The Town: Its Memorable Characters and Events

by Leigh Hunt

CHAPTER VI.

Great Queen Street—Former fashionable Houses there—Lewis and Miss Pope, the Comedians—Martin Folkes—Sir Godfrey Kneller and his Vanity—Dr. Radcliffe—Lord Herbert of Cherbury—Nuisance of Whetstone Park—The Three Dukes and the Beadle—Rogues and Vagabonds in the Time of Charles II—Former Theatres in Vere Street and Portugal Street—First appearance of Actresses—Infamous deception of one of them by the Earl of Oxford—Appearance of an avowed Impostor on the Stage—Anecdotes of the Wits and fine Ladies of the Time of Charles, connected with the Theatre in this Quarter—Kynaston, Betterton, Nokes, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Mountford, and other Performers—Rich—Joe Miller—Carey Street and Mrs. Chapone—Clare Market—History, and Specimens, of Orator Henley—Duke Street and Little Wild Street—Anecdotes of Dr. Franklin's Residence in those Streets while a Journeyman Printer.

Great Queen Street, in the time of the Stuarts, was one of the grandest and most fashionable parts of the town. The famous Lord Herbert of Cherbury died there. Lord Bristol had a house in it, Lord Chancellor Finch, and the Conway and Paulet families. Some of the houses towards the west retain pilasters and other ornaments, probably indicating, as Pennant observes, the abodes in question. Little thought the noble lords that a time would come, when a player should occupy their rooms, and be able to entertain their descendants in them; but in a house of this description, lately occupied by Messrs. Allman the booksellers, died Lewis, the comedian, one of the most delightful performers of his class, and famous to the last for his invincible airiness and juvenility. Mr. Lewis displayed a combination rarely to be found in acting, that of the fop and the real gentleman. With a voice, a manner, and a person, all equally graceful and light, and features at once whimsical and genteel, he played on the top of his profession like a plume. He was the Mercutio of the age, in every sense of the word mercurial. His airy, breathless voice, thrown to the audience before he appeared, was the signal of his winged animal spirits; and when he gave a glance of his eye, or touched his finger at another's ribs, it was the very punctum saliens of playfulness and inuendo. We saw him take leave of the public, a man of sixty-five, looking not more than half the age, in the character of the Copper Captain; and heard him say, in a voice broken by emotion, that "for the space of thirty years, he had not once incurred their displeasure."

Next door but one to the Freemasons' Tavern (westward), for many years lived another celebrated comic performer, Miss Pope, one of a very different sort, and looking as heavy and insipid as her taste was otherwise. She was an actress of the highest order for dry humour; one of those who convey the most laughable things with a grave face. Churchill, in the Rosciad, when she must have been very young, mentions her as an actress of great vivacity, advancing in a "jig," and performing the parts of Cherry and Polly Honeycomb. There was certainly nothing of the Cherry and Honeycomb about her when older; but she was an admirable Mrs. Malaprop.

OLD HOUSES IN GREAT QUEEN STREET.

Queen Street continued to be a place of fashionable resort for a considerable period after the Revolution. As we have been speaking of the advancement of actors in social rank, we will take occasion of the birth of Martin Folkes in this street, the celebrated scholar and antiquary, to mention that he was one of the earliest persons among the gentry to marry an actress. His wife was Lucretia Bradshaw. It may be thought worth observing by the romantic, that the ladies who were first selected to give this rise to the profession, had all something peculiar in their Christian names. Lord Peterborough married Anastasia Robinson, and the Duke of Bolton, Lavinia Fenton.

Sir Godfrey Kneller, and Radcliffe the physician, lived in this street. We mention them together because they were neighbours, and there is a pleasant anecdote of them in conjunction. The author of a book lately published, describes their neighbourhood as being in Bow Street; but Horace Walpole, the authority for the story, places it in the street before us; adding, in a note, that Kneller "first lived in Durham Yard (in the Strand), then twenty-one years in Covent Garden (we suppose in Bow Street), and lastly in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields." "Kneller," says Walpole, "was fond of flowers, and had a fine collection. As there was great intimacy between him and the physician, he permitted the latter to have a door into his garden; but Radcliffe's servants gathering and destroying the flowers, Kneller sent him word he must shut up the door. Radcliffe replied peevishly, 'Tell him he may do anything with it but paint it.' 'And I,' answered Sir Godfrey, 'can take anything from him but physic.'"[215]

Kneller, besides being an admired painter (and it is supposed from one of his performances, the portrait of a Chinese, that he could have been admired by posterity, if he chose), was a man of wit; but so vain, that he is described as being the butt of all the wits of his acquaintances. They played upon him undoubtedly, and at a great rate; but it has been suggested by a shrewd observer, that while he consented to have his vanity tickled at any price, he humoured the joke himself, and was quite aware of what they were at. Nor is this inconsistent with the vanity, which would always make large allowances for the matter of fact. The extravagance it would limit where it pleased; the truth remained; and Sir Godfrey, as Pope said, had a large appetite. With this probability a new interest is thrown upon the anecdotes related of his vanity, with the best of which the reader is accordingly presented. Kneller was a German, born at Lubec, so that his English is to be read with a foreign accent.

The younger Richardson tells us, that Gay read Sir Godfrey a copy of verses, in which he had pushed his flattery so far, that he was all the while in dread lest the knight should detect him. When Kneller had heard this through, he said, in his foreign style and accent, "Ay, Mr. Gay, all what you have said is very fine, and very true; but you have forgot one thing, my good friend; by G—, I should have been a general of an army; for when I was at Venice, there was a girandole, and all the place of St. Mark was in a smoke of gunpowder, and I did like the smell, Mr. Gay; should have been a great general, Mr. Gay!"

Perhaps it was this real or apparent obtuseness which induced Gay to add "engineering" to his other talents, in the verses describing Pope's welcome from Greece:—

"Kneller amid the triumph bears his part,

Who could (were mankind lost) a new create:

What can the extent of his vast soul confine?

A painter, critic, engineer, divine."

The following is related on the authority of Pope:—

"Old Jacob Tonson got a great many fine pictures, and two of himself, from him, by this means. Sir Godfrey was very covetous, but then he was very vain, and a great glutton; so he played these passions against the others; besides telling him that he was the greatest master that ever was, sending him, every now and then, a haunch of venison, and dozens of excellent claret. 'O, my G—, man,' said he once to Vander Gucht, 'this old Jacob loves me; he is a very good man; you see he loves me, he sends me good things; the venison was fat.' Old Geekie, the surgeon, got several fine pictures of him too, and an excellent one of himself; but then he had them cheaper, for he gave nothing but praises; but then his praises were as fat as Jacob's venison; neither could be too fat for Sir Godfrey."

Pope related the following to Spence:—

"As I was sitting by Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, whilst he was drawing a picture, he stopt, and said, 'I can't do as well as I should do, unless you flatter me a little, Mr. Pope! You know I love to be flattered.' I was for once willing," continues Pope, "to try how far this vanity would carry him; and after considering a picture which he had just finished, for a good while very attentively, I said to him in French (for he had been talking for some time before in that language), 'On lit dans les Ecritures Saintes, que le bon Dieu faisoit l'homme après son image: mais, je crois, que s'il voudroit faire un autre à présent, qu'il le feroit après l'image que voilà.' Sir Godfrey turned round, and said very gravely, 'Vous avez raison, Monsieur Pope; par Dieu, je le crois aussi.'"

It must not be omitted that Kneller was a kind-hearted man. At Whitton, where he had a seat, he was justice of the peace, and,

"Was so much more swayed," says Walpole, "by equity than law, that his judgments, accompanied with humour, are said to have occasioned those lines by Pope:—

"I think Sir Godfrey should decide the suit,

Who sent the thief (that stole the cash) away,

And punish'd him that put it in his way."

"This alluded to his dismissing a soldier who had stolen a joint of meat, and accused the butcher of having tempted him by it. Whenever Sir Godfrey was applied to, to determine what parish a poor man belonged to, he always inquired which parish was the richer, and settled the poor man there; nor would he ever sign a warrant to distrain the goods of a poor man who could not pay a tax."[216]

Poor Radcliffe, after reigning as a physician so despotically, that Arbuthnot, in his projected map of diseases, was for putting him up at the corner of it disputing the empire of the world, became a less happy man than Sir Godfrey, by reason of his falling in love in his old age. He set up a coach, adorned with mythological paintings,—at least, Steele says so; but soon had to put it in mourning for the death of his flame, who was a Miss Tempest, one of the maids of honour. Radcliffe was the Tory physician, and Steele, in the "Tatler," with a party spirit that was much oftener aggrieved than provoked in that good-natured writer, was induced, by some circumstance or other, perhaps Radcliffe's insolence, to make a ludicrous description of him, "as the mourning Esculapius, the languishing, hopeless lover of the divine Hebe." Steele accuses him of avarice. Others have said he was generous. He was the founder of the Radcliffe Library at Oxford, and made other magnificent bequests; which prove nothing either way. But it is not favourable to a reputation for generosity, to own (as he did), that he was fond of spunging, and to avoid the paying of bills. However, when he lost 5,000l. in a speculation, he said "he had nothing to do but to go up so many pair of stairs to make himself whole again." He was undoubtedly a very clever physician, though he made little use of books. Like many men who go upon their own grounds in this way, he had an abrupt and clownish manner, which he probably thought of use. According to Richardson, he one day said to Dr. Mead, "Mead, I love you; now I will tell you a sure secret to make your fortune. Use all mankind ill." It is worth observing, that Mead acted on the reverse principle, and made double the fortune of his adviser. Radcliffe is said have attended the lady of Judge Holt, in a bad illness, with unusual assiduity, "out of pique to her husband;" a very new kind of satire. He used to send huffing messages to Queen Anne, telling her that he would not come, and that she only had the vapours; and when King William consulted him on his swollen ankles and thin body, Radcliffe said he "would not have his Majesty's two legs for his three kingdoms;" a speech which it was not in the nature of royalty to forgive. His death is said to have been hastened by his refusal to attend on Queen Anne in her last illness; which so exasperated the populace that he was afraid to leave his country house at Carshalton, where he died. He lived in Bow Street when he first came to London; and afterwards in Bloomsbury Square.

But the most remarkable inhabitant of Queen Street was Lord Herbert of Cherbury, one of those extraordinary individuals who, with a touch of madness on the irascible side, and subject to the greatest blindness of self-love, possess a profound judgment on every other point. Such persons are supposed to be victims of imagination; but they are rather mechanical enthusiasts (though of a high order), and, for want of an acquaintance with the imaginative, become at the mercy of the first notion which takes their will by surprise. Lord Herbert, who in the intellectual part was intended for a statist and a man of science, was unfortunately one of the hottest of Welchmen in the physical. Becoming a Knight of the Bath, he took himself for a knight-errant, and fancied he was bound to fight everybody he met with, and to lie under trees in the fields of Holland. He thought Revelation a doubtful matter, and so he had recourse to the Deity for a revelation in his particular favour to disprove it. We have related an anecdote of him at Northumberland House, and shall have more to tell; but the account of his having recourse to Heaven for the satisfaction of his doubts of its interference, must not be omitted here. Perhaps it took place in this very street. His Lordship was the first Deist in England that has left an account of his opinions. Speaking of the work he wrote on this subject, he says:—

"My book 'De Veritate prout distinguitur à Revelatione verisimili, possibili, et à falso,' having been begun by me in England, and formed there in all its principal parts, was about this time finished; all the spare hours which I could get from my visits and negotiations being employed to perfect this work; which was no sooner done, but that I communicated it to Hugo Grotius—that great scholar, who, having escaped his prison in the Low Countries, came into France, and was much welcomed by me and Monsieur Tieleners, also one of the greatest scholars of his time; who, after they had perused it, and given it more commendations than is fit for me to repeat, exhorted me earnestly to print and publish it; howbeit, as the frame of my whole work was so different from anything which had been written heretofore, I found I must either renounce the authority of all that I had written formerly, concerning the method of finding out truth, and consequently insist upon my own way, or hazard myself to a general censure concerning the whole argument of my book; I must confess it did not a little animate me, that the two great persons above-mentioned did so highly value it; yet, as I knew it would meet with much opposition, I did consider whether it was not better for me for a while to suppress it.

"Being thus doubtful in my chamber one fair day in the summer, my casement being open towards the south, the sun shining clear, and no wind stirring, I took my book, 'De Veritate,' in my hand, and kneeling on my knees, devoutly said these words:—

"'Oh, thou eternal God, author of the light which now shines upon me, and giver of all inward illuminations, I do beseech thee of thy infinite goodness to pardon a greater request than a sinner ought to make; I am not satisfied enough whether I shall publish this book 'De Veritate;' if it be for thy glory, I beseech thee give me some sign from heaven; if not, I shall suppress it.'

"I had no sooner spoken these words, but a loud though gentle noise came from the heavens (for it was like nothing on earth) which did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my petition as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded; whereupon also I resolved to print my book. This (how strange soever it may seem) I protest, before the eternal God, is true; neither am I any way superstitiously deceived herein; since I did not only hear the noise, but, in the serenest sky that ever I saw, being without all cloud, did to my thinking see the place from whence it came."[217]

"How could a man," justly observes Walpole on this passage, "who doubted of partial, believe individual revelation! What vanity to think his book of such importance to the cause of truth, that it could extort a declaration of the Divine will, when the interest of half mankind could not!" Yet the same writer is full of admiration of him in other respects. It is well observed by the editor of the Autobiography (in reply to the doubts thrown on his lordship's veracity respecting his chivalrous propensities, the consequences of which always fell short of duels), that much of the secret might be owing "to his commanding aspect and acknowledged reputation; and a little more to a certain perception of the Quixote in his character, with which it might be deemed futile to contend. His surprising defence of himself against the attack of Sir John Ayres, forcibly exhibits his personal strength and mastery; and his spirited treatment of the French Minister, Luynes, and the general esteem of his contemporaries, sufficiently attest his quick feeling of national and personal dignity, and general gallantry of bearing." There is no doubt, in short, that Lord Herbert of Cherbury was a brave, an honest, and an able man, though with some weaknesses, both of heat and vanity, sufficient to console the most common-place.

With all this elegance of neighbourhood, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in the time of Charles II., had one eyesore of an enormous description, in a place behind Holborn row, entitled Whetstone Park. It is now a decent passage between Great and Little Turnstiles.

"It is scarcely necessary," says Mr. Malcolm, "to remind the reader of a well-known fact, that all sublunary things are subject to change:—he who passes through the Little Turnstile, Holborn, at present, will observe on the left hand, near Lincoln's Inn Fields, a narrow street, composed of small buildings, on the corner of which is inscribed Whetstone Park. The repose and quiet of the place seem to proclaim strong pretensions to regular and moral life in the inhabitants; and well would it have been for the happiness of many a family, had the site always exhibited the same appearance. On the contrary, Whetstone Park contributed to increase the dissoluteness of manners which distinguished the period between 1660 and 1700. Being a place of low entertainment, numerous disturbances occurred there, and rendered it subject to the satire and reprehension even of 'Poor Robin's Intelligencer,' a paper almost infamous enough for the production of a keeper of this theatre of vice. The publication alluded to says, in 1676, 'Notwithstanding the discourses that have been to the contrary, the boarding-school is still continued here, where a set of women may be readily untaught all the studies of modesty or chastity; to which purpose they are provided with a two-handed volume of impudence, loosely bound up in greasy vellum, which is tied by the leg to a wicker chair (as you find authors chained in a library), and is always ready to give you plain instructions and directions in all matters relating to immorality or irreligion.' * *

"Incomprehensible as it certainly is," continues our author, "the brutal acts of a mob are sometimes the result of a just sense of the ill consequences attending vice; and, although almost every individual composing it is capable of performing deeds which deserve punishment from the police, they cannot collectively view long and deliberate offences against the laws of propriety, without assuming the right of reforming them. 'The Loyal and Impartial Mercury' of Sept. 1, 1682, has this paragraph:—'On Saturday last, about 500 apprentices, and such like, being got together in Smithfield, went into Lincoln's Inn Fields, where they drew up, and marching into Whetstone Park, fell upon the lewd houses there, where, having broken open the doors, they entered, and made great spoil of the goods; of which the constables and watchmen having notice, and not finding themselves strong enough to quell the tumult, procured a party of the King's guards who dispersed them, and took eleven, who were committed to New Prison; yet on Sunday night they came again, and made worse havoc than before, breaking down all the doors and windows, and cutting the featherbeds and goods in pieces.' Another newspaper explains the origin of the riot by saying, 'that a countryman who had been decoyed into one of the houses alluded to, and robbed, lodged a formal and public complaint against them to those he found willing to listen to him in Smithfield, and thus raised the ferment.'"[218]

In the "State Poems" is a doggrel set of verses on a tragical circumstance occasioned by a frolic of three of Charles's natural sons in this place. It is entitled "On the three Dukes killing the Beadle on Sunday morning, Feb. the 26th, 1671." A great sensation was made by this circumstance, which was naturally enough regarded as a signal instance of the consequences of Charles's mode of life. Our Grub Street writer selected his title well—the "Dukes," the "Beadle," and the "Sunday." His first four lines might have been put into Martinus Scriblerus, as a specimen of the Newgate style.

"Near Holborn lies a park of great renown,

The place, I do suppose, is not unknown:

For brevity's sake the name I shall not tell,

Because most genteel readers know it well."

The three Dukes pick a quarrel with one poor damsel, and "murder" was cried.

"In came the watch, disturbed with sleep and ale,

By noises shrill, but they could not prevail

T' appease their Graces. Strait rose mortal jars,

Betwixt the night blackguard and silver stars;

Then fell the beadle by a ducal hand,

For daring to pronounce the saucy stand.

---

See what mishaps dare e'en invade Whitehall,

This silly fellow's death puts off the ball,

And disappoints the Queen, poor little chuck;

I warrant t'would have danced it like a duck.

The fiddlers, voices, entries, all the sport,

And the gay show put off, where the brisk court

Anticipates, in rich subsidy coats,

All that is got by necessary votes.

Yet shall Whitehall, the innocent, the good,

See these men dance, all daubed with lace and blood."[219]

The "subsidy coats" allude to Charles's raising money for his profligate expenditure under pretence of the public service. The last couplet would have done credit to a better satire.

As we are upon the subject of a neighbourhood to which they apply, we shall proceed to give a few more extracts from Mr. Malcolm, highly characteristic of the lower orders of desperadoes in Charles's reign.

"The various deceivers," he tells us, "who preyed upon the public at this time were exposed in a little filthy work called the 'Canting Academy,' which went through more than one edition (the second is dated 1674). I shall select from it enough to show the variety of villany practised under their various names. The Ruffler was a wretch who assumed the character of a maimed soldier, and begged from the claims of Naseby, Edgehill, Newbury, and Marston Moor. Those who were stationed in the city of London were generally found in Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden; and their prey was people of fashion, whose coaches were attacked boldly; and if denied, their owners were told, ''Tis a sad thing that an old crippled cavalier should be suffered to beg for a maintenance, and a young cavalier that had never heard the whistle of a bullet should ride in his coach.'

"There were people called Anglers, from the nature of their method of depredating, which was thus.—They had a rod or stick, with an iron hook affixed: this they introduced through a window, or any other aperture, where plunder might be procured, and helped themselves at pleasure; the day was occupied by them in the character of beggars, when they made their observations for the angling of the night.

"Wild Rogues were the offspring of thieves and beggars, who received the rudiments of the art even before they left their mothers' backs: "To go into churches and great crowds, and to nim golden buttons off men's cloaks; and being very little are shown how to creep into cellar windows, or other small entrances, and in the night to convey out thereat whatever they can find to the thievish receivers, who wait without for that purpose; and sometimes do open the door to let in such who have designed to rob the house; if taken, the tenderness of their age makes an apology or an excuse for their fault, and so are let alone to be hanged at riper years.'

"Palliards or Clapperdogeons, were those women who sat and reclined in the streets, with their own borrowed or stolen children hanging about them, crying through cold, pinching, or real disease, who begged relief as widows, and, in the name of their fatherless children, gaining by this artifice, 'a great deal of money, whilst her comrogue lies begging in the fields, with climes or artificial sores.' The way they commonly take to make them is by sperewort or arsenic, which will draw blisters; or they take unslacked lime and soap, mingled with the rust of old iron: these being well tempered together, and spread thick upon two pieces of leather, they apply to the leg, binding it thereunto very hard, which in a very little time would fret the skin so that the flesh would appear all raw, &c. &c.

"Fraters were impostors who went through the country with forged patents for briefs, and thus diverted charity from its proper direction.

"Abram men were fellows whose occupations seem to have been forgotten. They are described in the 'Canting Academy' in these words:—'Abram men are otherwise called Tom of Bedlams; they are very strangely and antickly garbed, with several coloured ribands or tape in their hats, it may be instead of a feather, a fox tail hanging down, a long stick with ribands streaming, and the like; yet for all their seeming madness they have wit enough to steal as they go.'[220]

"The Whip-Jacks have left us a specimen of their fraternity. They were counterfeit mariners, whose conversations were plentifully embellished with sea-terms, and falsehoods of their danger in the exercise of their profession. Instead of securing their arms and legs close to their bodies, and wrapping them in bandages (as the modern whip-jack is in the habit of doing, to excite compassion for the loss of limbs and severe wounds), the ancients merely pretended they had lost their all by shipwreck, and were reduced to beg their way to a sea-port, if in the country; or to some remote one, if in London.

"Mumpers.—The persons thus termed are described as being of both sexes: they were not solicitors for food, but money and cloathes. 'The male mumper, in the times of the late usurpation, was clothed in an old torn cassock, begirt with a girdle, with a black cap, and a white one peeping out underneath.' With a formal and studied countenance he stole up to a gentleman, and whispered him softly in the ear, that he was a poor sequestered parson, with a wife and many children. At other times, they would assume the habit of a decayed gentleman, and beg as if they had been ruined by their attachment to the royal cause. Sometimes the mumper appeared with an apron before him, and a cap on his head, and begs in the nature of a broken tradesman, who, having been a long time sick, hath spent all his remaining stock, and so weak he cannot work! The females of this class of miscreants generally attacked the ladies, and in a manner suited to make an impression on their finer feelings.

"Domerars are such as counterfeit themselves dumb, and have a notable art to roll their tongues up into the roof of their mouth, that you would verily believe their tongues were cut out; and, to make you have a stronger belief thereof, they will gape and show you where it was done, clapping in a sharp stick, and, touching the tongue, make it bleed—and then the ignorant dispute it no further.'

"Patricos are the strolling priests: every hedge is their parish, and every wandering rogue their parishioner. The service, he saith, is the marrying of couples, without the Gospel, or Book of Common Prayer, the solemnity whereof is thus: the parties to be married find out a dead horse, or any other beast, and standing the one on the one side and the other on the other, the patrico bids them to live together till death them part; and, so shaking hands, the wedding is ended.'"[221]

OLD THEATRE IN PORTUGAL STREET.

On the southern side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, at the back of Portugal Row, is Portugal Street, formerly containing a theatre, as celebrated as Covent Garden or Drury Lane is now. This was the Duke's Theatre, so called from the Duke of York, afterwards James II., who, at the Restoration, patronised one of the principal companies of players, as his brother Charles did the other. The latter was the Drury Lane company. Readers of theatrical history are generally led to conclude that there was only one theatre in the Lincoln's Inn quarter; but this is a mistake. There were at least two successive houses in two different places, though usually confounded under the title of "the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields." The first was in Gibbon's tennis-court, in Vere Street, Clare Market, where the actors who had played at the Red Bull opened their performances in the year of the Restoration, under the direction of Killigrew, and with the title of King's Company. These in 1663 removed to Drury Lane. The Duke's, or Sir William Davenant's company, removed in 1662 from Salisbury Court (see Fleet Street) to a new theatre "in Portugal Row," says Malone, "near Lincoln's Inn Fields."[222] Malone is a correct inquirer: so that he makes us doubt whether the name of Portugal Row did not formerly belong to Portugal Street. The latter is certainly meant, or he would describe it as in and not near the Fields. Davenant's company performed here till 1671, when they quitted it to return to the renovated theatre in Salisbury Court, under the management of his son, Charles Davenant (the father being dead), and the famous Betterton, who had been Sir William's first actor. The two companies afterwards came together at Drury Lane, but again fell apart; and in 1695 the Duke's company (if its altered composition could still warrant the name), with Betterton remaining at its head, and Congreve for a partner, again opened "the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields," which was rebuilt for the purpose, and is described as being in "the Tennis-court." Was this the tennis-court theatre in Vere Street? or were there two tennis-courts, one in Vere Street, and one in Lincoln's Inn Fields? We confess ourselves, after a diligent examination, unable to determine. At all events, the latest theatre of which we hear in Lincoln's Inn Fields, was not in Vere Street. It stood in Portugal Street, on the east end of the present burial ground, just at the back of Surgeons' College, and was subsequently the china warehouse of Messrs. Spode and Copeland.[223] This theatre, which was built of red brick, and had a front facing the market, is the one generally meant by the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It finally became celebrated for the harlequinades of Rich; but, on his removal to Covent Garden, was deserted, and, after a short re-opening by Gifford from Goodman's Fields, finally ceased to be a theatre about the year 1737. Since that period Covent Garden and Drury Lane playhouses have had this part of the town to themselves.

It is conjectured, that the first appearance of an actress on the English stage, to the scandal of the Puritans, and with many apologies for the "indecorum" of giving up the performances of female characters by boys, took place in the theatre in Vere Street, on Saturday, Dec. 8, 1660. The part first performed was certainly that of Desdemona; a very fit one to introduce the claims of the sex.[224]

Mr. Malone has given us the prologue written for this occasion by Thomas Jordan; which, as it shows the "sensation" that was made, sets us in a lively manner in the situation of the spectators, and gives a curious account of some of the male actors of gentle womanhood, we shall here repeat. It is entitled "A Prologue, to introduce the first Woman that came to act on the Stage, in the Tragedy called the Moor of Venice:"

"I came unknown to any of the rest,

To tell the news; I saw the lady drest:

The woman plays to-day; mistake me not,

No man in gown, or page in petticoat:

A woman to my knowledge, yet I can't,

If I should die, make affidavit on't.

Do you not twitter, gentlemen? I know

You will be censuring: do it fairly, though;

'Tis possible a virtuous woman may

Abhor all sorts of looseness, and yet play;

Play on the stage—where all eyes are upon her:

Shall we count that a crime France counts an honour?

In other kingdoms husbands safely trust 'em;

The difference lies only in the custom.

And let it be our custom, I advise;

I'm sure this custom's better than th' excise,

And may procure us custom: hearts of flint

Will melt in passion, when a woman's in't.

But, gentlemen, you that as judges sit

In the Star-chamber of the house—the pit,

Have modest thoughts of her; pray, do not run

To give her visits when the play is done,

With 'damn me, your most humble servant, lady;'

She knows these things as well as you, it may be;

Not a bit there, dear gallants, she doth know

Her own deserts,—and your temptations too.

But to the point:—in this reforming age

We have intents to civilize the stage.

Our women are defective, and so sized,

You'd think they were some of the guard disguised;

For to speak truth, men act, that are between

Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen;

With bone so large, and nerve so incompliant,

When you call Desdemona, enter giant.

We shall purge everything that is unclean,

Lascivious, scurrilous, impious, or obscene;

And when we've put all things in this fair way,

Barebones himself may come to see a play."[225]

The epilogue, "which consists of but twelve lines, is in the same strain of apology."

"And how do you like her; Come, what is't ye drive at?

She's the same thing in public as in private,

As far from being what you call a whore,

As Desdemona injured by the Moor;

Then he that censures her in such a case,

Hath a soul blacker than Othello's face.

But, ladies, what think you? for if you tax

Her freedom with dishonour to your sex,

She means to act no more, and this shall be

No other play, but her own tragedy.

She will submit to none but your commands,

And take commission only from your hands."[226]

From the nature of this epilogue, and the permission accorded by the ladies, the women actors appear to have met with all the success they could wish; yet a prologue to the second part of Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes," acted in April, 1662, shows us that the matter was still considered a delicate one upwards of a year afterwards.

"Hope little from our poet's withered wit,

From infant players scarce grown puppets yet;

Hope from our women less, whose bashful fear

Wondered to see me dare to enter here:

Each took her leave, and wished my danger past,

And though I came back safe and undisgraced,

Yet when they spy the wits here, then I doubt

No amazon can make them venture out,

Though I advised them not to fear you much,

For I presume not half of you are such."[227]

It was in the Theatre at Vere Street that Pepys first saw a woman on the stage.[228] One of the earliest female performers mentioned by him was an actress whose name is not ascertained, but who attained an unfortunate celebrity in the part of Roxana in the "Siege of Rhodes." She was seduced by Aubery de Vere, the last Earl of Oxford of that name, under the guise of a private marriage—a species of villany which made a great figure in works of fiction up to a late period. The story is "got up" in detail by Madame Dunois, in her "History of the Court of Charles II.;"[229] but it is told with more brevity in Grammont; and as the latter, though apocryphal enough, pretends to say nothing on the subject in which he is not borne out by other writers, his lively account may be laid before the reader.

"The Earl of Oxford," says one of his heroines, "fell in love with a handsome, graceful actress, belonging to the Duke's theatre, who performed to perfection, particularly the part of Roxana in a very fashionable new play; insomuch that she ever after retained that name. This creature being both very virtuous and very modest, or, if you please, wonderfully obstinate, proudly rejected the presents and addresses of the Earl of Oxford. The resistance inflamed his passion; he had recourse to invectives and even spells; but all in vain. This disappointment had such an effect upon him, that he could neither eat nor drink; this did not signify to him; but his passion at length became so violent, that he could neither play nor smoke. In this extremity, Love had recourse to Hymen; the Earl of Oxford, one of the first peers of the realm, is, you know, a very handsome man: he is of the order of the Garter, which greatly adds to an air naturally noble. In short, from his outward appearance, you would suppose he was really possessed of some sense; but as soon as ever you hear him speak, you are perfectly convinced to the contrary. This passionate lover presented her with a promise of marriage, in due form, signed with his own hand; she would not, however, rely upon this; but the next day she thought there could be no danger, when the Earl himself came to her lodgings attended by a clergyman, and another man for a witness; the marriage was accordingly solemnized with all due ceremonies, in the presence of one of her fellow-players, who attended as a witness on her part. You will suppose, perhaps, that the new countess had nothing to do but to appear at court according to her rank, and to display the earl's arms upon her carriage. This was far from being the case. When examination was made concerning the marriage, it was found to be a mere deception: it appeared that the pretended priest was one of my lord's trumpeters, and the witness his kettle-drummer. The parson and his companion never appeared after the ceremony was over; and as for the other witness, he endeavoured to persuade her that the Sultana Roxana might have supposed, in some part or other of a play, that she was really married. It was all to no purpose that the poor creature claimed the protection of the laws of God and man; both which were violated and abused, as well as herself, by this infamous imposition: in vain did she throw herself at the king's feet to demand justice; she had only to rise up again without redress; and happy might she think herself to receive an annuity of one thousand crowns, and to resume the name of Roxana, instead of Countess of Oxford."[230]

This scoundrel Earl (whose alleged want of sense is extremely probable, and was his best excuse, as well as the worst thing to say for the lady), died full of years and honours, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

In 1664, Mr. Pepys witnessed a scene in the theatre in Portugal Street, which shows the extremity to which the speculation of managers and the curiosity of the British public can go. This was no other than the appearance of an imposter, called the German Princess, in the part of her own character, after having been tried for it at the Old Bailey. She was tried for bigamy, and acquitted; but she had inveigled a young citizen into marriage under pretence of being a German Princess, the citizen pretending at the same time to be a nobleman. The impudence of the thing was completed by the badness of her performance. Granger, however, who appears to have read a vindication of her, which she published, thinks she had great natural abilities.

The following is curious:—4th (Feb. 1666-7).

"Soon as dined," says Pepys, "my wife and I out to the Duke's playhouse, and there saw Heraclius, an excellent play, to my extraordinary content; and the more from the house being very full, and great company; among others Mrs. Stuart,[231] very fine, with her locks done up in puffes, as my wife calls them: and several other great ladies had their hair so, though I do not like it, but my wife do mightily; but it is only because she sees it is the fashion. Here I saw my Lord Rochester[232] and his lady, Mrs. Mallet, who hath after all this ado married him; and, as I hear some say in the pit, it is a great act of charity, for he hath no estate. But it was pleasant to see how everybody rose up when my Lord John Butler, the Duke of Ormond's son, came into the pit, towards the end of the play, who was a servant to Mrs. Mallett, and now smiled upon her, and she on him."[233]

One little thinks, now-a-days, in turning into Portugal Street, that all the fashionable world, with the wits and poets, once thronged into that poor-looking thoroughfare, with its bailiffs at one end, and its butchers at the other. The difference, however, between beaux and butchers was not so great at that time as it became afterwards; though none arrogated the praise of high breeding more than the fine gentlemen of Charles II. Next year Pepys speaks of a fray at this house between Harry Killigrew and the Duke of Buckingham, in which the latter beat him, and took away his sword. Another time, according to his account, Rochester beat Tom Killigrew, at the Dutch Ambassador's, and in the King's presence. Blows from people of rank do not appear to have been resented as they would be now.

In the following passage we have an author's first night before us, and that author the gallant Etherege, with dukes and wits about him in the pit. He makes, however, a very different figure in our eyes from what we commonly conceive of him, for he is unsuccessful and complaining.

"My wife," says Pepys, "being gone before (6th Feb. 1667-8), I to the Duke of York's playhouse, where a new play of Etheridge's, called 'She would if she could;' and, though I was there by two o'clock, there was one thousand people put back that could not have room in the pit; and I at last, because my wife was there, made shift to get into the 18d. box, and there saw. But Lord! how full was the house, and how silly the play, there being nothing in the world good in it, and few people pleased in it. The King was there; but I sat mightily behind, and could see but little, and hear not at all. The play being done, I into the pit to look for my wife, it being dark and raining; but could not find her, and so staid, going between the two doors and through the pit, an hour and a half, I think, after the play was done, the people staying there till the rain was over, and to talk one with another. And among the rest here was the Duke of Buckingham to-day openly sat in the pit; and there I found him with my Lord Buckhurst, and Sedley, and Etheridge the poet; the last of whom I did hear mightily find fault with the actors, that they were out of humour and had not their parts perfect, and that Harris did do nothing, nor could so much as sing a catch in it; and so was mightily concerned; while all the rest did through the whole pit blame the play as a silly, dull thing, though there was something very roguish and witty; but the design of the play and end mighty insipid. At last I did find my wife."

The ensuing is a specimen of the manners of one of the fine ladies:-

"5th (May, 1668), Creed and I to the Duke of York's playhouse; and there, coming late, up to the balcony-box, where we find my Lady Castlemaine (the King's mistress) and several great ladies; and there we sat with them, and I saw the 'Impertinents' once more than yesterday! and I for that reason like it, I find, the better too. By Sir Positive At-all I understand is meant Sir Robert Howard. My lady pretty well pleased with it; but here I sat close to her fine woman, Wilson, who indeed is very handsome, but they say with child by the King. I asked, and she told me this was the first time her lady had seen it, I having a mind to say something to her. One thing of familiarity I observed in my Lady Castlemaine; she called to one of her women, another that sat by this, for a little patch off of her face, and put it into her mouth and wetted it, and so clapped it upon her own by the the side of her mouth; I suppose she feeling a pimple rising there."[234]

More manners of this gallant reign. Pepys says he went to see a woman with a great bushy beard, "which pleased him mightily."

"Thence to the Duke's playhouse, and saw 'Macbeth.' The King and Court there; and we sat just under them and my Lady Castlemaine, and close to a woman that comes into the pit, a kind of a loose gossip, that pretends to be like her, and is so something. And my wife, by my troth, appeared, I think, as pretty as any of them; I never thought so much before; and so did Talbot and W. Hewer, as they said, I heard, to one another. The King and Duke of York minded me, and smiled upon me, at the handsome woman near me; but it vexed me to see Moll Davies, in the box over the King and my Lady Castlemaine, look down upon the King and he up to her; and so did my Lady Castlemaine once to see who it was; but when she saw Moll Davies, she looked like fire; which troubled me."[235]

Modes of thinking. Mr. Pepys is of opinion that the "Tempest," which he saw at this house, is an "innocent" play; "no great wit, but yet good above ordinary plays." This appears to have been his general opinion of Shakspeare. That year he says,

"After dinner to the Duke of York's playhouse, and there saw 'Sir Martin Mar-all,' which I have seen so often, and yet am mightily pleased with it, and think it mighty witty, and the fullest of proper matter for mirth that was ever writ; and I do clearly see that they do improve in their acting of it. Here a mighty company of citizens, 'prentices, and others; and it makes me observe, that when I began first to be able to bestow a play on myself, I do not remember that I saw so many by half of the ordinary 'prentices and mean people in the pit, at 2s. 6d. a piece, as now; I going for several years no higher than the 12d. and then the 18d. places, though I strained hard to go in them when I did: so much the vanity and prodigality of the age is to be observed in this particular."[236]

What he calls the vanity of the age, was one of the best signs of its advancement. Plays, at the time above mentioned, began as early as they did before the civil wars; and when they were over, people rode out in their coaches to take the air. Our author, when the King visited the theatre, speaks of being there by one o'clock to get a seat. Kynaston, a favourite actor at this house, used to be taken out airing by the ladies, in the dress which he wore as a female. Cibber mentions this particular among others in an entertaining account of Kynaston, whom the ladies do not appear to have spoiled:—

"Though women," he says, "were not admitted to the stage till the return of King Charles, yet it could not be so suddenly supplied with them, but that there was still a necessity, for some time, to put the handsomest young men into petticoats, which Kynaston was then said to have worn with success; particularly in the part of Evadne, in the 'Maid's Tragedy,' which I have heard him speak of; and which calls to my mind a ridiculous distress that arose from these sort of shifts, which the stage was then put to. The King, coming a little before his usual time to a tragedy, found the actors not ready to begin, when his Majesty, not choosing to have as much patience as his good subjects, sent to them to know the meaning of it; upon which the master of the company came to the box, and rightly judging that the best excuse for their default would be the true one, fairly told his Majesty that the queen was not shaved yet: the King, whose good humour loved to laugh at a jest as well as to make one, accepted the excuse, which served to divert him till the male queen could be effeminated. In a word, Kynaston, at that time, was so beautiful a youth, that the ladies of quality prided themselves in taking him with them in their coaches to Hyde Park in his theatrical habit, after the play; which in those days they might have sufficient time to do, because plays then were used to begin at four o'clock: the hour that people of the same rank are now going to dinner. Of this truth I had the curiosity to inquire, and had it confirmed from his own mouth, in his advanced age: and, indeed, to the last of him, his handsomeness was very little abated; even at past sixty his teeth were sound, white and even, as one would wish to see in a reigning toast of twenty. He had something of a formal gravity in his mien, which was attributed to the stately step he had been so early confined to, in a female decency. But even that, in characters of superiority, had its proper graces; it misbecame him not in the part of Leon, in Fletcher's 'Rule a Wife,' &c., which he executed with a determined manliness, and honest authority, well worth the best actor's imitation. He had a piercing eye, and, in characters of heroic life, a quick imperious vivacity in his tone of voice, that painted the tyrant truly terrible. There were two plays of Dryden in which he shone with uncommon lustre; in 'Aurengzebe' he played Morat, and in 'Don Sebastian,' Muley Moloch; in both these parts he had a fierce, lion-like majesty in his port and utterance, that gave the spectator a kind of trembling admiration."[237]

Pepys does not speak much of Betterton, the chief performer at the Portugal-street playhouse. The reason must be, either that Betterton played chiefly in tragedy, or that his comic talent (which is probable) was not equal to his tragic. He was the great actor of his time, as Garrick was of the last century, and Mr. Kean lately. His most admired character appears to have been that of Hamlet; though Steele, in a paper to his memory in the 'Tatler,' seems to have been most impressed by his performance of Othello. If an actor's Othello is really fine, perhaps it must be his best part, as in Mr. Kean's instance, owing to the nature of the character. Hamlet speaks to the reflecting part of us; Othello to the sensitive. We will not present the reader with extracts from Cibber which contain little respecting this actor that might not be said of others; only it may be observed, that in the better parts of the performances of the old players we have something perhaps handed down to us of the manner of these ancient ornaments of the stage. The liveliest idea remaining of the genius of Betterton is furnished by an anecdote of Booth, who, when he first performed the Ghost to Betterton's Hamlet, is said to have been so astonished at the other's look of surprise, that for some moments he was unable to speak. Betterton died old and poor, rather, it should seem, from misfortune than imprudence. The actors in those times, though much admired, were not rewarded as they have been since; nor received anything like the modern salaries. His death is said to have been hastened by tampering with the gout, in order to perform on his benefit night. His person was rather manly than graceful. He was a good-natured man; and, like Molière, would perform when he was ill, rather than hinder the profits of his brother actors.[238] At Caen Wood, Hampstead, the seat of Lord Mansfield, there is a portrait of him by Pope, who was an amateur in painting. They became acquainted when the latter was young, and the actor old; and took such a liking to one another, that Pope is supposed to have had a hand in a volume of pieces from 'Chaucer,' purporting to have been modernised by Betterton.

Another celebrated actor in Portugal Street during the reign of Charles II. was Nokes, who appears, from Cibber's account of him to have been something between Liston and Munden. By a line in one of Dryden's Epistles, the town seem to have thought a comedy deficient in which he did not make his appearance. The poet says to Southern on his play of the 'Wives' Excuse'—

"The hearers may for want of Nokes repine,

But rest secure, the readers will be thine."

Nokes was one of those actors who create a roar the moment they are seen, and make people ache with laughter.

These were among the older performers in Portugal Street. When Congreve took a share in the theatre, some others had joined it, and become celebrated, two of whom, Mr. Mountford and Mrs. Bracegirdle, we have already described. Another two, whose names remain familiar with posterity, are Mrs. Mountford and Mrs. Barry. Mrs. Mountford was a capital stage coquette; besides being able to act male coxcombs and country dowdies. Mrs. Barry was a fine tragedian, both of the heroic and tender cast. Dryden pronounced her the best actress he had seen. It is said she was a mistress of Lord Rochester's when young; that it was to her his love-letters were addressed; and that she owed her celebrity to his instructions. She was not handsome, and her mouth was a little awry, but her countenance was very expressive. This is the actress, who, in the delirium of her last moments, is said to have alluded in an extempore blank verse to a manœuvre played by Queen Anne's ministry some time before:—

"Ha! ha! and so they make us lords by dozens!"

Cibber's sketch of Mrs. Mountford, in the character of Melantha is the masterpiece of his book, and presents a portrait sufficiently distinct to be extracted.

"Melantha," says our lively critic (himself a coxcomb of the first water), "is as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-room, and seems to contain the most complete system of female foppery that could possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a fine lady. Her language, dress, motion, manners, soul and body, are in a continual hurry to do something more than is necessary or commendable. And though I doubt it will be a vain labour to offer you a just likeness of Mrs. Mountford's action, yet the fantastic impression is still so strong in my memory, that I cannot help saying something, though fantastically, about it. The first ridiculous airs that break from her are upon a gallant, never seen before, who delivers her a letter from her father, recommending him to her good graces, as an honourable lover. Here now, one would think, she might naturally show a little of the sex's decent reserve, though never so slightly covered. No, sir, not a tittle of it; modesty is the virtue of a poor-souled country gentlewoman; she is too much a court lady to be under so vulgar a confusion; she reads the letter, therefore, with a careless dropping lip, and an erected brow, humming it hastily over, as if she were impatient to outgo her father's commands, by making a complete conquest of him at once; and that the letter might not embarrass her attack, crack! she scrambles it at once into her palm, and pours upon him her whole artillery of airs, eyes, and motion; down goes her dainty diving body to the ground, as if she were sinking under the conscious load of her own attractions; then launches into a flood of fine language and compliment, still playing her chest forward in fifty falls and risings, like a swan upon waving water; and to complete her impertinence, she is so rapidly fond of her own wit, that she will not give her lover leave to praise it: silent assenting bows, and vain endeavours to speak, are all the share of the conversation he is admitted to, which, at last, he is relieved from, by her engagements to half-a-score visits, which she swims from him to make, with a promise to return in a twinkling."[239]

Three of Congreve's plays, 'Love for Love,' the 'Mourning Bride,' and the 'Way of the World,' came out at the theatre in Portugal Street. In the first paper of the 'Tatler,' Steele gives a criticism on the performance of 'Love for Love,' which contains one or two curious points of information respecting the customs of play-goers in the reign of Anne. The "article" begins like that of a modern newspaper.

