Childe Harold
, Canto I. The "Good Night" is placed between stanzas xiii. and xiv.
"And now I'm in the world alone,
Upon the wide, wide sea;
But why should I for others groan,
When none will sigh for me?
Perchance my dog will whine in vain,
Till fed by stranger hands;
But long ere I come back again
He'd tear me where he stands."
St. Dunstan's in the West, before its rebuilding by Shaw (1831-33), was one of the oldest churches in London. The clock, which projected over the street, and had two wooden figures of wild men who struck the hours with their clubs, was set up in 1671. Unless there was a similar clock before this date, as is not improbable, Scott is wrong in
The Fortunes of Nigel
, where he makes Moniplies stand "astonished as old Adam and Eve ply their ding-dong." The figures, the removal of which, it is said, brought tears to the eyes of Charles Lamb, were bought by the Marquis of Hertford to adorn his villa in Regent's Park, still called St. Dunstan's. Murray's shop at 32, Fleet Street, stood opposite the church, the yard of which was surrounded with stationers' shops, where many famous books of the seventeenth century were published.