fyxmll Uramitg Jitotjg BOUGHT WfTH THE INCOME / FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henirs W. Sage 1891 AfM^^ Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013258995 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VIGNETTES Third Sekies M9 GARRICK. asAbelDrugger. Garrick as Abel Drugger. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VIGNETTES THIRD SERIES BY AUSTIN DOBSON ^ordeta3l»~iletailT most I care (Ce superflu, si n^cessaire I) NEW YORK: DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY .... 1896 Copyright, 1896, By Dodd, Mead and Comfanv. All righU reserved. tltttbetsttg iPnts: John WitsoN and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. TO R. F. SKETCHLEY. My dear Sketchley, This Book is dedicated to you for two reasons. One is, that I wish to thank you for much friendly encouragement and patient criti- cism: the other, that I desire in this way to record my gratitude to that excellent institu- tion over which you so long presided, and where I have spent so many pleasant hours — the Dyce and Forster Library at South Kensington. Sincerely yours, Austin DobsOn. PREFATORY NOTE. T ITTLE can be said with regard to this third series of ' Vignettes ' which has not been said with regard to its predecessors. As before, the papers treat exclusively of ' Eighteenth Century ' themes ; as before, they are — with one exception — reprinted from periodicals. The exception is the essay on ' Matthew Prior,' which appeared in the ' Parchment Library,' and is here included by permission of Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trtibner and Co. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Garrick as Abel Drugger . . . . Frontispiece Richard Mead To face 29 Addison 51 Thomas Gent 104 Hogarth • 133 Henry Fielding 163 Richard Owen Cambridge 17S Thomas Gray 205 Matthew Prior 222 James Puckle 269 Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey 292 Charles Lamb 323 AN EPISTLE TO A FRIEND. (by way of prologue.) 'Versate . . . Quid valeant humeri,' "LTOW shall a Writer change his ways ? ■*■ ■*• Read his Reviewer's blame, not praise. In blame, as Boileau said of old, The truth is shadowed, if not told. There 1 Let that row of stars extend To hide the faults I mean to mend. Why should the Public need to know The standard that I fall below ? — Or learn to search for that defect My Critic bids me to correct ? No: in this case the Worldly- Wise Keep their own counsel — and revise. Yet something of my Point of View I may confide, my Friend, to You. 1 don't pretend to paint the vast And complex picture of the Past : xiv An Epistle to a Friend. ' Not mine the wars of humankind, ' The furious troops in battle join'd ; ' * Not mine the march, the counter-march, The trumpets, the triumphal arch. For detail, detail, most I care (Ce superflu, si n^cessaire 1) ; I cultivate a private bent For episode, for incident; I take a page of Some One's life, His quarrel with his friend, his wife. His good or evil hap at Court, ' His habit as he lived,' his sport. The books he read, the trees he planted, The dinners that he eat — or wanted : As much, in short, as one may hope To cover with a microscope. I don't taboo a touch of scandal. If Gray or Walpole hold the candle ; Nor do I use a lofty tone Where faults are weaknesses alone. In studies of Life's sordid side I own I take no special pride ; The stocks, the pressgang, and the gibbets Are not among my prize exhibits ; ^Addison's Campaign, An Epistle to a Friend. Why should I labour to outdo What Fielding wrote, or Hogarth drew ? Yet much I love to arabesque What Gautier christened a ' Grotesque ' ; To take his oddities and ' lunes,' And drape them neatly with festoons, Until, at length, I chance to get The thing I designate 'Vignette.' To sum the matter then : — My aim Is modest. This is all I claim : To paint a part and not the whole. The trappings rather than the soul. The Evolution of the Time, The silent Forces fighting Crime, The Fetishes that fail, and pass. The struggle between Class and Class, The Wealth still adding land to lands, The Crown that falls, the Faith that stands , All this I leave to abler hands. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VIGNETTES. 'EXIT ROSCIUS.' 'pOWARD the latter end of the year 1775, ■*■ those of ' Farmer George's ' London lieges who had exhausted their interest in the impend- ing trials of Her scandalous Grace of Kingston and that ' beauteous sufferer ' (and suspected forger), Mrs. Margaret Caroline Rudd, must — if they had escaped the prevalent influenza * — have found an equally absorbing occupation in discussing the respective merits of the Covent Garden and Drury Lane playhouses. At Covent Garden, then under the elder Colman, Mr. Sheridan, Jun., who, rather less than a year earlier, had opened his brilliant dramatic career with the comedy of ' The Rivals,' was drawing crowded audiences to the bright little opera of ' The Duenna,' his very singable songs in ^ ' The influenza has raged in most parts of this king- dom as well as in London ' (' Morning Chronicle,' Novem- ber 29, 177s). 2 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, which were effectively aided by the admirable settings of his father-in-law, Mr. Linley. On the other hand, at.Drury Lane, Garrick had not only revived the Jacobean comedy of ' Eastward Hoe' under the title of 'Old City Manners,' his adapter being the accomplished Mrs. Char- lotte Lenox, but, calling in the aid of the brothers Adam, of Adelphi memory, he had beautified and Italianized his theatre, making it more commo- dious inside, and embellishing it externally — toward Brydges Street — with a brand new col- onnade, balcony, and pediment, the last being surmounted with a classic trophy, flanked at the angles — in place of the familiar figures of Thalia and Melpomene — by a lion and a unicorn. Concerning all these attractive novelties, to judge from the letters in the papers, the quidnuncs of 1775 ™"st have been abundantly exercised. ' Covent Garden ' writes sneeringly to her sister ' Drury Lane ' on her ' late acquisition of anew goivn and petticoat ' ; and ' Drury Lane ' retorts in a similar spirit of feline amenity. ' Impartial,' commending the improved accommodation, nevertheless holds that, ' with all deference to the taste of Messrs. A ra, . . . there is wanting a simplex munditus (sic) in the orna- ments to render them truly elegant,' while an- other correspondent sarcastically suggests that 'Exit Roscius.' 3 quite enough has been said upon this purely subordinate topic of decoration. But ' Adel- phos ' (whose pseudonym suggests an advocate either of the architects or the manager) is of opinion that ' Mr. Garrick, with a spirit undi- minished by age, has . . . made it [his theatre] the prettiest Assembly-room in the whole Town.' The same writer, besides, regards it as incon- ceivable that although he [Mr. G.] ' himself per- forms his best parts three or four times a week ' (an assertion which of course was promptly con- tradicted), all the world should flock ungrate- fully to that ' new sing-song thing,' ' The Duenna ' ; and the public are significantly re- minded that their Roscius is no longer young, and cannot possibly be expected to last forever. ' In a few years, perhaps months,' says ' Adel- phos,' with tears in his voice, ' this bright lumi- nary of the stage must yield to the common lott of mortality 1 Let us suspend our love of Operas till that melancholy period 1 ' The date of this letter, with its note of por- tent, is November 27, and before Christmas had come Garrick was actively arranging the step which, with more or less sincerity, he had so long been threatening to take — his definite and final retirement. For this, various reasons have been assigned, but it is probable that no single 4 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. cause can be made responsible for a course which must have been dictated by many considerations. In the first place, exceptional as were still his energy and his vivacity, he was no longer the Garrick who four-and-thirty years before, inaug- urating a new era in the art of acting, had bounded on the boards at Goodman's Fields. He was close upon sixty ; and already, in addi- tion to the wear and tear of an unusually harass- ing profession, he had to contend with two especially eighteenth-century ailments — gout and stone. His old partner, Lacy, had very recently died, and the managerial cares which this loss augmented were not made more easy to endure by the contentious character of Lacy's son and successor, Willoughby. His three leading ladies, Mrs. Yates, Miss Younge, and Mrs. Abington, gifted and indispensable no doubt as they were, nevertheless taxed all his tireless diplomacy to keep them in good humour with himself and with each other — Mrs. Abing- ton, in particular, being especially ' aggravating.' ' What with their axrs, indispositions, tails, fringes, and a thousand whimsies besides,' he is made to say in the ' Morning Chronicle ' for December i6, ' a manager leads the life of a devil, and he declared his intention of speedily relinquishing that thankless vocation. The sentiment thus 'Exit Roscius.' s expressed found its echo in more than one con- temporary epigram.^ At the same time, it may be assumed that when he redecorated his theatre he had not contemplated any very immediate severance from the scene of his ancient suc- cesses. The popularity of ' The Duenna,' the consciousness of his own failing powers and re- laxing rule, and the development of the graver of his two disorders, seem, nevertheless, to have precipitated a decision which, in spite of all col- lateral anxieties, he might — after the traditional fashion of his kind — have continued to post- pone ; and at the close of December he wrote in express terms to offer the refusal of his share in Drury Lane to Colman. The offer was promptly declined. The Covent Garden man- ager, who would probably have bought the whole, refused to purchase a part. He would not for worlds, he protested, sit on the throne ' As, for example, this, quoted in Davies' ' Life,' 1780, vol. ii, p. 32s : ' The Manager's Distress. 'I have no nerves, says Y gj I cannot act. I 've lost my limbs, cries A n ; 't is fact. Y s screams, I 've lost my voice, my throat 's so sore. Garrick declares he '11 play the fool no more. Without nerves, limbs, and voice, no shew, that 's certain : Here, prompter, ring the bell, and drop the curtain.' 6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. of Brentford with an assessor, unless (he was careful to add) that assessor could be Garrick himself. Such being the state of the case, it be- came necessary to seek for other bidders. Ul- timately Sheridan, his father-in-law, and two others found the money required, — some ;^3 5,000, — and Garrick prepared to make sur- render of his stewardship. With the minor details of his last months of management — enlivened and diversified as they were by fresh vagaries on the part of Mrs. Abington — these pages are not so much con- cerned as with the series of farewell perform- ances which preceded his departure from the stage. Before the end of January the purchase of the share appears to have been completed, and Garrick's sincerest friends were congratulating him on his approaching emancipation. In par- ticular, from his old antagonist and warm-hearted admirer, Mrs. Olive, already herself in retire- ment at Twickenham, came a most cordial and characteristic epistle, containing an opportune testimony to that part of his talent with which the public were least acquainted — to wit, the extraordinary patience and administrative skill with which, behind all the triumphs of the house, he had presided as wire-puller in chief. Other correspondents were as demonstrative in their 'Exit Roscius.' 7 felicitations. By-and-by the ' Gentleman's Mag- azine ' announced the sale as an accomplished fact, and not long afterwards the sequence of leave-takings began. Strictly speaking, the first of these valedictory representations was Gar- rick's assumption, on February 7, of the part of Sir Anthony Branville in Mrs. Sheridan's re- cently revived comedy of ' The Discovery.' The old beau, who 'emits' volcanic language with the ardour of an iceberg, was not one of the actor's great characters, but even here spec- tators like the younger Colman remembered how adroitly, to fit a fantastic personality. Gar- rick contrived to quench the lustre of his won- derful eyes so as to reduce those orbs to the semblance of ' coddled gooseberries.' Upon this occasion Mrs. Abington took the part of Lady Flutter. After ' The Discovery ' he played four times during the ensuing month in four differ- ent pieces. Then, for March 7, was announced what proved to be his final appearance in the last of these, ' Zara,' — an adaptation by Aaron Hill from Voltaire — in which, vifith Miss Younge as the heroine, he took the part of Lusignan, the old King of Jerusalem. It was a favourite rdle ; and long after, one of those who saw him act it at this very dale, communi- cated to Christopher North — over the signature 8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. of 'Senex' — his still green recollections of that memorable night. They are too lengthy and too discursive to quote, but they afford a vivid idea of the rapt attention with which Garrick's entry, not made till the third act, was greeted by the hushed and expectant house. The impression produced upon this witness was that of some- thing entirely new, unprecedented, unexpected in matters dramatic. To him it seemed that all his pre-conceived ideas of acting were wrong — that Garrick was not acting, but that he was Lusignan — that 'by a kind of magic . . . the old king was conjured from his grave, and ex- hibited to the spectators in proprid persond, as just liberated from the long confinement of his dungeon — first unable to distinguish objects in the light, after such a length of gloomy incarcer- ation, and afterwards gradually recovering the power of vision.' The illusion thus created was enhanced by that admirable elocution ' which compelled you to believe that what he [Garrick] spoke was not a conned lesson, but suggested by the exigency of the moment, and the imme- diate dictate of his own mind.' ^ The same night ^ Miss Burney (in ' Evelina,' Letter x.) is much to the same effect: 'I could hardly believe he had studied a written part, for every word seemed to be uttered from the impulse of the moment.' 'Exit Roscius.' 9 witnessed the production of a farce by Colman called ' The Sple#n ; or, Islington Spa.' Its merit was not extraordinary, though it was acted for fourteen or fifteen nights ; but its ' Pro- logue,' said to have been inimitably spoken by King in the part of the bookseller Jack Rubrick, is notable as containing the first public an- nouncement of Garrick's intention to leave the stage. After describing a tradesman who quits his business for the fallacious delights of a coun- try seat at Islington, King went on : ' The master of iAts shop too seeks repose, Sells off his stock-in-trade, his verse and prose, His daggers, buskins, thunder, lightning, and old clothes. Will he in rural shades find ease and quiet ? Oh no 1 — He '11 sigh for Drury, and seek peace in riot.' i For more than a month after the above-men- tioned representation of ' Zara ' Garrick's name ^ Rubrick, who also sells quack medicines, recalls Johnson's 'Jack Whirler' ('Idler,' No. 19), and still more, Johnson's original, ' John Newbery ' (see ' An Old London Bookseller ' in ' Eighteenth Century Vignettes,' 1892, pp. 125-135). It may be added that, according to the ' Morning Chronicle ' for March 8, 1 776, 'a very beautiful scene of Loutherbourg's painting, representing the Spaw Fields with the Pantheon, and the adjoining buildings, was introduced in the second Act ' of this farce. lo Eighteenth Century yignettes. is absent from the bills, which are mainly occu- pied by the benefits of other members of the company. On April ii, however, he played, for the last time, one of those low-comedy parts in which, even more than another, he gave evi- dence, not only of that versatility which had so astonished Count Orloff, but also of that power of confining himself rigorously within the limits of his impersonation, which is held to be one of his greatest gifts. This was the part of Abel Drugger in the ' Alchemist.' It was sometimes debated v'-'lf he lived whether in this character he was really more successful than his contem- porary Weston, and it is known that he himself greatly admired Weston's acting of Drugger. But the consensus of opinion among the best- instructed critics of the day is that Weston, while investing the rdle with much individual humour, never attained to that complete absorp- tion of its essence which, in Garrick's case, compelled the commendations of onlookers as diverse as Hogarth and Hannah More. ' You are in your element,' said Hogarth in a burst of blunt admiration, after seeing his old friend in Drugger and Richard the Third, ' when you are begrimed with dirt, or up to your elbows in blood.' But no one has written more graphi- cally or acutely of this ' quite unique creation ' 'Exit Roscius.' n (as he calls it) than Hogarth's own best comment- ator, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, who was in London at the close of 1775. After dwelling upon its extension of the author's conception, and the minute by-play and subtle facial variation by which that extended conception was inter- preted and made intelligible to every being in the theatre, Lichtenberg goes on to give an illustration of what he regards as Garrick's specific superiority to Weston. The passage is so excellent an example of his keen insight (he only once saw Garrick as Drugger^'^'tnat it de- serves unmutilated quotation, the admirable rendering being that of the late Lord Lytton. ' I will only mention,' says Lichtenberg, ' by way of example, a single trait, which "Weston is quite incapable of imitating, and still more in- capable of inventing. When the astrologers spell out the name of Abel Drugger in the stars, the poor gull says, with a certain self-satisfaction, " That is my name." Now, Garrick gives to this satisfaction the quality of secret self-homage. He makes you at once understand that, at this moment, there is in the depths of Abel's con- fused sensations, a vague inarticulate sentiment that any open expression of self-satisfaction would be wanting in respect to the majesty of the stars. He turns softly aside from the as- 12 Eighteenth Century yignettes. trologers, and, for a minute or two, you see him silently caressing and enjoying this new sensa- tion, till the rapture of it gradually flushes the wrinkling circles round his eyes, and at last overflows his whole countenance, as he half whispers to himself, " That is my name.'' The efi'ect, upon all who behold it, of this uncon- scious betrayal of secret self-congratulation, is quite indescribable. You at once recognize in Abel Drugger, not only the passive stupidity of a born fool, but the active absurdity of a fool who is beginning to reason his way to a ridicu- lously high opinion of himself.' That the words spoken by Drugger are not Ben Jonson's, but an addition to the prompt- book by some later hand, detracts nothing from the merits of this vivid piece of descriptive finesse. However they originated, Garrick cer- tainly justified their retention in the acting copy of the play. A fortnight later, on Thursday, April 25, he bade farewell to another of 'rare Ben's ' characters — that of Kitely, the jealous city merchant of ' Every Man in his Humour.' Beyond the verdict of Walpole — not an enthu- siastic or even a sympathetic critic of Garrick — to the effect that this ranked with Ranger in ' The Suspicious Husband ' as one of his capital performances (a praise which Walpole did not 'Exit Rosdus.' 13 vouchsafe to his Lear), little record seems to have been preserved respecting his appearance as Kitely, which is not mentioned by ' Senex ' above quoted, while Hannah More, who was present on this very occasion, confines herself to recording the fact. In regard to his next ' last night ' (April 30) — as Sir John Brute in ' The Provoked Wife ' — there are better data, since, for the profit of posterity, Lichtenberg was lucky enough to see him in this part also. As, in the case of Abel Drugger, he had contrasted Garrick with Weston, so, in speaking of Vanbrugh's blackguard baronet, he contrasts Garrick with Quin. The most interesting passage of his notes, however, turns upon Garrick's unrivalled facial power. ' I was close to the stage,' he says, ' and could observe him narrowly. He entered with the corners of his mouth so turned down as to give to his whole countenance the expres- sion of habitual sottishness and debauchery. And this artificial form of the mouth he retained unaltered from the beginning to the end of the play ; with the exception only, that, as the play went on, the lips gaped and hung more and more in proportion to the gradually increasing drunkenness of the character he represented. This made-up face was not produced by stage paint, but solely by muscular contraction ; and X4 Eighteenth Century yignettes. it must be so identified by Garrick with his idea of Sir John Brute as to be sponianeouslx assumed by him whenever he plays that part ; otherwise, his retention of such a mask, without ever once dropping it either from fatigue or surprise, even in the most boisterous action of his part, would be quite inexplicable.' After this, one can under- stand what Johnson meant by telling Miss Burney that Garrick might well look much older than he was, ' for his face had had double the business of any other man's.' There were, however, graver reasons why he should seem older. He was really ill, and nothing but his invincible energy could have kept him going. ' Gout, stone, and sore throat ! yet I am in spirits,' he had written in February to a friend. Added to this came the nervous ten- sion of these farewell representations, increased and intensified by the feverish enthusiasm of his hearers. ' I thought the audience were cracked,' he said of the reception of Abel Drugger, ' and they almost turned my brain.' Yet no sooner had he bidden good-bye to Sir John Brute than he followed up that part by three more succes- sively, all for the last time, and all in comedy. On May 2 he played Leon in his own version of Beaumont and Fletcher's ' Rule a Wife and Have a Wife'; on the 7th, Archer in 'The 'Exit Roscius.' 15 Beaux' Stratagem ' ; and on the 9th, Benedick in ' Much Ado about Nothing.' The leading feminine part on each occasion was taken by Mrs. Abington — 'The Stratagem,' as it was called familiarly, being selected for her benefit (when she also acted in ' The Man of Quality,' an adaptation from Vanbrugh's 'Relapse'). Garrick was supreme in all of the three charac- ters named. Nothing — according to those con- temporaries who were privileged to see them — could be better than the gay vivacity of his Bene- dick ; nothing exceed the splendid gallantry, the manly dignity of his Leon. But it was in the laced hat and brilliant light blue and silver livery of Farquhar's gentleman-footman that — notwithstanding the sneer of Johnson — he must have out-topped the record.^ ' Never,' it was said, ' had appeared so genteel a footman, or so complete a gentleman : the one fit to triumph over the pert airs of an inn-keeper's fair daughter [Cherry] ; the other inspired with that happy impudence, so timely corrected by a most pro- found respect, as not to be resisted by the finest woman in the world [Mrs. Sullen], languishing 1 Johnson thought that, in Archer, the gentleman should have broken through the footman j but Garrick — perhaps naturally — was of opinion that his old friend could not distinguish the one from the other. 1 6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. under the neglect of a cruel husband.' To the unmixed enjoyment of this 'last time,' there was only one irremediable drawback — the absence of that unrivalled Scrub, Thomas Weston, who had died in the preceding January, and whose part was taken by Yates. By this time Garrick had bid adieu to no fewer than eight of his most popular parts. Out of these — with the exception of Kitely, which can scarcely be classed as comic — only that of Lusignan belongs in strictness to the domain of Tragedy. The farewells of Lear, of Richard, of Hamlet, were yet to come. From a letter in his correspondence which seems to have been misdated, he must also, at some period, have thought of adding Macbeth to the list. ' I shall play Lear,' he writes, ' next week, and Macbeth (perhaps) in the old dresses, with new scenes, the week after that, and then ' exit Roscius.' But whatever he may have originally intended, ' Hamlet' was advertised for May 30, and, ac- cording to the notice in the public prints, certain omissions were to be made. To these he had referred in the letter quoted above. ' I have ventured to produce " Hamlet" with alterations. It was the most imprudent thing I ever did in all my life ; but I had sworn I would not leave the stage till I had rescued that noble play from all 'Exit Roscius.' 