Yet London, empress of the northern clime,
By a high fate thou greatly didst expire;
Great as the world's, which, at the death of Time,
Must fall, and rise a nobler frame by fire.
St. 212. [p. 142.]
"Esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur, adfore tempus,
Quo mare, quo tellus, correptaque regia cœli
Ardeat; et mundi moles operosa laboret."
Ovid. Metam. Lib. I.
The dreadful Fire of London befel almost ere the inhabitants had done with rejoicing over the flames which consumed the fleet at Vlie, and the town of Brandaris. This horrible conflagration took its rise in the house of one Farryner, an obscure baker in Pudding-lane, near New Fish Street. It broke out on the night preceding the 2d September, 1666, with astonishing fury; and the houses in the lane, and its neighbourhood, being entirely constructed of timber, warped, and dried by a long drought, its progress was soon so rapid, that the inhabitants were content to escape from it with their lives, without attempting to save their moveables, far less to intercept the progress of the conflagration. In the morning, the attempts to stop a fire, now become so general, and which raged amidst such combustible buildings, proved totally ineffectual. The narrowness of the streets, and the nature of the houses was such, that, where one house was on fire, the devastation soon became general; and a strong east wind (a Belgian wind, as Dryden calls it), prevailing through the whole day, the flames, by various means of approach, occupied and surrounded the greater part of the city, properly so called. The magazines of naval stores, pitch, tar, hemp, dried wood, and other materials for shipping, which occupied the yards by the side of the river, soon caught the flames, to which they afforded a most horrible supply of strength and nourishment. All help seemed now to be in vain; for it is one thing to quench a fire, which has only occupied a few houses, and against which all the skill and exertion of those best qualified to check its progress can be at once directed, and another to extinguish a conflagration which occupies many streets, and which, if quelled in one spot where skillfully opposed, is triumphant in many others, where its ravages are only the object of wonder and lamentation to the heartless and ignorant citizens. At length universal destruction and dismay prevented the adoption of uniform or effectual measures against the destruction which seemed to impend in every quarter. The progress and extinction of this horrible fire will be learned from the text, and the following notes.