horse out of a ditch, and is the better for it all the rest of the day. Are we not to be merciful to fish as well as beasts, merely because the Scripture does not expressly state it? Such are the inconsistencies of mankind, during their very acquirement of benefi

A great deal has been said lately of the merits and demerits of angling, and Isaac has suffered in the discussion, beyond what is agreeable to the lovers of that gentle system. Unfortunately the brothers of the angle do not argue ingenuously. They always omit the tortures suffered by the principal party, and affect to think you affected if you urge them; whereas their only reason for avoiding the point is, that is not to be defended. If it is, we may defend, by an equal abuse of reason any amusement which is to be obtained at another being's expense; and an evil genius might angle for us, and twitch us up, bleeding and roaring, into an atmosphere that would stifle us. But fishes do not roar; they cannot express any sound of suffering; and therefore the angler chooses to think they do not suffer, more than it is convenient to him to fancy. Now it is a poor sport, that depends for its existence on the want of a voice in the sufferer, and of imagination in the sportsman. Angling, in short, is not to be defended on any ground of reflection; and this is the worst thing to say of Isaac; for he was not unaware of the objections to his amusement, and he piqued himself upon being contemplative.

Anglers have been defended upon the ground of their having had among them so many pious men; but unfortunately men may be selfishly as well as nobly pious; and even charity itself may be practised, as well as cruelty deprecated, upon principles which have a much greater regard to a man's own safety and future comfort, than anything which concerns real Christian beneficence. Doubtless there have been many good and humane men anglers, as well as many pleasant men. There have also been some very unpleasant ones,-Sir John Hawkins among them.

They make a well-founded pretension to a love of nature and her scenery; but it is a pity they cannot relish it without this pepper to the poor fish. Walton's book contains many passages in praise of rural enjoyment, which affect us almost like the fields and fresh air themselves; though his brethren have exalted it beyond its value; and his lives of his angling friends, the Divines, have been preposterously over-rated. If angling is to be defended upon good and manly grounds, let it; it is no longer to be defended on any other. The best thing to be said for it (and the instance is worthy of reflection) is, that anglers have been brought up in the belief of its innocence, and that an inhuman custom is too powerful for the most humane. The inconsistency is to be accounted for on no other grounds; nor is it necessary or desirable that it should be so. It is a remarkable illustration of what Plate said, when something was defended on the ground of its being a trifle, because it was a custom. "But custom," said he, "is no trifle." Here, among persons of a more equivocal description, are some of the humanest men in the world, who will commit what other humane men reckon among the most inhuman actions, and make an absolute pastime of it.

Let one of their grandchildren be brought up in the reverse opinion, and see what he will think of it. This, to be sure, might be said to be only another instance of the effect of education; but nobody, the most unprejudiced, thinks it a bigotry in Shakspeare and Steele to have brought us to feel for the brute creation in general; and whatever we may incline to think, for the accommodation of our propensities, there will still remain the unanswered and always avoided argument, of the dumb and torn fish themselves, who die agonised, in the midst of our tranquil looking on, and for no necessity.

John Whitney, author of the "Genteel Recreation, or the Pleasures of Angling," a poem printed in the year 1700, recommends the lovers of the art to bait with the eyes of fish, in order to decoy others of the same species. A writer in the Censura Literaria exclaims, "What a Nero of Anglers doth this proclaim John Whitney to have been! and how unworthy, to be ranked as a lover of the same pastime, which had been so interestingly recommended by Isaac Walton in his Contemplative Man's Recreation*."

But Isaac's contemplative man can content himself with impaling live worms, and jesting about the tenderness with which he treats them,-using the worm, quoth Isaac, "as if you loved him." Doubtless John thought himself as good a man as Isaac. He poetizes, and is innocent with the best of them, and probably would not have hurt a dog. However, it must be allowed that he had less imagination than Walton, and was more cruel, inasmuch as he could commit a cruelty that was not the custom. Observe, nevertheless, that it was the customary cruelty which led to the new one. Why must these contemplative men commit any cruelty at all. The writer of the article in the Censura was, if we mistake not, one of the kindest of human beings, and yet he could see nothing erroneous in torturing a worm. "A good man," says the Scripture, "is merciful to his beast." Censura Literaria, vol. iv. p. 345.

cence.

