LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS OF LONDON. NO. II. "The City of London, that is to me so dear and sweet, in which I was forthgrown; and more kindly love have I to that place, than any other on earth." Chaucer. I AM never tired of walking in London. Whether I perambulate the broad pavement of Oxford-street, steal cautiously through the perilous passes of the Seven Dials, thread the mazes of oxen and sheep in Smithfield, or jostle rich city merchants on Cornhill, I never fail in finding an infinite fund of interest and amusement. But let me give some account of my second peregrination. It was a clear autumn morning as I passed through the massy archway of Lincoln's Inn, and traversed the venerable square so rich with a thousand legal associations. The doors of the hall in which Bacon and Clarendon, and Shaftesbury, delivered their judgments, were open, and I stepped in. I am not, thank Heaven! versed in the intricacies of equity; but I could not help feeling a sentiment of the highest veneration, as I stood where the powerful intellects of the country had for ages displayed their powers. Upon the ancient wainscot was emblazoned many a noble escutcheon, and many an illustrious name, upon which the sun seemed glad to shed his rays, enriched and glowing with the various tints of the stained windows through which they passed. As I gazed on these memorials of ancient genius, I recalled the men whose names they commemorated; and first, with a stately and very measured step, came the lord keeper Hatton. Alas! the voice of Mr. Hart, moving, I think he said, to dissolve an injunction, at the same time, dissolved my vision. In proceeding on towards Portugal-street, I passed the ViceChancellor's court, which, like America, is not old enough to possess any recollections. At the corner of Portugal-street, opposite to the shop of Messrs. Clarke, well stored with ponderous tomes of law, stands the modern Wills's-how changed from the Wills's of ancient days! but of that anon. Upon turning a corner, I emerged into the prodigious area of Lincoln's Inn Fields. To all who love virtue and honour, and freedom, this is indeed holy ground! From the centre of this square the pure and noble spirit of William Lord Russell fled to Heaven. How closely has the memory of this undaunted patriot, and his high-minded lady, entwined itself with the affections of every true English heart! The account of Lord Russell's last moments, as given by Burnet, is, perhaps, one of the most affecting biographical sketches in the language. How hard it is to refrain from tears when we find Lady Russell repressing hers, lest they should embitter the few remaining hours of her husband's life! Of his execution a very detailed account is given, from which I will transcribe a few particulars which enrich this place with the most interesting associations: "He went into his coach with great cheerfulness; Dr. Tillotson and Dr. Burnet accompanied him. As they were going, he looked about him, and knew several persons. Some he saw staring on him who knew him, and did not put off their hats. He said there was great joy in some, but that did not touch him so much as the tears he observed in the eyes of others, for that, he said, made him tender. He sung within himself as he went along; and Dr. Burnet asking him what he was singing, he said it was the 119th Psalm,-but he should sing better very soon. As the carriage turned into Little Queen-street, he said, 'I have often turned to the other hand with great comfort, but now I turn to this with greater.' As he said this, he looked towards his own house, and Dr. Tillotson saw a tear drop from his eye. Just as they were entering Lincoln's Inn Fields, he said, 'This has been to me a place of sinning, and God now makes it the place of my punishment.' He wondered to see so great a crowd assembled. He had before observed that it rained, and said to his companions, This rain may do you hurt that are bareheaded.' He then knelt down, and prayed three or four minutes by himself. When that was done, he took off his coat and waistcoat; he had brought a night-cap in his pocket, fearing his servant might not get up to him. He undressed himself; and took off his cravat, without the least change of countenance. Just as he was going down to the block, some one called out to make a lane, that the Duke of Albemarle might see; upon which he looked full that way. Dr. Burnet had advised him not to turn about his head, when it was once on the block, and not to give a signal to the executioner. These directions he punctually attended to. When he had lain down,' says Dr. Burnet, I once looked at him, and saw no change in his looks; and though he was still lifting up his hands, there was no trembling, though in the moment in which I looked, the executioner happened to be laying his axe to his neck, to direct him to take aim: I thought it touched him, but am sure he seemed not to mind it.' The executioner, at two strokes, cut off his head." The politician, as he passes through Lincoln's-Inn-fields, will recognize the immense mansion of the Duke of Newcastle: and the historian will remark the long line of buildings which were formerly the residence of the French embassage, of which the relics of the fleur-de-lys, which are still to be seen on the fronts, bear sufficient testimony. It was, I presume, to some mansion in this neighbourhood, that Pope's town-mouse invited his country-cousin. Away they come, through thick and thin, The windings of a few narrow streets and passages led me to Russell-street, Covent-garden, where "Wills's" formerly