold the -_Morning Herald_ once computed at 13 tons, or 107 flour-sacks full. The -sum, L1,800,000, was the exact sum also left by old Jemmy Wood of -Gloucester. Counting a sovereign a minute, it would take ten weeks to -count; and placed sovereign to sovereign, it would reach 24 miles 260 -yards. - -Coutts's Bank was founded by George Middleton. Till Coutts's time it stood -near St. Martin's Church. Good-natured Gay banked there, and afterwards -Dr. Johnson, Sir Walter Scott, and the Duke of Wellington. The Royal -Family have banked at Coutts's ever since the reign of Queen Anne. - - -THE DARK ARCHES.--p. 97. - -"The Adelphi arches, many of which are used for cellars and coal-wharfs, -remind one in their grim vastness," says Mr. Timbs, "of the Etruscan -Cloaca of old Rome." Beneath the "dry arches" the most abandoned -characters used to lurk; outcasts and vagrants came there to sleep, and -many a street thief escaped from his pursuers in those subterranean haunts -before the introduction of gas-light and a vigilant police. Mr. Egg, that -tragic painter, placed the scene of one of his most pathetic pictures by -this part of what was once the river-bank. - - -SOCIETY OF ARTS.--p. 99. - -Lord Folkestone and Mr. Shipley founded the Society of Arts, at a meeting -at Rawthmell's Coffee-house, in Catharine Street, in March 1754. It was -proposed to give rewards for the discovery of cobalt and the cultivation -of madder in England. Premiums were also to be given for the best drawings -to a certain number of boys and girls under the age of sixteen. The first -prize, L15, was adjudged by the society to Cosway, then a boy of fifteen. -The society was initiated in Crane Court; from thence it removed to -Craig's Court, Charing Cross; from there to the Strand, opposite Beaufort -Buildings; and from thence, in 1774, to the Adelphi. - -The subjects of Barry's six pictures in the Council Room are the following -(beginning on the left as you enter):--1. "Orpheus." The figure of Orpheus -and the heads of the two reclining women are thought fine. 2. "A Grecian -Harvest Home" (the best of the series). 3. "Crowning the Victors at -Olympia." 4. "Commerce, or the Triumph of the Thames." (Dr. Burney, the -composer, is composedly floating among tritons and sea-nymphs in his grand -tie-wig and queue.) 5. "The Distribution of Premiums by the Society of -Arts." (This picture contains a portrait of Dr. Johnson, for which he -sat.) 6. "Elysium, or the State of Final Retribution." - -Barry did pretty well with this work, which occupied him from 1777 to -1783. The society gave him L300 and a gold medal, and also L500, the -profit of two exhibitions-total, L800. - -In 1776 the society had proposed to the Academy to decorate the Council -Room, and be reimbursed by the exhibition of the works. Reynolds and the -rest refused, but Barry soon afterwards obtained permission to execute the -whole, stipulating to be paid for his colours and models. Barry at the -time had only sixteen shillings in his pocket. During the progress of the -work the painter, being in want, applied for a small subscription through -Sir George Savile, but in vain. An insolent secretary even objected to his -charge for colours and models. The society afterwards relented and -advanced L100. Barry died poor, neglected, and half crazy, in 1806, aged -sixty-five. - -The Adelphi Rooms contain three poor statues (Mars, Venus, and Narcissus) -by Bacon, R.A., a portrait of Lord Romney by Reynolds, and a full-length -portrait of Jacob, Lord Folkestone, the first president, by Gainsborough. -In the ante-room, in a bad light, hangs a characteristic likeness of poor, -wrongheaded Barry. The pictures are to be seen between ten and four any -day but Wednesday and Saturday. The society meets every Wednesday at eight -from October 31 to July 31. - -In the Council Room, that parade-ground of learned men, Goldsmith once -made an attempt at a speech, but was obliged to sit down in confusion. Dr. -Johnson once spoke there on "Mechanics," "with a propriety, perspicuity, -and energy which excited general admiration."[769] - -Jonas Hanway, that worthy old Russian merchant, when he came to see -Barry's pictures, insisted on leaving a guinea instead of the customary -shilling. The Prince of Wales gave Barry sittings. Timothy Hollis left him -L100. Lord Aldborough declared that the painter had surpassed Raphael. -Lord Romney gave him 100 guineas for a copy of one of the heads, and Dr. -Johnson praised the "grasping mind" in the six pictures.[770] - - -DUCHY OF LANCASTER.--p. 110. - -The Duchy of Lancaster is a liberty (whatever that means) in the Strand. -It belongs to the Crown, the Queen being "Duchess of Lancaster." It begins -without Temple Bar and runs as far as Cecil Street. The annual revenue of -the duchy is about L75,000. - - -WATERLOO BRIDGE.--p. 124. - -Hood's exquisite poem, "The Bridge of Sighs," appeared in "Hood's -Magazine" in May 1844. The poet's son informs me that he believes that the -poem was not suggested by any special incident, but that a great many -suicides had been reported in the papers about that time. - - "The bleak wind of _March_ - Made her tremble and shiver" - -marks the date of the writing, - - "But not the dark arch - Of the black flowing river." - -The dark arch is that of Waterloo Bridge, a spot frequently selected by -unfortunate women who meditate suicide, on account of its solitude and -privacy. - - -YORK HOUSE.--p. 135. - -After the death of Buckingham, York House was entrusted to the -guardianship of that Flemish adventurer and quack in art, Sir Balthasar -Gerbier, who here quarrelled and would have fought with Gentilleschi, a -Pisan artist who had been invited over by Charles I., and of whom he was -intolerably jealous. Some of Gentilleschi's work is still preserved at -Marlborough House. The York Buildings Waterworks Company was started in -the 27th year of Charles II. In 1688 there were forty-eight shares. After -the Scotch rebellion in 1715, the company invested large sums in -purchasing forfeited estates, which no Scotchman would buy. The concern -became bankrupt. The residue of the Scotch estates was sold in 1783 for -L102,537.[771] - - -BUCKINGHAM STREET.--p. 135. - -It is always pleasant to recall any scenes on which the light of Mr. -Dickens's fancy has even momentarily rested. It was to Buckingham Street -that Mr. David Copperfield went with his aunt to take chambers commanding -a view of the river. They were at the top of the house, very near the -fire-escape, with a half-blind entry and a stone-blind pantry.[772] - - -HUNGERFORD BRIDGE.--p. 138. - -The Hungerford Suspension Bridge was purchased in 1860 by a company of -gentlemen, and used in the construction of the bridge across the Avon at -Clifton. This aerial roadway has a span of 703 feet, and is built at the -height of 245 feet. It cost little short of L100,000. A bridge at Clifton -was first suggested in 1753 by Alderman Vick of Bristol, who left a -nest-egg of L1000. The bridge was completed and opened in 1864. - - -THE GAIETY THEATRE, STRAND (NORTH SIDE).--p. 147. - -This elegant and well-appointed theatre, near the corner of Wellington -Street, was built in 1868, from the designs of Mr. C. J. Phillips. It -occupies the site of the Strand Music Hall, a large building which had -been erected in the place of an arcade which the late Lord Exeter had -built here in order to resuscitate the glories of old Exeter 'Change. Both -the arcade and music hall proved disastrous failures, whilst the Gaiety -Theatre, on the other hand, has turned out immensely successful, under the -management of Mr. John Hollingshead. - - -THE STRAND (NORTH SIDE).--p. 147. - -Sir John Denham, the poet, when a student at Lincoln's Inn, in 1638, in a -drunken frolic blotted out with ink all the Strand signs from Temple Bar -to Charing Cross. - -In a house in Butcher Row, Winter, Catesby, Wright, and Guy Fawkes met and -took the sacrament together. Raleigh's widow lived in Boswell Court, and -also Lord Chief Justice Lyttelton and Sir Richard and Lady Fanshawe; and -in Clement's Lane resided Sir John Trevor, cousin to Judge Jeffries and -Speaker to the House of Commons. Dr. Johnson's pew at St. Clement's is No. -18 in the north gallery; Dr. Croly put up a tablet to his memory. The -_Tatler_, 1710, announces a stage-coach from the One Bell in the Strand -(No. 313) to Dorchester. - -No. 317 was the forge kept by the Duchess of Albemarle's father, and it -faced the Maypole; Aubrey describes it as the corner shop, the first -turning to the right as you come out of the Strand into Drury Lane. Dr. -King died at No. 332, once the _Morning Chronicle_ office. The New Exeter -Change--the site of which is now covered by the Gaiety Theatre and -Restaurant--was designed by Sydney Smirke, with Jacobean frontage. East of -Exeter Change stood the Canary House, mentioned by Dryden as famous for -its sack with the "abricot" flavour. Pepys mentions Cary House, probably -the same place. At No. 352 was born, in 1798, Henry Neale the poet, son of -the map and heraldic engraver. In Exeter Change No. 1 of the _Literary -Gazette_ was published, January 25, 1817. Old Parr lodged at No. 405, the -Queen's Head public-house. No. 429, built for an insurance office by Mr. -Cockerell, has a fine facade. At No. 448 is the Electric Telegraph Office; -the time signal-ball, liberated by a galvanic current sent from Greenwich, -falls exactly at one, and drops ten feet. The old Golden Cross Hotel stood -farther west than the present. The Lowther Arcade, designed by Witherden -Young, is 245 feet long and 20 feet broad. Here the electric eel and -Perkin's steam-gun were exhibited about 1838. In 1832 a Society for the -Exhibition of Models had been formed here. In 1831 the skeleton of a whale -was exhibited in a tent in Trafalgar Square; it was 98 feet long, and -Cuvier had estimated it to be nearly a thousand years old. - -It should be added that for most of the facts in this note the author is -indebted to that treasure-house of topographical anecdote, _Curiosities of -London_, by J. Timbs, Esq., F.S.A., a book displaying an almost boundless -industry. - - -THE CROWN AND ANCHOR TAVERN.--p. 152. - -The Crown and Anchor Tavern, at the corner of Arundel Street, was for some -years the Whittington Club. Before the alterations it had an entrance from -the Strand, which is now closed, its door being now in Arundel Street. -Douglas Jerrold was one of the earliest promoters of this club, which was -much used by young men of business. In 1873, after having been closed for -some time, it was re-opened as the Temple Club. The King of Clubs was -started about 1801 by Mr. Robert (Bobus) Smith, brother of Sydney, a -friend of Canning's, and Advocate-General of Calcutta. It sat every -Saturday at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, at that time famous for its -dinners and wine, and a great resort for clubs. Politics were excluded. -One of the chief members was Mr. Richard Sharpe, a partner in a West India -house, and a Parliamentary speaker during Addington's and Perceval's -administrations. Mackintosh, Scarlett, Rogers the poetical banker, John -Allen, and M. Dumont, an emigre and friend of the Abbe de Lisle, were also -members. Erskine, too, often dropped in to spend an hour stolen from his -immense and overflowing business. He there told his story of Lord -Loughborough trying to persuade him not to take Tom Paine's brief. He once -met Curran there. A member of the club describes the ape's face of the -Irish orator, with the sunken and diminutive eyes that flashed lightning -as he compared poor wronged Ireland to "Niobe palsied with sorrow and -despair over her freedom, and her prosperity struck dead before her."[773] - - -WYCH STREET.--p. 164. - -"In a horrible little court, branching northward from Wych Street," writes -Mr. Sala, in an essay written in America, "good old George Cruikshank once -showed me the house where Jack Sheppard, the robber and prison-breaker, -served his apprenticeship to Mr. Wood, the carpenter; and on a beam in the -loft of this house Jack is said to have carved his name. * * * Theodore -Hook used to say that "he never passed through Wych Street in a -hackney-coach without being blocked up by a hearse and a coal waggon in -the van, and a mud-cart and the Lord Mayor's carriage in the rear." - - -NEWSPAPER OFFICES.--p. 167. - -It is almost impossible to enumerate all the Strand newspaper offices, -present and past. It is, perhaps, sufficient to mention _The Spectator_ (a -very able paper,--office in Waterloo Place); _The London Journal_ (a -cheap, well-conducted paper with an enormous circulation); _The Family -Herald_ (the house formerly of Mr. Leigh, bookseller, a relation of the -elder Mathews, and the first introducer of the _Guides_ that Mr. Murray -has now rendered so complete); _The Illustrated Times_, _The Morning -Post_, _Notes and Queries_, _The Queen_, _Law Times_, _Athenaeum_, and -_Field_ (in Wellington Street); _Bell's Life_, _The Globe_, _Bell's -Messenger_, _The Observer_, and lastly, _The Pall Mall Gazette_, and _The -Saturday Review_. - - -THE BEEF-STEAK CLUB.--p. 172. - -Bubb Doddington, Aaron Hill, "Leonidas" Glover, Sir Peere Williams (a -youth of promise, shot at the siege of Belleisle), Hoadly, and the elder -Colman (the author of _The Suspicious Husband_), were either guests or -members of this illustrious club, whose origin dates back to Rich's days -in 1735. Then came the days of Lord Sandwich, Wilkes, Bonnell Thornton, -Arthur Murphy, Churchill, and Tickell. In 1785 the Prince of Wales -(afterwards George IV.) became the twenty-fifth member. - -Churchill resigned when the club began to receive him coldly after his -desertion of his wife. Wilkes never visited the club after the -contemptuous rejection of his infamous poem, the _Essay on Woman_. Garrick -was a great ornament of the club; he once dined there dressed in the -character of Ranger. Little Serjeant Prime was another club celebrity of -that period. An anonymous writer describes a meeting of the club in or -about 1799. There were present John Kemble, Cobb of the India House, the -Duke of Clarence, Sir John Cox Hippisley, Charles Morris (the writer of -our best convivial songs), Ferguson of Aberdeen, Mingay, and the Duke of -Norfolk. As the clock struck five, a curtain drew up, discovering the -kitchen through a gridiron grating, over which was inscribed this motto-- - - "If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well - It were done quickly." - -The Duke of Norfolk ate at least three steaks, and then when the cloth was -removed, took the chair on a dais, elevated some steps above the table, -and above which hung the small cocked-hat in which Garrick played Ranger, -and other insignia of the society. He was also invested with an orange -ribbon, to which a silver gridiron was appended. The sound motto "Beef and -Liberty" is inscribed on the buttons of the members. It is the duty of the -junior member at this club to bring up the wine. The writer before quoted -describes seeing Lord Brougham and the Duke of Leinster performing this -subordinate duty. Sir John Hippisley was the man who Windham used to say -was very _nearly_ a clever fellow. Cobb was the author of "First Floor" (a -farce) and of three comic operas--"The Haunted Tower," "The Siege of -Belgrade," and "Ramah Drug." To the two former Storace set his finest -music. - -"Captain" Morris, the author of those delightful songs, "The Town and -Country Life" and "When the Fancy-stirring Bowl wakes the Soul to -Pleasure," used to brew punch and "out-watch the Bear" at this club till -after his seventy-eighth year. The Duke of Norfolk, at Kemble's -solicitation, gave the veteran bard a pleasant little Sabine retreat near -Dorking. Jack Richards, the presbyter of the club, was famous for -inflicting long verbal harangues on condemned social culprits. - -Another much respected member was old William Linley, Sheridan's -brother-in-law; nor must we forget Richard Wilson, Lord Eldon's secretary, -and Mr. Walsh, who had been in early life valet to Lord Chesterfield. The -club secretary, in 1828, was Mr. Henry Stephenson, comptroller to the Duke -of Sussex; and about this time also flourished, either as guests or -members, Lord Viscount Kirkwall, Rowland Stephenson the banker, and Mr. -Denison, then M.P. for Surrey.