“A chield’s amang you takin’ notes,
And, faith, he’ll prent it.”
[190] Valuable as this book certainly was for a number of years, it is now superseded by the elaborate work produced by Dr. Meyrick [A Critical Inquiry into Ancient Armour, by Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick, 1824], an inestimable and complete treasure to the historian, the artist, and the stage.—S.
[191] Thomas Hearne (1744-1817) belonged to that group of artists whose tinted topographical drawings initiated water-colour. He died in Macclesfield Street, Soho, April 13, 1817, and was buried in Bushey churchyard by Dr. Monro, Turner’s “good doctor” of the Adelphi, who used to set Turner and Girtin to make drawings for him in the Adelphi at the price of “half a crown apiece and a supper.”
[192] See note on Mr. Baker, [p. 115].
[193] Henry Edridge, A.R.A. (1769-1821), was born in Paddington, established himself as a portrait painter in Dufour’s Place, Golden Square, in 1789, and died in Margaret Street, Cavendish Square. He was the friend and pupil of Thomas Hearne, and, like him, was buried in Bushey churchyard by the benevolent Dr. Monro. The British Museum Print Room has pencil portraits by Edridge, and three of his sketch-books.—William Alexander (1761-1816) preceded Smith as Keeper of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. He was a skilful water-colourist, and the Print Room has his original sketches for the illustrations in the officially published Ancient Terra-cottas and Ancient Marbles, dealing with the Museum collections.—Edmunds was an upholsterer in Compton Street, Soho.
[194] The elephant was Chunee, the “Jumbo” of the Georgian era. Smith writes of his arrival under 1785, but it was not until 1809 that he and Mr. Baker could have seen Chunee coming from the docks. This famous elephant stood eleven feet in height, and was the attraction at Mr. Cross’s menagerie until March 1826, when his death was ordered. Chunee’s carcass was valued at £1000. Lord Byron must have seen Chunee when he “saw the tigers sup” in 1813, and Thomas Hood’s lament on his death is well known. Exeter Change, which stood at the Strand end of Burleigh Street, did not long survive its elephant: in April 1829 it was sold out of existence by George Robins.
[195] Abraham Langford (1711-74), the most fashionable auctioneer of his day, had his rooms in the Piazza, Covent Garden. He was buried in St. Pancras churchyard, and identical laudatory verses were cut on both sides of his tombstone—
“His spring was such as should have been,
Adroit and gay, unvexed by Care or Spleen,