REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN.
September 1645, when the New Model Army had stormed Bristol and was otherwise carrying all before it in the English South-west, when Montrose in Scotland had been extinguished by David Leslie at Philiphaugh, and when the Presbyterian system had been so far arranged for England that the first order of Parliament for the election of Elders in all the London parishes had gone out, and Triers of the competency of these Elders had been appointed in all the London Presbyteries: then it was, as near as one can calculate, that the interesting house in Aldersgate Street was left by Milton, and he, his wife, his father, the two boys Phillips, and the other pupils, entered together into the new house in Barbican.
It was no great remove. The street called Barbican derived its name, according to Stow, from the fact that at one time there had stood there "a burgh-kenning, or watch-tower of the city, called in some language a barbican;" and modern etymologists perfect Stow's observation by tracing the name, through the mediæval Latin barbacana, to the Persian bála khaneh, meaning "upper chamber," whence our less corrupt form balcony, actually identical with barbican. [Footnote: Stow, as quoted in Cunningham's London, Art. "Barbican;" and Wedgwood's Dict. of English Etymology, Art. "Balcony.">[ There had, in short, been a barbican, or outer defence of the city, at this spot, a little beyond the particular gate called Aldersgate, just as there were such things beyond others of the city-gates; but the name had lingered only here as applied to the street or site where a barbican had been. The street, retaining its warlike name, still exists—a short street going off from Aldersgate Street at right angles on one side, and within a walk of not more than two or three minutes from the site of Milton's Aldersgate Street house. The house in Barbican was larger, and so much farther off from the city- gate; but that was all. There was no real change of neighbourhood or of street-associations. A dingy street now, dingier even than the main thoroughfare of Aldersgate Street, Barbican was then a fair enough bit of suburban London towards the north; and it boasted, as we already know, of at least one aristocratic mansion in which Milton had some interest—the town-house of the Earl of Bridgewater, ex-President of Wales, and the peer of Comus. The name "Bridgewater Gardens" still designates, without a shred of garden left there, but only grimy printing-offices and the like instead, the portion of the street which the mansion occupied. Nay more, till within a few years ago; Milton's own house in Barbican, with some modern change of frontage, and some filling-up of interstices right and left, was extant and known. Somehow, while the more important house in Aldersgate Street had perished from the memory of the neighbourhood (probably because the fabric itself had perished), the tradition of Milton still clung around this house in Barbican, I have passed it many a time, stopping to look at it, when it was occupied, if I remember rightly, by a silk-dyer, or other such tradesman, exhibiting on his sign the peculiar name of "Heaven," and using the lower part of it for his shop. Though jammed in with other houses and undistinguished in the line of bustling street, it had the appearance of having once been a commodious enough house in the old fashion; and I have been informed that some of the old windows, consisting of thick bits of dim glass lozenged in lead, still remained in it at the back, and that the occupants knew one of the rooms in it as "the Schoolroom" where Milton had used to teach his pupils. But alas! one of the city railways took it into its head that it required to run through this precise bit of Barbican, and the house, with others near it, was doomed to demolition. When I was last in Barbican part of the shell of the house was still standing, roofless, disfloored, diswindowed, and pickaxed into utter raggedness, as so much rubbish yet waiting to be removed from the new railway gap. The inscription yet remained on the front-door—"This was Milton's House," or to that effect—which had been very properly put there by the contractor or his workmen to lure people to a last look at the interior before the demolition was complete. [Footnote: My information about the interior of the house is from a friend who visited it just when it was doomed. Though I had passed it often when it was yet complete, I had unfortunately, not expecting its doom, deferred going in till it was too late; and my last homage to it had to be a lingering saunter near and in the railway gap behind, when there was only the remnant of it described in the text.]