That dull poet, worthy Sir Richard Blackmore, whom Locke and Addison praised and Dryden ridiculed, lived either at Saddlers' Hall or just opposite. It was on this weariful Tupper of his day that Garth wrote these verses:—
"Unwieldy pedant, let thy awkward muse,
With censures praise, with flatteries abuse.
To lash, and not be felt, in thee's an art;
Thou ne'er mad'st any but thy schoolboys smart.
Then be advis'd, and scribble not agen;
Thou'rt fashioned for a flail, and not a pen.
If B——l's immortal wit thou wouldst descry,
Pretend 'tis he that writ thy poetry.
Thy feeble satire ne'er can do him wrong;
Thy poems and thy patients live not long."
NO. 73, CHEAPSIDE (From an old View.)
And some other satirical verses on Sir Richard began:—
"'Twas kindly done of the good-natured cits,
To place before thy door a brace of tits."
Blackmore, who had been brought up as an attorney's clerk and schoolmaster, wrote most of his verses in his carriage, as he drove to visit his patients, a feat to which Dryden alludes when he talks of Blackmore writing to the "rumbling of his carriage-wheels."
At No. 90, Cheapside lived Alderman Boydell, engraver and printseller, a man who in his time did more for English art than all the English monarchs from the Conquest downwards. He was apprenticed, when more than twenty years old, to Mr. Tomson, engraver, and soon felt a desire to popularise and extend the art. His first funds he derived from the sale of a book of 152 humble prints, engraved by himself. With the profits he was enabled to pay the best engravers liberally, to make copies of the works of our best masters.
"The alderman assured me," says "Rainy Day Smith," "that when he commenced publishing, he etched small plates of landscapes, which he produced in plates of six, and sold for sixpence; and that as there were very few print-shops at that time in London, he prevailed upon the sellers of children's toys to allow his little books to be put in their windows. These shops he regularly visited every Saturday, to see if any had been sold, and to leave more. His most successful shop was the sign of the 'Cricket Bat,' in Duke's Court, St. Martin's Lane, where he found he had sold as many as came to five shillings and sixpence. With this success he was so pleased, that, wishing to invite the shopkeeper to continue in his interest, he laid out the money in a silver pencil-case; which article, after he had related the above anecdote, he took out of his pocket and assured me he never would part with. He then favoured me with the following history of Woollett's plate of the 'Niobe,' and, as it is interesting, I shall endeavour to relate it in Mr. Boydell's own words:—