"On Thursday last was acted, for the benefit of Mr. Betterton, the celebrated comedy called 'Love for Love.' Those excellent players, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Mr. Dogget, though not at present concerned in the house, acted on that occasion. There has not been known so great a concourse of persons of distinction as at that time: the stage itself was covered with gentlemen and ladies; and when the curtain was drawn, it discovered even there a very splendid audience. This unusual encouragement, which was given to a play for the advantage of so great an actor, gives an undeniable instance that the true relish for manly entertainments and rational pleasures is not wholly lost. All the parts were acted to perfection: the actors were careful of their carriage, and no one was guilty of the affectation to insert witticism of his own; but a due respect was had to the audience for encouraging this accomplished player. It is not now doubted but plays will revive, and take their usual course in the opinion of persons of wit and merit, notwithstanding their late apostacy in favour of dress and sound. The place is very much altered since Mr. Dryden frequented it; where you used to see songs, epigrams, and satires, in the hands of every man you met, you have now only a pack of cards; and instead of the cavils about the turn of the expression, the elegance of the style, and the like, the learned now dispute only about the truth of the game."

The last proprietor of this theatre was Rich, the famous harlequin, who, having a poor company, unable to compete with Drury Lane, introduced that love of show and spectacle which has ever since been willing to forego the regular drama, however reproached by the critics. Pope has hitched him into the 'Dunciad,' (book iii.), as one of the ministers of Dulness.

"Immortal Rich! how calm he sits at ease,

'Midst snows of paper, and fierce hail of pease;

And proud his mistress' order to perform,

Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm."

He had the merit, however, of producing the 'Beggar's Opera,' which was acted scores of nights together all over England, and finally rendered its heroine a duchess, and is said to have made "Gay Rich, and Rich Gay." Rich had no education. He was in the habit, when conversing, of saying mister, instead of sir.

One of Rich's actors was Quin, of whom more by and by. Garrick was never at this theatre. It closed a little before his time, and was never reopened. The vulgar attributed its desertion to a supernumerary devil, who made his appearance in the pantomine of 'Harlequin and Dr. Faustus,' and took his exit through the roof instead of the door; which so frightened the manager that he had not the courage to open the theatre again. The only memorial now remaining in Portugal Street of theatres and play-goers, and all their lively generation, is a table set up in the burial-ground to the memory of the famous Joe Miller, author of so many posthumous good things. He was an actor in Congreve's time, and has the reputation of having been an honest, as well as a pleasant fellow. The jest-book, which passes for his publication, was collected by a companion of his, who is thought to have owed to him nothing but his name. It is but reasonable to conclude, however, that many of the jests were of the comedian's relating.

In Carey Street, when she was first married, lived Mrs. Chapone. She afterwards resided in Arundel Street. When we have no greater names to mention, we think it our duty to avail ourselves of those of any intelligent and amiable persons who are really worth mention, though they may not be of the first order. They will be welcome to the inhabitants of the street, and perhaps serve to throw a grace over neighbourhoods that want it. It is better to think of Mrs. Chapone in going along Carey Street, than of bailiffs and lock-up houses—unless, indeed the latter should make us zealous to reform the debtor and creditor laws; and even then we might be glad of the refreshment. Mrs. Chapone was one of the disciples of Richardson, and is well known for her 'Letters on the Improvement of the Mind.' Ten months after her marriage she lost her husband, to whom she was greatly attached, and then she left Carey Street; so that the pleasantest part of her life was probably spent there.

Clare Market stands on a spot formerly called Clement's Inn Fields, the property of the Earls of Clare, one of whom built the market about the year 1657. He is said to have lived close by, in a style of magnificence. The names of the family, Denzel, Holles, &c., are retained in some of the neighbouring streets.

Clare Market became notorious in the time of Pope, for the extravagance of Orator Henley, a clever, but irregular-minded man, who overrated himself, and became, it may be said, mad with impudence. Some describe his Oratory as being in the Market, others in Duke Street, which is the street going out of the western side of Lincoln's Inn Square through the archway. Another writer says it was the old theatre of Sir William Davenant, in Gibbon's Tennis Court, of which we have just spoken, and which is said to have been in Vere Street. Most likely all these accounts are to be reconciled. A tenement is often described as existing in a certain street, when the street presents nothing but a passage to it; and we take Henley's Oratory to have been the old theatre, with a passage to it from the market, from Vere Street, and from Duke Street. Having settled this magnificent point, we proceed with the no less magnificent orator.

He was a native of Melton Mowbray, in the county of Leicester, the son of a clergyman, and after going to St. John's College, Cambridge, returned to his native place, and became master of the school there.

"Feeling, or fancying," says the author of the 'Lounger's Common-Place Book,' "that a genius like his ought not to be buried in so obscure a situation, having been long convinced that many gross errors and impostures prevailed in the various institutions and establishments of mankind; being also ambitious of restoring ancient eloquence, but as his enemies asserted, to avoid the scandalous embarrassments of illicit love, he repaired to the metropolis, and for a short time performed clerical functions at St. John's Chapel, near Bedford Row, with the prospect of succeeding to the lectureship of an adjoining parish (Bloomsbury), which soon became vacant.

"Several candidates offering for this situation, a warm contest ensued; probation sermons were preached; and Henley's predominating vanity made him expect an easy victory.

"We may guess at his disappointment, when this disciple of Demosthenes and Cicero was informed that the congregation had no objection to his language or his doctrine, but that he threw himself about too much in the pulpit, and that another person was chosen.

"Losing his temper as well as his election, he rushed into a room where the principal parishioners were assembled, and thus addressed them, in all the vehemence of outrageous passion:—

"'Blockheads! are you qualified to judge of the degree of action necessary for a preacher of God's word? Were you able to read, or had you sufficient sense, you sorry knaves, to understand the renowned orator of antiquity, he would tell you, almost the only requisite of a public speaker was action, action, action.

"'But I despise and defy you; provoco ad populum; the public shall decide between us.' He then hastily retired, and, to vindicate his injured fame, published the probationary discourse he had delivered.

"Thus disappointed in the regular routine of his profession, he became a quack divine; for this character he was eminently qualified, possessing a strong voice, fluent language, an imposing magisterial air, and a countenance, which no violation of propriety, reproach, or self-correction, was ever known to embarrass or discompose.

"He immediately advertised that he should hold forth publicly, two days in the week, and hired for this purpose, a large room in or near Newport Market, which he called the Oratory; but previous to the commencement of his 'academical discourses,' he chose to consult Mr. Whiston, a learned clergyman of considerable mathematical and astronomical research, but who had rendered himself remarkable by eccentric simplicity of heart, and the whimsical heterodoxy of his creed.

"In a letter to this gentleman he desired to be informed, whether he should incur any legal penalties by officiating as a separatist from the Church of England. Mr. Whiston did not encourage Henley's project, and a correspondence took place, which, ending in virulence and ill-language, produced, a few years after, the following letter:—

"'To Mr. William Whiston,

'Take notice, that I give you warning not to enter my room in Newport Market, at your peril.

'John Henley.'"[240]

Henley succeeded in his speculation, by lecturing, in the most important manner, on all sorts of subjects, from the origin of evil down to a shoe. He also published a variety of pamphlets, and a periodical farrago called the 'Hyp Doctor,' for which he is said to have had pay from Sir Robert Walpole; and as his popularity rapidly increased in consequence of his addressing himself to uneducated understandings, he removed from his Oratory in Newport Market to the more capacious room in Clare Market; for he seems to have had a natural propensity to the society of butchers, and they were fond of his trenchant style. He sometimes threatened his enemies with them. Pope, in answering the assertions of those who charged him with depriving people of their bread, asks whether Colley Cibber had not "still his lord," and Henley his butchers.

"And has not Colley still his lord——

His butchers Henley, his freemasons Moore."

Pope had been attacked by him. The poet speaks of him again, several times, in the 'Dunciad:'

"Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands,

Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands.

How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue!

How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung!

Still break the benches, Henley! with thy strain,

While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach in vain.

O great restorer of the good old stage,

Preacher at once and zany of the age!

O worthy thou of Egypt's wise abodes,

A decent priest where monkeys were the gods."

Book iii., v. 199.

Pope says he had a "gilt tub," and insinuates that he sometimes got drunk. Among the sleeping worthies in the 'Dunciad,'

"—— Henley lay inspired beside a sink,

And to mere mortals seemed a priest in drink."

A contemporary journalist, who says that the fame of Henley induced him to be present at one of the lectures in Newport Market, describes him as entering like a harlequin by a door behind the pulpit, and "at one large leap jumping into it, and falling to work." "His notions," he says, "the orator beat into the audience with hands, arms, legs, and head, as if people's understandings were to be courted and knocked down with blows." The price of admission was a shilling. The following are samples of Henley's extraordinary advertisements:—

"At the Oratory in Newport Market, to-morrow, at half-an-hour after ten, the sermon will be on the Witch of Endor. At half-an-hour after five, the theological lecture will be on the conversion and original of the Scottish nation, and of the Picts and Caledonians; St. Andrew's relics and panegyric, and the character and mission of the Apostles.

"On Wednesday, at six, or near the matter, take your chance, will be a medley oration on the history, merits, and praise of confusion, and of confounders, in the road and out of the way.

"On Friday, will be that on Dr. Faustus and Fortunatus, and conjuration; after each, the Chimes of the Times, No. 23 and 24. N.B. Whenever the prices of the seats are occasionally raised in the week days, notice will be given of it in the prints. An account of the performances of the Oratory from the 1st of August is published, with the Discourse on Nonsense; and if any bishop, clergyman, or other subject of his Majesty, or the subject of any foreign prince or state, can at my years, and in my circumstances and opportunities, without the least assistance or any patron in the world, parallel the study, choice, variety, and discharge of the said performances of the Oratory by his own or any others, I will engage forthwith to quit the said Oratory.

"J. Henley."[241]

In the bill of fare issued for Sunday, September 28, 1729, the most extraordinary theological speculations are followed by a list of the fashions in dress.

"At the Oratory, the corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields, near Clare Market, to-morrow, at half-an-hour after ten: 1. The postil will be on the turning of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. 2. The sermon will be on the necessary power and attractive force which religion gives the spirit of a man with God and good spirits.

"II. At five: 1. The postil will be on this point: in what language our Saviour will speak the last sentence on mankind. 2. The lecture will be on Jesus Christ's sitting at the right hand of God; where that is; the honours and lustre of his inauguration; the learning, criticism, and piety of that glorious article.

"The Monday's orations will shortly be resumed. On Wednesday, the oration will be on the skits of the fashions, or a live gallery of family pictures in all ages; ruffs, muffs, puffs manifold; shoes, wedding-shoes, two-shoes, slip-shoes, heels, clocks, pantofles, buskins, pantaloons, garters, shoulder-knots, periwigs, head-dresses, modesties, tuckers, farthingales, corkins, minikins, slammakins, ruffles, round robins, tollets, fans, patches; dame, forsooth, madam, my lady, the wit and beauty of my grannum; Winnifred, Joan, Bridget, compared with our Winny, Jenny, and Biddy; fine ladies, and pretty gentlewomen; being a general view of the beau monde, from before Noah's flood to the year 29. On Friday will be something better than last Tuesday. After each, a bob at the times."[242]

Henley must have lectured a long while; for one of his "bobs at the times" was occasioned by the dismissal of Dr. Cobden, a chaplain to George II. in the year 1748, for preaching from the following text: "Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness." The wicked, we believe, meant the king's mistresses. Next Saturday, Henley's advertisement appeared with an epigram on this text for a motto:—

"Away with the wicked before the king,

And away with the wicked behind him;

His throne it will bless

With righteousness,

And we shall know where to find him."

This must be what the reviewers call a "favourable specimen."

"Sometimes," says the 'Lounger's Common-Place Book,' "one of his old Bloomsbury friends caught the speaker's eye; on these occasions, he could not resist the temptation to gratify his vanity and resentment; after a short pause he would address the unfortunate interloper in words to the following effect: 'You see, sir, all mankind are not exactly of your opinion; there are, you perceive, a few sensible people in the world, who consider me as not wholly unqualified for the office I have undertaken.'

"His abashed and confounded adversaries, thus attacked in a public company, a most awkward species of distress, were glad to retire precipitately, and sometimes were pushed out of the room by Henley's partizans."[243]

It is probable that Henley's partizans were sometimes necessary to secure him from the results of his imprudence, though his boldness appears to have been on a par with it. He once attracted an audience of shoemakers by announcing that he could teach them a method of making shoes with wonderful celerity. The secret consisted in cutting off the tops of old boots. His motto to the advertisement (omne majus continet in se minus, the greater includes the less) had a pleasantry in it, which makes the disappointment of the poor shoemakers doubly ludicrous.

Henley, on one occasion, was for several days in the custody of the King's messenger, having incurred the displeasure of the House of Lords. "Lord Chesterfield, at that time secretary of state," says the 'Lounger,' "amused himself and his associates in office by sporting with the hopes and fears of our restorer of ancient eloquence; during his examination before the privy council, he requested permission to sit, on account of a real, or, as it was supposed, pretended rheumatism. Occasioning considerable merriment by his eccentric answers, and sometimes by the oddity of his questions, he was observed to join heartily and loudly in the laugh he had himself created.

"The Earl having expostulated with him on the impropriety of ridiculing the exertions of his native country, at the moment rebellion raged in the heart of the kingdom, Henley replied, 'I thought there was no harm, my Lord, in cracking a joke on a red-herring:' alluding to the worthy primate of that name, who proposed, and, I believe, had actually commenced, arming and arraying the clergy.

"Many disrespectful and unwarrantable expressions he had applied to persons high in office, being mentioned to him, he answered, without embarrassment, 'My Lords, I must live.'

"'I see no kind of reason for that,' said Lord Chesterfield, 'but many against it.' The council were pleased, and laughed at the retort; the prisoner, somewhat irritated, observed, 'That is a good thing, but it has been said before.'

"A few days after, being reprimanded for his improper conduct, and cautioned against repeating it, he was dismissed, as an impudent, but entertaining fellow."[244]

To complete the history of this man, he struck medals for his tickets, with a star rising to the meridian; over it the motto, Ad summa (to the height), and below, Inveniam viam aut faciam (I will find a way or make one). As might be expected, he found no way at last, but that of falling into contempt. He appears to have been too imprudent to make money by his vagaries; and his manners, probably in consequence, became gross and ferocious. He died in 1756. His person makes a principal figure in two humorous plates, attributed to Hogarth.

Duke Street and Little Wild Street have had an inhabitant, as illustrious afterwards as he was then obscure, in the person of Benjamin Franklin, who, when he was first in England, worked in the printing office of Mr. Watts, in the latter street, and lodged in the former. When he came to England afterwards, as the agent of Massachusetts, he went into this office, "and going up," says his biography, "to a particular press [now in America], thus addressed the two workmen: 'Come, my friends, we will drink together: it is now forty years since I worked like you at this press, as a journeyman printer.'" The same publication gives an account of him during this period, which, besides containing more than one curious local particular, is highly worth the attention of those who confound stimulus with vigour.

"After the completion," says the writer, "of twelve months at Palmer's" (in Bartholomew Close), "Franklin removed to the printing-office of Mr. Watts, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he continued during the whole of his subsequent stay in the British metropolis. He found a contiguous lodging with a widow lady in Duke Street, opposite the Catholic chapel, for which he paid at his old rate of three and sixpence weekly, and received no new impressions in favour of Christians from his occasional notices of the Romish superstitions in this family and neighbourhood. His landlady was a clergyman's daughter, who, marrying a Catholic, had abjured Protestantism, and became acquainted with several distinguished families of that persuasion. She and Franklin found mutual pleasure in each other's society. He kept good hours, and she was too lame generally to leave her room; frugality was the habit of both; half an anchovy, a small slice of bread and butter each, with half a pint of ale between them, furnished commonly their supper. So well pleased was the widow with her inmate, that when Franklin talked of removing to another house, where he could obtain the same accommodation as with her for two shillings per week, she became generous in his favour, and abated her charge for his room to that sum. He never paid her more during the rest of his stay with her, which was the whole time he continued in London. In the attic, was a maiden Catholic lady, by choice and habit a nun. She had been sent early in life to the Continent to take the veil; but the climate disagreeing with her health, she returned home; devoted her small estate to charitable purposes, with the exception of about 12l. a-year; practised confession daily; and lived entirely on water gruel. Her presence was thought a blessing to the house, and several of its tenants in succession had charged her no rent. Her room contained a mattress, table, crucifix, and stool, as its only furniture. She admitted the occasional visits of Franklin and her landlady; was cheerful, he says, and healthful: and while her superstition moved his compassion, he felt confirmed in his frugality by her example, and exhibits it in his journal as another proof of the possibility of supporting life, health, and cheerfulness on very small means.

"During the first weeks of his engagement with Mr. Watts, he worked as a pressman, drinking only water, while his companions had their five pints of porter each, per day; and his strength was superior to theirs. He ridiculed the verbal logic of strong beer being necessary for strong work; contending that the strength yielded by malt liquor could only be in proportion to the quantity of flour or actual grain dissolved in the liquor, and that a pennyworth of bread must have more of this than a pot of porter. The Water-American, as he was called, had some converts to his system; his example, in this case, being clearly better than his philosophy.[245]

"Franklin was born to be a revolutionist, in many good senses of the word. He now proposed and carried several alterations in the so-called chapel-laws of the printing office; resisted what he thought the impositions, while he conciliated the respect of his fellow-workmen; and always had cash and credit in the neighbourhood at command, to which the sottish part of his brethren were occasionally, and sometimes largely indebted. He thus depicts this part of his prosperous life:—'On my entrance, I worked at first as a pressman, conceiving that I had need of bodily exercise, to which I had been accustomed in America, where the printers work alternately, as compositors and at the press. I drank nothing but water. The other workmen, to the number of about fifty, were great drinkers of beer. I carried occasionally a large form of letters in each hand, up and down stairs, while the rest employed both hands to carry one. They were surprised to see by this and many other examples, that the American aquatic, as they used to call me, was stronger than those that drank porter. The beer-boy had sufficient employment during the whole day in serving that house alone. My fellow-pressman drank every day a pint of beer before breakfast, a pint with bread and cheese for breakfast, one between breakfast and dinner, one at dinner, one again about six o'clock in the afternoon, and another after he had finished his day's work. This custom appeared to me abominable; but he had need, he said, of all this beer, in order to acquire strength to work.

"'I endeavoured to convince him, that the bodily strength furnished by the beer could only be in proportion to the solid part of the barley dissolved in the water of which the beer was composed; that there was a larger portion of flour in a penny-loaf, and that, consequently, if he ate this loaf, and drank a pint of water, he would derive more strength from it than from a pint of beer. This reasoning, however, did not prevent him from drinking his accustomed quantity of beer, and paying every Saturday night a score of four or five shillings a-week for this cursed beverage; an expense from which I was wholly exempt. Thus do these poor devils continue all their lives in a state of voluntary wretchedness and poverty.

"'My example prevailed with several of them to renounce their abominable practice of bread and cheese with beer; and they procured, like me, from a neighbouring house, a good basin of warm gruel, in which was a small slice of butter, with toasted bread and nutmeg. This was a much better breakfast, which did not cost more than a pint of beer, namely, three halfpence, and at the same time preserved the head clearer. Those who continued to gorge themselves with beer, often lost their credit with the publican, from neglecting to pay their score. They had then recourse to me to become security for them, their light, as they used to call it, being out. I attended at the table every Saturday evening to take up the little sums which I had made myself answerable for, and which sometimes amounted to near thirty shillings a-week.

"'This circumstance, added to the reputation of my being a tolerable good gabber, or, in other words, skilful in the art of burlesque, kept up my importance in the chapel. I had, besides, recommended myself to the esteem of my master by my assiduous application to business, never observing Saint Monday. My extraordinary quickness in composing always procured me such work as was most urgent, and which is commonly best paid; and thus my time passed away in a very pleasant manner.'"[246]

THE PRINTING PRESS AT WHICH FRANKLIN WORKED.

CHAPTER VII.
DRURY LANE, AND THE TWO THEATRES IN DRURY LANE AND COVENT GARDEN.

Craven House—Donne and his vision—Lord Craven and the Queen of Bohemia—Nell Gwynn—Drury Lane Theatre—Its antiquity, different eras, and rebuildings—The principal theatre of Dryden, Wycherley, Farquhar, Steele, Garrick, and Sheridan—Old Drury in the time of Charles II.—A visit to it—Pepys and his theatrical gossip, with notes—Hart and Mohun—Goodman—Nell Gwynn—Dramatic taste of that age—Booth—Artificial tragedy—Wilks and Cibber—Bullock and Penkethman—A Colonel enamoured of Cibber's wig—Mrs. Oldfield—Her singular position in society—Not the Flavia of the Tatler—Pope's account of her last words probably not true—Declamatory acting—Lively account of Garrick and Quin by Mr. Cumberland—Improvement of stage costume—King—Mrs. Pritchard—Mrs. Clive—Mrs. Woffington—Covent Garden—Barry—Contradictory characters of him by Davies and Churchill—Macklin—Woodward—Pantomime—English taste in music—Cooke—Rise of actors and actresses in social rank—Improvement of the audience—Dr. Johnston at the theatre—Churchill a great pit critic—His Rosciad—His picture of Mossop—Mrs. Jordan and Mr. Suett—Early recollections of a play-goer.

Drury Lane takes its name from "the habitation of the great family of the Druries," built, "I believe," says Pennant, "by Sir William Drury, knight of the garter, a most able commander in the Irish wars, who unfortunately fell in a duel with Sir John Burroughs, in a foolish quarrel about precedency. Sir Robert, his son, was a great patron of Dr. Donne, and assigned to him apartments in his house. I cannot, learn into whose hands it passed afterwards. During the time of the fatal discontents of the favourite, Essex, it was the place where his imprudent advisers resolved on such counsels as terminated in the destruction of him and his adherents."[247]

Drury House stood at the corner of Drury Lane and Wych Street, upon the ground now included in Craven Buildings in the one thoroughfare, and the Olympic Pavilion in the other.

Pennant proceeds to say, that it was occupied in the next century by "the heroic William Lord Craven, afterwards Earl Craven," who rebuilt it in the form standing in his time. He describes it as "a large brick pile,"—a public-house with the sign of the Queen of Bohemia,—a head which still mystifies people in some parts of the country. The remains were taken down in 1809, and the Olympic Pavilion built on part of the site. But the public-house was only a portion of it.

CRAVEN HOUSE.

Who would suppose, in going by the place now, that it was once the habitation of wit and elegance, of a lord and a queen, and of more than one "romance of real life?" Yet the passenger acquainted with the facts can never fail to be impressed by them, especially by the romantic history of Donne. This master of profound fancies (whom Dryden pronounced "the greatest wit, though not the best poet," of our nation) had in his youth led a gay imprudent life, which left him poor. He became secretary to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, and fell in love with his lordship's niece, then residing in the house, daughter to a Sir George Moor or More, who, though Donne was of an ancient family, was very angry, and took the young lady away into the country. The step, however, was too late; for, the passion being mutual, a private marriage had taken place. The upshot was, that Sir George would have nothing to say to the young couple, and that they fell into great distress. After a time, Sir Robert Drury, a man of large fortune, who possessed the mansion above described, invited Donne and his wife to live with him, and this too in a spirit that enabled all parties to be the better for it. But for this, and the curious story connected with it, we shall have recourse to the pages of our angling friend Walton, who was a good fellow enough when he was not "handling a worm as if he loved him."

"Sir Robert Drury," says Walton, "a gentleman of a very noble estate, and a more liberal mind, assigned him and his wife an useful apartment in his own large house in Drury Lane, and not only rent free, but was also a cherisher of his studies, and such a friend as sympathised with him and his, in all their joy and sorrows.

"At this time of Mr. Donne's and his wife's living in Sir Robert's house, the Lord Hay was, by King James, sent upon a glorious embassy to the then French King, Henry IV., and Sir Robert put on a sudden resolution to accompany him to the French Court, and to be present at his audience there. And Sir Robert put on a sudden resolution to solicit Mr. Donne to be his companion in that journey. And this desire was suddenly made known to his wife, who was then with child, and otherwise under so dangerous a habit of body as to her health, that she professed an unwillingness to allow him any absence from her; saying, 'her divining soul boded her some ill in his absence,' and, therefore, desired him not to leave her. This made Mr. Donne lay aside all thoughts of his journey, and really to resolve against it. But Sir Robert became restless in his persuasions for it, and Mr. Donne was so generous as to think he had sold his liberty when he received so many charitable kindnesses from him, and told his wife so; who did, therefore, with an unwilling-willingness, give a faint consent to the journey, which was proposed to be but for two months; for about that time they determined their return. Within a few days after this resolve, the ambassador, Sir Robert, and Mr. Donne, left London; and were the twelfth day got all safe to Paris. Two days after their arrival there, Mr. Donne was left alone in that room, in which Sir Robert, and he, and some other friends had dined together. To this place Sir Robert returned within half an hour; and as he left, so he found Mr. Donne alone; but in such an ecstacy and so altered in his looks, as amazed Sir Robert to behold him; insomuch that he earnestly desired Mr. Donne to declare what had befallen him in the short time of his absence. To which Mr. Donne was not able to make a present answer; but, after a long and perplexed pause, did at last say, 'I have seen a dreadful vision since I saw you: I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me in this room, with her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms: this I have seen since I saw you.' To which Sir Robert replied, 'Sure, sir, you have slept since I saw you; and this is the result of some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now awake.' To which Mr. Donne's reply was, 'I cannot be surer that I now live, than that I have not slept since I saw you; and am as sure, that at her second appearing she stopped and looked me in the face, and vanished.' Rest and sleep had not altered Mr. Donne's opinion the next day; for he then affirmed this vision with a more deliberate, and so confirmed a confidence, that he inclined Sir Robert to a faint belief that the vision was true. It is truly said, that desire and doubt have no rest; and it proved so with Sir Robert; for he immediately sent a servant to Drewry House, with a charge to hasten back, and bring him word, whether Mrs. Donne were alive; and, if alive, in what condition she was in as to her health. The twelfth day the messenger returned with this account:—That he found and left Mrs. Donne very sad, and sick in her bed; and that, after a long and dangerous labour, she had been delivered of a dead child. And, upon examination, the abortion proved to be the same day, and about the very hour, that Mr. Donne affirmed he saw her pass by him in his chamber.

"This is a relation," continues Walton, "that will beget some wonder, and it well may; for most of our world are at present possessed with an opinion, that visions and miracles are ceased. And, though it is most certain, that two lutes being both strung and tuned to an equal pitch, and then one played upon, the other that is not touched, being laid upon a table at a fit distance will—like an echo to a trumpet—warble a faint audible harmony in answer to the same tune; yet many will not believe that there is any such thing as the sympathy of souls; and I am well pleased that every reader do enjoy his own opinion. But if the unbelieving will not allow the believing reader of this story a liberty to believe that it may be true, then I wish him to consider, that many wise men have believed that the ghost of Julius Cæsar did appear to Brutus, and that both St. Austin, and Monica his mother, had visions in order to his conversion. And though these, and many others—too many to name—have but the authority of human story, yet the incredible reader may find in the sacred story, that Samuel, &c."[248]

We may here break off with the observation of Mr. Chalmers, that "the whole may be safely left to the judgment of the reader."[249] Walton says he had not this story from Donne himself, but from a "Person of Honour," who "knew more of the secrets of his heart than any person then living," and who related it "with such circumstance and asseveration," that not to say anything of his hearer's belief, Walton did "verily believe," that the gentleman "himself believed it."

The biographer then presents us with some verses which "were given by Mr. Donne to his wife at the time he then parted from her," and which he "begs leave to tell us" that he has heard some critics, learned both in languages and poetry, say, that "none of the Greek or Latin poets did ever equal."

These lines are full of the wit that Dryden speaks of, horribly misused to obscure the most beautiful feelings. Some of them are among the passages quoted in Dr. Johnson to illustrate the faults of the metaphysical school. Mr. Chalmers and others have thought it probable, that it was upon this occasion Donne wrote a set of verses, which he addressed to his wife, on her proposing to accompany him abroad as a page; but as the writer speaks of going to Italy, which appears to have been out of the question in this two months' visit to Paris, they most probably belong to some other journey or intended journey, the period of which is unknown. The numbers of these verses are sometimes rugged, but they are full of as much nature and real feeling, as sincerity ever put into a true passion. There is an awfulness in the commencing adjuration:—

"By our first strange and fatal interview,

By all desires which thereof did ensue;

By our long striving hopes; by that remorse

Which my words' masculine persuasive force

Begot in thee, and by the memory

Of hurts which spies and rivals threaten me,

I calmly beg: but by thy father's wrath,

By all pains which want and divorcement hath,

I conjure thee, and all the oaths which I

And thou have sworn to seal joint constancy,

I here unswear, and overswear them thus:

Thou shalt not love by means so dangerous.

Temper, O fair Love! love's impetuous rage;

Be my true mistress, not my feigned page.

I'll go; and by thy kind leave, leave behind

Thee, only worthy to nurse in my mind

Thirst to come back. O! if thou die before,

My soul from other lands to thee shall soar:

Thy (else almighty) beauty cannot move

Rage from the seas, nor thy love teach them love,

Nor tame wild Boreas' harshness: thou hast read

How roughly he in pieces shiverèd

Fair Orithea, whom he swore he loved.

Fall ill or good, 'tis madness to have proved

Dangers unurged: feed on this flattery,

That absent lovers one in the other be;

Dissemble nothing, not a boy, nor change

Thy body's habit, nor mind; be not strange

To thyself only: all will spy in thy face

A blushing womanly discovering grace.

---

When I am gone dream me some happiness,

Nor let thy looks our long-hid love confess;

Nor praise nor dispraise me, nor bless nor curse

Openly love's force; nor in bed fright thy nurse

With midnight's startings, crying out, Oh! oh!

Nurse! oh, my love is slain! I saw him go

O'er the white Alps alone; I saw him, I,

Assailed, taken, fight, stabbed, bleed, fall, and die.

Augur me better chance; except dread Jove

Think it enough for me to have had thy love."

Drury House, when rebuilt by Lord Craven, took the name of Craven House. To this abode, at the restoration of Charles II., his lordship brought his royal mistress, the Queen of Bohemia, to whose interest he had devoted his fortunes, and to whom he is supposed to have been secretly wedded. She was daughter to James I., and, with the reluctant consent of her parents (particularly of her mother, who used to twit her with the title of Goody Palsgrave), was married to Frederick, the Elector Palatine, for whom the Protestant interest in Germany erected Bohemia into a kingdom, in the vain hope, with the assistance of his father-in-law, of competing with the Catholic Emperor. Frederic lost everything, and his widow became a dependent on the bounty of this Lord Craven, a nobleman of wealthy commercial stock, who had fought in her husband's cause, and helped to bring up her children. It is through her that the family of Brunswick succeeded to the throne of this kingdom, as the next Protestant heirs of James I. James's daughter, being a woman of lively manners, a queen, and a Protestant leader, excited great interest in her time, and received more than the usual portion of flattery from the romantic. Donne wrote an epithalamium on her marriage, in which are those preposterous lines beginning—

"Here lies a she sun, and a he moon there."

Sir Henry Wotton had permission to call her his "royal mistress," which he was as proud of as if he had been a knight of old. And when she lost her Bohemian kingdom, it was said that she retained a better one, for that she was still the "Queen of Hearts." Sir Henry wrote upon her his elegant verses beginning—

"You meaner beauties of the night,"

in which he gives a new turn to the commonplaces of stars and roses, and calls her

"Th'eclipse and glory of her kind."

It is doubtful, nevertheless, whether she was ever handsome. None of the Stuarts appear to have been so, with the exception of Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, who resembled, perhaps, her mother. Pepys, who saw the Queen of Bohemia at the Restoration, "thought her a very debonaire, but plain lady." This, it is true, was near her death; but Pepys was given to admire, and royalty did not diminish the inclination. Had her charms ever been as great as reported, he would have discovered the remains of them. It has been beautifully said by Drayton, that

"Even in the aged'st face, where beauty once did dwell,

And nature, in the least, but seemèd to excel,

Time cannot make such waste, but something will appear

To show some little tract of delicacy there."

Pepys saw the queen afterwards two or three times at the play, and does not record any alteration of his opinion. Her Majesty did not survive the Restoration many months. She quitted Craven House for Leicester House (afterwards Norfolk House, in the Strand,) seemingly for no other purpose than to die there; which she did in February 1661-2. Whether Lord Craven attended her at this period does not appear; but she left him her books, pictures, and papers. Sometimes he accompanied her to the play. She and her husband, King Frederick, appear to have been lively, good-humoured persons, a little vain of the royalty which proved such a misfortune to them. The queen had the better sense, though it seems to have been almost as much over-rated as her beauty. But all the Stuarts were more or less clever, with the exception of James II.

The author of a History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven in Yorkshire, gives it as a tradition, that Lord Craven's father, a lord-mayor, was born of such poor parents that they sent him when a boy by a common carrier to London, where he became a mercer or draper. His son was a distinguished officer under Gustavus Adolphus, was ennobled, attached himself to the King and Queen of Bohemia, and is supposed, as we have seen, to have married the king's widow. He was her junior by twelve years. He long resided in Craven House, became Colonel of the Coldstream Regiment of Foot Guards, and was famed for his bustling activity. He so constantly made his appearance at a fire, that his horse is said to have "smelt one as soon as it happened." Pepys, during a riot against houses of ill-fame (probably the houses in Whetstone Park, as well as in Moorfields, for he talks of going to Lincoln's Inn Fields to see the 'prentices,) describes his lordship as riding up and down the fields, "like a madman," giving orders to the soldiery. It was probably in allusion to this military vivacity that Lord Dorset says, in his ballad on a mistress,—

"The people's hearts leap, wherever she comes,

And beat day and night, like my Lord Craven's drums."

When there was a talk in his old age of giving his regiment to somebody else, Craven said, that "if they took away his regiment they had as good take away his life, since he had nothing else to divert himself with." The next king, however, William III., gave it to General Talmash; yet the old lord is said to have gone on, busy to the last. He died in 1697, aged nearly 89 years. He was intimate with Evelyn, Ray, and other naturalists, and delighted in gardening. The garden of Craven House ran in the direction of the present Drury Lane; so that where there is now a bustle of a very different sort, we may fancy the old soldier busying himself with his flower-beds, and Mr. Evelyn discoursing upon the blessings of peace and privacy.[250]

The only other personage of celebrity whom we know of as living in Drury Lane, is one of another sort; to wit, Nell Gwynn. The ubiquitous Pepys speaks of his seeing her there on a May-morning.

"May 1st, 1667. To Westminster, in the way meeting many milk-maids with garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them; and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodging's door in Drury Lane in her smock sleeves and boddice, looking upon one. She seemed a mighty pretty creature."

Lodgings in this quarter, though Nell lived there, must have been of more decent reputation than they became afterwards. It is curious that the old English word Drury, or Druerie, should be applicable to the fame we allude to. It has more or less deserved it for a long period, though we believe the purlieus rather warrant it now, than the lane itself. Pope and Gay speak of it. Pope describes the lane also as a place of residence for poor authors:—

"'Keep your piece nine years.'

'Nine years!' cries he, who high in Drury Lane,

Lull'd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane,

Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before term ends,

Obliged by hunger and request of friends."

The existence of a theatre in Drury Lane is as old as the time of Shakspeare. It was then called the Phœnix; was "a private," or more select house, like that of Blackfriars; and had been a cock-pit, by which name it was also designated. Phœnix generally implies that a place has been destroyed by fire, a common fate with theatres; but the first occasion on which we hear of the present one is the destruction of it by a Puritan mob. This took place in the year 1617, in the time of James; and was doubtless caused by the same motives that led to the demolition of certain other houses, which it was thought to resemble in fame. In Howe's Continuation of Stowe, it was called a "new play-house;" so that it had lately been either built or rebuilt. This theatre stood opposite the Castle tavern. There is still in existence a passage, called Cockpit Alley, into Great Wild Street; and there is a Phœnix Alley, leading from Long Acre into Hart Street.

The Phœnix was soon rebuilt: and the performances continued till 1648, when they were again stopped by the Puritans who then swayed England, and who put an end to playhouses for some time. In the interval, some of the most admired of our old dramas were produced there, such as Marlowe's Jew of Malta; Heywood's Woman killed with Kindness; The Witch of Edmonton, by Rowley, Decker, and Ford; Webster's White Devil, or Vittoria Colombona, Massinger's New Way to Pay Old Debts, and indeed many others.[251] It does not appear that Shakspeare or his immediate friends had any pieces performed there. He was a performer in other theatres; and the pressure of court, as well as city, lay almost exclusively in their direction, till the growth of the western part of the metropolis divided it. The Phœnix known in his time was probably nearly as select a house as the Blackfriars. The company had the title of Queen's Servants (James's Queen), and the servants of the Lady Elizabeth (Queen of Bohemia).

A few years before the Restoration, Davenant, supported by some of the less scrupulous authorities, ventured to smuggle back something like the old entertainments, under the pretence of accompanying them with music; a trick understood in our times where a license is to be encroached upon. In 1656, he removed with them from Aldersgate Street to this house; and, after the fluctuation of different companies hither and thither, the Cockpit finally resumed its rank as a royal theatre, under the direction of the famous Killigrew, whose set of players were called the King's company, as those under Sir William Davenant had the title of the Duke's. Killigrew, dissatisfied with the old theatre at the Cockpit, built a new one nearly on the site of the present, and opened it in 1663. This may be called the parent of Drury Lane theatre as it now stands. It was burnt in 1671-2, rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, and opened in 1674, with a prologue, from the pen of Dryden, from which time it stood till the year 1741. There had been some alterations in the structure of this theatre, which are said to have hurt the effect contemplated by Sir Christopher Wren, and perhaps assisted its destruction; for seventy years is no great age for a public building. Yet old Drury, as it was called, was said to have died of a "gradual decline." It was rebuilt, and became Old Drury the second; underwent the usual fate of theatres in the year 1809; and was succeeded by the one now standing.

ENTRANCE FRONT OF DRURY LANE THEATRE, ERECTED BY GARRICK.

It is customary to divide the eras of theatres according to their management; but, as managers become of little consequence to posterity, we shall confine ourselves in this as in other respects to names, with which posterity is familiar. In Shakspeare's time, Drury Lane appears to have been celebrated for the best productions of the second-rate order of dramatists, a set of men who would have been first in any other age. We have little to say of the particulars of Drury Lane at this period, no memorandums having come down to us as they did afterwards. All we can imagine is, that, the Phœnix being much out of the way, with fields and country roads in the interval between court and city, and the performances taking place in the day time, the company probably consisted of the richer orders, the poorer being occupied in their labours. The court and the rich citizens went on horseback; the Duke of Buckingham in his newly-invented sedan. In the time of the Puritans we may fancy the visitors stealing in, as they would into a gambling-house.

The era of the Restoration, or second era of the Stuarts, is that of the popularity of Ben Jonson's and Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, compared with Shakspeare's, though Davenant tried hard to revive him; of the plays of Dryden, Lee, and Otway; and finally of the rise of comedy, strictly so called, in those of Wycherly, Congreve, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh. All these writers had to do with Drury Lane Theatre, some of them almost exclusively. Nineteen out of Dryden's twenty-seven plays were produced there; seven out of Lee's eleven; all the good ones of Wycherly (that is to say, all except the 'Gentleman Dancing-Master'); two of Congreve's (the 'Old Bachelor' and 'Double Dealer'), and all Farquhar's, except the 'Beaux' Stratagem.' Otway's best pieces came out at the Duke's Theatre; and Vanbrugh's in the Haymarket.[252] This may be called the second era of Drury Lane, or rather the second and third; the former, which is Dryden's and Lee's, having for its principal performers Hart, Mohun, Lacy, Goodman, Nell Gwynn, and others; the latter, which was that of Congreve and Farquhar, presenting us with Cibber, Wilks, Booth, Mrs. Barry, and Mrs. Bracegirdle. The two, taken together, began with the Restoration and ended with George II.

Sir Richard Steele and the sentimental comedy came in at the close of the third era, and may be said to constitute the fourth; which, in his person, did not last long. Steele, admirable as an essayist, and occasionally as humorous as any dramatist in a scene or two, was hampered in his plays by the new moral ambition now coming up, which induced him to show, not so much what people are, as his notions of what they ought to be. This has never been held a legitimate business of the stage, which, in fact, is nothing else than what its favourite metaphor declares it, a glass of men and manners, in which they are to see themselves as they actually exist. It is the essence of the wit and dialogue of society brought into a focus. Steele was manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and made as bad a one as improvidence and animal spirits could produce.

The sentimental comedy continued into the next or fifth Drury Lane era, which was that of Garrick, famous for his great reputation as an actor, and for his triumphant revival of Shakspeare's plays, which have increased in popularity ever since. Not that he revived them in the strictest sense of the word; for the attempt was making when he came to town; but he hastened and exalted the success of it.

The last era before the present one was that of Sheridan, who, though he began with Covent Garden, produced four out of his seven pieces at this theatre; where he showed himself a far better dramatist, and a still worse manager than Steele.

We shall now endeavour to possess our readers with such a sense of these different periods, as may enable them to "live o'er each scene," not indeed of the plays, but of the general epochs of Old Drury; to go into the green-room with Hart and Nell Gwyn; to see Mrs. Oldfield swim on the stage as Lady Betty Modish; to revive the electrical shock of Garrick's leap upon it, as the lively Lothario;—in short, to be his grandfather and great-grandfather before him, and make one of the successive generations of play-goers, now in his peruke à la Charles II., and now in his Ramillie wig, or the bobs of Hogarth. Did we introduce him to all this ourselves, we should speak with less confidence; but we have a succession of play-goers for his acquaintance, who shall make him doubt whether he really is or is not his own ancestor, so surely shall they place him beside them in the pit.

And first, for the immortal and most play-going Pepys. To the society of this jolliest of government officers, we shall consign our reader and ourselves during the reign of Charles II.; and if we are not all three equally intimate with old Drury at that time, there is no faith in good company. By old Drury, we understand both the theatres; the Cockpit or Phœnix and the new one built by Killigrew, which took the title of "King's Theatre." There was a cockpit at Whitehall, or court theatre, to which Pepys occasionally alludes; but after trying in vain to draw a line between such of his memorandums as might be retained and omitted, we here give up the task as undesirable, the whole harmonizing in one mass of theatrical gossip, and making us acquainted collaterally, even with what he is not speaking of. We have not, indeed, retained everything, but we have almost.

