For sheer impudence this, perhaps, may be admitted to "defy competition"; but in point of tact and delicacy of finish it falls infinitely short of a subsequent notice, a perfect gem of its class, added by way of clenching the denial:—

"We have received Mr. Theodore Hook's second letter. We are ready to confess that we may have appeared to treat him too unceremoniously, but we will put it to his own feelings whether the terms of his denial were not, in some degree, calculated to produce a little asperity on our part. We shall never be ashamed, however, to do justice, and we readily declare that we meant no kind of imputation on Mr. Hook's personal character."

The ruse answered for awhile, and the paper went on with unabated audacity.

The death of the Queen, in the summer of 1821, produced a decided alteration in the tone and temper of the paper. In point of fact its occupation was now gone. The main, if not the sole, object of its establishment had been brought about by other and unforeseen events. The combination it had laboured so energetically to thwart was now dissolved by a higher and resistless agency. Still, it is not to be supposed that a machine which brought in a profit of something above L4,000 per annum, half of which fell to the share of Hook, was to be lightly thrown up, simply because its original purpose was attained. The dissolution of the "League" did not exist then as a precedent. The Queen was no longer to be feared; but there were Whigs and Radicals enough to be held in check, and, above all, there was a handsome income to be realised.

"Latterly Hook's desultory nature made him wander from the Bull, which might have furnished the thoughtless and heartless man of pleasure with an income for life. The paper naturally lost sap and vigour, at once declined in sale, and sank into a mere respectable club-house and party organ." "Mr. Hook," says Barham, "received to the day of his death a fixed salary, but the proprietorship had long since passed into other hands."



CHAPTER X.

FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES.

Dr. Johnson in Bolt Court—His motley Household—His Life there—Still existing—The gallant "Lumber Troop"—Reform Bill Riots—Sir Claudius Hunter—Cobbett in Bolt Court—The Bird Boy—The Private Soldier—In the House—Dr. Johnson in Gough Square—Busy at the Dictionary—Goldsmith in Wine Office Court—Selling "The Vicar of Wakefield"—Goldsmith's Troubles—Wine Office Court—The Old "Cheshire Cheese."

Of all the nooks of London associated with the memory of that good giant of literature, Dr. Johnson, not one is more sacred to those who love that great and wise man than Bolt Court. To this monastic court Johnson came in 1776, and remained till that December day in 1784, when a procession of all the learned and worthy men who honoured him followed his body to its grave in the Abbey, near the feet of Shakespeare and by the side of Garrick. The great scholar, whose ways and sayings, whose rough hide and tender heart, are so familiar to us—thanks to that faithful parasite who secured an immortality by getting up behind his triumphal chariot—came to Bolt Court from Johnson's Court, whither he had flitted from Inner Temple Lane, where he was living when the young Scotch barrister who was afterwards his biographer first knew him. His strange household of fretful and disappointed almspeople seems as well known as our own. At the head of these pensioners was the daughter of a Welsh doctor, (a blind old lady named Williams), who had written some trivial poems; Mrs. Desmoulins, an old Staffordshire lady, her daughter, and a Miss Carmichael. The relationships of these fretful and quarrelsome old maids Dr. Johnson has himself sketched, in a letter to Mr. and Mrs. Thrale:—"Williams hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them." This Levett was a poor eccentric apothecary, whom Johnson supported, and who seems to have been a charitable man.

The annoyance of such a menagerie of angular oddities must have driven Johnson more than ever to his clubs, where he could wrestle with the best intellects of the day, and generally retire victorious. He had done nearly all his best work by this time, and was sinking into the sere and yellow leaf, not, like Macbeth, with the loss of honour, but with love, obedience, troops of friends, and golden opinions from all sorts of people. His Titanic labour, the Dictionary, he had achieved chiefly in Gough Square; his "Rasselas"—that grave and wise Oriental story—he had written in a few days, in Staple's Inn, to defray the expenses of his mother's funeral. In Bolt Court he, however, produced his "Lives of the Poets," a noble compendium of criticism, defaced only by the bitter Tory depreciation of Milton, and injured by the insertion of many worthless and the omission of several good poets.

It is pleasant to think of some of the events that happened while Johnson lived in Bolt Court. Here he exerted himself with all the ardour of his nature to soothe the last moments of that wretched man, Dr. Dodd, who was hanged for forgery. From Bolt Court he made those frequent excursions to the Thrales, at Streatham, where the rich brewer and his brilliant wife gloried in the great London lion they had captured. To Bolt Court came Johnson's friends Reynolds and Gibbon, and Garrick, and Percy, and Langton; but poor Goldsmith had died before Johnson left Johnson's Court. To Bolt Court he stalked home the night of his memorable quarrel with Dr. Percy, no doubt regretting the violence and boisterous rudeness with which he had attacked an amiable and gifted man. From Bolt Court he walked to service at St. Clement's Church on the day he rejoiced in comparing the animation of Fleet Street with the desolation of the Hebrides. It was from Bolt Court Boswell drove Johnson to dine with General Paoli, a drive memorable for the fact that on that occasion Johnson uttered his first and only recorded pun.

Johnson was at Bolt Court when the Gordon Riots broke out, and he describes them to Mrs. Thrale. Boswell gives a pleasant sketch of a party at Bolt Court, when Mrs. Hall (a sister of Wesley) was there, and Mr. Allen, a printer; Johnson produced his silver salvers, and it was "a great day." It was on this occasion that the conversation fell on apparitions, and Johnson, always superstitious to the last degree, told the story of hearing his mother's voice call him one day at Oxford (probably at a time when his brain was overworked). On this great occasion also, Johnson, talked at by Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Williams at the same moment, gaily quoted the line from the Beggars' Opera,—

"But two at a time there's no mortal can bear,"

and Boswell playfully compared the great man to Captain Macheath. Imagine Mrs. Williams, old and peevish; Mrs. Hall, lean, lank, and preachy; Johnson, rolling in his chair like Polyphemus at a debate; Boswell, stooping forward on the perpetual listen; Mr. Levett, sour and silent; Frank, the black servant, proud of the silver salvers—and you have the group as in a picture.

In Bolt Court we find Johnson now returning from pleasant dinners with Wilkes and Garrick, Malone and Dr. Burney; now sitting alone over his Greek Testament, or praying with his black servant, Frank. We like to picture him on that Good Friday morning (1783), when he and Boswell, returning from service at St. Clement's, rested on the stone seat at the garden-door in Bolt Court, talking about gardens and country hospitality.

Then, finally, we come to almost the last scene of all, when the sick man addressed to his kind physician, Brocklesby, that pathetic passage of Shakespeare's,—

"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow; Raze out the written troubles of the brain; And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?"

Round Johnson's dying bed gathered many wise and good men. To Burke he said, "I must be in a wretched state indeed, when your company would not be a delight to me." To another friend he remarked solemnly, but in his old grand manner, "Sir, you cannot conceive with what acceleration I advance towards death." Nor did his old vehemence and humour by any means forsake him, for he described a man who sat up to watch him "as an idiot, sir; awkward as a turnspit when first put into the wheel, and sleepy as a dormouse." His remaining hours were spent in fervent prayer. The last words he uttered were those of benediction upon the daughter of a friend who came to ask his blessing.

Some years before Dr. Johnson's death, when the poet Rogers was a young clerk of literary proclivities at his father's bank, he one day stole surreptitiously to Bolt Court, to daringly show some of his fledgeling poems to the great Polyphemus of literature. He and young Maltby, an ancestor of the late Bishop of Durham, crept blushingly through the quiet court, and on arriving at the sacred door on the west side, ascended the steps and knocked at the door; but the awful echo of that knocker struck terror to the young debutants' hearts, and before Frank Barber, the Doctor's old negro footman, could appear, the two lads, like street-boys who had perpetrated a mischievous runaway knock, took to their heels and darted back into noisy Fleet Street. Mr. Jesse, who has collected so many excellent anecdotes, some even original, in his three large volumes on "London's Celebrated Characters and Places," says that the elder Mr. Disraeli, singularly enough, used in society to relate an almost similar adventure as a youth. Eager for literary glory, but urged towards the counter by his sober-minded relations, he enclosed some of his best verses to the celebrated Dr. Johnson, and modestly solicited from the terrible critic an opinion of their value. Having waited some time in vain for a reply, the ambitious Jewish youth at last (December 13, 1784) resolved to face the lion in his den, and rapping tremblingly (as his predecessor, Rogers), heard with dismay the knocker echo on the metal. We may imagine the feelings of the young votary at the shrine of learning, when the servant (probably Frank Barber), who slowly opened the door, informed him that Dr. Johnson had breathed his last only a few short hours before.

Mr. Timbs reminds us of another story of Dr. Johnson, which will not be out of place here. It is an excellent illustration of the keen sagacity and forethought of that great man's mind. One evening Dr. Johnson, looking from his dim Bolt Court window, saw the slovenly lamp-lighter of those days ascending a ladder (just as Hogarth has drawn him in the "Rake's Progress"), and fill the little receptacle in the globular lamp with detestable whale-oil. Just as he got down the ladder the dull light wavered out. Skipping up the ladder again, the son of Prometheus lifted the cover, thrust the torch he carried into the heated vapour rising from the wick, and instantly the ready flame sprang restored to life. "Ah," said the old seer, "one of these days the streets of London will be lighted by smoke."