17 the rubbish of the fifth act. I have brought it forth without the Grave-digger's triclt and the fencing match.' He goes on to say that the course he had taken had been ' received with general approbation, beyond my most warm ex- pectations.' These changes, to which Lichten- berg asserts that Garriclc should never have lent himself, and which must be laid at the door of Voltaire and French influence, had, however, no longer life than the actor ; and the public, according to Davies, soon clamoured for their ' Hamlet' 'as it had been acted from time im- memorial.' Of Garrick's assumption of this part at this period, perhaps the most important record is that of Hannah More, who, nevertheless, did not see him on this particular occasion, but on a penultimate performance in April, just after he had played Kitely for the last time. She sat in the pit, close to the orchestra, with the two Burkes, Sheridan, and Warton for neighbours. As a stage critic she is naturally not to be com- pared with those already mentioned, but her words give the note of enthusiasm which ani- mated the majority of those who (if they were fortunate enough to gain admittance) were now crowding Old Drury from all parts of the country whenever Garrick's name was in the bills. ' I staid in town to see " Hamlet," ' writes this 1 8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. perfervid chronicler, ' and I will venture to say, that it was such an entertainment as will prob- ably never again be exhibited to an admiring world. . . . The requisites for " Hamlet " are not only various but opposed. In him [Garrick] they are all united, and as it were concentrated. . . . To the most eloquent expression of the eye,^ to the hand-writing of the passions on his features, to a sensibility which tears to pieces the hearts of his auditors,' to powers so unpar- alleled, he adds a judgment of the most exquisite accuracy, the fruit of long experience and close observation, by which he preserves every gra- dation and transition of the passions, keeping all under the controul of a just dependence and natural consistency. So naturally, indeed, do the ideas of the poet seem to mix with his own, that he seemed himself to be engaged in a suc- cession of affecting situations, not giving utter- ance to a speech, but to the instantaneous ex- pression of his feelings, delivered in the most affecting tones of voice, and with gestures that belong only to nature. ... A few nights before I saw him in Abel Drugger; and had I not seen him in both, I should have thought it as possible 1 She always insisted to the last — as Macaulay, who had heard her, remembered — upon its ' unequalled radi- ance and penetration ' (Trevelyan's ' Life/ ch. iii.). ■ Exit Roscius.' 19 for Milton to have written "Hudibras," and Butler " Paradise Lost," as for one man to have played Hamlet and Drugger with such excellence.' From a letter following the one from which these extracts are derived, it seems that Mrs. Garrick petitioned Miss More for a copy of this little ' criticism,' and it is quite possible that ' dear Nine ' — as Roscius playfully called her — was not entirely unmindful that her words might eventually come under his notice. Her rather rhetorical account may be supplemented by that of another witness (in all probability) of this same April performance. This was Joseph Farington, the landscape painter and Royal academician, for whose impressions we are in- debted to those gossipping volumes, ' The Recol- lections of John Taylor,' proclaimed on his title- page to be author of the farce of ' Monsieur Tonson.' Farington told Taylor that he went to see ' Hamlet ' acted by Garrick in his last season. Until the entrance of the prince with the royal court in Scene 2, he paid little atten- tion to the play ; and then, observing the actor's worn and painted face, his bulky form, and the high-heeled shoes he had too palpably adopted to increase his height, concluded that Garrick was going to expose himself by attempting to 20 Eighteenth Century yignettes. perform a part for which age had rendered him unfit. But at length he began to speak, and such was 'the truth, simplicity and feeling' which he displayed, that Farington speedily lost sight of everything but the Hamlet which Shakespeare had conceived. To the advertisement of the last ' Hamlet' is appended, — 'On Saturday [i. e., June i] Mr. Garrick will perform a principal Part in Com- edy.' This was the part of Ranger in ' The Suspicious Husband,' which was accordingly played on the date named. It is a rdle which ranks with such lighter characters as those of Archer and Benedick, and we have the assur- ance of Mrs. Siddons, that it was one of Gar- rick's ' most delightful ' impersonations — a verdict in which even Walpole would have agreed. After this, on Monday, June 3, came what had been intended to be the last perform- ance of ' Richard the Third.' It was, however, repeated on Wednesday, June 5, ' by Command of their Majesties,' being followed (also by com- mand) by Garrick's farce of ' Bon Ton.' This second performance must have been a cruel ordeal for Garrick, upon whose physical powers the part of ' crook'd-backed Richard,' as he was described in the bills, made inexorable demands — demands with which his increased infirmities 'Exit Roscius.' 21 made it more and more difficult to comply. ' I dread the fight,' he told his friend Cradock, ' and the fall. I am afterwards in agonies.' Yet he surprised the King by the extraordinary activity with which he ran about the field. His Lady Anne, upon these two occasions, was Mrs. Siddons, then young and (as always) beautiful, but not yet risen to the maturity of her powers, and only imperfectly known to the London playgoer. Years afterwards she told John Taylor that she still retained the most vivid recollection of Garrick's terrible energy in this part, and in that of Lear. She remembered par- ticularly how, in rehearsing Lady Anne, he begged her, ' as he drew her from the couch [? ' corse,' in Act i., sc. 2], to follow him step by step, for otherwise he should be obliged to turn his face from the audience, and he acted much with his features.' She promised to at- tend to his wishes, but the intensity of his play entirely overcame her, and she was constrained to pause, ' when he gave her such a look of reprehension as she never could recollect with- out terror.' Mrs. Siddons appears to have acted only six times with Garrick — thrice as Mrs. Strickland in ' The Suspicious Husband,' and thrice as Lady Anne in ' Richard the Third " — the last 22 Eighteenth Century l^ignettes. performance of the latter piece being also the last occasion they ever appeared together. On the next day (Thursday, June 6), the ' Public Advertiser announced that Garrick would play Lear on the following Saturday, ' being the last Time but one of his appearing on the Stage.' As to the supreme excellence of this impersona- tion, which duly took place on the 8th, there seems to be no question. Cumberland protested that it was one of the three finest pieces of act- ing he had ever witnessed, the other two being Henderson's Falstaff and Cook's lago ; and Reynolds told Hannah More (who of course was rapturous) that it took him ' full three days before he got the better of it.' Years after the occurrence, Bannister related to Rogers how Garrick had thrilled him by his utterance of the words, 'O fool, I shall go mad 1' in Act H. O'KeefFe, again, could recall the exquisite ten- derness and pathos with which, in Act IV., wistfully asking, ' Be your tears wet ? ' he touched the cheek of Cordelia ; while the tra- ditions are unanimous as to the effect of the terrible paternal curse of Act I., under the in- fluence of which the very audience seemed to shrink and shudder. One of the most eloquent of the written tributes which Garrick received at this time came in the form of a farewell letter 'Exit Roscius.' 23 from the beautiful Madame Necker — the some- time love of Gibbon — then on a visit to Eng- land. ' Je ne sgais, Monsieur,' she wrote on May 14, ' oH je trouverai des termes pour rendre I'effrayante impression que vous nous avez faite hier ; vous vous 6tes rendu maltre de notre ftme toute entifere, vous I'avez bouleversde, vous I'avez remplie de terreur et de piti6, je ne puis penser encore aux diff^rentes expressions de votre physionomie sans que mes yeux se remplis- sent de larmes. Quelle superbe et touchante lefon vous nous avez donnde 1 quelle horreur pour I'ingratitude 1 quel amour 1 quel respect pour la vieillesse 1 mfime injuste, m6me ^garde ; oh I que n'ai-je encore les auteurs de ma vie, que ne puis-je porter k leurs pieds tous les sen- timents que vous avez 61ev6s dans mon cceur, et y rdpandre les larraes ddchirantes que vous m'avez fait verser. Toute ma pensde se con- centre sur les divers caractSres de la vieillesse affligde ; je fuis et je cherche cette image, et jamais rien ne s'est gravd plus profonddment dans mon souvenir.' Garrick was justly gratified by this impassioned homage, and he showed his pleasure in his reply. But his farewells were not without their pangs of separation. When, on this same occasion, he got back to the greenroom, he said with a 24 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. touch of sadness to his Cordelia (Miss Younge) that he should never again figure as her father. The actress fell upon her knees, and begged him at least to give her a father's benediction. Rais- ing her kindly, he laid his hand upon her head, and then murmuring to those who had crowded round, ' God bless you all 1 ' hurriedly quitted the room. Miss Younge (afterwards Mrs. Pope), who often told the story, could seldom repeat it without tears. But the ineluciabile lempus was at hand, and on Monday, June lo, 1776, came what, in modern theatrical parlance, would be ' positively the last appearance.' That Garrick would have chosen some important character on this occa- sion might perhaps have been expected. The renewed representation of Richard, however, and the demands made upon his strength in Lear, taken in connection with the sufficiently pathetic aspects of this abandonment of his pro- fession, decided him to make his farewell bow in a less arduous part. He chose Don Felix in 'The Wonder' of Mrs. Centlivre — an imper- sonation having certain affinities with that of Jonson's Kitely. From floor to ceiling the theatre was crowded by admirers of all ranks, and of almost all nationalities. The proceedings opened with a prologue (memorable for the line 'Exit Roscius.' 25 • A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind ') in aid of the Theatrical Fund. This, to which the profits of the night were to be devoted, had been set on foot by himself. Then came the piece. 'Never,' says the 'Morning Post,' 'were the passions of love — jealousy, rage, &c., so highly coloured, or admirably set off: in short, he finished his comic course with as high a theatrical climax as he did on Saturday evening, his tragic one.'^ Replying to the already quoted letter of Madame Necker, he himself supplies some account of his feelings. 'Though I performed my part,' he says, 'with as much, if not more spirit than I ever did, yet when I came to take the last farewell, I not only lost almost the use of my voice, but of my limbs too : it was indeed, as I said, a most awful moment.'' He here refers to the brief and un- affected address which he gave at the close. There was no attempt at an epilogue ; ' the jingle of rhyme, and the language of fiction,' he told his audience, would be unsuited to the oc- casion. In a few faltering and almost conven- 1 He presented the buckles he wore in this last part to Hannah More, as a relic. They prompted an extempore couplet from Mrs. Barbauld : ' Thy buckles, O Garrick, thy friend may now use, But no mortal hereafter shall tread in thy shoes.' 26 Eighteenth Century yignettes. tional words, which were interrupted by a burst of genuine tears, he confined himself to assuring them of the sincerity of his past efforts on their behalf, and of his unalterable gratitude for their long kindness to himself. The Country Dance customary at the end of Act V. had been already omitted ; and it was now felt by spectators and performers alike that Dibdin's ' Musical Enter- tainment ' of ' The Waterman ' which was in- tended to follow ' The Wonder,' and in which Bannister was to play his popular part of Tom Tug, could not take place. And so — accom- panied by the uncontrolled sobbings of Mrs. Garrick in her box — the curtain came down upon the excited plaudits and farewells of one of the most brilliant and enthusiastic audiences which had ever filled that historic house. Five-and-forty years after this event, and not many months before her own death, Mrs. Gar- rick, at that time an old lady of more than ninety- eight, and interested to the last in any relics of her ' Davy,' visited the British Museum at the invitation of Mr. J. T. Smith, Keeper of the Prints and Drawings, to inspect Dr. Burney's collection of Garrick portraits. Inquirers to- day may still study, in the Print Room at Blooms- bury, the identical engravings and sketches which 'Exit Roscius.' 27 the great actor's widow saw in August, 1 82 1 , and re-create from them, if they will, the images evoked in her nonagenarian recollections. They will see the magnificent Archer and the multi- farious Scrub, sitting in much the same attitudes as those in which contemporaries have described them: — Garrick, airy, elegant, and digagi; Weston, awestruck and awkward, in red stock- ings and a green apron. They will see the white-haired Lusignan, in his over-decorated dressing-gown,'' taking the little cross from a Zara whose architectural costume might have been designed by William Kent himself. They will see the restless-eyed Kitely of Reynolds ; they will see ZofFany's inimitable Abel Drugger, leering round with stupid cunning at Face and Subtle, while he presses his tobacco into his pipe-bowl with his thumb ; they will see Sir John Brute, in his woman's hoop and cap, viciously cudgelling the watch i(i Covent Garden, 1 An interesting anecdote of Garrick's last illness is connected with tliis garment. Two days before his death, when Mrs. Garrick, worn out with nursing, was talking quietly to an old friend whom she had persuaded to stay and dine with her, her husband, in his gorgeous undress, and looking as if he were about to play the part of Lu- signan once more, suddenly entered the room. He sat moodily for an hour without uttering a word, and then withdrew as abruptly as he came. 28 Eighteenth Century l^ignettes. and wearing upon his deboshed and besotted visage the very look that Lichtenberg had noted. They will see Lear in his ermine, buffeted by the storm ; and Benjamin Wilson's Hamlet in his black velvet ; and the rival Richards of Ho- garth and Nathaniel Dance — the latter by far the finer of the two. Yet with all these aids to historic reconstruction, much must still remain unrealized. So true are Garrick's own prophetic words in the Prologue to ' The Clandestine Marriage ' : — ' Nor Pen nor Pencil can the Actor save ; The Art, and Artist, share one common Grave ! ' Richard Mead. DR. MEAD'S LIBRARY. T N that lively and now rather rare little book, ■^ the ' foat des Arts en Angleterre,' its author, Hogarth's friend the Swiss enameller Rouquet, under the heading ' De la M6decine,' draws an instructive, if somewhat malicious picture of the eighteenth-century leech of eminence. After dilating upon his costume, his sword, his ample and indispensable perruque nouie (' a physician,' wrote Fielding in 1732, ' can no more prescribe without a full wig, than without a fee'), his chariot, his urbanity, and his erudition, Rou- quet goes on to note — as a proof of the pro- fundity of the Doctor's scientific attainments, and of the limited amount still left for him to learn — that he has almost invariably a special pursuit or hobby outside his own profession. ' One busies himself with paintings, antiquities, or prints ; the next with natural curiosities in general, or with particular departments of them ; some preserve in bottles all the lusus nature that are discovered or invented ; others devote their energies to objects more agreeable, and are 3° Eighteenth Century yignettes. galants.' Music, Poetry, the Drama, — each of these has its charm for your medical virtuoso. ' This apparent inattention with which the Eng- lish practitioners exercise their calling ' — the critic continues ironically — ' is sometimes of incalculable value to the patient. Nature, it is suggested, frequently takes advantage of their negligence to exert all her own efforts in effect- ing a cure.' The sentiment is one in which it is easy to detect the compatriot of the famous author of the ' Mddecin Malgr6 Lui ' ; but of the cultivated tastes of the foremost physicians of this country in the first half of the last century (Rouquet's book is dated 1755), there can be no reasonable doubt. Garth and Arbuthnot, for instance, the one by ' The Dispensary,' the other by ' John Bull,' belong almost as much to Literature as to Physic ; and even Sir Richard Blackmore, the much abused ' quack Maurus ' of Dryden and the wits at Will's, if he cannot be advanced as a lettered luminary of the first magnitude, may at least be cited as a productive case in point. Fat Dr. Cheyne again — Gay's ' Cheney huge of size ' — was a scholar ; and, both before and after his milk regimen, as great a humorist as Falstaff ; while Freind and Wood- ward were not only writers, but also book- lovers, who left behind them extensive collections. Dr. Mead's Library. 31 Dr. RaddifFe, in the capacity of lady-killer so liberally assigned to him in the 'Tatier' and elsewhere, should perhaps be classed primarily with those whose distractions were amatory rather than aesthetic ; but, on the other hand, as founder of the great university library which bears his name, he certainly rendered essential service to students. It is probable, however, that Rouquet had in mind chiefly those twin-stars in the Hippocratic heaven whom Pope has coupled in the line — ' And Books for Mead, and Butterflies for Sloane! Sir Hans Sloane, whom Young dubbed ' the foremost toyman of his time,' and whose monu- mental urn with its jEscuIapian serpents you shall still see beside the rail in Chelsea Church- yard, was an indefatigable hunter after the bibli- ographical treasures and curiosities which after- wards went to form the nucleus of the British Museum ; while Mead, who died shortly before the ' ctat des Arts ' appeared, was not only an almost typical specimen of the ' great court- Galen ' of his epoch, but, during a prolonged and prosperous career, had succeeded in bring- ing together such a show of antiques, coins, and rare volumes as had no contemporary paral- lel. The coins and antiques scarcely come 32 Eighteenth Century yignettes. within the province of this paper, but the books, which in the sale catalogue occupy some two hundred and forty pages, may fairly claim brief notice. Once a collector, always a collector. To Richard Mead this venial vice apparently came early, for it was during his Wanderjahre in Italy that he discovered, or rather re-discovered, the famous pseudo-Egyptian records then known as the Mensaor Tabula Isaica, but now discredited as spurious. In the paternal house at Stepney, where he first began to practise ; in his houses at Crutched- and Austin-Friars ; in the house at Blobmsbury where his predecessor RadclifFe had entertained Eugene of Savoy, — the ' Biblio- theca Meadiana' must have been growing as slowly, but as surely, as the fame of Marcellus. Its last and longest home, however, was 49 Great Ormond Street, at the corner of Powis Place, where its owner died. After Mead's death the house was tenanted by Lord Grey's uncle, Sir Harry Grey. Then, in due course, it was turned into a Hospital for Sick Children, and, as that institution progressed, ultimately gave way to the more imposing building which now absorbs not only its site, but also that of the adjoining No. 48. Tradition, no less, still speaks of the Hospital's first home as an ancient Queen Anne Dr. Mead's Library. 33 Mansion, with fine oak staircases and carved chimney-pieces contrasting strangely with the rows of tiny cots which, about 1852, began to find their places along its dark wainscoted walls. Charles Dickens, who, six years later, made one of his warm-hearted appeals for funds to aid the good work, spoke picturesquely, and from personal experience, of the pleasant and airy wards into which its time-honoured state draw- ing-rooms and family bed-chambers had been converted ; and it is to the Children's Hospital at Great Ormond Street that, in company with the toy-horse, the Noah's ark, the yellow bird, and the man in the Guards, he carries — too late — the 'little Johnny' of 'Our Mutual Friend.' The Hospital for Sick Children was still domiciled in Mead's 'courtly old house' when little Johnny made that last testamentary disposi- tion of his effects recorded in the story ; and those who now pause before the vast brick and terra cotta structure raised by Barry on the spot, will find it hard to realise that the earlier dwell- ing to which King George U.'s First Physician in Ordinary removed in 1720, had, at the back, a spacious and secluded garden, and that this garden, again, abutted upon the then wide and green expanse — not yet encumbered by the 3 34 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. Foundling — of Red Lion, or Lamb's Conduit, Fields. At the end of the garden, about a dozen years after taking up his residence at No. 49, Mead built a gallery for his overflowing statues and antiques, and here no doubt were enshrined many of his historical treasures, — the statue of Hygeia, afterwards purchased by Askew, — the Antinous, for which, notwithstanding its alleged broken nose and repaired condition, Lord Rock- ingham paid two hundred and thirty pounds, — the Homer that Lord Exeter presented to the British Museum. It is in this garden-gallery that we must conceive its owner discussing antiquities with Martin Folkes, or ' curios' with Sloane, or Greek particles with Bentley ; here, no doubt, he would chaffer with the ' Puffs ' and ' Varnishes ' of his day over some newly- imported ' black master,' or here, aided by Arbuthnot and ' Addison on Medals,' ■ judiciously define. When Pius marks the honorary coin Of Caracalla, or of Antonine.' Probably only the rarer books — e. g., the ' Missal,'^ said to be illuminated by Raphael 1 This, no doubt, was the opinion of Walpole and Mead. But later experts regarded the miniatures as six- teenth century French work, and described the volume as a Book of Hours. Dr. Mead's Library. 35 and his scholars, which afterwards found a home at Strawberry Hill — were exhibited in the gal- lery ; and it must be assumed that the remainder, numbering at their owner's death more than ten thousand volumes, were dispersed in the library and reception-rooms. What, however, seems indisputable is, that Mead was the most acces- sible and generous of collectors — not always an accessible or a generous race. Neither the princely Grolier nor the unparalleled Peiresc' could have made a more unselfish use of his possessions. He flung open his treasures freely to the public ; he would lend his miniatures and 1 Grolier's generosity is sufficiently evidenced by his well-known book-motto, ' lo. Grolierii et Amicorum.' But lest the qualifying epithet should be deemed extrava- gant in the case of M. Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc, let it be recorded, in the words of his biographer, that ' he sought Books, not for himself alone, but for any that stood in need of them ; ' that ' he lent an innumerable company, which were never restored ; also he gave a world away ... of which he could hardly hope ever to get the like again ; Which he did when learned men had occasion to use them.' Finally, if he borrowed books in bad condition, he re-clothed them before sending them back, 'so that having received them, ill-bound and ill- favoured, he returned them trim and handsome' ('The Mirrour of True Nobility and Gentility,' — being Pierre Gassendi's ' Life of Peiresc,' ' Englished by W. Rand, Doctor of Physick;' London, 1657, pp. 194, 195). 