We now, therefore, pass Drury House, proceed up the lane by my Lord Craven's garden, and turn into Russell Street amongst a throng of cavaliers in flowing locks, and ladies with curls à la Valliere. Some of them are in masks, but others have not put theirs on. We shall see them masquing as the house grows full. It is early in the afternoon. There press a crowd of gallants, who have already got enough wine. Here, as fast as the lumbering coaches of that period can do it, dashes up to the door my lord Duke of Buckingham, bringing with him Buckhurst and Sedley. There comes a greater, though at that time a humbler man, to wit, John Dryden, in a coat of plain drugget, which by and by his fame converted into black velvet. He is somewhat short and stout, with a roundish dimpled face and a sparkling eye; and, if scandal says true, by his side is "Madam" Reeves, a beautiful actress; for the ladies of the stage were so entitled at that time. Horses and coaches throng the place, with here and there a sedan; and, by the pulling off of hats, we find that the king and his brother James have arrived. The former nods to his people as if he anticipated their mutual enjoyment of the play; the latter affects a graciousness to match, but does not do it very well. As soon as the king passes in, there is a squeeze and a scuffle; and some blood is drawn, and more oaths uttered, from which we hasten to escape. Another scuffle is silenced on the king's entrance, which also makes the gods quiet; otherwise, at no period were they so loud. The house is not very large, nor very well appointed. Most of the ladies masque themselves in the pit and boxes, and all parties prepare for a play that shall render it proper for the remainder to do so. The king applauds a new French tune played by the musicians. Gallants, not very sober, are bowing on all sides of us to ladies not very nice; or talking to the orange girls, who are ranged in front of the pit with their backs to the stage. We hear criticisms on the last new piece, on the latest panegyric, libel, or new mode. Our friend Pepys listens and looks everywhere, tells all who is who, or asks it; and his neighbours think him a most agreeable fat little gentleman. The curtain rises: enter Mistress Marshall, a pretty woman, and speaks a prologue which makes all the ladies hurry on their masks, and convulses the house with laughter. Mr. Pepys "do own" that he cannot help laughing too, and calls the actress "a merry jade;" "but, lord!" he says, "to see the difference of the times, and but two years gone." And then he utters something between a sigh and a chuckle, at the recollection of his Presbyterian breeding, compared with the jollity of his expectations.

But let us hear our friend's memorandums:—

"29th (September 1662). To the King's Theatre, where we saw 'Midsummer's Night's Dream,' which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life. [The gods certainly had not made Pepys poetical, except on the substantial side of things.]

"5th (January 1662-3). To the Cockpit, where we saw 'Claracilla,' a poor play, done by the King's house; but neither the king nor queen were there, but only the duke and duchess.

"23d (February, 1662-3). We took coach and to court, and there we saw 'The Wilde Gallant,' performed by the King's house, but it was ill acted. The king did not seem pleased at all, the whole play, nor anybody else. My Lady Castlemaine was all worth seeing to-night, and little Stewart. [This is Miss, or as the designation then was, Mrs. Stewart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond. 'The Wild Gallant' was Dryden's first play, and was patronised by Lady Castlemaine, afterwards not less notorious as Duchess of Cleveland. Miss Stewart and she were rival beauties.]

"1st (February, 1663-4). To the King's Theatre, and there saw the 'Indian Queen' (by Sir Robert Howard and Dryden); which indeed is a most pleasant show, and beyond my expectation the play good, but spoiled with the rhyme, which breaks the sense. But above my expectation most, the eldest Marshall did do her part most excellently well as I have heard a woman in my life; but her voice is not so sweet as Ianthe's: but, however, we come home mightily contented.

"1st (January, 1664). To the King's house, and saw 'The Silent Woman' (Ben Jonson's); but methought not so well done or so good a play as I formerly thought it to be. Before the play was done, it fell such a storm of hayle, that we in the middle of the pit were fain to rise, and all the house in a disorder.

"2nd (August, 1664). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 'Bartholomew Fayre' (Ben Jonson's), which do still please me; and is, as it is acted, the best comedy in the world, I believe. I chanced to sit by Tom Killigrew, who tells me that he is setting up a nursery; that is, is going to build a house in Moorfields, wherein we will have common plays acted. But four operas it shall have in the year, to act six weeks at a time: where we shall have the best scenes and machines, the best musique, and everything as magnificent as in Christendome, and to that end hath sent for voices and painters, and other persons from Italy.

"4th (August, 1664). To play at the King's house, 'The Rivall Ladies' (Dryden's), a very innocent and most pretty witty play. I was much pleased with it, and it being given me, I look upon it as no breach of my oath. [Pepys means that he had made a vow not to spend money on theatres, but that he was now treated to a play.] Here we hear that Clun, one of their best actors, was, the last night, going out of town after he had acted the Alchymist (wherein was one of his best parts that he acts), to his country house, set upon and murdered; one of the rogues taken, an Irish fellow. It seems most cruelly butchered and bound. The house will have a great miss of him. [Clun's body was found at Kentish Town in a ditch. Pepys went to see the place.]

"11th (October, 1664). Luellin tells me what an obscene loose play this 'Parson's Wedding' is (by Tom Killigrew), that is acted by nothing but women at the King's house.

"14th (January, 1664-5). To the King's house, there to see 'Vulpone,' a most excellent play (Ben Jonson's); the best, I think, I ever saw, and well acted.

"19th (March, 1666). After dinner we walked to the King's playhouse, all in dirt, they being altering of the stage to make it wider. But God knows when they will begin to act again; but my business here was to see the inside of the stage, and all the tiring-rooms and machines; and, indeed, it was a sight worthy seeing. But to see their clothes, and the various sorts, and what a mixture of things there was; here a wooden leg, there a ruff, here a hobby-horse, there a crown, would make a man split himself to see with laughing; and particularly Lacy's wardrobe and Shotrell's. But then again to think how fine they show on the stage by candlelight, and how poor things they are to look at too near hand, is not pleasant at all. The machines are fine, and the paintings very pretty.

"7th (December, 1666). To the King's playhouse, where two acts were almost done when I came in; and there I sat with my cloak about my face, and saw the remainder of 'The Mayd's Tragedy;' a good play, and well acted, especially by the younger Marshall, who is become a pretty good actor; and is the first play I have seen in either of the houses, since before the great plague, they having acted now about fourteen days publickly. But I was in mighty pain, lest I should be seen by anybody to be at the play. [The plague seems to have made it an indecorum to resume visits to the theatre very speedily. Pepys had been educated among the Commonwealth-men, for whom he never seems to have got rid of a respect. The contrast aggravated his festivity.]

"8th (December, 1666). To the King's playhouse, and there did see a good part of 'The English Monsieur' (by James Howard), which is a mighty pretty play, very witty and pleasant. And the women do very well; but above all, little Nelly. [Nell Gwynn, not long entered upon the stage.]

"27th (December, 1666). By coach to the King's playhouse, and there saw 'The Scornful Lady' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), well acted; Doll Common doing Abigail most excellently, and Knipp the widow very well (and will be an excellent actor, I think). In other parts the play not so well done as need be by the old actors.

"3rd (January, 1666-7). Alone to the King's house, and there saw 'The Custome of the Country' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), the second time of its being acted, wherein Knipp does the widow well; but of all the plays that ever I did see, the worst, having neither plot, language nor anything on the earth that is acceptable; only Knipp sings a song admirably. [Mistress Knipp was a particular acquaintance of our friend's.]

"23rd (January, 1666-7). To the King's house, and there saw the 'Humourous Lieutenant' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), a silly play, I think; only the spirit in it that grows very tall, and then sinks again to nothing, having two heads breeding upon one, and then Knipp's singing did please us. Here in a box above we spied Mrs. Pierse; and going out they called us; and so we staid for them; and Knipp took us all in and brought us to Nelly (Nell Gwynn), a most pretty woman, who acted the great part of Cœlia to-day very fine, and did it pretty well: I kissed her, and so did my wife; and a mighty pretty soul she is. We also saw Mrs. Ball, which is my little Roman-nose black girl, that is mighty pretty; she is usually called Betty. Knipp made us stay in the box, and see the dancing preparatory to to-morrow for the 'Goblins,' a play of Suckling's, not acted these twenty years; which was pretty.

"5th (February, 1666-7). To the King's house to see 'The Chances' (Beaumont and Fletcher's). A good play I find it, and the actors most good in it. And pretty to hear Knipp sing in the play very properly, 'All night I weepe;' and sung it admirably. The whole play pleases me well: and most of all, the sight of many fine ladies; among others, my lady Castlemaine and Mrs. Middleton: the latter of the two hath also a very excellent face and body, I think. And so home in the dark over the ruins with a link. [The ruins are those of the city, occasioned by the fire. Mr. Pepys lived in Creed Lane, where the Navy Office then was, in which he had an appointment.]

"18th (February, 1666-7). To the King's house, to 'The Mayd's Tragedy' (Beaumont and Fletcher's); but vexed all the while with two talking ladies and Sir Charles Sedley; yet pleased to hear the discourse, he being a stranger. And one of the ladies would and did sit with her mask on all the play, and being exceedingly witty as ever I heard a woman, did talk most pleasantly with him; but was, I believe, a virtuous woman and of quality. He would fain know who she was, but she would not tell; yet did give him many pleasant hints of her knowledge of him, by that means setting his brains at work to find out who she was, and did give him leave to use all means to find out who she was, but pulling off her mask. He was mighty witty, and she also making sport with him mighty inoffensively, that more pleasant rencontre I never heard. But by that means lost the pleasure of the play wholly, to which now and then Sir Charles Sedley's exceptions against both words and pronouncing were very pretty. [This is the famous wit and man of pleasure. We have him before us, as if we were present, together with a curious specimen of the manners of these times. The pit, though subject to violent scuffles, greatly occasioned by the wearing of swords, seems to have contained as good company as the opera pit does now.]

"2nd (March, 1666-7). After dinner with my wife to the King's house, to see 'The Mayden Queen,' a new play of Dryden's, mighty commended for the regularity of it, and the strain and wit: and the truth is, there is a comical part, played by Nell, which is Florimell, that I never can hope to see the like done again by man or woman. The King and Duke of York were at the play. But so great performance of a comical part was never, I believe, in the world before as Nell do this, both as a mad girl, then most and best of all when she comes in like a young gallante; and hath the motions and carriage of a spark the most that ever I saw any man have. It makes me, I confess, admire her.

"25th (March, 1666-7). To the King's playhouse, and by and by comes Mr. Lowther and his wife and mine, and into a box, forsooth, neither of them being dressed, which I was almost ashamed of. Sir W. Pen and I in the pit, and here saw the 'Mayden Queen' again; which, indeed, the more I see the more I like, and is an excellent play, and so done by Nell her merry part, as cannot be better done in nature.

"9th (April, 1667). To the King's house, and there saw the 'Taming of the Shrew,' which hath some very good pieces in it, but generally is but a mean play; and the best part 'Sawny,' done by Lacy; and hath not half its life, by reason of the words, I suppose, not being understood, at least by me. [This was one of the rifacimentos of Shakspeare, by which he was to be rendered palatable.]

"15th (April, 1667). To the King's house, by chance, where a new play: so full as I never saw it; I forced to stand all the while close to the very door till I took cold, and many people went away for want of room. The King and Queene and Duke of York and Duchesse there, and all the court, and Sir W. Coventry. The play called 'The Change of Crownes;' a play of Ned Howard's, the best that I ever saw at that house, being a great play and serious; only Lacy did act the country gentleman come up to court with all the imaginable wit and plainness about the selling of places, and doing everything for money. The play took very much.

"16th (April, 1667). Knipp tells me the King was so angry at the liberty taken by Lacy's part to abuse him to his face, that he commanded they should act no more, till Moone (Mohun) went and got leave for them to act again, but not in this play. The King mighty angry; and it was bitter indeed, but very fine and witty. I never was more taken with a play than I am with this 'Silent Woman' (Ben Johnson's) as old as it is, and as often as I have seen it. [Ned Howard, the author of 'The Change of Crownes,' was one of the sons of the Earl of Berkshire, and though of a family who helped to bring in the King, was probably connected with the Presbyterians, and disgusted, like many of the royalists on that side, by the disappointments they had experienced in church and state. Dryden, who married one of his sisters, was of a Presbyterian stock. Ned, however, who afterwards became the butt of the wits, was not very nice, and might have 'committed himself,' as the modern phrase is, in his mode of conducting his satire].

"20th (April, 1667). Met Mr. Rolt, who tells me the reason of no play to-day at the King's house—that Lacy had been committed to the porter's lodge, for his acting his part in the late new play; and being thence released to come to the King's house, he there met with Ned Howard, the poet of the play, who congratulated his release; upon which Lacy cursed him, as that it was the fault of his nonsensical play that was the cause of his ill-usage. Mr. Howard did give him some reply, to which Lacy answered him that he was more a fool than a poet; upon which Howard did give him a blow on the face with his glove; on which Lacy, having a cane in his hand, did give him a blow over the pate. Here Rolt and others, that discoursed of it in the pit, did wonder that Howard did not run him through, he being too mean a fellow to fight with. But Howard did not do anything but complain to the King; so the whole house is silenced: and the gentry seem to rejoice much at it, the house being become too insolent.

"1st (May, 1667). Thence away to the King's playhouse, and saw 'Love in a Maze:' but a sorry play; only Lacy's clown's part, which he did most admirably indeed; and I am glad to find the rogue at liberty again. Here was but little, and that ordinary company. We sat at the upper bench, next the boxes; and I find it do pretty well, and have the advantage of seeing and hearing the great people, which may be pleasant when there is good store.

"15th (August, 1667). And so we went to the King's house, and there saw 'The Merry Wives of Windsor;' which did not please me at all, in no part of it.

"17th (August, 1667). To the King's playhouse, where the house extraordinary full; and there the King and Duke of York to see the new play, 'Queene Elizabeth's Troubles, and the History of Eighty-eight.' I confess I have sucked in so much of the sad story of Queene Elizabeth from my cradle, that I was ready to weep for her sometimes; but the play is the most ridiculous that sure ever came upon stage, and, indeed, is merely a show, only shows the true garb of the Queene in those days, just as we see Queene Mary and Queene Elizabeth painted; but the play is merely a puppet play, acted by living puppets. Neither the design nor language better; and one stands by and tells us the meaning of things: only I was pleased to see Knipp dance among the milkmaids, and to hear her sing a song to Queene Elizabeth, and to see her come out in her nighte-gown with no lockes on, but her bare face, and hair only tied up in a knot behind; which is the comeliest dress that ever I saw her in to her advantage.

"22nd (August, 1667). With my lord Brouncker and his mistress to the King's playhouse, and there saw 'The Indian Emperour;' where I find Nell come again, which I am glad of; but was most infinitely displeased with her being put to act the Emperour's daughter, which is a great and serious part, which she does most basely.

"14th (September, 1667). To the King's playhouse, to see 'The Northerne Castle, (quære Lasse, by Richard Brome?) which I think I never did see before. Knipp acted in it, and did her part very extraordinary well; but the play is but a mean sorry play.

"——, my wife, and Mercer, and I, away to the King's playhouse, to see 'The Scornful Lady' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), but it being now three o'clock, there was not one soul in the pit; whereupon, for shame, we could not go in; but against our wills, went all to see 'Tu Quoque' again (by John Cooke), where there was pretty store of company. Here we saw Madame Morland, who is grown mighty fat, but is very comely. Thence to the King's house, upon a wager of mine with my wife, that there would be no acting there to-day, there being no company: so I went in and found a pretty good company there, and saw their dance at the end of the play. [There is a confusion in the memorandum under this date.]

"20th (September, 1667). By coach to the King's playhouse, and there saw 'The Mad Couple' (by Richard Brome), my wife having been at the same play with Jane in the 18d. seat.

"25th (September, 1667). I to the King's playhouse, my eyes being so bad since last night's straining of them, that I am hardly able to see, besides the pain that I have in them. The play was a new play; and infinitely full; the King and all the court almost there. It is 'The Storme,' a play of Fletcher's; which is but so-so, methinks; only there is a most admirable dance at the end, of the ladies, in a military manner, which indeed did please me mightily.

"5th (October 1667.) To the King's house; and there going in met with Knipp, and she took us up into the tireing-rooms; and to the women's shift, where Nell was dressing herself, and was all unready, and is very pretty, prettier than I thought. And into the scene-room, and there sat down, and she gave us fruit; and here I read the questions to Knipp, while she answered me, through all her part of 'Flora's Figarys,' which was acted to-day. But, lord! to see how they were both painted, would make a man mad, and did make me loath them, and what base company of men comes among them, and how lewdly they talk. And how poor the men are in clothes, and yet what a show they make on the stage by candle-light, is very observable. But to see how Nell cursed, for having so few people in the pit, was strange; the other house carrying away all the people at the new play, and is said now-a-days to have generally most company, as having better players. By and by into the pit, and there saw the play, which is pretty good.

"19th (October 1667). Full of my desire of seeing my Lord Orrery's new play this afternoon at the King's house, 'The Black Prince,' the first time it is acted; where, though we came by two o'clock, yet there was no room in the pit, but were forced to go into one of the upper boxes at 4s. a piece, which is the first time I ever sat in a box in my life. And in the same box came by and by, behind me, my Lord Barkely and his lady; but I did not turn my face to them to be known, so that I was excused from giving them my seat. And this pleasure I had, that from this place the scenes do appear very fine indeed, and much better than in the pit. The house infinite full, and the King and Duke of York there. The whole house was mightily pleased all along till the reading of a letter, which was so long and so unnecessary, that they frequently began to laugh, and to hiss twenty times, that had it not been for the King's being there, they had certainly hissed it off the stage.

"23d (October 1667). To the King's playhouse, and saw 'The Black Prince;' which is now mightily bettered by that long letter being printed, and so delivered to everybody at their going in, and some short reference made to it in the play. [This is in the style of what Buckingham called "insinuating the plot into the boxes.">[

"1st (November 1667). To the King's playhouse, and there saw a silly play and an old one, 'The Taming of the Shrew.'

"2d (November 1667). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 'Henry the Fourth;' and, contrary to expectation, was pleased in nothing more than in Cartwright's speaking of Falstaffe's speech about 'What is honour?' The house full of parliament-men, it being holyday with them: and it was observable how a gentleman of good habit sitting just before us, eating of some fruit in the midst of play, did drop down as dead, being choked; but with much ado Orange Moll did thrust her finger down his throat, and brought him to life again.

"26th (December 1667). With my wife to the King's playhouse, and there saw 'The Surprizall' by Sir Robert Howard, brother of Ned; which did not please me to-day, the actors not pleasing me; and especially Nell's acting of a serious part which she spoils.

"28th (December 1667). To the King's house, and there saw 'The Mad Couple,' which is but an ordinary play; but only Nell's and Hart's mad parts are most excellent done, but especially hers: which makes it a miracle to me to think how ill she do any serious part, as, the other day, just like a fool or changeling; and, in a mad part, do beyond all imitation almost. It pleased us mightily to see the natural affection of a poor woman, the mother of one of the children brought on the stage; the child crying, she by force got upon the stage, and took up her child, and carried it away off the stage from Hart. Many fine faces here to-day.

"7th (January 1667-8). To the Nursery [qy. in Barbican, for children performers?], but the house did not act to-day; and so I to the other two playhouses, into the pit to gaze up and down, and there did, by this means, for nothing, see an act in 'The Schoole of Compliments' at the Duke of York's house, and 'Henry the Fourth' at the King's house; but not liking either of the plays, I took my coach again, and home. [It would here seem, that a man who did not choose to pay for a seat, might witness a play for nothing.]

"11th (January 1667-8). To the King's house, to see 'The Wild-Goose Chase' (Beaumont and Fletcher's). In this play I met with nothing extraordinary at all, but very dull inventions and designs. Knipp came and sat by us, and her talk pleased me a little, she telling me how Miss Davies is for certain going away from the Duke's house, the King being in love with her; and a house is taken for her, and furnishing; and she hath a ring given her already worth 600l.: that the King did send several times for Nelly, and she was with him; and I am sorry for it, and can hope for no good to the state from having a prince so devoted to his pleasure. She told me also of a play shortly coming upon the stage, of Sir Charles Sedley's, which, she thinks, will be called 'The Wandering Lady's,' a comedy that she thinks will be most pleasant; and also another play called 'The Duke of Lorane;' besides 'Cataline,' which she thinks, for want of the clothes which the King promised them, will not be acted for a good while.

"20th (February 1667-8). Dined, and by one o'clock to the King's house; a new play, 'The Duke of Lerma,' of Sir Robert Howard's, where the King and court was; and Knipp and Nell spoke the prologue most excellently, especially Knipp, who spoke beyond any creature I ever heard. The play designed to reproach our King with his mistresses, that I was troubled for it, and expected it should be interrupted; but it ended all well; which salved me.

"27th (February 1667-8.) With my wife to the King's house, to see 'The Virgin Martyr' by (Massinger), the first time it hath been acted a great while: and it is mighty pleasant; not that the play is worth much, but it is finely acted by Beck Marshall. But that which did please me beyond anything in the world, was the wind-musique when the angel comes down; which is so sweet that it ravished me, and, indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it made me really sick, just as I have formerly been when in love with my wife; that neither then, nor all the evening going home, and at home, I was able to think of anything, but remained all night transported, so as I could not believe that ever any musique hath that real command over the soul of a man, as this did upon me; and makes me resolve to practise wind-musique, and to make my wife do the like. [Pepys's use of the word "sick," and his resolution to make his wife practise the hautboy, are very ludicrous. His love of music, however, is genuine. He was an amateur composer. On the 23d Feb. 1666, he has the following memorandum: "Comes Mrs. Knipp to see my wife, and I spent all the night talking with this baggage, and teaching her my song of 'Beauty retire,' which she sings and makes go most rarely, and a very fine song it seems to be.">[

"6th (March 1667-8.) After dinner to the King's house, and there saw part of the 'Discontented Colonell' (Sir John Suckling's 'Brennoralt').

"7th (April 1668). To the King's house, and there saw 'The English Monsieur,' (sitting for privacy sake in an upper box): the play hath much mirth in it, as to that particular humour. After the play done, I down to Knipp, and did stay her undressing herself; and there saw the several players, men and women, go by; and pretty to see how strange they are all, one to another, after the play is done. Here I hear Sir W. Davenant is just now dead, and so, who will succeed him in the mastership of the house is not yet known. The eldest Davenport is, it seems, gone from this house to be kept by somebody; which I am glad of, she being a very bad actor. Mrs. Knipp tells me that my Lady Castlemaine is mighty in love with Hart of their house, and he is much with her in private, and she goes to him and do give him many presents; and that the thing is most certain, and Beck Marshall only privy to it, and the means of bringing them together: which is a very odd thing; and by this means she is even with the King's love to Mrs. Davies.

"28th (April 1668). To the King's house, and there did see 'Love in a Maze,' (the author is not mentioned in Baker); wherein very good mirth of Lacy the clown, and Wintershell, the country-knight, his master.

"1st (May 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw the 'Surprizall;' and a disorder in the pit by its raining in from the cupola at top.

"7th (May 1668). To the King's house; where going in for Knipp, the play being done, I did see Beck Marshall come dressed off of the stage, and look mighty fine, and pretty and noble; and also Nell in her boy's clothes mighty pretty. But lord! their confidence, and how many men do hover about them as soon as they come off the stage, and how confident they are in their talk. Here was also Haynes, the incomparable dancer of the King's house.

"16th (May 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw the best part of 'The Sea Voyage' (Beaumont and Fletcher), where Knipp did her part of sorrow very well.

"18th (May 1668). It being almost twelve o'clock, or little more, to the King's playhouse, where the doors were not then open; but presently they did open, and we in, and find many people already come in by private ways into the pit, it being the first day of Sir Charles Sedley's new play so long expected 'The Mulberry Garden,' of whom, being so reputed a wit, all the world do expect great matters. I having sat here a while and eat nothing to-day, did slip out, getting a boy to keep my place; and to the Rose Tavern (Will's, in Russell Street), and there got half a breast of mutton off the spit, and dined all alone. And so to the playhouse again, where the King and Queene by and by come, and all the court, and the house infinitely full. But the play, when it come, though there was here and there a pretty saying, and that not very many neither, yet the whole of the play had nothing extraordinary in it at all, neither of language nor design; insomuch that the King I did not see laugh nor pleased from the beginning to the end, nor the company; insomuch that I have not been less pleased at a new play in my life, I think.

"30th (May 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 'Philaster;' where it is pretty to see how I could remember almost all along, ever since I was a boy, Arethusa, the part which I was to have acted at Sir Robert Cooke's; and it was very pleasant to me, but more to think what a ridiculous thing it would have been for me to have acted a beautiful woman.

"22nd (June 1668). To the King's playhouse, and saw an act or two of the new play, 'Evening Love' again (Dryden's) but like it not.

"11th (July 1668). To the King's playhouse, to see an old play of Shirley's, called 'Hyde Parke,' the first day acted; where horses are brought upon the stage; but it is but a very moderate play, only an excellent epilogue spoken by Beck Marshall.

"31st (July 1668). To the King's house, to see the first day of Lacy's 'Monsieur Ragou,' now new acted. The King and court all there, and mighty merry: a farce.

"15th (September 1668). To the King's playhouse to see a new play, acted but yesterday, a translation out of French by Dryden, called 'The Ladys à la Mode' [probably the Precieuses, but not translated by Dryden]: so mean a thing as when they came to say it would be acted again to-morrow, both he that said it (Beeston) and the pit fell a-laughing.

"19th (September 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw the 'Silent Woman;' the best comedy, I think, that ever was wrote: and sitting by Shadwell the poet, he was big with admiration of it. Here was my Lord Brouncker and W. Pen and their ladies in the box, being grown mighty kind of a sudden; but, God knows, it will last but a little while, I dare swear. Knipp did her part mighty well.

"28th (September 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 'The City Match' (by Jasper Maine), not acted these thirty years, and but a silly play; the King and court there; the house, for the women's sake, mighty full.

"14th (October 1668). To the King's playhouse, and there saw 'The Faithful Shepherdess' (Fletcher's), that I might hear the French eunuch sing; which I did to my great content; though I do admire his actions as much as his acting, being both beyond all I ever saw or heard.

"2nd (December 1678). So she (Mrs. Pepys) and I to the King's playhouse, and there saw 'The Usurper;' a pretty good play in all but what is designed to resemble Cromwell and Hugh Peters, which is mighty silly. [The Usurper was by Ned Howard, who seems to have wished to show how impartial he could be.]

"19th (December 1678). My wife and I by hackney to the King's playhouse, and there, the pit being full, sat in the box above, and saw 'Cataline's Conspiracy' (Ben Jonson's), yesterday being the first day: a play of much good sense and words to read, but that do appear the worst upon the stage, I mean the least diverting, that ever I saw any, though most fine in clothes; and a fine scene of the senate and of a fight as ever I saw in my life. We sat next to Betty Hall, that did belong to this house, and was Sir Philip Howard's mistress; a mighty pretty wench.

"7th (January 1668-9). My wife and I to the King's playhouse, and there saw 'The Island Princesse' (Beaumont and Fletcher's), the first time I ever saw it; and it is a pretty good play, many good things being in it, and a good scene of a town on fire. We sat in an upper box, and the merry Jade Nell came in and sat in the next box; a bold slut, who lay laughing there upon people, and with a comrade of hers, of the Duke's house, that came to see the play.

"11th (January 1668-9). Abroad with my wife to the King's playhouse, and there saw 'The Joviall Crew' (by Richard Brome), ill acted to what it was in Clun's time, and when Lacy could dance.

"19th (January 1668-9). To the King's house to see 'Horace' (translated from Corneille by Charles Cotton); this is the third day of its acting; a silly tragedy; but Lacy hath made a farce of several dances—between each act one; but his words are but silly, and invention not extraordinary as to the dances. [Pepys adds, with seeming approbation, an instance of satire on the Dutch, too gross to extract, and highly disgraceful to that age of "fine ladies and gentlemen.">[

"2nd (February 1668-9). To dinner at noon, where I find Mr. Sheres; and there made a short dinner, and carried him with us to the King's playhouse, where 'The Heyresse,' notwithstanding Kynaston's being beaten, is acted; and they say the King is very angry with Sir Charles Sedley for his being beaten, but he do deny it. But his part is done by Beeston, who is fain to read it out of a book all the while, and thereby spoils the part, and almost the play, it being one of the best parts in it: and though the design is, in the first conception of it, pretty good, yet it is but an indifferent play; wrote, they say, by my Lord Newcastle. But it was pleasant to see Beeston come in with others, supposing it to be dark, and yet forced to read his part by the light of the candles; and this I observing to a gentleman, that sat by me, he was mightily pleased therewith and spread it up and down. But that that pleased me most in the play, is the first song that Knipp sings (she sings three or four); and indeed it was very finely sung, so as to make the whole house clap her.

"6th (February 1668-9). To the King's playhouse, and there in an upper box (where come in Colonel Poynton and Doll Stacey, who is very fine, and by her wedding-ring I suppose he hath married her at last), did see the 'Moor of Venice:' but ill acted in most parts. Moon (which did a little surprise me) not acting Iago's part by much so well as Clun used to do: nor another Hart's, which was Cassio's; nor indeed Burt doing the Moor's so well as I once thought he did.

"9th (February 1668-9). To the King's playhouse, and there saw the 'Island Princesse,' which I like mighty well as an excellent play; and here we find Kynaston to be well enough to act again; which he do very well, after his beating by Sir Charles Sedley's appointment. [Kynaston is generally supposed to have been taken for Sedley, and beaten for some offence of the baronet's. He affected to be Sedley's double.]

"26th (February 1668-9). To the King's playhouse, and saw the 'Faithful Shepherdesse.' But, lord! what an empty house, there not being, as I could see the people, so many as to make up above 10l. in the whole house! But I plainly discern the musick is the better, by how much the house the emptier." [The same thing was said by the great Handel, to console himself once, when he found a spare audience.]

Of the performers mentioned in this curious theatrical gossip, one of them, Hart, had been a captain in the civil wars; another, Mohun, a major; and there was a third a quarter-master; all on the royal side. Hart and Mohun were old actors, when Betterton was young; and they lived to see him reckoned superior to either. The two were accustomed to act together, Hart generally in the superior character, as Brutus to the other's Cassius; and both, like Betterton, acted in comedy as well as tragedy. They performed, for instance, Manly and Horner in 'The Country Wife,' and there appears to have been less distinction in their styles of acting than is customary. If Hart shone in the Dorimant of 'Sir Fopling Flutter,' Mohun was highly applauded in Davenant's Valentine, in 'Wit without Money.' Mohun, however, appears to have excelled in the more ferocious parts of tragedy, as Catiline; and Hart in the mixture of gaity with boldness, as in Hotspur and Alexander. His Alexander was particularly famous. Upon the whole, we should conclude, Mohun's to have the more artificial acting of the two, more like "the actor," in Partridge's sense of the word, but very fine nevertheless, otherwise Rochester would hardly have admired him, as he is said to have done; unless, indeed, it was out of spite to some other actor; for he was much influenced by feelings of that kind. Perhaps, however, it was out of some chance predilection, The Duke of Buckingham is said to have preferred Ben Jonson to Shakspeare, for no other reason than his having been introduced to him when a boy. The best compliment ever known to have been paid to Hart, is an anecdote recorded of Betterton. Betterton acted Alexander after Hart's time; and "being at a loss," says Davies, "to recover a particular emphasis of that performer, which gave a force to some interesting situation of the part, he applied for information to the players who stood near him. At last, one of the lowest of the company repeated the line exactly in Hart's key. Betterton thanked him heartily, and put a piece of money into his hand, as a reward for so acceptable a service."[253] Hart had the reputation of being the first lover of Nell Gwyn, and one of the hundreds of the Duchess of Cleveland.

Goodman was another of the favoured many. He was one of the Alexanders of his time, but does not appear to have been a great actor. He was a dashing impudent fellow, who boasted of his having taken "an airing" on the road to recruit his purse. He was expelled from Cambridge for cutting and defacing the portrait of the Duke of Monmouth, Chancellor of the University, but not loyal enough to his father to please Goodman. James II. pardoned the loyal highwayman, which Goodman (in Cibber's hearing) said "was doing him so particular an honour, that no man could wonder if his acknowledgement had carried him a little further than ordinary into the interest of that prince. But as he had lately been out of luck in backing his old master, he had now no way to get home the life he was out, upon his account, but by being under the same obligations to King William."[254] The meaning of this is understood to be, that Goodman offered to assassinate William, in consequence of his having had a pardon from James; but the plot not succeeding, he turned king's evidence against James, in order to secure a pardon from William. This "pretty fellow" was latterly so easy in his circumstances, owing, it is supposed, to the delicate Cleveland, that he used to say he would never act Alexander the Great, but when he was certain that "his duchess" would be in the boxes to see him.

The stage in that day was certainly not behind-hand with the court; and as it had less conventional respectability in the eyes of the world, its private character was never so low. But we must do justice and not confound even the disreputable. Poor Nell Gwynn, in a quarrel with one of the Marshalls, who reproached her with being the mistress of Lord Buckhurst, said she was mistress but of one man at a time, though she had been brought up in a bad house "to fill strong waters to the gentlemen;" whereas her rebuker, though a clergyman's daughter, was the mistress of three. This celebrated actress, who was as excellent in certain giddy parts of comedy as she was inferior in tragedy, was small of person, but very pretty, with a good-humoured face, and eyes that winked when she laughed. She is the ancestress of the ducal family of St. Albans, who are thought to have retained more of the look and complexion of Charles II. than any other of his descendants. Beauclerc, Johnson's friend, was like him; and the black complexion is still in vigour. The King recommended her to his brother with his last breath, begging him "not to let poor Nelly starve." Burnet says she was introduced to the King by Buckingham, to supplant the Duchess of Cleveland; but others tell us, he first noticed her in consequence of a hat of the circumference of a coach-wheel, in which Dryden made her deliver a prologue, as a set-off to an enormous hat of Pistol's at the other house, and which convulsed the spectators with laughter. If Nelly retained a habit of swearing, which was probably taught her when a child (and it is clear enough from Pepys that she did), the poets did not discourage her. One of her epilogues by Dryden began in the following startling manner. It is entitled "An Epilogue spoken by Mrs. Ellen, when she was to be carried off dead by the Bearers."

"Hold, are you mad, you damn'd confounded dog?

I am to rise and speak the epilogue."

The poet makes her say of herself, in the course of the lines, that she was "a harmless little devil," and that she was slatternly in her dress. Lely painted her with a lamb under her arm. Mr. Pegge discovered that Charles made her a lady of the chamber to his queen. Pennant seems to think this was only a title; but it is plain from Evelyn's Memoirs that she had apartments in Whitehall.[255] She died a few years after the King, at her house in Pall Mall. Nell was much libelled in her time, and among others by Sir George Etherege;[256] very likely out of some personal pique or rejection, for such revenges were quite compatible with the "loves" of that age.[257] But she was a general favourite, nevertheless, owing to a natural good-heartedness which no course of life could overcome. Burnet's character of her is well known. "Guin," says he, "the indiscreetest and wildest creature that ever was in a court, continued, to the end of that king's life, in great favour and was maintained at a vast expense. The Duke of Buckingham told me that when she was first brought to the King, she asked only five hundred pounds a year; and the King refused it. But when he told me this, about four years after, he said, she had got of the King above sixty thousand pounds. She acted all persons in so lively a manner, and was such a constant diversion to the King, that even a new mistress could not drive her away. But after all he never treated her with the decencies of a mistress."[258] Nell Gwynn is said to have suggested to her royal lover the building of Chelsea Hospital, and to have made him a present of the ground for it.

Upon the whole the dramatic taste during the greater part of Charles's reign was false and artificial, particularly in tragedy. Etherege produced one good comedy, the precursor of Wycherly and Congreve; but Dryden, the reigning favourite, was not as great in dramatic as he was in other writing; his heroic plays, and Lee's "Alexander," were admired, not so much for the beauties mixed with their absurdity, as for the improbable air they gave to a serious passion; and the favourite plays of deceased authors were those of the most equivocal writers of the time of James, not the pure and profound nature of Shakspeare and his fellows. Otway flourished, but was not thought so great as he is now; and even in Otway there is a hot bullying smack of the tavern, very different from the voluptuousness in Shakspeare. Towards the close of this reign comedy came to its height with Wycherly, who, almost as profligate in point of dialogue as any of his contemporaries, nevertheless hit the right vein of satire. Wycherly lived at the other end of Russell Street, in Bow Street, where we shall see him shortly.

We are now come to the time of Congreve, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and others; Betterton remaining. Of these individually we have spoken before; and therefore shall only observe that by the more serious examples of James II. and King William, the manners of the day were reforming, and those of the stage with them. We now find ourselves among audiences more composed, and witness plays less coarse, though with an abundance of double meaning and exuberantly witty. Coquetry and fashion are now the reigning stage goddesses, as mere wantonness was that of the age preceding.

Farquhar and Vanbrugh succeeded, together with Cibber, Wilkes, Booth, and latterly Steele and Mrs. Oldfield. Vanbrugh does not belong to Drury Lane, but Farquhar does, with the rest; and a lively place he made of it. He is Captain Farquhar, has a plume in his hat, and prodigious animal spirits, with invention at will, and great good nature. Captains abounded among the wits and adventurers of those days down to Captains Macheath and Gibbet. Vanbrugh was a captain; Steele at one time was Captain Steele; and Mrs. Oldfield's father, though the son of a vinter, became Captain Oldfield, and genteelly ran out an estate. This is still the age of genuine comedy, and the stage is worthy of it. The tragedy was proportionably bad. Booth, indeed, was a good tragic actor, but he suited the age in being declamatory. He was the hero of Addison's Cato, once the favourite tragedy of the critics, now of nobody.

Rowe was another artificial writer of tragedy, but not without a vein of feeling. It seems to have been thought in those times, as we may see by these authors, and by the tragedies of Banks and Lillo, that to be natural, an author was to be prosaical; while, if he had any pretensions to be poetical, it was his business to—

"—— wake the soul by tender strokes of art."

The gradual approach, also, of this period to our own times, which are more critical in costume, and the pictures left to us of favourite performers in Hamlet and Hermione, dressed in wigs and hoop petticoats, render those outrages upon propriety still stranger to one's imagination. They set tragedy in a mock-heroical light. Cato wore a long peruke; Alexander the Great a wig and jack-boots; and it was customary, down to Garrick's time, to dress Macbeth and other tragic general-officers in a suit of brick-dust. "Booth enters," says Pope:—

—— "Hark, the universal peal!

But has he spoken? Not a syllable.

What shook the stage and made the people stare?

Cato's long wig, flowered gown, and lackered chair."

The stare was not that of ridicule, but of admiration. All this makes the comedy of that period shine out the more as the only truth extant. Cherry, and Archer, and Sir Harry Wildair, and Sir John Brute, and my Lady Betty Modish, were like the age, and like the performers.

To return to these. Wilks was the fine gentleman of that period. He was a friend of Farquhar's, and came to London with him from Dublin. Cibber, though he wrote a good comedy, would appear, by some accounts of him, to have been little more on the stage than a mimic of past actors. Steele, however, has a criticism on him and Wilks, in which he speaks of them both as perfect actors in their kinds.

"Wilks," he tells us, "has a singular talent in representing the graces of nature; Cibber the deformity in the affectation of them. Were I a writer of plays, I should never employ either of them in parts which had not their bents this way. This is seen in the inimitable strain and run of good humour which is kept up in the character of Wildair, and in the nice and delicate abuse of understanding in that of Sir Novelty. Cibber, in another light, hits exquisitely the flat civility of an affected gentleman usher, and Wilks the easy frankness of a gentleman.... To beseech gracefully, to approach respectfully, to pity, to mourn, to love, are the places wherein Wilks may be made to shine with the utmost beauty. To rally pleasantly, to scorn artfully, to flatter, to ridicule, and to neglect, are what Cibber would perform with no less excellence."[259]

This criticism produced a letter to Steele from two inferior actors of that time, Bullock and Penkethman, who, rather than not be noticed at all, were willing to be bantered. They knew it would be done good-naturedly. Accordingly the "Tatler" says,

"For the information of posterity I shall comply with this letter, and set these two great men in such a light as Sallust has placed his Cato and Cæsar. Mr. William Bullock and Mr. William Penkethman are of the same age, profession, and sex. They both distinguish themselves in a very particular manner under the discipline of the crab tree, with this only difference, that Mr. Bullock has the more agreeable squall, and Mr. Penkethman the more graceful shrug. Penkethman devours cold chick with great applause; Bullock's talent lies chiefly in asparagus. Penkethman is very dexterous at conveying himself under a table; Bullock is no less active at jumping over a stick. Mr. Penkethman has a great deal of money; but Mr. Bullock is the taller man."[260]

Off the stage, and behind the scenes, Cibber performed the part of a coxcomb of the first order. We shall not be properly acquainted with Drury Lane at this period if we do not repeat his story of the wig.

This was a peruke of his, famous in the part of Sir Fopling Flutter. It was so much admired, that Cibber used to have it brought upon the stage in a sedan, and put it on publicly, to the great content of the beholders. A set of curls so applauded was the next thing to a toast; and accordingly Colonel, then Mr. Brett, whom the toasts admired, could not rest till he had taken possession of it.

"The first view," says Colley, "that fires the head of a young gentleman of this modish ambition, just broke loose from business, is to cut a figure (as they call it) in a side box at the play, from whence their next step is to the green-room behind the scenes, sometimes their non ultra. Hither at last, then, in this hopeful quest of his fortune, came this gentleman-errant, not doubting but the fickle dame, while he was thus qualified to receive her, might be tempted to fall into his lap. And though, possibly, the charms of our theatrical nymphs might have their share in drawing him thither; yet, in my observation, the most visible cause of his first coming was a more sincere passion he had conceived for a fair full-bottomed periwig, which I then wore in my first play of the 'Fool in Fashion,' in the year 1695. For it is to be noted that the beaux of those days were of a quite different cast to the modern stamp, and had more of the stateliness of the peacock in their mien, than (which now seems to be their highest emulation) the pert of a lapwing. Now, whatever contempt philosophers may have for a fine periwig, my friend, who was not to despise the world, but to live in it, knew very well, that so material an article of dress upon the head of a man of sense, if it became him, could never fail of drawing to him a more partial regard and benevolence than could possibly be hoped for in an ill-made one. This, perhaps, may soften the grave censure which so youthful a purchase might otherwise have laid upon him. In a word, he made his attack upon this periwig, as your young fellows generally do for a lady of pleasure; first, by a few familiar praises of her person, and then a civil inquiry into the price of it. But on his observing me a little surprised at the levity of his question about a fop's periwig, he began to rally himself with so much wit and humour upon the folly of his fondness for it, that he struck me with an equal desire of granting anything in my power to oblige so facetious a customer. This singular beginning of our conversation, and the mutual laughs that ensued upon it, ended in an agreement to finish our bargain that night over a bottle."[261]

Colonel Brett, being a man of "bonnes fortunes," married Savage's mother!