Johnson's house (No. 8), according to Mr. Noble, was not destroyed by fire in 1819, as Mr. Timbs and other writers assert. The house destroyed was Bensley the printer's (next door to No. 8), the successor of Johnson's friend, Allen, who in 1772 published Manning's Saxon, Gothic, and Latin Dictionary, and died in 1780. In Bensley's destructive fire all the plates and stock of Dallaway's "History of Sussex" were consumed. Johnson's house, says Mr. Noble, was in 1858 purchased by the Stationers' Company, and fitted up as a cheap school (six shillings a quarter). In 1861 Mr. Foss, Master of the Company, initiated a fund, and since then a university scholarship has been founded—sicitur ad astra. The back room, first floor, in which the great man died, had been pulled down by Mr. Bensley, to make way for a staircase. Bensley was one of the first introducers of the German invention of steam-printing.



At "Dr. Johnson's" tavern, established forty years ago (now the Albert Club), the well-known society of the "Lumber Troop" once drained their porter and held their solemn smokings. This gallant force of supposititious fighting men "came out" with great force during the Reform Riots of 1830. These useless disturbances originated in a fussy, foolish warning letter, written by John Key, the Lord Mayor elect (he was generally known in the City as Don Key after this), to the Duke of Wellington, then as terribly unpopular with the English Reformers as he had been with the French after the battle of Waterloo, urging him (the duke) if he came with King William and Queen Adelaide to dine with the new Lord Mayor, (his worshipful self), to come "strongly and sufficiently guarded." This imprudent step greatly offended the people, who were also just then much vexed with the severities of Peel's obnoxious new police. The result was that the new king and queen (for the not over-beloved George IV. had only died in June of that year) thought it better to decline coming to the City festivities altogether. Great, then, was even the Tory indignation, and the fattest alderman trotted about, eager to discuss the grievance, the waste of half-cooked turtle, and the general folly and enormity of the Lord Mayor elect's conduct. Sir Claudius Hunter, who had shared in the Lord Mayor's fears, generously marched to his aid. In a published statement that he made, he enumerated the force available for the defence of the (in his mind) endangered City in the following way:—

Ward Constables 400 Fellowship, Ticket, and Tackle Porters 250 Firemen 150 Corn Porters 100 Extra men hired 130 City Police or own men 54 Tradesmen with emblems in the procession 300 Some gentlemen called the Lumber Troopers 150 The Artillery Company 150 The East India Volunteers 600

Total of all comers 2,284

In the same statement Sir Claudius says:—"The Lumber Troop are a respectable smoking club, well known to every candidate for a seat in Parliament for London, and most famed for the quantity of tobacco they consume and the porter they drink, which, I believe (from my own observation, made nineteen years ago, when I was a candidate for that office), is the only liquor allowed. They were to have had no pay, and I am sure they would have done their best."

Along the line of procession, to oppose this civic force, the right worshipful but foolish man reckoned there would be some 150,000 persons. With all these aldermanic fears, and all these irritating precautions, a riot naturally took place. On Monday, November 8th, that glib, unsatisfactory man, Orator Hunt, the great demagogue of the day, addressed a Reform meeting at the Rotunda, in Blackfriars Road. At half-past eleven, when the Radical gentleman, famous for his white hat (the lode-star of faction), retired, a man suddenly waved a tricolour flag (it was the year, remember, of the Revolution in Paris), with the word "Reform" painted upon it, and a preconcerted cry was raised by the more violent of, "Now for the West End!" About one thousand men then rushed over Blackfriars bridge, shouting, "Reform!" "Down with the police!" "No Peel!" "No Wellington!" Hurrying along the Strand, the mob first proceeded to Earl Bathurst's, in Downing Street. A foolish gentleman of the house, hearing the cries, came out on the balcony, armed with a brace of pistols, and declared he would fire on the first man who attempted to enter the place. Another gentleman at this moment came out, and very sensibly took the pistols from his friend, on which the mob retired. The rioters were then making for the House of Commons, but were stopped by a strong line of police, just arrived in time from Scotland Yard. One hundred and forty more men soon joined the constables, and a general fight ensued, in which many heads were quickly broken, and the Reform flag was captured. Three of the rioters were arrested, and taken to the watch-house in the Almonry in Westminster. A troop of Royal Horse Guards (blue) remained during the night ready in the court of the Horse Guards, and bands of policemen paraded the streets.

On Tuesday the riots continued. About half-past five p.m., 300 or 400 persons, chiefly boys, came along the Strand, shouting, "No Peel!" "Down with the raw lobsters!" (the new police); "This way, my lads; we'll give it them!" At the back of the menageries at Charing Cross the police rushed upon them, and after a skirmish put them to flight. At seven o'clock the vast crowd by Temple Bar compelled every coachman and passenger in a coach, as a passport, to pull off his hat and shout "Huzza!" Stones were thrown, and attempts were made to close the gates of the Bar. The City marshals, however, compelled them to be re-opened, and opposed the passage of the mob to the Strand, but the pass was soon forced. The rioters in Pickett Place pelted the police with stones and pieces of wood, broken from the scaffolding of the Law Institute, then building in Chancery Lane. Another mob of about 500 persons ran up Piccadilly to Apsley House and hissed and hooted the stubborn, unprogressive old Duke, Mr. Peel, and the police; the constables, however, soon dispersed them. The same evening dangerous mobs collected in Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, and Whitechapel, one party of them displaying tricoloured flags. They broke a lamp and a window or two, but did little else. Alas for poor Sir Claudius and his profound computations! His 2,284 fighting loyal men dwindled down to 600, including even those strange hybrids, the firemen-watermen; and as for the gallant Lumber Troop, they were nowhere visible to the naked eye.

To Bolt Court that scourge of King George III., William Cobbett, came from Fleet Street to sell his Indian corn, for which no one cared, and to print and publish his twopenny Political Register, for which the London Radicals of that day hungered. Nearly opposite the office of "this good hater," says Mr. Timbs, Wright (late Kearsley) kept shop, and published a searching criticism on Cobbett's excellent English Grammar as soon as it appeared. We only wonder that Cobbett did not reply to him as Johnson did to a friend after he knocked Osborne (the grubbing bookseller of Gray's Inn Gate) down with a blow—"Sir, he was impertinent, and I beat him."

A short biographical sketch of Cobbett will not be inappropriate here. This sturdy Englishman, born in the year 1762, was the son of an honest and industrious yeoman, who kept an inn called the "Jolly Farmer," at Farnham, in Surrey. "My first occupation," says Cobbett, "was driving the small birds from the turnip seed and the rooks from the peas. When I first trudged a-field with my wooden bottle and my satchel over my shoulder, I was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles." In 1783 the restless lad (a plant grown too high for the pot) ran away to London, and turned lawyer's clerk. At the end of nine months he enlisted, and sailed for Nova Scotia. Before long he became sergeant-major, over the heads of thirty other non-commissioned officers. Frugal and diligent, the young soldier soon educated himself. Discharged at his own request in 1791, he married a respectable girl, to whom he had before entrusted L150 hard-earned savings. Obtaining a trial against four officers of his late regiment for embezzlement of stores, for some strange reason Cobbett fled to France on the eve of the trial, but finding the king of that country dethroned, he started at once for America. At Philadelphia he boldly began as a high Tory bookseller, and denounced Democracy in his virulent "Porcupine Papers." Finally, overwhelmed with actions for libel, Cobbett in 1800 returned to England. Failing with a daily paper and a bookseller's shop, Cobbett then started his Weekly Register, which for thirty years continued to express the changes of his honest but impulsive and vindictive mind. Gradually—it is said, owing to some slight shown him by Pitt (more probably from real conviction)—Cobbett grew Radical and progressive, and in 1809 was fined L500 for libels on the Irish Government. In 1817 he was fined L1,000 and imprisoned two years for violent remarks about some Ely militiamen who had been flogged under a guard of fixed bayonets. This punishment he never forgave. He followed up his Register by his Twopenny Trash, of which he eventually sold 100,000 a number. The Six Acts being passed—as he boasted, to gag him—he fled, in 1817, again to America. The persecuted man returned to England in 1819, bringing with him, much to the amusement of the Tory lampooners, the bones of that foul man, Tom Paine, the infidel, whom (in 1796) this changeful politician had branded as "base, malignant, treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous." During the Queen Caroline trial Cobbett worked heart and soul for that questionable martyr. He went out to Shooter's Hill to welcome her to London, and boasted of having waved a laurel bough above her head.

In 1825 he wrote a scurrilous "History of the Reformation" (by many still attributed to a priest), in which he declared Luther, Calvin, and Beza to be the greatest ruffians that ever disgraced the world. In his old age, too late to be either brilliant or useful, Cobbett got into Parliament, being returned in 1832 (thanks to the Reform Bill) member for Oldham. He died at his house near Farnham, in 1835. Cobbett was an egotist, it must be allowed, and a violent-tempered, vindictive man; but his honesty, his love of truth and liberty, few who are not blinded by party opinion can doubt. His writings are remarkable for vigorous and racy Saxon, as full of vituperation as Rabelais's, and as terse and simple as Swift's.

Mr. Grant, in his pleasant book, "Random Recollections of the House of Commons," written circa 1834, gives us an elaborate full-length portrait of old Cobbett. He was, he says, not less than six feet high, and broad and athletic in proportion. His hair was silver-white, his complexion ruddy as a farmer's. Till his small eyes sparkled with laughter, he looked a mere dull-pated clodpole. His dress was a light, loose, grey tail-coat, a white waistcoat, and sandy kerseymere breeches, and he usually walked about the House with both his hands plunged into his breeches pockets. He had an eccentric, half-malicious way of sometimes suddenly shifting his seat, and on one important night, big with the fate of Peel's Administration, deliberately anchored down in the very centre of the disgusted Tories and at the very back of Sir Robert's bench, to the infinite annoyance of the somewhat supercilious party.

We next penetrate into Gough Square, in search of the great lexicographer.