36 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. pictures to be copied ; and he not only allowed his books to be consulted, but he would even permit them to be taken away by deserving students. As a host, he kept open house, and scarcely any foreigner with the faintest reputa- tion for learning visited these shores without paying his respects to the renowned physician and connoisseur of Great Ormond Street. A classical scholar in an age of classical scholars ; an omnivorous and indefatigable reader ; a sci- entist and an antiquary of distinction ; and with all this, a person to whose native amenity his con- tinental travels and foreign education had super- added a certain cosmopolitan charm of manner — he seems to have deserved, better than most, the good things that were everywhere reported of him. 'Dr. Mead,' said Johnson, 'lived more in the broad sunshine of life than almost any man.' And Hawkins (whose testimonials are seldom unqualified) declares that ' he raised the medical character to such a height of dignity as was never seen in this or any other country.' When, on Saturday, i6 February, 1754, Dr. Mead died, to be buried a week later in the Temple Church, he was a man of eighty, whose work in the world had been done some years before. His professional gains had been large : in one year, indeed, they are said to have ex- Dr. Mead's Library. 37 ceeded _;£7,ooo. But his tastes and his mode of living were on a scale with his means ; and as his powers failed and his practice fell off, his income dropped also. Towards the close of his life, one hears, in Walpole and elsewhere, vague rumours of growing embarrassment, and it is not impossible that some of his books (in addition to the Greek. MSS. he sold to Askew) were privately disposed of previous to his death. At all events, when he did die, there seems to have been no question of anything but the sale of his library by auction, a step which is the more to be regretted in that his collection, instead of representing exclusively, like the collections of some of his contemporaries, the individual needs or likings of its possessor, was really a system- atic attempt at a general ingathering of the best authors of his day. He aimed at the standard and the canonical in everything ; and his library, although it did not — as Fielding said — include every rare work quoted in the all-embracing notes of the ' laborious much read doctor Zachary Grey' to ' Hudibras' (for which book, by the way, Mead applied the portrait of Butler by Gerard Soest), it would, nevertheless, had it been preserved intact, have remained an excel- lent specimen of a typical eighteenth-century library. Its dispersal, however, was not to be 38 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. averted. In November, 1 7 ^, it was announced for sale by Samuel Baker, of York. Street, Co- vent Garden ; and the auction, beginning on the 1 8th oi that month, continued at intervals for twenty-eight nights, terminating on May 8, 1755. According to Dibdin, the total amount realised was ;£5,5i8 los. iid., from which must be subtracted £1^ 6s. dd. for bookcases, leaving a sum of ;£'5,499 4s. 5^.^ In these times sales of rare books by auction would be copiously chronicled. But in the middle of the last century they found scant record ; and mention of them, apart from the advertisements, is generally confined to private letters. Horace Walpole spent five days in 1755 at the sale of Mead's coins and antiques, when he bought, among other things, the reputed ' Raphael Missal,' of which mention has already been made ; but he does not seem to have in- ' In a carefully-priced large paper copy of the Cata- logue, acquired since these pages were first written, as well as in an ordinary copy, the total produce of the sale is stated at ;^S,i;40 ys. 6d. The half bound ordinary copy, it may be added, is clad, as to its sides, in that old hand- made Dutch flowered and gilt pattern paper, familiar to the collector of John Newbery's children's books, but now — as Mr. Charles Welsh found when preparing his facsimile reproduction of ' Goody Two Shoes ' — no longer manufactured. Dr. Mead's Library. 39 vested largely in the earlier sale of books. In- deed, his chief reference to these consists in an expression to the younger Bentley of heartfelt relief that he had not been successful in securing the folio ' Prospects of Audley End ' (Lord Braybrooke's seat in Essex), by Henry Win- stanley of the Eddystone, for which he had given a commission of two or three guineas, whereas it was run up, apparently under some misapprehension, to no less than jQ^o. But Dibdin, who possessed one of the half dozen large paper catalogues, ' uncut and priced,' men- tions a few of the rarer items. Of these there were, on vellum, copies of the ' Spira Virgil ' of 1470 ; of the first Aldine ' Petrarch ' of 1501 ; of Melchior Pfintzing's ' Tewrdannckh,' ' pul- cherrimis tabulis ab Alberto Durer [Hans Schaufflein?] lignoincisisornatum,' 15 27 [15 17?]; and of Sebastian Brandt's ' Stultifera Navis,' 1498. Other volumes specified by Dibdin are the Abb6 d'Olivet's ' Cicero,' 1741-42, 9 vols. 4to, ' charta maxima, foliis deauratis,' bought by Askew for fourteen guineas ; the first edition of the ' Historia Naturalis' of Pliny the Elder, 1469, which found a purchaser in the King of France at eleven guineas ; and another edition of the same book by Jenson, 1472, with illumin- ated initials, which fell, for eighteen guineas, to 40 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. a bookseller named Willock. This, however, must have been but a merely superficial sam- pling of Mead's treasures. The number of edi- tions of the classics, — of Horace, "Virgil, and Cicero especially, was extraordinary, and many of these were of the utmost interest. ' The French books,' says Dibdin again, ' and all the books upon the Fine Arts were of the first rarity and value, arid bound in a sumptuous manner.' There were also a large number of MSS. in dif- ferent languages, and of books with autograph marginalia by Scaliger, Casaubon, Wotton, Wren, Hearne, and Mead himself. Of some previous book collectors, who were also authors, it has been observed that they seemed culpably indifferent to what my Lord Foppington, in ' The Relapse,' styles ' the natural ' sprauts ' of their own brains. Dr. Mead must have been wholly exempt from this infirmity. Few, if any of his productions, one would think, were absent from his shelves, for the majority of them appear in the Catalogue, with all the indications of that most favoured treatment which are conveyed by luxury of margin, gilt edges, and Turkey leather. Mead ' De imperio Soils ac Lunaa,' 1704; Mead ' De Peste,' 1720 (his best book) ; Mead ' De Variolis et Morbillis,' 1747 ; Mead, ' Medica Sacra,' 1749 ; Mead, Dr. Mead's Library. 41 ' Monita et Prsecepta Medica,' 175 1 — all these occur, not once but often, and in Latin as well as in English versions. There are also many books which like the ' Medicinal Dictionary' of Dr. James were inscribed or presented to him ' as a man ' (in Warburton's words) ' to whom all people that pretend to letters ought to pay their tribute ; ' and there are others which owe their very existence entirely to his fostering and munificent care. One of these last is the works of Roger Bacon by Dr. Samuel Jebb, which came out in 1733 ; another is the /o/io edition of De Thou's ' Historia sui Temporis ' in seven vols., upon which he employed at first Thomas Carte, and then Buckley. ' A finer edition of a valuable historian,' says Dibdin, ' has never seen the light.' He was also, to all appearances, a liberal subscriber to large paper copies, which abound in the record, and he often took more than one. In the case of his friend John Ward's ' Lives of the Professors of Gresham College,' he is down for no less than five. It is possible, however, that this particular prodigality was due to an adroit compliment supposed to be paid to him by the author in one of George Vertue's plates. In 1719 Mead had been provoked into a duel with a professional rival. Woodward of the Fossils, and had proved, by overpowering 42 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. his antagonist, that his sword was no mere deco- rative appendage. Woodward on his part had not come off badly, for on being bidden to beg for his life, he is alleged to have replied defiantly, ' Never — until I am your patient ! ' But Wood- ward had long been dead when Ward's /o/io was published in 1740, and the physical victory, which remained with Mead, was supposed to be indirectly commemorated at p. 33 by a pair of tiny figures in front of the Gate into the Stable Yard at Gresham College (said to be the scene of the incident), one of whom kneels and presents his weapon to the other. The natural limits of this paper would be far exceeded by any detailed attempt to give an ac- count of Mead's ten thousand volumes. As might be anticipated, his collection was espe- cially rich in medical works of all kinds. Next to these come the classics, of which, over and above the special rarities already mentioned, there is an unusual show of first editions, includ- ing, of course, the Homer of Demetrius Chal- condylas. Theologkj, Topography, Archaeology, History, Law, Voyages, and Travels are all abundantly represented. Nor are Belles Lettres neglected, except, it may "be, in the item of Fiction, of which, as regards England at least, the solitary specimen is ' Tom Jones.' But there Dr. Mead's Library. 43 are all the 'Ana ' from Scaligerto Poggio ; there are all the Essayists in large paper from the ' Tatler ' to the ' Craftsman,' including even the vamped-up volumes of ' Original and Genuine Letters sent to the Tatler and. Spectator,' which Charles Lillie, the perfumer, issued in 1725. There are early editions of Froissart and Mons- trelet, and of Montaigne ; there is the extremely rare little ' Pens6es de M. Pascal' of 1670; there is Perrault's ' Les Hommes Illustres,' 1696-1700,^ there is an ' Eikon Basilike' of 1 649 ; a Surrey's ' Songes and Sonnets ' of 1585. Of Shakespeare we can only trace a second folio ; but there is a Skelton of 1562, a ' Faerie Queene ' of 1 596, a ' Colin Clout 's come home again ' of 1 595 ! there are Earle's ' Microcosmo- graphy,' and Coryat's ' Crudities,' and Maunde- vile's ' Travels ' ; there is Raleigh's ' History of the World ' ; there is Guicciardini, whose long drawn War of Pisa the hapless convict in Ma- caulay found even more unbearable than the ' In which, let us hope, Dr. Mead had duly noted M. Perrault's judicious reprehension of Moliere: 'II n'a p1^ trop mal-traitter les Charlatans & les ignorants Mede- cins, mats il devoit en demeurer \k, & ne pas tourner en ridicule les bons Medecins, que I'Ecriture mesme nous enjoint d'honorer' (vol. i., p. 80). The Mead copy sold for £2 sj., which was cheap, especially if it contained the suppressed portraits of Arnauld and Pascal. 44 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. galleys ; * there is Sanchoniathon, who almost inevitably suggests in his train the ' Manetho, Berosus, and Ocellus Lucanus,' with whose sonorous names, at Welbridge Fair, the in- genious Mr. Ephraim Jenkinson cajoled the ingenuous Dr. Primrose. After so much gravity, the last items have perhaps an undue air of flippancy. But they serve to remind us in closing, as do not a few titles in Mr. Baker's list, of those books which, unread to-day, save by the antiquary or biblio- grapher, nevertheless survive vaguely in the memory by their association with other books. Here, for instance, at p. 122, is Capt. George Shelvocke's ' Voyage round the World by the Way of the Great South Sea,' etc., London, 1726, 8vo. Who now reads Shelvocke } Yet, according to Bishop Wordsworth's 'Memoirs' of his uncle (1851, i. 107), out of Shelvocke's pages, between ' the streights of le Mair,' and the coast of Chili, flew that historical ' disconso- late black Albitross,' which plays so essential a 1 Guicciardini's circumstantial prolixity must have been a common jest. Boccalini makes the reading of him the punishment of a copious Spartan [perhaps this is the origin of Macaulay's anecdote] ; and Steele quotes Donne as saying (' Sermons,' ii. 239), that if he had written the History of the Creation, the world itself would not have held his work. Dr. Mead's Library. 45 part in Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner.' ' I had been reading,' says W. W., ' in Shelvocke's Voyages, a day or two before, that, while doub- ling Cape Horn, they frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings twelve or thirteen feet. " Suppose," said I, " you represent him [Coleridge's ' Old Navigator,' as he was called at first] as having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime." ^ The incident was thought fit for the purpose, and adopted accordingly.' Here again, at p. 134, is Richard Ligon, Gent., his ' Trve & Exact History of the Island of Barba- does,' not the first edition, but the folio of 1673,* whence Steele elaborated that touching story of the heartless Inkle and the beautiful Yarico which figures in No. 11 of the ' Spectator,' and which the younger Colman turned into an opera. ' I was the other Day,' says Steele, ' amusing my self with Ligon s Account of Barbadoes [his 1 Wordsworth does not say, and perhaps forgot, that the shooting of the Albatross is also in Shelvocke. Hatley, the second Captain, a melancholy, superstitious man, killed it in hopes that its death would bring a fair wind. 2 The copy in the British Museum belonged to Sir Hans Sloane, and bears his autograph. 46 Eighteenth Century yignettes. own first wife, it will be remembered, had been a Barbadia'n heiress] ; and ... I will give you (as it dwells upon my Memory) out of that honest Traveller, in his fifty fifth Page, the His- tory of Inkh and Yarico.'' Mead had also Lord Molesworth's ' Account of Denmark as it was in the Year 1692,' a passage from which is thought to have prompted another ' owre true tale' in ' Tatler,' No. 94 — the story of Clarinda and Chloe. Both love Philander : Philander loves Chloe. The ladies go in masks with Philander to the theatre ; a fire breaks out ; Philander saves Clarinda first by mistake, but returns to die with Chloe. The situation is highly dramatic, and Steele depicts it sympathet- ically. Other books in the Catalogue are equally suggestive. Who, for instance, can come upon the quarto numbered 912, the ' Institvtiones ac Meditationes in Graecam Lingvam ' of the learned Nicolaus Clenardus, Frankfort, 1588, without thinking instantly of Johnson ? ' Why, Sir,' — he seems to ask sonorously of Langton, — ' who is there in this town who knows any thing of Clenardus but you and I ? ' — an inquiry which he might probably repeat to-day with even less chance of contradiction. * And so one goes 1 Matthew Prior the poet — it may be noted — must have known something of this particular scholiast, for one Dr. Mead's Library. 47 down the list. Baptista Porta ' De Humana Physiognomonia,' Vice Equense, fol. 1586. Is not this the Porta of Addison (' Spectator,' No. 86) and Gay's ' Dog and Fox ' ? — ' Sagacious Porta's skill could trace Some beast or bird in ev'ry face/ — a feat, by the by, which was also performed by the late Charles H. Bennett. And Quincy's ' College Dispensatory ' ? • Questionless ' (as Mrs. Charlotte Lenox would say), this must be an ' early state ' of that very manual from which, in ' She Stoops to Conquer,' maternal Mrs. Hardcastle was wont to physic her hopeful Tony Lumpkin. ' I have gone through every receipt in the complete huswife ten times over,' he com- plains ; ' and you have thoughts of coursing me through " Quincy " next spring.' Then there is TurnbuU on ' Ancient Painting,' large paper. Alas ! all its large paper could not save it from being wheeled, in Hogarth's print of Beer Street, to ' Mr. Pastem,' the Trunk Maker in Paul's Church Yard, cheek by jowl with Hill on the of his unpublished MSS. at Longleat (Wilts.) is entitled 'Dialogue between Charles the Emperor and Clenardus the Grammarian ' (' Hist. MSS. Comm.', 3rd Rept., App., p. 194). But he can scarcely have been familiar to Bos- well, who, in his first edition, calls him Cl/nardus. 48 Eighteenth Century yignettes. ' Royal Society,' and Lauder on ' Milton,' both of which also had hospitable harbourage on the shelves at Great Ormond Street. The list is one that might easily be extended ; but we have room for only two books more, endeared to us by their connection with Thomas Bewick. It was from Francis Barlow's folio ' jEsop ' that (through Croxall) Bewick borrowed the compositions of many of the ' Select Fables ' of 1784 ; and it was in Pierre Belon's, ' Histoire de la Nature des Oyseaux' (' Belon's very old book,' he calls it), Paris, 'In Pingui Gallina,' 1555, that he made some of the preliminary studies for his ' Land and Water Birds,' — masterpieces which assuredly, had they been published fifty years earlier, would have found an honoured place in the ' Bibliotheca Meadiana.' Under a glass case in the Library of the Col- lege of Physicians is the famous gold-headed and crutch-handled cane which, belonging orig- inally to Dr. RadcIifFe, passed in turn to Drs. Mead, Askew, Pitcairn, and Bailiie, and was ultimately presented to the College by Baillie's widow. Its chronicles, recorded first by Dr. Macmichael, sometime Registrar of that Institu- tion, have been excellently edited and continued by his successor. Dr. Munk, from whose pages some of the data for the foregoing paper have Dr. Mead's Library. 49 been derived. In the Censor's Room is another memorial of Mead in the shape of his bust by Roubillac, — a memorial which we owe to the pious care of the Doctor's friend and disciple Askew. Whether it was executed during Mead's lifetime is not quite clear ; but as Roubillac died in 1762, it must certainly have been executed while the memory of his face and features was still fresh in the minds of many of his contem- poraries — to say nothing of the fact that, as in the case of Newton, the sculptor may have worked from a death-mask. Moreover, as far back as 1740, Mead had been painted by Allan Ramsay in a portrait which is now in the National Portrait Gallery, and might well have formed the basis of a bust, even of a later date. But however this may be, there is ample testi- mony to the fact that the somewhat bent and dignified personage in the furred ' night-gown ' and silk cap, with the protruded under-lip which characterises so many eighteenth-century pre- sentments (Fielding's, Gray's Macklin's, for instance), faithfully depicts the Mead of 1750 or thereabouts. ' I,' said the ornithologist Edwards, ' who was as well acquainted with his face as any man living, do pronounce this bust of him to be so like that so often as I see it my mind is filled with the strongest idea of the 4 so Eighteenth Century Fignettes. original.' Dr. Askew, for whom it was carved, gave, if possible, even more unhesitating proof of his approval, since, having agreed with Rou- billac for jQS^, he was so pleased with the result of his labours, that he paid him ;£'ioo. But here ensues a less intelligible part of the story. Rou- billac, it is alleged, was still dissatisfied, and handed in a supplementary account ior jQQ 2S., which Askew discharged, shillings included, afterwards ' enclosing the receipt to Hogarth to produce [apparently as a curiosity in extortion] at the next meeting of artists.' This is one of those imperfect and tantalising anecdotes upon which the discreet critic can only postpone judg- ment indefinitely — ' pending the production of further evidence.' Addison. GROSLEY'S 'LONDRES.' ' A N Englishman has sense without wit : a •^^ Frenchman has wit without sense.' Such, at least, is a definition suggested in that lively little comedy, ' Le Fran9ais k Londres.' By combining these qualities on either side, the author, M. Louis de Boissy, creates two highly respectable characters ; and it is upon the Fran- gais raisonnable of the piece, M. le Baron de Polinville, that its Anglais poll — who rejoices in the Hugo-like name of ' Milord CrafF' — be- stows his desirable daughter Eliante. But there are two others of M. de Boissy's dramatis per- sonam who correspond more exactly to the tra- ditional natives of France and England, to wit, the Baron's cousin, the Marquis de Polinville, and the English merchant, Jacques Rosbif. The Marquis is a vainglorious, vivacious, and rather amusing coxcomb ; the Englishman, on the con- trary, taciturn, phlegmatic, and boorish, is a true blood-relation of that other historic ' Jean Rosbif, ficuyer, Qui se pendit pour se desennuyer.' 52 Eighteenth Century yignettes. Both, of necessity, would be somewhat exag- gerated for stage purposes ; but while the Mar- quis is a conceivable portrait, the other is a caricature. Not the less he represents — with far greater fidelity than ' Milord Craff,' whose nationality is the No-Man's-Land of the foot- lights — what, about 1727 (the date of ' Le Franfais k Londres '), was the received French notion of the average inhabitant of this perfidi- ous realm ; that is to say, he represents a per- sonality of whose domestic environment the generally untravelled Parisian knew literally nothing. Up to the date quoted, indeed, there had been but two recognized books by French- men professing to describe England from actual inspection — the ' Relation d'un Voyage en Angleterre ' of the Sieur Samuel de SorbiSres, upon certain misstatements in which Thomas Sprat had angrily ' observed' in 1665,^ and the ' Lettres sur les Anglais' of Muralt, translated in 1726. After these came, in 17541 ^^^ famous ' Lettres Philosophiques ' of Voltaire, to whom followed, at a respectful distance, the Abb6 Le Blanc, who (like his accomplished predecessor) ^ Under the title of 'A Journey to England in the Year 1663,' the volume of M. de Sorbieres has been made the subject of an interesting article by M.Jusserand (' English Essays from a French Pen," 1895, PP- 158-192). Grosley's ' Londres.' 53 had for some time resided in this country. But none of these books — and certainly not that of Sorbi^res — could be said to be wholly free from those ' strokes of national rancour and antipathy,' which are begotten of imperfect knowledge and long conflict by sea and land ; and it was not until the opening and the close of the ' Seven Years' War' that France succeeded in really learning something authoritative of English habits and customs. In 1758 was translated and issued at the Hague Dr. John Brown's once popular ' Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times ' — 'the inestimable estimate of Brown,' as Cowper ironically calls it ; — and at the be- ginning of 1765 M. Pierre Jean Grosley made that brief excursion to these shores which served him for the basis of his ' Londres ' — a work which one of the critics of his nation has de- scribed as the first livre d'ensemble composed by a Frenchman upon the English. Before proceeding to M. Grosley's pages let us present M. Grosley himself. Born in 1718, at Troyes in Champagne, he was by profession an advocate. But the acquisition of a compe- tence in early life left him free to devote himself in great measure to travel, to antiquarian studies, and to the cultivation of a kind of Rabelaisian humour, which — like the cheerfulness of the 54 Eighteenth Century yignettes. philosopher in Boswell — was always asserting itself at unseasonable moments. His incor- rigible habit of throwing the reins upon his very vagrant fancy, without regard to the nature of his theme, made it impracticable (says M.Dacier, the author of his ' 6loge ') to find a place in the plain-sailing Proceedings of the Acadimie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, which numbered him in its ranks, for any of his half-learned, half- burlesque ' M^moires.' These disqualifications for gravity, nevertheless, did not prevent him from producing a good many works, among which his ' Eph6m6ridesTroyennes ' and 'Trav- els in Italy ' are reckoned the most noteworthy. His personal appearance must have been fully in keeping with his other peculiarities, and had Smollett not been broad, would probably have attracted the attention of the creator of Lisma- hago and Captain Weazel. Above the ordinary height, and withal exceptionally dry, lean and bony of make, his figure was surmounted by a head too small for his body, out of which head looked, under bushy brows, a pair of green and deep-set, but very bright and penetrating eyes. He had a long -neck, and a complexion of so preternatural a pallor that even he himself de- scribed it with grim humour as a visage d'extrime- cnction; while without being positively, like Grosley's ' Londres.' 