On the other side of the corner of Chancery Lane, was born a man of real 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 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.* 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 III., 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 Sergeant's 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. But we shall anticipate our visions of Westminster Hall. 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 license 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.

Sergeant's 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 IV., when 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 Streett. Sergeant's 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 serjeants 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, at least as far as rings are concerned, for they give rings on the occasion with mottos expressive of their sentiments upon law and justice. As to the equites, learned "knights" or horsemen (till "knight" be restored to

• Imitations of Horace, Ep. i. book ii.

+ Pennant, ut supra, p. 172.

its original meaning,-servant) will never be anything but an anomaly, especially since the learned brothers 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 serjeants are a grateful race;
Their dress and language shew it;
Their purple robes from Tyre we trace,
Their arguments go to it.

One of the customs which used to be observed so late as the reign of Charles I. in the creation of Sergeants, was for the new made dignitary to go in solemn procession to St. Paul's and there to choose his pillar, as it was expressed. This ceremony is supposed to have originated in the ancient practice of the lawyers taking each his station at one of the pillars in the Cathedral, and there waiting for clients. The legal sage stood, it is said, with pen in hand, and dexterously noted down the particulars of every man's case on his knee.

Clifford's Inn, leading out of Sergeant's Inn into Fleet Street and Fetter Lane, is so called from the noble family of De Clifford, who granted it the students-at-law in the reign of Edward III. The word inn, (Saxon, chamber,) though now applied only to law places and the better sort of public-houses in which travellers are entertained, formerly signified a great house, mansion, or family palace. So Lincoln's Inn, the mansion of the Earls of Lincoln; Gray's Inn, of the Lords Gray, &c. The French still use the word hotel in the same sense. Inn once made as splendid a figure in our poetry, as the palaces of

Milton:

-

Now whenas Phoebus, with his fiery waine
Unto his inne began to draw apace ;*

says Spenser:-and his disciple Browne after him, Now had the glorious sun tane up his inne.† There is nothing to notice in Clifford's Inn, except that it has some trees in it, and is quiet; two circumstances which create a double pleasure in passing from the noise of the London streets. It is curious what a little remove produces this quiet. Even in the back room of a shop in the main street, the sound of the carts and carriages becomes wonderfully deadened to the ear, and a remove, like Clifford's Inn, makes it remote, or nothing.

The garden of Clifford's Inn forms part of the area of the ROLLS, so called from the records kept there, in rolls of parchment. It is said to have been the house of an eminent Jew, forfeited to the crown, that is to say, most probably taken from him with all that it contained, by Henry III., who made it a house for converts from the owner's religion. These converted Jews, most likely none of the best of their race, (for board and lodging are not arguments to the scrupulous,) appear to have been so neglected, that the number of them gradually came to nothing, and Edward the Third gave the place to the Court of Chancery, to keep its records in. There is a fine monument in the chapel to Dr. Young, one of the masters, which, according to Vertue, was executed by Torregiano, who built the splendid tomb in Henry VII.'s chapel. Sir John Trevor, infamous for bribery and corruption, also lies here. "Wisely," says Pennant, his epitaph is thus confined, Sir J. T. M. R. 1717." Some other masters, he adds, rest within the walls; "among them Sir John Strange, but without the quibbling line,

'Here lies an honest lawyer, that is Strange.' Another Master of the Rolls, who did honour to the profession, was Sir Joseph Jekyll, recorded by Pope

as an

odd old Whig, Who never changed his principles or wig." When he came into the office, many of the houses were rebuilt, and to the expense of ten of them he added, out of his own purse, as much as 3501. each house; observing, that "he would have them built as strong and as well as if they were his own inheritance." The Master of the Rolls is a great law dignitary, a sort of under-judge in Chancery, presiding in a court by himself, though his most ostensible office is to take care of the records in question. He has a house and garden on the spot, the latter secluded from public view. The house, however, has not been used as a residence by the present holder of the office or his predecessor.

Between Chancery and Fetter Lane is the new church of St. Dunstan's in the West,-a great improvement upon the old one, though a little too plain below for the handsome fret-work of its steeple. The

Faerie Queen, book vi. canto iii.