Mrs. Oldfield made such an impression in her day, and has been noticed by so many writers, that she must have a passage to herself. She was the daughter of Captain Oldfield above-mentioned, and went to live with her aunt, who kept the Mitre tavern in St. James's Market. Here, we are told, Captain Farquhar, overhearing Miss Nancy read a play behind the bar, was so struck "with the proper emphasis and agreeable turn she gave to each character, that he swore the girl was cut out for the stage." As she had always expressed an inclination for that way of life, and a desire of trying her fortune in it, her mother, on this encouragement, the next time she saw Captain Vanbrugh (afterwards Sir John), who had a great respect for the family, acquainted him with Captain Farquhar's opinion, on which he desired to know whether her bent was most tragedy or comedy. Miss, being called in, informed him that her principal inclination was to the latter, having at that time gone through all Beaumont and Fletcher's comedies; and the play she was reading when Captain Farquhar dined there having been 'The Scornful Lady.' Captain Vanbrugh, shortly after, recommended her to Mr. Christopher Rich, who took her into the house at the allowance of fifteen shillings per week. However, her agreeable figure and sweetness of voice soon gave her the preference, in the opinion of the whole town, to all the young actresses of that time; and the Duke of Bedford, in particular, being pleased to speak to Mr. Rich in her favour, he instantly raised her to twenty shillings per week. After which her fame and salary gradually increased, till at length they both attained that height which her merit entitled her to.[262]

The new actress had a silver voice, a beautiful face and person, great good-nature, sprightliness, and grace, and became the fine lady of the stage in the most agreeable sense of the word. She also acted heroines of the sentimental order, and had an original part in every play of Steele. But she was particularly famous in the part of Lady Betty Modish, in "The Careless Husband." The name explains the character. Cibber tells us that he drew many of the strokes in it from her lively manner.

"Had her birth," he says, "placed her in a higher rank of life, she had certainly appeared in reality what in this play she only excellently acted, an agreeable gay woman of quality, a little too conscious of her natural attractions. I have often seen her in private societies, where women of the best rank might have borrowed some part of their behaviour, without the least diminution of their sense or dignity. And this very morning, where I am now writing, at the Bath, November 11th, 1738, the same words were said of her by a lady of condition, whose better judgment of her personal merit in that light has emboldened me to repeat them. After her success in this character of higher life, all that nature had given her of the actress seemed to have risen to its full perfection: but the variety of her power could not be known till she was seen in a variety of characters, which, as fast as they fell to her, she equally excelled in. Authors had much more from her performance than they had reason to hope for, from what they had written for her; and none had less than another, but as their genius, in the parts they allotted her, was more or less elevated.

"In the wearing of her person she was particularly fortunate; her figure was always improving to her thirty-sixth year; but her excellence in acting was never at a stand; and the last new character she shone in (Lady Townly) was a proof that she was still able to do more, if more could have been done for her. She had one mark of good sense, rarely known in any actor of either sex but herself. I have observed several, with promising dispositions, very desirous of instruction at their first setting out; but no sooner had they found their best account in it, than they were as desirous of being left to their own capacity, which they then thought would be disgraced by their seeming to want any farther assistance. But this was not Mrs. Oldfield's way of thinking; for to the last year of her life she never undertook any part she liked, without being importunately desirous of having all the helps in it that another could possibly give her. By knowing so much herself, she found how much more there was of nature yet needful to be known.

"Yet it was a hard matter to give her any hint, that she was not able to take or improve. With all this merit, she was tractable, and less presuming in her station than several that had not half her pretensions to be troublesome. But she lost nothing by her easy conduct; she had everything she asked, which she took care should be always reasonable, because she hated as much to be grudged as denied a civility. Upon her extraordinary action in the 'Provoked Husband,' the managers made her a present of fifty guineas more than her agreement, which never was more than a verbal one; for they knew she was above deserting them to engage upon any other stage, and she was conscious they would never think it their interest to give her cause of complaint. In the last two months of her illness, when she was no longer able to assist them, she declined receiving her salary, though by her agreement she was entitled to it. Upon the whole she was, to the last scene she acted, the delight of her spectators."[263]

This charming actress (Mrs. Oldfield) is said to have been the Flavia of "The Tatler" (No. 212). The catch-penny writer of her memoirs equivocally speaks of it as her "vera effigies," and on his authority the assertion has been repeated. But as a Flavia mentioned in the same work (No. 239) turns out to be Miss Osborne, afterwards the wife of Bishop Atterbury (upon whom he wrote the lines on a fan there inserted, beginning

"Flavia the least and slightest toy

Can with resistless art employ,")

and as the first Flavia is praised for her quality and the extreme simplicity of her manners (which, according to Cibber, was not exactly one of the charms of Mrs. Oldfield,) the supposition, we think, falls to the ground. We need have less hesitation in admitting that Steele, who knew her well, alludes to her in another paper under her favourite title of Lady Betty Modish. Speaking of the effects of love upon a generous temper, in refining the manners, he says, "There is Colonel Ranter, who never spoke without an oath until he saw the Lady Betty Modish, now never gives his man an order, but it is, 'Pray, Tom, do it.' The drawers where he drinks live in perfect happiness. He asked Will at the George the other day, how he did? Where he used to say, 'Damn it, it is so;' he now 'believes there is some mistake; he must confess, he is of another opinion; but, however, he will not insist.'"[264] This Colonel Ranter is supposed by the commentators to have been Brigadier-General Churchill, one of the Marlborough family, who lived with Mrs. Oldfield after the death of Mr. Maynwaring. Steele elsewhere speaks of a "General" (supposed to be the same) "weeping for her, in the character of Indiana in his 'Conscious Lovers;'" upon which he said Mr. Wilks observed (for he had made all the fine gentlemen tender) that the General "would fight ne'er the worse for that."

Mrs. Oldfield's position in life was singular. With all her beauty and attraction, and the license of stage manners, she is understood to have attached herself but to two persons successively, and on the footing of a wife. The first was Mr. Maynwaring, a celebrated Whig writer, to whom one of the volumes of "The Spectator" is dedicated, and by whom she had a son; and, after his death, she lived with General Churchill, by whom she had a son also. "She left," says 'The General Biography,' "the bulk of her substance to her son Maynwaring, from whose father she had received it; without neglecting, however, her other son Churchill, and her own relations."

During the period of these two connections, Mrs. Oldfield appears to have been received into the first circles, where she is described as being a pattern of good behaviour; and yet the feeling of Mr. Maynwaring's friends against the connection was so strong, that she herself, though she is understood to have had a sincere affection for him, is said to have often remonstrated with him against it as injurious to his interest. Marriage with an actress, though the example had been set by a duke, appears in neither case to have been thought of. The feeling of society seems to have been this:—"Here is a woman bred up to the stage, and passing her life upon it. It is therefore impossible she should marry a gentleman of family; and yet, as her behaviour would otherwise deserve it, and the examples of actresses are of no authority for any one but themselves, some license may be allowed to a woman who diverts us so agreeably, who attracts the society of the wits, and is so capital a dresser. We will treat her profession with contempt, but herself with consideration." Upon these curious grounds Mrs. Oldfield lived in every respect like a woman of fashion, and as she became rich (which was, perhaps, not the least of her recommendations), she was admitted into the best society, and went to court. The pretence among her visitors during both her connections probably was, that she was privately married; but she was too sincere to warrant the deception. The Princess of Wales (afterwards queen of George II.) asked her one day at a levee if her marriage with General Churchill was true. "So it is said, may it please your highness, but we have not owned it yet."—"It may appear singular," says Mr. Chalmers, who tells us this story, "to quote the late pious Sir James Stonhouse for anecdotes of Mrs. Oldfield; yet in one of his letters we are informed, that she always went to the house in the same dress she had worn at dinner in her visits to the houses of great people; for she was much caressed on account of her professional merit and her connection with Mr. Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough's brother; that she used to go to the playhouse in a chair, attended by two footmen; that she seldom spoke to any one of the actors; and was allowed a sum of money to buy her own clothes."[265] Mrs. Oldfield's generosity was much admired in giving a pension to Savage, which he received regularly as long as she lived. This is what has given posterity a liking for her. When she died she lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and her funeral in Westminster Abbey was attended by several noblemen, among others, as pall-bearers. Mr. Chalmers has repeated, with other biographers, that, "at her own desire," she was elegantly dressed in her coffin; on which account, it is added, Pope introduced her in the character of Narcissa:

"Odious! in wollen! 'twould a saint provoke,

(Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke);

No, let a charming chintz and Brussels lace

Wrap my cold limbs and shade my lifeless face:

One would not sure be frightful when one's dead—

And, Betty, give this cheek a little red."

But it does not appear that there is any authority for this speech, except the poet's. A letter written to her first biographer by an attendant during her last illness says, that "although she had no priest," she "prayed without ceasing," which does not look like an attention to dress; but the biographer adds, that "as the nicety of dress was her delight when living, she was as nicely dressed after her decease; being, by Mrs. Saunders' direction, thus laid in her coffin." The nicety here mentioned was, to be sure, "mortal fine."—"She had on," says the writer, "a very fine Brussels lace-head, a Holland shift with tucker, and double ruffles of the same lace; a pair of new kid gloves, and her body wrapt up in a winding sheet."[266] Yet we are of Montaigne's opinion, and know not why death should be rendered more melancholy than it is. When a tomb was opened in Greece, supposed to be that of Aspasia, there was found in it a sprig of myrtle in gold.

The next batch of players, with Garrick at their head, are Quin, Macklin, Barry, King, Woodward, Gentleman Smith, and others; with Mrs. Clive, Pritchard, Cibber, and Woffington. Garrick's later contemporaries are Parsons, Dodd, Quick, the Palmers, Miss Pope, Mrs. Abingdon, and others, who bring us down to Mrs. Siddons, Miss Farren, &c., the commencers of our own time. Of Steele and the sentimental comedy we need say no more. Goldsmith belongs to Covent Garden; Foote to the Haymarket; and Cumberland, though an elegant writer, does not call for any particular mention in an abstract like this.

When Garrick first appeared, a declamatory grandeur prevailed in tragedy, which we conceive to have arisen in the time of Charles II. It was probably handed down by Booth; and imitated, with the usual deterioration, from Betterton, who, though a true genius and a universal one, may not have been uncorrupted by the taste of the times; not to mention that it is doubtful, till Garrick appeared, whether the art of acting was not identified with something too much of an art, and the delicacy of verses expected to partake more of recitation and musical accompaniment than we now look for. Our suspicion to this effect arises from the traditional habits of the stage, one generation handing down the manner of another, and Betterton himself having been educated in the school of those who were bred up in the recollection of Burbage and Condell. Shakspeare himself, from custom, or even from some subtlety of reason, might have approved of something of this kind; though, on the other hand, in the celebrated directions of Hamlet to the players, there appears to be a secret dissatisfaction with the most applauded actors of that time, as not being exactly what was desirable. If this notion is just, and the great poet of nature was as much advanced beyond his time in this as in other respects, he might indeed have hailed such an actor as Garrick, however hyperbolically they have been sometimes put together. The best performers whom Garrick found in possession of public applause, though some of them are described as excelling in all the varieties of passion (as Mrs. Cibber, for instance, notwithstanding the different impression given of her in the following quotation), appear to have been more or less of the old declamatory school. Quin in particular, then at the head of the profession, was an avowed declaimer, having the same notions of tragedy in the delivery which his friend Thomson had in the composition. Posterity respects Quin as the friend of Thomson, and laughs with him as an epicure and a wit. Garrick and he ultimately became friends. Of the first reception of the new style introduced by Garrick, its electrical effects upon some, and the natural hesitation of others to give up their old favourites, a lively picture has been left us by Cumberland.

Speaking of himself, who was then at Westminster school, he says,—

"I was once or twice allowed to go, under proper convoy, to the play, where, for the first time in my life, I was treated by the sight of Garrick in the character of Lothario. Quin played Horatio; Ryan, Altamont; Mrs. Cibber, Calista; and Mrs. Pritchard condescended to the humble part of Lavinia. I enjoyed a good view of the stage from the front row of the gallery, and my attention was rivetted to the scene. I have the spectacle even now, as it were, before my eyes. Quin presented himself, upon the rising of the curtain, in a green velvet coat, embroidered down the seams, an enormous full-bottomed periwig, rolled stockings, and high-heeled, square-toed shoes. With very little variation of cadence, and in a deep, full tone, accompanied by a sawing kind of action, which had more of the senate than of the stage in it, he rolled out his heroics with an air of dignified indifference, that seemed to disdain the plaudits that were bestowed upon him. Mrs. Cibber, in a key high pitched, but sweet withal, sung, or rather recitatived, Rowe's harmonious strain, something in the manner of the improvisatore's; it was so extremely wanting in contrast, that, though it did not wound the ear, it wearied it; when she had once recited two or three speeches, I could anticipate the manner of every succeeding one; it was like a long, old, legendary ballad of innumerable stanzas, every one of which is sung to the same tune, eternally chiming in the ear without variation or relief. Mrs. Pritchard was an actress of a different cast, had more nature, and, of course, more change of tone, and variety both of action and expression: in my opinion the comparison was decidedly in her favour; but when, after long and eager expectation, I first beheld little Garrick, then young and light and alive in every muscle and in every feature, come bounding on the stage, and pointing at the wittol Altamont and heavy-paced Horatio—heavens, what a transition!—it seemed as if a whole century had been swept over in the transition of a single scene; old things were done away and a new order at once brought forward, bright and luminous, and clearly destined to dispel the barbarisms and bigotry of a tasteless age, too long attached to the prejudices of custom, and superstitiously devoted to the illusions of imposing declamation. This heaven-born actor was then struggling to emancipate his audience from the slavery they were resigned to; and though, at times, he succeeded in throwing in some gleams of newborn light upon them, yet, in general they seemed to love darkness better than light, and, in the dialogue of altercation between Horatio and Lothario, bestowed far the greater show of hands upon the master of the old school than upon the founder of the new. I thank my stars, my feelings in those moments led me right; they were those of nature, and therefore could not err."[267]

It is needless to add that Garrick excelled in comedy as well as tragedy, and in the lowest comedy too—in Abel Drugger as well as Hamlet. He was first at Goodman's Fields; then appeared both at Covent Garden and Drury Lane; but in a short time settled for life at Drury Lane as actor, manager, and author. He was a sprightly dramatist, a man of wit, and no doubt a generous man, though the endless matters of business in which he was concerned, and the refusals of all kinds which he must have been often forced into, got him, with many, a character for the reverse. Johnson, who did not spare him, pronounced him generous. Fine as his tragedy must have been, we suspect his comedy must have been finer; because his own nature was one of greater sprightliness than sentiment. We hear nothing serious of him throughout his life; and his face, with a great deal of acuteness, has nothing in it profound or romantic.

Garrick has the reputation of improving the stage costume: but it was Macklin that did it. The late Mr. West, who was the first (in his picture of the "Death of Wolfe") to omit the absurdity of putting a piece of armour instead of a waistcoat upon a general officer, told us, that he himself once asked Garrick why he did not reform the stage in that particular. Garrick said the spectators would not allow it; "they would throw a bottle at his head." Macklin, however, persevered, and the thing was done. The other, with all his nature, seems to have had a hankering after the old dresses. He had first triumphed in them, and they suited his propensity to the airy and popular. Garrick had a particular dislike to appearing in the Roman costume. Probably in this there was a consciousness of his small person. There are many engravings of him extant, in which his tragic characters are seen in coats and toupees. His appearance as Hotspur, in a laced frock and Ramillie wig, was objected to, not as being unsuitable to the time, but as "too insignificant for the character."[268]

Of Barry, the most celebrated antagonist of Garrick, we shall speak at Covent Garden. King, according to Churchill, by the force of natural impudence as well as genius, excelled in "Brass;" and Churchill's opinions are worth attending to, though he expresses them with vehemence, and by wholesale. Gentleman Smith explains his character by his title. We should entertain a very high opinion of Mrs. Pritchard, even had she left us nothing but the face in her portraits. She seems to have been a really great genius, equally capable of the highest and lowest parts. The fault objected to her was, that her figure was not genteel; and we can imagine this well enough in an actress who could pass from Lady Macbeth to Doll Common. She seems to have thrown herself into the arms of sincerity and passion, not, perhaps, the most refined, but as tragic and comic as need be. As Churchill says,

"Before such merits all objections fly,

Pritchard's genteel, and Garrick six feet high."

Clive was an admirable comic actress, of the wilful and fantastic order, and a wit and virago in private life. She became the neighbour and intimate of Horace Walpole, and always seems to us to have been the man of the two. Mrs. Woffington was an actress of all work, but of greater talents than the phrase generally implies. Davies says she was the handsomest woman that ever appeared on the stage, and that Garrick was at one time in doubt whether he should not marry her. She was famous for performing in male attire, and openly preferred the conversation of men to women—the latter she said, talking of "nothing but silks and scandal." She was the only woman admitted into one of the beef-steak clubs, and is said to have been president of it. These humours, perhaps, though Davies praises her for feminine manners, as contrasted with her antagonist Mrs. Clive, frightened Garrick out of his matrimony.

We now pass at once to Covent Garden Theatre, which lies close by. Many old play-goers who are in the habit of associating the two theatres in their fancy, like twins, will be surprised to hear that the Covent Garden establishment is very young, compared with her sister, being little more than a hundred years old. It was first built by Rich, the harlequin, and opened in 1733 under the patent granted to the Duke's company. The Covent Garden company may therefore be considered as the representatives of the old companies of Davenant and Betterton; while those at Drury Lane are the successors of Killigrew, and more emphatically the King's actors. Indeed, they exclusively designate themselves as "his Majesty's servants;" and, we believe, claim some privileges on that account. Covent Garden theatre was partly rebuilt in 1772, and wholly so in 1809, having undergone the usual death by conflagration. The new edifice was a structure in classical taste, by Mr. Smirke, the portico being a copy from the Parthenon of Athens.[269]

Actors have seldom been confined to any one house; and those whom we are about to mention performed at Drury Lane as well as Covent Garden; but as they were rivals or opponents of Garrick, and may be supposed to have made the greatest efforts when they acted on a different stage, we shall speak of them apart under the present head. The first of them is Barry, who at one time almost divided the favour of of the town with Garrick, and in some characters is said to have excelled him, especially in love parts. How far this was owing to superiority of figure, and to a reputation for gallantry, it is impossible to say; and never were judgments more discordant than those which have been left us on the subject of Barry's merits. For instance, his character is thus summed up by Davies:—

"Of all the tragic actors who have trod the English stage for these last fifty years, Mr. Barry was unquestionably the most pleasing. Since Booth and Wilks, no actor had shown the public a just idea of the hero or the lover; Barry gave dignity to the one and passion to the other: in his person he was tall without awkwardness; in his countenance, handsome without effeminacy; in his uttering of passion, the language of nature alone was communicated to the feelings of an audience."

Davies proceeds to tell us, that Barry could not perform such characters as Richard and Macbeth, though he made a capital Alexander. "He charmed the ladies by the soft melody of his love-complaints, and the noble ardour of his courtship. There was no passion of the tender kind so truly pathetic and forcible in any actor as in Barry, except in Mrs. Cibber, who, indeed, excelled, in the expression of love, grief, tenderness, and jealous rage, all I ever knew. Happy it was for the frequenters of the theatre, when these two genuine children of nature united their efforts to charm an attentive audience. Mrs. Cibber, indeed, might be styled the daughter or sister of Mr. Garrick, but could be only the mistress or wife of Barry."[270] Our author afterwards calls him the "Mark Antony of the stage," whether his amorous disposition was considered, or his love of expense. He delighted in giving magnificent entertainments, and treated Mr. Pelham, who once invited himself to sup with him, in a style so princely, that the Minister rebuked him for it; which was not very civil. An actor has surely as much right to do absurd things as a statesman.

Now, as a contrast to this romantic portrait by Davies, take the following from the severer but masterly hand of Churchill:—

"In person taller than the common size,

Behold where Barry draws admiring eyes;

When lab'ring passions in his bosom pent,

Convulsive rage, and struggling heave for vent,

Spectators, with imagined terrors warm,

Anxious expect the bursting of the storm:

But, all unfit in such a pile to dwell,

His voice comes forth like Echo from her cell;

To swell the tempest needful aid denies,

And all a-down the stage in feeble murmur dies.

What man, like Barry, with such pains, can err

In elocution, action, character?

What man could give, if Barry was not here,

Such well-applauded tenderness to Lear?

Who else can speak so very, very fine,

That sense may kindly end with every line?

Some dozen lines, before the ghost is there,

Behold him for the solemn scene prepare.

See how he frames his eyes, poises each limb,

Puts the whole body into proper trim,—

From whence we learn, with no great stretch of art,

Five lines hence comes a ghost, and lo! a start.

When he appears most perfect, still we find

Something which jars upon and hurts the mind.

Whatever lights upon a part are thrown,

We see too plainly they are not his own:

No flame from nature ever yet he caught,

Nor knew a feeling which he was not taught;

He raised his trophies on the base of art,

And conn'd his passions, as he conn'd his part."[271]

The probability, we fear, is that Barry was one of the old artificial school, who made his way more by person than by genius. Davies, who was a better gossip than critic, though he affected literature, was an actor himself of the mouthing order, if we are to believe Churchill; and his criticisms show him enough inclined to lean favourably to that side.

We have spoken of Quin, who acted much at this house in opposition to Garrick. It was here that he delivered the prologue to the memory of his friend Thomson; and affected the audience by shedding real tears.[272]

Macklin was celebrated in Shylock; and in some other sarcastic parts, particularly that of Sir Archy, in his comedy of "Love-à-la-Mode." We take him to have been one of those actors whose performances are confined to the reflection of their own personal peculiarities. The merits of Shuter, Edwin, Quick, and others who succeeded one another as buffoons, were perhaps a good deal of this sort; but pleasant humours are rare and acceptable. Macklin was a clever satirist in his writing, and embroiled himself, not so cleverly, with a variety of his acquaintances. He foolishly attempted to run down Garrick; and once, in a sudden quarrel, poked out a man's eye with his stick and killed him; for which he narrowly escaped hanging. However, he was sorry for it; and he is spoken of, by the stage historians, as kind in his private relations, and liberal of his purse. A curious specimen of his latter moments we reserve for our mention of the house where he died.

Woodward seems to have been a caricature anticipation of Lewis, and was a capital harlequin. But nobody in harlequins beat Rich, the manager of this theatre. His pantomimes and spectacles produced a re-action against Garrick, when nothing else could; and Covent Garden ever since has been reckoned the superior house in that kind of merit,—"the wit," as Mr. Ludlow Holt called it, "of goods and chattels." However, a considerable degree of fancy and observation may be developed in pantomime: it is the triumph of animal spirits at Christmas, for the little children; and for the men there is occasionally some excellent satire on the times, reminding one, in its spirit, of what we read of the comic buffoonery of the ancients. Grimaldi, in his broad and fugitive sketches, often showed himself a shrewder observer than many a comic actor who can repeat only what is set down for him. Covent Garden has, perhaps, been superior also in music, at least since the existence of the two houses together: for Purcell was before its time. Many of Arne's pieces came out here; and the famous Beard, a singer as manly as his name, the delight both of public and private life, was one of the managers.

Among the Covent Garden actors must not be forgotten Cooke, who came out there in Richard III. For some time he was the greatest performer of this and a few other characters. He was a new kind of Macklin, and like him, excelled in Shylock and Sir Archy M'Sarcasm; a confined actor, and a wayward man, but highly impressive in what he could do. His artful villains have been found fault with for looking too artful and villanous; but men of that stamp are apt to look so. The art of hiding is a considerable one; but habit will betray it after all, and stand foremost in the countenance. They who think otherwise are only too dull to see it. Besides, Cooke had generally to represent bold-faced, aspiring art; and to hug himself in its triumph. This he did with such a gloating countenance, as if villany was pure luxury in him, and with such a soft inward retreating of his voice—a wrapping up of himself, as it were, in velvet—so different from his ordinary rough way, that sometimes one could almost have wished to abuse him.

John Kemble, who, like the whole respectable family of that name, contributed much to maintain the rising character of the profession, may be considered the last popular actor of the declamatory school. His sister was a far greater performer, a true theatrical genius, especially for the stately and dominant; and had a great effect in raising the character of the profession. The growth of liberal opinion is nowhere more visible than in the different estimation in which actors and actresses are now held, compared with what it was. Individuals, it is true, always made their way into society by dint of the interest they excited; but still they were upon sufferance. Anybody could insult an actor, could even beat him, without its being dreamt that he had a right to retaliate; and the most amiable and lady-like actresses were thought unfit for wives, as we have seen in the case of Mrs. Oldfield. Things are now upon a different footing. Talent is allowed its just pretensions, whether coming from author or performer, and actresses have taken such a step, in ascension, that nobility almost seems to look out for a wife among them, as in a school that will inevitably furnish it with some kind of grace and intellect. The famous Lord Peterborough, who was the first nobleman that married an actress, kept the union concealed as long as he could, and only owned it just before his death. The Duke of Bolton, who married Miss Fenton, the Polly of Gay's opera, had first had several children by her as his mistress; so that this is hardly a case in point; and the marriage of Beard, the singer, with a lady of the Waldegrave family, though he was one of the most excellent of men, was looked upon as such a degradation, that they have contrived to omit the circumstance in the peerage-books to this day! Martin Folkes's marriage with Mrs. Bradshaw probably made the world consider the case a little more rationally, as he was a clever man; but Lord Derby's marriage with Miss Farren, who was eminently the gentlewoman, as well as of spotless character, seems to have been the first that rendered such unions compatible with public opinion. Lord Craven's with Miss Brunton followed, though at a considerable interval; and since that time, the town are so far from being surprised at the marriages of actresses with people of rank or fashion, that they seem to look for them. Lord Thurlow, not long afterwards, married Miss Bolton; another noble lord was lately the husband of an eminent singer; and several other favourites of the town, Miss Tree, Miss O'Neill, &c., have become the wives of men of fortune. We remember even a dancer, Miss Searle (but she was of great elegance, and had an air of delicate self-possession), who married into a family of rank.

The whole entertainment of a theatre has been rising in point of accommodation and propriety for the last fifty years. The scenery is better, the music better—we mean the orchestra—and last, not least, the audiences are better. They are better behaved. Garrick put an end to one great nuisance—the occupation, by the audience, of part of the stage. Till his time, people often sat about a stage as at the sides of a room, and the actor had to make his way among them, sometimes with the chance of being insulted; and scuffles took place among themselves. Dr. Johnson, at Lichfield, is said to have pushed a man into the orchestra who had taken possession of his chair. The pit, also, from about Garrick's time, seems to have left to the galleries the vulgarity attributed to it by Pope. There still remains, says he—

—— "to mortify a wit,

The many-headed monster of the pit,

A senseless, worthless, and unhonoured crowd,

Who, to disturb their betters mighty proud,

Clattering their sticks before ten lines are spoke,

Call for the farce, the bear, or the black-joke."

This would now be hardly a fair description of the galleries; and yet modern audiences are not reckoned to be of quite so high a cast as they used, in point of rank and wealth; so that this is another evidence of the general improvement of manners. Boswell, in an ebullition of vivacity, while sitting one night in the pit by his friend Dr. Blair, gave an extempore imitation of a cow! The house applauded, and he ventured upon some attempts of the same kind which did not succeed. Blair advised him in future to "stick to the cow." No gentleman now-a-days would think of a freak like this. There is one thing, however, in which the pit have much to amend. Their destitution of gallantry is extraordinary, especially for a body so ready to accept the clap-traps of the stage, in praise of their "manly hearts," and their "guardianship of the fair." Nothing is more common than to see women standing at the sides of the pit benches, while no one thinks of offering them a seat. Room even is not made, though it often might be. Nay, we have heard women rebuked for coming without securing a seat, while the reprover complimented himself on his better wisdom, and the hearers laughed. On the other hand, a considerate gentleman one night, who went out to stretch his legs, told a lady in our hearing that she might occupy his seat "till he returned!"

A friend of ours knew a lady who remembered Dr. Johnson in the pit taking snuff out of his waistcoat pocket. He used to go into the green-room to his friend Garrick, till he honestly confessed that the actresses excited too much of his admiration. Garrick did not much like to be seen by him when playing any buffoonery. It is said that the actor once complained to his friend that he talked too loud in the stage box, and interrupted his feelings: upon which the doctor said, "Feelings! Punch has no feelings." It was Johnson's opinion (speaking of a common cant of critics), that an actor who really "took himself" for Richard III., deserved to be hanged; and it is easy enough to agree with him; except that an actor who did so would be out of his senses. Too great a sensibility seems almost as hurtful to acting as too little. It would soon wear out the performer. There must be a quickness of conception, sufficient to seize the truth of the character, with a coolness of judgment to take all advantages; but as the actor is to represent as well as conceive, and to be the character in his own person, he could not with impunity give way to his emotions in any degree equal to what the spectators suppose. At least, if he did, he would fall into fits, or run his head against the wall. As to the amount of talent requisite to make a great actor, we must not enter upon a discussion which would lead us too far from our main object; but we shall merely express our opinion, that there is a great deal more of it among the community than they are aware.

Goldsmith was a frequenter of the theatre: Fielding and Smollett, Sterne, but particularly Churchill. "His observatory," says Davies, "was generally the first row of the pit, next the orchestra." His "Rosciad," a criticism on the most known performers of the day, made a great sensation among a body of persons who, as they are in the habit of receiving applause to their faces, and in the most victorious manner, may be allowed a greater stock of self-love than most people—a circumstance which renders an unexacting member of their profession doubly delightful. "The writer," says Davies, "very warmly, as well as justly, celebrated the various and peculiar excellencies of Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. Cibber, and Clive; but no one has, except Garrick, escaped his satirical lash." Poor Davies is glad to say this, because of the well-known passage in which he himself is mentioned:—

"With him came mighty Davies! On my life

That Davies hath a very pretty wife."

We will make one more quotation from this poem, because it describes a class of actors, who are now extinct, and who carried the artificial school to its height:—

"Mossop, attached to military plan,

Still kept his eye fixed on his right-hand man.

Whilst the mouth measures words with seeming skill,

The right hand labours, and the left lies still;

For he resolved on scripture grounds to go,

What the right doth, the left hand shall not know.

With studied impropriety of speech,

He soars beyond the hackney critic's reach;

To epithets allots emphatic state,

Whilst principals, ungraced, like lackeys, wait;

In ways first trodden by himself excels,

And stands alone in indeclinables;

Conjunction, preposition, adverb join,

To stamp new vigour on the nervous line:

In monosyllables his thunders roll;

He, she, it, and we, ye, they, fright the soul."

Mr. Barrymore (of whom we have no unpleasing recollection) had something of this manner with him; but the extremity of the style is now quite gone out.

The only capital performers we remember, that are now dead and gone, with the exception of two or three already mentioned, were Mrs. Jordan, a charming cordial actress, on the homely side of the agreeable, with a delightful voice; and Suett, who was the very personification of weak whimsicality, with a laugh like a peal of giggles. Mathews gives him to the life.

We shall conclude this chapter with some delightful play-going recollections of the best theatrical critic now living[273]—the best, indeed, as far as we know, that this country ever saw. He is one who does not respect criticism a jot too much, nor any of the feelings connected with humanity, or the imitation of it, too little. We here have him giving us an account of the impression made upon him by the first sight of a play, and concluding with a good hint to those older children, who, because they have cut their drums open, think nothing remains in life to be pleased with. A child may like a theatre, because he is not thoroughly acquainted with it; but if he become a wise man, he will find reason to like it, because he is.

Life always flows with a certain freshness in these quarters; nor, with all their drawbacks, have we more agreeable impressions from any neighbourhood in London, than what we receive from the district containing the great theatres. It is one of the most social and the least sordid.

"At the north end of Cross Court," says Mr. Lamb, "there yet stands a portal, of some architectural pretensions, though reduced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance to a printing-office. This old door-way, if you are young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit entrance to old Drury—Garrick's Drury—all of it that is left. I never pass it without shaking some forty years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening when I passed through it to see my first play. The afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going (the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should cease. With what a beating heart did I watch from the window the puddles, from the stillness of which I was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation. I seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with which I ran to announce it.

---

"In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncomfortable manager who abolished them!—with one of these we went. I remember the waiting at the door—not that which is left—but between that and an inner door, in shelter. Oh, when shall I be such an expectant again!—with the cry of nonpareils, an indispensable playhouse accompaniment in those days. As near as I can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation of the theatrical fruiteresses was, 'chase some oranges, chase some nonpareils, chase a bill of the play:' chase pro chuse. But when we got in and I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my imagination, which was soon to be disclosed—the breathless anticipations I endured! I had seen something like it in the plate prefixed to 'Troilus and Cressida,' in Rowe's 'Shakspeare,'—the tent scene with Diomede; and a sight of that plate can always bring back, in a measure, the feeling of that evening. The boxes at that time full of well-dressed women of quality, projected over the pit; and the pilasters, reaching down, were adorned with a glittering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling—a homely fancy—but I judged it to be sugar-candy—yet, to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy! The orchestra lights at length arose, those 'fair Auroras!' Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out yet once again; and, incapable of the anticipation, I reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation upon the maternal lap. It rang the second time. The curtain drew up—I was not past six years old—and the play was 'Artaxerxes!'

"I had dabbled a little in the 'Universal History'-the ancient part of it—and here was the court of Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the past. I took no proper interest in the action going on, for I understood not its import; but I heard the word Darius, and I was in the midst of Daniel. All feeling was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens, palaces, princes, passed before me—I knew not players. I was in Persepolis for the time, and the burning idol of their devotion almost converted me into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those significations to be something more than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure has ever since visited me but in dreams. Harlequin's invasion followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the magistrates into reverend beldames seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a verity as the legend of St. Denys.

"The next play to which I was taken, was the 'Lady of the Manor,' of which, with the exception of some scenery, very faint traces are left in my memory. It was followed by a pantomime called 'Lun's Ghost'—a satiric touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since dead—but to my apprehension (too sincere for satire) Lun was as remote a piece of antiquity as Lud—the father of a line of harlequins—transmitting his dagger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through countless ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his silent tomb in a ghastly vest of white patch-work, like the apparition of a dead rainbow. So harlequins (thought I) look when they are dead.

"My third play followed in quick succession. It was 'The Way of the World.' I think I must have sat at it as grave as a judge; for, I remember, the hysteric affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected me like some solemn tragic passion. 'Robinson Crusoe' followed, in which Crusoe, Man Friday, and the Parrot were as good and authentic as in the story. The clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I believe I no more laughed at them, than at the same age I should have been disposed to laugh at the grotesque gothic heads (seeming to me then replete with devout meaning) that gape and grin, in stone, around the inside of the old round church (my church) of the Templars.

"I saw these plays in the season of 1781-2, when I was from six to seven years old. After the intervention of six or seven years (for at school all play-going was inhibited) I again entered the doors of a theatre. That old Artaxerxes' evening had never done ringing in my fancy. I expected the same feelings to come again with the same occasion. But we differ from ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than the latter does from six. In that interval what had I not lost! At the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing, discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered all—

'Was nourished I could not tell how.'

I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a rationalist. The same things were there materially; but the emblem, the reverence was gone! The green curtain was no longer a veil drawn between two worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back past ages, to present a 'royal ghost,' but a certain quantity of green baize, which was to separate the audience for a given time from certain of their fellow-men who were to come forward and pretend those parts. The lights—the orchestra lights—came up, a clumsy machinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now but a trick of the prompter's bell, which had been like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no hand seen or guessed at, which ministered to its warning. The actors were men and women painted. I thought the fault was in them; but it was in myself, and the alteration which those many centuries—of six short twelvemonths—had wrought in me. Perhaps it was fortunate for me that the play of the evening was but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time to crop some unreasonable expectations, which might have interfered with the genuine emotions with which I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first appearance, to me, of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction of the scene; and the theatre became to me, upon a new stock, the most delightful of recreations."—Elia, p. 221.

ENTRANCE DOOR, OLD COVENT GARDEN.

CHAPTER VIII.
COVENT GARDEN CONTINUED AND LEICESTER SQUARE.

Bow Street once the Bond Street of London—Fashions at that time—Infamous frolic of Sir Charles Sedley and others—Wycherly and the Countess of Drogheda—Tonson the Bookseller—Fielding—Russell Street—Dryden beaten by hired ruffians in Rose Street—His Presidency at Will's Coffee-House—Character of that Place—Addison and Button's Coffee-House—Pope, Philips, and Garth—Armstrong—Boswell's introduction to Johnson—The Hummums—Ghost Story there—Covent Garden—The Church—Car, Earl of Somerset—Butler, Southern, Eastcourt, Sir Robert Strange—Macklin—Curious Dialogue with him when past a century—Dr. Walcot—Covent Garden Market—Story of Lord Sandwich, Hackman, and Miss Ray—Henrietta Street—Mrs. Clive—James Street—Partridge, the almanack-maker—Mysterious lady—King Street—Arne and his Father—The four Indian Kings—Southampton Row—Maiden Lane—Voltaire—Long Acre and its Mug-Houses—Prior's resort there—Newport Street—St. Martin's Lane, and Leicester Square—Sir Joshua Reynolds—Hogarth—Sir Isaac Newton.

Bow Street was once the Bond Street of London. Mrs. Bracegirdle began an epilogue of Dryden's with saying—

"I've had to-day a dozen billet-doux

From fops, and wits, and cits, and Bow-street beaux;

Some from Whitehall, but from the Temple more:

A Covent-garden porter brought me four."

Sir Walter Scott says, in a note on the passage, "With a slight alteration in spelling, a modern poet would have written Bond Street beaux. A billet-doux from Bow Street would now be more alarming than flattering."[274]

Mrs. Bracegirdle spoke this epilogue at Drury Lane. There was no Covent Garden theatre then. People of fashion occupied the houses in Bow Street, and mantuas floated up and down the pavement. This was towards the end of the Stuart's reign, and the beginning of the next century—the times of Dryden, Wycherly, and the Spectator. The beau of Charles's time is well-known. He wore, when in full flower, a peruke to imitate the flowing locks of youth, a Spanish hat, clothes of slashed silk or velvet, the slashes tied with ribands, a coat resembling a vest rather than the modern coat, and silk stockings, with roses in his shoes. The Spanish was afterwards changed for the cocked hat, the flowing peruke for one more compact; the coat began to stiffen into the modern shape, and when in full dress, the beau wore his hat under his arm. His grimaces have been described by Dryden—

"His various modes from various fathers follow;

One taught the toss, and one the new French wallow;

His sword-knot this, his cravat that designed;

And this the yard-long snake that twirls behind.

From one the sacred periwig he gained,

Which wind ne'er blew, nor touch of hat profaned.

Another's diving bow he did adore,

Which with a shog casts all the hair before,

Till he, with full decorum, brings it back,

And rises with a water-spaniel shake."[275]

One of these perukes would sometimes cost forty or fifty pounds. The fair sex at this time waxed and waned through all the varieties of dishabilles, hoop-petticoats, and stomachers. We must not enter upon this boundless sphere, especially as we have to treat upon it from time to time. We shall content ourselves with describing a set of lady's clothes, advertised as stolen in the year 1709, and which would appear to have belonged to a belle resolved to strike even Bow Street with astonishment. They consisted of "a black silk petticoat, with a red-and-white calico border; cherry-coloured stays, trimmed with blue and silver; a red and dove-coloured damask gown, flowered with large trees; a yellow satin apron, trimmed with white Persian; muslin head-cloths, with crowfoot edging; double ruffles with fine edging; a black silk furbelowed scarf, and a spotted hood!"[276] It is probable, however, the lady did not wear all these colours at once.

A tavern in Bow Street, the Cock, became notorious for a frolic of Sir Charles Sedley, Lord Buckhurst, and others, frequently mentioned in the biographies, but too disgusting to be told. There was an account of it in Pepys' manuscript, but it was obliged to be omitted in the printing. Anthony à Wood found it out, and first gave it to the public. It was not commonly dissolute, there was a filthiness in it, which would have been incredible if told of any other period than that of the fine gentlemen of the court of Charles. What can be repeated has been told by Johnson in his life of Sackville, Lord Dorset.

"Sackville, who was then Lord Buckhurst, with Sir Charles Sedley, and Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock, in Bow Street, by Covent Garden, and going into the balcony, exposed themselves to the company in very indecent postures. At last, as they grew warmer, Sedley stood forth naked, and harangued the populace in such profane language, that the public indignation was awakened; the crowd attempted to force the door, and being repulsed, drove in the performers with stones, and broke the windows of the house. For this misdemeanour they were indicted, and Sedley was fined five hundred pounds; what was the sentence of the others is not known. Sedley employed Killegrew and another to procure a remission of the King, but (mark the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine for themselves, and exacted it to the last groat."

Opposite this tavern lived Wycherly, with his wife, the Countess of Drogheda. Charles paid him a visit there, before Wycherly knew the lady; and showed him a kindness which his marriage is said to have interrupted. The story begins and ends with Bow Street, and, as far as concerns the lady, is curious.

"Mr. Wycherly," says the biographer, "happened to be ill of a fever at his lodgings in Bow Street, Covent Garden: during his sickness, the King did him the honour of a visit: when, finding his fever indeed abated, but his body extremely weakened, and his spirits miserably shattered, he commanded him to take a journey to the south of France, believing that nothing could contribute more to the restoring his former state of health than the gentle air of Montpelier during the winter season: at the same time, the King assured him, that as soon as he was able to undertake the journey, he would order five hundred pounds to be paid him to defray the expenses of it.

"Mr. Wycherly accordingly went to France, and returned to England the latter end of the spring following, with his health entirely restored. The King received him with the utmost marks of esteem, and shortly after told him he had a son, who he resolved should be educated like the son of a king, and that he could make choice of no man so proper to be his governor as Mr. Wycherly; and that, for this service, he should have fifteen hundred pounds a-year allotted to him; the King also added, that when the time came that his office should cease, he would take care to make such a provision for him as should set him above the malice of the world and fortune. These were golden prospects for Mr. Wycherly, but they were soon by a cross accident dashed to pieces.

"Soon after this promise of his Majesty's, Mr. Dennis tells us that Mr. Wycherly went down to Tunbridge, to take either the benefit of the waters or the diversions of the place, when, walking one day upon the Wells-walk with his friend, Mr. Fairbeard, of Gray's Inn, just as he came up to the bookseller's, the Countess of Drogheda, a young widow, rich, noble, and beautiful, came up to the bookseller and inquired for the 'Plain Dealer.' 'Madam,' says Mr. Fairbeard, 'since you are for the "Plain Dealer," there he is for you,' pushing Mr. Wycherly towards her. 'Yes,' says Mr. Wycherly, 'this lady can bear plain-dealing, for she appears to be so accomplished, that what would be a compliment to others, when said to her would be plain-dealing.' 'No, truly, sir,' said the lady, 'I am not without my faults more than the rest of my sex: and yet, notwithstanding all my faults, I love plain-dealing, and am never more fond of it than when it tells me of a fault.' 'Then, Madam,' says Mr. Fairbeard, 'you and the plain dealer seem designed by heaven for each other.' In short, Mr. Wycherly accompanied her upon the walks, waited upon her home, visited her daily at her lodgings whilst she stayed at Tunbridge; and after she went to London, at her lodgings in Hatton Garden: where, in a little time, he obtained her consent to marry her. This he did, by his father's command, without acquainting the King; for it was reasonably supposed, that the lady's having a great independent estate, and noble and powerful relations, the acquainting the King with the intended match would be the likeliest way to prevent it. As soon as the news was known at court, it was looked upon as an affront to the King, and a contempt of his Majesty's orders; and Mr. Wycherly's conduct after marrying made the resentment fall heavier upon him: for being conscious he had given offence, and seldom going near the court, his absence was construed into ingratitude.

