The Town

his Habits and Character-Whitefriars, or Alsatia-The Temple-Its Monuments, Garden, &c.-Eminent names connected with it-Goldsmith dies there-Boswell's first Visit there to Johnson-Johnson and Mada

h of St. Dunstan in the West-Dryden's House in Fetter Lane-Johnson, the Genius Loci of Fleet Street-His Way of Life-His Residence in Gou

e Temple, the Mitre, and the abode of Richardson; to the right divers abodes of Johnson; Chancery Lane, with Cowley

place the famous ceremony of burning the Pope, with its long procession, and bigoted anti-bigotries. However, the lesser bigotry was useful, at that time, in keeping out the greater. Roger North has left us a lively account of one of these proce

ly increasing till we could perceive a motion; and that was a row of stout fellows, that came, shouldered together, cross the street, from wall to wall on each side. How the people melted away, I cannot tell; but it was plain those fellows made clear board, as if they had swept the street for what was to come after. They went along like a wave; and it was wonderful to see how the crowd made way: I suppose the good people were willing to give obedience to lawful authority. Behind this wave (which, as all the rest, had many lights attending), there was a vacancy, but it filled apace, till anot

a stenterophonic tube, sounded 'Abhorrers! Abhorrers!' most infernally; and, lastly, came one, with a single person upon it, which some said was the phamphleteer, Sir Roger L'Estrange, some the King of France

n of burning the effigies, which, on these oc

dfrey, a magistrate, supposed to have been killed by the Papists during the question

ury first in

w, and milks the

s opening as we pass the street, better even than that of the illuminated clock at night time; for there, in a lodging in the churchyard, lived Milton, at the time that he undertook the education of his sister's children. He was then young and unmarried. He is said to have rendered his young scholars, in the course of a year, able to read Latin at sight, though they were but nine or ten years

ied Richard Lovelace, Esq., one of the most elegant of the cavalier

with unco

within

vine Alth

er at my

e tangled

er'd in

hat wanton

such l

s do not a

n bars

ocent and

r an he

(which brought him at length into a consumption), became very poor in body and purse, and was the object of charity, went in ragged clothes, (whereas, when he was in his glory, he wore cloth of gold and silver,) and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places, more befitting the worst of beggars than poorest of servants," &c.[77] "Geo. Petty, haberdasher in Fleet Street," says Aubrey, "carried 20 shillings to him every Monday Morning from Sir -- Manny, and Charles Cotton, Esq., for -- months: but was never repaid." As if it was their intention he should be! Poor Cotton, in the excess of his relish of life, lived himself to be in want; perhaps wanted the ten shillings that he sent. The mistress of Lovelace is reported to have married another man, supposing him to have died of

perplexed to decide, whether to say all we have got to say upon anybody, when we come to the first place with which he is connected, or divide our memorials of him according to the several places. Circumstances will guide us; but

osity. He was numberer at Drury Lane Theatre, that is to say, the person who counted the number of people in the house, from a hole over the top of the stage; a practice

grains of tit

"without embryo Richards and Hotspurs strutting and bellowing in his dining-room, or in the parlour behind his shop. The latter of these apartments w

business, more creditably than he could have made a fortune by it,) he was often entrusted with the care of paying little annual stipends to unfortunate women, and others who were in equal want of relief; and he has been known, with a generosity almost unexampled, to continue these annuities, long after the sources o

interest of 20,000l. to a female acquaintance, and at her deceas

d play-house, one of the earliest in which theatrical entertainments were resumed at that period. The first mention we find of it is in the following curious memorandum in the manuscript book of Sir Henry Herbert, master of the revels to King Charles I. "I committed Cromes, a broker in Longe L

een indiscriminately applied. Be this as it may, the house became famous under the Davenants for the introduction of operas and of a more splendid exhibition of scenery; but in consequence of the growth of

his wife of perverseness in not liking the new habitation as well as the old."[80] This was the second Mrs. Richardson. He calls her in other places his "worthy-hearted wife;" but complains that she used to get her way by seeming to submit, and then returning to the point, when his heat of objection was over. She was a formal woman. His own manners were strict and formal with regard to his family, probably because he had formed his notions of life from old books, and also because he did not well know how to begin to do otherwise (for he was naturally bashful), and so the habit continued through life. His daughters addressed him in their letters by the title of "Honoured Sir," and are always designating themselves