↑ Britannia's Pastorals, book i. song iii.] t Londinium Redivivum, vol, ii. D. 279.

old building was eminent for the two wooden figures of wild men, who, with a gentleness not to be expected of them, struck the hour with a little tap of their clubs. At the same time they moved their arms and heads, with a like avoidance of superfluous action. These figures were put up in the time of Charles II., and were thought not to confer much honour on the passengers who stood "gaping" to see them strike. But the passengers might surely be as alive to the puerility as any one else. An absurdity is not the least attractive thing in this world. They who objected to the gapers probably admired more things than they laughed at. It must be remembered also, that when the images were set up, mechanical contrivances were much rarer than they are now. Two centuries ago St. Dunstan's Church-yard, as it was called, being the portion of Fleet Street in front of the church, was famous for its booksellers' shops. The church escaped the Great Fire, which stopped within three houses of it, and consequently, was one of the most ancient sacred edifices in London. It was supposed to have been built about the end of the fourteenth century-but had subsequently undergone extensive repairs. Besides the clock with the figures, it was adorned by a statue of Queen Elizabeth which stood in a niche, over the east end, and had been transferred thither about the middle of last century from the west side of old Ludgate, which was then re- . moved.

The only repute of Fetter Lane in the present days, is, or was, for sausages. But at one time it is said to have had the honor of Dryden's presence. The famous Praise God Barebones also, it seems, lived here, in a house for which he paid forty pounds a year, as he stated in his examination on a trial in the reign of Charles II.* He paid the above rent, he says, "except during the war"-that is, we suppose, during the confusion of the contest between the King and the Parliament, when probably this worthy contrived to live rent free. In this neighbourhood also dwelt the infamous Elizabeth, Brownrigg, who was executed in 1767 for the murder of one of her apprentices. Her house, with the cellar in which she used to confine her starved and tortured victims, and from the grating of which their cries of distress were heard, was one of those on the east side of the lane, looking into the long and narrow alley behind, called Flowerde-Luce Court. It was some years ago in the occupation of a fishing-tackle maker.

Johnson once lived in Fetter Lane, but the circumstances of his abode there have not transpired. We now, however, come to a cluster of his residences in Fleet Street, of which place he is certainly the great presiding spirit, the Genius Loci. He was conversant for the greater part of his life with this street, was fond of it, frequented its Mitre Tavern above any other in London, and has identified its name and places with the best things he ever said and did. It was in Fleet Street, we believe, that he took the poor girl up in his arms, put her to bed in his own house, and restored her to health and her friends; an action sufficient to redeem a million of the asperities of temper occasioned by disease, and to stamp him, in spite of his bigotry, a good Christian. Here at all events he walked, and talked, and shouldered wondering porters out of the way, and mourned, and philosophized, and was "a goodnatured fellow," (as he called himself,) and roared with peals of laughter till midnight echoed to his roar.

"We walked in the evening," says Boswell, "in Greenwich Park. He asked me, I suppose by way of trying my disposition, 'Is not this very fine?" Having no exquisite relish of the beauties of nature, and being more delighted with the busy hum of men,' I answered, 'Yes, sir; but not equal to Fleet Street.' Johnson. 'You are right, sir.'"+

Boswell vindicates the taste here expressed by the example of a "very fashionable baronet," who on his attention being called to the fragrance of a May evening in the country, observed, "This may be very well, but I prefer the smell of a flambeau at the playhouse." The Baronet here alluded to was Sir Michael Le Fleming, who, by way of comment on his indifference to fresh air, died of an apoplectic fit while conversing with Lord Howick (the present Earl Grey), at the Admiralty. However, Johnson's ipse dicit was enough. He wanted neither Boswell's vindication, nor any other. He was melancholy, and glad to be taken from his thoughts; and London furnished him with an endless flow of society.

Johnson's abodes in Fleet Street were in the following order :-First, in Fetter Lane, then in Boswell Court, then in Gough Square, in the Inner Temple Lane, in Johnson's Court, and, finally, and for the longest period, in Bolt Court, where he died. His mode of life, during a considerable portion of his residence in these places, is described in a communication to Boswell by the Rev. Dr. Maxwell, assistant preacher at the Temple, who was intimate with Johnson for many years, and spoke of his memory with affection.