55 Macbeth's witches, ' wild in his attire,' his cos- tume (at such times as it was not merely old- fashioned) must have been undeniably, and of set purpose, eccentric. He carried his contempt of conventionality so far as to perambulate his native town in night-cap, dressing-gown, and slippers — varying this in later years by a sort of loose surtout of red camlet, lined with cat- skins, which came down to his heels, and in which he must have closely resembled the pan- taloon of Italian comedy. Indeed, it is asserted that he had adapted this garment from a picture of St. Pantaleon in the church of that saint at Troyes. Although scholarly, and particularly well versed in law and in Greek and Latin authors, he was (like Sorbi6res) wholly ignorant of English ; but, upon the precedent of Panurge, who contended that he heard better when he had taken to spectacles, M. Grosley affirms that his inability to understand our tongue did but enhance and intensify his native acuteness of vision. He describes, he says, what he actually saw, after the manner of Herodotus ; and it is with what he saw, and not with what he sub- sequently ' read up ' in his study at Troyes, that our paper is concerned. Transivi ut viderem sapieniiam, erroresque &' stultUiam, says the motto from the Vulgate to S6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. this traveller's title-page. Upon such an errand, one would think, it was unnecessary to cross the Channel ; and, in any case, in eight weeks, he could scarcely hope to exhaust the subject. Yet in eight weeks much may come to pass ; and M. Grosley was fortunate in happening upon an unusually eventful time. Already King George III. had been attacked by the first of those mysterious illnesses which ultimately in- capacitated him as a practising monarch, and to this, during M. Grosley's sojourn among us, was to follow the second Regency Bill, with all its anti-Bute plotting and counter-plotting. Then Lord Byron had killed his cousin Mr. Chaworth of Nottinghamshire in a quarrel at the ' Star and Garter' in Pall Mall; and the galleries had already been erected for his lordship's trial by his peers in Westminster Hall. Moreover, the Spitalfields weavers were to make new demon- strations against the clandestine importation of French silks, marching in their thousands, under black banners, to St. James's and the House of Lords, and actually beleaguering, in his Blooms- bury mansion, his august Grace the Duke of Bedford, who had thrown out a Bill for their relief. It is true that at this date some notable and notorious personages were unavoidably ab- sent from London. Mr. Laurence Sterne, for Grostey's ' Londres.' 57 instance, who had not long published Vols. VII. and Vin. of his 'Tristram Shandy,' was at the Bath, and Mr. Garrick was at Paris — whence, however, he was on the point of returning, heralding his advent, more suo, by his own anonymous fable of the ' Sick Monkey.' Mr. Whitefield was still in America ; Mr. John Wilkes was luxuriating at Naples ; and Miss ' Iphigenia ' Chudleigh had betaken herself to the German Waters. On the other hand, there were rumours that Rousseau was coming to England, and (perhaps) the Duke de Nivernais ; while if Roscius was not rejoicing his admirers at Drury Lane, Foote would soon be delighting the devotees of broad-grin at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. At Vauxhall and Ranelagh, the season was approaching ; and the exhibition of the Society of Artists • at the Great Room in Spring Garden ' was on the point of opening. Besides all this, M. Grosley would find indica- tions in England of some of those things he had left behind him. There was, in the first place, that ' fugacious ' monster, the Wild Beast of the G^vaudan, whose carcase, a few months later, Horace Walpole would inspect in the Queen's ante-chamber at Versailles, exhibited by two chasseurs ' with as much parade as if it was Mr. Pitt,' but which was now still 'on the rampage,' 58 Eighteenth Century yignettes. being carefully followed in its career of crime by the St. James's Chronicle.' There was a very pretty quarrel between the French Ambassador, the Count de Guerchy, and M. D'fion de Beau- mont, who not only (in his correspondence) compared his Excellency to the Beast aforesaid, but, maintained that M. de Guerchy had procured a certain lean and impecunious Treyssac de Vergy to attempt his (D'^on's) life ; — and the popular voice in England was on the side of M. D'fion.^ Lastly, there was M. Buyrette de Belloy's tragedy of the ' Si^ge de Calais,' which, with its anti-English spirit, was at the height of its vogue when Grosley left the French capital, and was naturally attracting the attention of the London prints. The great ' M. Garrique ' — 1 Of this M. Grosley himself gives an instance. At one of the exhibitions was a slightly-worked portrait of De Guerchy by Michael Vanloo, first painter to the King of Spain. Above it was ostentatiously hung a magnifi- cent fuU-length of D'Eon in his uniform as a captain of dragoons, a richly-laced hat pulled fiercely over his eyes, one hand upon his sword hilt with the air of a swash- buckler (' ifun air de matamore '), and the other opening a copy of his recently published ' Memoires ' (1764). ' I never passed before the two pieces,' says the author of ' Londres,' ' but all the English present, men and women, were so kind as to let me know, that the large figure represented the chevalier d'Eon, and the little one was the portrait of the French Ambassador.' Grosley's ' Londres.' 59 it was rumoured from the ' Brussels Gazette ' — contemplated its transfer to Drury Lane, and an English version was, as a matter of fact, actually prepared by Robert Lloyd's friend, Charles Denis. But there is no record that this version was ever placed upon the boards. Owing to the popularity of M. de Belloy's play — M. Grosley tells us — he decided at first to start for England from Calais. He was, how- ever, ultimately persuaded by friends to embark from Boulogne, at which place only a few months earlier (and probably in the Rue Neuve Chaus- s6e), Churchill had breathed his last. But M. Grosley knew nothing of Churchill, although, before leaving Boulogne, he paid his respects to the burial-place of Lesage.* He set sail on April II, in the sloop of a Captain Meriton whose vocation it was to carry French clarets in bottle to Dover and London. The passage was a stormy one ; yet, ' fortified by that resignation ' In a cemetery in the Upper Town, which once occu- pied the site of the Petit Seminaire, Rue de Lille. With the Revolution the cemeteries were moved outside the city, and it is not now known where lie the bones of the author of 'Gil-Bias.' He died 17 November, 1747, in his eightieth year, at No. 3, Rue du ChSteau, the residence of his second son, Julien-Fran9ois, who was a Canon of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. A black marble slab was placed over the door In 1820 by the Socidte d' Agriculture. 6o EighUinth Century Vignettes. to Death which ought to be the first travelling requisite of all who undertake voyages of curi- osity,' M. Grosley fared better than most of his fellow-passengers. Two of these were an Eng- lishwoman and her ' very amiable daughter,' residents at Boulogne, who, in concert with ' a tall old Irishman, passing as an officer' (one wonders if his name was Costigan 1), seem to have contrived that their French companion should defray a materia! part of their passage money. At Dover, where they presently ar- rived, M.. Grosley was struck (like Pastor Moritz) with the towering and barbaric inn- signs. He was also impressed with the dapper postilions of the post-chaises ; and he proceeded without delay to experiment on the grilled bifteks Oi the country. He could see, he says, no trace of any place of worship — a statement which his English translator very properly de- clines to reproduce. As Dover swarrtied with travellers, chiefly French, the standing order as to Sunday traffic was suspended, and M. Grosley set out for London in a ' Flying Machine.' One advantage of this Sunday journeying was that, except where they dangled from gibbets at the wayside, 'dressed from head to foot, and with wigs on their heads,' nothing was seen of any of the dreaded ' Gentlemen of the Road.' Groslefs ' Londres.' 6i On tlie other hand, the absence of Custom House vigilance afforded a favourable opportu- nity for the delivery by the coach at the different hostelries of a good deal of contraband brandy. At Canterbury M. Grosley was shown the ' Red Lion,' where (as already narrated in an earlier paper*) the Duke de Nivemais had been fleeced three years before ; and, like Nivemais, he ad- mired on his drive from Rochester the full-flowing river, and the riante verdure of the rich Kent landscape. At sundown, when the lamps were already lighted on Westminster Bridge, he found himself rolling into London. With his arrival in the metropolis, where he at once settled himself in lodgings near the con- genial quarter of Leicester Fields, M. Grosley ceases to narrate his experiences in the order of their occurrence, but distributes his impressions under such general headings as ' The People,' ' Public Diversions,' ' The Polite Arts,' and so forth. For a stranger who held that no one but a fool meddles with foreign tongues after forty, and the sum total of whose two months' conversational achievements in England was con- fined to ' very good ' and ' very wel,' judiciously placed, it might be supposed that his difBculties 1 ' Nivemais in England,' in ' Eighteenth Century Vignettes,' 1894, pp. 107-137. 62 Eighteenth Century l^ignettes, would be almost unsurmountable. But in reality they were less than they looked. His landlord, M. Martin, was a Frenchman, in whose house both French and English were spoken ; and M. Grosley had introductions to many persons of rank and education, who, like Lord Temple and Lord Chesterfield, possessed his own language to perfection, in addition to this, most of his mornings were spent in long questionings and cross-questionings of that ' Marcellus of Scot- land' (as Boswell calls him), and friend of Sterne, Sir James Macdonald, whose unusual linguistic gifts and scholarly attainments were so speedily to be buried in a premature grave at Rome.* It is probable, indeed, that Grosley's book owes considerably more to Sir James than is covered by its grateful acknowledgments. He also refers repeatedly to the extreme civility and kindness with which he was everywhere treated by the upper and middle classes, particu- larly the citizens and shopkeepers. It is of the lower orders alone that his report is unfavour- able. The people disliked the Peace ; and — as M. Grosley found to his cost — they detested and insulted all foreigners. ' My French air,' ^ Even Walpole, who met him at Paris a few months later, testifies to the gifts of this ' very extraordinary young man.' He died in 1766. Grosley's ' Londres.' 63 he says, ' drew upon me, at the corner of every street, a volley of abusive litanies, in the midst of which I slipped on, thanking my stars that I did not understand English.' Still, as he seems to have circulated freely among all sorts and conditions of chairmen, porters, and Chelsea watermen — not to mention the disaffected Spitalfields weavers already referred to — and to have even escaped a playful mob in Seven Dials who had been baulked in their desire to pelt a gentleman in the pillory with dead dogs and rotten eggs, he cannot be said to have been exceptionally unfortunate. His servant, how- ever, who was ill advised enough to go to Ty- burn on ' Execution Day,' was not so lucky. Returning with the crowd down Oxford Road, he was mobbed and maltreated. Jack Ketch himself (who figures in M. Grosley's pages as ' Sir Jaquett, mattre des hautes-oeuvres ') taking joyous part in the game. He was finally rescued, half-dead and utterly demoralized, by three grenadiers of the French Guard (deserters), who, making a successful sortie from an ale- house, brought him off in safety.* 1 The victory was not always with the popular side. In 1763, M- de la Condamine, assailed in the streets of London by opprobrious reflections on his parentage, turned the tables adroitly on his tormentors by replying in broken 64 Eighteenth Century yignettes. M. Grosley does not, as he might, include this incident under his chapter of ' Public Diver- sions.' But it is part of his erratic method that, his headings often relate to the subjects treated, as remotely as the titles of his favourite Mon- taigne do to the matter of the ' Essays.' His ' Public Diversions ' discourses among other things, of pickpockets and thieves, but his de- scription of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, both of which he visited, comes in the section headed ' Clubs.' The account he gives of the two gardens differs little from that contained in the guide-books. But it adds one more testimony to the beauty of the coup d'ceil at Ranelagh, when the lighted Rotunda was filled with com- pany, and ' music arose with its voluptuous swell.' In Vauxhall he testifies to the merit of Hayman's four great pictures of English Con- quest, though, as might perhaps be expected, somewhat grudgingly. ' The national antipathy of the English to the French (he observes) seems English : ' Have a care, my friends, my mother was an Englishwoman.' Upon another occasion, the famous Maurice de Saxe, a man of great physical strength, being challenged to fight by a scavenger, craftily permitted his opponent to come on, and then, to the delight of the spectators, dexterously tilted him into his own mud cart, much as — in ' Our Mutual Friend' — the artful Sloppy disposes of Mr. Sil:vs Wegg. Grosley's ' Londres.' 65 to have raised the imagination and the hand of the painter above what the pencil of an English- man is capable of producing ; ' and he goes on, with perfect justice, to lay this species of pictorial insult to foreign nations at the door of Louis XIV., by which he must be understood to refer to those boastful battle-pieces of Le Brun which prompted the patriotic mot of Prior.^ As re- gards the Stage he can hardly be expected to say much, since the plays he went to, though no doubt submitted oculis fidelibus, could not be considered as confided acutis auribus. There is an instance of this in his report of a visit to the Little Theatre in the Haymarket. He says he saw Foote, and he describes minutely what he saw, namely : ' an actor behind a kind of counter, surrounded by wig-blocks, wigs, hats, and wo- men's headdresses, who, making his own head and periwig part of the Farce, took off all nations, all conditions, and all states of life in a series of laughable dialogues — the whole con- stituting a species of Encyclopidie perruqui&re in action.' Unhappily, though the Haymarket was unquestionably Foote's theatre, it was not ' M. Fout ' (as he writes him) whom M. Grosley be- held on this occasion, but that eccentric strolling pkyer and vocalist, George Alexander Stevens, 1 See ' Matthew Prior,' in this volume. 5 66 Eighteenth Century yignettes. whose once popular ' Lecture on Heads ' began its long vogue at Foote's house. At Drury Lane and Covent Garden, M. Grosley was im- pressed (like Addison and M. Rapin before him) by the very inhuman and bloodthirsty character of the tragedies of the author he calls ' Sakhe- sp6ar.' ' Whatever the most brutal cruelty or the most refined wickedness can conceive, is presented to view,' he says ; and he goes on to relate that his landlord's son, a boy about nine or ten, had grievously alarmed the house- hold at Leicester Fields by going into nightly convulsions after being taken to see ' Gentle- man ' Smith in ' Richard III.' But he confesses that the affecting situations were rendered with so much power that they moved him to tears. Lord Chesterfield seems to have done his best to remove this impression, by attributing it solely to his ignorance of English. If he had fully understood the speakers — said that cynical nobleman — the platitudes connected with the incidents would have destroyed all the charm of the action.^ Of our comedies, M. Grosley, in I Lord Chesterfield cared little for Shakespeare, and no doubt preferred the author of the ' Henriade.' At this date his lordship was over seventy. Writing to his son about the D'Eon and Guerchy quarrel, he says : — 'I see and hear these storms from shore, suave mart magno, etc. Grosleys ' Londres.' 67 common with other French critics, conceived a poor idea, regarding them as neglectful of the unities and needlessly involved in plot ; but as he must have assisted at pieces by Wycherley, Congreve, and Vanbrugh, we may perhaps, with Lord Chesterfield, lay something to his lack of our language. Where he is speaking of an adaptation from the French, however, he must be allowed a competent judge ; and it is possible that his criticisms upon the actor (one Dyer) who played the part of Oberon in Mrs. Gibber's version of ' L'Oracle ' of Saint-Foix, are not undeserved.^ ' Charmant ' [this is the name given to Oberon throughout the comedy by the heroine] ' was performed in this piece by a little I enjoy my own security and tranquillity, together with better health than I had reason to expect, at my age, and with my constitution: however, I feel a gradual decay, though a gentle one ; and I think that I shall not tumble, but slide gently to the bottom of the hill of life. When that will be, I neither know nor care, for I am very weary ' ('Letters,' April 22, 1765). ^ He says this was at Drury Lane. But it must have baen at Covent Garden, where ' The Oracle,' which, in 1 765, according to contemporary advertisements, had not been acted for twelve years, was produced for one night in May, following 'Richard III.,' 'the entire performance being for the benefit of Mr. Younger.' It does not seem to have been revived again during Grosley's stay in London. 68 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. man in an overcoat, frigid as marble, and who had no other way of expressing the tenderness and perplexity, which are the soul of the part, than by frequently biting the ends of his fingers.' Of the Italian Opera M. Grosley reports but little, though here he would obviously be no worse off than a native auditor. He heard, he tells us, at Covent Garden [King's Theatre in the Haymarket], the ' Ezio ' of Metastasio ; but he seems to have been entirely engrossed with the uncontrollable hilarity induced in two young Englishwomen near him by the ludicrous contrast between the soprano voice and the masculine physique of the leading singer.* As a connoisseur who decorated his birthplace of Troyes with busts of its local celebrities, M. Grosley might be expected to speak with some authority upon the state of the 'Polite 1 Among other disturbing insular customs, M. Grosley was much exercised by the little train-bearers [caudataires), in liveries that fitted them more or less, who rani about the stage to adjust the trailing robes of the heroines, as they were hurried to and fro by the tumult of their ficti- tious feelings. Fifty-four years earlier Addison had also commented upon this anomaly in much the same way : — ' It is, in my Opinion, a very odd Spectacle, to see a Queen venting her Passion in a disordered Motion, and a little Boy taking Care all the while that they do not rufile the Tail of her Gown ' (' Spectator,' April i8, 1711). Grosley's ' Londres.' 69 Arts ' in this country. Hogarth, of course, was dead when he came to Leicester Fields. But M. Grosley saw in Hampton House the famous Election Series now in the Soane IVluseum. He compares them to the worlt of the elder Breughel, calling them indeed * pure realism, but realism too crude and too truthful ' — a definition with which one can scarcely quarrel. But he is wrong in adding that Hogarth left them to Gar- rick by will, since Garrick bought them cheaply for 50 guineas apiece. It is more than a slip of the pen, again, to say that the ' Analysis of Beauty ' is based upon an obscure passage in Pliny; it derives from a saying of Michael Angelo. These, however, are trifles concerning which he might readily have been misled. He went, of course, to the Spring Garden exhibi- tion, where he saw a picture by ' M. Raynolds' representing ' une Ladi sacrifiant aux Graces.' He would probably have been more interested if he had known that the ' ladi ' in question had narrowly escaped wearing the crown of England — being indeed none other than that beautiful Lady Sarah Bunbury {nie Lenox), sister of the third Duke of Richmond, who, albeit Mrs. Thrale reports her more addicted to beefsteaks and cricket on the Steyne at Brighton than ' sacrificing to the Graces,' had nevertheless 70 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. aroused, in the susceptible breast of George III., a tendre which Time never wholly extinguished. M. Grosley also praises, as from the same brush, a portrait of the Marquis of Granby on horseback. But here, once again, he must have been at fault, for what he actually saw was Gainsborough's General Honeywood riding through the trees, which was not only a chief feature of the exhibition, but also one of the artist's finest works. He mentions no other painting, although ZofFany's ' Garrick in the " Provoked Wife"' (i. e. as Sir John Brute),i and the admirable ' Gladiator' of Joseph Wright of Derby might have been expected to appeal to him. On the other hand, he characterises Allan Ramsay, who was not an exhibitor, compactly in a footnote. ' II a fait,' he says, ' des portraits qui ont du colons, de I'expressionet du dessein. II 'est peintre du roi et homme trSs instruit.' This, for brevity and conciseness, is a pattern ' appreciation.' Sculpture in England, when M. Grosley visited us, was but in a languishing condition, being mainly monumental. Of the artists whose works he admired in Westminster Abbey, his com- patriot Roubillac was dead ; and Scheemakers and Rysbrack were no longer active. The 1 See pp. 13 and 27 of this volume. Grosley's ' Londres.' 71 leading native statuary at this date was Joseph Wilton, in whose studio he inspected the clay model of Wolfe's monument — a work which is regarded as the artist's masterpiece. He also saw in the same place, destined for erection at Cork, an unfinished figure of Pitt, soon to be Earl of Chatham. The only other sculptor's workshop he seems to have visited was that of the Hanoverian Moore, then engaged upon a statue, in Roman costume, of Lord Mayor Beckford, for whom Moore had also designed an elaborate mantelpiece, carved with death- scenes from the ' Iliad.' Of engraving on copper M. Grosley says nothing, although the shops must have been full of examples from the burins of Strange and Bartolozzi. But he was greatly interested by the boldness of the political carica- tures. One which particularly attracted him by its frank satire of the majesty of the law was manifestly the 'Bench' of Hogarth — memor- able also as being the last plate on which that artist worked. These popular prints were to be found chiefly in the shops near Westminster Hall, where on April 16 and 17, or only a few days after his arrival, he assisted at the trial, by the House of Peers in full Parliament assembled, of William, fifth Lord Byron, Baron Byron of Rochdale, for the murder of Mr. Chaworth. 72 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. Under the head of ' Criminal Jurisprudence' he gives a detailed description of this impressive ceremonial : the scarlet hangings of the Hall ; the peers marching two and two in their long red robes faced with ermine ; the peeresses with their jewels and elaborate toilettes ; the Lord High Steward (Robert Henley) with his white rod of office ; the Lord Chamberlain with his, ' but somewhat shorter ; ' the prisoner in his deep mourning, flanked by the serjeants-at-arms with their axes turned outwards ; and last, but not least, the little monkeys of schoolboys who munched apples on the steps of the throne itself, and tossed shreds of peel into the voluminous curls of the Rt. Hon. the Lord High Steward's periwig.