"The Countess, though a splendid wife, was not formed to make a husband happy; she was in her nature extremely jealous; and indulged in it to such a degree, that she could not endure her husband should be one moment out of her sight. Their lodgings were in Bow Street, Covent Garden, over against the Cock Tavern, whither, if Mr. Wycherly at any time went, he was obliged to leave the windows open, that his lady might see there was no woman in the company."[277]

"The Countess," says another writer, "made him some amends by dying in a reasonable time." His title to her fortune, however, was disputed, and his circumstances, though he had property, were always constrained. He was rich enough however to marry a young woman a few days before he died, in order to disappoint a troublesome heir. In his old age he became acquainted with Pope, then a youth, who vexed him by taking him at his word, when asked to correct his poetry. Wycherly showed a candid horror at growing old, natural enough to a man who had been one of the gayest of the gay, very handsome, and a "Captain." He was captain in the regiment of which Buckingham was colonel. We have mentioned the Duchess of Cleveland's visits to him when a student in the Temple. Wycherly is the greatest of all our comic dramatists for truth of detection in what is ill, as Congreve is the greatest painter of artificial life, and Farquhar and Hoadley the best discoverers of what is pleasant and good-humoured. When the profligacy of writers like Wycherly is spoken of, we should not forget that much of it is not only confined to certain characters, but that the detection of these characters leaves an impression on the mind highly favourable to genuine morals. A modern critic, as excellent in his remarks on the drama as the one quoted at the conclusion of our last chapter is upon the stage, says on this point, speaking of the comedy of the "Plain Dealer,"—"The character of Manly is violent, repulsive, and uncouth, which is a fault, though one that seems to have been intended for the sake of contrast; for the portrait of consummate, artful hypocrisy in Olivia, is, perhaps, rendered more striking by it. The indignation excited against this odious and pernicious quality by the masterly exposure to which it is here subjected, is 'a discipline of humanity.' No one can read this play attentively without being the better for it as long as he lives. It penetrates to the core; it shows the immorality and hateful effects of duplicity, by showing it fixing its harpy fangs in the heart of an honest and worthy man. It is worth ten volumes of sermons. The scenes between Manly, after his return, Olivia, Plausible, and Norel, are instructive examples of unblushing impudence, of shallow pretensions to principle, and of the most mortifying reflections on his own situation, and bitter sense of female injustice and ingratitude on the part of Manly. The devil of hypocrisy and hardened assurance seems worked up to the highest pitch of conceivable effrontery in Olivia, when, after confiding to her cousin the story of her infamy, she, in a moment, turns round upon her for some sudden purpose, and affecting not to know the meaning of the other's allusions to what she had just told her, reproaches her with forging insinuations to the prejudice of her character, and in violation of their friendship. 'Go! you're a censorious woman.' This is more trying to the patience than anything in the Tartuffe."

Tonson, the great bookseller of his time, had a private house in Bow Street. Rowe, in an amusing parody of Horace's dialogue with Lydia, has left an account of old Jacob's visitors here, and of his style of language.

Tonson got rich, but he was penurious; and his want of generosity towards Dryden (to say the least of it) has done him no honour with posterity. It may be said that he cared little for posterity or for anything else, provided he got his money; but a man who cares for money (unless he is a pure miser) only cares for power and consideration in another shape; and no man chooses to be disliked by his fellow-creatures, living, or to come. In the correspondence between Tonson and Dryden, we see the usual painful picture (when the bookseller is of this description) of the tradesman taking all the advantages, and the author made to suffer for being a gentleman and a man of delicacy. This is the common, and, perhaps, the natural order of things, till society see better throughout; though there have been, and still are, some handsome exceptions, as in the instances of Dodsley, the late Mr. Johnson, and others. The bookseller generally behaves well, in proportion to his intelligence; nothing being so eager to catch all petty advantages as the consciousness of having no other ground to go upon. It may be answered that Dryden's patience with Tonson sometimes got exhausted, and he became "captious and irritable:" and it is always to be remembered that the bookseller need not pretend to be anything more than a tradesman seeking his allowed profits; but he should not on every occasion retreat into the strongholds of trade, and yet claim the merit of acting otherwise; and Tonson, who undertook to be the familiar friend of Rowe and Congreve, ought not to have been able to insult the man whom they both respected, because he was not so well off as they. The following passage of mingled amusement and painfulness is out of Sir Walter Scott:—

"Dryden," says Sir Walter, in his life of the poet, "seems to have been particularly affronted at a presumptuous plan of that publisher (a keen whig, and Secretary to the Kit-Cat Club) to drive him into inscribing the translation of 'Virgil' to King William. With this view Tonson had an especial care to make the engraver aggravate the nose of Eneas in the plates into a sufficient resemblance of the hooked promontory of the Deliverer's countenance, and foreseeing Dryden's repugnance to his favourite plan, he had recourse, it would seem, to more unjustifiable means to further it; for the poet expresses himself as convinced that, through Tonson's means, his correspondence with his sons, then at Rome, was intercepted. I suppose Jacob, having fairly laid siege to his author's conscience, had no scruple to intercept all foreign supplies, which might have confirmed him in his pertinacity. But Dryden, although thus closely beleagured, held fast his integrity; and no prospect of personal advantage, or importunity on the part of Tonson, could induce him to take a step inconsistent with his religious and political sentiments. It was probably during the course of these bickerings with his publisher, that Dryden, incensed at some refusal of accommodation on the part of Tonson, sent him three well-known coarse and forcible satirical lines descriptive of his personal appearance:—

'With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair,

With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair,

And frouzy pores, that taint the ambient air.'

"'Tell the dog,' said the poet to the messenger, 'that he who wrote these can write more.' But Tonson, perfectly satisfied with this single triplet, hastened to comply with the author's request, without requiring any further specimen of his poetical powers. It would seem, on the other hand, that when Dryden neglected his stipulated labour, Tonson possessed powers of animadversion, which, though exercised in plain prose, were not a little dreaded by the poet. Lord Bolingbroke, already a votary of the Muses, and admitted to visit their high-priest, was wont to relate, that one day he heard another person enter the house. 'This,' said Dryden, 'is Tonson; you will take care not to depart before he goes away, for I have not completed the sheet which I promised him; and if you leave me unprotected, I shall suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can prompt his tongue.'"[278]

Fielding lived some time in Bow Street, probably during his magistracy.

We turn out of Bow Street into Russell Street, so called from the noble family of that name, who possess great property in this quarter. It is pleasant to think that the name is accordant with the reputation of the place, for we are more than ever in the thick of wits and men of letters, especially of a race which was long peculiar to this country, literary politicians. At the north-east corner of the two streets was the famous Will's coffee-house, formerly the Rose, where Dryden presided over the literature of the town; and on the other side of the way, on a part of the site of the present Hummums, stood Button's coffee-house, no less celebrated as the resort of the wits and poets of the time of Queen Anne.

Dryden is identified with the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. He presided in the chair at Russell Street; his plays came out in the theatre at the other end of it; he lived in Gerrard Street, which is not far off; and, alas! for the anti-climax! he was beaten by hired bravos in Rose Street, now called Rose Alley. Great men come down to posterity with their proper aspects of calmness and dignity; and we do not easily fancy that they received anything from their contemporaries but the grateful homage which is paid them by ourselves. "But the life of a wit," says Steele, "is a warfare upon earth." Sir Walter Scott, speaking of the beautiful description given by Dryden of the Attic nights he enjoyed with Sir Charles Sedley and others, observes, "He had not yet experienced the disadvantages attendant on such society, or learned how soon literary eminence becomes the object of detraction, of envy, of injury, even from those who can best feel its merit, if they are discouraged by dissipated habits from emulating its flight, or hardened by perverted feeling against loving its possessors."[279]

The outrage perpetrated upon the sacred shoulders of the poet was the work of Lord Rochester, and originated in a mistake not creditable to that would-be great man and dastardly debauchee. The following is Sir Walter's account of the matter.

"The 'Essay on Satire' (by Lord Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of Buckinghamshire), though written, as appears from the title-page of the last edition, in 1675, was not made public until 1679, with this observation:—I have sent you herewith a libel, in which my own share is not the least. The king having perused it, is no way dissatisfied with his. The author is apparently Mr. Dr[yden], his patron Lord M[ulgrave], having a panegyric in the midst. From hence it is evident that Dryden obtained the reputation of being the author; in consequence of which, Rochester meditated the base and cowardly revenge which he afterwards executed; and he thus coolly expressed his intention in another of his letters:—'You write me word that I am out of favour with a certain poet, whom I have admired for the disproportion of him and his attributes. He is a rarity which I cannot but be fond of, as one would be of a hog that could fiddle, or a singing owl. If he falls on me at the blunt, which is his very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him if you please, and leave the repartee to black Will with a cudgel.'

"In pursuance of this infamous resolution, upon the night of the 18th December, 1679, Dryden was waylaid by hired ruffians, and severely beaten, as he passed through Rose Street, Covent Garden, returning from Will's coffee-house to his own house in Gerrard Street. A reward of fifty pounds was in vain offered in the 'London Gazette' and other newspapers, for the discoverers of the perpetrators of this outrage. The town was, however, at no loss to pitch upon Rochester as the employer of the bravos, with whom the public suspicion joined the Duchess of Portsmouth, equally concerned in the supposed affront thus avenged. In our time, were a nobleman to have recourse to hired bravos to avenge his personal quarrels against any one, more especially a person holding the rank of a gentleman, he might lay his account with being hunted out of society. But in the age of Charles, the ancient high and chivalrous sense of honour was esteemed Quixotic, and the civil war had left traces of ferocity in the manners and sentiments of the people. Encounters, where the assailants took all advantages of number and weapons, were as frequent, and held as honourable, as regular duels. Some of these approached closely to assassination; as in the famous case of Sir John Coventry, who was waylaid and had his nose slit by some young men of rank, for a reflection upon the King's theatrical amours. This occasioned the famous statute against maiming and wounding, called the Coventry Act, an Act highly necessary, for so far did our ancestors' ideas of manly forbearance differ from ours, that Killegrew introduces the hero of one of his comedies, a cavalier, and the fine gentleman of the piece, lying in wait for, and slashing the face of a poor courtezan, who had cheated him.

"It will certainly be admitted, that a man, surprised in the dark, and beaten by ruffians, loses no honour by such a misfortune. But if Dryden had received the same discipline from Rochester's own hand, without resenting it, his drubbing could not have been more frequently made a matter of reproach to him: a sign, surely, of the penury of subjects for satire in his life and character, since an accident, which might have happened to the greatest hero that ever lived, was resorted to as an imputation on his honour. The Rose Alley ambuscade became almost proverbial; and even Mulgrave, the real author of the satire, and upon whose shoulders the blows ought in justice to have descended, mentions the circumstance in his 'Art of Poetry,' with a cold and self-sufficient sneer:—

'Though praised and punished for another's rhymes,

His own deserve as great applause sometimes.'

To which is added in a note, 'A libel for which he was both applauded and wounded, though entirely ignorant of the whole matter.' This flat and conceited couplet, and note, the noble author judged it proper to omit in the corrected edition of his poem. Otway alone, no longer the friend of Rochester, and, perhaps, no longer the enemy of Dryden, has spoken of the author of this dastardly outrage with the contempt it deserved:—

'Poets in honour of the truth should write,

With the same spirit brave men for it fight;

And though against him causeless hatreds rise,

And daily where he goes of late, he spies

The scowls of sudden and revengeful eyes;

'Tis what he knows with much contempt to bear.

And serves a cause too good to let him fear,

He fears no poison from incensed drab,

No ruffian's five-foot sword, nor rascal's stab;

Nor any other snares of mischief laid,

Not a Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade;

From any private cause where malice reigns,

Or general pique all blockheads have to brains.'"[280]

We dismiss this specimen of the times, that we may enjoy the look of Dryden as posterity sees it,—that is to say, as that of the first poet of his class, presiding over the tastes and aspirations of the town. Milton sat in his suburban bower, equally removed from outrage and compliment, and contemplating a still greater futurity. In the following passage from the 'Country and City Mouse,' by Prior and Montagu, Dryden, it is true, is spoken of with hostility, but his acknowledged predominance shines through it. Prior's instinct misgave him in writing against his natural master.

"Then on they jogg'd; and since an hour of talk

Might cut a banter on the tedious walk,

As I remember, said the sober mouse,

I've heard much talk of the Wits' Coffee-house;

Thither, says Brindle, thou shalt go and see

Priests supping coffee, sparks and poets tea;

Here rugged frieze, there quality well drest,

These baffling the grand Senior, those the Test,

And there shrewd guesses made, and reasons given,

That human laws were never made in heaven;

But, above all, what shall oblige thy sight,

And fill thy eye-balls with a vast delight,

Is the poetic judge of sacred wit,

Who does i' th' darkness of his glory sit;

And as the moon who first receives the light,

With which she makes these nether regions bright,

So does he shine, reflecting from afar

The rays he borrowed from a better star;

For rules, which from Corneille and Rapin flow,

Admired by all the scribbling herd below,

From French tradition while he does dispense

Unerring truths, 'tis schism, a damned offence,

To question his, or trust your private sense."[281]

Will's Coffee-house was at the western corner of Bow Street. It first had the title of the Red Cow, then of the Rose; and we believe is the same house alluded to in the pleasant story in the second number of the 'Tatler:'—

"Supper and friends expect we at the Rose."

The Rose, however, was a common sign for houses of public entertainment. The company, of which our poet was the arbiter, sat up-stairs in what was then called the dining, but now the drawing-room; and there was a balcony, to which his chair was removed in summer from its prescriptive corner by the fire-side in winter. "The appeal," says Malcolm, "was made to him upon every literary dispute. The company did not sit in boxes, as at present, but at various tables which were dispersed through the room. Smoking was permitted in the public room: it was then so much in vogue that it does not seem to have been considered a nuisance. Here, as in other similar places of meeting, the visitors divided themselves into parties; and we are told by Ward, that the young beaux and wits, who seldom approached the principal table, thought it a great honour to have a pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box."[282]

A lively specimen of a scene with Dryden in this coffee-house has been afforded us by Dean Lockier. "I was about seventeen when I first came up to town," says the Dean, "an odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of awkwardness which one always brings up at first out of the country with one. However, in spite of my bashfulness and appearance, I used, now and then, to thrust myself into Will's, to have the pleasure of seeing the most celebrated wits of that time, who then resorted thither. The second time that ever I was there, Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, as he frequently did, especially of such as had been lately published. 'If anything of mine is good,' says he, ''tis "Mac-Flecno;" and I value myself the more upon it, because it is the first piece of ridicule written in heroics.' On hearing this I plucked up my spirit so far as to say, in a voice but just loud enough to be heard, 'that "Mac-Flecno" was a very fine poem, but that I had not imagined it to be the first that was ever writ that way.' On this, Dryden turned short upon me, as surprised at my interposing; asked me how long 'I had been a dealer in poetry; and added, with a smile, 'Pray, sir, what is it that you did imagine to have been writ so before?'—I named Boileau's 'Lutrin,' and Tassoni's 'Secchia Rapita,' which I had read, and knew Dryden had borrowed some strokes from each. ''Tis true,' said Dryden, 'I had forgot them.' A little after, Dryden went out, and in going, spoke to me again, and desired me to come and see him the next day. I was highly delighted with the invitation; went to see him accordingly; and was well acquainted with him after, as long as he lived."[283]

Dryden's mixture of simplicity, good-nature, and good opinion of himself, is here seen in a very agreeable manner. It must not be omitted, that it was to this house Pope was taken when a boy, by his own desire, on purpose to get a sight of the great man; which he did. According to Pope, he was plump, with a fresh colour and a down look, and not very conversable. It appears, however, that what he did say was much to the purpose; and a contemporary mentions his conversation on that account as one of the few things for which the town was desirable. He was a temperate man; though, for the last ten years of his life, Davies informs us that he drank with Addison a great deal more than he used to do, "probably so far as to hasten his end."

It is curious, considering his peculiar sort of reputation with posterity, that Addison's name should be found so connected in his own time with this species of irregularity. The same cause is supposed to have hastened his own end; and it is related by Pope, that he was obliged to avoid the Russell Street Coffee-house, and the bad hours of Addison, otherwise they might have hastened his.

Will's Coffee-house was the great emporium of libels and scandal. The channels that have since abounded for the dregs of literature had scarcely then begun to exist; and, instead of purveying for periodical publications, the retailers of obloquy attended among the minor wits of this place, and distributed the last new lampoon in manuscript. There was a drunken fellow of that time, named Julian, who acquired an infamous celebrity in this way. Sir Walter Scott, in his edition of Dryden, has given the following account of him and his vocation.

"The extremity of license in manners necessarily leads to equal license in personal satire, and there never was an age in which both were carried to such excess as in that of Charles II. These personal and scandalous libels acquired the name of lampoons, from the established burden formerly sung to them:—

'Lampone lampone, camerada lampone,'

"Dryden suffered under these violent and invisible assaults, as much as any of his age; to which his own words in several places of his writing, and also the existence of many of the pasquils themselves in the Luttrel Collection, bear ample witness. In many of his prologues and epilogues, he alludes to this rage for personal satire, and to the employment which it found for the half and three-quarter wits and courtiers of the time!

'Yet these are pearls to your lampooning rhymes;

Ye abuse yourselves more dully than the times;

Scandal, the glory of the English nation,

Is worn to rags, and scribbled out of fashion:

Such harmless thrusts, as if, like fencers wise,

They had agreed their play before their prize.

Faith, they may hang their harp upon the willows;

'Tis just like children when they box their pillows.'

"Upon the general practice of writing lampoons, and the necessity of finding some mode of dispersing them, which should diffuse the scandal widely while the authors remained concealed, was founded the self-erected office of Julian, Secretary, as he calls himself, to the Muses. This person attended Will's, the Wits' Coffee-house, as it was called; and dispersed among the crowds who frequented that place of gay resort copies of the lampoons which had been privately communicated to him by their authors. 'He is described,' says Mr. Malone, 'as a very drunken fellow, and at one time was confined for a libel.' Several satires were written, in the form of addresses to him as well as the following. There is one among the 'State Poems,' beginning—

'Julian, in verse, to ease thy wants I write,

Not moved by envy, malice or by spite,

Or pleased with the empty names of wit and sense,

But merely to supply thy want of pence:

This did inspire my muse, when out at heel, She saw her needy secretary reel;

Grieved that a man, so useful to the age,

Should foot it in so mean an equipage;

A crying scandal that the fees of sense

Should not be able to support the expense

Of a poor scribe, who never thought of wants,

When able to procure a cup of Nantz.'

"Another, called a 'Consoling Epistle to Julian,' is said to have been written by the Duke of Buckingham.

"From a passage in one of the letters from the 'Dead to the Living,' we learn, that after Julian's death, and the madness of his successor, called Summerton, lampoon felt a sensible decay; and there was no more that 'brisk spirit of verse, that used to watch the follies and vices of the men and women of figure, that they could not start new ones faster than lampoons exposed them."[284]

These "brisk spirits" have still their descendants, and always will have till their betters cease to set the example of railing, or to encourage it. There is a difference, indeed, between the lampoons of such men and those of Dryden, or the literary personalities to which some ingenious minds will give way, before they well know what they are about, out of mere emulation, perhaps, of the names of Pope and Boileau. But it is not to be expected that the others will stop where they do, or refine with the progress of their years and knowledge. The most generous sometimes find it difficult to leave off saying ill-natured things of one another, out of shame of yielding, or the habit of indulging their irritability. They endeavour to reconcile themselves to it by trying to think that the abuse has a utility; but when they come to this point, the doubt is a proof that they ought to forego it, and help to teach the world better. Honest contention, however, is one thing, and scandal is another. The dealer in the latter has always a petty mind and inferior understanding, most likely accompanied with conscious unworthiness; the great secret of the love of scandal lying in the wish to level others with the calumniators.

"Will's continued to be the resort of the wits at least till 1710," says Mr. Malcolm. "Probably Addison established his servant [Button] in a new house about 1712, and his fame after the production of 'Cato,' drew many of the Whigs thither."[285]

"Addison," says Pope, "passed each day alike; and much in the manner that Dryden did. Dryden employed his mornings in writing, dined en famille, and then went to Will's: only he came home earlier a'nights." And again: "Addison usually studied all the morning; then met his party at Button's; dined, and staid there five or six hours; and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me: it hurt my health, and so I quitted it."[286]

Button had been a servant of the Countess of Warwick, whom Addison married. It is said that when the latter was dissatisfied with the Countess (we believe during the period of his courtship), he used to withdraw the company from her servant's coffee-house. Unfortunately it is as easy to believe a petty story of Addison as a careless one of Steele. Addison, intellectually a great man, was complexionally a little one. He was timid, bashful, and reserved, and instinctively sought success by private channels and disingenous measures.

Under the influence of these eminent persons, Button's became the head-quarters of the Whig literati, as Will's had been that of the Tory. Steele, however, dated his poetical papers in the 'Tatler' from Will's, as the old haunt of the town muse. Perhaps the Whiggery of Button's was one of the reasons why Pope left off going there, as he did not wish to identify himself with either party. Ambrose Philips is said to have hung up a rod at that coffee-house, as an intimation of what Pope should receive at his hands, in case the satirist chose to hazard it. A similar threat is related of Cibber. The behaviour of both has been cried out against as unhandsome, considering the little person and bodily infirmities of the illustrious offender: but as the threateners were so much his inferiors in wit, and he exercised his great powers at their expense, it might not be difficult to show that their conduct was as good as his. Why attack a man, if he is to be allowed no equality of retaliation? The truth is, that personal satire is itself an unhandsome thing, and a childish one, and there will be no end to childish retorts, till the more grown understandings reform. Pope accused Philips of pilfering his pastorals, and of "turning a Persian tale for half-a-crown;" the one an offence not very likely, unless, indeed, all common-places may be said to be stolen; the other no offence at all, though it might have been a misfortune. These littlenesses in great men are a part of the childhood of society. They show us how young it still is, and what a parcel of wrangling schoolboys (in that respect) a future period may consider us.

One of the most agreeable memories connected with Button's is that of Garth, a man whom, for the sprightliness and generosity of his nature, it is a pleasure to name. He was one of the most amiable and intelligent of a most amiable and intelligent class of men—the physicians.

Armstrong, another poet and physician and not unworthy of either class, for genius and goodness of heart, though he had the weakness of affecting a bluntness of manners, and of swearing, drew his last breath in this street. He is well known as the author of the most elegant didactic poem in the language,—the 'Art of Preserving Health.' The affectations of men of genius are sometimes in direct contradiction to their best qualities, and assumed to avoid a show of pretending what they feel. Armstrong, who had bad health, and was afraid perhaps of being thought effeminate, affected the bully in his prose writings; and he was such a swearer, that the late Mr. Fuseli's indulgence in that infirmity has been attributed to his keeping company with the Doctor when a youth. We never met with a habitual swearer in whom the habit could not be traced to some feeling of conscious weakness. Fuseli swore as he painted, in the hope of making up for the defects of his genius by the violence of his style.

At No. 8, Russell Street, Boswell was introduced to his formidable friend of whom he became the biographer. The house then belonged to Davies the bookseller. The account given us of his first interview is highly characteristic of both parties. Boswell had a thorough specimen of his future acquaintance at once, and Johnson evidently saw completely through Boswell.

"Mr. Thomas Davies, the actor," saith the particular Boswell, "who then kept a bookseller's shop in Russell Street, Covent Garden, told me that Johnson was very much his friend, and came frequently to his house, where he more than once invited me to meet him; but by some unlucky accident or other he was prevented from coming to us.

"Mr. Thomas Davies was a man of good understanding and talents, with the advantage of a liberal education. Though somewhat pompous, he was an entertaining companion; and his literary performances have no inconsiderable share of merit. He was a friendly and very hospitable man. Both he and his wife (who had been celebrated for her beauty), though upon the stage for many years, maintained an uniform decency of character, and Johnson esteemed them, and lived in as easy an intimacy with them as any family which he used to visit. Mr. Davies recollected several of Johnson's remarkable sayings, and was one of the best of the many imitators of his voice and manner, while relating them. He increased my impatience more and more to see the extraordinary man whose works I highly valued, and whose conversation was reported to be so peculiarly excellent.

"At last," continues Mr. Boswell, "on the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's back parlour, after having drank tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop, and Mr. Davies having perceived him through the glass-door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing towards us—he announced his awful approach somewhat as an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost, 'Look, my lord, it comes.' I found that I had a very perfect idea of Johnson's figure, from the portrait of him painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after he had published his 'Dictionary,' in the attitude of sitting in his easy chair in deep meditation; which was the first picture his friend did for him, which Sir Joshua very kindly presented to me, and from which an engraving has been made for this work. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him; I was much agitated, and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, 'Don't tell where I come from.'—'From Scotland,' cried Davies, roguishly. 'Mr. Johnson,' said I, 'I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.' I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to soothe and conciliate him, and not as a humiliating abasement at the expense of my country. But however that might be, this speech was somewhat unlucky; for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression 'come from Scotland!' which I used in the sense of being of that country; and, as if I had come away from it, or left it, retorted, 'That, sir, I find, is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help.' This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I felt myself not a little embarrassed, and apprehensive of what might come next. He then addressed himself to Davies: 'What do you think of Garrick? he has refused me an order for the play for Miss Williams, because he knows the house will be full, and that an order will be worth three shillings.' Eager to take any opening to get into conversation with him, I ventured to say, 'O, sir, I cannot think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a trifle to you.' 'Sir (said he, with a stern look,) I have known David Garrick longer than you have done; and I know no right you have to talk to me on the subject.' Perhaps I deserved this check; for it was rather presumptuous in me, an entire stranger, to express any doubt of the justice of his animadversion upon his old acquaintance and pupil. I now felt myself much mortified, and began to think that the hope I had long indulged of obtaining his acquaintance was blasted. And, in truth, had not my ardour been uncommonly strong, and my resolution uncommonly persevering, so rough a reception might have deterred me for ever from making any further attempts. Fortunately, however, I remained upon the field, not wholly discomfited." * * * "I was highly pleased with the extraordinary vigour of his conversation, and regretted that I was drawn away from it by an engagement at another place. I had, for a part of the evening, been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an observation now and then, which he received very civilly; so that I was satisfied that, though there was a roughness in his manner, there was no ill-nature in his disposition. Davies followed me to the door, and when I complained to him a little of the hard blows which the great man had given me, he kindly took upon him to console me by saying, 'Don't be uneasy. I can see he likes you very well.'"[287]

The Hummums Hotel and Coffee-house which occupies the south-west corner of this street, and stretches round into Covent Garden market, is so called from an eastern word signifying baths. It was one of the earliest houses set up in England of that kind, and thence called bagnios; and one of the few that retained their respectability. The generality were so much the reverse, that the word bagnio came to mean a brothel. It appears from a story we are about to relate, that people went to the Hummums not only to bathe, but to get themselves cupped. Bathing is too much neglected in this country; but the consequences of our sedentary habits have forced upon us a greater degree of attention to it, and the imitation of the Turkish system of cleanliness has been carried further in vapour baths and the startling luxury of shampooing, which makes people discover that they have in general two or three skins too many. Englishmen, in the pride of their greater freedom, often wonder how Eastern nations can endure their servitude. This is one of the secrets by which they endure it. A free man in a dirty skin is not in so fit a state to endure existence as a slave with a clean one; because nature insists, that a due attention to the clay which our souls inhabit, shall be the first requisite to the comfort of the inhabitant. Let us not get rid of our freedom; let us teach it rather to those that want it; but let such of us as have them, by all means get rid of our dirty skins. There is now a moral and intellectual commerce among mankind, as well as an interchange of inferior goods; we should send freedom to Turkey as well as clocks and watches, and import not only figs, but a fine state of the pores.

Of the Hummums there is a ghost-story in Boswell, a thing we should as little dream of in this centre of the metropolis, as look for a ghost at noonday. The reader will see how much credit is to be given it, by the style of the narrator, who, with all his good-will towards superstition (and it is no less a person that speaks than Dr. Johnson), had an inveterate love of truth, which led him to defeat his own object.

"Amongst the numerous prints," says Boswell, "pasted on the walls of the dining-room at Streatham, was 'Hogarth's Modern Midnight Conversation.' I asked him what he knew of Parson Ford, who makes a conspicuous figure in the riotous group. Johnson. 'Sir, he was my acquaintance and relation,—my mother's nephew. He had purchased a living in the country, but not simoniacally. I never saw him but in the country. I have been told that he was a man of great parts, very profligate, but I never heard he was impious.' Boswell. 'Was there not a story of his ghost having appeared?' Johnson. 'Sir, it was believed. A waiter at the Hummums, in which house Ford died, had been absent some time, and returned, not knowing that Ford was dead. Going down to the cellar, according to the story, he met him; going down again he met him a second time. When he came up, he asked some people of the house what Ford could be doing there. They told him Ford was dead. The waiter took a fever, in which he lay for some time. When he recovered he said he had a message to deliver to some women from Ford; but he was not to tell what, or to whom. He walked out; he was followed; but somewhere about St. Paul's they lost him. He came back, and said he had delivered the message, and the women exclaimed, 'Then we are all undone!' Dr. Pellett, who was not a credulous man, inquired into the truth of this story, and he said, the evidence was irresistible. My wife went to the Hummums (it is a place where people get themselves cupped). I believe she went with intention to hear about this story of Ford. At first they were unwilling to tell her; but after they had talked to her, she came away satisfied that it was true. To be sure the man had a fever; and this vision may have been the beginning of it. But if the message to the women, and their behaviour upon it, were true as related, there was something supernatural. That rests upon his word: and there it remains.'"[288]

At the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, Covent Garden (or, as it would be more properly spelt, Convent Garden[289]) extended from Drury Lane to St. Martin's Lane, and was surrounded by a brick wall. It had lately belonged to the abbots of Westminster, whom it supplied, doubtless, with fruit and vegetables, as it has since done the metropolis, and hence its appellation. The reader will see it in the old print of London by Aggas. There was a break into it on the south-west, made by the garden of Bedford House, which stood facing the Strand between the present Bedford and Southampton Streets. On the dissolution of the monasteries, Covent Garden was given to the Duke of Somerset, and on his fall, to John, Earl of Bedford, whose family converted it into a pasture ground, including Long Acre, then part of the fields leading to St. Giles's. His descendant Francis, about seventy years afterwards, let the whole pasture on a building lease, and built the old church for the intended inhabitants. The architect was Inigo Jones. To the same hand we are indebted for the portico of the north-eastern quarter, which still remains. There was a continuation of it on the south-east, which was burnt down. It was to have been carried all round the square, and the absence of it might be regretted on the score of beauty; but porticoes are not fit for this climate, unless where the object is to furnish a walk during the rain. Covered walks devoted to that purpose, and conveniently distributed, might be temptations to out-of-door exercise in bad weather. If they succeeded, they would effect a very desirable end. But covered walks, however beautiful, which are not used in that way, are rather to be deprecated in this cold and humid climate. In Italy, where the summer sun at noon-day burns like a cauldron, they are much to the purpose; but the more sun we can get in England the better. Luckily, there is a convenience in this portico, as far as the theatre is concerned; otherwise the circuit would be more agreeable without it, and the coffee-houses of the place more light and cheerful.

Of the style of building observed in the church there is a well-known story. "The Earl is said to have told Inigo Jones he wished to have as plain and convenient a structure as possible, and but little better than a barn; to which the architect replied, he would build a barn, but that it should be the handsomest in England."[290]

Inigo Jones's church was burnt down in the year 1795, owing to the carelessness of some plumbers who were mending the roof. "When the flames were at their height," says Malcolm, "the portico and massy pillars made a grand scene, projected before a back-ground of liquid fire, which raged with so much uncontrolled fury, that not a fragment of wood, in or near the walls, escaped destruction."[291]

INIGO JONES'S CHURCH, AND OLD COVENT GARDEN.

The barn-like taste, or in other words the Grecian (for usefulness and simplicity are the secrets of it, and the Temple of Theseus and a common barn have the same principles of structure), was copied in the new edifice. By a passage quoted in the Londinium Redivivum from the Weekly Journal of April 22, 1727, it appears that the portico of the old church had been altered by the inhabitants, and restored by the Earl of Burlington, "out of regard to the memory of the celebrated Inigo Jones, and to prevent our countrymen being exposed for their ignorance." The spirit of this portico has been retained, and the church of St. Paul's Covent garden is one of the most pleasing structures in the metropolis.

A great many actors have been buried in this spot; among them, Eastcourt the famous mimic, Edwin, Macklin, and King. We shall speak of one or two of them presently, but it is desirable, especially in a work of this kind, to observe a chronological order. The mere observance itself conveys information. Among the variety of persons buried here may be mentioned, first:

Car, Earl of Somerset, in the old church. His burial in Covent Garden was, doubtless, owing to his connection with the family of Russell, his daughter having married William, afterwards Earl and Duke of Bedford, father of the famous patriot. It is said that his lady was bred up in such ignorance of the dishonour of her parents, that having met by accident with a book giving an account of it, she fainted away, and was found in that condition by her domestics. Her lover's family were very averse to the match, but wisely allowed it upon due trial, and had no reason to repent their generosity. To read the history of the foolish and unprincipled Countess of Somerset, who would suppose that her daughter was to give birth to the conscientious martyr for liberty? But the blood which folly makes wicked, a good education may render noble.

Butler in the church-yard. The popular notion that he was starved is unfounded; but he was very ill-treated by a court whom his wit materially served. It is said that Charles, once and away, gave him a hundred pounds. This is possible; but it is at least as possible that he gave him nothing, though he would willingly have done it, perhaps, had his debaucheries left him the means. Charles, in his way, was as poor as Butler, though not as honourably so, for it does not appear that the poet was unwilling to labour for his subsistence. There is a mystery, however, in Butler's private affairs. He once appears to have had some office in the family of the Countess of Kent. Perhaps he was not a very good man of business, though the learning exhibited in 'Hudibras' showed how he could work on a favourite subject. When men succeed to this extent in what nature evidently designs them for, great allowance is to be made for their disinclination to other tasks; and Butler had no children to render the neglect of his fortune criminal. The Duke of Buckingham, who once undertook to "do something for him," and had a meeting for the purpose at a coffee-house, saw a pander of his go by the window with a "brace of ladies," and going after him, we hear no more of his Grace. Luckily, to prevent him from starvation, Butler found a friend in the excellent Mr. Longueville of the Temple, a scholar and a real gentleman, who did not confine his generosity to an admiration of him in books. The poet is understood to have been indebted to him for support during the latter part of his life; and it was he who buried him in this church-yard. It is to Mr. Longueville that we are indebted for the publication of Butler's "Remains," which are quite worthy of the wit of "Hudibras," and deserve to be more generally known. Butler was the greatest wit that ever wrote in verse; perhaps the greatest that ever wrote at all, meaning by wit the union of remote ideas. He was undoubtedly the most learned. His political poem is out of date; and much of the humour that delighted the cavaliers must, of necessity, be lost to us; but passages of it will always be repeated; and it is difficult to hear his name mentioned, without quoting some of his rhymes. He was the first man that gave rhyme itself an air of wit. His couplets are not only witty themselves, but seem to add a new idea to their imagery in the very sounds at the end of them. His startling turns of thought are accompanied by as surprising a turn in the cadence, as if the echo itself could not help laughing. Thus his doctor's shop is

"—— stored with deletery medicines,

Which whosoever took is dead since:"

his sour religionists

"Compound for sins they are inclined to,

By damning those they have no mind to:"

and again,

"Synods are mystical bear-gardens,

Where elders, deputies, church-wardens,

And other members of the court,

Manage the Babylonish sport;

For prolocutor, scribe, and bear-ward,

Do differ only in a mere word:

Both are but several synagogues

Of carnal men, and bears, and dogs:

Both antichristian assemblies

To mischief bent, as far's in them lies."

His most quoted rhyme, when

"—— Pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,

Was beat with fist instead of a stick,

is, singularly enough, no rhyme at all; but the surprise of the echo, and the truth conveyed in it, affect us as if it were perfect. Here are one or two more of the wilful order, very ludicrous:—

"—— The captive knight

And pensive squire, both bruised in body

And conjured into safe custody.

—— in all the fabrick

You could not see one stone or a brick.

Who deals in destiny's dark counsels,

And sage opinions of the moon sells.

Those wholesale critics that in coffee-

Houses cry down all philosophy."

Mrs. Pilkington tells us that Swift took down a "Hudibras" one day, and ordered her to examine him in the book, when, to her great surprise, she found he remembered "every line, from beginning to end of it."[292] Mrs. Pilkington is a lady whose word is to be taken cum multis granis; nor is it very likely she should ever have heard the Dean repeat a whole volume through; but if Swift knew any author entire, Butler is likely to have been the man. Butler had the same politics, the same love of learning, the same wit, the same apparent contempt of mankind, the same charity underneath it, and the same impatient wish to see them wiser. His style of writing is evidently the origin of Swift's. If the reader is not yet acquainted with his 'Remains,' the following sample or two will give him a desire to be so:—

"The truest characters of ignorance

Are vanity, and pride, and arrogance;

As blind men use to bear their noses higher,

Than those who have their eyes and sight intire."

---

"There needs no other charm, nor conjuror,

To raise infernal spirits up, but fear;

That makes men pull their horns in like a snail,

That's both a prisoner to itself, and jail;

Draws more fantastic shapes than in the grains

Of knotted wood, in some men's crazy brains,

When all the cocks they think they see, and bulls,

Are only in the inside of their skulls."

Sir Peter Lely, the painter of the meretricious beauties of the court of Charles II.—Pope's couplet on him is well known:—

"Lely on animated canvass stole

The sleepy eye that spoke the melting soul."

The canvass is more sleepy than animated, and the ladies more like what they were in inclination than in features. However, there is a great likeness on that very account. They are all of a sisterhood;—qualem non decet esse sororum. A master of pictorial criticism has said of the collection of them at Windsor Castle, that "they look just like what they were, a set of kept-mistresses, painted, tawdry, showing off their theatrical or meretricious airs and graces, without one trace of real elegance or refinement, or one spark of sentiment to touch the heart. Lady Grammont is the handsomest of them; and though the most voluptuous in her attire and attitude, the most decent. The Duchess of Portsmouth (Cleveland), in her helmet and plumes, looks quite like a heroine of romance, or modern Amazon; but for an air of easy assurance, inviting admiration, and alarmed at nothing but being thought coy, commend us to my Lady —— above, in the sky-blue drapery, thrown carelessly over her shoulders. As paintings, these celebrated portraits cannot rank very high. They have an affected ease, but a real hardness of manner and execution; and they have that contortion of attitude and setness of features, which we afterwards find carried to so disgusting and insipid an excess in Kneller's portraits. Sir Peter Lely was, however, a better painter than Sir Godfrey Kneller—that is the highest praise that can be accorded to him. He had more spirit, more originality, and was the livelier coxcomb of the two! Both these painters possessed considerable mechanical dexterity, but it is not of a refined kind. Neither of them could be ranked among great painters, yet they were thought by their contemporaries and themselves superior to every one. At the distance of a hundred years we see the thing plainly enough."[293] Sir Peter was a Westphalian, of a family named Vander Vaas. His father was an officer in the army, who, having been born in a perfumer's house which had a lily for its sign, got the name of Captain Du Lys, or Lely, and the cognomen was retained by his son. He aimed at magnificence in his style of living, probably in imitation of his predecessor at the English court, Vandyke; but there was a certain coarseness about him which showed the inferiority of his taste in that particular, as well as in the rest.

Wycherly in the Church. See [Bow Street].

Southern, one of those dramatic writers who, without much genius, succeed in obtaining a considerable name, and justly, by dint of genuine feeling for common nature. He began in Dryden's time, who knew and respected his talents, was known and respected by Pope, and lived to enjoy a similar regard from Gray. "I remember," says Oldys, "this venerable old gentleman, when he lived in Covent Garden, and used to frequent the evening prayers in the church there. He was always neat and decently dressed, commonly in black, with his silver sword, and silver locks." Gray, in a letter to Walpole, dated Burnham, in Buckinghamshire, 1737, says, "We have old Mr. Southern at a gentleman's house, a little way off, who often comes to see us; he is now seventy-seven years old, and has almost wholly lost his memory; but is as agreeable an old man as can be; at least I persuade myself so when I look at him, and think of Isabella and Oroonoko." Southern died about nine years after this period, aged about eighty-five. With all the respect he obtained, probably a great deal more by the decency and civility of his habits than by his genius, Southern, it appears, was not above making application to the nobility and others to buy tickets for his plays.

Joe Haines, the comedian. See [Drury Lane].

Eastcourt, the comedian—or mimic, rather—for, like most players who devote themselves to mimicry, which is a kind of caricature portrait-painting, his comedy or general humour was inferior to it. He was, however, a man of wit as well as a mimic; and, in spite of a talent which seldom renders men favourites in private, was so much regarded, that, when the Beef-steak Club was set up (which a late author says must not be confounded with the Beef-steak Club held in Covent Garden Theatre and the Lyceum), Eastcourt was appointed provveditore or caterer, and presented as a badge of distinction with a small gridiron of gold, which he wore about his neck fastened to a green ribbon. He is said at one time to have been a tavern-keeper, in which quality (unless it was in the other) Parnell speaks of him in the beginning of one of his poems:—

Gay Bacchus liking Estcourt's wine

A noble meal bespoke us,

And for the guests that were to dine

Brought Comus, Love, and Jocus.[294]

But his greatest honour is the following remarkable testimony borne to his merits by Sir Richard Steele, whose own fineness of nature was never more beautifully evinced in any part of his writings:—

"Poor Eastcourt! the last time I saw him we were plotting to show the town his great capacity for acting in his full light, by introducing him as dictating to a set of young players, in what manner to speak this sentence and utter t'other passion. He had so exquisite a discerning of what was defective in any object before him, that in an instant he could shew you the ridiculous side of what would pass for beautiful and just, even to men of no ill judgment, before he had pointed at the failure. He was no less skilful in the knowledge of beauty; and, I dare say, there is no one who knew him well, but can repeat more well-turned compliments, as well as smart repartees of Mr. Eastcourt's, than of any other man in England. This was easily to be observed in his inimitable faculty of telling a story, in which he would throw in natural and unexpected incidents to make his court to one part, and rally the other part of the company. Then he would vary the usage he gave them, according as he saw them bear kind or sharp language. He had the knack to raise up a pensive temper and mortify an impertinently gay one, as he saw them bear kind or sharp language.

"It is an insolence natural to the wealthy, to affix, as much as in them lies, the character of a man to his circumstances. Thus it is ordinary with them to praise faintly the good qualities of those below them, and say, it is very extraordinary in such a man as he is, or the like, when they are forced to acknowledge the value of him whose lowness upbraids their exaltation. It is to this humour only that it is to be ascribed, that a quick wit in conversation, a nice judgment upon any emergency that could arise, and a most blameless inoffensive behaviour, could not raise this man above being received only upon the foot of contributing to mirth and diversion. But he was as easy under that condition as a man of so excellent talents was capable; and since they would have it that to divert was his business, he did it with all the seeming alacrity imaginable, though it stung him to the heart that it was his business. Men of sense, who could taste his excellencies, were well satisfied to let him lead the way in conversation, and play after his own manner; but fools, who provoked him to mimicry, found he had the indignation to let it be at their expense who called for it; and he would show the form of conceited heavy fellows as jests to the company at their own request, in revenge for interrupting him from being a companion, to put on the character of a jester.

"What was peculiarly excellent in this memorable companion was, that in the accounts he gave of persons and sentiments, he did not only hit the figure of their faces, and manner of their gestures, but he would in his narration fall into their very way of thinking, and this when he recounted passages wherein men of the best wit were concerned, as well as such wherein were represented men of the lowest rank of understanding. It is certainly as great an instance of self-love to a weakness, to be impatient of being mimicked, as any can be imagined. There were none but the vain, the formal, the proud, or those who were incapable of mending their faults, that dreaded him; to others he was in the highest degree pleasing, and I do not know any satisfaction of any indifferent kind I ever tasted so much as having got over an impatience of seeing myself in the air he could put me when I have displeased him. It is indeed to his exquisite talent this way, more than any philosophy I could read on the subject, that my person is very little of my care; and it is indifferent to me what is said of my shape, my air, my manner, my speech, or my address. It is to poor Eastcourt I chiefly owe that I am arrived at the happiness of thinking nothing a diminution to me, but what argues a depravity of my will.