As far as can be ascertained from Boswell, Dr. Johnson resided at Gough Square from 1748 to 1758, an eventful period of his life, and one of struggle, pain, and difficulty. In this gloomy side square near Fleet Street, he achieved many results and abandoned many hopes. Here he nursed his hypochondria—the nightmare of his life—and sought the only true relief in hard work. Here he toiled over books, drudging for Cave and Dodsley. Here he commenced both the Rambler and the Idler, and formed his acquaintance with Bennet Langton. Here his wife died, and left him more than ever a prey to his natural melancholy; and here he toiled on his great work, the Dictionary, in which he and six amanuenses effected what it took all the French Academicians to perform for their language.

A short epitome of what this great man accomplished while in Gough Square will clearly recall to our readers his way of life while in that locality. In 1749, Johnson formed a quiet club in Ivy Lane, wrote that fine paraphrase of Juvenal, "The Vanity of Human Wishes," and brought out, with dubious success, under Garrick's auspices, his tragedy of Irene. In 1750, he commenced the Rambler. In 1752, the year his wife died, he laboured on at the Dictionary. In 1753, he became acquainted with Bennet Langton. In 1754 he wrote the life of his early patron, Cave, who died that year. In 1755, the great Dictionary, begun in 1747, was at last published, and Johnson wrote that scathing letter to the Earl of Chesterfield, who, too late, thrust upon him the patronage the poor scholar had once sought in vain. In 1756, the still struggling man was arrested for a paltry debt of L5 18s., from which Richardson the worthy relieved him. In 1758, when he began the Idler, Johnson is described as "being in as easy and pleasant a state of existence as constitutional unhappiness ever permitted him to enjoy."

While the Dictionary was going forward, "Johnson," says Boswell, "lived part of the time in Holborn, part in Gough Square (Fleet Street); and he had an upper room fitted up like a counting-house for the purpose, in which he gave to the copyists their several tasks. The words, partly taken from other dictionaries and partly supplied by himself, having been first written down with space left between them, he delivered in writing their etymologies, definitions, and various significations. The authorities were copied from the books themselves, in which he had marked the passages with a black-lead pencil, the traces of which could be easily effaced. I have seen several of them in which that trouble had not been taken, so that they were just as when used by the copyists. It is remarkable that he was so attentive to the choice of the passages in which words were authorised, that one may read page after page of his Dictionary with improvement and pleasure; and it should not pass unobserved, that he has quoted no author whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and morality."

To this account Bishop Percy adds a note of great value for its lucid exactitude. "Boswell's account of the manner in which Johnson compiled his Dictionary," he says, "is confused and erroneous. He began his task (as he himself expressly described to me) by devoting his first care to a diligent perusal of all such English writers as were most correct in their language, and under every sentence which he meant to quote he drew a line, and noted in the margin the first letter of the word under which it was to occur. He then delivered these books to his clerks, who transcribed each sentence on a separate slip of paper and arranged the same under the word referred to. By these means he collected the several words, and their different significations, and when the whole arrangement was alphabetically formed, he gave the definitions of their meanings, and collected their etymologies from Skinner, and other writers on the subject." To these accounts, Hawkins adds his usual carping, pompous testimony. "Dr. Johnson," he says, "who, before this time, together with his wife, had lived in obscurity, lodging at different houses in the courts and alleys in and about the Strand and Fleet Street, had, for the purpose of carrying on this arduous work, and being near the printers employed in it, taken a handsome house in Gough Square, and fitted up a room in it with books and other accommodations for amanuenses, who, to the number of five or six, he kept constantly under his eye. An interleaved copy of "Bailey's Dictionary," in folio, he made the repository of the several articles, and these he collected by incessantly reading the best authors in our language, in the practice whereof his method was to score with a black-lead pencil the words by him selected. The books he used for this purpose were what he had in his own collection, a copious but a miserably ragged one, and all such as he could borrow; which latter, if ever they came back to those that lent them, were so defaced as to be scarce worth owning, and yet some of his friends were glad to receive and entertain them as curiosities."

"Mr. Burney," says Boswell, "during a visit to the capital, had an interview with Johnson in Gough Square, where he dined and drank tea with him, and was introduced to the acquaintance of Mrs. Williams. After dinner Mr. Johnson proposed to Mr. Burney to go up with him into his garret, which being accepted, he found there about five or six Greek folios, a poor writing-desk, and a chair and a half. Johnson, giving to his guest the entire seat, balanced himself on one with only three legs and one arm. Here he gave Mr. Burney Mrs. Williams's history, and showed him some notes on Shakespeare already printed, to prove that he was in earnest. Upon Mr. Burney's opening the first volume at the Merchant of Venice he observed to him that he seemed to be more severe on Warburton than on Theobald. 'Oh, poor Tib!' said Johnson, 'he was nearly knocked down to my hands; Warburton stands between me and him.' 'But, sir,' said Mr. Burney, 'You'll have Warburton on your bones, won't you? 'No, sir;' he'll not come out; he'll only growl in his den.' 'But do you think, sir, Warburton is a superior critic to Theobald?' 'Oh, sir, he'll make two-and-fifty Theobalds cut into slices! The worst of Warburton is that he has a rage for saying something when there's nothing to be said.' Mr. Burney then asked him whether he had seen the letter Warburton had written in answer to a pamphlet addressed 'to the most impudent man alive.' He answered in the negative. Mr. Burney told him it was supposed to be written by Mallet. A controversy now raged between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke, and Warburton and Mallet were the leaders of the several parties. Mr. Burney asked him then if he had seen Warburton's book against Bolingbroke's philosophy!'No, sir; I have never read Bolingbroke's impiety, and therefore am not interested about its refutation.'"

Goldsmith appears to have resided at No. 6, Wine Office Court from 1760 to 1762, during which period he earned a precarious livelihood by writing for the booksellers.

They still point out Johnson and Goldsmith's favourite seats in the north-east corner of the window of that cozy though utterly unpretentious tavern, the "Cheshire Cheese," in this court.

It was while living in Wine Office Court that Goldsmith is supposed to have partly written that delightful novel "The Vicar of Wakefield," which he had begun at Canonbury Tower. We like to think that, seated at the "Cheese," he perhaps espied and listened to the worthy but credulous vicar and his gosling son attending to the profound theories of the learned and philosophic but shifty Mr. Jenkinson. We think now by the window, with a cross light upon his coarse Irish features, and his round prominent brow, we see the watchful poet sit eyeing his prey, secretly enjoying the grandiloquence of the swindler and the admiration of the honest country parson.

"One day," says Mrs. Piozzi, "Johnson was called abruptly from our house at Southwark, after dinner, and, returning in about three hours, said he had been with an enraged author, whose landlady pressed him within doors while the bailiffs beset him without; that he was drinking himself drunk with Madeira to drown care, and fretting over a novel which, when finished, was to be his whole fortune; but he could not get it done for distraction, nor dared he stir out of doors to offer it for sale. Mr. Johnson, therefore," she continues, "sent away the bottle and went to the bookseller, recommending the performance, and devising some immediate relief; which, when he brought back to the writer, the latter called the woman of the house directly to partake of punch and pass their time in merriment. It was not," she concludes, "till ten years after, I dare say, that something in Dr. Goldsmith's behaviour struck me with an idea that he was the very man; and then Johnson confessed that he was so."

"A more scrupulous and patient writer," says the admirable biographer of the poet, Mr. John Forster, "corrects some inaccuracies of the lively little lady, and professes to give the anecdote authentically from Johnson's own exact narration. 'I received one morning,' Boswell represents Johnson to have said, 'a message from poor Goldsmith, that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it and saw its merits, told the landlady I should soon return, and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for L60. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill.'"



The arrest is plainly connected with Newbery's reluctance to make further advances, and of all Mrs. Fleming's accounts found among Goldsmith's papers, the only one unsettled is that for the summer months preceding the arrest. The manuscript of the novel seems by both statements (in which the discrepancies are not so great but that Johnson himself may be held accountable for them) to have been produced reluctantly, as a last resource; and it is possible, as Mrs. Piozzi intimates, that it was still regarded as unfinished. But if strong adverse reasons had not existed, Johnson would surely have carried it to the elder Newbery. He did not do this. He went with it to Francis Newbery, the nephew; does not seem to have given a very brilliant account of the "merit" he had perceived in it—four years after its author's death he told Reynolds that he did not think it would have had much success—and rather with regard to Goldsmith's immediate want than to any confident sense of the value of the copy, asked and obtained the L60. "And, sir," he said afterwards, "a sufficient price, too, when it was sold, for then the fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as it afterwards was, by his 'Traveller,' and the bookseller had faint hopes of profit by his bargain. After 'The Traveller,' to be sure, it was accidentally worth more money."



On the poem, meanwhile, the elder Newbery had consented to speculate, and this circumstance may have made it hopeless to appeal to him with a second work of fancy. For, on that very day of the arrest, "The Traveller" lay completed in the poet's desk. The dream of eight years, the solace and sustainment of his exile and poverty, verged at last to fulfilment or extinction, and the hopes and fears which centred in it doubtless mingled on that miserable day with the fumes of the Madeira. In the excitement of putting it to press, which followed immediately after, the nameless novel recedes altogether from the view, but will reappear in due time. Johnson approved the verses more than the novel; read the proof-sheets for his friend; substituted here and there, in more emphatic testimony of general approval, a line of his own; prepared a brief but hearty notice for the Critical Review, which was to appear simultaneously with the poem, and, as the day of publication drew near, bade Goldsmith be of good heart.