[774] - -A literary friend tells me that the last time he saw Mr. Thackeray was one -evening in Exeter Street. The eminent satirist of snobs was peering about -for the stage door of the Lyceum Theatre, or some other means of entrance -to the Beef-steak Club, with whose members he had been invited to dine. - - -EXETER CHANGE.--p. 175. - -Thomas Clark, "the King of Exeter Change," took a cutler's stall here in -1765 with L100 lent him by a stranger. By trade and thrift he grew so rich -that he once returned his income at L6000 a year, and before his death in -1816 he rented the whole ground-floor of the Change. He left nearly half a -million of money, and one of his daughters married Mr. Hamlet, the -celebrated jeweller. Some of the old materials of Exeter House, including -a pair of large Corinthian columns at the east end, were used in building -the Change, which was the speculation of a Dr. Barbon, in the reign of -William and Mary. - - -TRAFALGAR SQUARE.--p. 221. - -The fountains were constructed in 1845, after designs from Sir Charles -Barry. - -Morley's Hotel (1 to 3 at the south-east corner) is much frequented by -American travellers, who may be seen on summer evenings calmly smoking -their cigars outside the chief entrance. The late proprietor, who died a -few years since, left nearly a hundred thousand pounds to the Foundling -and other charities. - - -THE UNION CLUB.--p. 226. - -The Union Club House, which stands on the south-west of Trafalgar Square -and faces Cockspur Street, was built by Sir Robert Smirke, R.A. The club, -consisting of 1000 members, has been in existence forty-four years; its -expenditure is about L10,000 a year. Its trustees are the Earl of -Lonsdale, Viscount Gage, Lord Trimleston, and Sir John Henry Lowther, -Bart. The entrance money is thirty guineas, the annual subscription six -guineas. Mr. Peter Cunningham, writing in 1849, describes the club as "the -resort chiefly of mercantile men of eminence;" but its present members are -of all the professions. - - -DRUMMOND'S BANK.--p. 227. - -This bank is older than Coutts's. Pope banked there. The Duke of -Sutherland and many of the Scottish nobility bank there. - - -ST. MARTIN'S LANE.--p. 252. - -Roger Payne was a celebrated bookbinder in Duke's Court, St. Martin's -Lane, London. This ingenious artist, a native of Windsor Forest, was born -in 1739, and first became initiated into the rudiments of his business -under the auspices of Mr. Pote, bookseller to Eton College. On settling in -the metropolis, about the year 1766, he worked for a short time for Thomas -Osborne, bookseller in Holborn, but principally for _honest_ Thomas Payne, -of the Mews Gate, who, although of the same name, was not related to him. -His talents as an artist, particularly in the finishing department, were -of the first order, and such as, up to his time, had not been developed by -any other of his countrymen. "Roger Payne," says Dr. Dibdin, "rose like a -star, diffusing lustre on all sides, and rejoicing the hearts of all true -sons of bibliomania." He succeeded in executing binding with such artistic -taste as to command the admiration and patronage of many noblemen. His -_chef-d'oeuvre_ is a large paper copy of AEschylus, translated by the Rev. -Robert Potter, the ornaments and decorations of which are most splendid -and classical. The binding of this book cost Earl Spencer fifteen guineas. - -It was by his artistic talents alone that Roger Payne became so celebrated -in his day; for, owing to his excessive indulgence in strong ale, he was -in person a deplorable specimen of humanity. As evidence of this -propensity, his account-book contains the following memorandum of one -day's expenditure: "For bacon, one halfpenny; for liquor, one shilling." -Even his trade bills are literary curiosities in their way, and frequently -illustrate his unfortunate propensity. On one delivered to Mr. Evans for -binding Barry's work on _The Wines of the Ancients_, he wrote:-- - - "Homer the bard, who sung in highest strains, - Had, festive gift, a goblet for his pains: - Falernian gave Horace, Virgil fire, - And barley-wine my British muse inspire; - Barley-wine, first from Egypt's learned shore, - Be this the gift to me from Calvert's store!" - -During the latter part of his life, as might have been expected, Roger -Payne was the victim of poverty and disease. He closed his earthly career -at his residence in Duke's Court on Nov. 20, 1787, and was interred in the -burial-ground of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, at the expense of his worthy -patron, Mr. Thomas Payne. This excellent man had also a portrait taken and -engraved of his namesake at his work in his miserable den, under which Mr. -Bindley wrote the following lines:-- - - "ROGERUS PAYNE: Natus Vindesor. MDCCXXXIX.; denatus Londin. - MDCCLXXXVII. Effigiem hanc graphicam solertis BIBLIOPEGI [Greek: - Mnemosunon] meritis BIBLIOPOLA dedit. Sumptibus Thomae Payne. [Etch'd - and published by S. Harding, No. 127 Pall Mall, March 1, 1800."][775] - - -HEMINGS' ROW.--p. 252. - -Hemings' Row, St. Martin's Lane, was originally called Dirty Lane.[776] -The place probably derived its name from John Hemings, an apothecary -living there in 1679. Peter Cunningham writes in 1849: "Upon an old wooden -house at the west end of this street, near the second-floor window, is the -name given above, and the date 1680."[777] - - -BEDFORDBURY.--p. 261. - -Mr. James Payne, a bookseller of Bedfordbury (perhaps the son of Thomas -Payne), died in Paris in 1809. Mr. Burnet describes him as remarkable for -amenity as for probity and learning. Repeated journeys to Italy, France, -and Germany had enabled him to collect a great number of precious MSS. and -rare first editions, most of which went to enrich Lord Spencer's -library--the most splendid collection ever made by a private person.[778] - - -EARL OF BRISTOL.--p. 264. - -Digby, Earl of Bristol, whom Pepys accuses of losing King Charles his head -by breaking off the treaty of Uxbridge, lived in Lincoln's Inn Fields. His -second daughter, Lady Ann, married the evil Earl of Sutherland. It was -Bristol who was base enough to impeach Lord Clarendon for selling Dunkirk -and making Charles marry a barren queen. Burnet describes the earl as -having become a Roman Catholic in order to be qualified for serving under -Don John in Flanders. He was an astrologer,[779] and had the impudence to -tell the king he was in danger from his brother. He renounced his new -religion openly at Wimbledon,[780] and then fled to France. - - -WILD HOUSE.--p. 277. - -Wild House, Drury Lane, was formerly the town mansion of the Welds of -Lulworth Castle. Short's Gardens were so called from Dudley Short, Esq., -who had a mansion here with fine gardens in the reign of Charles II. In -Parker Street, Philip Parker, Esq., had a mansion in 1623. - - -CRAVEN HOUSE, DRURY LANE.--p. 292. - -Pepys frequently mentions Lord Craven as attending the meetings at the -Trinity House upon Admiralty business. The old veteran, whom he -irreverently calls "a coxcomb," complimented him on several occasions upon -his popularity with the Duke of York. Pennant says that Lord Craven and -the Duke of Albemarle "heroically stayed in town during the dreadful -pestilence, and, at the hazard of their lives, preserved order in the -midst of the terrors of the time."[781] This fine old Don Quixote happened -to be on duty at St. James's when William's Dutch troops were coming -across the park to take possession. Lord Craven would have opposed their -entrance, but his timid master forbidding him to resist, he marched away -"with sullen dignity." The date of the sale of the pest-houses should be -1722, not 1772. - - -DRURY LANE.--p. 299. - -In the Regency time, and before, Drury Lane was what the Haymarket is now. -Oyster shops, low taverns, and singing-rooms of the worst description -surrounded the theatre. One of the worst of these, even down to our own -times, was "Jessop's" ("The Finish")--a great resort of low -prize-fighters, gamblers, sporting men, swindlers, spendthrifts, and -drunkards. "_H.'s_" (I veil the infamous name), described in a MS. of -Horace Walpole, is now a small, dingy theatrical tailor's, and in the -besmirched back-shop shreds of gilding and smears of colour still show -where Colonel Hanger knocked off the heads of champagne bottles, and -afterwards, Lord Waterford and such "bloods" squandered their money and -their health. - - -THE SAVAGE CLUB.--p. 303. - -The Savage Club, which was started at the Crown Tavern in Drury Lane, and -then removed to rooms next the Lyceum, and said to have been those once -occupied by the Beef-steak Club, is now moored at Evans's Hotel, Covent -Garden. The name of the club has a duplex signification; it refers to -Richard Savage the poet, and also to the Bohemian freedom of its members. -It includes in its number no small share of the literary talent of the -London newspaper and dramatic world. - - -CLARE MARKET.--p. 339. - -Denzil Street was so called by the Earl of Clare in 1682, in memory of his -uncle Denzil, Lord Holles, who died 1679-80. He was one of the five -members of Parliament whom Charles I. so despotically and so unwisely -attempted to seize. The inscription on the south-west wall of the street -was renewed in 1796. - - -STREET CHARACTERS.--p. 381. - -It would be impossible to recapitulate the street celebrities from -Hogarth's time to the present day which St. Giles's has harboured. A -writer in _Notes and Queries_ mentions a man who used to sell dolls' -bedsteads, and who was always said to have been the king's evidence -against the Cato Street conspirators. Charles Lamb describes, in his own -inimitable way, an old sailor without legs who used to propel his -mutilated body about the streets on a wooden framework supported on -wheels. He was said to have been maimed during the Gordon riots. But I -have now myself to add to the list the most remarkable relic of all. There -is (1868?) to be seen any day in the London streets a gaunt grey-haired -old blind beggar, with hard strongly-marked features and bushy eyebrows. -This is no less a person than Hare the murderer, who years ago aided Burke -in murdering poor mendicants and houseless people in Edinburgh, and -selling their bodies to the surgeons for dissection. Hare, a young man -then, turned king's evidence and received a pardon. He came to London with -his blood money, and entered himself as a labourer under an assumed name -at a tannery in the suburbs. The men discovering him, threw the wretch -into a steeping-pit, from which he escaped, but with loss of both eyes. - - -THE SEVEN DIALS.--p. 385. - -Evelyn describes going (Oct. 5, 1694) to see the seven new streets in St. -Giles's, then building by Mr. Neale, who had introduced lotteries in -imitation of those of Venice. The Doric column was removed in July 1773, -in the hope of finding a sum of money supposed to be concealed under the -base. The search was ineffectual; the pillar now ornaments the common at -Weybridge. Gay describes Seven Dials, in his own pleasant, inimitable way -(circa 1712). - - "Where fam'd St. Giles's ancient limits spread, - An inrailed column rears its lofty head, - Here to seven streets seven dials count the day, - And from each other catch the circling ray; - Here oft the peasant, with inquiring face, - Bewildered trudges on from place to place; - He dwells on every sign with stupid gaze, - Enters the narrow alley's doubtful maze, - Tries every winding court and street in vain, - And doubles o'er his weary steps again."[782] - -Martinus Scriblerus is supposed to have been born in Seven Dials. Horace -Walpole describes the progress of family portraits from the drawing-room -to the parlour, from the parlour to the counting-house, from the -housekeeper's room to the garret, and from thence to flutter in rags -before a broker's shop in the Seven Dials.[783] Here Taylor laid the scene -of "Monsieur Tonson." - - "Be gar! there's Monsieur Tonson come again!" - -The celebrated Mr. Catnach, the printer of street ballads, lived in Seven -Dials. He died about 1847. - - -STREETS IN ST. GILES'S.--p. 385. - -In Dyot Street lived Curll's "Corinna," Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, and her -mother.[784] At the Black Horse and Turk's Head public-houses in this -street, those wretches Haggerty and Holloway, in November 1802, planned -the murder of Mr. Steele on Hounslow Heath, and here they returned after -the perpetration of the crime. At the execution of these murderers at the -Old Bailey, in 1807, twenty-eight persons were trampled to death. The -street was immortalised by a song in _Bombastes Furioso_, an excellent and -boisterous burlesque tragic opera, written by William Barnes Rhodes, a -clerk in the Bank of England. Bainbridge and Breckridge Streets, St. -Giles's, now no more, were built prior to 1672, and derived their names -from the owners, eminent parishioners in the reign of Charles II. Dyot -Street was inhabited as late as 1803 by Philip Dyot, Esq., a descendant of -Richard Dyot, from whom it derived its name. In 1710 there was a -"Mendicants' Convivial Club" held at the Welsh's Head in this street. The -club was founded in 1660, when its meetings were held at the Three Crowns -in the Poultry. Denmark Street was probably built in 1689. Zoffany lived -at No. 9. Bunbury, the caricaturist, laid the scene of his "Sunday Evening -Conversation" in this street. In July 1771 Sir John Murray, the -Pretender's secretary, was carried off in a coach from his house near St. -Giles's Church by armed men.[785] - - -SAINT GILES.--p. 385. - -This saint has some scurvy worshippers. Pierce Egan, in his _Life in -London_ (1820), afterwards dramatised, describes the thieves' kitchens and -beggars' revels, which men about town in those days thought it "the -correct thing," as the slang goes, to see and share. "The Rookery" was a -triangular mass of buildings, bounded by Bainbridge, George, and High -Streets. It was swept away by New Oxford Street. The lodgings were -threepence a night. Sir Henry Ellis, in 1813, counted seventeen -horse-shoes nailed to thresholds in Monmouth Street as antidotes against -witches. Jews preponderate in this unsavoury street. Mr. Henry Mayhew -describes a conversation with a St. Giles's poet who wrote Newgate -ballads, Courvousier's Lamentation, and elegies. He was paid one shilling -each for them. A parliamentary report of 1848 describes Seven Dials as in -a degraded state. "Vagrants, thieves, sharpers, scavengers, basket-women, -charwomen, army seamstresses, and prostitutes, compose its mass. Infidels, -chartists, socialists, and blasphemers have their head-quarters there. -There are a hundred and fifty shops open on the Sunday. The ragged-school -there is badly situated and uninviting." Mr. Albert Smith says gin shops -are the only guides in "the dirty labyrinth" of the Seven Dials. The -author once accompanied a Scripture-reader to some of the lowest and -poorest courts and alleys of St. Giles's. In one bare room, he remembers, -on an earth floor, sat a blind beggar waiting for the return of his boy, a -sweeper, who had been sent out to a street-crossing to try and earn some -bread. In another room there was a poor old lonely woman who had made a -pet of an immense ram. We ended our tour by visiting an Irishwoman who had -been converted from "Popery." While we were there, some Irish boys -surrounded the house and shouted in at the key-hole, threatening to -denounce her to the priest. When we emerged from this den we were received -with a shower of peculiarly hard small potatoes, a penance which the -author bore somewhat impatiently, while the Scripture-reader, who seemed -accustomed to such rough compliments, took the blows like an early -Christian martyr. - - -LINCOLN'S INN HALL.--p. 398. - -In 1800 or 1801 Mackintosh delivered lectures in the old Lincoln's Inn -Hall on the "Laws of Nature and Nations." They were attended by Canning, -Lord Liverpool, and a brilliant audience. They contained a panegyric on -Grotius. In style Mackintosh was measured and monotonous--of the school of -Robertson and Gilbert Stuart. He made one mistake in imputing the doctrine -of the association of ideas to Hobbes, which Coleridge corrected. He -refuted the theories of Godwin in a masterly way.[786] - - -SERLE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS.--p. 401. - -This street derived its name from a Mr. Henry Serle, who died intestate -circa 1690, much in debt, and with lands heavily mortgaged. He purchased -the property from the executors of Sir John Birkenhead, the conductor of -the Royalist paper, _Mercurius Aulicus_, during the Civil War, a writer -whose poetry Lawes set to music, and who died in 1679. New Square was -formerly called Serle's Court, and the arms of Serle are over the Carey -Street gateway. The second edition of _Barnaby's Journal_ was printed in -1716, for one Illidge, under Serle's Gate, Lincoln's Inn, New Square.[787] -Addison seems to have visited Serle's Coffee-house, to study from some -quiet nook the "humours" of the young barristers. There is a letter extant -from Akenside, the poet, addressed to Jeremiah Dyson, that excellent -friend and patron who defended him from the attacks of Warburton at -Serle's Coffee-house. - - -CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY.--p. 414. - -The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, now at 66 Lincoln's Inn -Fields, had apartments in 1714 at No. 6 Serle's Court. This society was -founded by Dr. Bray and four friends on the 8th of March 1699, and it -celebrated its third jubilee, or 150th anniversary, in 1849. The society -assists schools and colonial churches, and is said to have distributed -more than a hundred millions of Bibles and Prayer-books since its -foundation. - - -THE SOANE MUSEUM.--p. 424. - -The following squib is said to have been placed under the plates at an -Academic dinner:-- - - "THE MODERN GOTH. - - "Glory to thee, great artist soul of taste - For mending pigsties where a plank's displaced, - Whose towering genius plans from deep research - Houses and temples fit for Master Birch - To grace his shop on that important day - When huge twelfth-cakes are raised in bright array. - Each pastry pillar shows thy vast design; - Hail! then, to thee, and all great works of thine. - Come, let me place thee in the foremost rank - With him whose dulness discomposed the Bank." - -The writer then, apostrophising Wren, adds-- - - "Oh, had he lived to see thy blessed work, - To see pilasters scored like loins of pork, - To see the orders in confusion move, - Scrolls fixed below and pedestals above, - To see defiance hurled at Rome and Greece, - Old Wren had never left the world in peace. - Look where I will--above, below is shown - A pure disordered order of thy own; - Where lines and circles curiously unite - A base compounded, compound composite, - A thing from which in turn it may be said, - Each lab'ring mason turns abash'd his head; - Which Holland reprobates and Dance derides, - While tasteful Wyatt holds his aching sides."[788] - -Soane foolishly brought an action against the bitter writer; but Lord -Kenyon directed the jury to find for the defendant on the ground that the -satire was not personal. - - - - -INDEX. - - - Abingdon, Mrs., "Nosegay Fan," 318 - - Adam, the Brothers, their design, 96; - joke against their Scotch workmen, 103 - - Adam, Robert, death and funeral of, 104 - - Addison, the "Cato" of, 311; - Booth's representation of "Cato," _ib._ - - Adelphi, site of the, 97; - the residence of Garrick, _ib._; - Johnson and Boswell at, 98; - prowlers in its arches, 448 - - Adelphi Rooms, the, 449 - - Adelphi Theatre, first success of, 180; - Terry and Yates as its lessees, _ib._; - appearance of "Jim Crow" in, _ib._; - the elder Mathews manager of, _ib._; - last great successes at, 185 - - Akenside, at Tom's Coffee-house, 38 - - Albemarle, Duke of. _See_ Monk - - Albemarle, Duchess of, 93; - anecdotes of, 301 - - "All the Year Round," 170 - - Ambassador, Spanish, attack of an anti-Catholic mob on his house, 277 - - Ambassadors, French and Spanish, affray between the retainers of, 134 - - Amiens, proclamation of peace of, 18 - - Anderson, Dr. Patrick, his Scotch pills, 53; - story of Sir Walter Scott relating to, _ib._ - - Anne of Denmark, her masques and masquerades in Somerset House, 58; - accident at the funeral of, 195 - - Anstis, John, Garter King at Arms, 43 - - Antiquaries, Society of, 70 - - Apollo Court and Room, 6 - - Armstrong, Sir Thomas, 11 - - Arnold, Dr., and the Lyceum, 171 - - Art, English, institutions for promoting, 75 - - Arts, the Society of, its place of meeting, 99; - Barry's paintings, 100, 449; - premiums and bounties distributed by, _ib._; - Barry at work on its frescoes, 101; - foundation and object of, 449; - Barry's application to, _ib._ - - Artists' Club in Clare Market, 346 - - Arundel House, Strand, 39; - occupants of, 40; - death of the Countess of Nottingham in, 41; - the Marquis of Rosney's description of, _ib._; - Thomas Howard's treasures of art in, 42; - neglect of antiquities in, _ib._; - rooms lent to the Royal Society in, 43; - streets erected on the site of, _ib._; - Gay's remarks on its glories, _ib._ - - Arundel Street, Strand, its residents, 43, 164 - - Astronomical Society, 71 - - "Athenaeum" (Newspaper), 170 - - Atterbury, Bishop, 155 - - - Bacon, Lord, his ingratitude, 32; - birthplace of, 127; - events of his life connected with York House, 127-8; - anecdotes of his early life, 128; - verses addressed to him at Durham House, 129; - his early legal studies, 130 - - Balmerino, Lord, an anecdote of, 234 - - Baltimore, Lord, infamous conduct of, 176 - - Banks. _See_ Coutts, Child, and Drummond - - Bannister, Jack, 325 - - Barrow, Dr. Isaac, the death of, 232 - - Barry, his violence, 101; - his diligence at work, _ib._; - his paintings in the Council Room of the Society of Arts, _ib._; - effect produced by his paintings, 449; - his poverty and death, _ib._ - - Barry, Mrs., her theatrical career, 433 - - Barry, Spanger, an actor, 315 - - Basing House, an adventure at, 279 - - Beard, singer and actor, 249 - - Beauclerk, Topham, 98 - - Beaufort, House, Strand, 83, 447 - - Beckett, Andrew, works of, 99 - - Beckett, Thomas, bookseller, 99 - - Bedford, the Earls of, the old town house of, 185; - streets named after his family, _ib._ - - Bedford Street once fashionable, 186; - Half Moon Tavern in, _ib._; - residents of, 187; - Constitution Tavern in, 197 - - Bedfordbury, 236, 459 - - Beefsteak Club, 172; - badge of, _ib._; - members of, 173; - Peg Woffington, president of one at Dublin, _ib._; - another started by Rich and Lambert, _ib._; - its place of meeting, _ib._; - distinguished members of, 454; - sale of its effects, 174 - - Bell, Mr. Jacob, 225 - - Bellamy, George Anne, actress, 317 - - Berkeley, Dr., 155 - - Bermudas, the Justice Overdo's allusion to, 235 - - Berties, the, 417 - - Betterton, the "Garrick" of his age, 433; - the parts he represented, _ib._; - his death, _ib._ - - Betty, Master, 321 - - Billington, Mrs., 333 - - Bindley, James, father of the Society of Antiquaries, his burial-place, - 164 - - Birch, Dr., the antiquary, 36; - his books and literary remains, 48; - Dr. Johnson's remark on, _ib._ - - Birkenhead, Sir John, 245 - - Bishop, operas produced by, 334 - - Black Jack, 348, 440 - - Blake, the mystical painter, 83 - - Blemund's Ditch, 353 - - Bohemia, the Queen of, 293; - reports concerning, 295; - Sir Henry Wotton's lines to, _ib._; - memorial of her husband, 296 - - Boleyn, Anne, at Temple Bar, 21 - - Bonomi, 78 - - Booksellers, their shops the haunts of wits and poets, 219 - - Booth, Barton, 311 - - Boswell, James, admitted into the Literary Club, 17; - the supposed Shaksperean MSS., 47. - - Bowl-yard, its name, 373 - - Boydell, Alderman, 258 - - Bracegirdle, Mrs., 49; - her abduction, 50; - her charity, 347; - her popularity, 434 - - Braham, John, 333 - - Bristol, Earl of, 264; - particulars concerning, 459 - - Britain's Bourse. _See_ Exchange - - Brocklesby, Dr. Richard, friend of Burke and Johnson, 45; - attends Lord Chatham when he fainted in the House of Lords, _ib._ - - Brougham, Lord, 396 - - Buckingham, the first Duke of, 130; - his residences, _ib._; - patronage of art, 131; - Dryden's lines on, 132; - Pope's lines on, _ib._; - Clarendon's view of his character, 133 - - Buckingham, the second Duke of, 133 - - Buckingham Street, 135; - distinguished residents in, 136, 137; - Mr. David Copperfield's visit to, 451 - - Bull's Head, the, Clare Market, 346 - - Burgess, Dr., a witty preacher, 159; - successors of, _ib._ - - Burleigh, Lord, his residence, 179 - - Burleigh Street, site of, 179 - - Burley, Sir Simon, 218 - - Burnet, Bishop, 44 - - Burton St. Lazar, 350 - - Bushnell, John, the sculptor, 7, 8 - - Butcher Row, 148; - Lee's death in, 150 - - - "Cabinet" Newspaper, _see_ "Pic-Nic" - - Caermarthan, Lord, 136 - - Cameron, Dr., burial place of, 120 - - Canary House, 452 - - Canning, George, 395 - - Carey Street, 428 - - Carlini, 65 - - Carlisle, the Countess of, 178 - - Catherine of Braganza, 61; - her return to Portugal, 62 - - Catherine Street, its newspapers and theatre in, 166; - Gay's description of, _ib._ - - Cavalini Pietro, works attributed to, 203 - - Cavendish, William, Earl of Devonshire, 90 - - Cecil, Robert, Earl of Salisbury, 89, 153 - - Cecil Street, its residents, 88 - - Celeste, Madam, 184 - - Centlivre, Mrs., 230; - her hatred to the Jacobites, 231; - Pope's dislike to, _ib._; - Leigh Hunt's treatment of, 232 - - Ceracchi, Giuseppe, 66 - - Chambers, Sir William, 65 - - Chapone, Mrs. Hester, 428 - - Charing, village of, 201; - population under Edward I., _ib._; - the Falconry or Mews at, 218 - - Charing Cross, tradition concerning, 201; - Peele's lines on, 202; - tradition of Queen Eleanor connected with, _ib._; - erection and demolition of, 204; - a Royalist ballad on, _ib._; - executions at, 205; - introduction of Punch into England at, 208; - Titus Oates, in the pillory at, _ib._; - the royal statue at, 209; - Waller's lines on the statue, 210; - Andrew Marvell's lines on the Cross, 211; - loss of parts of, 212; - a tradition concerning, _ib._; - the pedestal of, _ib._; - a rogue exposed in the pillory at, _ib._; - punishment of Japhet Crook at, 213; - old prints of, 215; - poetical eulogiums of, _ib._; - coffee-houses in the neighbourhood of, 226; - Locket's ordinary at, 227; - Milton's lodging at, 232; - other memoranda, 248; - a strange scene at, _ib._; - a remark of Dr. Johnson's on, 234; - site of the post office at, _ib._; - ancient hospital at, 235; - former improvements at, _ib._; - the "Swan," and verses by Johnson, 236 - - Charing Cross Hospital, 233 - - Charles I., letter written by, 58; - his statue at Charing Cross, 209; - strange story regarding the statue of, 212 - - Charles II., his progress through London, his coronation, 22; - the two courts in the reign of, 61 - - Chatterton, 80; - story concerning, 197 - - Chaucer, his marriage, 108; - favours obtained, 109; - royal post held by, 218 - - Chesterfield, Earl of, 187 - - Child's Bank, 6 - - Christian Knowledge, Society for Promoting, 414, 464 - - Chunee, the elephant, 95, 419 - - Cibber, Colley, 312; - characters originated by, 316; - his success as actor and manager, _ib._ - - Cibber, Theophilus, his fate, 317; - his wife, _ib._ - - Clare House Court, 298 - - Clare Market, 339; - Orator Henley's appearances in, _ib._; - artists' club at the Bull's Head in, 346; - Mrs. Bracegirdle's visits to, 347 - - Clarges, John, farrier, 93, 301 - - Clarke, William, proprietor of Exeter Change, 177 - - Clement's Inn, 156; - a tradition concerning, _ib._; - the hall of, 157; - the New Court and Independent Meeting-house in, 159 - - Clement's, St., Church, improvements round, 152; - general dislike to, _ib._; - a ferment in the parish of, 153; - distinguished men baptized and buried in, _ib._; - adornments of, 155; - Dr. Johnson's attendance in, _ib._ - - Clement's, St., Well, 156; - Cleopatra's Needle, 145 - - Clifton, bridge over the Avon at, 451 - - Clifton's Eating-house, 149 - - Clinch, Tom, the highwayman, 373 - - Clive, Kitty, 315 - - Coaches and coach-stands, 166, 167 - - Coal Hole, the, 85 - - Cobb, the upholsterer, anecdote of, 258 - - Cock and Pye Fields, 356 - - Cock Lane ghost, the, 196; - the contriver of, 214 - - Cockpit, or Phoenix Theatre, its site, 304; - Puritan violence against, _ib._; - its reopening at the Restoration, 305 - - Coffee, 36 - - Coffee-houses, 36; - mentioned by Steele in the _Tatler_, _ib._ - - Coleridge, S. T., 170 - - Commons, House of, 101 - - Congreve, William, 53; - Pope's declaration regarding, 51; - the successful career of, _ib._; - Voltaire's visit to, _ib._; - Curll's life of, 52 - - Congreve, Sir William, 88 - - Conway, Lord, memoranda of, 270 - - Cooke, George Frederick, 321 - - Cooke, T. P., 174 - - Cottenham, Lord, 395 - - Coutts's Bank, the strong room of, 86, 87; - the first deposit in, 87; - story of one of the clerks of, _ib._; - the site of, and additions to, _ib._ - - Coutts, Thomas, his origin, and marriage, 86; - anecdote of, 448 - - Covent Garden, 93 - - Covent Garden Theatre and Sheridan, 328 - - Coventry, Secretary, 245 - - Cowley, enmity of the Royalists to, 115; - occasion of "The Complaint" by, _ib._; - beautiful lines by, 116; - his death at Chertsey, _ib._ - - Cox, Bessy, 282 - - Craig's Court, Charing Cross, 227 - - Craven, Lord, his life, etc., 294; - miniature Heidelberg erected by, _ib._; - his services to the Queen of Bohemia, 295; - patronage of literature, _ib._; - employment in King William's reign, 296; - Miss Benger's estimate of, _ib._; - Quixotic character of, 460 - - Craven Buildings, fresco portrait at, 297 - - Craven House, 292, 459 - - Craven Street, residents of, 139; - diplomatic consultation in, _ib._; - epigrams by James Smith and Sir George Rose on it, _ib._ - - "Cries of London," the, 167 - - Crockford, his shop in the Strand, 148; - his club, _ib._ - - Cromwell, Oliver, residences of, 226, 279 - - Crook, Japhet, his punishment, 213; - lines by Pope on, 214 - - Crouch, Mrs., the singer, 333 - - Crowle, _bon mot_ on Judge Page by, 217 - - Crown and Anchor, the, 152, 153; - the great room of, 444 - - Cumberland, George, Earl of, 120 - - Cuper's Gardens, 43 - - Curl, Edmund, 212 - - Curtis, Mrs., visits Mrs. Siddons, 91 - - - Davenant, Lady, 404 - - Davenant, the actor, 429 - - Davies, Moll, 430 - - Dawson, Jemmy, 15 - - Denham, Sir John, works written by, 393; - a drunken frolic of, 452 - - Denzil Street, 460 - - Deptford, and Peter the Great in, 45 - - Design, the School of, 446 - - De Sully, Duc, 41 - - Devereux Court, 36; - duel in, _ib._; - death of Marchmont Needham in, 37; - relic of Pope at Tom's Coffee-house, _ib._ - - Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex, 28; - Spenser's relation to, _ib._; - his house near the Temple, 29; - his plot against Elizabeth, _ib._; - his running a-muck in the City, and flight to Essex Gardens, 30; - his capture and death 31; - his mother and sister, 32; - his crimes, 34 - - Devonshire Club, 148 - - Dibdin, Charles, his entertainments, 34 - - Dickens, Charles, 170; - on Seven Dials and Monmouth Street, 385; - - Digby, Sir Kenelm, 241; - Ben Jonson's lines on, _ib._ - - Dilke, Sir C. Wentworth, 170 - - Disraeli, B., 400 - - Dobson, Vandyke's protege, 200 - - Dodd, the actor, 328 - - Doggett, the actor, 310 - - Donne, Dr., the tomb of his wife, 154; - his want of self-respect, 289; - strange circumstance recorded, 290; - vision seen by, _ib._; - conceits of, 291; - his picture in his shroud, 292; - a divine and a poet, 390 - - Dowton, the actor, 323 - - Doyley, 168 - - Drinking-fountains, the first, 445 - - Drummond's Bank, 227, 457 - - Drury family, 288 - - Drury House, secret meetings there arranged by Essex, 29; - outbreak decided on at, 288; - site of, 237 - - Drury Lane, origin of its name, 288; - residents in, 297 _et seq._; - a strange scene in, 298; - a duel in, _ib._; - pictures of, 299; - the poor poet's home in, _ib._; - its bad repute during the Regency, 460 - - Drury Lane Theatre, 305; - Pepys's visits to, 306; - scuffle in the king's presence in, _ib._; - distinguished actresses of, 309 _et seq._; - plays produced at, _ib._; - Garrick's first appearance at, 313; - Dr. Johnson's address on its re-opening, 322; - a riot in 1740 in, 324; - Charles Lamb's description of, 324, 325; - the rebuilding of, 329; - competitive poems for the opening of, 330; - Byron's opening address at, _ib._; - statue over its entrance, _ib._; - pecuniary statements relating to, _ib._; - revival of its fortunes by Edmund Kean, 331; - Grimaldi at, 334; - various actors of, _ib._; - pictures of royalty at, 338; - recent productions at, _ib._ - - Drury, Sir Robert, 288 - - Dryden, his lines on the death of Buckingham, 132; - his squabbles with Jacob Tonson, 54; - attack on, 280; - established jokes against, _ib._; - Mulgrave's lines on, 281; - Otway's defence of, _ib._ - - Dudley, Sir Robert, 369 - - Dudley, Duchess of, 369 - - Duke Street, 135 - - Duke's Theatre, 429 - - Durham House, residents of, 92; - sufferings of the Princess Elizabeth in, _ib._; - its last occupants, _ib._; - banquets given by Henry VII. at, _ib._; - mint established at, 95; - Lady Jane Grey's marriage in, _ib._; - the scene of an old legend, 96; - Raleigh in his turret study at, _ib._; - purchased by the brothers Adam, _ib._ - - Durham Street, 91 - - Dyot Street, 462 - - - Eccentrics, club of, 259 - - Edward III., 110; - his conduct on the death of John of Gaunt, 114 - - Edward VI. at Temple Bar, 21 - - Egerton, Lord Chancellor, 391 - - Eleanor Cross, model of, 138 - - Eleanor, Queen, crosses in memory of, 138, 202; - tombs of, 203; - the preservation of her body, 204 - - Elizabeth, Queen, procession on the anniversary of her accession, 9; - adornment of her statue at Temple Bar, 10; - her reception at Temple Bar, 21; - the plot of Essex against, 29; - her relations with Admiral Seymour, 39; - story of the Essex ring, 40; - her favour for Raleigh, 92 - - Ellesmere. _See_ Egerton - - Elliston, Robert William, 326; - stories told of, 327 - - Epigram, an, a legacy gained by, 139 - - Erskine, Lord, 424 - - Essex House, 29; - occupants of, 31; - the Parliamentary general a resident in, 33 - - Essex, Robert, Earl of, Ben Jonson's masque on his marriage, 33; - divorce of his countess, and her marriage with Robert Carr, _ib._; - general for the Parliament, _ib._; - attempts to seize his papers, 34 - - Essex Street, Strand, 25; - residents in, 34; - Johnson's club at the Essex Head, 35; - Unitarian chapel in, 443; - memoranda of, _ib._ - - Estcourt, 452; - Steele's compliments to, 180 - - Etherage, Sir George, 301; - play by, 431 - - Etty, residence of, 136 - - Evans's Hotel, Covent Garden, 460 - - Evelyn, John, 134 - - "Examiner," the, 123 - - Exchange, the New, 93; - a tragedy in, _ib._; - legends about, _ib._; - the White Widow, 94; - the walks of, _ib._; - a frequenter of, _ib._; - its destruction, 95 - - Exeter Change, 175; - exhibitions in, _ib._; - last tenants of, 176 - - Exeter Hall, 178 - - Exeter House, 179 - - Exeter Place, 261 - - Exeter Street, 178 - - - Faithorne, William, 148 - - Fanshawe, Lady, 423 - - Fanshawe, Sir Richard, 421 - - Farren, Miss, the actress, 318 - - Farren, the actor, 335 - - Faucit, Helen (Mrs. T. Martin), 337 - - "Field" newspaper, 168 - - Finch, Lord Chancellor, 265 - - Finett, Sir John, 240 - - Fletcher, his execution, 14 - - Folkes, Martin, 272 - - Folly, the, 82 - - Foote, the actor, 315 - - Fordyce, George, 34 - - Fortescue, Judge, 394 - - Fortescue, Pope's lawyer, 37 - - Fountain Club, the, 84 - - Fountain Court Tavern, 84; - the Coal Hole in, 85 - - Fountain, the, King Street, 381 - - Franklin, Benjamin, 139; - his landlady and the charitable nun, 275; - extravagance of his fellow-pressmen, 276; - his visit as ambassador of Massachusetts, 277 - - Freemasons' Hall, the, 274 - - Friend, Sir John, 13 - - Fuseli, 76; - his residence, 259 - - - Gaiety Theatre, 452 - - Gardelle, the artist and murderer, 251 - - Garrick, David, 96, 99; - Johnson's esteem for, _ib._; - his "Chinese Festival," 185, 186; - anecdote of, 273; - Zoffany's portrait of, 304; - his career, 313; - his first appearance at Drury Lane, _ib._; - his varied talent, 314; - appears on the stage with Quin, _ib._; - his death, 315 - - Gatti's cafe, 189 - - George, Madame St., 59 - - Geological Society, the, 69 - - George III., his patronage of art, 73; - his coolness, 338 - - George IV., Chantrey's statue of, 226 - - Gerbier, Sir Balthasar, 72 - - Gibbons, Grinling, 139 - - Gibbons's Tennis Court, 429 - - Gibbs, the architect, 162 - - Giles, St., tradition of, 353; - a scurvy worshipper of, 463 - - Giles's, St., ancient toll in, 350; - hospital for lepers in, 350; - death of Sir John Oldcastle in, 351; - the gallows in, 352; - site of the hospital, 353; - the manor of, 352-3; - gradual growth of, 355, 356; - its progress after the Great Fire, 356; - settlement of foreigners in, 357; - its increase in Queen Anne's reign, _ib._; - resort of Irish to, _ib._; - entries in the parish records of, _ib._; - increase of French refugees in, 357; - relief to well-known mendicants in, 359; - the plague in, 360; - the plague-cart of, _ib._; - rates levied in consequence of the plague, 361; - hospital church of, 363; - Dr. Mainwaring rector of, _ib._; - new church of, 364; - Dr. Heywood, the rector of, _ib._; - celebration of the Restoration in, 365; - church extension in, _ib._; - a sexton's bargain with the rector of, 367; - the Resurrection Gate in the churchyard of, _ib._; - churchyard of, 367, 368; - new burial-ground of, 368; - celebrated persons buried in the churchyard of, 369, 370; - the oldest monument in the burial-ground of, 370; - persons relieved in, 371; - erection of the new almshouses and school for, _ib._; - Hogarth's studies and scenes in, 372; - Nollekens Smith's description of, _ib._; - the whipping-stone of, _ib._; - the Pound in, 373; - the inns of, 374; - resort of Irish beggars to, 376, 377; - the cellars of, 378; - lodgings in, _ib._; - beggars, conjurors, and pickpockets of, 379; - the mendicants of, 381; - low Irish in, 385, 386; - persons connected with several streets in, 463; - the author's visit with a missionary to houses in, 463 - - Giles's, St., Hospital, criminals at its gate, on their way to Tyburn, - 373 - - Giraud, his quarrel, 93; - execution, _ib._ - - Globe Theatre, 165 - - Glover, Mrs., as an actress, 336 - - Godfrey, Sir E., murder of, 61; - residence of, 142 - - Godwin, William, 444 - - Golden Cross, the, 232 - - Goldsmith, Oliver, a quotation of Dr. Johnson's cleverly capped by, 18; - lines on Caleb Whitefoord by, 141; - his friends, 197; - an earl's patronage of, 198; - anecdote of, _ib._; - his visit to Northumberland House, _ib._ - - Gondomar, Spanish ambassador, 298 - - Goodman, and the Drury Lane Company, 308 - - Gordon, Lord George, 278 - - Gorges, Sir Ferdinand, 30 - - Graham, Dr., a London Cagliostro, his rooms and their chief priestess, - 102; - his "celestial bed" and "elixir of life," 103 - - Grange Inn, 440 - - Gravelot, the drawing-master, 250 - - Gray's Inn, Bacon's chambers in, 130 - - Grecian, the, Addison's description of, 36; - a quarrel at, _ib._; - meetings of savans at, 37; - the privy-council held at, _ib._ - - Greenhill, John, 271 - - Green Ribbon Club, the, 8 - - Gresham College, 68 - - Grimaldi at Drury Lane, 334 - - Gwynn, Nell, her last resting-place, 244; - the birthplace, life, and character of, 301; - a descendant of, 302; - Pepys's allusion in his "Diary" to, _ib._; - her death, _ib._; - a memorandum of Evelyn's regarding, _ib._; - Pepys's estimate of the other actresses associated with, 307; - her last original part, 308 - - - Hackman, the Rev. Mr., the murderer of Miss Ray, 160; - his execution, _ib._ - - Haines, Joe, a clever actor, 308 - - Hale, Sir Matthew, an eminent student of Lincoln's Inn, 390 - - Hare, the murderer, the lamentable condition of, 461 - - Harley, John Pritt, actor, 336 - - Harrison, General, the Anabaptist, the brave end of, 205 - - Haverhill, William de, Henry III.'s treasurer, his mansion and the - various uses to which it was put, 388 - - Haycock's Ordinary, 443 - - Haydon, anecdote of, 1; - another, of his early life in London, 77 - - Hayman, Frank, a St. Martin's Lane worthy, amusing anecdotes of, 255 - - Haymarket Theatre, the, Fielding's "Tom Thumb" brought out at, 438 - - Hazlitt, William, his criticism of the elder Mathews, 182 - - Heber, Bishop, 397 - - Helmet Court, memoranda of, 447 - - Hemings' Row, St. Martin's Lane, origin of its name, 458 - - Henderson, the actor, 319 - - Henley, Orator, sketch of his life, 339; - his defence of action in a preacher, _ib._; - his correspondence with William Whiston, 340; - the shameless advertisements issued by, 340, 341; - lines by Pope in the "Dunciad" on, 342; - his controversy with Pope, _ib._; - a contemporary description of, _ib._; - his plans for raising money, 343; - a joke on Archbishop Herring by, _ib._; - his appearance before the privy-council, _ib._; - Hogarth's two caricatures of, 344; - beginning of one of his sermons, 345; - overawed by two Oxonians, 346 - - Henrietta Maria, queen of Charles I., the insolent conduct of her French - household, and the king's difficulty in getting rid of them, 58; - her last masques at Somerset House, 59 - - Henry VII., hospital founded on the site of the Savoy by, 114 - - Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, a Quixotic quarrel of, 194; - commencement of his work, "De Veritate," 265; - a remarkable vision which is said to have appeared to, _ib._; - reflections on passing the residence of, 266 - - Herring, Archbishop, Swift's opposition to, 344 - - Hewson, the supposed original Strap of "Roderick Random," 136 - - Heywood, Dr., rector of St. Giles's, Puritan petition against, 365 - - Hill, Captain, a well-known profligate bully, his drunken jealousy of - Mountfort the actor, 49; - his attempt to carry off Mrs. Bracegirdle, 50; - cowardly murder of Mountfort, by, 51 - - Hill, Mr. Thomas, the supposed prototype of Paul Pry, 103 - - Hilliard, Nicholas, Queen Elizabeth's miniature-painter, 244 - - "Histriomastix," the, Prynne's punishment for a scurrilous note in, 59 - - Hodges, Dr., his account of the commencement and progress of the plague, - 262 - - Hogarth, 72; - his picture of "Noon," 372 - - Hog Lane, St. Giles's (now Crown Street), 371 - - Holborn, gradual extension and first pavement of, 355; - allusions to a doleful procession up the Heavy Hill of, 374 - - Hollar, the German engraver, description of a scarce view of Somerset - House by, 63; - the residence of, 157 - - Holmes, Copper, a well-known character on the river, 247 - - Holy Land, the, a part of St. Giles's, 386 - - Hone, Nathaniel, 258 - - Hood, Thomas, his "Bridge of Sighs," 450 - - Hook, Theodore, 102 - - Howard, Lady Margaret, Sir John Suckling's fantastic simile in lines on - her feet, 195 - - Howard, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, discovery of the cipher used by--his - treason and death, 27 - - Howard, Thomas, Earl of Arundel, an amateur of art, Clarendon's - description of, 42; - Vansomer's portrait of, _ib._; - his devotion in the pursuit of objects of art, 43; - disposal of his statues, marbles, and library, _ib._; - remarks made by him in a dispute with Charles I., _ib._ - - Howard, Philip, Earl of Arundel, a letter to, 27; - memorial in the Tower of, _ib._ - - Hudson, the portrait-painter, 272 - - Hungerford, Lord Walter, first Speaker of the House of Commons, 137 - - Hungerford, Sir Edward, founder of Hungerford Market, 137 - - Hungerford Market, the site of, 137; - the origin and object of, 138; - vicissitudes of, _ib._; - an unlucky speculation at, _ib._ - - Hungerford Suspension Bridge, 138; - the purchase of, 451; - the new railway bridge in place of, 138; - the railway station at, _ib._ - - Hunter, Dr. William, O'Keefe's description of him lecturing on anatomy, - 78 - - Hunter, Dr. John, particulars of his professional life, 420, 421 - - Hunt, Leigh, the imprisonment of, 123; - his critical remarks on the elder Mathews, 182 - - - "Illustrated London News," the proprietor and staff of, 55 - - Ingram, Mr. Herbert, proprietor of the "Illustrated London News," career - and death of, 55 - - Ireland, Samuel, father of the celebrated literary impostor, the - residence of, 46; - his belief in the genuineness of "Vortigern" as a work of Shakspere's, - 47 - - Ireland, W. H., the true story of the Shakspere forgery committed by, 46; - effect of the extraordinary praise lavished on, 47; - supporters and opponents of, _ib._; - damnation of his play of "Vortigern," _ib._ - - "Isabella," Southerne's tragedy of, effect of Mrs. Siddons's acting in, - 91 - - Ivy Bridge, narrow passage to the Thames under, and mansion near, 91 - - - Jacobites, the cant words used by, 15 - - James I., pageants on his passage through the city, 21 - - James Street, Adelphi, No. 2, the residence of Mr. Thomas Hill, the Hull - of "Gilbert Gurney," 103 - - Jansen, an architect, works by, 191 - - Jekyll, Sir Joseph, his obnoxious bill, and the fury of the mob against, - 410; - his _bon-mot_ on Lord Kenyon's spits, 423 - - Jennings, Frances. _See_ Widow, the White - - Jerdan, William, 83 - - John, King of France, his entrance as a captive into London, 112; - his honourable return to England after having been liberated on - parole, _ib._; - his death at the Savoy, _ib._ - - John of Padua, Henry VIII.'s architect, 57 - - John, Saint, the foundation of the hospital of, 114; - abuses of, transference of its funds, etc., 115; - Dr. John Killigrew appointed master of, _ib._; - Strype's description of the old hall of, 117 - - John Street, Adelphi, 99 - - Johnson, Dr., his conversation with Goldsmith on Westminster Abbey, 17; - club formed at the Essex Head by--its principal members, 35; - his high estimation for Garrick, 97; - Garrick's remark on the philosopher's friendship for Beauclerk, 98; - his three reasons for the black skin of the negro race, 149; - an Irishman's opinion of, _ib._; - his pleasant evenings at the Mitre with an old college friend, 150; - Boswell's account of his solemn devotion during divine service, 155; - extract from a letter written to Mrs. Thrale by, 156; - his first residence in London, 178; - an eccentric habit of, 187; - beginning of his address for the re-opening of Drury Lane Theatre, 322 - - Johnstone, Irish, 335 - - Jones, Colonel, his execution, 205 - - Jones, Inigo, his plan for laying out Lincoln's Inn Fields, 402 - - Jones, the actor, 323 - - Jonson, Ben, dialogues, speeches, and masques by, 22, 33; - his residence when a child, 142; - a story of, 251; - early life of, 399; - tradition of, _ib._; - his exploit in Flanders, _ib._ - - Jordan, Mrs., 326 - - - Kauffman, Angelica, 76 - - Kean, Charles, 338 - - Kean, Mrs. Charles (Miss Ellen Tree), 338 - - Kean, Edmund, habits of, 85; - his early success in London, 88; - his origin, early life, and first triumphs in London, 331; - Hazlitt's remarks on, 332 - - Keeley, Robert, the actor, 337 - - Keelings the, 405 - - Kelly, Michael, 334 - - Kelly, Miss, actress, 336; - attacks on, _ib._ - - Kemble, Charles, 321 - - Kemble, John, 320; - generous act of the Duke of Northumberland to, _ib._; - Leigh Hunt's picture of, _ib._ - - Kenilworth, Lord of, 28 - - Kennington Common, execution of Jacobites on, 14 - - Kensington, South, transfer of pictures from the National Gallery to, 224 - - Kent, the rising under Wat Tyler, 112 - - Kenyon, Lord, jokes on, 423; - his stinginess and bad Latin, _ib._ - - Killigrew, Dr. Henry, 119 - - Killigrew, Mrs. Anne, 119 - - Killigrew, Thomas, 119; - actors in his company, 308 - - King, Dr., Principal of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, 36 - - King, Dr. William, lines on the Beefsteak Club by, 174 - - King, the original Sir Peter Teazle, 321 - - King's College and its museum, 66, 447; - models and instruments presented by Queen Victoria, _ib._ - - King's College Hospital, 438 - - Kirby, Mr., 73, 74 - - Kit Cat Club, 51; - institution of the, 85; - origin of its name, _ib._; - the summer rendezvous of, 86; - Lady Mary Wortley Montague the toast of, _ib._ - - Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 72; - his life and character, 267; - the witty banter of, 268; - his vanity, 269; - how Jacob Tonson got pictures out of, _ib._; - his conviction of the legitimacy of the Pretender, _ib._ - - Knight Templars, the, 25 - - Knollys, Lettice, Countess of Essex, afterwards Lady Leicester, 31 - - Knowledge, Christian, the Society for Promoting, 461 - - Koenigsmark, Count, 193 - - Kynaston, Sir Francis, 71, 187 - - Kynaston, the actor, 187, 432 - - - Lacy, a favourite actor, 308 - - Laguerre, the French painter, 246 - - Lamb, Charles, tragedy in his family, 285; - his devotion to his sister, 286 - - Lancaster, the Earl of, 107 - - Lancaster, John, Duke of, favours Wickliffe, 109; - his peril from the London mob, 110; - his escape, _ib._; - _amende_ of the Londoners to, _ib._; - his marriage and connections, _ib._; - his unpopularity and violence, 119; - clause aimed by Wat