stood. The age of coffee-houses is at length passed: they are no longer the resort of. all the great, the learned and the witty. Time was, when in some favourite haunt the genius of the metropolis would assemble, and "shine a constellation," such as might well dazzle our weak modern vision. Were I possessed of that fabled art-the power of summoning to my presence the illustrious dead, whose mortal part the tomb has long since claimed, but whose noble memories still flourish greenly, I know not if I could assemble a worthier company than that of the wits, who at various periods have held their meetings within the walls of the metropolis. Antedate my life, for one short hour, to the seventeenth century, and place me in the Mermaid Tavern in Friday-street; let me witness one sitting of the Raleigh Club, and I will not ask Mecænas to introduce me to Augustus. Let me be seated between Shakspeare and Selden, with Beaumont and Fletcher before me, and I will contentedly resign the pleasure of shaking hands with Cicero, and drinking a cup of Falernian with Horace. From the time of the Raleigh club we have almost a regular succession of literary societies, rich in genius, learning, and amusement. I have already incidentally mentioned Ben Jonson's club. The celebrated Kit-cat is well known to every one. Its sittings were held in a small street near Temple-bar, and seldom has any society been able to boast so bright a mixture of wit, patriotism, and nobility. In later time we have the literary club, of which Johnson and Goldsmith and Sir Joshua Reynolds were such distinguished ornaments. But, in addition to these regular assemblies, the different coffee-houses furnished for nearly the two last centuries a place of mutual resort for all who were either desirous of displaying wit and information, or of seeing them displayed by others. The reign of Queen Anne was certainly the age of coffee-houses; and though Dr. Johnson, who merited equally well with "the Irish peer" the title of "Lord Mount Coffee-house," for a while supported their fading literary glories, those haunts of genius have at last sunk into the mere resorts of hungry bachelors and ill-humoured husbands. If an eulogy were wanted on a tavern-life, it might be found in the Doctor's answer to Boswell :-" Sir, there is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as in a capital tavern.-No, Sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by men, by which so much happiness has been produced as by a good tavern or inn.” Every one remembers Shenstone's verses on the same subject. But I am wandering far from Wills's. Wills's was situated on the north side of Russell-street, at the end of Bow-street, and in Malone's time the house was occupied by a perfumer, and numbered 23. This was Dryden's favourite resort, where in winter he had a seat by the fire, and in summer on the balcony, which he called his winter and summer seats. The company usually met in the first or diningroom floor, as it was called in the last century. There were no boxes at that time, but the company assembled round different tables. Here all the wits of the day used to meet, from "Glorious John" down to the meanest patron-hunter, and display their brilliancy to the admiring spectators, amongst whom the Templars, "spruce, pert, and loquacious," as Mr. Maturin calls them, occasionally mingled, and ventured upon their bad jokes. The younger part of the assembly, however, seldom approached the principal table, and thought it a great honour to have a pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box. Wills's continued to be the favourite of the wits till 1710; and about 1712 Addison established his servant Button in a new house, whither the fame of the author of Cato * Bolingbroke in his letter to Wyndham, reproaches Harley with a deficiency in gentlemanly refinement, and tells him that his jokes smell of the Inns of Court. The Spectator gives a better account of the Templars: "The gentleman next in esteem and authority amongst us is another bachelor, who is a member of the Inner Temple, a man of great probity, wit, and understanding.” drew many of the Whigs. The reader may, perhaps, remark the similarity of the account I have just given of Wills's, with that which Mr. Claude Halcro so kindly bestowed upon Mordaunt Mertoun at the Udaller's feast: the reason, I believe, is that they are both drawn from the same source, a note of Mr. Malone's in Spence's Anecdotes. In the same book we have a very accurate account left us of the manner in which Addison, used to pass his time, which gives us no bad idea of the occupations and amusements of a literary man a century ago. He usually employed all the morning in study, then met his party at Button's, and dined there a good deal earlier, it must be remembered, than our modern fashionables do at Brunet's: after dinner he was accustomed to sit five or six hours, and sometimes pretty far into the night. It seems that Pope was of this company for about a year, but he found it too much for his health, and therefore seceded." If I remember aright, for I cannot at this moment discover the passage, it was at Button's that pastoral Phillips hung up a rod, with which he threatened to chastise poor Pope, should he ever venture to make his appearance there. The principal coffee-houses after Wills's were Child's in St. Paul's church-yard, which used to be a great resort of the clergy; St. James's coffee-house, famous for its politicians; Jonathan's in 'Changealley, the Rose near Temple-bar, the Grecian, and the Cocoa-tree. I have already remarked that the tavern-system is entirely