And pay thy tribute to Humility.'
Hanway died in 1786, aged seventy-four. He is buried at Hanwell, and he has a bust in Westminster Abbey.
VIII. A GARRET IN GOUGH SQUARE.
NOT very far from 'streaming London's central roar'—or, in plain words, about midway in Fleet Street, on the left-hand side as you go toward Ludgate Hill—is a high and narrow archway or passage over which is painted in dingy letters the words 'Bolt Court.' To the lover of the 'Great Cham of Literature,' the name comes freighted with memories. More than a hundred years ago 'the ponderous mass of Johnson's form,' to quote a poem by Mrs. Barbauld, must often have darkened that contracted approach, when, in order to greet with tea the coming day ('veniente die'), * and to postpone if possible that 'unseasonable hour at which he had habituated himself to expect the oblivion of repose,' he rolled across from the Temple to Miss Williams's rooms. Where the blind lady lodged, no Society of Arts tablet now reveals to us; but as soon as the pilgrim has traversed the dark and greasy entrance-way, and finds himself in the little court itself, with its disorderly huddle of buildings, and confusion of tip-cat playing children, he is in Johnson's land, and only a few steps from the actual spot on which Johnson's last hours were spent. Fronting him, in the farther angle of the enclosure, is the Stationers' Company's School, and the Stationers' Company's School stands upon the site of No. 8 Bolt Court, formerly Bensley's Printing Office, ** but earlier still the last residence of Dr. Johnson, who lived in it from 1776 to 1784.
* 'Te venienie die, te decedenle canebat.'—Georg, iv. 466.
* Bensley succeeded Allen the printer, Johnson's landlord.
During Bensley's tenancy of the house it was twice the scene
of disastrous fires, by the second of which (in June, 1819)
the Doctor's old rooms were entirely destroyed. Among other
valuables burned at Bensley's was the large wood block
engraved by Bewick's pupil, Luke Clennell, for the diploma
of the Highland Society; and the same artist's cuts after
Stothard for Rogers's 'Pleasures of Memory' of 1810 were
only saved from a like fate by being kept in a 'ponderous
iron chest.'
It was in the backroom of its first floor that, on Monday, the 13th December in the latter year, at about seven o'clock in the evening, his black servant Francis Barber and his friend Mrs. Desmoulins, who watched in the sick-chamber, 'observing that the noise he made in breathing had ceased, went to the bed, and found that he was dead.'
Standing in Bolt Court to-day, before the unimposing façade of the school which now occupies the spot, it is not easy to reconstruct that quiet parting-scene; nor is it easy to realize the old book-burdened upper floors, or the lower reception chamber, where, according to Sir John Hawkins, were given those 'not inelegant dinners' of the good Doctor's more opulent later years. Least of all is it possible to conceive that, somewhere in this pell-mell of bricks and mortar, was once a garden which the famous Lexicographer took pleasure in watering; and where, moreover, grew a vine from which, only a few months before he died, he gathered 'three bunches of grapes.' But if Bolt Court prove unstimulating, you have only to take a few steps to the right, and you arrive, somewhat unexpectedly, in a little parallelogram at the back, known as Gough Square. Here, in the north-west corner, still stands one of the last of those sixteen residences in which Johnson lived in London. It is at present a place of business; but the tenants make no difficulty about your examination of it, and when you inquire for the well-known garret you are at once invited to inspect it. The interior of the house, of course, is much altered, but there is still a huge chain at the front door, which dates from Johnson's day, and the old oak-balustraded staircase remains intact. As you climb its narrow stages, you remember that, sixty years since, Thomas Carlyle must have made that ascent before you; * and you wonder how Johnson, with his bad sight and his rolling gait, managed to steer up it at all.
* He visited it in 1831 (Froude's 'Carlyle,' vol. ii., eh.
x.).