Tyler against, 112; - destruction of his London palace, etc., 113; - his death and burial, 114 - - Lancaster, the Duchy of, 122, 450 - - Lander, Richard, 120 - - Langhorne, Dr., 396 - - Law Courts, new, 147 - - "Law Times," Office, 168 - - Layer, Christopher, 17 - - Learning, Society for the encouragement of, 49 - - Lee, the poet, his death, 154 - - Lepers, 354 - - Lewis, the comedian, 274; - his acting, 323, 324 - - Lillie, Charles, the perfumer, 84 - - Limput, Remigius van, 187 - - Liston, the comedian, 323 - - Lincoln's Inn, origin of its name, 387; - the Chancery Lane side of, 388; - the gateway of, _ib._; - the chapel, 388, 389; - distinguished students of, 390 _et seq._; - persons buried in the chapel, 392 _et seq._; - old customs and laws of, 397, 398; - disposal of Hogarth's picture, "Preaching before Felix," at, 398; - the new hall, library, and garden of, _ib._, 464; - Mr. Disraeli's studies at, 400 - - Lincoln's Inn Field, part of Fickett's field, 401; - King James regulates building in, 401, 402; - Inigo Jones's plan for laying out and building, 402; - state in the time of Charles I. and Charles II.; - Gay's sketch of its dangers, 403; - Earl of Rochester's house in, 404; - execution of plotters against Elizabeth in, _ib._; - procession of Thomas Sadler, the thief, through, _ib._; - Lord Russell's death in, 405; - improvements in 1735 in, 410; - Macaulay's picture of, _ib._; - distinguished inhabitants of, 414 _et seq._; - Tennyson's chambers in, 418; - Mr. Povey's house in, 428 - - Lindsey, Earl, 416, 417 - - Lindsey House, 417 - - Literary Club, Boswell and Johnson at, 17 - - Literary Fund Society, 427 - - Literature, Royal Society of, 259 - - Locket's Ordinary, 227 - - London, growth and changes of, 2; - points of departure for tours in, _ib._; - start for the author's tour in, 3; - banks in, 7; - the rebels under Tyler in, 112; - King William at the celebration of the peace of Ryswick in, 23, 24; - a bishop beheaded by the mob of, 26; - cruel treatment of a Spaniard by the mob of, 213; - the street signs of, 237; - foreigners in 1580 in, 356; - a glance at an ancient map of, 356, 357; - Pennant on its churchyards, 367; - crusade against Irish and other vagrants, 377; - royal fears as to its increase, 401; - its history an epitome of that of the world, 441; - its newspapers and periodicals, 454 - - Long Acre, the plague in, 262; - Oliver Cromwell's residence in, 279; - Tory tavern Club in, 284 - - Lord Mayor's Day, 23 - - Loutherberg, De, 167 - - Lowin, John, 154 - - Lyceum, the, 171; - exhibitions in, _ib._; - experiment in, 172; - Mathew's entertainment in, _ib._; - Beefsteak Club meet in, _ib._; - Mr. T. P. Cooke's early triumphs in, 174 - - Lyndhurst, Lord, 395 - - Lyons, Emma (afterwards Lady Hamilton), 102 - - Lyon's Inn, 165; - sale of its materials, _ib._; - murder of Mr. Weare, _ib._ - - Lyttelton, Sir Thomas, 44 - - - M'Ardell, Hogarth's engraver, 251 - - Mackintosh, Sir James, 464 - - Macklin, the actor, 436 - - Macready, William Charles, 337 - - Maginn, Dr., ballad by, 232 - - Malibran, Madame, 334 - - Manos, Gannee, and other beggars, 382 - - Mansfield, the Earl of, 394 - - Mardyn, Mrs., the actress, 335 - - Marlborough, the Duchess of, Congreve's legacy to, 52; - her regard for Congreve, 53 - - Martin's St., Lane, residents of, 239 _et seq._; - Beard, the singer, 249; - Old Slaughter's Coffee-house, _ib._; - houses built by Payne in, 252; - curious staircase in No. 96, 253; - a house favoured by artists in, _ib._; - Roubilliac's first studio in, 257; - old house of the Earls of Salisbury in, 256; - changes in, 261 - - Martin's-in-the-Fields, St., 242; - the church of, 244; - the dust enshrined in, _ib._; - J. T. Smith's visit to the vaults of, 246; - the parochial abuses of, _ib._; - the old watch and stocks of, 256 - - Marvell, Andrew, 209; - the grave of, 370 - - Mary, Queen, 21 - - Mary, St. Savoy, the Chapel of, the dead interred in, 121; - its destruction by fire, 122; - its restoration, _ib._ - - Mary, St., Roncevalles, the hospital of, 235 - - Mary-le-Strand, St., 162; - construction of, _ib._; - allusions by Pope and Addison to, 163; - tragedy at, _ib._; - interior of, _ib._ - - Mathews, his entertainment, 140; - his "Mail-coach Adventures," 172; - his bargains with Mr. Arnold, 181; - his various entertainments, _ib._; - failure of his health, and death, 182; - his first attempts as an actor, 298; - his first appearance in London, 323 - - Matthews, Bishop of Durham, 98 - - Mayerne, Sir Theodore, 239; - story of, 240; - his death, 260 - - Maynard, Mr. Serjeant, 404 - - Mainwaring, Dr., 363, 364 - - Maypole in the Strand, the, 160; - its fall and restoration, 161; - removal of, 162 - - May's Buildings, 259 - - Mellon, Miss, the actress, 87; - her first and second marriages, 88; - her first appearance at Drury Lane, 448; - leaves her fortune to Miss Burdett Coutts, _ib._ - - Mendicants' Convivial Club, 462 - - Mews, origin of the name, 217; - notes concerning, 218; - old bookshop at the gate of one, 219 - - Michael's, St., Alley, Cornhill, 36 - - Milford Lane, 38 - - Millar, the publisher, 56 - - Miller, Joe, his burial-place, 348; - his debut on the stage, 439; - his last success, _ib._; - his haunt, 440 - - Milton, John, 232 - - Misaubin, Dr., 253 - - Mitre, the, 150 - - Mohun, Lord, 50, 245 - - Monk, General, his death, 65; - the Restoration effected by, 61; - his vulgar wife, 301; - invited to a conference by the Earl of Northumberland, 200 - - Monmouth Street, 385; - Mr. Dickens's description of, _ib._; - modern civilisation in, 463 - - Montague, Lady M. W., 86 - - Montfort, Simon de, 107 - - More, Sir Thomas, 164 - - Morgan, the Welsh buccaneer, 264 - - Morley's Hotel, 456 - - "Morning Chronicle," 167; - the end of, 168 - - "Morning Post," 170 - - Mortimer, the English Salvator, 46 - - Moss, the engraver, 63 - - Mottley, the actor, 439; - origin of his jest book, 440 - - Mountfort, Mrs., 434 - - Mountfort, the actor, 50; - his career, 435 - - Munden, Charles Lamb on, 327 - - Murphy, Arthur, 394 - - Murray, Major, 143 - - Mytens, Daniel, 240 - - - National Gallery, opening of, 219; - the paltry design of, 75; - the first purchase of pictures for, 222; - the gems of, 223, 224; - purchases and donations for, _ib._; - Turner's bequest to, 224; - proposed removal of the pictures from, _ib._; - Jacob Bell's bequest, 225; - enlargement of the, _ib._ - - Needham, Marchmont, 37; - his burial-place, 155 - - Nelson, Admiral, a tradition of, 71 - - Nelson Column, the, original estimate for, 220; - bassi relievi on, _ib._; - adornment of the pedestal of, 221 - - Newcastle, the Duke of, his house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, 410; - his levees, _ib._; - the porter's reply to an intruder on, 411; - impertinence of his cook, 412; - anecdote of, _ib._; - Smollett's and Walpole's sketches of, 413; - Walpole's review of his career, _ib._; - his reply to Lord Bute, 414 - - Newgate ballads, 463 - - New Inn, 164 - - Newspaper offices, 454 - - Nisbett, Mrs., 335 - - Nivernois, the Duc de, 18 - - Nokes, James, 432 - - Nollekens, the sculptor, 379 - - Norfolk Street, 44 _et seq._; - Charles Dickens's sketch of, 445 - - Northampton, the Earl of, 191 - - Northampton, Algernon, tenth Earl of, 192, 195 - - Northumberland, the wizard Earl of, his marriage 192; - treason, etc., _ib._ - - Northumberland, the Duke of, 192 - - Northumberland House, 191; - the oldest part of, 195; - accident at, _ib._; - the letters and date on its facade, 196; - destruction of the Strand front by fire, 197; - Sir John Hawkins's and Goldsmith's visit to Mr. Percy at, 198; - Goldsmith's account of a visit to, 199; - pictures in the gallery of, _ib._ - - Northumberland Street, 142; - demolition of, 200 - - Nottingham, the Countess of, 39, 40 - - Noy, Attorney-general, 389 - - - Oates, Titus, 208, 302 - - O'Keefe, the dramatist, 18, 258 - - Oldcastle, Sir John, Lord Cobham, 352; - his imprisonment, escape, and death, _ib._ - - Oldfield, Mrs., actress, 186; - her merits as a comedian, 310; - her death, 311 - - "Old Slaughter's," the frequenters of, 249; - Hogarth and Roubilliac at, _ib._ - - Olympic, the, 164; - Mr. Robson's representations at, 165 - - Oratory, Henley's, 339 - - Oxberry, the actor, 335 - - Oxburgh, Sir John, 13 - - Oxford, the Earl of, 137 - - - Page, Judge, 217; - the "Dunciad" on, _ib._ - - Paget, Lord, 26 - - Paintings, the first exhibition in London of, 75 - - Palsgrave Head Tavern, 148, 151 - - Parr, Dr., 47 - - Parr, Old, 91 - - Parsons, parish-clerk of St. Sepulchre's, 214 - - Partridge, the charlatan cobbler, 90 - - Pasquin (Williams), Anthony, 142 - - Patterson, Samuel, bookseller, 34 - - Payne, Mr. James, collector of MSS., 459 - - Payne, Roger, bookbinder, 457 - - Pendrell, Richard, his tomb and epitaph, 368 - - Penn, the Quaker, 44 - - Pepys, residence of, 135; - his career, 136; - residence of his father-in-law, 282; - visits Drury Lane Theatre, 302; - Lord Cottenham, a descendant of the author of the "Diary," 395 - - Perceval, Spencer, 394 - - Percy, the Earl Marshal, 109 - - Percy, Elizabeth, her marriages, 192 - - Perkins, Sir William, 12 - - Perry, James, 167 - - Pest-houses, 297 - - Peter the Great, 45; - his evenings in York Buildings, 136 - - Peters, Hugh, 207 - - Petty, William, 42 - - Philips, Ambrose, 248; - Pope's lines on, _ib._ - - Physicians, the Royal College of, 225 - - Pickett, Alderman, 148; - street named after, 147 - - "Pic-Nic," the, London newspaper, 139 - - Pidgeon, Bat, barber, 160 - - Pierce, Edward, sculptor, 49 - - Pine, the engraver, 252 - - "Pine Apple," the, 178 - - Plague, the Great, 143; - its origin in London, 262; - its progress, 263 - - Poitiers, the victory of, 111 - - Pope, the, 9 - - Pope, a relic of, 37; - lines on the death of Buckingham by, 132; - insolence of, 248; - reply of Sir Godfrey Kneller to, 268; - his dispute with Orator Henley, 342 - - Pope, Miss, the actress, 273; - her manner on the stage, 321 - - Porridge Island, 236 - - Porter, Mrs., the actress, 43 - - Portugal Row, 403, 421 - - Portugal Street, 429 _et seq._ - - Precinct of the Savoy, 122 - - Precinct Club, the, 169 - - Prior, his boyhood, 229; - his attachments, 282; - his death, 283 - - Pritchard, Mrs., actress, 317 - - Proctor, student of the Royal Academy, 80 - - Prynne, William, 398 - - Punch, the puppet-show, 208 - - "Punch," the periodical, 303 - - - Quakers, the, 44 - - "Queen" newspaper, 168 - - Queen Street, Great, 263; - residents in, 264 _et seq._; - residence of Lord Herbert of Cherbury in, 266 - - Quin, the actor, 187, 271; - appears on the stage with Garrick, 312; - his career as an actor, _ib._; - appears at Portugal Street Theatre, 437 - - - Radcliffe, Dr., 347 - - Radford, Thomas, 93 - - Railton, designer of the Nelson Memorial, 220 - - Raimbach, the engraver, 258 - - Raleigh, Sir Walter, 92; - Durham House unjustly taken from, 96; - costly dress worn by, _ib._ - - Rann, John, "Sixteen-stringed Jack," 374 - - Rawlinson, Dr., 16 - - Ray, Miss, murder of, 160 - - Rebecca, Biaggio, 76 - - Reddish, Samuel, the actor, 318 - - Reeve, John, 184 - - _Rejected Addresses_, the, 140 - - Rennie, John, architect, 124 - - Reynolds, Sir Joshua, his club in Essex Street, 35; - his adherence to the Spring Garden Society, 73; - his lectures, 83; - lying-in-state of, 79; - residences of, 274 - - Rhodes, the bookseller and actor, 233, 305 - - Rice, Mr. ("Jim Crow"), 180 - - Rich, Penelope, 31 - - Rich, the actor and manager, 435; - legend regarding, 436; - Garrick's lines on, 438 - - Richardson, the humourist, 187 - - Richmond, the Duke of, his gallery at Whitehall, 72 - - Rimbault, the clockmaker, 303 - - Rivet, John, a brazier, 212 - - Roberts, the solicitor, 143 - - Robin Hood Debating Society, 443 - - Robinson, Mrs., 318 - - Robinson's Coffee-house, 215 - - Robson, Mr. Frederick, 165, 236 - - Roman Bath, in the Strand, 169 - - Roman Road, ancient, 349 - - Romilly, Sir Samuel, 400 - - Rookery, the, 463 - - Roubilliac, his burial-place, 246; - his studio, 255; - a pupil of, 257 - - Royal Academy, the, Somerset House, 65; - the germs of, 71; - its service to English art, 75; - its first officers, 74; - catalogue, etc., 75 - - Royal Academicians, the, 74 - - Royal Society, the, 68; - its portraits of Newton, and other curiosities, 69 - - "Rummer," the, 229; - the scene of Jack Sheppard's first robbery, 230 - - Russel, Lord William, 285; - his alleged plot, 405; - his appearance before the Council, 406; - his interview with French agents, _ib._; - petition presented for his life, 407; - the last days of, _ib._; - his execution, 408 - - Russel, Lady Rachel, her petition for her husband's life, 407; - her letter to Dr. Fitzwilliams, 408 - - Rutland, the Earls of, 91 - - Ryan, the actor, 272 - - Rymer, the antiquary, 43, 154 - - - Saa, Don Pantaleon de, his quarrel with Giraud, 93 - - Sacheverell, Dr., 409 - - Sadler, Thomas, the thief, 404 - - St. Leonards, Lord, 396 - - Sala, G. A., 122 - - Sale, George, 49 - - Salisbury, Earls of, old house of the, 256 - - Salisbury House, Little, 89 - - Salisbury House, Old, 89 - - Salisbury Street, 89 - - Sandwich Islands, the king and queen of, 102 - - Sandwich, Montague, Earl of, 415 - - Savage, Richard, 216; - his escape from execution, _ib._ - - Savage Club, the, 460 - - Savoy, Peter, Earl of, 107; - Henry III.'s grant to, _ib._; - transfer of his manor to the chapter of Montjoy, 108 - - Savoy, the, moonlight meetings in, 106; - derivation of the name of, 107; - occupants of the palace of, 108; - Chaucer's marriage in, _ib._; - the vicissitudes of, 109; - attack of the mob of London on, 110; - a residence of John, King of France, 111; - its destruction by Wat Tyler, 112; - erection of an hospital on its site, 114; - its suppression and removal, 115; - Conference of the Savoy, 116; - a French church in, 117; - a sanctuary for debtors, _ib._; - Strype's description of it, _ib._; - clandestine marriages in, 118; - its state in the reign of George II., _ib._; - portions of it remaining in 1816, _ib._; - the destruction of, 119; - Mr. G. A. Sala's description of the Precinct of, 122; - traditions still lingering in, 123 - - Savoy Street, 116 - - Scheemakers, 333 - - School of Design, 446 - - Serle Street, origin of its name, 464 - - Serle's coffee-house, Addison's visit to, 464; - a curious letter extant at, _ib._ - - Seven Dials, the, Mr. Dickens's description of, 385; - Gay's description of, 461; - the degraded state of, 462 - - Seymour, Lord Thomas, 39; - the mint established in aid of his designs, 95 - - Seymour, Sir Edward, anecdote of, 234 - - Seymour Place. _See_ Arundel House - - Shadwell, son of the poet, 135 - - Shaftesbury, Earl of, 179 - - Shallow, the revelry of, 158 - - Sheppard, Jack, the burial-place of, 246 - - Sheridan, Thomas, 187 - - Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, produces the "School for Scandal," 322; - his extravagance, 328; - _sang froid_ exhibited in the House of Commons by, _ib._; - his death, 329 - - Shipley, Mr., founder of the Society of Arts, 100; - his pupils, _ib._ - - Shippen, "Honest," 45 - - Shipyard, the, gable-ended house in, 148 - - Shorter, Sir John, 22 - - Siddons, Mrs., 91, 319; - the homage of distinguished men to, 320 - - Signs, the suppression of, 237; - adornment of old London by, 238 - - Simon, Old, 379-80; - portraits of, 380; - anecdotes of his dog "Rover," _ib._ - - Singers, theatrical, 333 _et seq._ - - Slaughter's, Old, 249; - Hogarth and Roubilliac at, _ib._ - - Slaughter's, New, 253 - - Sloane, Sir Hans, 284 - - Smith, the brothers, 330 - - Smith, James, 139; - epigram by, 140 - - Snow, the goldsmith, 151, 443 - - Soane, Sir John, 427 - - Soane Museum, the, curiosities in, 424; - impediments thrown in the way of visitors to, _ib._; - its treasures, 425 _et seq._; - its pictures and engravings, 426; - a satire on, 465 - - Soeur, Le, French sculptor, 209 - - Somerset, the Protector, 57 - - Somerset House, 56; - Elizabeth's visits to Lord Hunsdon in, 58; - Anne of Denmark's masquerades in, _ib._; - pranks of Henrietta Maria's French household in, _ib._; - Puritans offended by Henrietta Maria's Roman Catholic chapel in, 59; - tombs under the great square of, _ib._; - death of Inigo Jones in, _ib._; - the celebration of Protestant service in, _ib._; - the lying-in-state of Cromwell in, 60; - Pepys's description of a strange scene in the presence-chamber of, 61; - lying-in-state of Monk, Duke of