Oliver Goldsmith came first to London in 1756, a raw Irish student, aged twenty-eight. He was just fresh from Italy and Switzerland. He had heard Voltaire talk, had won a degree at Louvaine or Padua, had been "bear leader" to the stingy nephew of a rich pawnbroker, and had played the flute at the door of Flemish peasants for a draught of beer and a crust of bread. No city of golden pavement did London prove to those worn and dusty feet. Almost a beggar had Oliver been, then an apothecary's journeyman and quack doctor, next a reader of proofs for Richardson, the novelist and printer; after that a tormented and jaded usher at a Peckham school; last, and worst of all, a hack writer of articles for Griffith's Monthly Review, then being opposed by Smollett in a rival publication. In Green Arbour Court Goldsmith spent the roughest part of the toilsome years before he became known to the world. There he formed an acquaintance with Johnson and his set, and wrote essays for Smollett's British Magazine.

Wine Office Court is supposed to have derived its name from an office where licenses to sell wine were formerly issued. "In this court," says Mr. Noble, "once flourished a fig tree, planted a century ago by the Vicar of St. Bride's, who resided, with an absence of pride suitable, if not common, to Christianity, at No. 12. It was a slip from another exile of a tree, formerly flourishing, in a sooty kind of grandeur, at the sign of the 'Fig Tree,' in Fleet Street. This tree was struck by lightning in 1820, but slips from the growing stump were planted in 1822, in various parts of England."

The old-fashioned and changeless character of the "Cheese," in whose low-roofed and sanded rooms Goldsmith and Johnson have so often hung up their cocked hats and sat down facing each other to a snug dinner, not unattended with punch, has been capitally sketched by a modern essayist, who possesses a thorough knowledge of the physiology of London. In an admirable paper entitled "Brain Street," Mr. George Augustus Sala thus describes Wine Office Court and the "Cheshire Cheese":—

"The vast establishments," says Mr. Sala, "of Messrs. Pewter & Antimony, typefounders (Alderman Antimony was Lord Mayor in the year '46); of Messrs. Quoin, Case, & Chappell, printers to the Board of Blue Cloth; of Messrs. Cutedge & Treecalf, bookbinders; with the smaller industries of Scawper & Tinttool, wood-engravers; and Treacle, Gluepot, & Lampblack, printing-roller makers, are packed together in the upper part of the court as closely as herrings in a cask. The 'Cheese' is at the Brain Street end. It is a little lop-sided, wedged-up house, that always reminds you, structurally, of a high-shouldered man with his hands in his pockets. It is full of holes and corners and cupboards and sharp turnings; and in ascending the stairs to the tiny smoking-room you must tread cautiously, if you would not wish to be tripped up by plates and dishes, momentarily deposited there by furious waiters. The waiters at the 'Cheese' are always furious. Old customers abound in the comfortable old tavern, in whose sanded-floored eating-rooms a new face is a rarity; and the guests and the waiters are the oldest of familiars. Yet the waiter seldom fails to bite your nose off as a preliminary measure when you proceed to pay him. How should it be otherwise when on that waiter's soul there lies heavy a perpetual sense of injury caused by the savoury odour of steaks, and 'muts' to follow; of cheese-bubbling in tiny tins—the 'specialty' of the house; of floury potatoes and fragrant green peas; of cool salads, and cooler tankards of bitter beer; of extra-creaming stout and 'goes' of Cork and 'rack,' by which is meant gin; and, in the winter-time, of Irish stew and rump-steak pudding, glorious and grateful to every sense? To be compelled to run to and fro with these succulent viands from noon to late at night, without being able to spare time to consume them in comfort—where do waiters dine, and when, and how?—to be continually taking other people's money only for the purpose of handing it to other people—are not these grievances sufficient to cross-grain the temper of the mildest-mannered waiter? Somebody is always in a passion at the 'Cheese:' either a customer, because there is not fat enough on his 'point'-steak, or because there is too much bone in his mutton-chop; or else the waiter is wrath with the cook; or the landlord with the waiter, or the barmaid with all. Yes, there is a barmaid at the 'Cheese,' mewed up in a box not much bigger than a birdcage, surrounded by groves of lemons, 'ones' of cheese, punch-bowls, and cruets of mushroom-catsup. I should not care to dispute with her, lest she should quoit me over the head with a punch-ladle, having a William-the-Third guinea soldered in the bowl.

"Let it be noted in candour that Law finds its way to the 'Cheese' as well as Literature; but the Law is, as a rule, of the non-combatant and, consequently, harmless order. Literary men who have been called to the bar, but do not practise; briefless young barristers, who do not object to mingling with newspaper men; with a sprinkling of retired solicitors (amazing dogs these for old port-wine; the landlord has some of the same bin which served as Hippocrene to Judge Blackstone when he wrote his 'Commentaries')—these make up the legal element of the 'Cheese.' Sharp attorneys in practice are not popular there. There is a legend that a process-server once came in at a back door to serve a writ; but being detected by a waiter, was skilfully edged by that wary retainer into Wine Bottle Court, right past the person on whom he was desirous to inflict the 'Victoria, by the grace, &c.' Once in the court, he was set upon by a mob of inky-faced boys just released from the works of Messrs. Ball, Roller, & Scraper, machine printers, and by the skin of his teeth only escaped being converted into 'pie.'"

Mr. William Sawyer has also written a very admirable sketch of the "Cheese" and its old-fashioned, conservative ways, which we cannot resist quoting:—

"We are a close, conservative, inflexible body—we, the regular frequenters of the 'Cheddar,'" says Mr. Sawyer. "No new-fangled notions, new usages, new customs, or new customers for us. We have our history, our traditions, and our observances, all sacred and inviolable. Look around! There is nothing new, gaudy, flippant, or effeminately luxurious here. A small room with heavily-timbered windows. A low planked ceiling. A huge, projecting fire-place, with a great copper boiler always on the simmer, the sight of which might have roused even old John Willett, of the 'Maypole,' to admiration. High, stiff-backed, inflexible 'settles,' hard and grainy in texture, box off the guests, half-a-dozen each to a table. Sawdust covers the floor, giving forth that peculiar faint odour which the French avoid by the use of the vine sawdust with its pleasant aroma. The only ornament in which we indulge is a solitary picture over the mantelpiece, a full-length of a now departed waiter, whom in the long past we caused to be painted, by subscription of the whole room, to commemorate his virtues and our esteem. He is depicted in the scene of his triumphs—in the act of giving change to a customer. We sit bolt upright round our tables, waiting, but not impatient. A time-honoured solemnity is about to be observed, and we, the old stagers, is it for us to precipitate it? There are men in this room who have dined here every day for a quarter of a century—aye, the whisper goes that one man did it even on his wedding-day! In all that time the more staid and well-regulated among us have observed a steady regularity of feeding. Five days in the week we have our 'Rotherham steak'—that mystery of mysteries—or our 'chop and chop to follow,' with the indispensable wedge of Cheddar—unless it is preferred stewed or toasted—and on Saturday decorous variety is afforded in a plate of the world-renowned 'Cheddar' pudding. It is of this latter luxury that we are now assembled to partake, and that with all fitting ceremony and observance. As we sit, like pensioners in hall, the silence is broken only by a strange sound, as of a hardly human voice, muttering cabalistic words, 'Ullo mul lum de loodle wumble jum!' it cries, and we know that chops and potatoes are being ordered for some benighted outsider, ignorant of the fact that it is pudding-day."



CHAPTER XI.

FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES—SHOE LANE.

The First Lucifers—Perkins' Steam Gun—A Link between Shakespeare and Shoe Lane—Florio and his Labours—"Cogers' Hall"—Famous "Cogers"—A Saturday Night's Debate—Gunpowder Alley—Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier Poet—"To Althea, from Prison"—Lilly the Astrologer, and his Knaveries—A Search for Treasure with Davy Ramsay—Hogarth in Harp Alley—The "Society of Sign Painters"—Hudson, the Song Writer—"Jack Robinson"—The Bishop's Residence—Bangor House—A Strange Story of Unstamped Newspapers—Chatterton's Death—Curious Legend of his Burial—A well-timed Joke.

At the east corner of Peterborough Court (says Mr. Timbs) was one of the earliest shops for the instantaneous light apparatus, "Hertner's Eupyrion" (phosphorus and oxymuriate matches, to be dipped in sulphuric acid and asbestos), the costly predecessor of the lucifer match. Nearly opposite were the works of Jacob Perkins, the engineer of the steam gun exhibited at the Adelaide Gallery, Strand, and which the Duke of Wellington truly foretold would never be advantageously employed in battle.

