Arne, the celebrated musician, in the church-yard. See [King Street].
Sir Robert Strange, the greatest engraver, perhaps, this country has seen; that is to say, supposing the merits of an engraver to be in proportion to his relish for and imitation of his originals. Other men may have drawn a finer mechanical line, but none have surpassed Strange in giving the proper diversity of surfaces, or equalled him in transferring to hard copper the roundness and delicacy of flesh. His engravings from Titian almost convey something of the colours of that great painter. Like all true masters, Strange took pains with whatever he did, and bestowed attention on every part of it; so much indeed, that his love for his art appears to have been an exhausting one, and he was anxious to keep the burin out of the hands of his children. He had seen a great deal of the world, and was a very amiable as well as intelligent man. When young he was a great Jacobite, and fought sword-in-hand for the Pretender; though it is said that a main cause of his ardour was the hope of attaining the hand of a fair friend, equally devoted to the cause. It is pleasant to add, that he did attain it, and that she made him a good wife. Sir Robert was a Scotchman of a good family; but his knighthood came from George the Third, a few years before the artist's death.
Macklin, the comedian, in the church-yard, at the age of one hundred and seven, and upwards. We have spoken of him before in his stage character. His long age in the midst of cities and theatres is very remarkable. It seems to have been owing to the inheritance of a robust constitution—the great cause of longevity next to temperance, perhaps the greatest, unless contradicted by the reverse. Most persons who have been long-lived have had long-lived progenitors; but somebody must begin. The foundation is always temperance. Macklin must have been very lucky in his physical advantages, for he did not keep any very strict rein over his temper; nor does he appear to have followed any regimen, till latterly, and then he consulted the immediate ease of his stomach, and not the quality of what he took. However, his habits, whatever they were, were most likely regular. "It had been his constant rule," says his biographer, "for a period of thirty years and upwards, to visit a public-house called the Antelope, in White Hart Yard, Covent Garden, where his usual beverage was a pint of beer called stout, which was made hot and sweetened with moist sugar, almost to a syrup. This, he said, balmed his stomach, and kept him from having any inward pains."[296] The same writer, in a report of a conversation he had with Mr. Macklin, has left us an affecting but not unpleasing picture of the decay of faculties, remarkable to the very last for their shrewdness and vivacity. It is the liveliest picture of old mortality we ever met with.
Question. "Well, Mr. Macklin, how do you do to-day?"
Answer. "Why, I hardly know, sir; I think I am a little better than I was in the morning."
Q. "Why, sir, did you feel any pain in the morning?"
A. "Yes, sir, a good deal."
Q. "In what part?"
A. "Why, I feel a sort of a—a—a—" (shaking his head), "I forget everything; I forget the word: I felt a kind of pain here" (putting his hand upon his left breast),—"but it is gone away, and I am better now."
Q. "How do you sleep, sir?"