* The result of the trial, as is known, was that Lord Byron — who in Westminster Hall simulated a contrition which he failed to maintain in after life — was found guilty of man- slaughter, pleaded his privilege as an hereditary legislator, and went away comfortably in a chair to his own house in Mortimer Street. Five days afterwards, M. Grosley saw him in his place in the House of Lords, taking part in the ^ From M. Grosley's account it might be supposed that these were Eton boys. But they were probably West- minster King's scholars, who had long-standing privileges of this kind. Grosley's 'Londres.' 73 debate on the Regency Bill. Through Lord Temple, M. Grosley had several opportunities of visiting the Upper House. He heard the King, whose voice he describes as ' sonorous, flexible, and persuasive ; ' he heard ' silver- tongued Murray ; ' he heard Lord Lyttleton, Lord Temple, Lord Pomfret, and the old Duke of Newcastle — the last, as he spoke, leaning familiarly with both hands ' on the shoulders of two young lords who sat in front of him on the second bench.' M. Grosley thought the elo- quence of the peers infinitely superior to the eloquence of the stage. In the Lower House, he was not fortunate enough to hear Pitt, who was at this time ailing and in retirement ; but he heard Beckford and George Grenville, neither of whom impressed him as distinguished. They stood up, he says, and addressed themselves to the Speaker's chair (the bureau du Spik — is M. Grosley's phrase), ' with legs apart, one knee bent, and one arm extended as if they were going to fence. They held forth for a long time, scarcely any one paying attention to what they said, except at such moments as the mem- bers of their party cried out in chorus, ya, ya.' Many of these last, he observes elsewhere, con- fined themselves to this monosyllabic contribu- tion to debate ; and he instances one gentleman 74 Eighteenth Century yignettes. who for twenty years had never but once made a speech, and that was to move that a broken window at the back of his seat might be mended without loss of time. M. Grosley omits the name of this laconic emulator of ' Singlespeech Hamilton,' but according to certain recently published records, he is to be identified with James Ferguson of Pitfour, afterwards Member for Aberdeenshire. De- spite his taciturnity in the House, ' old Pitty,' as he was called, was a noted humourist, who is credited with the probably earlier state- ment (not long since revived in ' Punch ') that ' he had heard many speeches which changed his opinion but never one that changed his vote.' 1 From that comfortable club, the House of Commons, one naturally turns to M. Grosley on clubs and coffee houses in general. But here he is scarcely as full as might be anticipated from such a gadabout, or rather he is more general than specific. Under this head he notes that the old pious salutation of any one who sneezed, which still prevailed in his own country, * ' Records of the Clan and Name of Fergusson, Fer- guson, and Fergus.' Edited for The Clan Fergus(s)on Society by James Ferguson and Robert Menzies Fergus- son. Edinburgh : David Douglas, 1S95. Grosley's ' Londres.' 75 had been abolished in England by the use of snufF. He was given to understand that to salute a snufF-taker in these circumstances was like complimenting him on the colour of the hair of his wig. That colour, by the way, he an- nounces in another place, was usually reddish- brown, being chosen as least affected by the mud and dirt of the streets. This ingenious explanation, like his statement that Pope was not buried at Westminster because he was a Roman Catholic, and that Queen Anne in St. Paul's Churchyard wears a hoop, seems to sug- gest that some of his obliging informants must occasionally, in eighteenth-century parlance, have treated M. Grosley to a 'bite.' But in saying that his chapter of clubs is disappointing, it must not be forgotten that he visited one very remarkable specimen of this all-popular Georgian institution — the society of ' Robin Hoodians,' at whose freethinking discussions Fielding pokes rather cumbrous fun in the ' Covent Garden Journal.' This curious de- bating association — of which M. Grosley was advised by Lord Chesterfield — held its sittings in Fielding's day at Essex Street, Strand. But M. Grosley locates it in Fleet Market, which his translator converts into Butcher Row. Wherever it was held in 1765, however, our 76 Eighteenth Century yignettes. Traveller attended a siance, paid his sixpence, consumed his mug of beer, and listened to the florid eloquence of the famous baker-president, which if it be true that both Burke and Henry Erskine were not ashamed to learn from his periods, must have been more than remark- able. Indeed, according to a pleasant anec- dote, he was not only oratorically but physi- cally impressive. Goldsmith, who went to the Robin Hoodians with Derrick of Bath, was completely overawed by the senatorial dignity of the chairman (this very baker), whom he thought Nature must at least have intended for a Lord Chancellor. ' No,' commented Derrick neatly, ' only for a Master of the Rolls: The Byron trial is one of the few incidents of his stay in England to which M. Grosley devotes anything like a sequent description, and even in this the episode of the schoolboys has somehow straggled into the section on ' English Melan- choly.' It is part of the author's rambling method that his personal experiences have to be picked out from the antiquarian ' padding ' with which he has overlaid them. But those who have the patience for such a sifting will find that they are gradually gaining a fair idea of the old dim-lighted London of the Georges, with its Grosley's ' LQndres.' 77 dirty streets and ancient watchmen (ouachmen). In the ' course continuelle ' of his brief sojourn, M. Grosley certainly contrived to see more than many of the oldest inhabitants manage to achieve in a lifetime. He visited Bedlam, and drank a ' dish of tea ' in the ' gayest and most noisy of all the Coteries he had seen,' a group of its female inmates ; he went to the races at Epsom, and dilates upon the love of the English for their horses ; he went to a cock-fight, which he re- garded as no better than child's play. He went to that ' nothing-plotting, nought-caballing, un- mischievous synod,' a Quakers' meeting, where he was fortunate enough 'to hear a speaker who reminded him of the Paris convulsionaries ; he went to Wesley's tabernacle at Moorfields ; he went also over Lindsey House, the home of the Moravian Society, concerning which, owing to some confusion of his recollections and his re- searches, he makes but a doubtful and an inac- curate report. He visited on several occasions the Royal Society, which elected him one of its foreign members ; he visited that younger but not less prosperous institution, the Society of Antiquaries. He travelled to Windsor, where he saw the Eton boys hugging a buxom shop- girl, and playing ' en chemise et en sueur' at an ' esp6ce de paume ' (cricket) ; he travelled to 78 Eighteenth Century yignettes. Lord Temple's seat at Stowe, to the grottoes, columns, pyramids, and triumphal arches of which he consecrates a grateful appendix ; he travelled to that ' Gothic Vatican of Greece and Rome,' Strawberry Hill, though apparently with- out making the acquaintance of its accomplished 'Abbot.'* Finally, although he did not see Garrick act at Drury Lane, he must have seen him act at home, for he managed to penetrate to the Villa at Hampton, where he was intro- duced to the Shakspearean temple and statue, concerning which latter he makes Roscius say : ' Je dois tout k Sakhesp6ar : si vivo &• valeo, suum est ; c'est un faible t^moignage d'une re- connaissance sans bornes.' Apart from the scrap of Latin, which was ' pretty Fanny's way,' the quotation is probably textual, as Mr. Garrick was fresh from the pleasant land of France, and would speak in M. Grosley's tongue. But, as we know, Mr. Garrick's ' reconnaissance sans bornes ' did not prevent him from driving an 1 Walpole, however, saw his book. ' I have read an account of Strawberry in a book called ' Londres ; ' in which my name is Robert, my house lives at Putney, the book-cases in the library are of inlaid woods, and I have not a window but is entirely of painted glass. This is called seeing and describing ' (' Letter to Mason,' May 4, 1776.) Grosleys ' Londres.' 79 exceedingly close bargain with the sculptor, Roubillac* M. Grosley's volumes deserve a larger exam- ination than has been given to them in this essay. But we must forego for the present his curious and ingenious theories as to what Dr. Cheyne calls the ' English Malady' of the spleen, to- gether with his proposed remedy, French light wines ; his doctrine of the causes of the national propensity to suicide, as evidenced by the skulls found in the bed of the Thames ; and his expla- nations and interpretations of a variety of things which, one is bound to allow, he treats in general with a bonhomie and an impartiality not often characteristic of his countrymen who deal with England and things English. When he got back to France (he returned as he came, by way of 1 See 'Little Roubillac' in 'Eighteenth Century Vignettes,' 1894, p. 91. This paragraph does not, of course, pretend to exhaust the list of M. Grosley's per- sonal experiences. Among other individuals he encoun- tered in London was the so-called ' French Poet,' M. du Halley Descazeaux, an eccentric of whom Mr. J. Eliot Hodgkin has recently given some account in ' Notes and Queries,' May 9, 1896. Descazeaux (who died in the Rules of the Fleet in February, 1775) at this time seems to have been living on ' proposals to print,' and laudatory verses to Lady Harrington, Nivernais, and others, some of which latter M. Grosley quotes in his first volume. 8o Eighteenth Century yignettes. Boulogne), he did not at once publish his im- pressions de voyage. He worked upon them during 1766 and 1767, supplementing his experi- ences ' by a study of the History of England in its sources, and by combining the information so acquired with the actual state of men, things, and places,' a praiseworthy piece of application which produced some remarkable results in the way of obscure erudition, besides having the additional effect of filling his page-feet with illus- trative quotations from the ancients. His book, ready for press in the latter year, was not act- ually issued until early in 1770, when it appeared at Lausanne (for Paris) in three volumes. Its success was so encouraging that it was promptly pirated at Neuchatel, ' with the notes of an Englishman,' who professed to correct its more glaring misconceptions. One or two of these gave grave offence. Garrick, in particular, was greatly irritated by the account of a riot at Drury Lane, which represented him in a ridicu- lous aspect; and M. de la Condamine also protested, politely but firmly, against certain inaccurate detairls connected with his own visit to this country two years before. In both in- stances Grosley made amende honorable to the complainants in the ' Journal Encyclopddique.' In 1772 his book was done into English by that Grosley's ' Londres.' 8i energetic translator, Dr. Thomas Nugent of the French Pocket Dictionary, who had already produced a version of the author's Italian travels. Dr, Nugent, who 'castigated' the text in some respects, might clearly — as shown in the course of this account — have ' castigated ' it still farther. In 1774, M. Grosley himself published, in four volumes, a new edition, ' revised, cor- rected, and considerably augmented,' one of the additions being a map of London. He died in November, 1785. Not long after his death appeared a curious ' life' by the Abb6 Maydieu, Canon of the Cathedral of Troyes, three parts of which are made up of a disorganized autobi- ography of Grosley's earlier years, entitled ' Comraentarii de vita mea.' His will, printed at full in 1810 with his 'Opuscules,' is charac- teristic. Pope speaks somewhere of those testators who ' Die, and endow a college, or a cat.' M. Grosley did not endow a college. But he left three thousand livres to a learned colleague who, he considered had cultivated letters ' with- out self-assertion, intrigue, or undue desire of profit.' And he endowed iivo cats, whom he styles his commensaux (mess-mates), with an annuity of twenty-four livres. Also, he left to 6 82 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. his maid two hundred livres for mourning, which he dispensed her from wearing. He gave orders that he was to be buried liite the poorest hos- pital patient, at the foot of the cross in the cem- etery where for sixty years had lain his morning walk. ' Qui m'aime, me suive ' — was the only injunction as to followers. •POLLY HONEYCOMBE.' ' IVyTADAM,' — says Sir Anthony Absolute, ■'■'■'■ commenting on those marble-covered, half-bound volumes ^ with which Mrs. Lucy in ' The Rivals ' was wont to supply Miss Lydia Languish, — ' Madam, a Circulating Library in a town is, as an evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge.' It is not uncharacteristic of Sheri- dan that something of the kind had been said before. Fifteen years earlier, the elder Colman had inaugurated his theatrical career with a one- act farce — or ' dramatick Novel,' as he calls it — the whole scheme of which is but Sir Anthony's aphorism ' writ large/ while its final moral — if moral there be — is much the same. ' A man,' says the heroine's father, ' might as well turn his Daughter loose in Covent-garden, as trust the ' They must have long survived the days of Sheridan. ' You still read books in marble cm'ers About smart girls and dapper lovers — ' writes Macaulay to his sister Hannah in 1833 (Trevelyan's ' Life,' ch. v.). 84 Eighteenth Century yignettes. cultivation of her mind to a Circulating Library.' Polly Honeycombe, the daughter in question, certainly justifies his Jeremiad. The child of steady-going tradesman parents, already middle- aged, but ' Still amorous, and fond, and billing. Like Philip and Mary on a Shilling.' this misguided young person dreams, after the fashion of Arabella in the ' Female Quixote,' of nothing but what she has learned from the leaves of Sir Anthony's pernicious perennial. But whereas Arabella is occupied exclusively by the impossible Clelias and Clidamiras of Scuddry and La Calprenfede, Polly Honeycombe seeks her ideals in the more modern and more human productions of Richardson and Fielding, and their imitators. ' A Novel (she declares) is the only thing to teach a girl life, and the way of the world, and elegant fancies, and love to the end of the chapter.' To which her Nurse, a repetition, in more than one characteristic, of a similar ancient gentlewoman in ' Romeo and Juliet,' replies that, indeed, her young mistress is ' always reading her simple story-books, — the Ventures of Jack this, and the history of Betsy t'other, and Sir Humphrys, and women with hard Christian names.' The result is that 'Polly Honeycombe.' 85 Miss Honeycombe knows the ' nature of a mas- querade as well as if she had been at twenty.' She flouts her father's chosen suitor, the moneyed and estimable Mr. Ledger, whom she asserts is ' ten times uglier than Solmes ' in ' Clarissa,' and she openly prefers the frivolous Mr. Scribble, who not only ' writes as well as Bob Lovelace,' but contrives to persuade her that she is a ' constellation ' of the blended beauties of Narcissa, Clementina, Sophy Wes- tern and all her most cherished heroines. As a consequence she informs the luckless Ledger that she considers him ' a vile book of arithme- tick,' and ' more tiresome than the multiplication table,' thereby pluming herself that she is out- topping Polly Barnes, Sophy Willis and sundry other self-respecting and high-minded young women of fiction in the gentle art of ' treating an odious fellow with spirit.' To these proceed- ings there can be but one issue, to wit, that, aided by her mother's regrettable weakness for the restorative cordials {lege strong waters) of Mr. Julep the apothecary, she elopes with Scribble, who turns out to be her Nurse's nephew, and a mere attorney's clerk from Grace- church Street, — a discovery which has no other effect upon his infatuated inamorata than to set her conjecturing that, like Fielding's Foundling, 86 Eighteenth Century yignettes. he may chance to be a gentleman's son and that, when they are married, they may go through ' as many distresses as Booth and Aimelia.' Of Ledger — who at this point judiciously cries off — even when she is brought back, she will have nothing. He is ' as deceitful as Blifil, as rude as the Harlowes, and as ugly as Doctor Slop,' who, by the way, had only recently made his first appearance in the early volumes of ' Tristram Shandy.' And so comes down the curtain upon that already-quoted outburst of her perplexed and exasperated father.^ With Yates as the paternal Honeycombe, and King as Scribble, and Churchill's ' lively Pope' — the Miss Pope who afterwards shed histrionic tears over Lady Di. Beauclerk's ' incomparable ' drawings to Walpole's ' Mysterious Mother' — in the part of Polly, the little piece must have gone admirably when, in December, 1760, it was produced by Garrick at Drury Lane. In- deed, in the Preface to the printed play, Colman specially acknowledges the kind reception which, in spite of an inconclusive dinoAment, the public had given to his work. Already, in his Pro- 1 This little satire against the novel — it may be noted — has its parallel — perhaps its first suggestion — in Arthur Murphy's 'Apprentice,' 1756, which is directed against the stage. 'Polly Honeycombe.' 87 logue, he had defined and described the class of Fiction at which he aimed. The Sorceress Romance with her distrest Maids ' on Milli- white Palfreys,' her Knights and Dwarfs, her Oroondates and Statira, had been killed by Cervantes. And now a younger sister had taken her place': — ' Less solemn is her air, her drift the same, And Novel her enchanting, charming. Name. Romance might strilte our grave Forefathers' pomp. But Novel for our Buck and lively Romp I Cassandra's Folios now no longer read. See, Two Neat Pocket Volumes in their stead I And then so sentimental is the Stile, So chaste, yet so bewitching all the while ! Plot, and elopement, |>assion, rape, and rapture, The total sum of ev'ry dear — dear — Chapter. 'Tis not alone the Small-Talk and the Smart, 'T is Novel most beguiles the Female Heart. Miss reads — she melts — she sighs — Love steals upon her — And then — Alas, poor Girl 1 — good night, poor Honour I ' To the Preface which preceded this Prologue, its author had added what, from a purely anti- quarian point of view, is now a valuable pibce justificative. It is an Extract, extending to some eight closely-printed columns of book-names, purporting to be transcribed by his own mother from a Circulating Library Catalogue which she 88 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. had found in the back-parlour of Mr. Lutestring the Cheapside silk-mercer, where it lay upon the table in company with certain dog's-eared copies of the first volume of the ' Adventures of Mr. Loveill,' the third volume of ' Betsy Thoughtless,' and the current annual issue of the scandalous and still-surviving ' New Atalantis.' It is, in short, a fairly exhaustive list of the pop- ular novels in circulation for the year 1760. The record thus presented, it must be owned, is scarcely a worshipful one, and the eye at once detects two or three titles that assuredly would not now be found at all in any reputable book- list. ' Rasselas,' which was just a year old in 1760, is conspicuous by its absence ; but ' Zadig; or. The Book of Fate ' is an obvious translation from Voltaire, as the ' Sopha ' is, no doubt, from the younger Crebillon. The ' Vicar of Wake- field ' had not yet been written ; but there are Fielding's three chief novels, several of Smollett's, and the ' Pamela,' ' Clarissa,' and ' Grandison ' of Richardson. There are also the ' David Simple ' and ' Countess of Dellwin ' of Sarah Fielding, together with the ' dramatick Fable ' called ' The Cry,' which she wrote in conjunc- tion with Jane Collier. There are the novels of Mrs. Lenox, — "Harriot Stuart,' 'Henrietta,' the ' Memoirs (from the French) of the Coun- 'Polly Honeycombe.' 89 tess of Berci.' Side by side with these are the spurious sequels and stupid rejoinders which had grown up round the worlc of the greater men — the ' History of Tom Jones in his Married State,' ' Anti-Pamela,' the ' True Anti-Pamela,' and so forth. There is the ' Marriage Act' of Dr.* John Shebbeare, which was prompted by Hogarth's ' Marriage 4-la-Mode ; ' and though no more than two volumes of ' Tristram Shandy ' had made their appearance, there is already a ' Life and Opinions of Miss Sukey Shandy, of Bow Street, Gentlewoman.' Of the numerous brood which may be said to have sprung from the Swift-cum-Addison ' Adventures of a Shil- ling ' in the ' Tatler,' there are the first instal- ment of Charles Johnstone's recently-published roman A clef, the ' Adventures of a Guinea (Chrysal),' and the Rev. Francis Coventry's ' Adventures of a Lap-Dog (Pompey the Little).' * There are Defoe's ' Colonel Jack ' and ' Roxana,' and there is the 'Stage-Coach;' there are the worthless and curious ' Memoirs of the Shake- speare's Head in Covent Garden,' and the 1 Another roman ], and the Markett Place.' They must have passed by the cherry orchards of Gad's Hill where the ' wild Prince ' robbed taverns ' perspective glasses ' were thoughtfully supplied to those who desired 'to enjoy the spectacle' (Hartshorne's 'Hanging in Chains/ 1891, p. 75). 138 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. ' fat Jack,' and where later lived the author of Edwin Drood.' At Rochester, which they reached at ten, they inspected the Bridge, the Cathedral of St. Andrew and the Castle, then less ruinous than now. In the latter they watched a little boy go down the well in the middle wall ' by [Small Holes Cut in the Sides wherein he plac'd his hands and Feet and soon return'd Safe bringing up with him a Young Daw he had taken out of a Nest there.' Tra- versing the High Street, they came, on the north side upon Richard Watts his Hospital ' for Releif of Six Travelling Persons by Enter- taining them with one Night's Lodging and giving to each fourpence in the Morning, pro- vided they are not Persons Contagiously Dis- eased, Rogues or proctors' [i.e., itinerant priests]!.