One golden thread of association links Shakespeare to Shoe Lane. Slight and frail is the thread, yet it has a double strand. In this narrow side-aisle of Fleet Street, in 1624, lived John Florio, the compiler of our first Italian dictionary. Now it is more than probable that our great poet knew this industrious Italian, as we shall presently show. Florio was a Waldensian teacher, no doubt driven to England by religious persecution. He taught French and Italian with success at Oxford, and finally was appointed tutor to that generous-minded, hopeful, and unfortunate Prince Henry, son of James I. Florio's "Worlde of Wordes" (a most copious and exact dictionary in Italian and English) was printed in 1598, and published by Arnold Hatfield for Edward Church, and "sold at his shop over against the north door of Paul's Church." It is dedicated to "The Right Honourable Patrons of Virtue, Patterns of Honour, Roger Earle of Rutland, Henrie Earle of Southampton, and Lucie Countess of Bedford." In the dedication, worthy of the fantastic author of "Euphues" himself, the author says:—"My hope springs out of three stems—your Honours' naturall benignitie; your able emploiment of such servitours; and the towardly like-lie-hood of this springall to do you honest service. The first, to vouchsafe all; the second, to accept this; the third, to applie it selfe to the first and second. Of the first, your birth, your place, and your custome; of the second, your studies, your conceits, and your exercise; of the thirde, my endeavours, my proceedings, and my project giues assurance. Your birth, highly noble, more than gentle; your place, above others, as in degree, so in height of bountie, and other vertues; your custome, never wearie of well doing; your studies much in all, most in Italian excellence; your conceits, by understanding others to worke above them in your owne; your exercise, to reade what the world's best writers have written, and to speake as they write. My endeavour, to apprehend the best, if not all; my proceedings, to impart my best, first to your Honours, then to all that emploie me; my proiect in this volume to comprehend the best and all, in truth, I acknowledge an entyre debt, not only of my best knowledge, but of all, yea, of more than I know or can, to your bounteous lordship, most noble, most vertuous, and most Honorable Earle of Southampton, in whose paie and patronage I haue liued some yeeres; to whom I owe and vowe the yeeres I haue to live.... Good parts imparted are not empaired; your springs are first to serue yourself, yet may yeelde your neighbours sweete water; your taper is to light you first, and yet it may light your neighbour's candle.... Accepting, therefore, of the childe, I hope your Honors' wish as well to the Father, who to your Honors' all deuoted wisheth meede of your merits, renowne of your vertues, and health of your persons, humblie with gracious leave kissing your thrice-honored hands, protesteth to continue euer your Honors' most humble and bounden in true seruice, JOHN FLORIO."

And now to connect Florio with Shakespeare. The industrious Savoyard, besides his dictionary—of great use at a time when the tour to Italy was a necessary completion of a rich gallant's education—translated the essays of that delightful old Gascon egotist, Montaigne. Now in a copy of Florio's "Montaigne" there was found some years ago one of the very few genuine Shakespeare signatures. Moreover, as Florio speaks of the Earl of Southampton as his steady patron, we may fairly presume that the great poet, who must have been constantly at Southampton's house, often met there the old Italian master. May not the bard in those conversations have perhaps gathered some hints for the details of Cymbeline, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, or The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and had his attention turned by the old scholar to fresh chapters of Italian story?

No chronicle of Shoe Lane would be complete without some mention of the "Cogers' Discussion Hall," formerly at No. 10. This useful debating society—a great resort for local politicians—was founded by Mr. Daniel Mason as long ago as 1755, and among its most eminent members it glories in the names of John Wilkes, Judge Keogh, Daniel O'Connell, and the eloquent Curran. The word "Coger" does not imply codger, or a drinker of cogs, but comes from cogite, to cogitate. The Grand, Vice-Grand, and secretary were elected on the night of every 14th of June by show of hands. The room was open to strangers, but the members had the right to speak first. The society was Republican in the best sense, for side by side with master tradesmen, shopmen, and mechanics, reporters and young barristers gravely sipped their grog, and abstractedly emitted wreathing columns of tobacco-smoke from their pipes. Mr. J. Parkinson has sketched the little parliament very pleasantly in the columns of a contemporary.

"A long low room," says the writer, "like the saloon of a large steamer. Wainscoat dimmed and ornaments tarnished by tobacco-smoke and the lingering dews of steaming compounds. A room with large niches at each end, like shrines for full-grown saints, one niche containing 'My Grand' in a framework of shabby gold, the other 'My Grand's Deputy' in a bordering more substantial. More than one hundred listeners are wating patiently for My Grand's utterances this Saturday night, and are whiling away the time philosophically with bibulous and nicotian refreshment. The narrow tables of the long room are filled with students and performers, and quite a little crowd is congregated at the door and in a room adjacent until places can be found for them in the presence-chamber. 'Established 1755' is inscribed on the ornamental signboard above us, and 'Instituted 1756' on another signboard near. Dingy portraits of departed Grands and Deputies decorate the walls. Punctually at nine My Grand opens the proceedings amid profound silence. The deputy buries himself in his newspaper, and maintains as profound a calm as the Speaker 'in another place.' The most perfect order is preserved. The Speaker or deputy, who seems to know all about it, rolls silently in his chair: he is a fat dark man, with a small and rather sleepy eye, such as I have seen come to the surface and wink lazily at the fashionable people clustered round a certain tank in the Zoological Gardens. He re-folds his newspaper from time to time until deep in the advertisements. The waiters silently remove empty tumblers and tankards, and replace them full. But My Grand commands profound attention from the room, and a neighbour, who afterwards proved a perfect Boanerges in debate, whispered to us concerning his vast attainments and high literary position.

"This chieftain of the Thoughtful Men is, we learn, the leading contributor to a newspaper of large circulation, and, under his signature of 'Locksley Hall,' rouses the sons of toil to a sense of the dignity and rights of labour, and exposes the profligacy and corruption of the rich to the extent of a column and a quarter every week. A shrewd, hard-headed man of business, with a perfect knowledge of what he had to do, and with a humorous twinkle of the eye, My Grand went steadily through his work, and gave the Thoughtful Men his epitome of the week's intelligence. It seemed clear that the Cogers had either not read the newspapers, or liked to be told what they already knew. They listened with every token of interest to facts which had been published for days, and it seemed difficult to understand how a debate could be carried on when the text admitted so little dispute. But we sadly underrated the capacity of the orators near us. The sound of My Grand's last sentence had not died out when a fresh-coloured, rather aristocratic-looking elderly man, whose white hair was carefully combed and smoothed, and whose appearance and manner suggested a very different arena to the one he waged battle in now, claimed the attention of the Thoughtful ones. Addressing 'Mee Grand' in the rich and unctuous tones which a Scotchman and Englishman might try for in vain, this orator proceeded, with every profession of respect, to contradict most of the chief's statements, to ridicule his logic, and to compliment him with much irony on his overwhelming goodness to the society 'to which I have the honour to belong. Full of that hard northern logic' (much emphasis on 'northern,' which was warmly accepted as a hit by the room)—'that hard northern logic which demonstrates everything to its own satisfaction; abounding in that talent which makes you, sir, a leader in politics, a guide in theology, and generally an instructor of the people; yet even you, sir, are perhaps, if I may say so, somewhat deficient in the lighter graces of pathos and humour. Your speech, sir, has commanded the attention of the room. Its close accuracy of style, its exactitude of expression, its consistent argument, and its generally transcendant ability will exercise, I doubt not, an influence which will extend far beyond this chamber, filled as this chamber is by gentlemen of intellect and education, men of the time, who both think and feel, and who make their feelings and their thoughts felt by others. Still, sir,' and the orator smiles the smile of ineffable superiority, 'grateful as the members of the society you have so kindly alluded to ought to be for your countenance and patronage, it needed not' (turning to the Thoughtful Men generally, with a sarcastic smile)—'it needed not even Mee Grand's encomiums to endear this society to its people, and to strengthen their belief in its efficacy in time of trouble, its power to help, to relieve, and to assuage. No, Mee Grand, an authoritee whose dictum even you will accept without dispute—mee Lord Macaulee—that great historian whose undying pages record those struggles and trials of constitutionalism in which the Cogers have borne no mean part—me Lord Macaulee mentions, with a respect and reverence not exceeded by Mee Grand's utterances of to-night' (more smiles of mock humility to the room) 'that great association which claims me as an unworthy son. We could, therefore, have dispensed with the recognition given us by Mee Grand; we could afford to wait our time until the nations of the earth are fused by one common wish for each other's benefit, when the principles of Cogerism are spread over the civilised world, when justice reigns supreme, and loving-kindness takes the place of jealousy and hate.' We looked round the room while these fervid words were being triumphantly rolled forth, and were struck with the calm impassiveness of the listeners. There seemed to be no partisanship either for the speaker or the Grand. Once, when the former was more than usually emphatic in his denunciations, a tall pale man, with a Shakespeare forehead, rose suddenly, with a determined air, as if about to fiercely interrupt; but it turned out he only wanted to catch the waiter's eye, and this done, he pointed silently to his empty glass, and remarked, in a hoarse whisper, 'Without sugar, as before.'"



Gunpowder Alley, a side-twig of Shoe Lane, leads us to the death-bed of an unhappy poet, poor Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier, who, dying here two years before the "blessed" Restoration, in a very mean lodging, was buried at the west end of St. Bride's Church. The son of a knight, and brought up at Oxford, Anthony Wood describes the gallant and hopeful lad at sixteen, when presented at the Court of Charles I., as "the most amiable and beautiful youth that eye ever beheld. A person, also, of innate modesty, virtue, and courtly deportment, which made him then, but specially after, when he retired to the great city, much admired and adored by the female sex." Presenting a daring petition from Kent in favour of the king, the Cavalier poet was thrown into prison by the Long Parliament, and was released only to waste his fortune in Royalist plots. He served in the French army, raised a regiment for Louis XIII., and was left for dead at Dunkirk. On his return to England, he found Lucy Sacheverell—his "Lucretia," the lady of his love—married, his death having been reported. All went ill. He was again imprisoned, grew penniless, had to borrow, and fell into a consumption from despair for love and loyalty. "Having consumed all his estate," says Anthony Wood, "he grew very melancholy, which at length brought him into a consumption; became very poor in body and purse, was the object of charity, went in ragged clothes (whereas when he was in his glory he wore cloth of gold and silver), and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places, more befitting the worst of beggars than poorest of servants." There is a doubt, however, as to whether Lovelace died in such abject poverty, poor, dependent, and unhappy as he might have been. Lovelace's verse is often strained, affected, and wanting in judgment; but at times he mounts a bright-winged Pegasus, and with plume and feather flying, tosses his hand up, gay and chivalrous as Rupert's bravest. His verses to Lucy Sacheverell, on leaving her for the French camp, are worthy of Montrose himself. The last two lines—

"I could not love thee, dear, so much, Lov'd I not honour more"—

contain the thirty-nine articles of a soldier's faith. And what Wildrake could have sung in the Gate House or the Compter more gaily of liberty than Lovelace, when he wrote,—

"Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take That for a hermitage. If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above, Enjoy such liberty"?