her lover's fervour, and vows of everlasting love, has said, when I have asked her direction, 'I cannot tell you what to write, but (her heart on her lips) you cannot write too kindly;' all her fear was only that she should incur a slight for her kindness." This passage, with its pretty breathless parenthesis, is in the style of his books. If the writers among his female coterie in after-life owed their inspiration to him, he only returned to them what they had done for himself. Women seem to have been always about him, both in town and country; which made Mrs. Barbauld say, very agreeably, that he "lived in a kind of flower-garden of ladies." This has been grudged him, and thought effeminate; but we must make allowance for early circumstances, and recollect what the garden produced for us. Richardson did not pretend to be able to do without female society. Perhaps, however, they did not quiet his sensibility so much as they charmed it. We think, in his Correspondence, a tendency is observable to indulge in fancies, not always so paternal as they agree to call them; though doubtless all was said in honour, and the ladies never found reason to diminish their reverence. A great deal has been said of his vanity and the weakness of it. Vain he undoubtedly was, and vanity is no strength; but it is worth bea

t him; but the "flower-garden" is not talked of so much there as at Fulham. In the evening the ladies read and worked by themselves, and Richardson retired to his study; a most pernicious habit for a man of his bad nerves. He should have written early in the morning, taken good exercise in the day, and amused himself in the evening. When he walked in town it was in the park, where he describes himself (to a fair correspondent who wished to have an interview with him, and who recognised him from the description) as "short, rather plump, about five feet five inches, fair wig, one hand generally in his bosom, the other a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat, that it may imperceptibly serve him as a suppor

owledges. Richardson encouraged his men to be industrious, sometimes by putting half-a-crown among the types as a prize to him who came first in the morning, at others by sending fruit for the same purpose from the country. Agreeably to his natural bashfulness, he was apt to be reserved with strangers. Sir John Hawkins tells us,

dly to the

probably knew this pragmatical pers

ourite heroine. In the comparison of Richardson with Fielding, he was in the habit of opposing the nature of one to the manners of the other; but Fielding's manners are only superadded to his nature, not opposed to it, which makes all the difference. As to Richardson, he was so far gone upon this point, in a mixture of pique and want of sympathy, that he said, if he had not known who Fielding was, "he should have taken him for an ostler." Fielding, it is true, must have vexed him greatly by detecting th

as long as his eyes and nerves would let him, and was come to relax with a little friendly and domestic chat. I even then used to creep to his knee and hang upon his words, for my whole family doated on him; and once, I recollect that at one of these evening visits, probably about the year 1753, I was standing by his knee when my mother's maid came to summon me to bed; upon which, being unwilling to part from him and manifesting some reluctance, he begged I might be permitted to stay a little longer; and, on my mother's objecting that the servant would be wanted to wait at supper (for, in those days of friendly intercourse and real hospitality, a decent maid-servant was the only attendant at his own and many creditable tables, where, nevertheless, much company was received), Mr. Richardson said, 'I am sure Miss P. is now so much a woman, that she does not want anyone to attend her to bed, but will conduct herself with s

re allowed to breakfast with her and whatever company happened to be in the house, for they were seldom without. After breakfast, we younger ones read to her in turns the Psalms and Lessons for the day. We were then permitted to pursue our childish sports, or to walk in the garden, which I was allowed to do at pleasure; for, when my father hesitated upon granting that privilege for fear I should help myself to the fruit, Mrs. Richardson said, 'No, I have so much confidence in her, that, if she is put upon honour, I am certain that she will not touch so much as a gooseberry.' A confidence I dare saf

genius, towards young people; for, in general society, I know he has been accused as being of few words and of a particularly reserved turn. He was, however, all his lifetime the patron and protector of the female sex. Miss M. (aft

o the advantage that might have been expected, and rendered an intercourse with the world uneasy to themselves, giving a peculiar air of shyness and reserve to their whole address; of which habits his own daughters partook, in a degree that has been thought by some a little to obscure those really valuable qualifications and talents they undou

mas Robinson (Lord Grantham), &c., &c., who were frequent visitors at his house in town and country. The ladies I have named were often staying at North End, at the period of his hi

h, and his age. In this church were also interred Wynken de Worde, the famous printer; the bowels of Sackville the poet, whom we shall presently