* '^^^^ quaint and ancient charity, it will be remembered, Dickens, riot without com- ments on its defective modern administration, made the scene of the Christmas Number of ' Household Words ' for 1854, and the pretext 1 By an Act of the 22nd year of Henry VIII., cap. 12 [1530], all proctors or pardoners, going about without sufficient authority, were to be treated as vagabonds. A ' pardoner ' or seller of indulgences — it will be remem- bered — with wallet 'bret-ful of pardoun come from Rome al hoot,' is numbered among Chaucer's famous pilgrims. The Adventures of Five Days. 139 for his own excellent history of Private Richard Doubledick. At one they dined at the still-existent, but much modified, Crown Inn, a respectable hos- telry then more than four centuries old. Here is the bill of fare for five : — Soles and flounders with crab sauce ; calf s head stuffed and roasted, with the liver fried and the appurtenances minced ; roast leg of mutton and green peas ; beverages, small beer and port. It says much for the unimpaired digestions of Hogarth and Scott that they subsequently played hop-scotch in the Colonnade under the red-brick Town Hall, and that they were shortly afterwards ready for shrimps at Chatham, to which place they next adjourned. At^Qnatham, where they vis- ited the dockyard, and went on board the 'Marlborough' and the 'Royal Sovereign,' they saw the ' Royal George,' a predecessor of that ill-fated vessel of which Cowper sang the elegy, and the ' Royal Anne ' which Field- ing mentions in the 'Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon.' ^ ' The ' Royal Sovereign ' and the ' Royal Anne,' both built by William Lee, were then two of the largest ships in the Navy. The former was 1,882 tons, with no guns and S50 men ; the latter, 1,721 tons, with 780 men and 100 guns. I40 Eighteenth Century yignettes. On the following day they crossed by Strood through the fields to Frindsbury, where a list of benefactions in the church which, despite the usual ' Witness our hands,' was subscribed by the Vicar alone, appears, in the absence of other objects of interest, to have greatly ex- cited them. From Frindsbury they went on to Upnor, where Hogarth drew the Castle and Scott the shipping. The whole party, with the diminutive figure of Hogarth conspicuous among them, appear in the foreground of the joint pict- ure. They dined hurriedly at 'The Smack' Inn in the ten-gun battery, after which their ex- uberant animal spirits found vent in a battle royal and a good deal of horse play. Their next halting-place was Hoo. Here their ad- miration was divided between an epitaph, more emotional than coherent, placed by a grateful servant maid upon the tomb of her master in Hoo Churchyard, and an attractive widow-land- lady who had buried four husbands. Scott, who was apparently the butt of the party, then enlivened them, ' by attempting to prove, a Man might go over but not through the "World and for Example pointed to the Earth and ask'd them to go thro' that Element.' In revenge for this outrageous pleasantry, they subsequently devoted themselves to the The Adventures of Five Days. 141 pastime of secretly filling his pockets with stones, a procedure which in the issue proved impolitic, as it only had the effect of supplying him with ammunition for the combats for which at this time their souls seem to have thirsted. North Street, where a well afforded opportunity for cooling their courage by a water engage- ment and Stoke, which rejoiced in a remarkable and highly original ' arrangement ' in weather- cocks, were next traversed, and they finally put up in the latter place at the Nag's Head. Here they found ' but Three Beds and no Night Caps.' Upon the complications thus created followed a good deal of further fun, such as bolstering, ' fighting perukes ' (?) and so forth. At six next morning arrived a fisherman in boots and shock hair, who shaved them and ' flowered ' their wigs, which, after the severe discipline of the night before, must have stood in urgent need of renovation. Hogarth made a rapid sketch of this scene ; and the old roughly- washed drawing still shows us what he saw in the low-ceiled, lattice-windowed, brick-floored room — the fisherman in his shirt sleeves taking Thornhill gingerly by the nose ; Forrest at breakfast in a red coat, with a handkerchief bound about his bare poll ; Scott drawing at the table ; Tothall, a portly personage, scraping 142 Eighteenth Century yignettes. his chin at a little mirror on the wall, and Ho- garth himself busily engaged with his pencil (or rather quill) in the corner. Milk and toast were then the order of the day, and they started for Sheerness. After all but losing their way in the Stoke Marshes they entered the Isle of Graine, making instinctively for Goody Hubbard's Chequers' Alehouse. No ferryman could be persuaded to carry them across the Medway to Sheerness ; but at last they engaged a ship's yawl, embark- ing with some difficulty. (From Hogarth's sketch they had to crawl on their hands and knees along two oars laid between the shore and the boat.) At twelve they landed at Sheer- ness, visited the fort (where Scott excited much derisive hilarity by smelling the touch-holes of the recently discharged ordnance), and then walked along the beach to Queenborough. Here the traditional smallness of the town, with its one street, its minute deckhouse, and its 'plentiful lack' of provisions,^ impressed them almost as much as the fact that the principal inn, which had for its sign a Red Lion, was never- 1 Matthew Green, in his 'Spleen,' puts 'a Queen- b'rough mayor behind his mace ' among the legitimate incentives to laughter. The tiny town seems to have been a long-standing object of satire. The Adventures of Five Days. 143 theless called the ' Swans.' In the church they found an epitaph on one Henry Knight, an old whaling captain and ' Harpooneer : ' ' In Greenland I Whales Sea-horse Bears did Slay Though Now my Body is Intombe in Clay : ' and in the churchyard the Gravedigger, who, tongue-loosed by two pots of ale, informed them among other things, that the Mayor was ' a Customhouse Officer,' and the parson, ' a Sad Dog ' — phrases which the speaker probably regarded as synonymous. On the hill behind the town they forgathered with a boat's crew from the ' Rose ' man-of-war, who, having been told off to carry one of the midshipmen on shore, had been left by their inconsiderate com- manding officer without money or food, a few cockles excepted, a moving and Smollett-like incident which immediately excited the charity of the Pilgrims. ' Wee gave the Fellows Six- pence who were Very thankfull, and Run towards the Town to buy Victualls for them- selves & their Companions who lay asleep at some distance ; Wee going to View their Boat that stuck fast in the Mud One of the Sailors return'd hastily and kindly ofFer'd us some Cockles, This seem'd an Act of so much Grat- itude that wee foUow'd the Fellows into the 144 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. Town and gave them another Sixpence and they fetch 'd their Companions and all refresh'd them- selves and were Very thankful! and Merry.' The last words almost read like an extract from Pepys. At Queenborough a chair was brought into the street for Hogarth to sketch the little Town House, an operation which soon had the effect of attracting as art-critics a larger popula- tion than had been suspected, including ' Sev- erall pretty Women.' Nothing else of much note occurred here. The missing officer of the ' Rose ' having returned, fresh difficulties en- sued owing to his cavalier behaviour to a mar- ried lady of the neighbourhood ; the friends were out-chirrupped at the inn by some Harwich lob- ster men, whose admirable sea-songs threw their own humbler efforts of St. John and Pishoken entirely into the background, and the usual misunderstanding arose with the Pantaloon of the party, Scott, in regard to his bed. Quitting Queenborough at ten, they mounted to the little village of Minster, the highest part of the island of Sheppey. Here, in the ancient abbey church of SS. Mary and Sexburga, Scott made a sketch of the tomb of a Spanish ambas- sador, and Hogarth drew that of Sir Robert de Shurland, sometime Warden of the Cinque Ports, whose tragic story Ingoldsby has embel- The Adventures of Five Days, 145 lished and embroidered in his prose legend of ' Grey Dolphin.' Forrest's version, as collected on the spot from local tradition, is also highly picturesque, but the tale, as told in Grose's ' Antiquities,' is of a more commonplace order. This tomb, too, as described by him, differs in some particulars from Hogarth's sketch. Little more remains to be related of our tourists. Hiring a ' Small Vessell (vulgarly call'd a Bomb boat) ' at four on Thursday, the 30th, they embarked for Gravesend. They had a bad passage, were sick, and struck on the Blythe Sands,; but — Tothall's old seafaring knowledge aiding — got to their destination at ten. At eight next day they hired a boat with clean straw, laid in a bottle of wine, pipes, to- bacco, and light, and came merrily up the river to Billingsgate before a ' Mackrell Gale,' though not without the indispensable burlesque misadventures on the part of Scott. About two they reached their starting place, the Bedford Arms. ' I think I cannot better Conclude [says Forrest] than with taking Notice that not one of the Company was unemployed. For Mr. Thornhill made the Map, Mr. Hogarth & Mr. Scott all the other Drawings, Mr. Tothall was our Treasurer which (tho' a Place of the Great- est Trust), he faithfully Discharg'd and the fore- 146 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. going Memoirs was the work of E fforest ' ' The Verasity of this Manuscript is attested by us. W" Hogarth Sara' Scott W"" Tothall J°° Thorn- hill.' It was forthwith transcribed, bound, and read out to the delighted Club. Some time afterwards it was run into Hudibrastic rhyme by the Rev. W. Gostling of Canterbury, whose version, as well as Forrest's original, has been reprinted by Nichols. For the quotations in the foregoing paper, however, we have made use of the contemporary manuscript, preserved at Bloomsbury. The total expenses of the ex- pedition, it may be added, amounted to £6 6s. A RIVAL OF REYNOLDS: ■pXR. JOHNSON once asserted — in a burst ■*^ of benignity — that it was better to keep half-a-dozen people hungry, than to embarrass a belated guest by sitting down to table without him. Whether the Doctor was speaking under the consciousness of his own shortcomings (or rather ' late-comings') is not disclosed. But one evening in April, 1778, the party at No. 67, Harley Street, were certainly waiting for Dr. Johnson, who was the last to arrive. The din- ner that followed must have been memorable even among those memorable entertainments which Boswell so well describes ; and the Bill of Company should have satisfied Swift. There was, indeed, but one lady, Hannah More's cor- respondent, the Hon. Mrs. Boscawen, relict of of that gallant Admiral who beat the French at Louisburg and Lagos Bay; but for men there was Boswell, there was his ' illustrious friend,' there were Reynolds, and Robertson the histo- rian, and Langton's brother-in-law. Lord Bin- ning. The Bill of Fare was as good as the guest-roll, and the ' flow of talk ' excellent. 148 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. Johnson discussed poetry and Pope ; the host advanced theories of the ' Iliad ' which Mr. Andrew Lang would regard as heretical ; Rob- ertson treated of history in general and of his own performances in particular. Then he went on to speak of the late Lord Clive, and the Doctor ' downed ' him with an epigram ; of drinking, and the Doctor countered him with abstinence ; of his own favoured northern land, and the Doctor rode rough-shod over him with an inaccurate illustration, which nobody was clever enough to contradict. Johnson, in short, disported himself altogether in his most approved and characteristic fashion. To him, at any rate, the evening must have been cloudless, one of those Nodes non ehrice sed solutce curis in which his soul delighted. On the day following he was in magnificent form, and not a little self- satisfied. He valued himself — he told Bos- well — in that there was nothing of senility in his talk (he was nearing seventy) ; and though he afterwards grew a little ' heated ' at his henchman's ill-timed harping on ' the evils of old age,' it was upon this occasion that he gave vent to the remarkable utterance — ' I think my- self a very polite man.' ' Elegant of manners ' is Johnson's own dic- tionary definition of the epithet he thus appro- A Rival of Reynolds. 149 priates, though it is difiScult to conceive, at all events from Boswell's pages, that it can ever have been really deserved. Yet singularly enough, he seems to have been regarded as ' po- lite ' by others, and even by his Harley Street host, who was certainly entitled to rank as a judge. For, if ever there was anyone conspic- uous for ease and finish of address, it must have been the painter Allan Ramsay, the host in question. He was a man of varied accomplish- ments ; he was an exceptional linguist ; he was a traveller who had seen men and cities ; he was a scholar, a courtier, a connoisseur. He had written fluently and on many subjects, critical, historical, and political ; he had even essayed with distinction the inevitable pamphlet on Elizabeth Canning, when he crossed swords with Henry Fielding.^ ' I love Ramsay,' said his principal 1 He also tried his hand at verse. After Prestonpans he produced a satiric imitation of the Song of Deborah, putting it into the mouth of ' a Jacobite young lady of family ; ' and in the ' Edinburgh Annual Register ' for 1813 (1815, p. cccxlv) is a paraphrase by him of ' Integer vitx,' in which the combination of rhyme and quantity is suggested rather than achieved : ' ' Should I by hap land on the coast of Lapland, Where there no fire is, much less pears and cherries. Where stormy weather, sold by hags whose leather Faces would fright one.' ISO Eighteenth Century yignettes. guest at the dinner above-mentioned. 'You will not find a man in whose conversation there is more instruction, more information, and more elegance, than in Ramsay's.' Of his gifts as a talker, Boswell gives several illustrations. Per- haps the most attractive account depicts him at Reynolds's, holding his own with such men as Gibbon, and Richard Owen Cambridge, and Shipley, the Bishop of St. Asaph ; and delight- ing the company with his recollections of a visit to Horace's villa, a narrative in which the rest played up to him with classical quotations. The impression left is that of a man of letters and an antiquary rather than of a fashionable portrait-painter ; and it is perhaps not surpris- ing that he was suspected of caring more for his reputation as a scholar than for his reputa- tion as an artist. Time has revenged itself — if this be true — by a disregard of his pictures which is greater than they deserve. His sire was Allan Ramsay of the ' Gentle Shepherd ' and the ' Evergrene,' — that old wig- maker-poet who ' theeked pashes ' (i.e. ' thatched pates') at the Mercury, opposite to Niddry's- Wynd in Edinburgh, but not the less claimed kindred with the noble family of Dalhousie. ' Dalhousie of an auld descent, My chief, my stoup and ornament,' A Rival of Reynolds. 151 he sang, and what is more, like the ' ruin'd spendthrift ' in Goldsmith, he ' had his claims allow'd,' being, in very truth, great-grandson to the Laird of Cockpen, a cadet of that ancient house. His son Allan, the first of seven chil- dren, was born in 171 3, and seems to have been an artist from his boyhood. When about twenty, he came to London, lodging in Orange Court by Leicester Fields, and entering himself forth- with at the St. Martin's Lane Academy, an in- stitution then (or soon after) housed in Roubil- lac's old studio, and superintended, for the most part, by Hogarth, whose large ' Hudibras' had been dedicated to the author of the ' Gentle Shepherd.' Returning to his native town, after a two years' absence, young Ramsay set out in July, 1736, for a prolonged visit to Italy. His travelling companion was an Edinburgh physi- cian, Dr. Alexander Cunningham (afterwards Sir Alexander Dick of Prestonfield, Bart.), portions of whose diary were published some forty years ago in the ' Gentleman's Magazine.' They give a good idea of a Grand Tour only three years earlier than that of Gray and Wal- pole, the same places being, in more than one instance, visited by each pair of travellers. At Amiens they admired the Cathedral ; at Chan- tilly, the Duke of Bourbon's magnificent palace 152 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. and stables ; at Paris they visited the Palais Royal and Walpole's favourite Italian Comedy. They also promenaded the Luxembourg gar- dens, where they were edified by the * very flaming appearance ' of the cheeks of the ladies, especially those who were married. Taking lodgings in the Rue Dauphine, they made ex- cursions to the Academy of Painting, the col- lection of the Cardinal de Polignac, and the Invalides. With the French opera they were as little impressed as Gray and Walpole, hold- ing the music to be ' loud and noisy, great in the execution, but very mean and little in the harmonious part which belongs to good music' At Versailles they marvelled at the formal arti- ficial character of the gardens, ' no ways in the style of nature,' though they admired the stat- uary of M. Fran9ois Girardon, and (in the pal- ace itself) the great canvases of wars and sieges. They were also fortunate enough to witness the ' grandes eaux,' which intermittent and expen- sive entertainment was ordered for the benefit of some Polish visitors to Maria Leczinska. At the end of August they turned their faces southward towards Italy, setting out by way of Lyons. Much of their journey henceforth was performed in the old dragboats or coches-iTeau, carrying motley freights of priests, gardes-du' A Rival of Reynolds. 153 corps, Jesuits and Knights of Malta. ' In gen- eral,' says the journal, ' they [the priests, etc.] were very noisy, eat, drank, and sung perpet- ually ; and at night those that did not go ashore lay in the boat all higgledy-piggledy,, which is their usual custom.' By Sens and Auxerre, the travellers drove through the Burgundian vine- yards to Chalons, and so again down the Sa6ne and Rhone by coche-d'eau to Avignop. ' In our company we had a strange mixture of riff-raff sort of people, particularly a very witty, comi- cal girl of Lyons, a Provenfal priest who was very entertaining, a slattern from Marseilles without virtue or modesty, and a Roman with his wife and daughter who gave good diversion. As we went along we got every now and then a fresh cargo of Cordeliers and Capuchin monks.' Passing over roads perfumed with lavender and rosemary, they came to Aix, and thence descended to Marseilles, where they visited the great Exchange with its solemn as- semblage of merchants of all nationalities, Per- sians, Armenians, Egyptians, Turks, and noted in the streets the pitiable spectacle of the galley- slaves, chained two and two, ' some of them gentlemen formerly of great condition.' At Nice they inspected the anchovy fishery ; at Genoa they were robbed. Off Pisa they were 154 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. cast away in a felouche, or felucca, and all but drowned. Finally, on the 26th October, they reached what the elder Ramsay, writing to John Smibert of Covent Garden, the friend who painted his portrait, describes as ' the seat of the Beast.' At Rome, after exploring the city, Ramsay settled down steadily to work, drawing in the evening at the French Academy, and studying by day under Francesco Imperiali, at that deca- dent time reckoned the foremost of the Italian history-painters. According to Allan Cunning- ham, he also received instruction from another Francesco Solimena (otherwise the Abate Ciccio), then an old man of eighty. Having remained in Italy three years, Ramsay returned to Edinburgh, where he devoted himself mainly to portraits. He painted his sister Janet ; he painted Duncan Forbes the judge ; he painted a portrait of Archibald Campbell, third Duke of Argyll, in his robes as Lord of Session. Other early sitters were Sir John Barnard, Colonel Sir Peter Halkett (afterwards killed in Brad- dock's ill-fated expedition), and Dr. Mead of the Library. In due time Ramsay moved to London. Urbane, accessible and expert, he speedily found friends, one of his first patrons being the Earl of Bridgewater. Then he leaped ' A Rival of Reynolds. 155 into fashion with a lucky full-length of Lord Bute, to whom he fitted a pair of legs that even stirred a gentle emulation in the unenvious breast of Reynolds. ' I wish,' said Reynolds, speak- ing of a portrait he had in progress, ' to show legs with Ramsay's Lord Bute.' In the twenty years that followed 1740 Ramsay must have been exceptionally active. Flora Macdonald, Lady Boyd, Admirals Boscawen and Stewart, Lord Hardwicke and Judge Burnet, these, and a host of other notabilities, royal and courtly, owed their pictorial immortality to his brush, aided by the scraping tools of McArdell and the younger Faber. He painted not only portraits but decorations, and soon began to employ an army of assistants. More than this, he made money. ' I am informed,' says Allan Cunningham, probably on the authority of the son of Ramsay's pupil, Philip Reinagle, ' that before he [Ramsay] had the luck to become a favourite with the King, he was perfectly inde- pendent as to fortune, having in one way or another, accumulated not less than forty thou- sand pounds.' It may well be imagined that this success, coupled with his avowed adherence to those foreign masters among whom he had served his apprenticeship, was not viewed with entire equanimity by some of his more able but 156 Eighteenth Century yigmttes. less fortunate rivals ; and Hogarth, whose gains by his paintings were of the poorest, may per- haps be forgiven for girding at ' Mr. Ram's-eye, and his quick-sighted and impartial coadjutors.' That Ramsay was seriously compared with Reynolds is more difficult to understand. Yet it is clear, from Rouquet and others, that at this time he was not only equally admired, but even preferred. Horace Walpole, whom he painted in 1758, reflects this view. ' Reynolds,' he says, ' is bold, and has a kind of tempestuous colour- ing, yet with dignity and grace ; Ramsay is all delicacy. Mr. Reynolds seldom succeeds in women {I] ; Mr. Ramsay is formed to paint them.' Ramsay had manifestly fascinated his sitter, who praises his ' genuine wit,' his just ' manner of reasoning,' and his merits as an author ; and where Walpole's partialities were en- listed, his judgment generally fails him. It is, however, but fair to add that, in 1759, the date of the above utterance, the star of Reynolds was not fully risen. Twenty years later, when the Abbot of Strawberry had become the fortunate possessor of ' The Ladies Waldegrave,' he had probably revised his verdict. For the moment, however, the star of Ramsay was in the ascendant, and with the accession of George H I., the politic portrayer of Lord Bute's A Rival of Reynolds. 157 shapely extremities, who, in addition, had the advantage of being able to talk fluent German to Queen Charlotte on many topics besides art, became even a greater favourite with those in power. In 1767 he succeeded Shackelton as portrait-painter to the Court, an appointment which multiplied his commissions, especially for pictures of royal personages, to an inordinate extent, turning his studio into a mere manufac- tory of portraits. Little in these but the head was executed by himself, and even the head in course of time fell to pupils who, like Reinagle the elder, had caught their master's manner. The King was in the habit of presenting elabo- rate full-lengths of himself and Queen to all the foreign ambassadors (two of the first of these went to the Duke de Nivernais at Paris),* and Ramsay's studio, first in Soho and afterwards in Harley Street, where it overflowed into the hay- loft and coachrooms at the back, was seldom free from Royal eflSgies in various stages of com- position. With the King he was as popular as with the Queen, and his Majesty seems to have more than once plagiarised the famous ' They are referred to in a letter from Nivernais to M. D'Eon, dated i6 June, 1763. The Duke begs him not to let M. Ramsay make them, frames included, more than eight feet high at most. is8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes, anecdote of Moli^re and the ' en-cas-de-nuit ' of Louis XIV., by inviting Mr. Ramsay to share, or rather succeed to, his own special and particular refection of boiled mutton and turnips — a piece of condescension which for- tunately escaped that caustic rhymer Peter Pindar, who was not in the habit of sparing the Harley Street picture-shop. Churchill, how- ever, hitched Ramsay into the ' Prophecy of Famine.' 'Thence,' he says, speaking of Scotland, ' Tlience came the Ramsavs, names of worthy note, Of whom one paints, as well as t'other wrote.' — a couplet too equivocal, one would imagine, to have aroused, as it did, the * compatriotic ' wrath of Allan Cunningham. Luckily the task of adjusting vacuous royal faces to ' arrange- ments ' of robes and regalia did not so com- pletely absorb Ramsay's energies as to prevent him from executing many excellent likenesses of his more distinguished contemporaries. His presentments of Henry Fox, Lord Mansfield, Gibbon, Nivernais, Lord Chesterfield (in the National Portrait Gallery), Hume, Rousseau, and many others, all belong to this part of his career. Dispersed in many places, comparison of his A Rival of Reynolds. 159 works is difficult, if not impracticable. But three very typical examples are to be found at Edinburgh. They are the Hume and Rousseau above mentioned, and the portrait of the painter's wife, Margaret Lindsay, the eldest daughter of Sir Alexander Lindsay, of Evelick, in Perth, and the niece of Lord Mansfield. This last, his masterpiece and one of the many valuable be- quests of Lady Murray, is a very beautiful and charming production, which goes far to make intelligible the praise which Walpole gives to Ramsay's women. The other two are historic. Both were executed in 1766, the year of that absurd misunderstanding between the Self- tormentor and his ' Guide, Philosopher, and Friend,' over which so much eighteenth-century ink was spilled. They must have been painted shortly after the arrival of the pair in England in January ; and that of Rousseau was appar- ently interrupted by the quarrel, since it is as- serted that he refused to continue the sittings, and the portrait, in which he wears the Armenian dress he had recently adopted, is supposed to have been finished from such furtive glimpses of him as could be obtained in public. That of Hume exhibits the historian in his chargi d'affaires period, when, as the apostle of Deism, he divided with ' whisk ' the admiration of the i6o Eighteenth Century Vignettes. Parisians. Another excellent and little-known example of Ramsay, is the likeness, in later life, of that delightful Lady Hervey (once the ' beautiful Molly Lepel ' of Pope and Gay) to whom Horace Walpole wrote so many letters. Indeed, the picture formerly belonged to Wal- pole, having been, of yore, in a Grinling Gibbons frame, one of the chief ornaments of the Cottage in the Flower Garden at Strawberry Hill.