Whenever we read the verse that begins,—

"When love, with unconfined wings, Hovers within my gates, And my divine Althea brings, To whisper at my grates,"

the scene rises before us—we see a fair pale face, with its aureole of golden hair gleaming between the rusty bars of the prison door, and the worn visage of the wounded Cavalier turning towards it as the flower turns to the sun. And surely Master Wildrake himself, with his glass of sack half-way to his mouth, never put it down to sing a finer Royalist stave than Lovelace's "To Althea, from Prison,"—

"When, linnet-like, confined, I With shriller note shall sing The mercy, sweetness, majesty, And glories of my king; When I shall voice aloud how good He is, how great should be, Th' enlarged winds that curl the flood Know no such liberty."

In the Cromwell times there resided in Gunpowder Alley, probably to the scorn of poor dying Lovelace, that remarkable cheat and early medium, Lilly the astrologer, the Sidrophel of "Hudibras." This rascal, who supplied the King and Parliament alternately with equally veracious predictions, was in youth apprenticed to a mantua-maker in the Strand, and on his master's death married his widow. Lilly studied astrology under one Evans, an ex-clergyman, who told fortunes in Gunpowder Alley. Besotted by the perusal of Cornelius Agrippa and other such trash, Lilly, found fools plenty, and the stars, though potent in their spheres, unable to contradict his lies. This artful cheat was consulted as to the most propitious day and hour for Charles's escape from Carisbrook, and was even sent for by the Puritan generals to encourage their men before Colchester. Lilly was a spy of the Parliament, yet at the Restoration professed to disclose the fact that Cornet Joyce had beheaded Charles. Whenever his predictions or his divining-rod failed, he always attributed his failures, as the modern spiritualists, the successors of the old wizards, still conveniently do, to want of faith in the spectators. By means of his own shrewdness, rather than by stellar influence, Lilly obtained many useful friends, among whom we may specially particularise the King of Sweden, Lenthal the Puritan Speaker, Bulstrode Whitelocke (Cromwell's Minister), and the learned but credulous Elias Ashmole. Lilly's Almanac, the predecessor of Moore's and Zadkiel's, was carried on by him for six-and-thirty years. He claimed to be a special protege of an angel called Salmonaeus, and to have a more than bowing acquaintance with Salmael and Malchidael, the guardian angels of England. Among his works are his autobiography, and his "Observations on the Life and Death of Charles, late King of England." The rest of his effusions are pretentious, mystical, muddle-headed rubbish, half nonsense half knavery, as "The White King's Prophecy," "Supernatural Light," "The Starry Messenger," and "Annus Tenebrosus, or the Black Year." The rogue's starry mantle descended on his adopted son, a tailor, whom he named Merlin, junior. The credulity of the atheistical times of Charles II. is only equalled by that of our own day.

Lilly himself, in his amusing, half-knavish autobiography, has described his first introduction to the Welsh astrologer of Gunpowder Alley:—

"It happened," he says, "on one Sunday, 1632, as myself and a justice of peace's clerk were, before service, discoursing of many things, he chanced to say that such a person was a great scholar—nay, so learned that he could make an almanac, which to me then was strange; one speech begot another, till, at last, he said he could bring me acquainted with one Evans, in Gunpowder Alley, who had formerly lived in Staffordshire, that was an excellent wise man, and studied the black art. The same week after we went to see Mr. Evans. When we came to his house, he, having been drunk the night before, was upon his bed, if it be lawful to call that a bed whereon he then lay. He roused up himself, and after some compliments he was content to instruct me in astrology. I attended his best opportunities for seven or eight weeks, in which time I could set a figure perfectly. Books he had not any, except Haly, 'De Judiciis Astrorum,' and Orriganus's 'Ephemerides;' so that as often as I entered his house I thought I was in the wilderness. Now, something of the man. He was by birth a Welshman, a master of arts, and in sacred orders. He had formerly had a cure of souls in Staffordshire, but now was come to try his fortunes at London, being in a manner enforced to fly, for some offences very scandalous committed by him in those parts where he had lately lived; for he gave judgment upon things lost, the only shame of astrology. He was the most saturnine person my eye ever beheld, either before I practised or since; of a middle stature, broad forehead, beetle-browed, thick shoulders, flat-nosed, full lips, down-looked, black, curling, stiff hair, splay-footed. To give him his right, he had the most piercing judgment naturally upon a figure of theft, and many other questions, that I ever met withal; yet for money he would willingly give contrary judgments; was much addicted to debauchery, and then very abusive and quarrelsome; seldom without a black eye or one mischief or other. This is the same Evans who made so many antimonial cups, upon the sale whereof he chiefly subsisted. He understood Latin very well, the Greek tongue not all; he had some arts above and beyond astrology, for he was well versed in the nature of spirits, and had many times used the circular way of invocating, as in the time of our familiarity he told me."

One of Lilly's most impudent attempts to avail himself of demoniacal assistance was when he dug for treasure (like Scott's Dousterswivel) with David Ramsay (Scott again), one stormy night, in the cloisters at Westminster.

"Davy Ramsay," says the arch rogue, "his majesty's clockmaker, had been informed that there was a great quantity of treasure buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey; he acquaints Dean Williams therewith, who was also then Bishop of Lincoln; the dean gave him liberty to search after it, with this proviso, that if any was discovered his church should have a share of it. Davy Ramsay finds out one John Scott,[4] who pretended the use of the Mosaical rods, to assist him therein. I was desired to join with him, unto which I consented. One winter's night Davy Ramsay,[5] with several gentlemen, myself, and Scott, entered the cloisters; upon the west side of the cloisters the rods turned one over another, an argument that the treasure was there. The labourers digged at least six feet deep, and then we met with a coffin, but in regard it was not heavy, we did not open, which we afterwards much repented. From the cloisters we went into the abbey church, where upon a sudden (there being no wind when we began) so fierce, so high, so blustering and loud a wind did rise, that we verily believed the west-end of the church would have fallen upon us; our rods would not move at all; the candles and torches, all but one, were extinguished, or burned very dimly. John Scott, my partner, was amazed, looked pale, knew not what to think or do, until I gave directions and command to dismiss the demons, which when done all was quiet again, and each man returned unto his lodging late, about twelve o'clock at night. I could never since be induced to join with any in such-like actions.

"The true miscarriage of the business was by reason of so many people being present at the operation, for there was about thirty—some laughing, others deriding us; so that if we had not dismissed the demons, I believe most part of the abbey church had been blown down. Secrecy and intelligent operators, with a strong confidence and knowledge of what they are doing, are best for this work."

In the last century, when every shop had its sign and London streets were so many out-of-door picture-galleries, a Dutchman named Vandertrout opened a manufactory of these pictorial advertisements in Harp Alley, Shoe Lane, a dirty passage now laid open to the sun and air on the east side of the new transverse street running from Ludgate Hill to Holborn. In ridicule of the spurious black, treacly old masters then profusely offered for sale by the picture-dealers of the day, Hogarth and Bonnell Thornton opened an exhibition of shop-signs. In Nicholls and Stevens' "Life of Hogarth" there is a full and racy account of this sarcastic exhibition:—"At the entrance of the large passage-room was written, 'N.B. That the merit of the modern masters may be fairly examined into, it has been thought proper to place some admired works of the most eminent old masters in this room, and along the passage through the yard.' Among these are 'A Barge' in still life, by Vandertrout. He cannot be properly called an English artist; but not being sufficiently encouraged in his own country, he left Holland with William the Third, and was the first artist who settled in Harp Alley. An original half-length of Camden, the great historian and antiquary, in his herald's coat; by Vandertrout. As this artist was originally colour-grinder to Hans Holbein, it is conjectured there are some of that great master's touches in this piece. 'Nobody, alias Somebody,' a character. (The figure of an officer, all head, arms, legs, and thighs. This piece has a very odd effect, being so drolly executed that you do not miss the body.) 'Somebody, alias Nobody,' a caricature, its companion; both these by Hagarty. (A rosy figure, with a little head and a huge body, whose belly sways over almost quite down to his shoe-buckles. By the staff in his hand, it appears to be intended to represent a constable. It might else have been intended for an eminent justice of peace.) 'A Perspective View of Billingsgate, or Lectures on Elocution;' and 'The True Robin Hood Society, a Conversation or Lectures on Elocution,' its companion; these two by Barnsley. (These two strike at a famous lecturer on elocution and the reverend projector of a rhetorical academy, are admirably conceived and executed, and—the latter more especially—almost worthy the hand of Hogarth. They are full of a variety of droll figures, and seem, indeed, to be the work of a great master struggling to suppress his superiority of genius, and endeavouring to paint down to the common style and manner of sign-painting.)

"At the entrance to the grand room:—'The Society of Sign Painters take this opportunity of refuting a most malicious suggestion that their exhibition is designed as a ridicule on the exhibitions of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c., and of the artists. They intend theirs only as an appendix or (in the style of painters) a companion to the other. There is nothing in their collection which will be understood by any candid person as a reflection on anybody, or any body of men. They are not in the least prompted by any mean jealousy to depreciate the merit of their brother artists. Animated by the same public spirit, their sole view is to convince foreigners, as well as their own blinded countrymen, that however inferior this nation may be unjustly deemed in other branches of the polite arts, the palm for sign-painting must be ceded to us, the Dutch themselves not excepted.' Projected in 1762 by Mr. Bonnel Thornton, of festive memory; but I am informed that he contributed no otherwise towards this display than by a few touches of chalk. Among the heads of distinguished personages, finding those of the King of Prussia and the Empress of Hungary, he changed the cast of their eyes, so as to make them leer significantly at each other. Note.—These (which in the catalogue are called an original portrait of the present Emperor of Prussia and ditto of the Empress Queen of Hungary, its antagonist) were two old signs of the "Saracen's Head" and Queen Anne. Under the first was written 'The Zarr,' and under the other 'The Empress Quean.' They were lolling their tongues out at each other; and over their heads ran a wooden label, inscribed, 'The present state of Europe.'