out of fashion at the present day; for although pleasant people are occasionally to be met with in such places, our literati are seldom seen within their precincts. The observation made by a modern man of letters, that our booksellers' shops are now what the coffee-houses were formerly, is very just. He instances Ridgway's in Piccadilly, where many celebrated political characters might frequently be met with, but the latter class of gentlemen are still fond of congregating at coffee-houses, as White's and Brookes's and Boodle's sufficiently testify. After leaving Wills's, and passing through a region sacred to the drama, I resolved to make the best of my way to the Green-park, and then through St. James's to Westminster. On my road, however, I made a pilgrimage to Dryden's house, in Gerrard-street-the fifth on the left hand, in coming from Little Newport-street. The apartments behind looked into the gardens of Leicester House; but the poet generally wrote in a room on the ground floor, next the street. The celebrated Literary club also had its domicile in this street, at a house called the Turk's Head. Having inspected the mansion of Glorious John, I speedily arrived at the Park. These great spiracles of the metropolis can never be sufficiently praised. They furnish the smokedried citizens with both air and exercise; to take advantage of which, they at the same time afford an inducement by the gaiety and liveliness of the scene. The Parks have long been classic ground. They were formerly a notorious scene of action for the duellists, when swords were in fashion; so that no report of fire-arms alarmed the neighbourhood. Thus the fatal duel which Burnet relates, in which Duke Hamilton fell, took place in the Park; and in the same place, Fielding has laid the scene of the encounter between Captain Booth and the valiant Major Gascoigne. As I proceeded, the fresh air gave a keener edge to my appetite, and brought to my mind. Goldsmith's friend, the strolling player, whom he discovered in St. James's park, about the hour at which company leave it to go to dinner. It seems to have been the practice at that time, for such unfortunates as were compelled to pass the day impransi, to take a walk in this place, in lieu of satisfying their cravings in a more substantial manner. The Parks have many curious recollections connected with them; but alas! how seldom in these days do the feet of the wise and the witty traverse them. "This evening," says Swift, "I met Addison and Pastoral Phillips in the Park, and supped with them at Addison's lodgings. We were very good company.' Who would doubt it? We are better enabled to trace the Dean's perambulations than those of any other of the illustrious dead, by the minute details which he has left of all his proceedings in his Journal to Stella. I love to follow the doctor's footsteps, as he proceeded in his wig and gown (for at that time the sons of mother church ever went thus attired), and to trace him in his various walks through the metropolis. He appears always to have been a great advocate for exercise. In his youth he used to run up and down hill till he was tired, for the sake of the exertion; and in his maturer years he was accustomed, with childish playfulness, to drive his friends the Grattans before him, and pursue them through the spacious apartments of the Deanery. Whilst residing in London, during Harley's administration, he lived in various parts of the town. His first lodging appears to have been in Bury-street, where, says he, "I have a first floor, a dining-room, and a bedchamber, at eight shillings a week-plaguy deep, but I spend nothing for eating; never go to a tavern, and very seldom in a coach; yet, after all, it will be expensive." How would the Dean have groaned at the present price of lodgings? He next removed to St. Alban's-street, where he paid at the same rate, and "had the use of a parlour to receive persons of quality." He afterwards took a lodging in Suffolk-street, and "designed to walk the park and the town," to supply his walks to Chelsea. Of his excursions to the latter place, he has left a most particular account: "My way is this: I leave my best gown and periwig at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's, then walk up the Pall Mall, through the Park, out at Buckingham House, and so to Chelsea, a little beyond the church. I set out about sunset, and get here in something less than an hour. It is two good miles, and just 5748 steps; so there is four miles a-day walking, without reckoning what I walk whilst I stay in London." At one time he resided near Leicester-Fields, where he paid the enormous sum of ten shillings a week; upon which he observes, "that won't hold out long, 'faith." He appears, before he became so intimate with the Vanhomrigh's, to have been very fond of walking in the Park. "The days are now long enough to walk in the Park after dinner, and so I do whenever it is fair. This walking is a strange remedy: Mr. Prior walks to make himself fat, and I to bring myself down. We often walk round the Park together." It is curious to observe, as his acquaintance with Vanessa grew more intimate, how he forsook the Park, and preferred a walk into the city, which was not, in all probability, merely for walking's sake. "I had good walking to-day in the city, and take all opportunities of it on purpose for my health; but I can't walk in the Park, because it is only for walking's sake, and loses time, so I mix it with business." In one of his letters he relates, in his own whimsical way, an incident which I cannot forbear repeating. The chair |