See Malcom's Lond. Rediv. iii. 453. + Boswell, ut supra, vol. i. p. 441.

+ Malone, in the passage in Boswell, ibid,

"About twelve o'clock," says the Doctor, "I commonly visited him, and found him in bed, or declaiming over his tea, which he drank [very plentifully. He generally had a levee of morning visitors, chiefly men of letters; Hawkesworth, Goldsmith, Murphy, Langton, Steevens, Beauclerk, &c. &c., and sometimes learned ladies; particularly I remember a French lady of wit and fashion doing him the honour of a visit. He seemed to me to be considered as a kind of public oracle, whom every body thought they had a right to visit and consult; and, doubtless, they were well rewarded. I never could discover how he found time for his compositions. He declaimed all the morning, then went to dinner at a tavern, where he commonly staid late, and then drank his tea at some friend's house, over which he loitered a great while, but seldom took supper. I fancy he must have read and wrote chiefly in the night; for I can scarcely recollect that he ever refused going with me to a tavern; and he often went to Ranelagh, which he deemed a place of innocent recreation.

"He frequently gave all the silver in his pocket to the poor, who watched him between his house and the tavern where he dined. He walked the streets at all hours, and said he was never robbed, for the rogues knew he had little money, nor had the appearance of having much.

"Though the most accessible and communicative man alive, yet when he suspected that he was invited to be exhibited, he constantly spurned the invitation.

"Two young women from Staffordshire visited him when I was present, to consult him on the subject of Methodism, to which they were inclined. Come (said he), you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over that subject;' which they did; and after dinner he took one of them on his knees, and fondled them for half an hour together."*

This anecdote is exquisite. It shews, that however impatient he was of having his own superstitions canvassed, he was loth to see them inflicted on others. He is here a harmless Falstaff, with two innocent damsels on his knees, in the room of Mesdames Ford and Page.

In Gough Square Johnson wrote part of his Dictionary. He had written the Rambler, and taken his high stand with the public before. At this time," says Barber, his servant, "he had little for himself, but frequently sent money to Mr. Shiels when in distress." (Shiels was one of his amanuenses in the Dictionary). His friends and visitors in Gougn Square are a good specimen of what they always were,-a miscellany creditable to the largeness of his humanity. There was Cave, Dr. Hawkesworth, Miss Carter, Mrs. Macauley, (who was must have looked strangely at one another), Mr. (afterwards Sir Joshua) Reynolds, Langton, Mrs. Williams, (a poor poetess whom he maintained in his house), Mr. Levett (an apothecary, on the same footing), Garrick, Lord Orrery, Lord Southwell, and Mrs. Gardiner, wife of a tallowchandler on Snow-hill,-"not in the learned way," says Mr. Barber, "but a worthy good woman." With all his respect for rank, which doubtless he regarded as a special dispensation of Providence, his friend Beauclerk's notwithstanding,t Johnson never lost sight of the dignity of goodness. He did not, how. ever, confine his attentions to those who were noble or amiable; though we are to suppose, that every body with whom he chose to be particularly conversant had some good quality or other; unless, indeed, he patronized them as the Duke of Montague did his ugly dogs, because nobody would if he did not. The great secret, no doubt, was, that he was glad of the company of any of his fellow-creatures, who would bear and forbear with him, and for whose tempers he did not care as much as he did for their welfare. And he was giving alms; which was a Catholic part of religion, in the proper sense of the word. "He nursed," says Mrs. Thrale, in her superfluous style, "whole nests of people in his house, where the lame, the blind, the sick and the sorrowful, found a sure retreat from all the evils whence

his little income could secure them and commonly spending the middle of the week at our house, he kept his numerous family in Fleet Street upon a settled allowance; but returned to them every Saturday to give them three good dinners and his company, before he came back to us on the Monday night, treating them with the same, or perhaps more ceremonious civility, than he would have done by as many people of fashion, making the Holy Scripture thus the rule of his conduct, and only expecting salvation, as he was able to obey its precepts." Johnson's female inmates were not like the romantic ones of Richard

son.