Albemarle, in, _ib._; - the murder of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, _ib._; - Waller made drunk at, 62; - apartments for poor noblemen, _ib._; - erection of new Government offices on the site of the old palace of, - _ib._; - scene witnessed by Pepys at, 63; - old prints of, _ib._; - the architect of the modern buildings of, 64; - demolition of the old palace of, _ib._; - Edward VI.'s furniture, and Catherine of Braganza's breakfast room in, - _ib._; - dimensions of the building completed by Sir William Chambers, 65; - retirement of the Royal Academy to, _ib._; - figures on the Strand front of, _ib._; - Government clerks and public offices in, 66; - statue and figure in the east wing of, _ib._; - office for auditing public accounts in, _ib._; - learned societies sheltered in, 67; - distinguished men who must have frequented the halls of, _ib._; - a legend of, 71; - a tradition of Nelson at, _ib._; - accident during Reynolds's lecture at, 78; - day-dreams in the great quadrangle of, 81 - - Somerset Coffee-house, 446 - - Somerset House Stairs, 63 - - Southampton Street, 185; - Garrick's house in, _ib._ - - Sparkes, Isaac, Irish comedian, 274 - - "Spectator," office of the, 124 - - Spelman, Lady, 40 - - Spelman, Sir Henry, 391 - - Spenser, his death and burial, 28 - - Spiller, James, comedian, 154; - his death, 438 - - Spring Gardens Academy of Art, the, 72; - dissimulation of the king in relation to, 73; - intrigues against, _ib._ - - Stage, the, reform of declamation and costume on, 325; - first appearance of actresses, in London, on, 429 - - Stapleton, Walter, his death, 26 - - Steele, Sir Richard, his coffee-houses, 36; - his residence, 135; - his allusions to Lincoln's Inn, 398 - - Stone, Nicholas, sculptor, 278 - - Storace, operas written by, 334 - - Stothard, the artist, sketch of his career, 283 - - Strahan and Co., bankers, 151, 451 (_note_) - - Strand, the:-- - Essex Street, 25; - Exeter House, 26; - Exeter Place, _ib._; - Essex House 29; - Milford Lane, 38; - Devereux Court, _ib._; - Arundel House, 39; - Arundel Street, 43; - Norfolk Street, 44; - Surrey Street, 48; - Howard Street, 49; - Strand Lane, 53; - Anderson's pills in, _ib._; - Turk's Head Coffee-house, _ib._; - residence of Jacob Tonson in, 54; - occupants of No. 141, _ib._; - office of the "Illustrated London News" in, 55; - Somerset House, 56; - Haydon's first London lodgings in, 77; - Beaufort House, 83; - the residence of Blake, in, _ib._; - office of the "Sun" newspaper, 83; - Coutts's Bank, 86; - Cecil Street, 88; - Salisbury Street and House, 89; - Mrs. Siddons's residence in, 91; - Durham Street and House, _ib._; - Buckingham Street, 135; - Villiers Street, _ib._; - Duke Street, _ib._; - York Buildings, _ib._; - Hungerford Bridge and Market, 136; - Craven Street, 139; - Northumberland Street, 143; - the strata of, 146; - the footway in Edward II.'s time, 147; - discovery of a small bridge in, _ib._; - houses on the north side of, _ib._ _et seq._; - Butcher Row, 148; - Palsgrave Place, 151; - the Maypole in, 160; - St. Clement's Danes, 152; - a scene of Elizabeth's time in, 161; - St. Mary's-le-Strand, 162; - New Inn, 164; - Wych Street, _ib._; - Lyon's Inn, 165; - Catherine Street, 166; - Doyley's warehouse in, 168; - Wellington Street, _ib._; - Lyceum Theatre, 171; - Exeter Change, 175; - familiar sounds to the old residents in, 177; - Exeter Street, 178; - Exeter Hall, _ib._; - a resident in, _ib._; - Exeter House, 179; - Burleigh Street, _ib._; - Adelphi Theatre, 180; - Southampton Street, 185; - Bedford Street, 186; - Gaiety Theatre, 452; - memoranda relating to the south side of, 443; - do. relating to the north side of, 452 - - Strand, Bridge, the, 169 - - Strand Lane, 53; - mentioned by Addison, 169 - - Strand Theatre, 444, 446 - - Streets, the nomenclature of, 103 - - Strype, the antiquary, 117 - - Suckling, Sir John, 195; - his death, 241 - - Suett, the actor, 321 - - Suffolk House, 194 - - Sullivan, Luke, engraver, 251 - - "Sun," office of the, 83 - - Surrey Street, 48 - - Surgeons, College of, 419 - - Swan, the, Charing Cross, 236 - - - Tart-Hall, 43 - - Taylor, the water-poet, 279; - his complaint regarding carriages and tobacco, _ib._; - epitaph on, 280 - - Tempest, Peter Molyn, engraver, 167 - - Temple Bar, its erection, 4; - description of, 5; - threatened destruction of, 6; - fixing the heads of traitors on, 11; - curious print of, 13; - heads of Fletcher, Townley, and Oxburgh, exposed on, _ib._; - apprehension of a man for firing bullets at the two last heads - exhibited on, 16; - Counsellor Layer's head blown by a terrible wind from, _ib._; - removal of the last iron spike from, 17; - a quotation of Dr. Johnson's at, _ib._; - proclamation of peace at, 18; - its adornment on public occasions, 19; - opening its gates to the sovereign, 20; - reception of Queen Elizabeth at, _ib._; - reception of royal persons at, 21; - pageants on the passage of King James, _ib._; - the mournful celebrity of, 22 - - Temple Club, 453 - - Tenison, Dr. Thomas, 247 - - Tennyson, Alfred, 418 - - Terry, an actor, 183 - - Thames, the, scenery on its banks, 136; - embankment of, 190; - old watermen on, 247; - Copper Holme's ark on, _ib._ - - Theatres, an old custom at, 172; - a riot in one, 186 - - Theatre, the Duke's, 429; - a sword-fight between two factions in, 430; - the principal ladies of, _ib._; - Pepys's visits to, 431; - the principal performers at, 432 _et seq._; - plays of Congreve produced at, 434; - Steele's account of an audience in, 435; - the last proprietor of, _ib._; - riot at, 436; - Macklin's performance at, 437; - Quin's appearance at, _ib._ - - Thomson, the music-seller, 177 - - Thornbury, the Rev. Nathaniel, 47 - - Thornhill, Sir James, 72 - - Thurloe, Secretary, 392-393 - - Thurtell, the murderer of Weare, 165 - - Thynne, Tom, 193 - - Tillotson, Dr., 390 - - Tobacco, introduction of, 96 - - Tom's Coffee-house, 37 - - Tonson, Jacob, 54 - - Tories, they establish tavern-clubs, 284 - - Townley, execution of, 14 - - Trafalgar Square, 220; - statues and fountains in, 221, 456 - - Trojan Horse, Bushnell's, 7 - - Tunstall, Bishop, 92 - - Turk's Head Coffee-house, 53 - - Turk's Head, Gerrard Street, 72 - - Turner, J. W. M., anecdote of, 78; - his opinion of the Thames scenery, 136; - characteristics of his works, 224; - his bequests to the nation, _ib._ - - Tyburn, criminals on their way to, 373 - - Tyler Wat, 112; - a mistake of Shakspere regarding, 114 (_note_) - - Tyrconnel, the Duchess of. _See_ Widow, the White - - Twinings, the Messrs., 35, 152 - - - Ussher, Archbishop, 396 - - Union Club, the, 457 - - - Vanderbank starts an academy of art, 72 - - Vane, Sir Harry, 200 - - Vere Street, Clare Market, 345 - - Vernon, Robert, 224 - - Vertue, 8 - - Vestris, Madame, 175 - - Via Trinovantica, 349 - - Victoria embankment, 191 - - "Ville de Paris," the Olympic Theatre partially built of its timbers, 164 - - Villiers Street, 135 - - "Vine," the, in St. Giles's, 375 - - Vine Street, origin of the name, 300 - - Vinegar Yard, Drury Lane, 300 - - Voltaire rebukes Congreve's vanity, 52 - - "Vortigern," by W. H. Ireland, 46 - - - Waagen, Dr., 199 - - Waldo, Sir Timothy, 412 - - Wallack, the actor, 334 - - Waller, the poet, Saville's saying of, 62; - lines by, 210 - - Wallis, Albany, residence of, 46 - - Walpole, a circumstance to surprise, 78; - visits the Cock Lane ghost, 196 - - Warburton, Bishop, 397 - - Ward, Dr., inventor of "Friar's Balsam," disposal of his statue by - Carlini, 100; - attends on George II., _ib._ - - Ward, Edward, 281 - - Waterloo Bridge, Dupin and Canova's declaration respecting, 124; - chief features of, _ib._; - anecdote of Old Jack, a horse employed to drag the stone to, _ib._; - the dark arch of, 451 - - Watling Street, 349 - - Weare, Mr. William, 165 - - Webster, Benjamin, as an actor, 184 - - Wedderburn, his insincerity, 415; - Lord Clive's reward to, _ib._ - - Welch, Judge, apprehends a highwayman, 378 - - Wellington Street, newspapers and periodicals in, 167, 168, 454 - - West, anecdote of, 73; - his patronage of Proctor, 80 - - Westminster Fire Office, 257 - - Whetstone Park, 400 - - Whitefoord, Caleb, 141; - Adam's room in the house of, 142; - Goldsmith's lines on, _ib._ - - White Horse livery stables, 257 - - Whitelock, Bulstrode, 234 - - Whittington Club, the, 152 - - Wickliffe, John, refuses tribute to the Pope, 109; - appears before the Bishop of London, _ib._ - - Widow, the White, the story of, 94 - - Wild House, 277, 459 - - Wilkes, Robert, actor, 311 - - Wilkinson, Tate, 123 - - Willis, Dr. Thomas, 241 - - Wilson, the painter, 189, 283 - - Wimbledon House, Strand, and Doyley's warehouse erected on the site of, - 168 - - Winchester House, 271 - - Wither, George, 120, 121 - - Woffington, Peg, president of the Beefsteak Club, 173; - her career, 316 - - Wolcot, Dr. (Peter Pinder), 84 - - Wollaston, Dr., discoveries of, 88; - anecdote of, 85 - - Woodward, the actor, 315 - - Wych Street, 164, 454 - - Wynford, Lord, epigram on, 415 - - - Yates, Mr., the actor, 183 - - Yates, Mrs., actress, 317 - - York House, old, 126; - river view of, 127; - celebrated men connected with, _ib._; - Lord Bacon's life here, _ib._; - pictures, busts, and statues at, 131; - paintings placed in it by the Duke of Buckingham, _ib._; - Pepys's visit to, 132; - streets built on its site, 135 - - York Stairs, description of, 134 - - York Buildings, waterworks, 135, 445 - - York Buildings, Water Company, 445 - - Young, Charles, the actor, 323, 335 - - - Zoffany, the artist, 303; - Garrick's patronage of, 304 - - -THE END. - - - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] Tom Taylor's _Life of Haydon_, vol. i. p. 49. - -[2] Strype, B. iii. p. 278. - -[3] It was pulled down in January 1878. - -[4] The steepness of Holborn Hill was abolished by the new viaduct in -1869. - -[5] Cunningham's _London_, vol. i. p. 260. - -[6] Archenholz, p. 227. - -[7] Beautifully reprinted in 1863 by Mr. J. C. Hotten. - -[8] Walpole's _Anecdotes of Painting_, vol. iii. p. 274. - -[9] Pamphlet "The Burning of the Pope," quoted in Brayley's _Londiniana_, -vol. iv. p. 74. - -[10] Roger North's _Examen_, p. 574. - -[11] _Ibid._ p. 574. - -[12] For a further account of these Anti-Papal proceedings the reader may -refer to _Sir Roger de Coverly_, with notes by W. H. Wills. - -[13] _State Trials_, x. pp. 105-124; Burnet, ii. p. 407. - -[14] Hume, vol. vii. p. 220. - -[15] Evelyn, vol. ii. p. 341. - -[16] _Temple Bar, the City Golgotha_ (1853), p. 33. - -[17] Cobbett's _State Trials_, vol. xviii. - -[18] _State Trials_, vol. xviii. p. 375. - -[19] _Annual Register_ (1766), p. 52. - -[20] Nichol's _Literary Anecdotes_. - -[21] Brayley. - -[22] Boswell, p. 258. - -[23] Ovid, _de Art. Amand._, B. v. 339. - -[24] _Recollections of the Life of John O'Keefe_, vol. i. p. 81. - -[25] _O'Keefe's Life_, vol. i. p. 101. - -[26] _London Scenes_, by Aleph (1863), p. 75. - -[27] Stow's _Annals_. - -[28] Hall's _Chronicle_ (condensed in Nichols' _London Pageants_). - -[29] Leland's _Collectanea_, vol. iv. pp. 310 _et seq._ - -[30] Holinshed. - -[31] Nichols' _Progresses_, vol. i. p. 58. - -[32] Nichols' _London Pageants_, p. 63. - -[33] _London Gazette._ - -[34] Nichols p. 83. - -[35] Dugdale. - -[36] Holinshed's _Chronicles_, vol. iii. p. 338. - -[37] Sharon Turner's _Hist. of England_, vol. xii. p. 276. - -[38] Hygford's _Exam. Murd._, 57. - -[39] _Ibid._ - -[40] Pennant. - -[41] Camden, p. 632. - -[42] Hepworth Dixon's _Story of Lord Bacon's Life_ (1862), p. 120. - -[43] Hepworth Dixon's _Story of Lord Bacon's Life_ (1862), p. 121. - -[44] Wotton, _Reliquiae_, p. 160. - -[45] Dr. Birch's _Memoirs of the Reign of James I._ - -[46] Ben Jonson's _Works_ (Gifford), vol. vii. p. 75. - -[47] Clarendon's _History of the Rebellion_, x. 80. - -[48] MS. Journal of the House of Commons. - -[49] Smith's _Nollekens_. - -[50] Boswell's _Johnson_ (1860), p. 751. - -[51] Jeaffreson's _Book about Doctors_, p. 97. - -[52] Boswell, vol. iv. p. 276. - -[53] J. T. Smith's _Streets of London_ (1846), vol. i. p. 412. - -[54] _The Intelligencer_, Jan. 23, 1664-5. - -[55] Disraeli's _Curios. of Lit._, p. 289. - -[56] Evelyn, vol. i. p. 10. - -[57] Dr. King's _Anecdotes_, p. 117. - -[58] Thoresby's _Diary_, ii. 111-117. - -[59] _British Bibliographer_, vol. i. p. 574. - -[60] Pope's _Works_ (Carruthers), vol. ii. p. 379. - -[61] Hawkins's _Life of Johnson_, pp. 207-244. - -[62] Jeaffreson's _Book about Doctors_ (2d edit.) pp. 207, 208. - -[63] Stow, p. 161. - -[64] Dryden's _Misc. Poems_, iv. 275, ed. 1727 (Cunningham). - -[65] Latimer's Fourth Sermon, 1st ed. - -[66] Strype, B. iv. p. 105. - -[67] _Earl of Monmouth's Mem._, ed. 1759, p. 77. - -[68] Lysons. - -[69] Dr. Birch's _Mems. of the Peers of England_. - -[70] Lingard's _History of England_. - -[71] Hughson. - -[72] Cunningham (1846), vol. i. p. 38. - -[73] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. i. p. 292. - -[74] Lilly _On the Life and Death of King Charles I._, p. 224. - -[75] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, ii. 153. - -[76] Smith's _Streets_, vol. i. p. 385. - -[77] Thoresby's _Letters_, ii. 329. - -[78] Hawkins's _Life of Johnson_, p. 208. - -[79] _Spectator_, 329-335. - -[80] Ireland's _Authentic Account_, etc. (1796), i. p. 42. - -[81] W. H. Ireland's _Vindication_, p. 21. - -[82] Ireland's _Vindication_, p. 19. - -[83] Boaden's _Life of Kemble_, vol. ii. p. 172. - -[84] Andrews's _History of British Journalism_, vol. ii. p. 285. - -[85] Strype, B. iv. p. 118. - -[86] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. ii. p. 391. - -[87] _The Mourning Bride._ - -[88] It is doubtful whether it was not the duchess. (Wilson's _Life of -Congreve_, 8vo, 1730, i. p. 1 of Preface.) - -[89] Cibber's _Lives of the Poets_ (1753). - -[90] Stow, p. 165. - -[91] _Spectator_, No. 454. - -[92] Malachi Malagrowther's _Letters_. - -[93] Croker's _Boswell_, vol. i. p. 475. - -[94] Scott's _Dryden_, vol. i. p. 388. - -[95] Johnson's _Life of Dryden_. - -[96] Strype, B. ii. p. 508. - -[97] Hume. - -[98] Dugdale, vol. ii. p. 363. - -[99] Mitford, v. 201. - -[100] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 756. - -[101] Stow, p. 149. - -[102] Burleigh's _Diary in Munden_, p. 811. - -[103] Wilson's _Life of James I._ - -[104] L'Estrange's _Life of Charles I._ - -[105] _Certain Information_, etc., No. 11, p. 87. - -[106] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 755. - -[107] Essay by John D'Espagne. - -[108] Ludlow's _Memoirs_, vol. ii. p. 615. - -[109] Pepys, 2d. edit. vol. i. p. 309. - -[110] Pepys, vol. i. p. 357. - -[111] Aubrey's _Lives and Letters_. - -[112] Stow, p. 1045, ed. 1631. - -[113] Pepys's _Diary_, vol. i. p. 16. - -[114] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 166. - -[115] _Ibid._ p. 168. - -[116] Dryden's _Essay on Dramatick Poesy_, 1668. - -[117] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 756. - -[118] _European Magazine_ (Mr. Moser). - -[119] Smith's _Life of Nollekens_, vol. ii. p. 205. - -[120] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. i. p. 22 (Notes by Northcote and Mr. -Wornum). - -[121] Chalmers's _British Poets_, vol. vii. p. 101 (Ode to the Royal -Society). - -[122] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 26. - -[123] _Ibid._ p. 757. - -[124] _Ibid._ - -[125] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. i. p. 282. - -[126] Galt's _Life of West_, pt. ii. p. 25. - -[127] _Ibid._ pp. 36-38. - -[128] Strange's _Enquiry into the Rise and Establishment of the Royal -Academy_ (1775). - -[129] Pye's _Patronage of British Art_, p. 134. - -[130] The original thirty-six Academicians were--Benjamin West, Francesco -Zuccarelli, Nathaniel Dance, Richard Wilson, George Michael Moser, Samuel -Wale (a sign-painter), J. Baptist Cipriani, Jeremiah Meyer, Angelica -Kauffmann, Charles Catton (a coach and sign painter), Francesco -Bartolozzi, Francis Cotes, Edward Penny, George Barrett (Wilson's rival), -Paul Sandby, Richard Yeo, Mary Moser, Agostino Carlini, William Chambers -(the architect of Somerset House), Joseph Wilton (the sculptor), Francis -Milner Newton, Francis Hayman, John Baker, Mason Chamberlin, John Gwynn, -Thomas Gainsborough, Dominick Serres, Peter Toms (a drapery painter for -Reynolds, who finally committed suicide), Nathaniel Hone (who for his -libel on Reynolds was expelled the Academy), Joshua Reynolds, John -Richards, Thomas Sandby, George Dance, J. Tyler, William Hoare of Bath, -and Johann Zoffani. In 1772 Edward Burch, Richard Cosway, Joseph -Nollekens, and James Barry (expelled in 1797), made up the -forty.