"In 1762 was published, in quarto, undated, 'A Catalogue of the Original Paintings, Busts, and Carved Figures, &c. &c., now Exhibiting by the Society of Sign-painters, at the Large Room, the upper end of Bow Street, Covent Garden, nearly opposite the Playhouse.'"

At 98, Shoe Lane lived, now some fifty years ago, a tobacconist named Hudson, a great humorist, a fellow of infinite fancy, and the writer of half the comic songs that once amused festive London. Hudson afterwards, we believe, kept the "Kean's Head" tavern, in Russell Court, Drury Lane, and about 1830 had a shop of some kind or other in Museum Street, Bloomsbury. Hudson was one of those professional song-writers and vocalists who used to be engaged to sing at such supper-rooms and theatrical houses as Offley's, in Henrietta Street (north-west end), Covent Garden; the "Coal Hole," in the Strand; and the "Cider Cellars," Maiden Lane. Sitting among the company, Hudson used to get up at the call of the chairman and "chant" one of his lively and really witty songs. The platform belongs to "Evans's" and a later period. Hudson was at his best long after Captain Morris's day, and at the time when Moore's melodies were popular. Many of the melodies Hudson parodied very happily, and with considerable tact and taste. Many of Hudson's songs, such as "Jack Robinson" (infinitely funnier than most of Dibdin's), became coined into catch-words and street sayings of the day. "Before you could say Jack Robinson" is a phrase, still current, derived from this highly droll song. The verse in which Jack Robinson's "engaged" apologises for her infidelity is as good as anything that James Smith ever wrote. To the returned sailor,—

"Says the lady, says she, 'I've changed my state.' 'Why, you don't mean,' says Jack, 'that you've got a mate? You know you promised me.' Says she, 'I couldn't wait, For no tidings could I gain of you, Jack Robinson. And somebody one day came to me and said That somebody else had somewhere read, In some newspaper, that you was somewhere dead.'— 'I've not been dead at all,' says Jack Robinson."

Another song, "The Spider and the Fly," is still often sung; and "Going to Coronation" is by no means forgotten in Yorkshire. "There was a Man in the West Countrie" figures in most current collections of songs. Hudson particularly excelled in stage-Irishman songs, which were then popular; and some of these, particularly one that ends with the refrain, "My brogue and my blarney and bothering ways," have real humour in them. Many of these Irish songs were written for and sung by the late Mr. Fitzwilliam, the comedian, as others of Hudson's songs were by Mr. Rayner. Collectors of comic ditties will not readily forget "Walker, the Twopenny Postman," or "The Dogs'-meat Man"—rough caricatures of low life, unstained by the vulgarity of many of the modern music-hall ditties. In the motto to one of his collections of poems, Hudson borrows from Churchill an excuse for the rough, humorous effusions that he scattered broadcast over the town,—

"When the mad fit comes on, I seize the pen, Rough as they run, the rapid thoughts set down; Rough as they run, discharge them on the town. Hence rude, unfinished brats, before their time, Are born into this idle world of rhyme; And the poor slattern muse is brought to bed, With all her imperfections on her head."

We subjoin a very good specimen of Hudson's songs, from his once very popular "Coronation of William and Adelaide" (1830), which, we think, will be allowed to fully justify our praise of the author:—

"And when we got to town, quite tired, The bells all rung, the guns they fired, The people looking all bemired, In one conglomeration. Soldiers red, policemen blue, Horse-guards, foot-guards, and blackguards too, Beef-eaters, dukes, and Lord knows who, To see the coronation.

While Dolly bridled up, so proud, At us the people laughed aloud; Dobbin stood in thickest crowd, Wi' quiet resignation. To move again he warn't inclined; 'Here's a chap!' says one behind, 'He's brought an old horse, lame and blind, To see the coronation.'

Dolly cried, 'Oh! dear, oh! dear, I wish I never had come here, To suffer every jibe and jeer, In such a situation.' While so busy, she and I To get a little ease did try, By goles! the king and queen went by, And all the coronation.

I struggled hard, and Dolly cried; And tho' to help myself I tried, We both were carried with the tide, Against our inclination. 'The reign's begun!' folks cried; ''tis true;' 'Sure,' said Dolly, 'I think so too; The rain's begun, for I'm wet thro', All through the coronation.'

We bade good-bye to Lunnun town; The king and queen they gain'd a crown; Dolly spoilt her bran-new gown, To her mortification. I'll drink our king and queen wi' glee, In home-brewed ale, and so will she; But Doll and I ne'er want to see Another coronation."

Our English bishops, who had not the same taste as the Cistercians in selecting pleasant places for their habitations, seem during the Middle Ages to have much affected the neighbourhood of Fleet Street. Ely Place still marks the residence of one rich prelate. In Chichester Rents we have already met with the humble successors of the netmaker of Galilee. In a siding on the north-west side of Shoe Lane the Bishops of Bangor lived, with their spluttering and choleric Welsh retinue, as early as 1378. Recent improvements have laid open the miserable "close" called Bangor Court, that once glowed with the reflections of scarlet hoods and jewelled copes; and a schoolhouse of bastard Tudor architecture, with sham turrets and flimsy mullioned windows, now occupies the site of the proud Christian prelate's palace. Bishop Dolben, who died in 1633 (Charles I.), was the last Welsh bishop who deigned to reside in a neighbourhood from which wealth and fashion was fast ebbing. Brayley says that a part of the old episcopal garden, where the ecclesiastical subjects of centuries had been discussed by shaven men and frocked scholars, still existed in 1759 (George II.); and, indeed, as Mr. Jesse records, even as late as 1828 (George IV.) a portion of the old mansion, once redolent with the stupefying incense of the semi-pagan Church, still lingered. Bangor House, according to Mr. J.T. Smith, is mentioned in the patent rolls as early as Edward III. The lawyers' barbarous dog-Latin of the old-deed describe, "unum messuag, unum placeam terrae, ac unam gardniam, cum aliis edificis," in Shoe Lane, London. In 1647 (Charles I.) Sir John Birkstead purchased of the Parliamentary trustees the bishop's lands, that had probably been confiscated, to build streets upon the site. But Sir John went on paving the old place, and never built at all. Cromwell's Act of 1657, to check the increase of London, entailed a special exemption in his favour. At the Restoration, the land returned to its Welsh bishop; but it had degenerated—the palace was divided into several residences, and mean buildings sprang up like fungi around it. A drawing of Malcolm's, early in the century, shows us its two Tudor windows. Latterly it became divided into wretched rooms, and two as three hundred poor people, chiefly Irish, herded in them. The house was entirely pulled down in the autumn of 1828.



Mr. Grant, that veteran of the press, tells a capital story, in his "History of the Newspaper Press," of one of the early vendors of unstamped newspapers in Shoe Lane:—

"Cleaves Police Gazette," says Mr. Grant, "consisted chiefly of reports of police cases. It certainly was a newspaper to all intents and purposes, and was ultimately so declared to be in a court of law by a jury. But in the meantime, while the action was pending, the police had instructions to arrest Mr. John Cleave, the proprietor, and seize all the copies of the paper as they came out of his office in Shoe Lane. He contrived for a time to elude their vigilance; and in order to prevent the seizure of his paper, he resorted to an expedient which was equally ingenious and laughable. Close by his little shop in Shoe Lane there was an undertaker, whose business, as might be inferred from the neighbourhood, as well as from his personal appearance and the homeliness of his shop, was exclusively among the lower and poorer classes of the community. With him Mr. Cleave made an arrangement to construct several coffins of the plainest and cheapest kind, for purposes which were fully explained. The 'undertaker,' whose ultra-republican principles were in perfect unison with those of Mr. Cleave, not only heartily undertook the work, but did so on terms so moderate that he would not ask for nor accept any profit. He, indeed, could imagine no higher nor holier duty than that of assisting in the dissemination of a paper which boldly and energetically preached the extinction of the aristocracy and the perfect equality in social position, and in property too, of all classes of the community. Accordingly the coffins, with a rudeness in make and material which were in perfect keeping with the purpose to which they were to be applied, were got ready; and Mr. Cleave, in the dead of night, got them filled with thousands of his Gazettes. It had been arranged beforehand that particular houses in various parts of the town should be in readiness to receive them with blinds down, as if some relative had been dead, and was about to be borne away to the house appointed for all living. The deal coffin was opened, and the contents were taken out, tied up in a parcel so as to conceal from the prying curiosity of any chance person that they were Cleave's Police Gazettes, and then sent off to the railway stations most convenient for their transmission to the provinces. The coffins after this were returned in the middle of next night to the 'undertaker's' in Shoe Lane, there to be in readiness to render a similar service to Mr. Cleave and the cause of red Republicanism when the next Gazette appeared."