"We surely cannot but admire," says Boswell, "the benevolent exertions of this great and good man, especially when we consider how grievously he was afflicted with bad health, and how uncomfortable his home was made by the perpetual jarring of those whom he charitably accommodated under his roof. He has sometimes suffered me to talk jocularly of his

* Boswell, vol. ii. p. 117.

+ Beauclerk, of the St. Alban's family, was a descendant of Charles II., whom he resembled in face and complexion, for which Johnson by no means liked him the less.

+ Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, &c. Allman, 1822, p.69.

group of females, and call them his seraglio. He thus mentions them, together with honest Levett, in one of his letters to Mrs. Thrale: 'Williams hates every body; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll loves none of them.” "*

Of his residence in Inner Temple Lane we have spoken before. He lived there six or seven years, and then removed to Johnson's Court, No. 7, where he resided for ten. Johnson's Court is in the neighbourhood of Gough Square. It was during this period that he accompanied his friend Boswell to Scotland where he sometimes humourously styled himself " Johnson of that Ilk" (that same, or John. son of Johnson), in imitation of the local designations of the Scottish chiefs. In 1776, in his sixty-seventh year, still adhering to the neighbourhood, he removed into Bolt Court, No. 8, where he died eight years after, on the 13th December, 1784. In Bolt Court he had a garden, and perhaps in Johnson's Court and Gough Square: which we mention to shew how tranquil and removed these places were, and convenient for a student who wished, nevertheless, to have the bustle of London at hand. Maitland (one of the compilers upon Stow), who published his history of London in 1739, describes Johnson and Bolt Courts as having "good houses, well inhabited;" and Gough Square he calls fashionable.†

Johnson was probably in every tavern and coffeehouse in Fleet Street. There is one which has taken his name, being styled, par excellence, "Dr. Johnson's Coffee-house." But the house he most frequented was the Mitre tavern, on the other side of the street, in a passage leading to the Temple. It was here, as we have seen, that he took his two innocent theologians, and paternally dandled them out of their misgivings on his knee. The same place was the first of the kind in which Boswell met him. "We had a good supper," says the happy biographer, "and port wine, of which he then sometimes drank a bottle." (At intervals he abstained from all fermented liquors for a long time). "The orthodox, high-church sound of the MITRE, the figure and manner of the celebrated SAMUEL JOHNSON, the extraordinary power and precision of his conversation, and the pride arising from finding myself admitted as his companion, produced a variety of sensations, and a pleasing elevation of mind beyond what I had before experienced." They sat till between one and two in the morning. He told Boswell at that period that "he generally went abroad at about four in the afternoon, and seldom came home till two in the morning. I took the liberty to ask if he did not think it wrong to live thus, and not to make more use of his great talents. He owned it was a bad habit."

The next time Goldsmith was with them, when Johnson made a remark very fit to be repeated in this journal; namely, that granting knowledge in some cases to produce unhappiness, "knowledge per se was an object which every one would wish to attain, though, perhaps, he might not take the trouble necessary for attaining it." One of his most curious remarks followed, occasioned by the mention of Campbell, the author of the Hermippus Redivivus, on which Boswell makes a no less curious comment. "Campbell," said Johnson, "is a good man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been in the inside of a church for many years; but he never passes a church without pulling off his hat. This shews that he has good principles." On which, says Boswell in a note, "I am inclined to think he was misinformed as to this circumstance. I own I am jealous for my worthy friend Dr. John Campbell. For though Milton could without remorse absent himself from public worship, I cannot."§

It was at their next sitting in this house, at which the Rev. Dr. Ogilvie, a Scotch writer, was present, that Johnson made his famous joke, in answer to that gentleman's remark, that, Scotland has a great many "noble, wild prospects." Johnson, "I believe, sir, you have a great many. Norway, too, has noble, wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble, wild prospects. But, sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!” "This unexpected and pointed sally," says Boswell, produced a roar of applause. After all, however (he adds), those who admire the rude grandeur of nature, cannot deny it to Caledonia.”||

Johnson had the highest opinion of a tavern, as a place in which a man might be comfortable, if he could anywhere. Indeed, he said that the man who could not enjoy himself in a tavern, could be comfortable nowhere. This, however, is not to be taken to the letter. Extremes meet; and Johnson's uneasiness of temper led him into the gayer necessities of Falstaff. However, it is assuredly no honour to a man, not to be able to "take his ease at his inn."