the demolition of the old monastery, Whitefriars was not only a sufficiently orderly district, but one of the most fashionable parts of the city. Among others of the gentry, for instance, who had houses here at this period, was Sir John Cheke, King Edward VI.'s tutor, and afterwards Secretary of State. The reader of our great modern novelist has been made almost as well acquainted with the place in its subsequent state of degradation and lawlessness, as if he had walked through it when its bullies were in full blow. The rags of their Dulcineas hang out to dry, as if you saw them in a Dutch picture; and the passages are redolent of beer and tobacco. The sanctuary of Whitefriars is now extremely shrunk in its dimensions; and the

heirs in tail, and helps them to goods and money upon great disadvantages; is bound for them, and shares

de a decoy-duck for others: not daring to stir out of Alsatia, where he lives:

sergeant in Flanders, run from his colours, retreated into White-fryers for a very small debt, wher

recise fellow, pretending to great piety, a godly knave, who joi

uts these people in action, with a spirit beyond anything that Shadwell could have done, even though the dramati

t use to do for the preservation of the other." "Some time after," continues this writer, "being in the court of the late great Henry of France, and the King (courteous to strangers), entertaining discourse with him, asked him, 'How he lost his eye:' he (cloathing his answer in a better shrowd than a plain fencer's) told him 'It was done with a sword.' The King replies, 'Doth the man live?' and that question gave an end to the discourse, but was the beginner of a strange confusion in his working fancy, which neither time nor distance could compose, carrying it in his breast some years after, till he came into England, where he hired two of his countrymen, Gray and Carliel, men of low and mercenary spirits, to murther him, which they did with a case of pistols in his house in Whitefriars many years after."[85] For many years-read five-enough, however, to make such a piece of revenge extraordinary. Gray and Carliel were among his followers. Gray, however, did not assist in the murder. His mind misgave him; and Carliel got another accomplice, named Irweng. "These two, about seven o'clock

and all three were hung, Carliel and Irweng in Fleet Street, opposite the great gate of Whitefriars (the entrance of the present Bouverie Street), and Sanquire in Palace Yard, before Westminster Hall. He made a singular defence, very good and penitent, and yet remarkably illustrative of

ng, instead of those of chastity and humility, the modern reader need not be told, after the masterly pictures of them in the writer from whom we have just taken another set of ruffians. The Templars were dissolved in the reign of Edward II., and their house occupied by successive nobles, till it came into the possession of the law, in whose hands it was confirmed "for ever" by James I. We need not enter into the origin of its division into two parts, the Inner and Middle Temple. Suffice to say, that the word Middle, which implies a third Temple, refers to an outer one, or third portion of the old buildings, which does not appear to have been ever occupied by lawyers, but came into possession of the celebrated Essex family, whose name is retained in the street where it wa

IGHTS IN TE

ghts Templars, we have copied below the most complete information respecting

some of which are let to persons not in the profession. The garden about forty years ago was enlarged, and a muddy tract under it, on the side of the Thames, converted into a pleasant walk. This garden is still not very large, but it deserves its name both for trees and flowers. There is a descent into it after the Italian fash

TAGE

ongue-ty'd, and

icence proclai

is a true b

on the honour

that I have

rier pluck a wh

ERS

s no coward no

tain the part

e from off this

RW

urs; and, with

nsinuatin

white rose wi

FF

ed rose with y

I think he he

t, supposing that the colonists had no objection. The rook is a grave legal bird, both in his coat and habits; living in communities, yet to himself; and strongly addicted to discu

ge of Chaucer, who is reported to have been of the Temple himself. It is in his character of the Manc

ciple was the

(purchasers) migh

ise in buyin

at be paid, or

aited so in

ay before in

at of God a f

d (ignorant) man

a heap of le

bring the homeliest images into his verse, f

se bric

ames' broad age

udious lawyers h

nt the Templar

cayed throug

lemen of the Temple were addicted to "shove and slip-groats,"[90] which became forbidden them under a penalty; and in the age in which Spenser wrote, so many encounters had taken place, of a dangerous description, that Templars were prohibited from carrying any other weapon into the hall (the dining room), "than a dagger

s, with a scholarly taste for classical subjects; and the gravest of them did not disdain to cater in this way for the amusement of their fellows, sometimes for that of crowned heads. T

