Meanwhile, one after the other of the frequenters of the Hampstead walks we have recalled is missed from them. First the soft-hearted old seaman, Captain Coram, passes away; then Colley Cibber vanishes; and Richardson dies (1761), and is followed a year later by his venerable friend, Mrs. Donnellan. More than a dozen years after Richardson’s death, I find in the delightfully-named ‘Flowers of Parnassus,’ in the Monthly Miscellany for 1774, ‘Lines addressed to a Lady weeping over “Clarissa.”’
From the period of what is called the Augustan Age of English literature, Hampstead had claims to be considered, if not the literary suburb which it subsequently became, at least an appanage of the Muses. If their most famous representatives did not absolutely reside here, they were, at all events, frequent visitors, so much so that the Muses themselves were poetically fabled to have forsaken
‘Aganippe’s font,
And hoof-ploughed Hippocrene,’
for
‘Hampstead courted by the western winds,’
as Dr. Armstrong in his poem to ‘Health’ sings of the upland suburb, where he and his brother resided for some time, being very well regarded by the inhabitants. Could the doctor have been that other ‘tame genius’ that Horace Walpole bracketed with Akenside?
In those years plain little Thomas Gray,[281] who could see the ‘northern heights’ from his lodgings west of the museum, with their woods and massy elms, and loved them as much as Milton had done—Gray of the deathless ‘Elegy,’ that, had he never written another line, would have ranked him with the immortals, might occasionally have been met wandering alone upon the Heath, or in the company of friends in the walks, an incomprehensible poet to the author of ‘Rasselas,’ who could neither feel his sensitiveness to the influence of Nature nor the exquisite pathos of this poem.
As one by one the bright lights of literature faded out, others arose in their stead, and found their way as visitors to the topmost of the London levels. Dr. Johnson still survives the greater number of his contemporaries, and is occasionally to be found at Hampstead, a guest at the suburban feasts given by his friends.
In 1778 Miss Burney’s ‘Evelina’ appeared, to the surprise and delight of the world of letters, and little Fanny Burney, Dr. Johnson’s ‘Fannikin,’ became famous. Certain scenes in her novel assure us of her acquaintance with Hampstead Wells and its sometime visitors. Her description of the ball in the Long Room has done as much to memorise that building as Richardson’s ‘Clarissa’ did for the Upper Flask and Flask Walk.