^ Ramsay was not entirely constant to London. Once he went back to Edinburgh for a time, and founded a ' Select Society,' which not only numbered among its earlier members his old fellow-traveller. Sir Alexander Dick, but such major notabilities as Hume and Robertson and Adam Smith. Twice he returned to Rome, copying inscriptions at the Vatican with the ardour of a professional antiquary. Shortly after his second visit, while showing his Harley Street household how to escape in case of fire, he fell and dislocated his right arm. With ex- traordinary fortitude, he finished the picture on which he was working — a portrait of course of the reigning Monarch of these isles — but he never really recovered the shock to his system. Leaving Reinagle to struggle with some fifty I It is now in the possession of Viscount LiSord at Austin House, Broadway, Worcesteishire. A Rival of Reynolds. i6i pairs of Royalties (a six years' task of which the life-long horror turned that hapless deputy into an animal painter), he set out on a fourth visit to Italy, where he continued to reside as an invalid, until, at last, returning in a fit of home sickness, he died in August, 1784, a few days after reaching Dover. He was buried in St. Marylebone Church. ' Poor Ramsay,' wrote Johnson gloomily to Reynolds, ' on which side soever I turn, mortality presents its formidable frown.' Others regretted him as sincerely. He was a kind friend, a good son, a worthy and a prosperous gentleman. As an artist more than one cause had served to determine the direction and conditions of his work. He paid the penalty of his versatility in its distractions from his professed vocation ; he paid the penalty of his success in the depression of his standard. His portraits have the merit of intelligently re- producing their originals : had you encountered those originals in the street, you would prob- ably have recognized them far more readily than you would have recognized the idealized sitters of Sir Joshua. He is not a great colourist, com- poser, character-painter. But he is instructed, he is unaffected, he is thoroughly (in the Lam- besque sense of the word) ' genteel.' "Walpole thought he lacked subjects more than genius ; i62 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. Northcote, that his ability fell short of his con- ception. It is more likely that he attained the allotted limit of his powers. His art was a pleasant and lucrative pursuit, not a consunr.ing passion. Henry Fielding. FIELDING'S LIBRARY. 'T^HERE is a passage in Thackeray's letters to ■*■ Mrs. Brookfield which — upon one of his readers, at all events — has always jarred a little unpleasantly. He is writing of Fielding — that Fielding whose reputation his own fine lecture was afterwards to serve so splendidly, and to whose robust genius he himself is not lightly indebted. He says : ' I have just got two new novels from the library by Mr. Fielding ; the one is " Amelia," the most delightful portrait of a woman that surely ever was painted ; the other is " Joseph Andrews," which gives me no particular pleasure, for it is both coarse and careless, and the author makes an absurd brag of his two-penny learning, upon which he values himself evidently more than upon the best of his own qualities.' Now, it is not to the ' Amelia ' part of this utterance that one need object ; nor do we desire to defend the grosser lapses of Fielding's burlesque upon Richardson. But, taking into consideration both the speaker and the subject, the little outburst as to ' two- 164 Eighteenth Century yignettes. penny learning ' is certainly uncalled for. We have it upon Prior's authority that there is no obligation to swear to the truth of a song : and it would be equally superfluous to insist upon the exact justification of every light-hearted boutade which might escape a playful writer in a private and familiar correspondence. Some- thing, too, in the latter case, must be allowed for the occasion, for the person addressed, and (to speak paradoxically) for the written tone of voice. Regarded, however, for the salte of ar- gument, as the serious utterance of one great novelist concerning another, it has always seemed to us that this particular characteri- sation is, to say the least, ill-considered. For if Fielding was anything at all, he was a genuine scholar. He had been educated at Eton ; and he is declared by his first biographer, Arthur Murphy, to have left that place ' uncommonly versed in the Greek authors, and an early mas- ter of the Latin classics.' He had also for a short time studied diligently in the University of Leyden, under its professor of Civil Law, the ' learned Vitriarius ; ' and it is allowed, and is indeed abundantly proved by the notes to the enlarged version of ' Tom Thumb,' that, with the excesses of his later life in London, he had managed to combine an unusual amount of read- Fielding's Library. 165 ing, at once systematic and recondite. To this he must have added a certain acquaintance with modern languages. ' Tuscan and French are in my head,' he tells us in his rhymed Epistle to Sir Robert Walpole. Nor was it to his younger days alone that his love of the classics was con- fined. ' He retained a strong admiration for them,' says Murphy, ' in all the subsequent pas- sages of his life.' The same writer speaks of him as quietly reading Cicero ' de Consolatione ' in seasons of sorrow and dejection ; and he ap- parently carried a volume of Plato with him on his last pilgrimage in search of health, for even on the ' Queen of Portugal ' he quotes a long passage from that philosopher. It is besides to be observed that his learning, as revealed in his' books, has generally a singularly unforced and spontaneous air. Unless absolutely appropriate to the character represented, it seldom, in ' Tom Jones ' at all events, is obtruded in the body of the story, but is restricted to those ' prolego- menous, or introductory Chapters,' in which, to use George Eliot's words, the author ' seems to bring his arm-chair to the proscenium and chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine English.' Moreover his classical quotations were not like Captain Shandon's, sharked out of Burton's ' Anatomy ; ' and however hack- 1 66 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. neyed they have now become by constant repe- tition, they must have been fresh enough when he first found them at the end of his quill. In short, as, with respect to this very charge of pedantry, one of his most capable critics has remarked, ' what with some men is ostentation was in his case the simple application of mate- rials which early habit had made so familiar that they had lost their learned air and were entirely native to him.' ^ If this is, as we believe it to be, an accurate statement of the case, it com- pletely disposes of that random deliverance of Colonel Esmond's biographer in regard to the market value, in copper coinage, of his prede- cessor's erudition. And, without for a moment admitting any charge of ' absurd brag,' it is per- fectly conceivable that the author of ' Joseph Andrews ' may not have been unwilling to em- phasise the fact that his literary equipment was something widely different from the stock-in- trade of those easy-moralled gentlemen of the pen, his contemporaries, who borrowed their artless Latinity from the mottoes to the ' Spec- tator,' or subsisted fraudulently upon ' Propo- sals ' for fresh translations from the Greek, out of the French of Madame Dacier. 1 ' Quarterly Review,' No. cxcv. (December, 1855). Tradition ascribes the authorship of this admirable article to the Rev. Whitwell Elwin. Fielding's Library. 167 But whatever may have been the exact amount of iFielding's scholarship, there can be no doubt — though the fact has not hitherto been made known — that he was exceptionally well pro- vided with the materials for a scholar's reputa- tion. To the devotees of the time-honoured tradition which represents him as scribbling off farce-scenes at tavern tables upon the paper which had wrapped his tobacco, it will perhaps come as a surprise to hear that he died pos- sessed of an exceedingly well-chosen and ' polite ' library of books, as varied in character as Johnson's, more extensive by far than Gold- smith's, and — in the matter of those authors whom Moses Primrose describes comprehen- sively as 'the Ancients' — as richly endowed as that of Gray. His biographers have made no reference to this fact, probably for the best of all good reasons — that it was not known to them. But in the course of certain minute in- vestigations into the first appearance of the ' Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon,' the present writer came unexpectedly on the following notification in the ' Public Advertiser ' for Thursday, February 6, 175 5j four months after Fielding's death at Lisbon. As it is not likely to be often consulted in situ, it is here in part transcribed : ' This day is publish'd a Catalogue 1 68 Eighteenth Century yignettes. of the entire and valuable Library of Books of the Late Henry Fielding, Esq., which (by Order of the Administrator) will be sold by Auction, by Samuel Baker, at his House in York Street, Covent Garden, on Monday next, and the three following Evenings, for the ben- efit of his Wife and Family. Among many other valuable Books are the following in Folio. [Here is printed a double column list.] There are likewise most of the Greek Commentators on Aristotle, and several Books with Mr. Field- ing's MSS. Notes.' The advertisement goes on to say when the collection may be viewed ' till the Time of Sale, which will begin at Half an Hour after Five o'clock ' in the evening ; and it adds that cata- logues can be obtained gratis of Mr. Andrew Millar in the Strand (Fielding's publisher), Mr. Robert Dodsley of Pall Mall, and others. It was repeated on the yth and 8th, and on Mon- day the loth, as announced, the sale no doubt began. But of this the 'Public Advertiser' makes no further mention. Fortunately one of the catalogues is preserved in the British Museum ; and the gentleman to whom it be- longed — perhaps Mr. Baker himself — has been far-seeing enough to price it for the ben- efit of Posterity. Against nearly every one of Fielding's Library. 169 the 655 lots it comprises, he has inserted the sum realised, and the total of the four evenings' sale is £i'i^A 7^- ^^-i °^ about ;^ioo more than the public were willing to give in 1785 for the books of Johnson, which also extended to 650 lots, and were in all probability far more numer- ous. The majority of the amounts at the Field- ing sale are small, and prompt the inference that the condition of the volumes must have been indifferent, or the state of the market bad. Of the valuable Folios specified in the Advertise- ment, the Statutes at Large, 34 vols., fetched £\o; Rymer's ' Foedera' 20 vols., £1') los. ; Buckley's ' Thuanus,' 7 vols., £ Lepel, Lady Hervey. Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 293 fully entitled to the epithet ' gamesome,' which Tennyson gives to the charming heroine of the ' Talking Oak,' may, perhaps, be admitted, and even expected. Well born, goodMooking, and high spirited, they were condemned to a life in which yawning and wearisome etiquette must have predominated, and it may be conceived that, in their hours of ease, they were likely to be especially ' aggravating ' to the long-suffering charioteer whose duty it was to carry them hither and thither, cheapening brocades and sarsnets like Steele's ' silkworm,' or travelling on a circuit of interminable ' How-dees.' When they were not hunting, or eating the perpetual Westphalia ham which Pope has included among their crosses, they probably enjoyed what — in that vulgar speech of which Lord Chesterfield deplored the use — would now be characterized as ' an uncommonly good time.' Clever poets, like Gay and Prior, wrote them verses as gal- lantly turned and as metrically impudent as any 'couplets' contrived under Louis the Mag- nificent ; wits like Chesterfield and Pulteney treated them to elaborate raillery and mock- heroic adulation ; grave humorists, like Arbuth- not and Swift, not only drew up mocking ' proposals ' to publish their biographies (by subscription), but undertook in addition to prove 294 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. that they made the best wives, — which, as a general proposition, was probably a specimen of the form of rhetoric described by the excel- lent Mrs. Slipslop as ' ironing.' But, if some of them were frivolous and some were frail, there were also some, especially in the prince- ship of the second George, who, besides being lively and attractive, were accomplished and sensible as well, and who, as a matter of fact, did develop into exemplary helpmates. Such, for example, was that bonny, good-humoured Mary Bellenden, ' fair and soft as down,' who ultimately became Duchess of Argyll ; such, again, the ' beautiful Molly Lepel ' who forms the subject of this paper. Others have written of this lady ; and she has been praised by Thackeray. But about her later life not very much has been said, and the few new facts con- tained in the recently-published ' Diary ' and ' Letter Books of the first Eari of Bristol ' seem to warrant some fresh attempt to revive the memory of one who has been cited upon good authority as the perfect model of a finely- pol- ished woman of fashion. Of itself this would, perhaps, be scarcely a sufficient excuse for a new study. But Lady Hervey, like Mrs. Primrose's wedding-gown, was not merely con- spicuous for a ' glossy surface.' She had other Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 295 qualities of a more durable and less external character. A certain enjoiiment and vivacity of manner, coupled with a habit of speaking playfully of France as if it were her native country, seem to have led to the tradition that Miss Lepel was of Gallic extraction. Following this clue, the indefatigable Mr. Croker, discovering that the Lepelles or Le Pelleys were lords of Sark, made the suggestion that she must have belonged to this family ; and what Mr. Croker stated as a plausible conjecture was, of course, immediately converted into an established fact. But, even in the very correspondence he was annotating, Lady Hervey says expressly that the Sark Le Pelleys were no relations of hers, and the Rev. S. H. A. Hervey, who edited the Bristol Papers, satisfied himself that she was right. After much investigation he came to the con- clusion that her father, Nicholas Wedig Lepel, page in 1684 to Prince George of Denmark (husband of the Princess Anne), and after- wards an officer in the English army, was not of French but of Danish or North German descent. In August, 1698, Mr. Lepel married Miss Mary Brooke, daughter and sole heiress of John Brooke, of Rendlesham, in Suffolk, deceased, who brought him a dowry of ;^20,ooo. 296 Eighteenth Century Fignettes. His daughter was born in September, 1700, and nine years after he was made a Brigadier- General, which is almost all that we know of Nicholas Lepel. But, according to the Duch- ess of Marlborough, he was lucky enough to obtain for his daughter, even from her birth, the rank, or rather the pay, of a cornet of horse, which pay, according to the same not unim- peachable authority. Miss Lepel continued to draw until the absurdity of a Maid of Honour figuring as a Gentleman of the Army became too manifest to be maintained. Whether this be true or not — and the pen of Sarah Jennings is not precisely that of a recording angel — it is clear that she must have become a Maid of Honour at the earliest possible age. And it is equally clear, though the records of her service in this capacity are of the scantiest, that she was a popular favourite from the beginning. 'Tell dear Molly I love her like any thing,' writes in 1716 to Mrs. Howard (afterwards Lady Suffolk) the widow of that Lord Mohun who was killed in a duel with the Duke of Hamilton. Another glimpse of her is contained in a letter from Pope to Teresa and Martha Blount in the following year. (Mr. Carruthers is uncharitable enough to suggest that it was inserted with the spedial intention of making Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 297 his correspondents jealous.) After telling them that Miss Bellenden and Miss Lepel had, ' con- trary to the laws against harbouring Papists,' entertained him at Hampton Court, he goes on, ' I can easily believe, no lone house in Wales, with a mountain and a rookery, is more contem- plative than this Court ; and as a proof of it, I need only tell you Mrs. L[epel] walked with me three or four hours by moonlight, and we met no creature of any quality but the King [George I.], who gave audience to the Vice- Chamberlain, all alone, under the garden wall.'^ The bard of Twickenham \vas not the only poet who took pleasure in the society of these girl- ish beauties. They were subscribers to Prior's great folio of 17 18, and John Gay must have been among their intimates, for a year later he, too, sends to Mrs. Howard (who was bed- chamber woman) his respects to both, in addi- tion to which he joins their names in his ' Damon and Cupid.' ' So well I 'm known at Court' — says his modish Georgian deity — ' None ask where Cupid dwells. But readily resort To B »'j or Z IPs: ^ It is impossible to, quote Pope's letters with perfect confidence. This anecdote has been accepted as histori- 298 Eighteenth Century Vigngttes. He also refers to the latter lady with greater felicity, in ' Mr. Pope's Welcome from Greece.' In one of his most poetical lines, he couples her with ' Hervey, fair of face,' as ' Youth's young- est daughter, sweet Lepell.' This conjunction in Gay's verses seems to imply that Mr. Hervey 's name was already linked to Miss Lepel's in the minds of those who knew them, and not without reason. Early in 1720 — the year of that completion of the ' Iliad' which prompted Gay's poem — the lady had been ill, for in March Pope tells Broome that he had been constantly engaged in attending her during her convalescence at Twickenham. Of the nature of this indisposi- tion he says nothing ; but in the following month she was married privately to Lord Bris- tol's second son, the John Hervey above re- ferred to. Hitherto, the date of this occurrence has been more or less matter of guess-work, but the publication of her father-in-law's diary removes all ground for uncertainty. Under date of April 21, 1720, is the following entry by the Earl. ' Thursday, my dear & hopeful cal, and it probably is so. But it is only right to state that a year later it re-appears, moonlight, rookery and all, but without Miss Lepel and the Vice-Chamberlain, in a letter to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 299 son Mr. John Hervey was marryed to Mrs. Mary Le Pell.' The marriage was not at first avowed. ' I met Madam Lepell coming into town last night,' writes Mrs. Bradshaw to Mrs. Howard on August 21 following. 'She is a pretty thing, though she never comes to see me ; for which, tell her, I will use her like a dog in the winter ; ' a passage that — besides supplying in its last words unexpected confir- mation of the accuracy of Swift's ' Polite Con- versation ' — shows clearly that at this time the facts were still unknown to many friends.^ The suggested reason for secrecy is that Miss Bel- lenden had also contracted a clandestine alli- ance with Colonel Campbell, and that the two couples had ' for mutual support agreed to brave the storm toigether,' — the storm antici- pated being apparently the royal anger. In Miss Lepel's case, at all events, it cannot have been parental, ' My son,' writes Lord Bristol, 'has shown ye nicest skill in choosing you, since in you alone he could securely promise 1 An earlier letter makes this plainer still. Writing to Mrs. Howard on April 31, ten days after the marriage, Mrs. Molesworth says : ' Pray give my service to Miss Lepell, and tell her I am glad I did not hear of her illness until it was over. I believe it would have saved Mr. Harvey a great deal of pain if he could have been as ignorant of it' ('Suffolk Corr.,' 1824, i. 53). 300 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. himself not only every quality essential to his own happiness, but has also made a wise pro- vision to intaile good sense and virtue (its con- stant concomitant) on our (now) flourishing family.' The date of this letter is May 20, but from an editorial note it appears that the mar- riage was not publicly announced until Octo- ber 25, or five months later. How it was received by the Court does not transpire. But as it involved the resignation of the two brides, h effectually broke up the little coterk at Hamp- ton, and put an end for ever to those pastoral delights of friieli\ation, flirtation, and danglea- tion, which, in a letter addressed years after- wards to Lady Hervey, Mrs. Howard includes among the unforgettable diversions of Wren's formal palace by the Thames. Lord Bristol, who, from his courteous and very copious correspondence, must have been not only an accomplished and a scholarly, but an affectionate and a singularly amiable man, appears from the first to have appreciated his son's wife. In the letter quoted he hopes that the newly-married pair will prolong his ' declin- ing dales ' (he was then fifty-five, and he lived to be eighty-two) by residing with him. His letters to his 'dear daughter' are always couched in the most cordial terms, and it is evident that Mary Lepel. Lady Hervey. 301 Lady Hervey became genuinely attached to him. But as regards her husband, one has certainly to fortify oneself by the recollection of Horace and his sic visum Veneri. Every- thing that one hears of the brilliant and cynical John Hervey, with his ' coffin-face ' and his painted cheeks, his valetudinarian, anaemic beauty, and his notorious depravity of life, makes it difficult to understand what particular qualities in him — apart from opportunity and proximity — could possibly have attracted the affection of a young and very charming woman, who was besides far in advance of her contem- poraries in parts and education. Yet it must be remembered that ' — when Hervey the handsome was wedded To the beautiful Molly Lepell' (as the ballad has it), he was only four-and- twenty ; that it was not until thirteen years later that Pope began to attack hira as ' Lord Fanny,' and that the same poet's portrait of 'Paris'^ — a passage of matchless malignity — is a year later still. His health, besides, was not yet broken ; and it is probable that at this date he exercised to the full that extraordinary gift of fascination which captivated Queen 1 Afterwards altered to ' Sporus.' 