--Wornum's Preface to the _Lectures on Painting_. - -[131] Pye's _Patronage of British Art_, 1845, p. 136. - -[132] Royal Academy _Catalogues_, Brit. Mus. - -[133] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. p. 381. - -[134] _Life of Haydon_, by Tom Taylor, vol. i. p. 30. - -[135] _Ibid._ p. 20. - -[136] Thornbury's _Life of Turner_. - -[137] O'Keefe's _Life_ vol. i. p. 386. - -[138] Knowles's _Life of Fuseli_, vol. i. p. 32. - -[139] Irvine's _Life of Falconer_. - -[140] Smith's _Life of Nollekens_, vol. ii. p. 129. - -[141] Hatton, p. 785. - -[142] _Postman_, No. 80. - -[143] _Life of Blake_, by Gilchrist. - -[144] Andrews's _History of Journalism_, vol. ii. p. 85. - -[145] Strype, B. iii. p. 196. - -[146] Glover's _Life_, p. 6. - -[147] Dennis's _Letters_, p. 196. - -[148] Procter's _Life of Kean_, vol. ii. p. 140. - -[149] Dr. King's _Art of Cookery_. - -[150] _Spectator_, No. 9. - -[151] _Memoirs of the Kit-Cat Club_, p. 6. - -[152] Defoe's _Journal_, vol. i. p. 287. - -[153] _Letters of Lady M. W. Montagu_, edited by W. M. Thomas, Esq. - -[154] _Annual Obituary_, vol. vii. - -[155] _Monthly Repository_, by Leigh Hunt, 1836. - -[156] Procter's _Life of Kean_. - -[157] _The Temple Anecdotes_ (Groombridge), p. 50. - -[158] Strype, B. iv. p. 120. - -[159] _Ibid._ - -[160] Dixon's _Bacon_, p. 227. - -[161] Appendix to the _Tatler_, vol. iv. p. 615. - -[162] Smith's _Streets of London_, vol. iv. p. 244. - -[163] _Egerton Papers_, by Collier, p. 376. - -[164] Strype, B. vi. p. 76. - -[165] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 283. - -[166] _London Gazette_, No. 897. - -[167] Pepys, vol. i. p. 137, 4to ed. - -[168] Horace Walpole. - -[169] Otway. - -[170] _Spectator_, No. 155. - -[171] _Tatler_, No. 26. - -[172] _Nouvelle Biographie Univ._, vol. xxxviii. p. 19. - -[173] _Ducatus Leodiensis_, fol. 1715, p. 485. - -[174] _British Apollo_ (1740), ii. p. 376. - -[175] Oldys's _Life of Raleigh_, p. 145. - -[176] Aubrey, vol. iii. p. 513. - -[177] Gough's _British Topography_, vol. i. p. 743. - -[178] Walpole's _Mems. of George III._, vol. iv. p. 173. - -[179] Elmes's _Anecdotes_, vol. iii. - -[180] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 83. - -[181] Boswell, vol. i. p. 225. - -[182] Hone's _Everyday Book_, vol. i. p. 237. - -[183] Pye's _Patronage of British Art_ (1845), pp. 61, 62. - -[184] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i. p. 161. - -[185] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. p. 3. - -[186] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 203. - -[187] _Haydon's Life_, vol. iii. p. 182. - -[188] _Book about Doctors_, by J. C. Jeaffreson, p. 221. - -[189] Archenholz, p. 109. - -[190] Colman's _Random Records_. - -[191] See the Percy Society's Publications. - -[192] Rymer, iii. 926. - -[193] Chaucer's _Works_. - -[194] Dugdale's _Baronetage_, vol. 1. p. 789. - -[195] _Scala Chron._, p. 175; Froissart, c. 161. - -[196] Rymer, vi. 452. - -[197] Froissart, lix. - -[198] Walsingham, p. 248. - -[199] Holinshed, vol. ii. p. 431. - -[200] Shakspere incorrectly makes Jack Cade burn the Savoy. He has -attributed to that Irish impostor the act of Wat Tyler, a far more -patriotic man. - -[201] Stow. - -[202] Cowley's _Works_, 10th edit. (Tonson), 1707, vol. ii. p. 587. - -[203] Letter to Evelyn. Cowley's _Works_ (1707), vol. ii. p. 731. - -[204] J. T. Smith's _Antiquarian Ramble in the Streets of London_ (1846), -vol. i. p. 255. - -[205] Baker's _Chronicle_ (1730), p. 625. - -[206] Cunningham's _London_ (1849), vol. ii. p. 728. - -[207] _The Postman_ (1696), No. 180. - -[208] Strype, B. iv. p. 107, ed. 1720. - -[209] Hughson's _Walks through London_, p. 207. - -[210] Hughson's _Walks through London_, p. 209. - -[211] Dryden's _Works_ (1821 ed.), vol. ii. p. 105. - -[212] _Athenae Ox._ vol. ii. p. 1036. - -[213] Cunningham (1849), vol. ii. p. 537. - -[214] Wood's _Athen. Ox._ ii. 396, ed. 1721. - -[215] _The Shepherd's Hunting_ (1633). - -[216] Macaulay's _History of England_, vol. ii. chap. v. - -[217] Buckingham's _Works_ (1704), p. 15. - -[218] _All the Year Round_, May 12, 1860 (_The Precinct_). - -[219] Andrews's _History of British Journalism_, vol. ii. p. 83. - -[220] Smiles's _Lives of the Engineers_, vol. ii. p. 187. - -[221] Smiles's _Lives of the Engineers_, vol. ii. p. 186. - -[222] _Ibid._, vol. ii. p. 93. - -[223] Hepworth Dixon's _Story of Lord Bacon's Life_ (1862), p. 14. - -[224] Montagu, xii. 420, 432. - -[225] Aubrey's _Lives_, vol. ii. p. 224; Dixon's _Bacon_, p. 315. - -[226] _Character of Lord Bacon._ - -[227] Dixon's _Story of Lord Bacon's Life_, p. 33 (1862). Pearce's _Inns -of Court_. - -[228] Sir B. Gerbier. - -[229] Bassompierre's _Embassy to England_. - -[230] Whitelocke, p. 167. - -[231] Peacham's _Compleat Gentleman_, ed. 1661, p. 108. - -[232] Pepys, 6th June 1663. - -[233] Dryden (Scott), vol. ix. p. 233. - -[234] Pepys's _Diary_. vol. i. p. 223. - -[235] Evelyn's _Memoirs_, vol. i. p. 530. - -[236] Rate Books of St. Martin's. - -[237] Cole's _MSS._, vol. xx. folio 220. - -[238] Gilchrist's _Life of Etty_, vol. i. p. 221. - -[239] Barrow's _Life of Peter the Great_, p. 90. - -[240] Ballard's Collection, Bodleian. - -[241] Pennant. - -[242] Strype, B. vi. p. 76. - -[243] Cunningham, vol. i. pp. 402, 403. - -[244] Rate-books of St. Martin's. - -[245] _Memorials of Franklin_, vol. i. p. 261. - -[246] Smith's _Comic Misc._ vol. ii. p. 186. - -[247] _Memoirs of James Smith_, by Horace Smith, vol. i. p. 32. - -[248] _Memoirs of James Smith_, by Horace Smith, vol. i. p. 54. - -[249] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. p. 340. - -[250] _Ibid._ vol. i. pt 302. - -[251] Harl. MSS. 6850. - -[252] Rate-books of St. Martin's. - -[253] Smith's _Book for a Rainy Day_, pp. 281, 282. - -[254] Cal. Rot. Patentium. - -[255] Brayley's _Beauties of England and Wales_, vol. x. part iv. p. 167. - -[256] _Father Hubbard's Tale_, 4to, 1604.--Middleton's _Works_, vol. v. p. -573. - -[257] Archer's _Vestiges of Old London_ (View of Crockford's shop). - -[258] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. iii. p. 911. - -[259] Malcolm's _Londinum Rediviv._ vol. iii. p. 397. - -[260] Hughson's _Walks_ (1829). - -[261] Boswell's _Life of Johnson_, vol. i. p. 383. - -[262] Boswell, vol. iii. p. 331. - -[263] _Censura Literaria_, vol. i. p. 176. - -[264] Spence's _Anecdotes_. - -[265] _State Poems_, vol. ii. p. 143 ("A Satyr on the Poets.") - -[266] Leigh Hunt's _Town_ (1857), p. 135. - -[267] Hughson's _Walks_, p. 184. - -[268] Leigh Hunt's _Town_ (1859 ed.), p. 134. - -[269] Strype, B. iv. p. 117. - -[270] Boswell. - -[271] Walpole's _Anecdotes_ (ed. Dallaway), vol. ii. p. 315. - -[272] Leigh Hunt's _Town_ (1859), p. 145. - -[273] Brayley's _Beauties of England and Wales_, vol. x. part iv. p. 166. - -[274] Malone's _Shakspere_, vol. iii. p. 516. - -[275] Nichols's _Hogarth_, vol. ii. p. 70. - -[276] Cunningham (1849), vol. i. p. 210. - -[277] Hughson's _Walks through London_, p. 188. - -[278] Chalmers's _Biog. Dict._ vol. v. p. 64. - -[279] Boswell, ed. Croker, vol. ii. 201. - -[280] Stow, p. 166. - -[281] Sir G. Buc, in Howes (ed. 1631), p. 1075. - -[282] Fitzstephen, circa, 1178: the quotation refers, however, more to the -north of London. - -[283] Tennyson. - -[284] Malcolm's _London_, vol. ii. - -[285] Knox's _Elegant Extracts_. - -[286] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 146. - -[287] _Henry IV._ second part, act iii. sc. 2. - -[288] _Prot. Dissenters' Magazine_, vol. vi. - -[289] Smith's _Life of Nollekens_, vol. i. 365. - -[290] Cradock's _Memoirs_, vol. iv. p. 166. - -[291] _Garrard to the Earl of Strafford_, vol. i. p. 227. - -[292] _Citie's Loyaltie Displayed_, 4to, 1661. - -[293] Pepys. - -[294] Aubrey's _Anecdotes_, vol. iii. p. 457. - -[295] Malcolm's _Streets of London_ (1846), vol. i. p. 363. - -[296] _Parish Clerks' Survey_, p. 286. - -[297] Cunningham's _Lives of the Painters_, vol. iii. p. 292. - -[298] Pope's _Dunciad_. - -[299] Addison's _Freeholder_, No. 4. - -[300] J. T. Smith's _Streets of London_ (1846), vol. i. pp. 366, 367. - -[301] Sir G. Buc (Stow by Howes), p. 1075, ed. 1631. - -[302] Roper's _Life of Sir Thomas More_, by Singer, p. 52. - -[303] _Spectator_ No. 2, March 2, 1710-11. - -[304] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 606. - -[305] Sir G. Buc, in Howes, p. 1076, ed. 1631. - -[306] _Trivia._ - -[307] _Smith's Streets of London_, vol. i. p. 338. - -[308] Hone's _Every-day Book_, vol. i. p. 1300. - -[309] Walpole's _Anecdotes of Painting_, vol. ii. p. 612. - -[310] No. 102. - -[311] Pennant's _London_ (1813), p. 204. - -[312] _Spectator_, No. 454. - -[313] _Spectator_, No. 454. - -[314] Andrews's _History of Journalism_, vol. ii. p. 8. - -[315] Brayley's _Theatres of London_ (1826), p. 40. - -[316] Brayley, p. 42. - -[317] Chetwood's _History of the Stage_, p. 141. - -[318] _Spectator_, No. 468. - -[319] Ward's _Secret History of Clubs_, ed. 1709. - -[320] Victor. - -[321] Edwards's _Anecdotes of Painting_, p. 20. - -[322] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i. p. 110. - -[323] P. Cunningham. - -[324] Dr. King's _Art of Cookery, humbly inscribed to the Beef-steak -Club_. (1709.) - -[325] Leigh Hunt's _Town_ (1859), p. 191. - -[326] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 297. - -[327] Delaune. - -[328] Strype, B. iv. p. 119. - -[329] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, ch. iv. - -[330] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i. p. 281. - -[331] _Ibid._ p. 269. - -[332] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i. p. 276. - -[333] Cunningham, p. 187. - -[334] Whitelocke. - -[335] Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, vol. vi. p. 20. - -[336] _The Stage_, by Alfred Bunn, vol. iii. p. 131. - -[337] _Life of Mathews_, by Mrs. Mathews (abridged by Mr. Yates), p. 211. - -[338] _Life of Mathews_, by Mrs. Mathews. - -[339] _Critical Essays_ (1807), p. 140. - -[340] Hazlitt's _Criticisms of the English Stage_, p. 98. - -[341] Hazlitt's _Criticisms of the English Stage_, p. 98. - -[342] Cole's _Life of C. Kean_, vol. ii. p. 260. - -[343] Strype, B. vi. p. 93. - -[344] Stow. - -[345] Davies's _Life of Garrick_, vol. x. p. 217. - -[346] Strype, B. vi. p. 93. - -[347] Cunningham's _London_ (1850), p. 219. - -[348] Whyte's _Miscellanea Nova_, p. 49. - -[349] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 597.--Rate-books of St. Martin's. - -[350] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. i. p. 248. - -[351] Dixon's _Story of Lord Bacon's Life_, p. 204. - -[352] _English Causes Celebres_ (edited by Craik), vol. i. p. 79. - -[353] _Memoirs of the Peers of James I._, p. 240. - -[354] _Autobiography of Lord Herbert_, p. 110 - -[355] Suckling's _Poems_. - -[356] Camden's _Annals of King James_. - -[357] _Londinum Redivivum._ - -[358] Walpole to Montague, Feb. 2, 1762. - -[359] Dix's _Life of Chatterton_, p. 267. - -[360] Foster's _Life of Goldsmith_, p. 216. - -[361] Irving's _Oliver Goldsmith_ (1850), p. 90. - -[362] Dr. Waagen's _Treasures of Art_, vol. i. p. 394. - -[363] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. ii. p. 354. - -[364] Walpole, vol. i. p. 277. - -[365] _The Famous Chronicle of King Edward I._ (4to., 1593). - -[366] Bosworth's _Anglo-Saxon Dictionary_. - -[367] Hamlet. - -[368] _Diversions of Purley._ - -[369] Peele's _Works_ (Dyce), vii. 575. - -[370] Rymer, ii. 498. - -[371] Heming, 590. - -[372] Walpole, vol. i. p. 32. - -[373] _Gleanings from Westminster Abbey_, 2d edition, p. 152 (W. Burges), -Roxburghe Club. - -[374] Lilly's _Observations_. - -[375] Carlyle's _Cromwell_, vol. i. p. 99. - -[376] _State Trials_, vol. v. pp. 1234-5. - -[377] Narcissus Luttrell. - -[378] Overseers' Books (_Cunningham_, vol. i. p. 179). - -[379] _Harl. MSS._ 7315. - -[380] Carpenter (quoted by Walpole, _Anecdotes_, vol. ii. p. 395). - -[381] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. ii. p. 394. - -[382] Smith's _Streets of London_, vol. i. p. 139. - -[383] Archenholz, _Tableau de l'Angleterre_, vol. ii. p. 164, 1788. - -[384] _Burnet_, vol. ii. p. 53, ed. 1823. - -[385] _Annual Register_ (1810). - -[386] Cobbett's _State Trials_, vol. xvii. p. 160. - -[387] Archenholz, vol. i. p. 166. - -[388] _Daily Advertiser_, 1731. - -[389] _Gentleman's Magazine_, vol. i. - -[390] v. 85. - -[391] Hogarth's _Works_ (Nicholls and Steevens), vol. i. p. 162. - -[392] Smith's _London_, vol. i. p. 141. - -[393] _Notes and Queries_ (vol. vi., 1858), p. 364. - -[394] _Dunciad_, B. iv. 30. - -[395] Pope's Works (edited by R. Carruthers), vol. ii. p. 314. - -[396] Stow, p. 167. - -[397] Report, May 16, 1844. - -[398] Smith's _London_, vol. i. p. 133. - -[399] Dr. Waagen, vol. i. p. 6. - -[400] Waagen, vol. i. p. 322. - -[401] _Ibid._ vol. i. p. 331. - -[402] Cunningham, nearly always correct, says L10,000 (vol. ii. p. 577). - -[403] Waagen, vol. ii. p. 329. - -[404] Cunningham's _London_, p. 428. - -[405] Smith's _Streets of London_, vol. i. p. 153. - -[406] Rate-books of St. Martin's (Cunningham). - -[407] MSS., Birch, 4221, quoted in the notes of the _Tatler_. - -[408] "Country Wife." - -[409] "The Scowrers." - -[410] _State Poems._ - -[411] "The Hind and the Panther Transversed." - -[412] "The Relapse." - -[413] _The Art of Cookery._ - -[414] _Weekly Journal_, Nov. 21, 1724. - -[415] _London Gazette_, June 4, 1688. - -[416] _Dunciad_, B. ii. v. 411. - -[417] _Flying Post_, June 23, 1716. - -[418] Pope's _Works_ (Carruthers), vol. ii. pp. 309, 310. - -[419] Leigh Hunt's _Essays on the Theatres_ (1807), p. 64. - -[420] Philips's _Life of Milton_, p. 32, 12mo, 1694. - -[421] Cunningham (1850), p. 107. - -[422] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i. p. 163. - -[423] _Royal Guide to the London Charities_, 1878-79. - -[424] _Life of Dr. John North._ - -[425] Whitelock, p. 470, ed. 1732. - -[426] Burnet, vol. ii. p. 70, ed. 1823. - -[427] Boswell (Croker), vol. iii. p. 213. - -[428] Willis's _History of the See of Llandaff_. - -[429] _Bartholomew Fair_ (Ben Jonson). - -[430] Gifford's _Ben Jonson_, iv. p. 430. - -[431] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 505. - -[432] _The World_, Nov. 29, 1753. - -[433] _Robson: a Sketch_ (Hotten, 1864). - -[434] Aubrey, iii. 415. - -[435] "Treacherous Brothers," 4to, 1696. - -[436] _St. James's Chronicle_, April 24, 1762. - -[437] _Ibid._ May 26, 1761. - -[438] Edwards' _Anecdotes_, pp. 116, 117. - -[439] Rate-books of St. Martin's. - -[440] Lord Orford's _Anecdotes of Painting_. - -[441] J. C. Jeaffreson's _Book about Doctors_, p. 109. - -[442] _Ath. Ox._ vol. ii. - -[443] Gifford's _Ben Jonson_, vol. ix. pp. 48, 63, 64. - -[444] Aubrey's _Letters_, vol. ii. p. 332. - -[445] Recital in grant to the parish from King James I. - -[446] Cunningham's _London_ (1849), vol. ii. p. 526. - -[447] Burnet's _Own Times_, vol. i. p. 327, ed. 1823. - -[448] Allan Cunningham's _Lives_, vol. iv. p. 290. - -[449] _Biog. Brit._ - -[450] Smith's _Life of Nollekens_, vol. ii. p. 233. - -[451] Smith's _Book for a Rainy Day_, pp. 251, 252. - -[452] Prologues to the _Satires_, v. 180. - -[453] Dr. Johnson's _Life of Ambrose Philips_. - -[454] Smith's _Nollekens and his Times_, vol. ii. p. 222. - -[455] Cunningham (1850), p. 450. - -[456] Smith's _Streets_, vol. ii. p. 208. - -[457] Smith, vol. ii. p. 97. - -[458] Smith, p. 211. - -[459] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 212. - -[460] Smith, vol. ii. p. 224. - -[461] Smith's _Streets of London_, vol. ii. p. 226. - -[462] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i. p. 178, a curious and amusing book, the -truth in which is spoiled by an injudicious and eccentric mixture of -fiction. - -[463] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. pp. 93, 94. - -[464] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 233. - -[465] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. ii. p. 238. - -[466] _Ibid._ p. 241. - -[467] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. p. 143. - -[468] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 244. - -[469] _Ibid._ p. 250. - -[470] _Recollections of O'Keefe_, vol. i. p. 108. - -[471] Knowles's _Life of Fuseli_, vol. i. p. 57. - -[472] _Passages of a Working Life_, by