"I have been present with him among men of the most delicate taste a whole night, and have known him (for he saw it was desired) keep the discourse to himself the most part of it, and maintain his good humour with a countenance and in a language so delightful, without offence to any person or thing upon earth, still preserving the distance his circumstances obliged him to; I say, I have seen him do all this in such a charming manner, that I am sure none of those I hint at will read this without giving him some sorrow for their abundant mirth, and one gush of tears for so many bursts of laughter I wish it were any honour to the pleasant creature's memory that my eyes are too much suffused to let me go on."[295]

Closterman in the church-yard. He was an indifferent, but once popular artist, whom we mention on account of his painful domestic end. He had a mistress, whom he thought devoted to him. She robbed him of everything she could lay her hands on, money, plate, jewels, and moveables, and fled out of the kingdom. He pined away with an impaired understanding, and was soon brought to the grave. Closterman was once set in competition with Sir Godfrey Kneller. He painted the family of the Duke of Marlborough, and had so many disputes about the picture with the Duchess, that Marlborough said to him, "It has given me more trouble to reconcile my wife and you, than to fight a battle."

Arne, the celebrated musician, in the church-yard. See [King Street].

Sir Robert Strange, the greatest engraver, perhaps, this country has seen; that is to say, supposing the merits of an engraver to be in proportion to his relish for and imitation of his originals. Other men may have drawn a finer mechanical line, but none have surpassed Strange in giving the proper diversity of surfaces, or equalled him in transferring to hard copper the roundness and delicacy of flesh. His engravings from Titian almost convey something of the colours of that great painter. Like all true masters, Strange took pains with whatever he did, and bestowed attention on every part of it; so much indeed, that his love for his art appears to have been an exhausting one, and he was anxious to keep the burin out of the hands of his children. He had seen a great deal of the world, and was a very amiable as well as intelligent man. When young he was a great Jacobite, and fought sword-in-hand for the Pretender; though it is said that a main cause of his ardour was the hope of attaining the hand of a fair friend, equally devoted to the cause. It is pleasant to add, that he did attain it, and that she made him a good wife. Sir Robert was a Scotchman of a good family; but his knighthood came from George the Third, a few years before the artist's death.

Macklin, the comedian, in the church-yard, at the age of one hundred and seven, and upwards. We have spoken of him before in his stage character. His long age in the midst of cities and theatres is very remarkable. It seems to have been owing to the inheritance of a robust constitution—the great cause of longevity next to temperance, perhaps the greatest, unless contradicted by the reverse. Most persons who have been long-lived have had long-lived progenitors; but somebody must begin. The foundation is always temperance. Macklin must have been very lucky in his physical advantages, for he did not keep any very strict rein over his temper; nor does he appear to have followed any regimen, till latterly, and then he consulted the immediate ease of his stomach, and not the quality of what he took. However, his habits, whatever they were, were most likely regular. "It had been his constant rule," says his biographer, "for a period of thirty years and upwards, to visit a public-house called the Antelope, in White Hart Yard, Covent Garden, where his usual beverage was a pint of beer called stout, which was made hot and sweetened with moist sugar, almost to a syrup. This, he said, balmed his stomach, and kept him from having any inward pains."[296] The same writer, in a report of a conversation he had with Mr. Macklin, has left us an affecting but not unpleasing picture of the decay of faculties, remarkable to the very last for their shrewdness and vivacity. It is the liveliest picture of old mortality we ever met with.

Question. "Well, Mr. Macklin, how do you do to-day?"

Answer. "Why, I hardly know, sir; I think I am a little better than I was in the morning."

Q. "Why, sir, did you feel any pain in the morning?"

A. "Yes, sir, a good deal."

Q. "In what part?"

A. "Why, I feel a sort of a—a—a—" (shaking his head), "I forget everything; I forget the word: I felt a kind of pain here" (putting his hand upon his left breast),—"but it is gone away, and I am better now."

Q. "How do you sleep, sir?"

A. "Not so well as I could wish; I am becoming more wakeful than usual; I awoke last night two or three times: I got up twice, walked about my room here, and then went to bed again."

Q. "Do you always get up when you awake, sir?"

A. "No, sir, not always; but I get up and walk about as soon as I feel myself—there, now, it is all gone" (putting his hand upon his forehead).

Q. "You get up, sir, I suppose, as soon as you feel yourself uneasy in bed?"

A. "Yes, sir, when I begin to be troublesome to myself."

Q. "Do not you, sir, find it unpleasant to walk about here alone, and to have nobody to converse with?"

A. "Not at all, sir, I get up when I am tired abed, and I walk about till I am tired, and then I go to bed again; and so forth."

Q. "But does it not afford you great pleasure when any person comes to see you?"

A. "Why, not so much as one would expect, sir."

Q. "Are you not pleased when your friends come and converse with you?"

A. "I am always very happy to see my friends, and I should be very happy to hold a—a—a, see there now...."

Q. "A conversation you mean, sir?"

A. "Ay, a conversation. Alas! sir, you see the wretched state of my memory—see there now, I could not recollect that common word—but I cannot converse. I used to go to a house very near this where my friends assemble ... it was a—a—a

Q. "Have you been reading this morning, sir?"

A. "Yes, sir."

Q. "What book?"

A. "I forget:—here, look at it;"—handing the book.

Q. "I see, it is Milton's 'Paradise Lost.'"

[He then took the book out of my hand and said:—"I have only read this much" (about four pages) "these two days—but what I read yesterday, I have forgot to-day." He next read a few lines of the beginning inimitably well, and laying down the book, said] "I understand all that, but if I read any farther, I forget that passage which I understood before."

Q. "But I perceive with satisfaction, sir, that your sight is very good."

A. "Oh, sir, my sight, like everything else, begins to fail too; about two days ago I felt—a—a—there now ... I have lost it—a pain just above my left eye, and heard something give a crack, and ever since, this eye (pointing to the left) has been painful."

Q. "I think, sir, it would be advisable for you to refrain from reading a little time."

A. "I believe you are in the right, sir."

Q. "I think you appear at present free from pain?"

A. "Yes, sir, I am pretty comfortable now: but I find my—my—my strength is all gone. I feel myself going gradually."

Q. "But you are not afraid to die?"

A. "Not in the least, sir—I never did any person any serious mischief in my life:—even when I gambled, I never cheated:—I know that a—a—a—see, now—death, I mean, must come, and I am ready to give it up" (meaning the ghost).

Q. "I understand you were at Drury Lane theatre last night?"

A. "Yes, sir, I was there."

Q. "Yes, sir, the newspapers of this morning take notice of it."

A. "Do they?"

Y. "Yes, sir;—the paragraph runs thus:—'Among the numerous visitors at Drury Lane Theatre last night, we observed the Duke of Queensbury and the veteran Macklin, whose ages together amount to one hundred and ninety-six."

Mr. Macklin. "The Duke of who?"

A. "The Duke of Queensbury, sir."

Mr. Macklin. "I don't know that man. The Duke of Queensbury! The Duke of Queensbury! Oh! ay, I remember him now very well:—The Duke of Queensbury old! Why, sir, I might be his father! ha! ha! ha!"

Q. "Well, sir, I understand that you went to the Haymarket Theatre to see the 'Merchant of Venice?'"

A. "I did, sir."

Q. "What is your opinion of Mr. Palmer's Shylock?"

[This question was answered by a shake of the head. Being desirous of hearing his opinion I asked him the second time.]

Mr. Macklin.—"Why, sir, my opinion is, that Mr. Palmer played the character of Shylock in one style. In this scene there was a sameness, in that scene a sameness, and in every scene a sameness: it was all same! same! same!—no variation. He did not look the character, nor laugh the character, nor speak the character of Shakspeare's Jew. In the trial scene, where he comes to cut the pound of flesh, he was no Jew. Indeed, sir, he did not hit the part, nor the part did not hit him."[297]

This conversation took place in September 1796: in July 1797 he died.

Dr. Walcot, better known by the name of Peter Pindar. He was a coarse and virulent satirist, and content to write so many common-places, that they will stifle his works with posterity, with the exception of a few pieces. His humour, however, was genuine of its kind. His caricatures are striking likenesses; and the innocent simplicity which he is fond of affecting makes a ludicrous contrast with his impudence. Dr. Walcot's largest poems are worth little, and his serious worth nothing. What we think likely to last in the collections, are his "Bozzy and Piozzi," his 'Royal visit to Whitbread's Brewhouse,' one or two more of that stamp, some of his "Odes to Academicians," and the immortal "Pilgrims and the Peas," the hero of which is assuredly hobbling to this day, and will never arrive. Dr. Walcot was a man of taste in the fine arts, and produced some landscapes, which we believe do credit to his pencil. We have never seen them. His critical good taste is not to be disputed, though the Academicians, at one time, would have given a great deal to find it wanting. He was latterly blind, but maintained his spirits to the last. He had a fine skull, which he was not displeased to be called upon to exhibit, taking his wig off, and saying "There," with a lusty voice; which formed a singular contrast with the pathos attached to the look of blind eyes.

Covent Garden market has always been the most agreeable in the metropolis, because it is devoted exclusively to fruit, flowers, and vegetables. A few crockery-ware shops make no exceptions to this "bloodless" character. The seasons here regularly present themselves in their most gifted looks,—with evergreens in winter, the fresh verdure of spring, all the hues of summer, and whole loads of desserts in autumn. The country girls who bring the things to market at early dawn are a sight themselves worthy of the apples and roses; the good-natured Irish women who attend to carry baskets for purchasers are not to be despised, with the half-humorous, half pathetic tone of their petitions to be employed; and the ladies who come to purchase, crown all. No walk in London, on a fine summer's day, is more agreeable than the passage through the flowers here at noon, when the roses and green leaves are newly watered, and blooming faces come to look at them in those cool and shady avenues, while the hot sun is basking in the streets. On these occasions we were very well satisfied with the market in its old state. The old sheds, and irregular avenues, when dry, assorted well with the presence of leaves and fruits. They had a careless picturesque look, as if a bit of an old suburban garden had survived from ancient times.

Nothing, however, but approbation can be bestowed on the convenient and elegant state into which the market has been raised by the magnificence of the noble proprietor, whose arms we are glad to see on the side next James Street. They are a real grace to the building and to the owner, for they are a stamp of liberality. In time we hope to see the roofs of the new market covered with shrubs and flowers, nodding over the balustrades, and fruits and red berries sparkling in the sun.[298] As an ornament, nothing is more beautiful in combination than the fluctuating grace of foliage and the stability of architecture. And, as a utility, the more air and sun the better. There is never too much sun in this country, and every occasion should be seized to take advantage of it.

The space between the church and the market is the scene of Hogarth's picture of the 'Frosty Morning.' Here in general take place the elections for Westminster. Sheridan has poured forth his good things in this spot, and Charles Fox won the hearts of multitudes. It would be an endless task to trace the recollections connected with the coffee-houses under the portico. Perhaps there is not a name of celebrity in the annals of wit or the stage, between the reigns of Charles II. and the present sovereign, which might not be found concerned in the clubs or other meetings which they have witnessed, particularly those of Garrick, Hogarth, and their contemporaries. Sir Roger de Coverley has been there, a person more real to us than nine-tenths of them. When in town he lodged in Bow Street.

Opposite the Bedford Coffee-house a tragical scene took place, the particulars of which are interesting. The Earl of Sandwich, grandson of Charles II.'s Earl of Sandwich, and first Lord of the Admiralty during the North administration, had for his mistress a Miss Ray, whom he had rendered as accomplished as she was handsome. Some say that she was the daughter of a labourer at Elstree, others of a stay-maker in Covent Garden. Her father is said to have had a shop in that way of business in Holywell Street in the Strand. Miss Ray was apprenticed at an early age to a mantua-maker in Clerkenwell Close, with whom she served her time out and obtained a character that did her honour. A year or two after the expiration of this period she was taken notice of by Lord Sandwich, who gave her a liberal education; rendered her a proficient in his favourite arts of music and singing; and made her his mistress. He was old enough to be her father.

Lord Sandwich was in the habit of having plays and music at his house, particularly the latter. At Christmas the musical performance was an oratorio, for, "to speak seriously," says Mr. Cradock, "no man was more careful than Lord Sandwich not to trespass on public decorum." This gentleman, in his Memoirs, has furnished us with accounts which will give a livelier idea of the situation of Miss Ray in his Lordship's house than any formal abstract of them.

"Plays at Hinchinbrook had ceased before I had ever been in company with Lord Sandwich, and oratorios for a week at Christmas had been substituted. Miss Ray, who was the first attraction, was instructed in music both by Mr. Bates and Signor Giardini. Norris and Champness regularly attended the meetings, and there were many excellent amateur performers; the Duke of Manchester's military band assisted, and his Lordship himself took the kettle-drums to animate the whole. 'Non nobis, Domine,' was sung after dinner, and then catches and glees succeeded; all was well conducted, for whatever his Lordship undertook he generally accomplished, and seemed to have adopted the emphatic advice of Longinus, 'always to excel.' Miss Ray, in her situation, was a pattern of discretion; for when a lady of rank, between one of the acts of the oratorio, advanced to converse with her, she expressed her embarrassment; and Lord Sandwich, turning privately to a friend, said, 'As you are well acquainted with that lady, I wish you would give her a hint, that there is a boundary line in my family I do not wish to see exceeded; such a trespass might occasion the overthrow of all our music meetings.'

"From what I have collected, Miss Ray was born in Hertfordshire, in 1742, and that his lordship first saw her in a shop in Tavistock Street where he was purchasing some neckcloths. This was all that Mr. Bates seemed to have ascertained, for both his lordship and the lady were equally cautious of communicating anything on the subject. From that time her education was particularly attended to, and she proved worthy of all the pains that were taken with her. Her voice was powerful and pleasing, and she has never been excelled in that fine air of Jephtha, 'Brighter scenes I seek above;' nor was she less admired when she executed an Italian bravura of the most difficult description."[299]

Again:—"I did not know his lordship in early life; but this I can attest, and call any contemporary to ratify who might have been present, that we never heard an oath, or the least profligate conversation at his lordship's table in our lives. Miss Ray's behaviour was particularly circumspect. Dr. Green, Bishop of Lincoln, always said, 'I never knew so cautious a man as Lord Sandwich.' The Bishop came too soon once to an oratorio; we went to receive him in the dining-room, but he said, 'No; the drawing-room is full of company, and I will go up and take tea there.' Lord Sandwich was embarrassed, as he had previously objected to Lady Blake speaking to Miss Ray between the acts; and as the Bishop would go up, a consequence ensued just as I expected. Some severe verses were sent, which Mr. Bates intercepted.

---

"The elegant Mrs. Hinchcliffe, lady of the Bishop, attended one night with a party. She had never seen Miss Ray before, and she feelingly remarked afterwards, 'I was really hurt to sit directly opposite to her, and mark her discreet conduct, and yet to find it improper to notice her. She was so assiduous to please, was so very excellent, yet so unassuming, I was quite charmed with her; yet a seeming cruelty to her took off the pleasure of my evening.'"[300]

While Miss Ray was thus situated, his lordship, through the medium of a neighbour, Major Reynolds, became acquainted with a brother officer of the major's, a Captain Hackman, and invited him to his house. The Captain fell in love with Miss Ray, and Miss Ray is understood not to have been insensible to his passion. He was her junior by several years, though the disparity was nothing like the reverse one on the part of Lord Sandwich. Sir Herbert Croft, who wrote a history of their intimacy and correspondence, under the title of "Love and Madness," represents the attachment as mutual. According to his statement, Hackman urged her to marry him, and Miss Ray was desirous of doing so, but fearful of hurting the feelings of the man who had educated her, and who is represented as a sort of Old Robin Gray. In this sentiment, Hackman with all his passion is represented as partaking. Sir Herbert's book, though founded on fact, and probably containing more truth than can now be ascertained, is considered apocryphal; and Mr. Cradock, who is as cautious in his way as his noble acquaintance, doubts whether any man was really acquainted with the particulars. All that he could call to mind relative to either party was, that for three weeks after the Captain's introduction, till his military pursuits led him to Ireland, he was observed to bow to Miss Ray whenever she went out; and that Miss Ray, during the latter part of her time at the Admiralty, did not continue to speak of her situation as before. "She complained," he says, "of being greatly alarmed by ballads that had been sung, or cries that had been made, directly under the windows that looked into the park; and that such was the fury of the mob, that she did not think either herself or Lord Sandwich was safe whenever they went out; and I must own that I heard some strange insults offered; and that I with some of the servants once suddenly rushed out, but the offenders instantly ran away and escaped. One evening afterwards, when sitting with Miss Ray in the great room above stairs, she appeared to be much agitated, and at last said, 'she had a particular favour to ask of me; that, as her situation was very precarious, and no settlement had been made upon her, she wished I would hint something of the kind to Lord Sandwich.' I need not express my surprise, but I instantly assured her, 'that no one but herself could make such a proposal, as I knew Lord Sandwich never gave any one an opportunity of interfering with him on so delicate a subject.' She urged that her wish was merely to relieve Lord Sandwich as to great expense about her; for as her voice was then at the best, and Italian music was particularly her forte, she was given to understand she might succeed at the Opera-house, and as Mr. Giardini then led, and I was intimate with Mrs. Brooke and Mrs. Yates, she was certain of a most advantageous engagement. I then instantly conjectured who one of the advisers must have been; and afterwards found that three thousand pounds and a free benefit had been absolutely held out to her, though not by the two ladies who managed the stage department. Whether any proposals of marriage at that time or afterwards were made by Mr. Hackman, I know not."[301] Be this as it may, Hackman's passion was undoubted. He was originally an apprentice to a merchant at Gosport; was impatient of serving at the counter; entered the army at nineteen, but during his acquaintance with Miss Ray, exchanged the army for the church, "as a readier road to independence;" and was presented to the living of Wyverton in Norfolk.

Whatever was the nature of the intimacy between these unfortunate persons, a sudden stop appears to have been put to Hackman's final expectations, and he became desperate. By what we can gather from the accounts, Lord Sandwich, either to preserve her from her lover or herself, thought proper to put Miss Ray under the charge of a duenna. Hackman grew jealous either of him or of some other person; he was induced to believe that Miss Ray had no longer a regard for him, and he resolved to put himself to death. In this resolution a sudden impulse of frenzy included the unfortunate object of his passion.

On the evening of the fatal day, Miss Ray went with her female attendant to Covent Garden Theatre to see "Love in a Village." Mr. Cradock thinks she had declined to inform Hackman how she was engaged that evening. Hackman, who appears to have suspected her intentions, watched her, and saw the carriage pass by the Cannon Coffee-house (Cockspur Street, Charing Cross), in which he had posted himself. Singularly enough, Mr. Cradock happened to be in the same coffee-house, and says that he wondered to see the carriage go by without Lord Sandwich. This looks as if there was more in Hackman's suspicion than can now be shown. Hackman followed them.

"The ladies sat in a front box," says Mr. Cradock; "and three gentlemen, all connected with the Admiralty, occasionally paid their compliments to them; Mr. Hackman was sometimes in the lobby, sometimes in an upper side box, and more than once at the Bedford coffee-house to take brandy and water, but still seemed unable to gain any information; and I can add, as a slight circumstance, that in the afternoon I had myself been at the coffee-house (Cockspur Street, Charing Cross), and, observing the carriage pass by, had remarked to my friend that I wondered at seeing the ladies on their way to the theatre without Lord Sandwich; that I meant to have dined at the Admiralty, but had been prevented; so that it appears now that most of the circumstances must have been accidental. The dreadful consummation, however, was, that at the door of the theatre, directly opposite the Bedford coffee-house, Mr. Hackman suddenly rushed out, and as a gentleman was handing Miss Ray into the carriage, with a pistol he first destroyed this most unfortunate victim, and, though not at the time, fell a most dreadful sacrifice himself."[302]

"Miss Ray," says the Introduction to 'Love and Madness,' "was coming out of Covent Garden Theatre in order to take her coach, accompanied by two friends, a gentleman and a lady, between whom she walked in the piazza. Mr. Hackman stepped up to her without the smallest previous menace or address, put a pistol to her head, and shot her instantly dead. He then fired another at himself, which, however, did not prove equally effectual. The ball grazed upon the upper part of the head, but did not penetrate sufficiently to produce any fatal effect; he fell, however, and so firmly was he bent on the entire completion of the destruction he had meditated, that he was found beating his head with the utmost violence with the butt-end of the pistol, by Mr. Mahon, apothecary, of Covent Garden, who wrenched the pistol from his hand. He was carried to the Shakspeare, where his wound was dressed. In his pocket were found two letters; the one a copy of a letter which he had written to Miss Ray, and the other to Frederic Booth, Esq., Craven Street, Strand. When he had so far recovered his faculties as to be capable of speech, he inquired with great anxiety concerning Miss Ray; and being told she was dead, he desired her poor remains might not be exposed to the observation of the curious multitude. About five o'clock in the morning, Sir John Fielding came to the Shakspeare, and not finding his wounds of a dangerous nature, ordered him to Tothill Fields Bridewell.

"The body of the unhappy lady was carried into the Shakspeare Tavern for the inspection of the coroner."[303]

The whole of the circumstances connected with this catastrophe are painfully dramatic.

"The next morning," says Mr. Cradock, "I made several efforts before I had resolution enough to see any one of the Admiralty; at last old James, the black, overwhelmed with grief, came down to me, and endeavoured to inform me, that when he had mentioned what had occurred, Lord Sandwich hastily replied, 'You know that I forbad you to plague me any more about those ballads: let them sing or say whatever they please about me!' 'Indeed, my lord,' I said, 'I am not speaking of any ballads; it is all too true.' Others then came in, and all was a scene of the utmost horror and distress. His lordship for a while stood, as it were, petrified, till, suddenly seizing a candle, he ran up-stairs and threw himself on the bed; and in an agony exclaimed, 'Leave me for a while to myself—I could have borne anything but this!' The attendants remained for a considerable time at the top of the staircase, till his lordship rang the bell and ordered that they should all go to bed. They assured me that at that time they believed fewer particulars were known at the Admiralty than over half the town besides; indeed all was confusion and astonishment; and even now I am doubtful whether Lord Sandwich was ever aware that there was any connection between Mr. Hackman and Miss Ray. His lordship continued for a day or two at the Admiralty, till, at the earnest request of those about him, he at last retired for a short time to a friend's house in the neighbourhood of Richmond."[304]

Hackman was executed at Tyburn. He confessed at the bar that he had intended to kill himself, but he protested that but for a momentary frenzy he should not have destroyed her, "who was more dear to him than life." It appears, however, that he was furnished with two pistols; which told against him on that point.

"On Friday," says Boswell, "I had been present at the trial of the unfortunate Mr. Hackman, who, in a fit of frantic jealous love, had shot Miss Ray, the favourite of a nobleman. Johnson, in whose company I dined to-day, with some other friends, was much interested by my account of what passed, and particularly with his prayer for mercy of heaven. He said in a solemn, fervent tone, 'I hope he shall find mercy.' In talking of Hackman, Johnson argued as Judge Blackstone had done, that his being furnished with two pistols was a proof that he meant to shoot two persons. Mr. Beauclerk said, 'No; for that every wise man who intended to shoot himself, took two pistols, that he might be sure of doing it at once. Lord ——'s cook shot himself with one pistol, and lived ten days in great agony. Mr. ——, who loved buttered muffins, but durst not eat them because they disagreed with his stomach, resolved to shoot himself, and then he ate three buttered muffins for breakfast before shooting himself, knowing that he should not be troubled with indigestion; he had two charged pistols: one was found lying charged upon the table by him, after he had shot himself with the other.' 'Well (said Johnson with an air of triumph), you see here one pistol was sufficient.' Beauclerk replied smartly, 'Because it happened to kill him.'"[305]

It is impossible to settle this point. The general impression will be against Hackman; but, perhaps, the second pistol, though not designed for himself, might have been for Miss Ray. His victim was buried at Elstree, where she had been a lowly and happy child, running about with her blooming face, and little thinking what trouble it was to cost her.

In Mr. Cradock's book we hear again of Lord Sandwich on whom this story has thrown an interest. On his return from Richmond, Mr. Cradock went to see him, and was admitted into the study where the portrait of Miss Ray, an exact resemblance, still hung over the chimney-piece. "I fear," says Mr. Cradock, "I rather started on seeing it, which Lord Sandwich perceiving, he instantly endeavoured to speak of some unconnected subject; but he looked so ill, and I felt so much embarrassed, that as soon as I possibly could, I most respectfully took my leave."

"His lordship rarely dined out anywhere; but after a great length of time he was persuaded by our open-hearted friend, Lord Walsingham, to meet a select party at his house. All passed off exceedingly well for a while, and his lordship appeared more cheerful than could have been expected; but after coffee, as Mr. and Mrs. Bates were present, something was mentioned about music, and one of the company requested that Mrs. Bates would favour them with, 'Shepherds, I have lost my love.' This was, unfortunately, the very air that had been introduced by Miss Ray at Hinchinbrook, and had been always called for by Lord Sandwich. Mr. Bates immediately endeavoured to prevent its being sung, and by his anxiety increased the distress, but it was too late to pause. Lord Sandwich for a while struggled to overcome his feelings, but they were so apparent that at last he went up Mrs. Walsingham, and in a very confused manner said, he hoped she would excuse his not staying longer at that time; but that he had just recollected some pressing business, which required his return to the Admiralty, and bowing to all the company, rather hastily left the room. Some other endeavours to amuse him afterwards did not prove much more successful."[306]

His lordship afterwards lived in retirement, and died in 1792.

It does not appear that Lord Sandwich's disinclination to be amused arose from excessive sensibility. Mr. Cradock represents him in his political character as bearing "daily insults and misrepresentations as a stoic rather than an injured and feeling man," and he describes his calmness of mind in retirement, and his enjoyment of solitude. The same writer who calls him "a steady friend," speaks highly of his classical attainments, and his accomplishments as a modern linguist and an amateur, to which he added great caution (as the Bishop said), a love of "badgering," and an incompetency for the personal graces. When he played his part in the oratorios, it was on the kettle-drum. He related the following anecdote of himself.

"When I was in Paris, I had a dancing-master; the man was very civil, and on taking leave of him, I offered him any service in London. 'Then,' said the man, bowing, 'I should take it as a particular favour, if your lordship would never tell any one of whom you have learned to dance.'"

"Hurd once said to me," adds Mr. Cradock, "there is a line in the Heroic Epistle that I do not at all comprehend the meaning of; but you can, perhaps, acquaint me. It alludes to Lord Sandwich, I suppose; but one word, shambles, I cannot guess at,—

'See Jemmy Twitcher shambles—stop, stop, thief.'

'That, sir,' said I, 'alludes to his lordship's shambling gait.'"[307]

Upon the whole we have no doubt that he was a cold and superficial person, and that Miss Ray would not have been sorry had Hackman succeeded in retaining her heart; for, as to Hackman, the great cause of his mischance, according to the passage in Boswell, appears to have been the violence of his temper,—the common secret of most of these outrageous love stories. He was not a bad-hearted man, merely selfish and passionate, otherwise he would have meditated no mischief against himself.

"He that beats or knocks out brains,

The devil's in him, if he feigns,"

says the poet. But he was weak, wilful, and, by his readiness to become a clergyman from a Captain, perhaps not very principled. The truest love is the truest benevolence; it acquires an infinite patience out of the very excess of its suffering, and is content to merge its egotism in the idea of the beloved object. He that does not know this, does not know what love is, whatever he may know of passion.

In Henrietta Street Mrs. Clive once resided. She was the favourite Nell of the stage in the "Devil to Pay," and similar characters; and, according to Garrick, there was something of the Devil to Pay in all her stage life. She might have been Macklin's sister for humour, judgment, and a sturdiness of purpose amounting to violence, not unmixed with generosity. The latter part of her life she spent in retirement at Strawberry Hill, where she was a neighbour and friend to Horace Walpole, whose effeminacy she helped to keep on the alert. It always seems to us, as if she had been the man of the two, and he the woman.

Henrietta Street was most probably named after the queen of Charles I., and James Street after her father-in-law. In both these streets lived the egregious almanack-maker, and quack doctor, the butt of the wits of his time. He died in Salisbury Street, Strand, which is the scene of his posthumous behaviour,—his pretending to be alive, when Bickerstaff had declared him dead. Partridge had foretold the death of the French king. Swift, under the name of Bickerstaff, foretold Partridge's, and, when the time came, insisted he was dead. Partridge gravely insisted that he was alive. The wits, the friends of Swift, maintained the contrary, wondering at the dead man's impudence and the whole affair was hawked about the streets, to the ludicrous distress of poor Partridge, who not only highly resented it, and repeatedly advertised his existence, but was fairly obliged to give up almanack-making. "He persisted, indeed, sturdily in his refusal to be buried till 1715: but he actually died as an almanack-maker in 1709, his almanack for that year being the last, and the only one he wrote after this odd misfortune befell him."[308]

The following are specimens of the way in which Partridge resisted his death and burial. In the almanack for 1709, he says,

"You may remember there was a paper published predicting my death on the 29th of March at night, 1708, and after that day was passed the same villain told the world I was dead, and how I died, and that he was with me at the time of my death. I thank God, by whose mercy I have my being, that I am still alive, and, excepting my age, as well as ever I was in my life, as I was on that 29th of March. And that paper was said to be done by one Bickerstaff, Esq., but that was a sham name, it was done by an impudent lying fellow. But his prediction did not prove true. What will he say to excuse that? for the fool had considered the star of my nativity, as he said. Why, the truth is, he will be hard put to it to find a salvo for his honour. It was a bold touch, and he did not know but it might prove true.

"Feb. 1709. Much lying news dispersed about this time, and also scandalous pamphlets; perhaps we may have some knavish scribbler, a second Bickerstaff, or a rascal under that name for that villain, &c. It is a cheat, and he a knave that did it, &c.

"Whereas, it has been industriously given out by Bickerstaff, Esq., and others, to prevent the sale of this year's almanack, that John Partridge is dead; this may inform all his loving countrymen, that, blessed be God, he is still living in health, and they are knaves who reported otherwise. 'Merlinus Liberatus, with an almanack [printed by allowance for 1710]. By John Partridge, student in Physic and Astrology.'"

In James Street, towards the beginning of the last century, lived a mysterious lady, who will remind the reader of the Catholic lady in the "Fortunes of Nigel."

"In the month of March 1720," says Mr. Malcolm, "an unknown lady died at her lodgings in James Street, Covent Garden. She is represented to have been a middle-sized person, with dark-brown hair, and very beautiful features, and mistress of every accomplishment peculiar to ladies of the first fashion and respectability. Her age appeared to be between thirty and forty. Her circumstances were affluent, and she possessed the richest trinkets of her sex, generally set with diamonds. A John Ward, Esq., of Hackney, published many particulars relating to her in the papers; and amongst others, that a servant had been directed by her to deliver him a letter after her death; but as no servant appeared, he felt himself required to notice those circumstances, in order to acquaint her relations of her decease, which occurred suddenly after a masquerade, where she declared she had conversed with the King, and it was remembered that she had been seen in the private apartments of Queen Anne; though after the Queen's demise she had lived in obscurity. This unknown arrived in London from Mansfield, in 1714, drawn by six horses. She frequently said that her father was a nobleman, but that, her elder brother dying unmarried, the title was extinct; adding, that she had an uncle then living, whose title was his least recommendation.

"It was conjectured that she might be the daughter of a Roman Catholic, who had consigned her to a convent, whence a brother had released her and supported her in privacy. She was buried at St. Paul's, Covent Garden."[309]

Perhaps she had some connection with Queen Anne's brother, the Pretender.

In King Street lived the father of Arne and Mrs. Cibber. He was an upholsterer, and is said to have been the original of the Quid-nunc in the Tatler, and the hero of Murphy's farce of the Upholsterer, or, What News? His name is connected also with that of the four "Indian Kings," as they were called, who came into this country in Queen Anne's time, to ask her assistance against the French in Canada.

"They were clothed and entertained," says a note in the 'Tatler', "at the public expense, being lodged, while they continued in London, in an handsome apartment," perhaps in the house of Mr. Arne, as may be inferred from 'Tatler,' 155, and note. Certainly their landlord was an upholsterer in Covent Garden, in a new street, which seems at that time to have received the name of King Street, which it retains to this day, in common with many other streets so called, in honour of Charles II. The figures of these four Indian kings or chiefs are still preserved in the British Museum. The names and titles of their Majesties are recorded there and in the 'Annals of Queen Anne,' but with the following differences from the account of them in this paper: Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Prow, and Sa Ga Yean Qua Prah Ion, of the Maquas;—Elow Oh Kaom, and Oh Nee Yeath Ion No Prow, of the river Sachem, and the Ganajoh-hore Sachem. On the 18th of April 1710, according to Salmon, on the 19th according to Boyer, these four illustrious personages were conveyed in two of the Queen's coaches to St. James's, by Sir Charles Cotterel, master of the ceremonies, and introduced to their public audience by the Duke of Shrewsbury, then Lord Chamberlain. They made a speech by an interpreter, which Major Pidgeon, an officer who came over with them from America, read in English to her Majesty. "They had (they said) with one consent hung up the kettle and taken up the hatchet, in token of their friendship to their great queen and her children, and had been, on the other side of the great water, a strong wall of security to their great queen's children, even to the loss of their best men. For the truth of what they affirmed, and their written proposals, they referred to Colonel Scuyder and Colonel Nicholson, whom they called, in their language, Brother Queder, and Anadgargaux, and, speaking of Colonel Vetch, they named him Anadiasia. They said they always considered the French as men of falsehood, and rejoiced in the prospect of the reduction of Canada; after which they should have free hunting, and a great trade with their great queen's children, and as a token of the sincerity of the six nations, in the name of all, they presented their great queen with the belts of wampum. They concluded their speech with recommending their very hard case to their great queen's gracious consideration, expressing their hopes of her favour, and requesting the mission of more of her children to reinforce and to instruct, for they had got, as they said, since their alliance with her children, some knowledge of the Saviour of the world. The curious may see this speech at full length in the 'Annals of Queen Anne,' year 9th, p. 191, et seq., 8vo. On the same day, according to Boyer, a royal messenger of the Emperor of Morocco, Elhadge Guzman, was likewise introduced by the Duke of Shrewsbury to a private audience, and delivered letters to the Queen from Mula Ishmael, his master; the same emperor, probably, who sent an ambassador to our court in 1706, mentioned in the 'Tatler,' No. 130, and note, vol. iii., p. 44. The Indian Kings continued about a fortnight longer in London, during which time they were hospitably entertained by some of the lords commissioners of the Admiralty, by the Duke of Ormond, and several persons of distinction. They were carried to see Dr. Flamstead's house and the mathematical instruments in Greenwich Park, and entertained with the sight of the principal curiosities in and about the metropolis; then conveyed to Portsmouth through Hampton Court and Windsor, and embarked with Colonel Frances Nicholson, commander-in-chief of the forces appointed to the American service, on board the Dragon, Captain Martin, Commodore, who, with about eighteen sail under his convoy, sailed from Spithead on the 18th of May, and landed their Majesties safe at Boston, in New England, July 15th, 1710."[310]

Their names are like a set of yawns and sneezes.

Young Arne, who was born in King Street, was a musician against his father's will, and practised in the garret, on a muffled spinnet, when the family had gone to bed. He was sent to Eton, which was probably of use to him in confirming his natural refinement, but nothing could hinder his devoting himself to the art. It is said the old man had no suspicion of his advancement in it, till, going to a concert one evening, he was astonished to see his son exalted, bow in hand, as the leader. Seeing the praises bestowed on him, he suffered him to become what nature designed him for. Arne was the most flowing, Italian-like musician of any we have had in England; not capable of the grandeur and profound style of Purcell, but more sustained, continuous, and seductive. His "Water parted" is a stream of sweetness; his song, "When Daisies pied" is truly Shaksperian, full of archness and originality. Like many of his profession, who feel much more than they reflect, he became, in some measure, the victim of his sense of beauty, being excessively addicted to women. His sister, Mrs. Cibber, whose charming performances on the stage we have before noticed, did not escape without the reputation of a like tendency; but she had a bad husband (the notorious Theophilus Cibber); and on the occasion that gave rise to it, is understood to have been the victim of his mercenary designs.

Southampton Street we have noticed in speaking of the Strand. Godfrey's, the chemist's, in this street, is an establishment of old standing, as may be seen by the inscription over the door. A hundred years ago, Mr. Ambrose Godfrey, who lived here, proposed to extinguish fire by a new method of "explosion and suffocation;" that is to say, a mixture of water and gunpowder. Tavistock Street (where Lord Sandwich first saw Miss Ray) was once the great emporium of millinery and mantua-making. Macklin died there. He lived many years in Wyld Street. In Maiden Lane, Voltaire lodged, when in England, at the sign of the White Peruke, probably the house of a fashionable French peruquier. In "Swift's Works" (vol. xx. of the duodecimo edition, p. 294), there is a letter to him, in English, by Voltaire, and dated from this house. The English seems a little too perfect. There is another following it which looks more authentic. But there is no doubt that Voltaire, while in England, made himself such a master of the language, as to be able to write in it with singular correctness for a foreigner. He was then young. He had been imprisoned in the Bastile for a libel; came over here, on his release; procured many subscriptions for the "Henriade;" published in English "An Essay on Epic Poetry," and remained some years, during which he became acquainted with the principal men of letters—Pope, Congreve, and Young. He is said to have talked so indecently at Pope's table (probably no more than was thought decent by the belles in France), that the good old lady, the poet's mother, was obliged to retire. Objecting, at Lord Chesterfield's table, to the allegories of Milton, Young is said to have accosted him in the well-known couplet:—

Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin,

Thou seem'st a Milton, with his Death and Sin.

But this story has been doubted. Young, though not so thin, was as witty and profligate in his way as Voltaire: for, even when affecting a hermit-like sense of religion, he was a servile flatterer and preferment-hunter. The secret of the gloomy tone in his "Night-Thoughts" was his not having too much, and his missing a bishopric. This is the reason why the "Night-Thoughts" are overdone, and have not stood their ground. Voltaire left England with such a mass of subscriptions for his "Henriade" as laid the foundation of his fortunes, and with great admiration of English talent and genius, particularly that of Newton and Locke, which, with all his insinuations against our poetry, he took warm pains to extend, and never gave up. He was fond to the last of showing he had not forgotten his English. Somebody telling him that Johnson had spoken well of his talents, he said, in English, "He is a clever fellow;" but the gentleman observing that the doctor did not think well of his religion, he added, "a superstitious dog."

During his residence in Maiden Lane, there is a story of Voltaire's having been beset, in one of his walks, by the people, who ridiculed him as a Frenchman. He got upon the steps of a door-way and harangued them in their own language in praise of English liberty and the nation; upon which, the story adds, they hailed him as a fine fellow, and carried him to his lodgings on their shoulders. The treatment of foreigners at this time in the streets of London (and every foreigner was a Frenchman) was very much the reverse of what the inhabitants took it for. Thanks to the progress of knowledge, nations have learnt to understand one another's common cause better, and to suspect that the most ridiculous thing they could do is to forget it.

Long Acre is a portion of the seven acres before mentioned. The great plague of London began there in some goods brought over from Holland; but as that calamity made its principal ravages in the city, we shall speak of it under another head. During the battles of the Whigs and Tories, Long Acre was famous for its Mug-houses, where beer-drinking clubs were held, and politics "sung or said." Cheapside was another place of celebrity for these meetings. There is a description of them in a Journey through England in 1724, quoted by Mr. Malcolm in his "Manners and Customs of London during the Eighteenth Century." "Gentlemen, lawyers, and tradesmen," says the account, "used to meet in a great room, seldom under a hundred."

"They had a president, who sat in an arm-chair some steps higher than the rest of the company, to keep the whole room in order. A harp played all the time at the lower end of the room, and every now and then one or other of the company rose and entertained the rest with a song, and (by the by) some were good masters. Here was nothing drank but ale, and every gentleman had his separate mug, which he chalked on the table where he sat as it was brought in; and every one retired when he pleased, as from a coffee-house.

"The rooms were always so diverted with songs, and drinking from one table to another one another's healths, that there was no room for anything that could sour conversation.

"One was obliged to be there by seven to get room, and after ten the company were for the most part gone.

"This was a winter's amusement, agreeable enough to a stranger for once or twice, and he was well diverted with the different humours when the mugs overflow.

"On King George's accession to the throne, the Tories had so much the better of the friends to the Protestant succession, that they gained the mobs on all public days to their side. This induced this set of gentlemen to establish mug-houses in all the corners of this great city, for well-affected tradesmen to meet and keep up the spirit of loyalty to the Protestant succession, and to be ready upon all tumults to join their forces for the suppression of the Tory mobs. Many an encounter they had, and many were the riots, till at last the Parliament was obliged by law to put an end to this city strife, which had this good effect, that, on pulling down the mug-houses in Salisbury Court, for which some boys were hanged on this Act, the city has not been troubled with them since."[311]

One of the mistresses whom Prior celebrates, under the name of Chloe, and compares to Venus and Diana, lived in Long Acre, and was the wife, some say, of a common soldier, others of a cobbler, others of the keeper of an ale-house. Perhaps she was all these, or there were three mistresses whose alliances were confounded. Spence says that the ale-house keeper was the first husband, and the cobbler the second. "Everybody knows," says Pope, "what a wretch she was." And again:—"Prior was not a right good man. He used to bury himself, for whole days and nights together, with a poor mean creature, and often drank hard. He turned from a strong Whig (which he had been when most with Lord Halifax) to a violent Tory; and did not care to converse with any Whigs after, any more than Rowe did with Tories."[312] "I have been assured," says Pope's friend, Richardson, the painter, "that Prior, after having spent the evening with Oxford, Bolingbroke, Pope, and Swift, would go and smoke a pipe, and drink a bottle of ale, with a common soldier and his wife, in Long Acre, before he went to bed."[313] After the poet's death, Arbuthnot says something to the same effect; but we forget what.

None of the wits of that time seem to have known much about love as a sentiment. There is no end of the misconceptions of what is called love. Prior would probably have retorted upon Pope, that his own taste was not very delicate; and upon Arbuthnot, that the doctor was a sensualist in his way, and of a lower order.[314] He would have quoted Propertius, Raphael, and others, for the impartiality of his taste; and the woman, though in low life, might have had wit and beauty. The secret of these inequalities has been explained by Fielding.[315]

Sir Joshua Reynolds lived successively in St. Martin's Lane, and on the north side of Great Newport Street, before he settled finally in Leicester Square. In Newport Street was born the celebrated Horne Tooke, the son of a poulterer in the adjoining market; which made him say, that his father was a "Turkey merchant." He was, perhaps, the hardest-headed man that ever figured in the union of literature and politics; meaning, by that epithet, the power to discuss, and impenetrability to objection. He died at his house at Wimbledon, and was buried at Ealing. His history trenches too closely on the politics of our own day, to allow us to expatiate upon it in a work expressly devoted to the past.

St. Martin's Lane (see Charing Cross, for a notice of the church,) was once as famous for artists as Newman Street has been since. In Salisbury Court and in St. Martin's Lane the Royal Academy may be said to have originated, for in those places successively its original members first came together as a society established by themselves. Perhaps there was not a single artist, contemporary with Sir Joshua, who was unconnected with St. Martin's Lane, either as a lodger, student, or visitor. Old Slaughter's coffee-house, in the same lane, became celebrated on the same account, and as a resort of the contemporary wits, especially Hogarth, who may be said to have amalgamated in his works the wit and the painter. St. Martin's Lane and Leicester Square are the head-quarters of the memory of English art. In the annals of the former we meet with the names of Wilson and Gainsborough: in the latter flourished and died Hogarth and Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Sir Joshua's house in Leicester Square was on the eastern side, four doors from Sydney's Alley.[316] It was there he kept a handsome table, and was visited by Johnson and Goldsmith, and had the whole round of the fashionable world fluttering before him, and steadying itself to become immortal in his pictures: if, indeed, immortal they are to be, in the ordinary meaning of that word; for, out of certain misgivings, which perhaps argued a want of perfect claim to that destiny, he dabbled in experiments upon colours which have failed; and his pictures, though but of yesterday, already look old and worn out, while Titian's are as blooming as Apollo.