awyers begin their education, and the diversity of knowledge which no men are more in the way of acquiring afterwards. Blackstone need not have written his farewell to the Muses. If he had been destined to be a poet, he could not have taken his leave; and, as an accomplished lawyer, he was always within the pale of the liter? humaniores. The greatest practical lawyers, such as Coke and Plowden, may not have been the most literary, but those who have understood the law in the greatest and best spirit have; and t

pressed among the foremost. Besides, a variety of wits had issued from the Temple in the reign of Charles and his brother, and their successors in lodging took themselves for their heirs in genius. The coffee-houses by this time had become cheap places to talk in. They were the regular morning lounge and ev

phs, and three pe

alents, and thei

o query, answ

love of poetry

ny of them are still connected with the literature of the day, but in the best manner and with the soundest views; and if there is no pretension to wit, there is the thing itself. It would be endless to name all the celebrated lawyers who have had to do with the Temple. Besides, we

are told by Thynne, in his Animadversions on Speght's edition of the poet's works (published a few years ago from the manuscript by Mr. Todd, in his Illustrations of Chaucer and Gower), that "it is most certain to be gathered by circumstances of records that the lawyers were not in the Temple until towards the latter

rick Court, where he had a first floor elegantly furnished. It was in one of the former lodgings that, being visited by Dr. Johnson, and expressing something like a shame-faced hope that he should soon be in lodgings better furnished, "Johnson," says Boswell, "at the same time checked him, and paid him a handsome compliment, implying that a man of talent should be above attention to such distinctions. 'Nay, sir, never mind that: Nil te qu?siveris extra.'[94] (It is only yourself that need be looked for). He died in Brick Court. It is said that when he was on his deathbed, the landing-place was filled with inquirers, not of the most mentionable description, who lamented him heartily, for he was lavish of his money as he went along Fleet Street. We are told by one of the writers of the life prefixed to his works (probably Bishop Percy, who contributed the greater part

landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he

re now of the party, are too characteristic to be omitted. "His chambers," says Boswell, "were on the first floor of No. 1, Middle Temple Lane-and I entered them with an impression given me by the Rev. Dr. Blair, of Edinburgh, who had been int

were loose; his black worsted stockings ill-drawn up; and he had a pair of unbuckled shoes by way of slippers. But all these slovenly particularities were forgotten the moment he began to talk. Some gentlemen, whom I do not recollect, were sitting with him; and when they went away, I also rose; but he sai

ere his friend Beauclerc, of the St. Albans family, and Madame de Boufflers, mother (if we mistake not) of the Chevalier de Boufflers, the celebrated French wit. Her report, when she got h

hnson, who, it seems, on a little recollection, had taken it into his head that he ought to have done the honours of his literary residence to a foreign lady of quality; and eager to show himself a man of gallantry, was hurrying down the stairs in violent agitation. He overtook us before we reached the Temple-gate, and brushing in between me and Madame de Boufflers,

nto such a convulsive laugh, says Boswell, that in order to support himself he "laid hold of one of the posts at the side of the foot-pavement, and sent forth peals so loud, that in the silence of the night, his voice seemed to resound from Temple-bar to Fleet-ditch. This most ludic

acob Tonson. There is a pleasant anecdote of Dr. Young's addressing him a letter by mistake, which Bernard opened, and found it begin thus:-"That Berna

quently used for balls, was called the Apollo, and was large and handsome, with a gallery for music. Probably the house had originally been a private abode of some consequence. The Leges Conviviales, which Jonson wrote for his club, and which are to be found in his works, are composed in his usual style of elaborate and compiled learning, not without a taste of that dictatorial self-sufficiency, which, notwithstanding all that has been said by his advocates, a

e Briton is t

Muses met him

six to one. Mr. Addison's election has passed easy and undisputed; and I believe if he had a mind to be chosen king, he would hardly be refused."[100] Yet Addison was a Whig. Addison had not then had his disputes with Pope and others; and his intercourse, till his sincerity became doubted, was very delightful. It is impossible to read of those famous wits dining together and not lingering upon the occasion a little, and

former times for the nuisance of selling coffee); Ben Tooke's (the bookseller); Lintot's; and Charles Mather's, alias Bubble-boy, the Toyman, who, when Sir Timothy Shallow accuses him of selling him a cane "for ten pieces, while Tom Empty had as g