"There is no private house," said Johnson, talking on this subject, "in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern. Let there be ever so great plenty of good things, ever so much grandeur, ever so much elegance, ever so much desire that every body should be easy, in the nature of things it cannot be there must always be some degree of care and anxiety. The master of the house is anxious to entertain his guests; the guests are anxious to be agreeable to him; and no man, but a very impudent dog indeed, can as freely command what is in another man's house as if it were his own. Whereas, at a tavern, there is a general freedom from anxiety. You are sure you are welcome: and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you with the alacrity which waiters do, who are incited by the prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please. No sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced, as by a good tavern or inn." He then repeated with great emotion Shenstone's lines:

"Whoe'er has travelled life's dull round,

Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found

The warmest welcome at an inn."*

'As

"Sir John Hawkins," says Boswell, in a note on this passage, "has preserved very few memorabilia of Johnson." There is, however, to be found in his bulky tome, a very excellent one upon this subject. "In contradiction to those who, having a wife and children, prefer domestic enjoyments to those which a tavern affords, I have heard him assert, that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity. soon (said he) as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience an oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude: when I am seated, I find the master courteous, and the servants obsequious to my call; anxious to know and ready to supply my wants: wine there exhilarates my spirits and prompts me to free conversation and an interchange of discourse with those whom I most love; I dogmatise, and am contradicted; and in this conflict of opinion and sentiments I find delight.'"

The following anecdote is highly to Johnson's credit, and equally worthy, every one's attention. "Johnson was known to be so rigidly attentive to the truth," says Boswell, "that even in his common conversation the slightest circumstance was men

tioned with exact precision. The knowledge of his having such a principle and habit made his friends have a perfect reliance on the truth of every thing that he told, however it might have been doubted if told by many others. As an instance of this I may mention an odd incident, which he related as having happened to him one night in Fleet Street. "A gentlewoman (said he) begged I would give her my arm to assist her in crossing the street, which I accordingly did; upon which she offered me a shilling, supposing me to be the watchman. I perceived that she was somewhat in liquor.' This, if told by most people, would have been thought an invention; when told by Johnson, it was believed by his friends, as much as if they had seen what passed."+

The gentlewoman, however, might have taken him for the watchman without being in liquor, if she had no eye to discern a great man through his uncouthness. Davies, the bookseller, said, that he "laughed like a rhinoceros." It may be added he walked like a whale; for it was rolling rather than walking, "I met him in Fleet Street," says Boswell, "walking, or rather, indeed, moving along; for his peculiar march is thus described in a very just and picturesque manner, in a short life of him published very soon after his death:-'When he walked the streets, what with the constant roll of his head, and the concomitant motion of his body, he appeared to make his way by that motion independent of his feet.' That he was often much stared at," continues Boswell, "while he advanced in this manner, may be easily believed; but it was not safe to make sport of one so robust as he Mr. Langton saw him one day, in a fit of absence, by a sudden start, drive the load off a porter's back, and walk forwards briskly, without being conscious of what he had done. The porter was very angry, but stood still, and eyed the huge figure with much earnestness, till he was satisfied that his wisest course was to be satisfied, and take up his burthen again."§

was.

There is another remark on Fleet Street and its superiority to the country, which must not be passed over. Boswell, not having Johnson's reasons for wanting society, was a little overweening and gratuitous on this subject; and on such occasions the Doctor would give him a knock. "It was a delightful day," says the biographer;-" as we walked to St. Clement's church, I again remarked that Fleet Street was the most cheerful scene in the world; 'Fleet Street,' said I, 'is in my mind more delightful than

* Boswell, vol. ii. p. 469.

+ Id. vol. ii. p. 455.

+ Id. vol. iv. p. 77.