Hogarth, the greatest name in English art, lived in one of the two houses which now form Sabloniere's hotel. It was the one to the north. He was a little bustling man, with a face more lively than refined, a sort of knowing jockey look; and was irritable and egotistical, but not ungenerous. As a painter, he did what no man ever did before or since—brought out the absurdities of artificial life,

"Showed vice her own features, scorn her own image,"

and fairly painted even goods and chattels with a meaning! His intentions were less profound than his impulses; that is to say, he sometimes had an avowed common-place in view, as in the instance of the Industrious and Idle Apprentice, while the execution of it was full of much higher things and profounder humanities. As to the rest, if ever there was a wit on canvass, it was he. To take one instance alone, his spider's web over the poor's box is a union of remote ideas, coalescing but too perfectly.[317]

Leicester Square, formerly Leicester Fields, was not built upon till towards the restoration of Charles II. It took its name from a family mansion of the Sydneys, Earls of Leicester, which stood on the north side, on the site of the present houses and of Leicester Place.

RESIDENCE OF SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

"It was for a short time," says Pennant, "the residence of Elizabeth, daughter of James I., the titular Queen of Bohemia, who, on February 13th, 1661, here ended her unfortunate life. It has been tenanted for a great number of years. It was successively the pounting-place of princes. The late King [George II.], when Prince of Wales, after he had quarrelled with his father, lived here several years. His son Frederic followed his example, succeeded him in his house, and in it finished his days."

"Behind Leicester House," the same author informs us, "stood, in 1658, the Military-yard, founded by Henry Prince of Wales, the spirited son of our peaceful James. M. Faubert afterwards kept here his academy for riding and other gentlemanlike exercises, in the reign of Charles II., which, in later years, was removed to Swallow Street, opposite the end of Conduit Street. Part is retained for the purpose of a riding-house; the rest is converted into a workhouse for the parish of St. James's."[318]

But the glory of the neighbourhood of Leicester Fields is in St. Martin's Street, where the house is still remaining which was occupied by the great Newton.

CHAPTER IX.
CHARING CROSS AND WHITEHALL.

Old Charing Cross, and New St. Martin's Church—Statue of Charles I.—Execution of Regicides—Ben Jonson—Wallingford House, now the Admiralty—Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; Sir Walter Scott's Account of him—Misrepresentation of Pope respecting his Death—Charles's Horse a Satirist—Locket's Ordinary—Sir George Etherege.—Prior and his Uncle's Tavern—Thomson—Spring Gardens—Mrs. Centlivre—Dorset Place, and Whitcombe Street, &c., formerly Hedge Lane—The Wits and the Bailiffs—Suffolk Street—Swift and Miss Vanhomrigh—Calves' Head Club, and the Riot it occasioned—Scotland Yard—Pleasant Advertisement—Beau Fielding, and his Eccentricities—Vanbrugh—Desperate Adventure of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

In the reign of Edward I., on the country road from London to Westminster, stood the hamlet of Charing; a rustic spot, containing a few houses, and the last cross set up by that Prince in honour of the resting-places of his wife's body on its way to interment in the Abbey. The Cross was originally of wood, but afterwards of stone. The reader may see it in the old map of London by Aggas. He will there observe, that towards the beginning of Elizabeth's reign Charing Cross was united with London on the Strand side, and at little intervals with Whitehall; but Spring Gardens was then and long after what its name implies; and, in the reign of Charles II., Hedge Lane (now Whitcomb Street) and the Haymarket were still real lanes and passages into the fields. In Elizabeth's time, you might set out from the site of the present Pall-mall, and, leaving St. Giles in the Fields on the right hand, walk all the way to Hampstead without encountering perhaps a dwelling-place. Lovers plucked flowers in Cranbourne Alley, and took moonlight walks in St. James's market.

THE VILLAGE OF CHARING FROM AGGAS'S MAP.

On this spot, in Dr. Johnson's opinion, is to be found the fullest "tide of human existence" in the metropolis. We know not how that may be at present when the tide is so full everywhere; but Charing Cross has long been something the reverse of a rural village, and is now exhibiting one of the newest and grandest evidences of an improving metropolis. By way of north front, the Mews (formerly the mews of the King's falcons) has given way to a sorry palace for the Fine Arts; on the west is a handsome edifice including the new college of Physicians; on the east St. Martin's church has obtained its long desired opening: and in the midst of these buildings and of the Strand-end is a new square, named after the greatest of our naval victories, adorned with a column surmounted by their hero, and disgraced by a couple of shabby fountains. Here also is an equestrian statue of George the Fourth. What for?

"In the reign of Henry VIII.," says Pennant, speaking of St Martin's, "a small church was built here at the King's expense, by reason of the poverty of the parishioners, who possibly were at that period very poor. In 1607 it was enlarged because of the increase of buildings. In 1721 it was found necessary to take the whole down, and in five years from that time this magnificent temple was completed at the expense of near thirty-seven thousand pounds. This is the best performance of Gibbs, the architect of the Radcliffe Library. The steeple is far the most elegant of any of that style which I named the pepper-box; and with which (I beg pardon of the good people of Glasgow) I marked their boasted steeple of St. Andrew."[319]

Our lively biographer seems chiefly to admire the steeple of this church. The Corinthian portico, we believe, is the usual object of praise. Both of them may deserve praise separately; nor, indeed, will their size and situation allow them to be regarded with indifference in conjunction; but the elevation of the steeple on the neck of the church, or without any apparent or proper base to rest upon, is a fault not to be denied; and Mr. Pennant perhaps would not have been in the wrong, had he found an ill name for steeples in general, as well as for the species which he "peppered." Steeples, however noble, and porticoes, however Greek, can never truly coalesce. The finest steeple with a portico to it is but an excrescence and an anomaly, a horn growing out of the church's neck. The Italians felt this absurdity so much, that they have often made a separate building of the steeple, converting it into a beautiful tower aloof from the church, as in the instances of the famous Hanging Tower in Pisa, and the Campanile in Florence. Suppose a shaft like the Monument, in a space near St. Martin's church, and the church itself a proper building with a portico, like St. Paul's Covent Garden, and you have an improvement in the Italian style. The best thing to say for

—— sharpèd steeples high shot up in air

(as Spenser calls them) is, that they seem to be pointing to heaven, or running up into space like an intimation of interminability. An idea of this kind is supposed to have given rise to them. But they always have a meagre, incongruous look, considered in their union with the body to which they are attached. Their best appearance is at a distance, and when they are numerous, as in the view of a great city; but even then, how inferior are they to the massive dignity of such towers as those of Westminster Abbey, or to a dome like that of St. Paul's!

The origin of the word Charing is unknown. The cross was destroyed during the Reformation. The spot where it stood is occupied by the statue of Charles I. originally the property of the Earl of Arundel, for whom it was cast by Le Sœur in 1633. It was not placed in its present situation till the decline of the reign of Charles II. The pedestal is the work of Grinling Gibbons. The statue had been condemned by Parliament to be sold and broken in pieces; "but John River, the brazier, who purchased it," says Pennant, "having more taste or more loyalty than his masters, buried it unmutilated and showed to them some broken pieces of brass in token of his obedience. M. D'Archenholz gives a diverting anecdote of this brazier, and says that he cast a vast number of handles of knives and forks in brass, which he sold as made of the broken statue. They were bought with great eagerness by the royalists, from affection to their monarch; by the rebels as a mark of triumph over the murdered sovereign."[320] The sovereign now faces Whitehall as if in triumph: yet behind the Banquetting house lurks a statue of another of this unfortunate race, who lost his throne for attempting to renew the dictatorial spirit which cost his ancestor his head. The omission of the horse's girth in this statue has been thought a singular instance of forgetfulness in the artist. But it is hardly possible he could have forgotten it. Most likely he took a poetical license, and rejected what might have hurt the symmetry of his outline.

Charles's memory, like his life, was destined to be connected with tragedies. On this spot, before the statue was erected, a number of the regicides were executed with tortures; and, till of late years, it was a place for the pillory. Harrison died there, Scrope, Colonel Jones, Hugh Peters, and others of those extraordinary men, who, in welcoming a bloody death, gave the last undoubted proofs that they were real patriots as well as bigots. The spirit in which they died (bold and invincible, though in the very glow and loquacity evincing that lingering love of life which is so affecting to one's own mortality,) had such an effect on the public, that the king was advised not to have any more such executions near the court, and the scaffold was accordingly removed to Tyburn. A ghastly story is related of Harrison;—that after he was cut down alive (according to his sentence), and had his bowels removed and burnt before his face by the executioner, he rose up and gave the man a box on the ear. He had behaved with great patience before this half-death; so that there appears to have been something of delirium in this action,—the action, perhaps, of a being feeling himself to be no longer under the ordinary condition of his species.

The particular sort of religious enthusiasm evinced by these men is now as obsolete as some of the absurdities which they fought against, and as others which they would have upheld; but there are passages of lasting interest in the account of their last moments, which the reader will perhaps expect to see.

As Harrison was going to suffer, "one in derision called to him and said, 'Where is your Good Old Cause?' He with a cheerful smile clapt his hand on his breast, and said 'Here it is, and I am going to seal it with my blood?' And when he came to the sight of the gallows, he was transported with joy, and his servant asked him how he did; he answered 'Never better in my life.' His servant told him, 'Sir, there is a crown of glory ready prepared for you.' 'O yes,' said he, 'I see.' When he was taken off the sledge, the hangman desired him to forgive him. 'I do forgive thee,' said he, 'with all my heart, as it is a sin against me;' and told him he wished him all happiness. And further said, 'Alas, poor man, thou dost it ignorantly; the Lord grant that this sin may not be laid to thy charge!' And putting his hand into his pocket gave him all the money he had, and so parting with his servant, hugging of him in his arms, he went up the ladder with an undaunted countenance.

"The people observing him to tremble in his hands and legs, he, taking notice of it, said:—

"'Gentlemen, by reason of some scoffing that I do hear, I judge that some do think I am afraid to die, by the shaking I have in my hands and knees; I tell you no, but it is by reason of much blood I have lost in the wars, and many wounds I have received in my body, which caused this shaking and weakness in my nerves; I have had it this twelve years: I speak this to the praise and glory of God; he hath carried me above the fear of death; and I value not my life, because I go to my Father, and am assured I shall take it again.

"'Gentlemen, take notice, that for being instrumental in that cause and interest of the Son of God, which hath been pleaded amongst us, and which God hath witnessed to my appeals and wonderful victories I am brought to this place to suffer death this day, and if I had ten thousand lives, I could freely and cheerfully lay them down all, to witness to this matter.'"[321]

The time of Colonel Jones's departure being come "this aged gentleman," says the account, "was drawn in one sledge with his aged companion Scroope, whose grave and graceful countenances, accompanied with courage and cheerfulness, caused great admiration and compassion in the spectators, as they passed along the streets to Charing Cross, the place of their execution; and, after the executioner had done his part upon three others that day he was so drunk with blood, that, like one surfeited, he grew sick at stomach; and not being able himself, he set his boy to finish the tragedy upon Col. Jones." The night before he died he "told a friend he had no other temptation but this, lest he should be too much transported, and carried out to neglect and slight his life, so greatly was he satisfied to die in that cause."

"The day he suffered, he grasped a friend in his arms, and said to him with some expressions of endearment, 'Farewell: I could wish thee in the same condition with myself, that thou mightest share with me in my joys.'"[322]

The famous Hugh Peters, the commonwealth preacher, whom Burnet speaks of as an "enthusiastical buffoon," and a very "vicious man," is thought by a greater loyalist (Burke) to have had "hard measures dealt him at the Restoration." He calls him a "poor good man." Peters was afraid at first he should not behave himself with the proper courage, but rallied his spirits afterwards, and, according to the account published by his friends (and all the accounts, it should be observed, emanate from that side), no man appears to have behaved better. Burnet says otherwise, and that he was observed all the while to be drinking cordials to keep him from fainting, and Burnet's testimony is not to be slighted, though he seems too readily to have taken upon trust some evil reports of Peters' life and manners, which the "poor man," expressly contradicted in prison. Be this as it may, "Being carried," says the account, "upon the sledge to execution, and made to sit thereon within the rails at Charing Cross to behold the execution of Mr. Cook, one comes to him and upbraided him with the death of the King, bidding him (with opprobrious language) to repent; he replied, 'Friend, you do not well to trample upon a dying man; you are greatly mistaken, I had nothing to do in the death of the King.'"

"When Mr. Cook was cut down and brought to be quartered, one they called Colonel Turner called to the Sheriff's men to bring Mr. Peters near that he might see him; and by and by the hangman came to him all besmeared in blood, and rubbing his bloody hands together, he tauntingly asked, 'Come, how do you like this, how do you like this work?' To whom he replied, 'I am not, I thank God, terrified at it; you may do your worst.'

"When he was going to his execution, he looked about and espied a man, to whom he gave a piece of gold (having bowed it first), and desired him to go to the place where his daughter lodged, and to carry that to her as a token from him, and to let her know that his heart was as full of comfort as it could be, and that before that piece should come into her hands he should be with God in glory.

"Being upon the ladder, he spake to the Sheriff, saying, 'Sir, you have here slain one of the servants of God before mine eyes, and have made me to behold it on purpose to terrify and discourage me; but God hath made it an ordinance to me for my strengthening and encouragement.'

"When he was going to die, he said, 'What! flesh, art thou unwilling to go to God through the fire and jaws of death? Oh' (said he), 'this is a good day; he is come that I have long looked for, and I shall be with him in glory;' and so smiled when he went away.

"What Mr. Peters said farther at his execution, either in his speech or prayer, it could not be taken, in regard his voice was low at that time, and the people uncivil."[323]

Ben Jonson is supposed to have been born in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross, where he lived when a little child. "Though I cannot," says Fuller, "with all my industrious inquiry, find him in his cradle, I can fetch him from his long coats. When a little child he lived in Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross, when his mother married a bricklayer for her second husband. He was first bred in a private school in St. Martin's Court; then in Westminster school." But we shall have other occasions of speaking of him.

The famous reprobate Duke of Buckingham, Villiers, the second of that name, was born in Wallingford House, which stood on the site of the present Admiralty. "The Admiralty Office," says Pennant "stood originally in Duke Street, Westminster: but in the reign of King William was removed to the present spot, to the house then called Wallingford, I believe, from its having been inhabited by the Knollys, Viscounts Wallingford. From the roof the pious Usher, Archbishop of Armagh, then living here with the Countess of Peterborough, was prevailed on to take the last sight of his beloved master Charles I., when brought on the scaffold before Whitehall. He sank at the horror of the sight, and was carried in a swoon to his apartment." Wallingford House was often used by Cromwell and others in their consultations.

"The present Admiralty Office," continues Pennant, "was rebuilt in the late reign, by Ripley; it is a clumsy pile, but properly veiled from the street by Mr. Adam's handsome screen." Where the poor Archbishop sank in horror at the sight of the misguided Charles, telegraphs have since plied their dumb and far-seen discourses, like spirit in the guise of mechanism, telling news of the spread of liberty and knowledge all over the world. Of the Villierses, Dukes of Buckingham, who have not heard? The first one was a favourite not unworthy of his fortune, open, generous, and magnificent; the second, perhaps because he lost his father so soon, a spoiled child from his cradle, wilful, debauched, unprincipled, but witty and entertaining. Here, and at York House in the Strand, he turned night into day, and pursued his intrigues, his concerts, his dabblings in chemistry and the philosopher's stone, and his designs on the Crown: for Charles's character, and the devices of Buckingham's fellow quacks and astrologers, persuaded him that he had a chance of being king. When a youth, he compounded with Cromwell, and married Fairfax's daughter;—he was afterwards all for the king, when he was not "all for rhyming" or ousting him;—when an old man, or near it (for these prodigious possessors of animal spirits have a trick of lasting a long while), he was still a youth in improvidence and dissipation, and his whole life was a dream of uneasy pleasure. He is now best known from Dryden's masterly portrait of him in the "Absalom and Achitophel."

"A man so various, that he seemed to be,

Not one, but all mankind's epitome;

Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,

Was everything by starts, and nothing long;

But in the course of one revolving moon,

Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;

Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,

Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.

Blest madman! who could every hour employ

With something new to wish or to enjoy.

Railing and praising were his usual themes;

And both, to show his judgment, in extremes,

So very violent, or over civil,

That every man with him was God or devil.

In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;

Nothing went unrewarded but desert.

Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late,

He had his jest, and they had his estate.

He laugh'd himself from court; then sought relief

By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief;

For spite of him, the weight of business fell

On Absalom, or wise Achitophel;

Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft,

He left not faction, but of that was left."

"This inimitable description," observes Sir Walter Scott, in a note on the subject, "refers, as is well known, to the famous George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, son of the favourite of Charles I., who was murdered by Felton. The Restoration put into the hands of the most lively, mercurial, ambitious, and licentious genius who ever lived, an estate of 20,000l. a year, to be squandered in every wild scheme which the lust of power, of pleasure, of license, or of whim, could dictate to an unrestrained imagination. Being refused the situation of President of the North, he was suspected of having favoured the disaffected in that part of England, and was disgraced accordingly. But in 1666 he regained the favour of the King, and became a member of the famous Administration called the Cabal, which first led Charles into unpopular and arbitrary measures, and laid the foundation for the troubles of his future reign. Buckingham changed sides about 1675, and becoming attached to the country party, made a most active figure in all proceedings which had relation to the Popish plot; intrigued deeply with Shaftesbury, and distinguished himself as a promoter of the bill of exclusion. Hence, he stood an eminent mark for Dryden's satire; which we may believe was not the less poignant, that the poet had sustained a personal affront, from being depicted by his grace under the character of Bayes in the "Rehearsal." As Dryden owed the Duke no favour, he has shown him none. Yet even here the ridiculous rather than the infamous part of his character is touched upon; and the unprincipled libertine, who slew the Earl of Shrewsbury while his adulterous countess held his horse in the disguise of a page, and who boasted of caressing her before he changed the bloody clothes in which he had murdered her husband, is not exposed to hatred, whilst the spendthrift and castle builder are held up to contempt. So just, however, is the picture drawn by Dryden, that it differs little from the following sober historical account.

"'The Duke of Buckingham was a man of great parts, and an infinite deal of wit and humour; but wanted judgment, and had no virtue, or principle of any kind. These essential defects made his whole life one train of inconsistencies. He was ambitious beyond measure, and implacable in his resentments; these qualities were the effects or different faces of his pride; which, whenever he pleased to lay aside, no man living could be more entertaining in conversation. He had a wonderful talent in turning all things into ridicule; but, by his own conduct, made a more ridiculous figure in the world than any which he could, with all his vivacity of wit and turn of imagination, draw of others. Frolic and pleasure took up the greatest part of his life: and in these he had neither any taste nor set himself any bounds: running into the wildest extravagances and pushing his debaucheries to a height, which even a libertine age could not help censuring as downright madness. He inherited the best estate which any subject had at that time in England; yet his profuseness made him always necessitous, as that necessity made him grasp at every thing that would help to support his expenses. He was lavish without generosity, and proud without magnanimity; and though he did not want some bright talents, yet no good one ever made part of his composition; for there was nothing so mean that he would not stoop to, nor anything so flagrantly impious but he was capable of undertaking.'"

"Buckingham's death," concludes the commentator, "was as awful a beacon as his life. He had dissipated a princely fortune, and lost both the means of procuring and the power of enjoying the pleasures to which he was devoted. He had fallen from the highest pinnacle of ambition into the last degree of contempt and disregard." His dying scene, in a paltry inn, in Yorkshire, has been immortalized by Pope's beautiful lines:—

"In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half hung;

The floors of plaister and the walls of dung;

On once a flock bed, but repaired with straw,

With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw,

The George and Garter, dangling from that bed,

Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,

Great Villiers lies! Alas! how changed from him!

That life of pleasure and that soul of whim;

Gallant and gay in Cliefden's proud alcove,

The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;

Or just as gay at council, in a ring

Of mimicked statesmen and a merry king;

No wit to flatter left of all his store,

No fool to laugh at, which he valued more;

There victor of his health, of fortune, friends,

And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends!"[324]

"The worst inn's worst room," however, is a poetical fiction. Buckingham died at the house of one of his tenants at Kirby Mallory, where he was overtaken with illness. He had wasted his fortune to a comparative nothing; but was not reduced to such necessity as the poet would imply.[325]

Andrew Marvel makes the statue of Charing Cross the speaker in one of his witty libels on Charles and his brother. There was an equestrian statue of Charles II. at Woolchurch, the horse of which is made to hold a dialogue with this other. The poet fancies that the riders, "weary of sitting all day," stole off one evening, and the two horses came together. The readers at Will's must have been a little astonished at the boldness of such passages as the following:—

"Quoth the marble horse, It would make a stone speak,

To see a Lord Mayor and a Lombard Street beak,

Thy founder and mine, to cheat one another,

When both knaves agreed to be each other's brother.

Here Charing broke forth, and thus he went on—

My brass is provoked as much as thy stone

To see church and state bow down to a ——

And the King's chief ministers holding the door,

The money of widows and orphans employed,

And the bankers quite broke to maintain the ——'s pride.

Woolchurch. To see Dei Gratia writ on the throne.

And the King's wicked life says God there is none.

Charing. That he should be styled Defender of the Faith,

Who believes not a word what the Word of God saith.

Woolchurch. That the Duke should turn Papist, and that church defy,

For which his own father a Martyr did die.

Charing. Tho' he changed his religion, I hope he's so civil,

Not to think his own father has gone to the Devil.

---

Charing. Pause, brother, awhile, and calmly consider

What thou hast to say against my royal rider.

Woolchurch. Thy priest-ridden King turned desperate fighter

For the surplice, lawn-sleeves, the cross, and the mitre;

Till at last on the scaffold he was left in the lurch,

By knaves, who cried themselves up for the church,

Archbishops and bishops, archdeacons and deans.

Charing. Thy King will ne'er fight unless for his Queens.

Woolchurch. He that dys for ceremonys, dys like a fool.

Charing. The King on thy back is a lamentable tool.

Woolchurch. the Goat and the Lion I Equally Hate,

And Freemen alike value life and estate:

Tho' the father and son be different rods,

Between the two scourgers we find little odds;

Both infamous stand in three kingdoms' votes,

This for picking our pockets, that for cutting our throats.

---

What is thy opinion of James Duke of York?

Charing. The same that the frogs had of Jupiter's stork.

With the Turk in his head, and the Pope in his heart,

Father Patrick's disciples will make England smart.

If e'er he be king, I know Britain's doom,

We must all to a stake, or be converts to Rome.

Ah! Tudor, ah! Tudor, of Stuarts enough;

None ever reigned like old Bess in the ruff.

---

Woolchurch. But canst thou devise when things will be mended?

Charing. When the reign of the line of the Stuarts is ended."

And these very lampoons had a hand in ending them.

In the days of Buckingham there was a famous house of entertainment in Charing Cross, called Locket's Ordinary. Where it exactly stood seems to be no longer known: we suspect by the great Northumberland Coffee-house. "It is often mentioned," says a manuscript in Birch's collection, "in the plays of Cibber, Vanbrugh, &c., where the scene sometimes is laid." It was much frequented by Sir George Etherege, as appears from the following anecdotes, picked up at the British Museum. Sir George Etherege and his company, "provoked by something amiss in the entertainment or attendance, got into a violent passion and abused the waiters. This brought in Mrs. Locket: 'We are so provoked,' said Sir George, 'that even I could find in my heart to pull the nose-gay out of your bosom, and throw the flowers in your face.' This turned all their anger into jest."

"Sir G. Etherege discontinued Locket's Ordinary, having run up a score which he could not conveniently discharge. Mrs. Locket sent one to dun him, and to threaten him with a prosecution. He bid the messenger tell her that he would kiss her if she stirred a step in it. When this answer was brought back, she called for her hood and scarf, and told her husband, who interposed, that 'she'd see if there was any fellow alive who had the impudence.' 'Pr'ythee, my dear, don't be so rash,' said her husband, 'you don't know what a man may do in his passion.'"[326]

The site of the tavern is now also unknown, where Prior was found, when a boy, reading Horace. It was called the Rummer. Mr. Nichols has found that, in the year 1685, it was kept by "Samuel Prior," and that the "annual feasts of the nobility and gentry living in the parish of St. Martin" were held there, October 14, in that year. "Prior," says Johnson, "is supposed to have fallen, by his father's death, into the hands of his uncle, a vintner near Charing Cross, who sent him for some time to Dr. Busby, at Westminster; but, not intending to give him any education beyond that of the school, took him, when he was well educated in literature, to his own house, where the Earl of Dorset, celebrated for patronage of genius, found him by chance, as Burnet relates, reading Horace, and was so well pleased with his proficiency, that he undertook the care and cost of his academical education."[327]

It is doubtful, however, from one of Prior's epistles to Fleetwood Shepherd, whether the poet was more indebted to the Lord Dorset or to that gentleman for his first advancement in life, though the Earl finally became his great patron. He says to Shepherd,—

"Now, as you took me up when little

Gave me my learning and my vittle,

Asked for me, from my lord, things fitting

Kind, as I 'ad been your own begetting,

Confirm what formerly you've given,

Nor leave me now at six and seven,

As Sunderland has left Mun Stephen."

And again:—

"My uncle, rest his soul! when living,

Might have contrived me ways of thriving;

Taught me with cider to replenish

My vats, or ebbing tide of Rhenish;

So, when for hock I drew pricked white-wine,

Swear 't had the flavour, and was right-wine;

Or sent me with ten pounds to Furni-

Val's Inn, to some good rogue attorney;

Where now, by forging deeds and cheating,

I 'ad found some handsome ways of getting.

All this you made me quit to follow

That sneaking, whey-fac'd god Apollo;

Sent me among a fiddling crew

Of folks, I 'ad never seen nor knew,

Calliope, and God knows who.

I add no more invectives to it,

You spoiled the youth to make a poet."

Johnson says "A survey of the life and writings of Prior may exemplify a sentence which he doubtless understood well when he read Horace at his uncle's; 'the vessel long retains the scent which it first receives.' In his private relaxation he revived the tavern, and in his amorous pedantry he exhibited the college. But on higher occasions and nobler subjects, when habit was overpowered by the necessity of reflection, he wanted not wisdom as a statesman, or elegance as a poet." It is doubtful whether the general colour of everybody's life and character might not be found in that of his childhood; but there is no more reason to think that Prior's tavern propensities were owing to early habit than those of his patrician companions. No man was fonder of his bottle than Lord Dorset, and of low company than many a lord has been. According to Burke, who was a king's man, kings are naturally fond of low company. Yet they are no nephews of tavern-keepers. Nor does it appear that Prior did anything in his uncle's house but pass the time and read.

Thomson wrote part of his "Seasons" in the room over the shop of Mr. Egerton, bookseller, where he resided when he first came to London. He was at that time a raw Scotchman, gaping about town, getting his pocket picked, and obliged to wait upon great men with his poem of "Winter." Luckily his admiration of freedom did not hinder him from acquiring the highest patronage. He obtained an easy place, which required no compromise with his principles, and passed the latter part of his life in a dwelling of his own at Richmond, writing in his garden, and listening to nightingales. He was of an indolent constitution, and has been seen in his garden eating peaches off the trees, with his hands in his waistcoat pockets. But his indolence did not hinder him from writing. He had the luck to have the occupation he was fond of; and no man perhaps in his native country, with the exception of Shakspeare, has acquired a greater or more unenvied fame. His friends loved him, and his readers love his memory.

In Spring Gardens, originally a place of public entertainment, died Mrs. Centlivre, the sprightly authoress of the "Wonder," the "Busy Body," and the "Bold Stroke for a Wife." She was buried at St. Martin's. She is said to have been a beauty, an accomplished linguist, and a good-natured friendly woman. Pope put her in his "Dunciad," for having written, it is said, a ballad against his "Homer" when she was a child! But the probability is that she was too intimate with Steele and other friends of Addison while the irritable poet was at variance with them. It is not impossible, also, that some raillery of hers might have been applied to him, not very pleasant from a beautiful woman against a man of his personal infirmities, who was naturally jealous of not being well with the sex. Mrs. Centlivre is said to have been seduced when young by Anthony Hammond, father of the author of the "Love Elegies," who took her to Cambridge with him in boy's clothes. This did not hinder her from marrying a nephew of Sir Stephen Fox, who died a year thereafter; nor from having two husbands afterwards. Her second was an officer in the army, of the name of Carrol, who, to her great sorrow, was killed in a duel. Her third husband, Mr. Centlivre, who had the formidable title of Yeoman of the Mouth, being principal cook to Queen Anne, fell in love with her when she was performing the part of Alexander the Great, at Windsor; for she appears at one time to have been an actress, though she never performed in London. Mrs. Centlivre's dramas are not in the taste of Mrs. Hannah More's, but the public still have a regard for them. All the plays above-mentioned are stock pieces. The reason is, that, careless as they are in dialogue, and not very scrupulous in manners, they are full of action and good-humour.

Hedge Lane retained its name till lately, when, ceasing to be a heap of squalidity, it was new christened and received the appellation of Dorset Place. Part of it is merged in Pall Mall East. It is now the handsomest end of the thoroughfare which runs up into Oxford Road, and takes the successive names of Whitcomb, Princes, and Wardour Streets. Not long ago the whole thoroughfare appears to have been called Hedge Lane. It is related of Steele, Budgel, and Philips, that, issuing from a tavern one day in Gerrard Street, they were about to turn into Hedge Lane, when they were told that some suspicious-looking persons were standing there as if in wait. "Thank ye," said the wits, and hurried three different ways.

It is not pleasant to have old places altered which are connected with interesting recollections, even if the place or recollection be none of the pleasantest. When the houses in Suffolk Street were pulled down, we could not help regretting that the abode was among them in which poor Miss Vanhomrigh lived, who died for love of Swift. She resided there with her mother, the widow of a Dutch merchant, and had a small fortune. Swift while in England, upon the affairs of the Irish Church, was introduced to them, and became so intimate as to leave his best gown and cassock there for convenience. He found the coffee also very pleasant, and gradually became too much interested in the romantic spirit and flattering attentions of the young lady, whose studies he condescended to direct, and who, in short, fell in love with him at an age when he was old enough to be her father. Unluckily he was married; and most unluckily he did not say a word about the matter. It is curious to observe in the letters which he sent over to Stella (his wife), with what an affected indifference he speaks of the Vanhomrighs and his visits to them, evidently thinking it necessary all the while to account for their frequency. When he left England, Miss Vanhomrigh, after the death of her mother, followed him, and proposed that he should either marry or refuse her. He would do neither.

At length both the ladies, the married and unmarried, discovered their mutual secret: a discovery which is supposed ultimately to have hastened the death of both. Miss Vanhomrigh's survival of it was short—not many weeks. For what may remain to be said on this painful subject the reader will allow us to quote a passage from one of the magazines.

"There was a vanity, perhaps, on both sides, though it may be wrong to attribute a passion wholly to that infirmity, where the object of it is not only a person celebrated, but one full of wit and entertainment. The vanity was certainly not the less on his side. Many conjectures have been made respecting the nature of this connection of Swift's, as well as another more mysterious. The whole truth, in the former instance, appears obvious enough. Swift, partly from vanity, and partly from a more excusable craving after some recreation of his natural melancholy, had suffered himself to take a pleasure, and exhibit an interest, in the conversation of an intelligent young woman, beyond what he ought to have done. An attachment on her part ensued, not greater, perhaps, than he contemplated with a culpable satisfaction as long as it threatened no very great disturbance of his peace, but which must have given him great remorse in after-times, when he reflected upon his encouragement of it. On the occasion of its disclosure his self-love inspired him with one of his most poetical fancies:—

'Cadenus many things had writ;

Vanessa much esteemed his wit,

And called for his poetic works:

Meanwhile the boy in secret lurks,

And while the book was in her hand

The urchin from his private stand,

Took aim, and shot with all his strength

A dart of such prodigious length,

It pierced the feeble volume through,

And deep transfixed her bosom too.

Some lines more moving than the rest,

Stuck to the point that pierced her breast,

And borne directly to the heart,

With pains unknown increased her smart.

Vanessa, not in years a score,

Dreams of a gown of forty-four,

Imaginary charms can find

In eyes with reading almost blind:

Cadenus now no more appears

Declined in health, advanced in years,

She fancies music in his tongue,

Nor farther looks, but thinks him young.'

"A reflection ensues which it is a pity he had not made before:—

'What mariner is not afraid

To venture in a ship decayed?

What planter will attempt to yoke

A sapling with a fallen oak?

As years increase she brighter shines,

Cadenus with each day declines;

And he must fall a prey to time

While she continues in her prime.'

"If he had thought of this when he used to go to her mother's house in order to change his wig and gown and drink coffee, he would have avoided those encouragements of Miss Vanhomrigh's sympathy and admiration, which must have given rise to very bitter reflections when she read such passages as the lines that follow:—

'Cadenus, common forms apart,

In every scene had kept his heart;

Had sighed and languished, vowed and writ,

For pastime, or to show his wit.'

"It was sport to him, but death to her. His allegations of not being conscious of anything on her part, are not to be trusted. There are few men whose self-love is not very sharp-sighted on such occasions,—men of wit in particular; nor was Swift, notwithstanding the superiority he assumed over fopperies of all sorts, and the great powers which gave a passport to the assumption, exempt, perhaps, from any species of vanity. The more airs he gives himself on that point, the less we are to believe him. He was fond of lords and great ladies, and levees, and canonicals, and of having the verger to walk before him. He saw very well, we may be assured, the impression which he made on the young lady; but he hoped, as others have hoped, that it would accommodate itself to circumstances in cases of necessity; or he pretended to himself that he was too modest to believe it a great one; or sacrificing her ultimate good to her present pleasure and to his own, he put off the disagreeable day of alteration and self-denial till it was too late. There are many reasons why Swift should have acted otherwise, and why no man, at any time of life, should hazard the peace of another by involvements which he cannot handsomely follow up. If he does, he is bound to do what he can for it to the last."[328]

The famous Calves' Head Club (in ridicule of the memory of Charles I.) was held at a tavern in Suffolk Street; at least the assembly of it was held there which made so much noise in the last century, and produced a riot. At this meeting it was said that a bleeding calf's head had been thrown out of the window, wrapt up in a napkin, and that the members drank damnation to the race of the Stuarts. This was believed till the other day, and has often been lamented as a disgusting instance of party spirit. To say the truth, the very name of the club was disgusting, and a dishonour to the men who invented it. It was more befitting their own heads. But the particulars above mentioned are untrue. The letter has been set right by the publication of "Spence's Anecdotes," at the end of which are some letters to Mr. Spence, including one from Lord Middlesex, giving the real account of the affair. By the style of the letter the reader may judge what sort of heads the members had, and what was reckoned the polite way of speaking to a waiter in those days:—

Whitehall, Feb. y^e 9th, 1735.

"Dear Spanco,

"I don't in the least doubt but long before this time the noise of the riot on the 30 of Jan. has reached you at Oxford, and though there has been as many lies and false reports raised upon the occasion in this good city as any reasonable man could expect, yet I fancy even those may be improved or increased before they come to you. Now, that you may be able to defend your friends (as I don't in the least doubt you have an inclination to do), I'll send you the matter of fact literally and truly as it happened, upon my honour. Eight of us happened to meet together the 30th of January, it might have been the 10th of June, or any other day in the year, but the mixture of the company has convinced most reasonable people by this time that it was not a designed or premeditated affair. We met, then, as I told you before, by chance upon this day, and after dinner, having drunk very plentifully, especially some of the company, some of us going to the window unluckily saw a little nasty fire made by some boys in the street, of straw I think it was, and immediately cried out, 'Damn it, why should not we have a fire as well as anybody else?' Up comes the drawer, 'Damn you, you rascal, get us a bonfire.' Upon which the imprudent puppy runs down, and without making any difficulty (which he might have done by a thousand excuses, and which if he had, in all probability, some of us would have come more to our senses), sends for the faggots, and in an instant behold a large fire blazing before the door. Upon which some of us, wiser, or rather soberer, than the rest, bethinking themselves then, for the first time, what day it was, and fearing the consequences a bonfire on that day might have, proposed drinking loyal and popular healths to the mob (out of the window), which by this time was very great, in order to convince them we did not intend it as a ridicule upon that day. The healths that were drank out of the window were these, and these only: The King, Queen, and Royal Family, the Protestant Succession, Liberty and Property, the present Administration. Upon which the first stone was flung, and then began our siege: which, for the time it lasted, was at least as furious as that of Philipsbourgh; it was more than an hour before we got any assistance; the more sober part of us, doing this, had a fine time of it, fighting to prevent fighting; in danger of being knocked on the head by the stones that came in at the windows; in danger of being run through by our mad friends, who, sword in hand, swore they would go out, though they first made their way through us. At length the justice, attended by a strong body of guards, came and dispersed the populace. The person who first stirred up the mob is known; he first gave them money, and then harangued them in a most violent manner; I don't know if he did not fling the first stone himself. He is an Irishman and a priest, and belonging to Imberti, the Venetian Envoy. This is the whole story from which so many calves' heads, bloody napkins, and the Lord knows what has been made; it has been the talk of the town and the country, and small beer and bread and cheese to my friends the Garretters in Grub Street, for these few days past. I, as well as your friends, hope to see you soon in town. After so much prose, I can't help ending with a few verses:—

O had I lived in merry Charles's days,

When dull the wise were called, and wit had praise;

When deepest politics could never pass

For aught, but surer tokens of an ass;

When not the frolicks of one drunken night

Could touch your honour, make your fame less bright,

Tho' mob-form'd scandal rag'd, and Papal spight.

"Middlesex."

The author of a "Secret History of the Calves' Head Club, or the Republicans Unmasked" (supposed to be Ned Ward, of ale-house memory), attributes the origin to Milton and some other friends of the Commonwealth, in opposition to Bishop Juxon, Dr. Sanderson, and others, who met privately every 30th of January, and had compiled a private form of service for the day, not very different from that now in use.

"After the Restoration," says the writer, "the eyes of the Government being upon the whole party, they were obliged to meet with a great deal of precaution; but in the reign of King William they met almost in a public manner, apprehending no danger." The writer farther tells us, he was informed that it was kept in no fixed house, but that they moved as they thought convenient. The place where they met when his informant was with them was in a blind alley near Moorfields, where an axe hung up in the club-room, and was reverenced as a principal symbol in this diabolical sacrament. Their bill of fare was a large dish of calves' heads, dressed several ways, by which they represented the king and his friends who had suffered in his cause; a large pike, with a small one in his mouth, as an emblem of tyranny; a large cod's head by which they intended to represent the person of the king singly; a boar's head with an apple in its mouth, to represent the king by this as bestial, as by their other hieroglyphics they had done foolish and tyrannical. After the repast was over, one of their elders presented an Icon Basilike, which was with great solemnity burnt upon the table, whilst the other anthems were singing. After this, another produced Milton's Defensio Populi Anglicani, upon which all laid their hands, and made a protestation in form of an oath for ever to stand by and maintain the same. The company only consisted of Independents and Anabaptists; and the famous Jeremy White, formerly chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, who no doubt came to sanctify with his pious exhortations the ribaldry of the day, said grace. After the table-cloth was removed, the anniversary anthem, as they impiously called it, was sung, and a calf's skull filled with wine, or other liquor; and then a brimmer went about to the pious memory of those worthy patriots who had killed the tyrant and relieved their country from his arbitrary sway: and, lastly, a collection was made for the mercenary scribbler, to which every man contributed according to his zeal for the cause and ability of his purse."

"Although no great reliance," says Mr. Wilson, from whose life of De Foe this passage is extracted, "is to be placed upon the faithfulness of Ward's narrative, yet, in the frighted mind of a high-flying churchman, which was continually haunted by such scenes, the caricature would easily pass for a likeness." "It is probable," adds the honest biographer of De Foe, "that the persons thus collected together to commemorate the triumph of their principles, although in a manner dictated by bad taste, and outrageous to humanity, would have confined themselves to the ordinary methods of eating and drinking, if it had not been for the ridiculous farce so generally acted by the royalists upon the same day. The trash that issued from the pulpit in this reign, upon the 30th of January, was such as to excite the worst passions in the hearers. Nothing can exceed the grossness of language employed upon these occasions. Forgetful even of common decorum, the speakers ransacked the vocabulary of the vulgar for terms of vituperation, and hurled their anathemas with wrath and fury against the objects of their hatred. The terms rebel and fanatic were so often upon their lips, that they became the reproach of honest men, who preferred the scandal to the slavery they attempted to establish. Those who could profane the pulpit with so much rancour in the support of senseless theories, and deal it out to the people for religion, had little reason to complain of a few absurd men who mixed politics and calves' heads at a tavern; and still less, to brand a whole religious community with their actions."[329]

SCOTLAND YARD IN 1750.

Scotland Yard is so called from a palace built for the reception of the Kings of Scotland when they visited this country. Pennant tells us that it was originally given to King Edgar, by Kenneth, Prince of that country, for the purpose of his coming to pay him annual homage, as Lord Paramount of Scotland. Margaret, widow of James V. and sister of Henry VIII., resided there a considerable time after the death of her husband, and was magnificently entertained by her brother on his becoming reconciled to her second marriage with the Earl of Angus.[330] When the Crowns became united, James I. of course waived his right of abode in the homage-paying house, which was finally deserted as a royal residence. We know not when it was demolished. Probably it was devoted for some time to Government offices. Scotland Yard was the place of one of Milton's abodes during the time he served the Government of Cromwell. He lost an infant son there. The eccentric Beau Fielding died in it at the beginning of the last century, and Vanbrugh a little after him. There was a coffee-house in the yard, which seems, by the following pleasant advertisement, to have been frequented by good company:—

"Whereas six gentlemen (all of the same honourable profession), having been more than ordinarily put to it for a little pocket-money, did, on the 14th instant, in the evening, near Kentish Town, borrow of two persons (in a coach) a certain sum of money, without staying to give bond for the repayment: And whereas fancy was taken to the hat, peruke, cravat, sword, and cane, of one of the creditors, which were all lent as freely as the money: these are therefore to desire the said six worthies, how fond soever they may be of the other loans, to un-fancy the cane again and send it to Well's Coffee House in Scotland Yard; it being too short for any such proper gentlemen as they are to walk with, and too small for any of their important uses; and withal, only valuable as having been the gift of a friend."[331]

Beau Fielding was thought worthy of record by Sir Richard Steele, as an extraordinary instance of the effects of personal vanity upon a man not without wit. He was of the noble family of Fielding, and was remarkable for the beauty of his person, which was a mixture of the Hercules and the Adonis. It is described as having been a real model of perfection. He married to his first wife the dowager Countess of Purbeck; followed the fortunes of James II., who is supposed to have made him a major-general and perhaps a count; returned and married a woman of the name of Wadsworth, under the impression that she was a lady of fortune; and, discovering his error, addressed or accepted the addresses of the notorious Duchess of Cleveland, and married her, who, on discovering her mistake in turn, indicted him for bigamy and obtained a divorce. Before he left England to follow James, "Handsome Fielding," as he was called, appears to have been insane with vanity. On his return, he had added, to the natural absurdities of that passion, the indecency of being old; but this only rendered him the more perverse in his folly. He always appeared in an extraordinary dress: sometimes rode in an open tumbril, of less size than ordinary, the better to display the nobleness of his person; and his footmen appeared in liveries of yellow, with black feathers in their hats, and black sashes. When people laughed at him, he refuted them, as Steele says, "by only moving." Sir Richard says he saw him one day stop and call the boys about him, to whom he spoke as follows:—

"Good youths,—Go to school, and do not lose your time in following my wheels: I am loth to hurt you, because I know not but you are all my own offspring. Hark ye, you sirrah with the white hair, I am sure you are mine, there is half-a-crown for you. Tell your mother, this, with the other half-crown I gave her ... comes to five shillings. Thou hast cost me all that, and yet thou art good for nothing. Why, you young dogs, did you never see a man before?" "Never such a one as you, noble general," replied a truant from Westminster. "Sirrah, I believe thee: there is a crown for thee. Drive on, coachman." Swift puts him in his list of Mean Figures, as one who "at fifty years of age, when he was wounded in a quarrel upon the stage, opened his breast and showed the wound to the ladies, that he might move their love and pity; but they all fell a laughing." His vanity, which does not appear to have been assisted by courage, sometimes got him into danger. He is said to have been caned and wounded by a Welsh gentleman, in the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields; and pressing forward once at a benefit of Mrs. Oldfield's, 'to show himself,' he trod on Mr. Fulwood, a barrister, who gave him a wound twelve inches deep. His fortune, which he ruined by early extravagance, he thought to have repaired by his marriage with Mrs. Wadsworth, and endeavoured to do so by gambling; but succeeded in neither attempt, and after the short-lived splendour with the Duchess of Cleveland, returned to his real wife, whom he pardoned, and died under her care. During the height of his magnificence, he carried his madness so far, according to Steele, as to call for his tea by beat of drum; his valet got ready to shave him by a trumpet to horse; and water was brought for his teeth, when the sound was changed to boots and saddle." If this looks like a jest, there is no knowing how far vanity might be carried, especially when the patient may cloak it from himself under the guise of giving way to a humour.[332]

Vanbrugh, comic poet, architect, and herald, was comptroller of the royal works. His house in Whitehall, built by himself, was remarkable for its smallness. Swift compared it to a goose-pie. On the other hand, his Blenheim and public buildings are ridiculed for their ponderous hugeness. The close of Dr. Evans's epitaph upon him is well known:—

Lie heavy on him earth, for he

Laid many a heavy load on thee.