ion, stating the house to have been the last of the houses burnt, and the first restored. The old front of this

y to Shire Lane, which is close t

fire, but although the work of so great a master, is hardly worth notice as a piece of architecture. It must be allowed that Wren could do poor things as well as good, even when not compelled by a vestry. As the last of the city gates, however, we confess we should be sorry to see it pulled down, though we believe there is a general sense that it is in the way. If it were hand

strum nomen mis

y, our names may

to the heads upon it, and slily whispered to me ('in allusion,' says Boswe

ostrum nomen mi

y, our names may

kes as anything else, is not likely to be repeated. Yet such an effect has habit in reconciling men's minds to the most revolting, and sometimes the most dangerous customs, that here were two Jacobites, o

rd Steele, the founder of English periodical literature. The public-house called the Trumpet, now known as the Duke of York, at which the Tatler met his club, is still remaining. At his house in the lane he dates a great number of his papers, and receive

ver." "The club," continues a note in Spence by the editor, "is supposed to have derived its name from Christopher Katt, a pastry-cook, who kept the house where they dined, and excelled in making mutton-p

ho would do that, would cut a man's throat. So that he had the good and the forms of the society much at heart. The paper was all in Lord Halifax's handwriting of a subscription of four hundred guineas for the encouragement of good comedies, and was dated 1709, soon after they broke up. Steele, Addison, Congreve, Garth, Vanbrugh, Manwaring, Stepney, Walpole, and Pulteney, were of

afterwards met in higher places; but humbleness of locality is nothing in these matters. The refinement consists in the company, and in whatever t

eet Street, that it was "a more convenient place for the coaches of the quality to stand unmolested."[105] Some of the houses in this quarter are of the Elizabethan age, with floors projecting over the others, and looking pressed together like burrows. The inmates of these humble tenements (unlike those of great

here, carrying on the business of a linen-draper about the year 1624. Another person, John Mason, a hosier, occupied one-half of the tenement. Walton

nt is, that it 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 ourselves, 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 no

s 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. It is a remarkable illustration of what Plato 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

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!

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

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 f

epic, nay

e the language o

ding 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

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 foun

s 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

nts are a g

and langua

robes from

guments

here 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 pillar

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'

h?bus, with h

began to dra

d his disciple B

rious sun tane u

Who he was, is not known; probably a barrister without practice; but he wrote an amiable and interesting book. As to the sudden and pleasant quiet in this little inn, it is curious to consider what a small remove from

se 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 soon came to nothing, and Edward III. gave the place to the Court of Chancery to keep its records in. There is a fine monument in the chapel to a Dr. Young, one of the Masters, which,

onest lawyer, t

honour to the profession, was Sir J

dd old

nged his prin

d as well as if they were his own inheritance."[111] 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

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 Churchyard, as it was called, being the portion of Fleet Street in front of the church, was fam

id 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 h

ts 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

ion, 'Is not this very fine?' Having no exquisite relish of the beauties of nature, and being more delighted with

l 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 late Earl Grey), at

t, 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

ench 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 everybody 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,

house and the tavern where he dined. He walked the streets at all hours, and said he was n

live, yet when he suspected that he was invited to

hey were inclined. 'Come (said he), you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over that su

uperstitions canvassed, he was loth to see them inflicted on others. He is here a harml

nother), 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 tallow chandler on Snow-hill-"not in the learned way," said 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,[116] Johnson never lost sight of the dignity of goodness. He did not, however, confine his atte

pending 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,

s were not like the rom

s made by the perpetual jarring of those whom he charitably accommodated under his roof. He has sometimes suffered me to talk jocularly of his group of females, and call them his seraglio. He thus mentions the

HOUSE IN B

t ilk" (that same, or Johnson 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

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 com

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 wi

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

ople can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern. Let there be ever so great a plenty of good things, ever so much grandeur, ever so much elegance, ever so much desire that everybody 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

travelled lif

s stages ma

think he sti

welcome at a

which a tavern affords, I have heard him assert, that a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity. 'As 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 obsequ

e his friends have a perfect reliance on the truth of everything 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

s 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

g 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 rema

nd 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

and library before they removed to their late 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 contempo