His house in Queen-Square had been relinquished from difficulties respecting its title; and Mrs. Burney, assiduously and skilfully, purchased and prepared another, during his confinement, that was situated in St. Martin’s-street, Leicester-fields.
If the house in Queen-Square had owed a fanciful part of its value to the belief that, formerly, in his visits to Alderman Barber, it had been inhabited occasionally by Dean Swift, how much higher a local claim, was vested in imagination, for a mansion that had decidedly been the dwelling of the immortal Sir Isaac Newton!
Dr. Burney entered it with reverence, as may be gathered from the following lines in his doggrel chronology.
“This house, where great Newton once deign’d to reside,
Who of England, and all Human Nature the pride,
Sparks of light, like Prometheus, from Heaven purloin’d,
Which in bright emanations flash’d full on mankind.”
This change of position from Queen-Square to St. Martin’s-street, required all that it could bestow of convenience to business, of facilitating fashionable and literary intercourse, of approximation to travelling foreigners of distinction, and of vicinity to the Opera House; to somewhat counter-balance its unpleasant site, its confined air, and its shabby immediate neighbourhood; after the beautiful prospect which the Doctor had quitted of the hills, ever verdant and smiling, of Hampstead and Highgate; which, at that period, in unobstructed view, had faced his dwelling in Queen-Square.
St. Martin’s-street, though not narrow, except at its entrance from Leicester-square, was dirty, ill built, and vulgarly peopled.
The house itself was well-constructed, sufficiently large for the family, and, which now began to demand nearly equal accommodation, for the books of the Doctor. The observatory of Sir Isaac Newton, which surmounted its roof, over-looked all London and its environs. It still remained in the same simple state in which it had been left by Sir Isaac; namely, encompassed completely by windows of small old-fashioned panes of glass, so crowded as to leave no exclusion of the glazier, save what was seized for a small chimney and fire-place, and a cupboard, probably for instruments. Another cupboard was borrowed from the little landing-place for coals.