When he was made Clarencieux king-at-arms, Swift said he might now "build houses." The secret of this ridicule was, that Vanbrugh was a Whig. Sir Joshua Reynolds has left the following high encomium on his merits as an architect. "In the buildings of Vanbrugh, who was a poet as well as an architect, there is a greater display of imagination than we shall find, perhaps, in any other; and this is the ground of the effect we feel in many of his works, notwithstanding the faults with which many of them are charged. For this purpose, Vanbrugh appears to have had recourse to some principles of the Gothic architecture, which, though not so ancient as the Grecian, is more so to our imagination, with which the artist is more concerned than with absolute truth." "To speak of Vanbrugh (adds Sir Joshua), in the language of a painter, he had originality of invention; he understood light and shadow, and had great skill in composition. To support his principal object, he produced his second and third groups or masses. He perfectly understood in his art, what is the most difficult in ours, the conduct of the back-ground, by which the design and invention are set off to the greatest advantage. What the back-ground is in painting, in architecture is the real ground on which the building is erected; and no architect took greater care that his work should not appear crude and hard; that is, that it did not abruptly start out of the ground without expectation or preparation. This is a tribute which a painter owes to an architect who composed like a painter, and was defrauded of the due reward of his merit by the wits of his time, who did not understand the principles of composition in poetry better than he, and who knew little or nothing of what he understood perfectly—the general ruling principles of architecture and painting. Vanbrugh's fate was that of the great Perrault. Both were the objects of the petulant sarcasms of factious men of letters, and both have left some of the fairest monuments which, to this day, decorate their several countries;—the façade of the Louvre; Blenheim, and Castle Howard."[333] Perrault, however, had a worse fate than Vanbrugh, for the Frenchman was ridiculed not only as an architect but as a man of letters, whereas our author's pretensions that way were acknowledged.

In the front of Scotland Yard an extraordinary adventure befell Lord Herbert of Cherbury—(see [Queen Street], Lincoln's Inn Fields), who relates it in a strain of coxcombry (particularly about the ladies) which would have brought discredit upon such a story from any other pen. There is no doubt, however, that the story is true.

"There was a lady," says his lordship, "wife to Sir John Ayres, knight, who finding some means to get a copy of my picture from Larkin, gave it to Mr. Isaac, the painter, in Blackfriars, and desired him to draw it in little, after his manner; which being done, she caused it to be set in gold and enamelled, and so wore it about her neck so low that she hid it under her breasts, which I conceive, coming afterwards to the knowledge of Sir John Ayres, gave him more cause of jealousie than needed, had he known how innocent I was from pretending to anything that might wrong him or his lady, since I could not so much as imagine that either she had my picture, or that she bare more than ordinary affection to me. It is true, that as she had a place in court, and attended Queen Anne, and was beside of an excellent wit and discourse, she had made herself a considerable person. Howbeit, little more than a common civility ever passed betwixt us; though I confess I think no man was welcomer to her when I came, for which I shall allege this passage:—

"Coming one day into her chamber, I saw her through the curtains lying upon her bed with a wax candle in one hand, and the picture I formerly mentioned in the other. I coming thereupon somewhat boldly to her, she blew out the candle and hid the picture from me: myself thereupon being curious to know what that was she held in her hand, got the candle to be lighted again, by means whereof I found it was my picture she looked upon with more earnestness and passion than I could easily have believed, especially since myself was not engaged in any affection towards her. I could willingly have omitted this passage, but that it was the beginning of a bloody history which followed: howsoever, yet I must before the eternal God clear her honour. And now in court a great person sent for me divers times to attend her; which summons, though I obeyed, yet God knows I declined coming to her as much as conveniently I could without incurring her displeasure; and this I did, not only for very honest reasons, but, to speak ingenuously, because that affection passed between me and another lady (who I believe was the fairest of her time) as nothing could divert it. I had not been long in London, when a violent burning fever seized upon me, which brought me almost to my death, though at last I did by slow degrees recover my health. Being thus upon my amendment, the Lord Lisle, afterwards Earl of Leicester, sent me word, that Sir John Ayres intended to kill me in my bed; and wished me to keep guard upon my chamber and person. The same advertisement was confirmed by Lucy, Countess of Bedford, and the Lady Hobby, shortly after. Hereupon I thought fit to entreat Sir William Herbert, now Lord Powis, to go to Sir John Ayres, and tell him that I marvelled much at the information given me by these great persons, and that I could not imagine any sufficient ground hereof; howbeit, if he had anything to say to me in a fair and noble way, I would give him the meeting as soon as I had got strength enough to stand on my legs. Sir William hereupon brought me so ambiguous and doubtful an answer from him, that, whatsoever he meant, he would not declare yet his intention, which was really, as I found afterwards, to kill me any way that he could." The reason, Lord Herbert tells us, was, that Sir John, though falsely, accused him of having seduced his wife. "Finding no means thus to surprise me," continues the noble lord, "he sent me a letter to this effect; that he desired to meet me somewhere, and that it might so fall out as I might return quietly again. To this I replied, that if he desired to fight with me on equal terms, I should, upon assurance of the field and fair play, give him meeting when he did any way specify the cause, and that I did not think fit to come to him upon any other terms, having been sufficiently informed of his plots to assassinate me.

"After this, finding he could take no advantage against me, then in a treacherous way he resolved to assassinate me in this manner;—hearing I was to come to Whitehall on horseback with two lacqueys only, he attended my coming back in a place called Scotland Yard, at the hither end of Whitehall, as you come to it from the Strand, hiding himself here with four men armed to kill me. I took horse at Whitehall Gate, and, passing by that place, he being armed with a sword and dagger, without giving me so much as the least warning, ran at me furiously, but instead of me, wounded my horse in the brisket, as far as his sword could enter for the bone; my horse hereupon starting aside, he ran him again in the shoulder, which, though it made the horse more timorous, yet gave me time to draw my sword: his men thereupon encompassed me, and wounded my horse in three places more; this made my horse kick and fling in that manner, as his men durst not come near me, which advantage I took to strike at Sir John Ayres with all my force, but he warded the blow both with his sword and dagger; instead of doing him harm, I broke my sword within a foot of the hilt; hereupon, some passenger that knew me, observing my horse wounded in so many places, and so many men assaulting me, and my sword broken, cried to me several times, 'Ride away, ride away;' but I scorning a base flight upon what terms soever, instead thereof alighted as well I could from my horse; I had no sooner put one foot upon the ground than Sir John Ayres, pursuing me, made at my horse again, which the horse perceiving, pressed on me on the side I alighted, in that manner, that he threw me down, so that I remained flat upon the ground, only one foot hanging in the stirrup, with that piece of a sword in my right hand. Sir John Ayres hereupon ran about the horse, and was thrusting his sword into me, when I, finding myself in this danger, did with both my arms reaching at his legs pull them towards me, till he fell down backwards on his head; one of my footmen hereupon, who was a little Shropshire boy, freed my foot out of the stirrup, the other, who was a great fellow, having run away as soon as he saw the first assault; this gave me time to get upon my legs and to put myself in the best posture I could with that poor remnant of a weapon; Sir John Ayres by this time likewise was got up, standing betwixt me and some part of Whitehall, with two men on each side of him, and his brother behind him, with at least twenty or thirty persons of his friends, or attendants on the Earl of Suffolk; observing thus a body of men standing in opposition against me, though to speak truly I saw no swords drawn but Sir John Ayres' and his men, I ran violently against Sir John Ayres, but he, knowing my sword had no point, held his sword and dagger over his head, as believing I could strike rather than thrust, which I no sooner perceived but I put a home thrust to the middle of his breast, that I threw him down with so much force, that his head fell first to the ground and his heels upwards; his men hereupon assaulted me, when one Mr. Mansel, a Glamorganshire gentleman, finding so many set against me alone, closed with one of them; a Scotch gentleman also, closing with another, took him off also: all I could well do to those that remained was to ward their thrusts, which I did with that resolution that I got ground upon them. Sir John Ayres was now got up a third time, when I making towards him with intention to close thinking, that there was otherwise no safety for me, put by a thrust of his with my left hand, and so coming within him, received a stab with his dagger on my right side, which ran down my ribs as far as my hips, which I feeling, did with my right elbow force his hand, together with the hilt of the dagger, so near the upper part of my right side, that I made him leave hold. The dagger now sticking in me, Sir Henry Carey, afterwards Lord of Faulkland, and Lord Deputy of Ireland, finding the dagger thus in my body, snatched it out; this while I, being closed with Sir John Ayres, hurt him on the head and threw him down a third time, when kneeling on the ground and bestriding him, I struck at him as hard as I could with my piece of a sword, and wounded him in four several places, and did almost cut off his left hand; his two men this while struck at me, but it pleased God even miraculously to defend me, for when I lifted up my sword to strike at Sir John Ayres, I bore off their blows half a dozen times; his friends now finding him in this danger, took him by the head and shoulders and drew him from betwixt my legs, and carrying him along with them through Whitehall, at the stairs whereof he took boat, Sir Herbert Croft (as he told me afterwards) met him upon the water vomiting all the way, which I believe was caused by the violence of the first thrust I gave him; his servants, brother, and friends, being now retired also, I remained master of the place and his weapons, having first wrested his dagger from him, and afterwards struck his sword out of his hand.

"This being done, I retired to a friend's house in the Strand, where I sent for a surgeon, who, searching my wound on the right side, and finding it not to be mortal, cured me in the space of some ten days, during which time I received many noble visits and messages from some of the best in the kingdom. Being now fully recovered of my hurts, I desired Sir Robert Harley to go to Sir John Ayres, and tell him, that though I thought he had not so much honour left in him, that I could be in any way ambitious to get it, yet that I desired to see him in the field with his sword in his hand; the answer that he sent me was (repeating the charge above mentioned) 'that he would kill me with a musket out of a window.'

"The Lords of the Privy Council, who had at first sent for my sword, that they might see the little fragment of a weapon with which I had so behaved myself, as perchance the like had not been heard in any credible way, did afterwards command both him and me to appear before them; but I, absenting myself on purpose, sent one Humphrey Hill with a challenge to him in an ordinary, which he refusing to receive, Humphrey Hill put it upon the point of his sword, and so let it fall before him and the company then present.

"The Lords of the Privy Council had now taken order to apprehend Sir John Ayres, when I, finding nothing else to be done, submitted myself likewise to them. Sir John Ayres had now published everywhere that the ground of his jealousie, and consequently of his assaulting me, was drawn from the confession of his wife, the Lady Ayres. She, to vindicate her honour, as well as free me from this accusation, sent a letter to her aunt, the Lady Crook, to this purpose: that her husband, Sir John Ayres, did lie falsely, ... but most falsely of all did lie when he said he had it from her confession, for she had never said any such thing.

"This letter the Lady Crook presented to me most opportunely, as I was going to the Counsell table before the Lords, who, having examined Sir John Ayres concerning the cause of his quarrel with me, found him still to persist on his wife's confession of the fact; and now, he being withdrawn, I was sent for, when the Duke of Lennox, afterwards of Richmond, telling me that was the ground of his quarrel, and the only excuse he had for assaulting me in that manner, I desired his lordship to peruse the letter, which I told him was given me as I came into the room; this letter being publicly read by a clerk of the Counsell, the Duke of Lennox then said, that he thought Sir John Ayres the most miserable man living, for his wife had not only given him the lie, as he found by the letter, but his father had disinherited him for attempting to kill me in that barbarous fashion, which was most true, as I found afterwards;—for the rest, that I might content myself with what I had done, it being more almost than could be believed, but that I had so many witnesses thereof; for all which reasons, he commanded me in the name of his Majesty, and all their lordships, not to send any more to Sir John Ayres, nor to receive any message from him, in the way of fighting, which commandment I observed: howbeit, I must not omit to tell, that some years afterwards Sir John Ayres, returning from Ireland by Beaumaris, where I then was, some of my servants and followers broke open the doors of the house where he was, and would, I believe, have cut him into pieces, but that I, hearing thereof, came suddenly to the house and recalled them, sending him word also that I scorned to give him the usage he gave me, and that I would set him free of the town, which courtesie of mine (as I was told afterwards) he did thankfully acknowledge."[334]

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CHAPTER X.
WOLSEY AND WHITEHALL.

Regal Character of Whitehall—York Place—Personal and Moral Character of Wolsey—Comparison of him with his Master, Henry—His Pomp and Popularity—Humorous Account of his Flatterers by Sir Thomas More—Importance of his Hat—Cavendish's Account of his household State, his goings forth in Public, and his entertainments of the King.

The whole district containing all that collection of streets and houses, which extends from Scotland Yard to Parliament Street, and from the river side, with its wharfs, to St. James's Park, and which is still known by the general appellation of Whitehall, was formerly occupied by a sumptuous palace and its appurtenances, the only relics of which, perhaps the noblest specimen, is the beautiful edifice built by Inigo Jones, and retaining its old name of the Banqueting House.

As this palace was the abode of a series of English sovereigns, beginning with Henry the Eighth, who took it from Wolsey, and terminating with James the Second, on whose downfall it was destroyed by fire, we are now in the very thick of the air of royalty; and so being, we mean to lead a princely life with the reader for a couple of chapters,—whether he take the word "princely" in a good or ill sense, as first in magnificence and authority, or in wilfulness and profusion. Cavendish, Holinshed, and the poets, will enable us to live with Wolsey, with Henry, and with Elizabeth; Wilson and the poets, with James the First; Clarendon, Pepys, and others with Charles the First, Cromwell, Charles the Second, and his brother. We shall eat and drink, and swell into most unapostolical pomp, with the great Cardinal; shall huff and fume with Henry, and marry pretty Anne Bullen in a closet (Lingard says in a "garret"); send her to have her head cut off as if nothing had happened; be an everlasting young old gentlewoman with Queen Elizabeth, enamouring people's eyes at seventy; drink and splutter, and be a great baby, with King James; have a taste, and be henpecked, and not very sincere, yet melancholy and much to be pitied, with poor Charles the First; be uneasy, secret, and energetic, and like a crowned Methodist preacher, or an old dreary piece of English oak (choose which you will) with Oliver Cromwell; saunter, squander, and be gay, and periwigged, and laughing, and ungrateful, and liked, and despised, and have twenty mistresses, and look as grim and swarthy, and with a face as full of lines, as if we were full of melancholy and black bile, with Charles the Second; and, finally, have all his melancholy, and none of his wit and mirth, with his poor, dreary, bigoted brother James.

"Now, this is worshipful society."

Whether it be happy or not, or enviable by the least peasant who can pay his way and sleep heartily, will be left to the judgment of the reader.

The site of Whitehall was originally occupied by a mansion built by Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, and Chief Justice of England in the reign of Henry the Third, one of the ancestors of the present Marquess of Clanricarde. De Burgh bequeathed it to the Brotherhood of the Black Friars, near "Oldborne," in whose church he was buried; the Brotherhood sold it to Walter Gray, Archbishop of York, who left it to his successors in that see as the archiepiscopal residence, which procured it the name of York Place; and under that name, two centuries and a half afterwards, it became celebrated for the pomp and festal splendour of the "full-blown" priest, Wolsey, the magnificent butcher's son. Wolsey, on highly probable evidence, is thought to have so improved and enlarged the mansion of his predecessors, as to have in a manner rebuilt it, and given it its first royalty of aspect: but, as we shall see by and by, it was not called Whitehall, nor occupied anything like the space it did afterwards, till its seizure by the Cardinal's master.

We have always thought the epithet of "full-blown," as applied to Wolsey, the happiest poetical hit ever made by Dr. Johnson:

"In full-blown dignity see Wolsey stand,

Law in his voice, and fortune in his hand."

His ostentation, his clerical robes, his very corpulence, and his subsequent fading, all conspire to render the image felicitous. Wolsey is the very flower of priestly prosperity—fat, full-blown, gorgeous, called into life by sunshine; the very odours he was fond of carrying in his hand, become a part of his efflorescence; one imagines his cheek florid, and his huge, silken vestments expanding about him, like bloated petals. Anon, the blast blows from the horrid royal mouth: the round flower hangs its head; it lays its dead neck on the earth; and in its room, is a loathed weed.

Wolsey, however, did not grow to be what he was with the indolence of a flower. He began his career with as much personal as mental activity, rendered himself necessary to the indolence of a young and luxurious Sovereign,—in fact, became his Sovereign's will in another shape, relieving the royal person of all trouble, and at the same time securing all his wishes, from a treaty down to a mistress; and hence, as he himself intimated, the whole secret of his prosperity. He had industry, address, eloquence, the power of pleasing, the art (till success spoilt him) of avoiding whatever was unpleasant. He could set his master at ease with himself, in the smallest points of discourse, as well as on greater occasions. Henry felt no misgiving in his presence. He beheld in his lordly and luxurious agent a second self, with a superior intellect, artfully subjected to his own, so as to imply intellectual as well as royal superiority; and he loved the priestly splendour of Wolsey, because, in setting the church so high, and at the same time carrying himself so loyally, the churchman only the more elevated the Prince. The moment the great servant appeared as if he could do without the greater master, by a fortune superior to failure in his projects, Henry's favour began to give way; and when the princely churchman, partly in the heedlessness arising from long habits of security, and partly in the natural resentment of a superior mind, expressed a doubt whether his Sovereign was acting with perfect justice towards him, his doom was sealed. Kings never forgive a wound to their self-love. They have been set so high above fellowship by their fellow-creatures, that they feel, and in some measure they have a right to feel, the least intimation of equality, much more of superiority, as an offence, especially when it is aggravated by a secret sense of the justice of the pretension; and all Wolsey's subsequent self-abasements could not do away with that stinging recollection, pleased as Henry was to widen the distance between them, and recover his own attitude of self-possession by airs of princely pity. Wolsey was a sort of Henry, himself—wilful, worldly, and fat, but with more talents and good-nature; for he appears to have been a man of rare colloquial abilities, and, where he was not opposed in large matters, of a considerate kindliness. He was an attached as well as affable master; and his consciousness of greater merit in himself would never have suffered him to send a couple of poor light-hearted girls to the scaffold, for bringing the royal marriage-bed into some shadow of a doubt of its sacredness. He would have sent them to a nunnery, and had a new marriage, without a tragedy in it, like a proper Christian Sultan! Had Henry been in Wolsey's place, he would have proposed to set up the Inquisition; and King Thomas would have reproved him, and told him that such severities did not become two such fat and jolly believers as they.

The people appear to have liked Wolsey much. They enjoyed his pomp as a spectacle, and pitied his fall. They did not grudge his pomp to one who was so generous. Besides, they had a secret complacency in the humbleness of his origin, seeing that he rose from it by real merit. Those that quarrelled with him for his pride, were proud nobles and grudging fellow-divines. It is pretty clear that Shakspeare, who was such a "good fellow" himself, had a regard for Wolsey as another. He takes opportunities of echoing his praises, and dresses his fall in robes of pathos and eloquence. As to a true feeling of religion, it is out of the question in considering Wolsey's history and times. It was not expected of him. It was not the fashion or the morality of the day. It was sufficient that the Church made its way in the world, and secretly elevated the interests of literature and scholarship along with it. A king in those times was regarded as a visible God upon earth, not thoroughly well behaved, but much to be believed in; and if the Church could compete with the State, it was hoped that more perfect times would somehow or other ensue. A good deal of license was allowed it on behalf of the interests of better things—a singular arrangement, and, as the event turned out, not likely to better itself quite so peaceably as was hoped for; but it was making the best, under the circumstances, of the old perplexity between "the shows of things, and the desires of the mind." Wolsey (as the prosperous and the upper classes are apt to do in all ages) probably worshipped success itself as the final proof of all which the divine Governor of the world intended, in his dealings with individuals or society. Hence his proud swelling while possessed of it, and his undisguised tears and lamentations during his decline. He talks with his confidants about the King and good fortune, like a boy crying for a cake, and they respectfully echo his groans, and evidently think them not at all inconsistent, either with manliness or wisdom.

There was a breadth of character in all that Wolsey thought, did, and suffered—in his strength and in his weakness. In his prosperity he set no bounds to his pomp; in adversity he cries out and calls upon the gods, not affecting to be a philosopher. When he was angry he huffed and used big words, like his master; when in good humour, he loaded people with praise; and he loved a large measure of it himself, he issued forth, with his goodly bulk and huge garments, and expected a worship analogous to his amplitudes. There is a passage written with great humour by Sir Thomas More, which, according to Dr. Wordsworth (the poet's brother), is intended, "no doubt, to represent the Cardinal at the head of his table." What reasons the doctor has for not doubting the application, we cannot say, and therefore do not think ourselves any more justified than inclined to dispute them. The supposition is highly probable. Wolsey must have offered a fine dramatic spectacle to the eyes of a genius like More. We shall therefore copy the passage for the reader's entertainment, from a note in Mr. Singer's excellent edition of the Cardinal's Life by Cavendish:—

"Anthony. I praye you, Cosyn, tell on. Vincent. Whan I was fyrste in Almaine, Uncle, it happed me to be somewhat favoured with a great manne of the churche, and a great state, one of the greatest in all that country there. And in dede whosoever might spende as muche as hee mighte in one thinge and other, were a ryght great estate in anye countrey of Christendom. But glorious was hee verye farre above all measure, and that was great pitie, for it dyd harme, and made him abuse many great gyftes that God hadde given him. Never was he saciate of hearinge his owne prayse.

"So happed it one daye, that he had in a great audience made an oracion in a certayne matter, wherein he liked himselfe so well, that at his dinner he sat, him thought, on thornes, tyll he might here how they that sat with hym at his borde, woulde commende it. And whan hee had sitte musing a while, devysing, as I thought after, uppon some pretty proper waye to bring it in withal, at the laste for lacke of a better, lest he should have letted the matter too long, he brought it even blontly forth, and asked us al that satte at his bordes end (for at his owne messe in the middes there sat but himself alone) how well we lyked his oracion that he hadde made that daye. But in fayth, Uncle, whan that probleme was once proponed, till it was full answered, no manne (I wene) eate one morsell of meate more. Every manne was fallen in so depe a studye, for the fyndynge of some exquisite prayse. For he that shoulde have broughte out but a vulgare and a common commendacion, woulde have thoughte himself shamed for ever. Then sayde we our sentences by rowe as wee sat, from the lowest unto the hyghest in good order, as it had bene a great matter of the common weale, in a right solemne counsayle. Whan it came to my parte, I wyll not say it, Uncle, for no boaste, mee thoughte, by oure Ladye, for my parte, I quytte my selfe metelye wel. And I lyked my selfe the better because mee thoughte my words beeinge but a straungyer, wente yet with some grace in the Almain tong; wherein lettyng my latin alone me listed to shewe my cunnyng, and I hoped to be lyked the better, because I sawe that he that sate next mee, and should saie his sentence after mee, was an unlearned Prieste, for he could speake no latin at all. But whan he came furth for hys part with my Lordes commendation, the wyly fox hadde be so well accustomed in courte with the crafte of flattry, that he wente beyonde me to farre.

"And then might I see by hym, what excellence a right meane witte may come to in one crafte, that in al his whole life studyeth and busyeth his witte about no mo but that one. But I made after a solempne vowe unto my selfe, that if ever he and I were matched together at that boarde agayne, whan we should fall to our flattrye, I would flatter in latin, that he should not contende with me no more. For though I could be contente to be out runne by an horse, yet would I no more abyde it to be out runne of an asse. But, Uncle, here beganne nowe the game; he that sate hyghest, and was to speake, was a great beneficed man, and not a Doctour only, but also somewhat learned in dede in the lawes of the Churche. A worlde it was to see howe he marked every mannes worde that spake before him. And it seemed that every worde the more proper it was, the worse he liked it, for the cumbrance that he had to study out a better to passe it. The manne even swette with the laboure, so that he was faine in the while now and than to wipe his face. Howbeit in conclusion whan it came to his course, we that had spoken before him, hadde so taken up al among us before, that we hadde not lefte him one wye worde to speake after.

"Anthony. Alas good manne! amonge so manye of you, some good felow shold have lente hym one. Vincent. It needed not, as happe was, Uncle. For he found out such a shift, that in hys flatterying he passed us all the many. Anthony. Why, what sayde he, Cosyn? Vincent. By our Ladye, Uncle, not one worde. But lyke as I trow Plinius telleth, that when Appelles the Paynter in the table that he paynted of the sacryfyce and the death of Iphigenia, hadde in the makynge of the sorrowefull countenances of the other noble menne of Greece that beehelde it, spente out so much of his craft and hys cunnynge, that whan he came to make the countenance of King Agamemnon her father, which hee reserved for the laste ... he could devise no maner of newe heavy chere and countenance—but to the intent that no man should see what maner countenance it was, that her father hadde, the paynter was fayne to paynte him, holdyng his face in his handkercher—the like pageant in a maner plaide us there this good aunciente honourable flatterer. For whan he sawe that he coulde fynde no woordes of prayse, that woulde passe al that hadde bene spoken before all readye, the wyly Fox woulde speake never a worde, but as he that were ravished unto heavenwarde with the wonder of the wisdom and eloquence that my Lordes Grace had uttered in that oracyon, he fette a long syghe with an Oh! from the bottome of his breste, and helde uppe bothe hys handes, and lyfte uppe both his handes, and lyfte uppe his head, and caste up his eyen into the welkin and wept."

But if Wolsey set store by his fine speaking, he knew also what belonged to his hat; he was quite alive to the effect produced by his office, and knew how to get up and pamper a ceremony—to cook up a raw material of dignity for the public relish. It should be no fault of his, that any toy of his rank should not be looked up to with awe. Accordingly, a most curious story is told of the way in which he contrived that the Cardinal's hat, which was sent him during his residence in York Place, should make its first appearance in public. Cavendish says, that the hat having been sent by the Pope through the hands of an ordinary messenger, without any state, Wolsey caused him to be "stayed by the way," newly dressed in rich apparel, and met by a gorgeous cavalcade of prelates and gentry. But a note in Mr. Singer's edition, referring to Tindal and Fox, tells us that the messenger actually reached him in York Place, was clothed by him as aforesaid, and sent back with the hat to Dover, from whence the cavalcade went and fetched him. The hat was then set on a sideboard full of plate, with tapers round about it, "and the greatest Duke in the lande must make curtesie thereto."

Cavendish has given a minute account of the household at York Place, from which the following are extracts. Compare them with the recollection of "the disciples plucking ears of corn:"—

"He had in his hall, daily, three especial tables furnished with three principal officers; that is to say, a Steward, which was always a dean or a priest; a Treasurer, a knight; and a Comptroller, an esquire; which bore always within his house their white staves. Then had he a cofferer, three marshals, two yeoman ushers, two grooms, and an almoner," &c., &c., &c.... "In his privy kitchen, he had a master-cook, who went daily in damask, satin, or velvet, with a chain of gold about his neck."... In his chapel, he had "a Dean, who was always a great clerk and a divine; a Sub-dean; a Repeater of the quire; a Gospeller, a Pisteller (separate men to read the Gospels and the Epistles), and twelve singing Priests; of Scholars, he had first, a Master of the children; twelve singing children; sixteen singing men; with a servant to attend upon the said children. In the Revestry, a yeoman and two grooms: then were there divers retainers of cunning singing men, that came thither at divers sundry principal feasts. But to speak of the furniture of this chapel passeth my capacity to declare the number of the costly ornaments and rich jewels, that were occupied in the same continually. For I have seen there, in a procession, worn forty-four copes of one suit, very rich, besides the sumptuous crosses, candlesticks, and other necessary ornaments to the comely furniture of the same. Now shall ye understand that he had two cross-bearers, and two pillar-bearers; and in his chamber, all these persons; that is to say: his High Chamberlain; his Vice-Chamberlain; twelve Gentlemen Ushers, daily waiters; besides two in his Privy Chamber; and of Gentlemen waiters in his Privy Chamber he had six; and also he had of Lords nine or ten, who had each of them allowed two servants; and the Earl of Derby had allowed five men. Then had he of Gentlemen, as cup-bearers, carvers, sewers, and Gentlemen daily waiters, forty persons; of yeomen ushers he had six; of grooms in his chamber he had eight; of yeomen of his chamber he had forty-six daily to attend upon his person; he had also a priest there which was his Almoner, to attend upon his table at dinner. Of doctors and chaplains attending in his closet to say daily mass before him, he had sixteen persons: and a clerk of his closet. Also he had two secretaries, and two clerks of his signet: and four counsellors learned in the laws of the realm.

"And, for as much as he was Chancellor of England, it was necessary for him to have divers officers of the Chancery, to attend daily upon him, for the better furniture of the same. That is to say, first, he had the Clerk of the Crown, a Riding Clerk, a Clerk of the Hanaper, a Chafer of Wax. Then had he a Clerk of the Check, as well to check his chaplains, as his yeomen of the chamber; he had also four Footmen, which were apparelled in rich running coats, whensoever he rode any journey. Then had he an Herald at Arms, and a Serjeant at Arms; a Physician; an Apothecary; four Minstrels; a Keeper of his Tents; an Armourer; an Instructor of his Wards; two Yeomen in his Wardrobe; and a Keeper of his chamber in the court. He had also daily in his house the Surveyor of York, a Clerk of the Green Cloth; and an auditor. All this number of persons were daily attendant upon him in his house, down-lying and up-rising. And at meals, there was continually in his chamber a board kept for his Chamberlains, and Gentlemen Ushers, having with them a mess of the young Lords, and another for gentlemen. Besides all these, there was never an officer and gentleman, or any other worthy person in his house, but he was allowed some three, some two servants; and all other one at the least; which amounted to a great number of persons."

Such was the style in which Wolsey grew fat, in-doors. When he went out of doors, to Westminster Hall for instance, as Chancellor, or merely came into an anteroom, to speak with his suitors, the following was the state which he always kept up. Think of Lord Brougham or Lord Lyndhurst in our own times, modestly eschewing notice, and going down to the House in a plain hat and trowsers, and then look on the following picture:—

"Now will I declare unto you," says the worthy Cavendish, striking up a right gentleman-usher note (and out of this very gentleman-usher's family came the princely house of Devonshire, which has lasted with so much height and refinement ever since,)—"Now will I declare unto you his order in going to Westminster Hall, daily in the term season. First, before his coming out of his privy chamber, he heard most commonly every day two masses in his private closet; and there then said his daily service with his chaplain; and, as I heard his chaplain say, being a man of credence and of excellent learning, that the Cardinal, what business or weighty matters soever he had in the day, he never went to his bed with any part of his divine service unsaid, yea, not so much as one collect; wherein I doubt not but he deceived the opinion of divers persons. And after mass he would return in his privy chamber again, and being advertised of the furniture of his chambers without, with noblemen, gentlemen, and other persons, would issue out into them, apparelled all in red, in the habit of a cardinal; which was either of fine scarlet, or else of crimson satin, taffety, damask, or caffa, the best that he could get for money; and upon his head a round pillion, with a noble of black velvet set to the same in the inner side; he had also a tippet of fine sables about his neck; holding in his hand a very fair orange, whereof the meat or substance within was taken out, and filled up again with the part of a sponge, wherein was vinegar, and other confections against the pestilent airs; the which he most commonly smelt unto, passing among the press, or else when he was pestered with many suitors. There was also borne before him, first, the great seal of England, and then his cardinal's hat, by a nobleman or some worthy gentleman, right solemnly, bareheaded. And as soon as he was entered into his chamber of presence, where there was attending his coming to await upon him to Westminster Hall, as well noblemen and other worthy gentlemen, as noblemen and gentlemen of his own family; thus passing forth with two great crosses of silver borne before him; with also two great pillars of silver, and his pursuivant at arms with a great mace of silver gilt. Then his gentlemen ushers cried, and said: 'On, my lords and masters, on before; make way for my Lord's Grace!' Thus passed he down from his chamber through the hall; and when he came to the hall door, there was attendant for him his mule, trapped altogether in crimson velvet, and gilt stirrups. When he was mounted, with his cross bearers, and pillow bearers, also upon great horses trapped with [fine] scarlet, then marched he forward, with his train and furniture in manner as I have declared, having about him four footmen, with gilt poll-axes in their hands; and thus he went until he came to Westminster Hall door. And there alighted and went after this manner, up through the hall into the chancery; howbeit he would most commonly stay awhile at a bar, made for him, a little beneath the chancery [on the right hand], and there commune some time with the judges, and some time with other persons. And that done he would repair into the chancery, sitting there till eleven of the clock, hearing suitors, and determining on divers matters. And from thence, he would divers times go into the star chamber, as occasion did serve; where he spared neither high nor low, but judged every estate according to their merits and demerits."

But this style of riding abroad was not merely for official occasions. He went through Thames Street every Sunday, in his way to the court at Greenwich, with his crosses, his pillars, his hat, and his great seal. He was as fond of his pomp out of doors, as a child is of its new clothes.

The description of the way in which he used to receive the visits of the King at York Place, has acquired a double interest from the use made of it by Shakspeare, by whom it has been, in a manner, copied, in his play of "Henry the Eighth:"

"Thus in great honour, triumph, and glory," says Cavendish, "he reigned a long season, ruling all things within this realm, appertaining unto the King, by his wisdom, and also all other weighty matters of foreign regions with which the King of this realm had any occasion to intermeddle. All Ambassadors of foreign potentates were always dispatched by his discretion, to whom they had always access for their dispatch. His house was also always resorted and furnished with noblemen, gentlemen, and other persons, with going and coming in and out, feasting and banqueting all Ambassadors divers times, and other strangers right nobly.

"And when it pleased the King's Majesty, for his recreation, to repair unto the Cardinal's house, as he did divers times in the year, at which time there wanted no preparations, or goodly furniture, with viands of the finest sort that might be provided for money or friendship, such pleasures were then devised for the King's comfort and consolation, as might be invented, or by man's wit imagined. The banquets were set forth, with masks and mummeries, in so gorgeous a sort, and costly a manner, that it was a heaven to behold. There wanted no dames, or damsels, meet or apt to dance with the maskers, or to garnish the place for the time, with other goodly disports. Then was there all kind of music and harmony set forth, with excellent voices both of men and children. I have seen the King suddenly come in thither in a mask, with a dozen of other maskers, all in garments like shepherds, made of fine cloth of gold and fine crimson satin paned, and caps of the same, with visors of good proportion of visnomy; their hairs, and beards, either of fine gold wire, or else of silver, and some being of black silk; having sixteen torch-bearers, besides their drums, and other persons attending upon them, with visors, and clothed all in satin, of the same colours. And at his coming, and before he came into the hall, ye shall understand, that he came by water to the water gate, without any noise: where, against his coming, were laid charged, many chambers[335], and at his landing they were all shot off, which made such a rumble in the air, that it was like thunder. It made all the noblemen, ladies, and gentlewomen, to muse what it should mean coming so suddenly, they sitting quietly at a solemn banquet; under this sort: First, ye shall perceive that the tables were set in the chamber of presence, banquet-wise covered, my Lord Cardinal sitting under the cloth of estate, and there having his service all alone; and then was there set a lady and a nobleman, or a gentleman and gentlewoman, throughout all the tables in the chamber on the one side, which were made and joined as it were but one table. All which order and device was done and devised by the Lord Sands, Lord Chamberlain to the King; and also by Sir Henry Guildford, Comptroller to the King. Then immediately after this great shot of guns, the Cardinal desired the Lord Chamberlain and Comptroller to look what this sudden shot should mean, as though he knew nothing of the matter. They thereupon looking out of the windows into Thames, returned again, and showed him that it seemed to them there should be some noblemen and strangers arrived at his bridge, as ambassadors from some foreign prince. With that, quoth the Cardinal, 'I shall desire you, because ye can speak French, to take the pains to go down into the hall to encounter and to receive them, according to their estates, and to conduct them into this chamber, where they shall see us, and all these noble personages sitting merrily at our banquet, desiring them to sit down with us, and to take part of our fare and pastime.' Then [they] went incontinent down into the hall, where they received them with near twenty new torches, and conveyed them up into the chamber, with such a number of drums and fifes as I have seldom seen together at one time, in any masque. At their arrival into the chamber, two and two together, they went directly before the Cardinal where he sat, saluting him very reverently; to whom the Lord Chamberlain for them said; 'Sir, for as much as they be strangers, and can speak no English, they have desired me to declare unto your Grace thus: they, having understanding of this your triumphant banquet, where was assembled such a number of excellent fair dames, could do no less, under the supportation of your good Grace, but to repair hither to view as well as their incomparable beauty, as for to accompany them at mumchance[336], and then after to dance with them, and so to have of them acquaintance. And, sir, they furthermore require of your Grace license to accomplish the cause of their repair.' To whom the Cardinal answered, that he was very well contented that they should do so. Then the maskers went first and saluted all the dames as they sat, and then returned to the most worthiest, and there opened a cup full of gold, with crowns and other pieces of coin, to whom they set divers pieces to cast at. Thus in this manner perusing all the ladies and gentlewomen, and to some they lost, and of some they won. And this done, they returned unto the Cardinal, with great reverence, pouring down all the crowns into the cup, which was about two hundred crowns. 'At all,' quoth the Cardinal, and so cast the dice, and won them all at a cast; whereat was great joy made. Then quoth the Cardinal to my Lord Chamberlain, 'I pray you,' quoth he, 'show them that it seemeth me that there should be among them some noble man, whom I suppose to be much more worthy of honour to sit and occupy this room and place than I; to whom I would most gladly, if I knew him, surrender my place, according to my duty.' Then spake my Lord Chamberlain unto them in French, declaring my Lord Cardinal's mind, and they rounding him again in the ear, my Lord Chamberlain said to my Lord Cardinal, 'Sir, they confess,' quoth he, 'that among them there is such a noble personage, whom, if your Grace can appoint him from the other, he is contented to disclose himself, and to accept your place most worthily.' With that the Cardinal, taking a good advisement among them, at the last, quoth he, 'me seemeth the gentleman with the black beard should be even he.' And with that he arose out of his chair, and offered the same to the gentleman in the black beard, with his cap in his hand. The person to whom he offered then his chair was Sir Edward Neville, a comely knight of a goodly personage,[337] that much more resembled the King's person in that mask than any other. The King, hearing and perceiving the Cardinal so deceived in his estimation and choice, could not forbear laughing; but plucked down his visor, and Master Neville's also, and dashed[338] out with such a plesant countenance and cheer, that all noble estates there assembled, seeing the King to be there amongst them, rejoiced very much. The Cardinal eftsoons desired his highness to take the place of estate, to whom the King answered, that he would go first and shift his apparel; and so departed, and went straight into my lord's bedchamber, where was a great fire made and prepared for him; and there new apparelled him with rich and princely garments. And in the time of the King's absence the dishes of the banquet were clean taken up, and the tables spread again with new and sweet perfumed clothes; every man sitting still until the King and his maskers came in among them again, every man being newly apparelled. Then the King took his seat under the cloth of state, commanding no man to remove, but sit still, as they did before. Then in came a new banquet before the King's majesty, and to all the rest through the tables, wherein, I suppose, were served two hundred dishes or above, of wondrous costly meats and devices, subtilly devised. Thus passed they forth the whole night with banqueting, dancing, and other triumphant devices, to the great comfort of the King, and pleasant regard of the nobility there assembled.

"All this matter I have declared at large, because ye shall understand what joy and delight the Cardinal had to see his Prince and sovereign Lord in his house so nobly entertained and pleased, which was always his only study, to devise things to his comfort, not passing of the charges or expenses. It delighted him so much, to have the King's pleasant princely presence, that nothing was to him more delectable than to cheer his sovereign lord, to whom he owed so much obedience and loyalty, as reason required no less, all things well considered.

"Thus passed the Cardinal his life and time, from day to day, and year to year, in such great wealth, joy, and triumph, and glory, having always on his side the King's especial favour; until Fortune, of whose favour no man is longer assured than she is disposed, began to wax something wroth with his prosperous estate [and] thought she would devise a mean to abate his high port; wherefore she procured Venus, the insatiate Goddess, to be her instrument. To work her purpose, she brought the King in love with a gentlewoman, that, after she perceived and felt the King's goodwill towards her, and how diligent he was both to please her, and to grant all her requests, she wrought the Cardinal much displeasure; as hereafter shall be more at large declared."

Pretty Anne Bullen completed the ruin of Wolsey for having thwarted her, and not long afterwards was sent out of this very house from which she ousted him, to the scaffold, herself ruined by another rival. On the Cardinal's downfall, Henry seized his house and goods, and converted York Place into a royal residence, under the title of Westminster Place, then, for the first time, called also Whitehall.

"It is not impossible," says Mr. Brayley (Londiniana, vol. ii., p. 27.) "that the Whitehall, properly so called, was erected by Wolsey, and obtained its name from the newness and freshness of its appearance, when compared with the ancient buildings of York Place. Shakspeare, in his play of King Henry VIII., makes one of the interlocutors say, in describing the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn:—

'So she parted,

And with the same full state paced back again

To York Place, where the feast is held.'

To this is replied—

'Sir, you

Must no more call it York Place—that is past.

For since the Cardinal fell, that title's lost.

'Tis now the King's, and called Whitehall.'"

It is curious to observe the links between ancient names and their modern representatives, and the extraordinary contrast sometimes exhibited between the two. The "Judge," who by Henry's orders went to turn Wolsey out of his house, without any other form of law—a proceeding which excited even the fallen slave to a remonstrance—was named Shelly, and was one of the ancestors of the poet! the most independent-minded and generous of men.