On the other side of the corner of Chancery Lane was born a man of genius and benevolence, who would not have hurt a fly—Abraham Cowley. His father was a grocer; himself, one of the kindest, wisest, and truest gentlemen that ever graced humanity. He has been pronounced by one, competent to judge, to have been "if not a great poet, a great man." But his poetry is what every other man's poetry is, the flower of what was in him; and it is at least so far good poetry, as it is the quintessence of amiable and deep reflection, not without a more festive strain, the result of his sociality. Pope says of him—
"Forgot his epic, nay pindaric art;
Yet still we love the language of his heart."[107]
His prose is admirable, and his character of Cromwell a masterpiece of honest enmity, more creditable to both parties than the zealous royalist was aware. Cowley, notwithstanding the active part he took in politics, never ceased to be a child at heart. His mind lived in books and bowers—in the sequestered "places of thought;" and he wondered and lamented to the last, that he had not realised the people he found there. His consolation should have been, that what he found in himself was an evidence that the people exist.
Chancery Lane, "the most ancient of any to the west," having been built in the time of Henry the Third, when it was called New Lane, which was afterwards altered to Chancellor's Lane, is the greatest legal thoroughfare in England. It leads from the Temple, passes by Sergeants' Inn, Clifford's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, and the Rolls, and conducts to Gray's Inn. Of the world of vice and virtue, of pain and triumph, of learning and ignorance, truth and chicanery, of impudence, violence, and tranquil wisdom, that must have passed through this spot, the reader may judge accordingly. There all the great and eloquent lawyers of the metropolis must have been, at some time or other, from Fortescue and Littleton, to Coke, Ellesmere, and Erskine. Sir Thomas More must have been seen going down with his weighty aspect; Bacon with his eye of intuition; the coarse Thurlow; and the reverend elegance of Mansfield. In Chancery Lane was born the celebrated Lord Strafford, who was sent to the block by the party he had deserted, the victim of his own false strength and his master's weakness. It is a curious evidence of the secret manners of those times, which are so often contrasted with the licence of the next reign, that Clarendon, in speaking of some love-letters of this lord, a married man, which transpired during his trial, calls them "things of levity." What would he have said had he found any love letters between Lady Carlisle and Pym? Of Southampton Buildings, on the site of which lived Shakspeare's friend, Lord Southampton, we shall speak immediately; and we shall notice Lincoln's Inn when we come to the Western portion of Holborn. But we may here observe, that on the wall of the Inn, which is in Chancery Lane, Ben Jonson is said to have worked, at the time he was compelled to assist his father-in-law at his trade of bricklaying. In the intervals of his trowel, he is said to have handled his Horace and Virgil. It is only a tradition, which Fuller has handed down to us in his Worthies; but tradition is valuable when it helps to make such a flower grow upon an old wall.
Sergeants' Inn, the first leading out of Chancery Lane, near Fleet Street, has been what its name implies for many generations. It was occasionally occupied by the Sergeants as early as the time of Henry the Fourth, when it was called Farringdon's Inn, though they have never, we believe, held possession of the place but under tenure to the bishops of Ely, or their lessees. Pennant confounds this inn with another of the same name, now no longer devoted to the same purpose, in Fleet Street.[108] Sergeants' Inn in Fleet Street was reduced to ruins in the great fire, but was soon after rebuilt in a much more uniform style than before. It continued after this to be occupied by the lawyers in 1730, when the whole was taken down, and the present court erected. The office of the Amicable Annuitant Society, on the east side of the court, occupies the site of the ancient hall and chapel. All the judges, as having been Sergeants-at-law before their elevation to the bench, have still chambers in the inn in Chancery Lane. The windows of this house are filled with the armorial bearings of the members, who, when they are knighted, are emphatically equites aurati (knights made golden), at least as far as rings are concerned, for they give rings on the occasion, with mottoes expressive of their sentiments upon law and justice. As to the equites, learned "knights" or horsemen (till "knight" be restored to its original meaning—servant) will never be anything but an anomaly, especially since the brethren no longer even ride to the Hall as they used. The arms of the body of Sergeants are a golden shield with an ibis upon it; or, to speak scientifically, "Or, an Ibis proper;" to which Mr. Jekyll might have added, for motto, "In medio tutissimus." The same learned punster made an epigram upon the oratory and scarlet robes of his brethren, which may be here repeated without offence, as the Sergeants have had among them some of the best as well as most tiresome of speakers:
"The Sergeants are a grateful race;
Their dress and language show it;
Their purple robes from Tyre we trace,
Their arguments go to it."