"In this way Mr. Cleave contrived for some time to elude the vigilance of the police and to sell about 50,000 copies weekly of each impression of his paper. But the expedient, ingenious and eminently successful as it was for a time, failed at last. The people in Shoe Lane and the neighbourhood began to be surprised and alarmed at the number of funerals, as they believed them to be, which the departure of so many coffins from the 'undertaker's' necessarily implied. The very natural conclusion to which they came was, that this supposed sudden and extensive number of deaths could only be accounted for on the assumption that some fatal epidemic had visited the neighbourhood, and there made itself a local habitation. The parochial authorities, responding to the prevailing alarm, questioned the 'undertaker' friend and fellow-labourer of Mr. Cleave as to the causes of his sudden and extensive accession of business in the coffin-making way; and the result of the close questions put to him was the discovery of the whole affair. It need hardly be added that an immediate and complete collapse took place in Mr. Cleave's business, so far as his Police Gazette was concerned. Not another number of the publication ever made its appearance, while the coffin-trade of the 'undertaker' all at once returned to its normal proportions."

This stratagem of Cleave's was rivalled a few years ago by M. Herzen's clever plan of sending great numbers of his treasonable and forbidden paper, the Kolokol, to Russia, soldered up in sardine-boxes. No Government, in fact, can ever baffle determined and ingenious smugglers.

One especially sad association attaches to Shoe Lane, and that is the burial in the workhouse graveyard (the site of the late Farringdon Market) of that unhappy child of genius, Chatterton the poet. In August, 1770, the poor lad, who had come from Bristol full of hope and ambition to make his fortune in London by his pen, broken-hearted and maddened by disappointment, destroyed himself in his mean garret-lodging in Brooke Street, Holborn, by swallowing arsenic. Mr. John Dix, his very unscrupulous biographer, has noted down a curious legend about the possible removal of the poet's corpse from London to Bristol, which, doubtful as it is, is at least interesting as a possibility:—

"I found," says Mr. Dix, "that Mrs. Stockwell, of Peter Street, wife of Mr. Stockwell, a basket-maker, was the person who had communicated to Sir R. Wilmot her grounds for believing Chatterton to have been so interred; and on my requesting her to repeat to me what she knew of that affair, she commenced by informing me that at ten years of age she was a scholar of Mrs. Chatterton, his mother, where she was taught plain work, and remained with her until she was near twenty years of age; that she slept with her, and found her kind and motherly, insomuch that there were many things which in moments of affliction Mrs. C. communicated to her, that she would not have wished to have been generally known; and among others, she often repeated how happy she was that her unfortunate son lay buried in Redcliff, through the kind attention of a friend or relation in London, who, after the body had been cased in a parish shell, had it properly secured and sent to her by the waggon; that when it arrived it was opened, and the corpse found to be black and half putrid (having been burst with the motion of the carriage, or from some other cause), so that it became necessary to inter it speedily; and that it was early interred by Phillips, the sexton, who was of her family. That the effect of the loss of her son was a nervous disorder, which never quitted her, and she was often seen weeping at the bitter remembrance of her misfortune. She described the poet as having been sharp-tempered, but that it was soon over; and she often said he had cost her many uneasy hours, from the apprehension she entertained of his going mad, as he was accustomed to remain fixed for above an hour at a time quite motionless, and then he would snatch up a pen and write incessantly; but he was always, she added, affectionate....

"In addition to this, Mrs. Stockwell told the writer that the grave was on the right-hand side of the lime-tree, middle paved walk, in Redcliff Churchyard, about twenty feet from the father's grave, which is, she says, in the paved walk, and where now Mrs. Chatterton and Mrs. Newton, her daughter, also lie. Also, that Mrs. Chatterton gave a person leave to bury his child over her son's coffin, and was much vexed to find that he afterwards put the stone over it, which, when Chatterton was buried, had been taken up for the purpose of digging the grave, and set against the church-wall; that afterwards, when Mr. Hutchinson's or Mr. Taylor's wife died, they buried her also in the same grave, and put this stone over with a new inscription. (Query, did he erase the first, or turn the stone?—as this might lead to a discovery of the spot.)....

"Being referred to Mrs. Jane Phillips, of Rolls Alley, Rolls Lane, Great Gardens, Temple Parish (who is sister to that Richard Phillips who was sexton at Redcliff Church in the year 1772), she informed me that his widow and a daughter were living in Cathay; the widow is sexton, a Mr. Perrin, of Colston's Parade, acting for her. She remembers Chatterton having been at his father's school, and that he always called Richard Phillips, her brother, 'uncle,' and was much liked by him. He liked him for his spirit, and there can be no doubt he would have risked the privately burying him on that account. When she heard he was gone to London she was sorry to hear it, for all loved him, and thought he could get no good there.

"Soon after his death her brother, R. Phillips, told her that poor Chatterton had killed himself; on which she said she would go to Madame Chatterton's, to know the rights of it; but that he forbade her, and said, if she did so he should be sorry he had told her. She, however, did go, and asking if it was true that he was dead, Mrs. Chatterton began to weep bitterly, saying, 'My son indeed is dead!' and when she asked her where he was buried, she replied, 'Ask me nothing; he is dead and buried.'"

Poppin's Court (No. 109) marks the site of the ancient hostel (hotel) of the Abbots of Cirencester—though what they did there, when they ought to have been on their knees in their own far-away Gloucestershire abbey, history does not choose to record. The sign of their inn was the "Poppingaye" (popinjay, parrot), and in 1602 (last year of Elizabeth) the alley was called Poppingay Alley. That excellent man Van Mildert (then a poor curate, living in Ely Place, afterwards Bishop of Durham—a prelate remarkable for this above all his many other Christian virtues, that he was not proud) was once driven into this alley with a young barrister friend by a noisy illumination-night crowd. The street boys began firing a volley of squibs at the young curate, who found all hope of escape barred, and dreaded the pickpockets, who take rapid advantage of such temporary embarrassments; but his good-natured exclamation, "Ah! here you are, popping away in Poppin's Court!" so pleased the crowd that they at once laughingly opened a passage for him. "Sic me servavit, Apollo," he used afterwards to add when telling the story.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] "This Scott lived in Pudding Lane, and had some time been a page (or such-like) to the Lord Norris."

[5] "Davy Ramsay brought a half-quartern sack to put the treasure in."



CHAPTER XII.

FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES SOUTH.

Worthy Mr. Fisher—Lamb's Wednesday Evenings—Persons one would wish to have seen—Ram Alley—Serjeants' Inn—The Daily News—"Memory" Woodfall—A Mug-House Riot—Richardson's Printing Office—Fielding and Richardson—Johnson's Estimate of Richardson—Hogarth and Richardson's Guest—An Egotist Rebuked—The King's "Housewife"—Caleb Colton: his Life, Works, and Sentiments.

Falcon Court, Fleet Street, took its name from an inn which bore the sign of the "Falcon." This passage formerly belonged to a gentleman named Fisher, who, out of gratitude to the Cordwainers' Company, bequeathed it to them by will. His gratitude is commonly said to have arisen from the number of good dinners that the Company had given him. However this may be, the Cordwainers are the present owners of the estate, and are under the obligation of having a sermon preached annually at the neighbouring church of St. Dunstan, on the 10th of July, when certain sums are given to the poor. Formerly it was the custom to drink sack in the church to the pious memory of Mr. Fisher, but this appears to have been discontinued for a considerable period. This Fisher was a jolly fellow, if all the tales are true which are related of him, as, besides the sack drinking, he stipulated that the Cordwainers should give a grand feast on the same day yearly to all their tenants. What a quaint picture might be made of the churchwardens in the old church drinking to the memory of Mr. Fisher! Wynkyn de Worde, the father of printing in England, lived in Fleet Street, at his messuage or inn known by the sign of the Falcon. Whether it was the inn that stood on the site of Falcon Court is not known with certainty, but most probably it was.

Charles Lamb came to 16, Mitre Court Buildings in 1800, after leaving Southampton Buildings, and remained in that quiet harbour out of Fleet Street till 1809, when he removed to Inner Temple Lane.

It was whilst Lamb was residing in Mitre Court Buildings that those Wednesday evenings of his were in their glory. In two of Mr. Hazlitt's papers are graphic pictures of these delightful Wednesdays and the Wednesday men, and admirable notes of several choice conversations. There is a curious sketch in one of a little tilt between Coleridge and Holcroft, which must not be omitted. "Coleridge was riding the high German horse, and demonstrating the 'Categories of the Transcendental Philosophy' to the author of The Road to Ruin, who insisted on his knowledge of German and German metaphysics, having read the 'Critique of Pure Reason' in the original. 'My dear Mr. Holcroft,' said Coleridge, in a tone of infinitely provoking conciliation, 'you really put me in mind of a sweet pretty German girl of about fifteen, in the Hartz Forest, in Germany, and who one day, as I was reading "The Limits of the Knowable and the Unknowable," the profoundest of all his works, with great attention, came behind my chair, and leaning over, said, "What! you read Kant? Why, I, that am a German born, don't understand him!"' This was too much to bear, and Holcroft, starting up, called out, in no measured tone, 'Mr. Coleridge, you are the most eloquent man I ever met with, and the most troublesome with your eloquence.' Phillips held the cribbage-peg, that was to mark him game, suspended in his hand, and the whist-table was silent for a moment. I saw Holcroft downstairs, and on coming to the landing-place in Mitre Court he stopped me to observe that he thought Mr. Coleridge a very clever man, with a great command of language, but that he feared he did not always affix very proper ideas to the words he used. After he was gone we had our laugh out, and went on with the argument on 'The Nature of Reason, the Imagination, and the Will.' ... It would make a supplement to the 'Biographia Literaria,' in a volume and a half, octavo."

It was at one of these Wednesdays that Lamb started his famous question as to persons "one would wish to have seen." It was a suggestive topic, and proved a fruitful one. Mr. Hazlitt, who was there, has left an account behind him of the kind of talk which arose out of this hint, so lightly thrown out by the author of "Elia," and it is worth giving in his own words:—