Tempè.' Johnson. 'Ay, sir, but let it be compared with Mull." *

The progress of knowledge, even since Johnson's time, has enabled us to say, without presumption, that we differ with this extraordinary person on many important points, without ceasing to have the highest regard for his character. His faults were the result of temperament; perhaps his good qualities and his powers of reflection were, in some measure, so too; but this must be the case with all men. Intellect and beneficence, from whatever causes, will always command respect; and we may gladly compound, for their sakes, with foibles which belong to the common chances of humanity. If Johnson has added nothing very new to the general stock, he has contributed (especially by the help of his biographer) a great deal that is striking and entertaining. He was an admirable critic, if not of the highest things, yet of such as could be determined by the exercise of a masculine good sense; and one thing he did, perhaps beyond any man in England, before or since ;-he advanced, by the powers of his conversation, the strictness of his veracity, and the respect he exacted towards his presence, what may be called the personal dignity of literature. The consequence has been, not exactly what he expected, but certainly what the great interests of knowledge require; and Johnson has assisted men, with whom he little thought of cooperating, in setting the claims of truth and beneficence above all others.

East from Fetter Lane, on the same side of the street, is Crane Court-the principal house in which, facing the entry, was that in which the Royal Society used to meet, and where they kept their museum and library, before they removed to their present apartments in Somerset House. The Society met in Crane Court up to a period late enough to allow us to present to our imaginations Boyle and his contemporaries prosecuting their eager inquiries and curious experiments in the early dawn of physical science, and afterwards Newton presiding in the noontide glory of the light which he had shed over nature.

CHAPTER IV.

THE STRAND.

Contents:-Ancient state of the Strand.-Butcher Row.-Death of Lee, the dramatic poet.-Johnson at an eating-house.-Essex Street.-House and history of the favourite Earl of Essex.-Spenser's visit there.-Essex, general of the Parliament.—Essex Head Club.-Devereux Court.-Grecian Coffee-House.-Twining, the accomplished scholar.—St. Clement Dunes.-Clement's Inn. Falstaff and Shallow.—Norfolk, Arundel, Surrey, and Howard Streets.-Norfolk House. - Essex's Ring and the Countess of Nottingham. William Penn, -Birch.- Dr. Brocklesby.-Congreve, and his Will.-Voltaire's visit to him. - Mrs. Bracegirdle.Tragical end of Mountford the player.-Ancient Cross. Maypole.- New Church of St. Mary-le-Strand. Old Somerset House.-Henrietta Maria and her French household. Waller's mishap at Somerset Stairs.New Somerset House.- Royal Society, Antiquarian Society, and Royal Academy.-Death of Dr. King.Exeter Street.-Johnson's first lodging in London.Art of living in London.-Catherine Street.-Unfortunate Women. - Wimbledon House. - Lyceum and Beef-Steak Club.-Exeter Change. ·Bed and Baltimore.-The Savoy.-Anecdotes of the Duchess of Albemarle-Beaufort Buildings.-Lillie the Perfumer. Aaron Hill.-Fielding.-Southampton Street. - Cecil and Salisbury Streets.-Durham House.-Raleigh. Pennant on the word Place or Palace. - New Exchange.-Don Pantaleon Sa.-The White Milliner.Adelphi.-Garrick and his Wife. Beauclerc. -Society of Arts, and Mr. Barry. - Bedford Street. George, Villiers, and Buckingham Streets. - York House and Buildings.-Squabble between the Spanish and French Ambassadors. - Hungerford Market. Craven Street.-Franklin.-Northumberland House. -Duplicity of Henry, Earl of Northampton. Violence of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.-Percy, Bishop of Dromore.-Pleasant mistake of Goldsmith.

IN going through Fleet Street and the Strand, we seldom think that the one is named after a rivulet, now running under ground, and the other from its being on the banks of the river Thames. As little do most of us fancy that there was once a line of noblemen's houses on the one side, and that at the same time, all beyond the other side, to Hampstead or Highgate, was open country, with the little hamlet of St. Giles's in a copse. So late as the reign of Henry VIII. we have a print containing the village of Charing. Citizens used to take an evening stroll to the well now in St. Clement's Inn.