Charles Knight, vol. i. pp. 114, -115. - -[473] Hume's _Learned Societies_, pp. 84, 85. - -[474] Dr. Hodges' _Letter to a Person of Quality_, p. 15. - -[475] Defoe's _Journal of the Plague Year_. - -[476] Dr. Hodges' _Loimologia_, p. 7 (from the reprint in 1720, when the -plague was raging in France). - -[477] _Ibid._ pp. 19, 20. - -[478] Howes, p. 1048. - -[479] Bagford, Harl. MSS. 5900, fol. 50. - -[480] Walpole's _Royal and Noble Authors_, vol. ii. p. 25. - -[481] Evelyn's _Diary_ (1850), vol. ii. p. 59. - -[482] Evelyn's _Diary_, vol. ii. p. 153 (1850). - -[483] _Life of Lord Herbert_ (1826), p. 304. - -[484] Horace Walpole. - -[485] Aubrey's _Lives_, vol. ii. p. 387. - -[486] Walpole's _Anecdotes of Painting_ (Dallaway), vol. ii. p. 593. - -[487] Richardson. - -[488] Walpole, vol. ii. p. 563 (partly from Dallaway's version of the same -story). - -[489] Dallaway. - -[490] Walpole, vol. ii. p. 594. - -[491] Spence. - -[492] Aubrey, vol. ii p. 132. - -[493] Dallaway's Notes. - -[494] Clarendon, B. ii. p. 2117. - -[495] _Ibid._ B. i. p. 116. - -[496] _Clarendon_, B. viii. p. 694. - -[497] Walpole's _Anecdotes of Painting_, vol. ii. p. 452. - -[498] Doran's _Her Majesty's Servants_, vol. ii. p. 51. - -[499] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 226. - -[500] _Ibid._ p. 226. - -[501] Hazlitt's _Criticisms of the English Stage_, p. 49. - -[502] _O'Keefe's Life_, vol. i. p. 322. - -[503] Leigh Hunt, p. 226. - -[504] _Life of Benjamin Franklin_ (1826), p. 31. - -[505] _Life of the Duke of Ormond_ (1747), pp. 67, 80. - -[506] Macaulay, vol. ii. p. 560. - -[507] Bramston, p. 339. - -[508] _Annual Register_ (1780), pp. 254-287. - -[509] _Life of Inigo Jones_, by P. Cunningham, p. 22 (Shakspere Society). - -[510] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. ii. p. 90. - -[511] Cibber's _Lives_, vol. ii. p. 10. - -[512] _Ibid._ p. 11. - -[513] Cunningham's _London_, vol. ii. p. 501. - -[514] Dryden's Works (Scott), vol. i. p. 204. - -[515] Scott's _Dryden_, vol. xiii. p. 7. - -[516] Cibber's _Lives_, vol. iv. p. 293. - -[517] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. ii. p. 277. - -[518] Cibber's _Lives_, vol. iv. p. 47. - -[519] Cibber's _Lives_, vol. iv. p. 47. - -[520] Mrs. Bray's _Life of Stothard_, p. 47. - -[521] Defoe's _Journey through England_. - -[522] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. ii. p. 167. - -[523] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. p. 27. - -[524] _Times_, Sept. 26, 1796. - -[525] Talfourd's _Final Memorials of Charles Lamb_, vol. i. p. 56. - -[526] Burke's _Landed Gentry_ (1858), p. 320. - -[527] Pennant. - -[528] Lingard, vol. vi. p. 607. - -[529] Walton's _Lives_ (1852), p. 22. - -[530] _Angel in the House_, by Mr. Coventry Patmore. - -[531] Dedication to Translation of Juvenal. - -[532] Donne's _Poems_ (1719), p. 291. - -[533] Miss Benger's _Memoirs of the Queen of Bohemia_, vol. ii. p. 322. - -[534] Miss Benger's _Memoirs of the Queen of Bohemia_, vol. ii. p. 428. - -[535] Sydney State Papers, vol. ii. p. 723. - -[536] Benger, vol. ii. p. 457. - -[537] _Ibid._, Preface. - -[538] Brayley's _Londiniana_, vol. iv. p. 301. - -[539] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, p. 210. - -[540] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 204. - -[541] Wilson's _Life of James I._ (1653), p. 146. - -[542] Aubrey's _Anecdotes and Traditions_, p. 3. - -[543] _Trivia._ - -[544] Rate-books of St. Martin's, quoted by P. Cunningham. - -[545] Granger's _Biographical History of England_ (1824), vol. v. p. 356. - -[546] Pepys's _Memoirs_, vol. iii. p. 75. - -[547] Curll's _History of the English Stage_, vol. i. p. III. - -[548] _Miscellaneous Works by the late Duke of Buckingham, etc._, p. 35 -(1704). - -[549] _Miscellaneous Works by the late Duke of Buckingham, etc._, vol. i. -p. 34. - -[550] _Burnet's History of his own Times_ (1753), vol. i. p. 387. - -[551] Leigh Hunt's _Town_ (1859), p. 282. - -[552] Evelyn's _Mems._ vol. ii. p. 339. - -[553] Collier, iii. 328. - -[554] Prynne's _Histrio-Mastix_ (1633). - -[555] Pepys (May 8, 1663). - -[556] Cibber's _Apology_, p. 338. ed. 1740. - -[557] Doran, vol. i. p. 57. - -[558] Dec. 7, 1666. - -[559] Jan. 23, 1667. - -[560] April 20, 1667. - -[561] Doran, p. 97. - -[562] Doran, vol. i. p. 79. - -[563] Leigh Hunt, p. 267. - -[564] Cibber's _Apology_, 250. - -[565] Doran, vol. i. p. 466. - -[566] _Tatler_, No. 182. - -[567] Doran, vol. i. p. 464. - -[568] Cumberland's _Memoirs_, p. 59. - -[569] Davies's _Miscellanies_, vol. i. p. 126. - -[570] Doran, vol. ii. p. 126. - -[571] _Ibid._ p. 149. - -[572] Doran, vol. i. p. 511. - -[573] _Ibid._ vol. ii. p. 7. - -[574] Dr. Doran, vol. ii. p. 277. - -[575] Dr. Doran's _Knights and their Days_. - -[576] _Elia_, p. 217. - -[577] Doran, vol. ii. p. 330. - -[578] Leigh Hunt's _Essays on the Theatres_, p. 124. - -[579] Hazlitt's _Essays_, p. 47. - -[580] _Elia_, p. 216. - -[581] Moore's _Sheridan_, p. 140. - -[582] _Ibid._ p. 181. - -[583] Murphy's _Garrick_. - -[584] Doran, vol. ii. p. 489. - -[585] Leigh Hunt's _Essays on the Theatres_, p. 124. - -[586] _Ibid._ p. 78. - -[587] Hazlitt's _Criticisms of the Stage_, p. 441. - -[588] _Elia_, p. 221. - -[589] Doran, vol. ii. p. 476. - -[590] Hazlitt's _Essays_, p. 47. - -[591] Hazlitt's _Criticisms_, pp. 49, 50. - -[592] _Elia_ (1853), p. 206. - -[593] _Elia_, p. 232. - -[594] _Ibid._ p. 213. - -[595] Moore's _Life of Sheridan_, p. 637. - -[596] Moore's _Sheridan_, p. 637. - -[597] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. ii. p. 113. - -[598] Hazlitt's _Essays_, p. 51. - -[599] _Ibid._ p. 212. - -[600] _The Georgian Era_, vol. iv. p. 43. - -[601] Hazlitt's _Essays_, p. 49. - -[602] _Lounger's Commonplace Book_, vol. ii. p. 137. - -[603] _Dunciad_, B. iii. p. 199. - -[604] _Lounger's Commonplace Book_, vol. ii. p. 141. - -[605] _The Intelligencer_, No. 3. - -[606] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 248. - -[607] _Fly Leaves_ (Miller), vol. i. p. 96. - -[608] Disraeli's _Miscellanies_, p. 77. - -[609] _Wine and Walnuts_, vol. ii. p. 150. - -[610] Jeaffreson's _Book about Doctors_ (2d ed.), p. 85. - -[611] The very earliest was granted to Philip the Hermit, for gravelling -the road at Highgate. - -[612] Rymer's _Foedera_. - -[613] Fuller's _Church History_. - -[614] Vaughan's _Life of Wickliffe_. - -[615] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, p. 11. - -[616] _Ibid._ (1829), p. 2. - -[617] Pennant (4th ed.), p. 3. - -[618] Butler's _Lives of the Saints_. - -[619] Aggas's Map, published in 1578 or 1560. - -[620] Stow's _Survey_, 1595. - -[621] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, p. 46. - -[622] Evelyn's _Diary_. - -[623] Brayley's _Londiniana_. - -[624] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, pp. 58, 59. - -[625] Defoe's _History of the Plague_. - -[626] Maitland's _History of London_. - -[627] Dr. Sydenham. - -[628] Dr. Hodgson's _Journal of the Plague_. - -[629] Dr. Hodges on the Plague. - -[630] Fuller's _Church History_. - -[631] Hume. - -[632] Fuller. - -[633] Parliamentary Report. - -[634] Ralph. - -[635] Rowland Dobie's _History of St. Giles's_, p. 119. - -[636] Pennant's _London_, p. 159. - -[637] Cunningham's _London_, vol. i. p. 339. - -[638] _Annual Register_, 1827. - -[639] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, p. 367. - -[640] Strype. - -[641] Strype. - -[642] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, p. 225. - -[643] Cunningham's _London_, vol. i. p. 384. - -[644] Smith's _Book for a Rainy Day_, p. 21. - -[645] Stow, p. 164. - -[646] Pennant. - -[647] Smith's _Book for a Rainy Day_, p. 29, date 1774. - -[648] Smith's _Book for a Rainy Day_ is one of the best works of a clever -London antiquarian, to whose industry, as well as to Mr. Peter -Cunningham's, the author is much indebted, as his foot-notes pretty well -show. - -[649] Dryden's _Limberham_. - -[650] _Love for Love._ - -[651] Stow. - -[652] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, p. 66. - -[653] Parton's account of St. Giles's. - -[654] Parton. - -[655] Smith's _Nollekens_, vol. i. p. 130. - -[656] Archenholz, p. 117. - -[657] Smith's _Book for a Rainy Day_, p. 74. - -[658] Dobie's _History of St. Giles's_, p. 204. - -[659] _Bell's Life in London_, July 12, 1829. - -[660] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 565. - -[661] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 566. - -[662] _Sketches by Boz_, p. 44. - -[663] _Sketches by Boz_, p. 45. - -[664] Dobie's _St. Giles's_, p. 362. - -[665] T. Hudson Turner, _Archaeological Journal_, Dec. 1848. - -[666] Sir G. Buc in Stow, by Howes, p. 1072 (ed. 1631). - -[667] Pennant, p. 176. - -[668] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 480. - -[669] _Walpole_, by Dallaway, vol. ii. p. 37. - -[670] Lloyd's _State Worthies_. - -[671] _State Trials_, iv. 445, fol. ed. - -[672] _Hudibras_, part iii. c. 3. - -[673] Granger's _Biography_ in art. "Margaret Roper." - -[674] Dr. Birch's _Life of Tillotson_. - -[675] _Hale's Life_, by Burnet. - -[676] _Biog. Brit._, by the Hon. and Rev. F. Egerton. - -[677] Preface to Thurloe's _State Papers_, 1742. - -[678] _Biog. Brit._ - -[679] _Session of the Poets._ - -[680] Johnson's _Lives_. - -[681] _Ath. Ox._ vol. ii. - -[682] Foote's _Life of Murphy_. - -[683] Campbell's _Lives of the Chief Justices_, vol. iii. p. 221. - -[684] Dr. Johnson. - -[685] Pennant, p. 176. - -[686] Evelyn's _Diary_, vol. ii. p. 60 (1850). - -[687] _The Devil is an Ass._ - -[688] Aubrey. - -[689] Gifford's _Ben Jonson_, vol. i. p. 9. - -[690] Fuller's _Worthies_, vol. ii. p. 112. - -[691] Gifford, vol. i. p. 14. - -[692] Moore's _Memoirs_, vol. ii. p. 211. - -[693] _Poems on Affairs of State_, vol. i. p. 147. - -[694] Cunningham. - -[695] Rymer's _Foedera_, vol. xvii. p. 120. - -[696] Wilkinson's _Handbook for Egypt_, p. 185. - -[697] Cunningham's _Life of Inigo Jones_, p. 23 (Shakspere Society). - -[698] _Canting Academy_, 1674 (Malcolm). - -[699] Cunningham. - -[700] Rate-books of St. Clement's Danes (Cunningham). - -[701] Wharton's _Works_. - -[702] _Life of Lord W. Russell_, by Lord John Russell, 3d ed. vol. ii. p. -18. - -[703] Fox's _History of the Reign of James II._ (Introduction). - -[704] Lord John Russell, vol. i. p. 121. - -[705] Raplin, vol. xiv. p. 333. - -[706] Burnet's _History of his own Times_ (1725), vol. ii. - -[707] _Letters of Lady Russell_, 7th ed. 1819. - -[708] _State Trials_, vol. xviii. p. 522. - -[709] _Daily Journal_, July 9, 1735. - -[710] Ireland _Inns of Court_, p. 129. - -[711] Macaulay's _History of England_, vol. i. p. 353. - -[712] Walpole's _Anecdotes_, vol. iii. p. 167. - -[713] Pennant, p. 238. - -[714] _Lady M. W. Montague's Letters._ - -[715] Burney's _Hist. of Music_, vol. iv. p. 667. - -[716] Lord Chesterfield (Mahon), vol. ii. p. 264. - -[717] Hawkins's _Life of Johnson_, p. 192. - -[718] Pugh's _Life of Jonas Hanway_ (1787), p. 184. - -[719] _Lounger's Commonplace Book_, vol. i. p. 361. - -[720] Macaulay's _Essay on Walpole's Letters_. - -[721] Walpole's _Memoirs_, vol. i. p. 169. - -[722] Campbell's _Lives of the Lord Chancellors_, vol. vi. p. 105. - -[723] Campbell's _Chief Justices_, vol. ii. p. 563. - -[724] Pepys, vol. ii. p. 272. - -[725] _Ibid._ p. 282. - -[726] Hatton's _New View of London_ (1708), p. 627. - -[727] Clarendon, vol. vi. pp. 89, 90. - -[728] Grosley's _Tour to London_, vol. ii. p. 309. - -[729] Walpole's _Letters_, vol. ii. p. 137. - -[730] Walpole's _Letters_, vol. vii. p. 223. - -[731] _Ibid._ vol. ix. p. 307. - -[732] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 228. - -[733] _Lady Fanshawe's Memoirs_, p. 92. - -[734] _Ibid._ p. 94. - -[735] _Lady Fanshawe's Memoirs_, pp. 300, 301. - -[736] Moore's _Diary_, vol. iv. p. 193. - -[737] _Ibid._ p. 35. - -[738] Coleridge's _Table Talk_. - -[739] Townsend, vol. i. p. 91. - -[740] "The Alabaster sarcophagus of Oimeneptah I., King of Egypt, now in -Sir John Soane's Museum. Drawn by Joseph Bonomi, and described by Samuel -Sharpe." London: Longmans and Co. 1864. - -[741] _Annual Register_ (1837). - -[742] Chapone's _Letters_, vol. ii. p. 68. - -[743] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 237. - -[744] Malone, pp. 135, 136. - -[745] Grammont's _Mems._ (1811), vol. ii. p. 142. - -[746] Doran's _Her Majesty's Servants_, vol. i. p. 80. - -[747] Pepys, vol. iii. p. 136. - -[748] Pepys, vol. iv. p. 2. - -[749] Cibber's _Apology_, chap. v. - -[750] _Ibid._ - -[751] _Doran_, vol. i. p. 119. - -[752] Doran, vol. i. p. 149. - -[753] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 245. - -[754] Cibber's _Apology_, 2d. ed. p. 138. - -[755] Baker's _Biog. Dram._, vol. i. p. 270. - -[756] Doran, vol. i. p. 542. - -[757] Doran, vol. i. p. 424. - -[758] _Ibid._ p. 446. - -[759] Leigh Hunt's _Town_, p. 427. - -[760] Cunningham (1850), p. 406. - -[761] Doran, vol. i. p. 327. - -[762] Whincop's _Scanderberg_, p. 80 (1747). - -[763] _Fly Leaves_, by John Miller, p. 20. - -[764] The name of Strahan, Paul, and Bates's firm was originally Snow and -Walton. It was one of the oldest banking-houses in London, second only to -Child's. At the period of the Commonwealth Snow and Co. carried on the -business of pawnbrokers, under the sign of the "Golden Anchor." The firm -suspended payment about 1679 (as did many other banks), owing to the -tyranny of Charles II. Strahan (the partner at the time of the last -failure) had changed his name from Snow; his uncle, named Strahan (Queen's -printer?) having left him L180,000, making change of name a condition. It -is curious that on examining Strahan and Co.'s books, it was found by -those of 1672 that a decimal system had been then employed. Strahan was -known to all religious people. Bates had for many years been managing -clerk. The firm had also a navy agency in Norfolk Street. They had -encumbered themselves with the Mostyn Collieries to the amount of -L139,940, and backed up Gandells, contractors who were making railways in -France and Italy and draining Lake Capestang, lending L300,000 or -L400,000. They finally pledged securities (L22,000) to the Rev. Dr. -Griffiths, Prebendary of Rochester. Sir John Dean Paul got into a -second-class carriage at Reigate, the functionaries trying to get in after -him; the porter pulled them back, the train being in motion! Paul went to -London alone, and in spite of telegraph got off, but at eight o'clock next -night surrendered. The three men were tried October 26 and 27, 1858. - -[765] _Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings_ (1863), pp. 6, 7. - -[766] _Harleian MS._, 6850. - -[767] _Cunningham_, vol. i. p. 378. I may here, as well as anywhere else, -express my thanks to this careful and most industrious antiquary. - -[768] Mrs. Cornwall Baron Wilson's _Memoirs of the Duchess of St. Albans_ -(1840), vol. i. p. 331. - -[769] Kippis, _Bio. Brit._ iv. p. 266. - -[770] Thornbury's _British Artists_, vol. i. p. 171. - -[771] _Gentleman's Magazine_, August 1783, p. 709. - -[772] _David Copperfield_ (1864), p. 208. - -[773] _The Clubs of London_, vol. ii. p. 150. - -[774] _The Clubs of London_ (1828), vol. ii. - -[775] _Notes and Queries_, vol. vi. 2d series, p. 131. - -[776] Hatten, p. 24. - -[777] Cunningham, vol. i. p. 378. - -[778] _Notes and Queries_ (Bolton Corney), vol. viii. 2d series, p. 122. - -[779] Burnet, vol. i. p. 338. - -[780] Pepys, vol. v. p. 436. - -[781] Pennant, p. 215. - -[782] _Trivia._ - -[783] _Anecdotes of Painting_, iv. 22. - -[784] Malone's _Dryden_, ii. 97. - -[785] Mr. Rimbault in _Notes and Queries_, Feb. 1850. - -[786] _Clubs of London_, vol. ii. p. 263. - -[787] All from Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 731, and how much else. - -[788] _Notes and Queries_, 2d series, vol. xi. p. 289. - - - - -Transcriber's Notes: - -The original text includes Greek characters that have been replaced with -transliterations in this text version. - -Footnote 404 appears on page 224 of the text, but there is no -corresponding marker on the page. - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Haunted London, by Walter Thornbury - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAUNTED LONDON *** - -***** This file should be named 41580.txt or 41580.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/1/5/8/41580/ - -Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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