In the reign of Edward III. the Strand was an open country road, with a mansion here and there, on the banks of the river Thames, most probably a castle or strong hold. In this state it no doubt remained during the greater part of the York and Lancaster period. From Henry VIIth's time the castles

Boswell, vol. iii, p. 327.

most likely began to be exchanged for mansions of a more peaceful character. These gradually increased; and in the reign of Edward VI. the Strand consisted, on the south side, of a line of mansions with garden walls; and on the north, of a single row of houses, behind which all was field. The reader is to imagine wall all the way from Temple Bar to White hall, on his left hand, like that of Kew Palace, or a succession of Burlington Gardens; while the line of humbler habitations stood on the other side, like a row of servants in waiting.

As wealth increased, not only the importance of rank diminished, and the nobles were more content to recollect James's advice of living in the country, (where he said, they looked like ships in a river, instead of ships at sea), but the value of ground about London, especially on the river side, was so much augmented, that the proprietors of these princely mansions were not unwilling to turn the premises into money. The civil wars had given another jar to the stability of their abodes in the metropolis; and in Charles the Second's time the great houses finally gave way, and were exchanged for streets and wharfs. An agreeable poet of the last century lets us know that he used to think of this great change in going up the Strand.

Come, Fortescue, sincere, experienc'd friend,' Thy briefs, thy deeds, and e'en thy fees suspend; Come, let us leave the Temple's silent walls; Me, business to my distant lodging calls; Through the long Strand together let us stray; With thee conversing, I forget the way. Behold that narrow street which steep descends,'.** Whose building to the slimy shore extends; Here Arundel's fam'd structure rear'd its fame: The street alone retains the empty name. Where Titian's glowing paint the canvas warmed, And Raphael's fair design with judgment charmed, Now hangs the Bellman's song; and pasted here, The coloured prints of Overton appear. Where statues breathed, the works of Phidias' hands, A wooden pump, or lonely watch-house, stands. There Essex' stately pile adorned the shore, There Cecil's, Bedford's, Villiers',-now no more."*

As the aspect in this quarter is so different from what it was, and the quarter is one of the most important in the metropolis, we may add what Pennant has written on the same subject :—

"In the year 1353, that fine street the Strand was an open high-way, with here and there a great man's house, with gardens to the water's side. In that year it was so ruinous, that Edward III., by an ordinance, directed a tax to be raised upon wool, leather, wine, and all goods carried to the staple at Westminster, from Temple Bar to Westminster Ab bey, for the repair of the road; and that all owners of houses adjacent to the highway, should repair as much as lay before their doors. Mention is also made of a bridge to be erected near the royal palace at Westminster, for the conveniency of the said staple; but the last probably meant no more than stairs for the landing of the goods, which I find sometimes went by the name of a bridge.

"There was no continued street here till about the year 1533; before that it entirely cut off Westminster from London, and nothing intervened except the scattered houses, and a village, which afterwards gave name to the whole. St. Martin's stood literally in the fields. But about the year 1560 a street was formed, loosely built, for all the houses on the south side had great gardens to the river, were called by their owners' names, and in after times gave name to the several streets that succeeded them, pointing down to the Thames; each of them had stairs for the conveniency of taking boat, of which many to this day bear the names of the houses. As the court was for centuries either at the palace at Westminster, or Whitehall, a boat was the customary conveyance of the great to the presence of their sovereign. The north side was a mere line of houses from Charingcross to Temple Bar; all beyond was country. The gardens which occupied part of the site of Covent Garden were bounded by fields, and St. Giles was a distant country village. These are circumstances proper to point out, to shew the vast increase of our capital in little more than two centuries."+

The aspect of the Strand, on emerging through Temple-Bar, is very different from what it was forty years ago. "A stranger who had visited London in 1790, would on his return in 1804." says Mr. Malcolm, "be astonished to find a spacious area (with the church nearly in the centre) on the site of Butcher Row, and some other passages undeserving of the name of streets, which were composed of those wretched fabrics, overhanging their foundations, the receptacles of dirt in every corner of their projecting stories, the bane of ancient London, where the plague, with all its attendant horrors, frowned destruction on the miserable inhabitants, reserving its forces for the attacks of each returning summer."§

The site of Butcher Row, thus advantageously

• Gay's Trivis, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London book ii. + Pennant, ut supra, p. 139. Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii. p. 397.