302 Eighteenth Century Wignettes. Caroline and Lady Mary, made of his father his blind and doting admirer, and secured the love and respect of a wife, to whom in point of fidelity he was by no means a pattern husband. Perhaps in later years the respect was stronger than the love. Of the early days of wedlock, however, this could not be said. More than a twelvemonth after marriage — according to Lady Mary — the billing and cooing of the pair still continued with such unabated ardour as to oblige that austere on-looker to take flight for Twickenham. But, as Lady Mary candidly says, her own talents did not lie in this direc- tion, and she is scarcely an unprejudiced observer. For nearly twenty years we practically lose sight of Mr. Hervey's wife. As has already been said, her Maid-of-Honourship came to an end with her marriage, and for a long time she was rarely at Court, although her husband, in his capacity as Lord Chamberlain, was almost continuously in attendance on the Queen. It is probable that she was frequently with his parents at Ickworth ; and Lord Bristol's diary for several years continues to record methodi- cally the births of sons and daughters, with the names of the illustrious sponsors who in each instance ' answered for them.' In November, Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 303 1725, Carr, Lord Hervey, died at Bath, and Mr. Hervey became Lord Hervey. Five years later he went abroad for his health, remaining absent for more than a year, during which time his wife was left behind in her father-in-law's house to mourn his absence, which, from ex- pressions to Mrs. Howard, she seems to have done very genuinely. It is, indeed, chiefly from the Suffolk correspondence that we gain our information about her at this time. Some of her letters are written in a spirit of levity which does not always show her at her best, although she is uniformly amiable and lively. From one of these epistles we get the oft-quoted picture of Swift's ' Mordanto ' — Lord Peterborough, strolling about Bath in boots in defiance of Nash and the proprieties, cheapening a chicken and cabbage in all the splendours of his blue ribbon and star, and then sauntering away un- concernedly to his lodgings with his marketings under his arm. In another despatch from Ick- worth we find a reference to Arbuthnot, whom Lady Hervey trusts may not at Tunbridge either lose his money at quadrille or over-indulge in his favourite John Dory — a taste which he shared with Quin and Fielding. Here and there one detects traces of her love for reading, although her correspondents are not bookish. 304 Eighteenth Century yignettes. There are also pleasant and affectionate refer- ences to her children. But with her mother-in- law, Lady Bristol, if we are to believe certain indications in the Suffolk correspondence, she does not seem to have been always on amicable terms. ' Pray,' she says to Mrs. Howard, ' when you are so kind as to write to me, get sometimes one body, sometimes another, to direct your letters ; for curiosity being one of the reigning passions in a certain person ' [obvi- ously, from the contest. Lady Bristol], ' I love prodigiously both to excite and to baffle it.' From this utterance and other passages, it is clear that Lady Hervey's relations with Lady Bristol were at times considerably strained, and, indeed, if contemporary gossip is to be trusted, the antagonism of the two occasionally ripened into actual warfare. But there were also apparently peaceful interspaces, and Lady Suffolk is informed, as an item of extraordinary ' news out of the country,' that for a whole fort- night Lady Bristol has been all civility and kindness. ' I am become first favourite,' writes Lady Hervey. ' It would puzzle a poet to find anything soft, kind, and sweet enough to liken her to it — down, turtle-doves, and honey, are faint images of her disposition.' But this can only have been a 'Martin's summer' of the Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey, 305 elder lady's goodwill, for a letter two years later contains a most sarcastic picture of her infirmi- ties, both physical and mental. Probably, in this bellum plusquam civile, there was much — to quote Sir Roger de Coverley — to be said on both sides. Lady Hervey was too clever a woman not to see and accentuate Lady Bristol's weak points, and she had considerable gifts as an observer when her critical powers were excited. On the other hand, Lady Bristol was by no means deficient in ability. She was both witty and vivacious, and her copious letters to her lord during her absences at Bath and at Court (she was a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess Caroline), if, as her editor admits, scarcely literary, are at all events fluent and natural. They are extravagant in their expres- sions of aff"ection, and those of Lord Bristol are equally so. But the pair in many respects were a curious contrast. She was a courtier, he was a country gentleman ; he delighted in domes- ticity and fresh air, she in Bath and the racket of the ill-ventilated Pump Room ; she gambled freely ; he had forsworn cards. To these pecu- liarities on the lady's part may be added a pas- sion for dosing herself with rhubarb on the slightest provocation ; a temper as sensitive as a barometer, and a gift of tears which equalled 3o6 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. that of Loyola. Yet to the end the letters of this apparently ill-matched husband and wife are those of newly-married persons, and they occupy two quarto volumes. In May, 1741, Lady Bristol died suddenly ' of a fitt which seized her as she was taking the air in her Sedan in St. James's Parke,' — the Sedan in question being, as her editor suggests, possibly that very specimen which still stands in the entrance hall of No. 6, St. James's Square, a house which Lady Hervey must often have visited during her father-in-law's tenancy of it.^ With this event Lord Bristol's letters to his 'ever new Delight' naturally ceased, and he does not seem to have lamented his loss with the same 'terrific length and vehemence ' of epistolary regret which, in the case of his first wife, had provoked the rebukes of his father. Two years later he suffered a fresh bereavement in the death of Lord Hervey, when Lady Her- vey became a widow. Both by his wife and his father Lord Hervey was sincerely mourned. But Lady Hervey refrained from verifying the old saying that short widowhoods follow happy matches, since, although still, to quote her husband's couplet to Lady Mary, — 1 It still belongs to the Bristol family, but was re-built in 1819-22. Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 307 ' — in the noon of life — those golden days When the mind ripens ere the form decays,' she never again entered the married state. At Lord Hervey's death, her eldest son George, who was twenty, had become a soldier, not entirely with the approval of his grandfather, who hated standing armies. Lepel, her eldest daughter — ' a fine black girl,' Horace Walpole calls her — was already married to Mr. Con- stantine Phipps, afterwards Lord Mulgrave, while her second son Augustus, later one of the two husbands of a later Maid of Honour, Miss Elizabeth Chudleigh, was 'already a midshipman in the navy. After Augustus came another daughter, Mary, a girl of eighteen, and then two little boys — Frederick, who lived to be Bishop of Derry, and William, a general in the army.* These last two were under the charge of a country clergyman, the Rev. Edmund Morris ; and it is to Lady Hervey's prolonged correspondence with this gentleman, which extends from September, 1742, to a month or two before her death, that we are mainly in- debted for our further knowledge of her life. These letters were published in 1821, with a brief memoir and notes by Mr. Crocker. Sub- 1 There were two other daughters, Emily and Caroline, who died unmarried. 3o8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. sequent to Lord Bristol's death, they are dated from different places, but up to that time the majority went out from the Suffolk family seat at Ickworth. Ickworth, or Ickworth Hall, where Lord Hervey died, was not the ancestral home of the Herveys, which, from various reasons, had been allowed to fall into decay. It was a farm- house in the vicinity, to which in April, 1702, Lord Bristol (then plain John Hervey) had brought his second wife pending the construc- tion of a better building. But the arrival of a large second family made architectural improve- ments impossible, and the gradually transformed and extended farmhouse became the ' sweet Ickworth ' to which Lady Hervey's father-in- law refers so often in his Diary. From the copy of an old oil-painting prefixed to the vol- ume containing this record, it seems to have been a straggling and battlemented building, standing in a well-wooded park, and having that profusion of chimneys which is popularly supposed to indicate hospitality and good house- keeping. To the left, facing the spectator, is a garden with a sundial, perhaps the very inclo- sure which Lady Hervey describes to Mr. Morris as containing such a show of flowers and sweet shrubs, and to which her care had Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 309 attracted so numerous a colony of birds. Here also she no doubt planted the rosary mentioned in another letter, which included ' all the sorts of roses there are ' — apparently, in 1747, a col- lection of no more than fifty. Her life at Ick- worth must have been a thoroughly peaceful one, and, when she was not occupied in her correspondence with her friends and children, absorbed almost wholly by reading, gardening, riding, or nursing Lord Bristol, whose infirm- ities (he was now over seventy) had greatly increased with age. Such glimpses as we get of him exhibit a most affectionate and polite old gentleman, much attached to his home and his family, but sadly preoccupied with dismal fore- bodings as to the inevitable collapse of the king- dom. Lady Hervey, who frequently acted as his amanuensis, was evidently very fond of him, but her distaste for these wearisome jeremiads, ' which she sometimes hisses, and sometimes parodies,' peeps out repeatedly in her letters. ' When I remind Lord Bristol how long it is since he bespoke my tears for my ruined country, he shakes his head and says, " Ay, madam 1 but it is nearer and nearer, and must happen at last," therefore, according to his method, one should begin to weep for one's children as soon as they are born; for they must die at last, and every 3IO Eighteenth Century Vignettes. day brings them nearer to it. Let his lordship be a disciple of Heraclitus' if he will ; I prefer Democritus, and should be glad to have you of the same sect. Ride si sapis ! ' Speaking in his ' Verses on his Own Death ' of Woolston's works, Swift says : — ' Those Maids of Honour who can read, Are taught to use them for their creed.' Here is a quondam Maid of Honour who could not only read, but quote the ancients at large. Lady Hervey (as Lord Chesterfield affirmed) ' understood Latin perfectly well,' and her let- ters to Mr. Morris are freely sprinkled with citations from Horace and TuUy (which Mr. Croker obligingly translates). Often they are exceedingly appropriate, as when presently she applies to Lord Bristol the Plus dolet quam necesse est, qui ante dolet quam necesse est of Seneca. In the lines that precede she defines her own placid philosophy. ' I cannot,' she says, speaking of politics, ' like some people, pass the whole day in sighing, fretting, or scold- ing about them : I have but a little more time in this world, and I choose rather to follow Anacreon's advice, and — ' Of a short life the best to make And manage wisely the last stake.' Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 311 The same feeling comes out in her first letter, d propos of Young's then recently published ' Night Thoughts.' They are excellent, no doubt, but she does not intend to read them again. ' I do not like to look on the dark side of life, and shall always be thankful to those who turn the bright side of that lantern to me.' It was a similar attitude of mind which predis- posed her towards France and things French, where she found that perpetual sunlight and good humour which constituted her fitting en- vironment. ' Here,' she says, later, of Paris, ' are coteries to suit one in every humour (ex- cept a melancholy one) ; ' and in the same letter she praises a theological discussion as having been conducted with warmth enough for spirit, and not heat enough for ill-temper. In her own religious opinions she evidently inclined to the esprits forts, and she had naturally been some- what influenced by the opinions of Lord Her- vey and the free-thinking writers in vogue at the Court of the Princess of Wales. Mr. Croker siglj? a little over her unorthodox but intelligible partiality for Dr. Conyers Middle- ton, whose ' Life of Cicero' had not only been dedicated to her husband, but even purged by his editorial pen from many of those ' low words and collegiate phrases,' of which, with Lord 312 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. Chesterfield, Lady Hervey had a horror.^ But her good sense and her good taste alike recoiled from the senseless political parodies of the liturgy which were current circa 1745, and which even "Walpole so far forgot himself as to imitate in his ' Lessons for the day.' Sound sense and an eminently practical intel- ligence are conspicuous features of these epis- tles, and not alone in their comments upon the retention of the Hanoverian troops, and upon the other political complications which wrung the withers of Lord Bristol. In that earth- quake mania of 1750, which Mr. Croker de- scribes as ' unusually rabid and contagious,' Lady Hervey seems to have kept her head, as she also did in that other minor madness which agitated so many people four years later — the case of Elizabeth Canning. She regarded it, and rightly, ' as, on her [Canning's] part, one of the silliest, worse formed, improbable stories she ever met ' — which is very much the modern verdict. In her literary leaning there is the same bias to the concrete and J;he tangible. Unlike the friend of her youth. Lady Mary, she wholly eschewed the old romances of 1 Middleton practically confirms this by saying, in his Dedication, that the book owes its ' correctness to Your [Lord Hervey's] pencil.' Mary Lepel. Lady Hervey. 313 Scuddry and the rest, and even swelled her ' Index Expurgatorius ' by classing with them political Utopias like the ' Oceana ' of Harring- ton. Of ' Tristram Shandy,' in common with Goldsmith, Walpole, and other of her contem- poraries, she could make nothing. To her it seemed but a ' tiresome unsuccessful attempt at humour,' only relieved by the excellent sermon of Mr. Yorick, which read like the work of another author.^ On the other hand she studies attentively such works as Swift's ' Battle of the Books,' Brown's 'Estimate,' Berkeley's 'Tar Water,' Rousseau's ' Emile,' Bolingbroke's ' Letters on History,' Montesquieu, Davila, and the Cardinal de Retz — the last of whom she calls her favourite author (she had read him six or seven times), devoting, indeed, more of her time to commentaries on his Memoirs than her editor thinks desirable, since there are large excisions at this stage of her correspondence. It is d propos of one of the Cardinal's heroes, the Prince of Cond6, that she digresses into the following excursus on good humour and good nature, which is a fair specimen of her style in 1 Home was more fortunate with her, for according to Lord Haddington (as reported by Scott), she wept like an infant over the manuscript of ' Douglas ' (' Quarterly Re- view,' Ixxxvi, 204). 314 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. this way. ' As I take it ' (she says), ' good nature is a quality of the soul, good temper of the body : the one always feels for everybody, the other frequently feels for nobody. Good tempers are often soured by illness or disap- pointments, good nature can be altered by neither : one would choose the one in a compan- ion, the other in a friend. I judge good nature to be the effect of tenderness, and good temper to be the consequence of ease and cheerfulness : the first exerts itself in acts of compassion and beneficence, the other shows itself in equality of humour and compliance.' In Lord Chesterfield's letters to his son, -a long paragraph is deyoted to Lady Hervey, to whom he gives young Stalnhope an introduction. The time of writing is October 22, 1750, at which date she was in Paris, where indeed she seems to have resided until the close of the fol- lowing year. His lordship's admiration of his old friend is unbounded. ' She has been bred all her life at courts,' he says ; ' of which she has acquired all the easy good- breeding, and politeness, without the frivolousness. She has all the reading that a woman should have ; and more than any woman need have ; for she un- derstands Latin perfectly wel|, though she wisely conceals it.' [Lord Chesterfield had Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 315 obviously not seen her correspondence with Mr. Morris, where it is rather en. dvldence.] ' No woman ' (he goes on) ' ever had more than she has, le ton de la parfaitement bonne com- pagnie, Us manUres engageantes, et le je ne sgais quoi qui plait,' and he bids his awkward ofTspring consult her in everything pertaining to good man- ners. ' In such a case she will not put you out of countenance, by telling you of it in company ; but either intimate it by some sign, or wait for an opportunity when you are alone together.' She will not only introduce him, says his lord- ship, but (' if one may use so low a word ') she will puff him, as she lives in the beau monde. Of this last, unhappily, her letters to Mr. Mor- ris of Nutshalling afford few traces. But she was evidently acquainted with many of the per- sonages who figure in Walpole's later letters from the French capital. Her chief friend was Mademoiselle de Charolais, a witty, verse- making princess of the blood, sister of that hom- icidal maniac who was wont to divert himself by firing upon the helpless Parisians from the roof of his palace.* With ' Mademoiselle,' who was some years older than herself, she lived much ; and she also went frequently to the ' See Goldsmith's ' Citizen of the World,' Letter 3i6 Eighteenth Century Vignettest Prince de Conti's chAleau at L'Isle Adam on the Oise — a delightful country-seat of which, thirty years ago, nothing remained but a terrace walk shaded by ancient trees. Another intimate was that Duchesse d'Aiguillon whose singular fancy led her to translate and recite the ' Eloisa to Abelard ' of Pope and the ' Solomon ' of Prior.^ In the summer of 175 1 Lady Hervey was ill, and, like Walpole, testifies to the ex- treme kindness and solicitude of her French friends, who overpowered her with delicate at- tentions in the shape of light quilts, couches, easy-chairs, ' little chickens, out of the coun- try,' and ' new-laid eggs, warm from the hen,' all of which things naturally heighten her ' re- luctance to quit this delightful place [Paris], and most agreeable people.' But the only approach to a portrait which she draws for her corre- spondent is the following pen-sketch of the now venerable Cydias of La Bruyfire — the author of the ' Plurality des Mondes.' ' I dine some- times ' (she says) with a set of beaux esprits, among which old Fontenelle presides. He has no mark of age but wrinkles, and a degree of deafness : but when, by sitting near him, you I Madame de Boufilers was another Anglomaniac, who composed a prose tragedy upon a paper in the ' Spectator.' It was excellent, says Walpole ; but it remained unprinted. Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 317 make him hear you, he never failsjto understand you, and always answers with that liveliness, and a sort of prettiness, peculiar to himself. He often repeats and applies his own and other peo- ple's poetry very agreeably ; but only occa- sionally as it is proper and applicable to the subject. He has still a great deal of gallantry in his turn and in his discourse. He is ninety- two, and has the cheerfulness, liveliness, and even the taste and appetite of twenty-two.' He was two years older than Lady Hervey thought : but he had still six years to live before, in Janu- ary, 1757, he experienced that final difficulty d'Mre to which his death-bed words referred. As far as one can judge from the dates of Lady Hervey's letters, it must have been during her absence in Paris at this period that she lost her father-in-law, who departed this world on January 20, 175 1, in his eighty-sixth year. His last communication to her is filled with paternal concern lest an indisposition of which she had spoken should have been promoted by the ill hours and good cookery of Paris ; and from the one that immediately preceded it, it seems that premonitions of her impending departure had for the time been distracting him from the misfor- tunes of his native land, since he refers to France as a ' corrival country ' which ' hath 3i8 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. now provd to have had that superior ascendent long apprehended by, Madam, your Ladyships disconsolate, faithfull friend & servant, Bristol.' Some years previous to his death, and partly in anticipation of the severance from her Suffolk home which that event would involve, Lady Hervey had been. re-building her London house in St. James's Pla,ce, her architect being Henry Flitcroft, the ' Burlington Harry ' to whom we owe Hampstead Church and St. Giles-in-the- Fields. Her letters contain frequent references to the progress of this enterprise, and to the prolonged familiarity with compasses, rulers, Greystock bricks, cornices, fascias, copings, and so forth, which her minute supervision of the subject entailed. Besides making it comfort- able, her object was to render it as countrified as possible, so as to compensate her, as far as might be, for the loss of the bird-haunted lawns and leafy shrubberies of Ickworth; and as its five windows in a row looked uninterruptedly over the Green Park towards Chelsea (not far from the spot where in 1731 her husband had fought his duel with Pulteney), her desire in this respect was doubtless gratified. The house, which stood between Spencer House and that of Sir John Cope (of Preston Pans), is still in existence, though at a later period it was divided Mary Lepel, Lady Heroey. 319 into two. At St. James's Place Lady Hervey resided when she was in town, and here she entertained her particular friends with delightful little dinners, cooked and served d la frangaise, where the guests would be wits like Walpole or Chesterfield, and philosophers like Mr. Hume from Edinburgh (who sends her his account of his quarrel with Rousseau), or M. Helv^tius from Paris,' whose treatise ' De I'Esprit' is, with Voltaire * ' Sur la Tolerance,' among the latest literary novelties which her Ladyship re- ports to Mr. Morris. Lord March, afterwards ' Old Q,' who was also a favoured visitor at the Hdtel de Milady, as he calls it, writes enthusi- astically to Selwyn of these charming gatherings. Another of the habiiuis was Pulteney, both be- fore and after the period when, in Lord Ches- terfield's phrase, he ' shrunk into insignificancy 1 Hume warned Helv^tius that in England men of letters were not made as much of as in France ; and Helvetius confirmed this upon his return to Paris (Hume to Blair, 6 April, 1765). But he no doubt made an exception in favour of his amiable hostess at St. James's Place. 2 Lady Hervey had known Voltaire during his resi- dence in England in 1726-29, and he had even addressed to her some conventional amatory verses. In the ' His- toire de Jenni,' 1775, he makes mention of her, as also of Mead, Cheselden, and Peterborough. 320 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. and an Earldom.' A passage or two from one of Lady Hervey's letters at the period of his death in July, 1764, serve to complete and con- firm Lord Chesterfield's by no means flattering portrait of their common friend, whose brilliant social gifts seem never to have blinded even his chosen associates to his essentially selfish and sordid character : ' He was a most agreeable companion, and a very good-humoured man ; but I, that have known him above forty years, knew that he never thought of anyone when he did not see them, nor ever cared a great deal for those he did see. . . . He has left an immense fortune to a brother he never cared for, and always, with reason, despised, and a great deal to a man he once liked, but had lately great reason to think ill of. I am sorry he is dead ; he was very agreeable and enter- taining ; and whenever I was well enough to go downstairs, and give him a good dinner, he was always ready to come and give me his good company in return. I was satisfied with that ; one must take people as they are. . . .' Lord Bath died at eighty-two, and when this letter was written Lady Hervey was sixty-four. She returned to France several times after her first visit, and made excursions into Scotland and its ' frightfully dirty ' capital. But in later Mary Lepel, Lady Hervey. 321 years, as hereditary gout grew upon her, her travels became restricted to such distances as would enable a postchaise to bring her home at the first approach of an attack. Her letters to Mr. Morris, whose firm friend and benefactor she continued to the last, extend to a little before her death ; but she doubtless wrote many others to her favourite daughter Lepel ; to her eldest son, the ambassador ; and to his brother, the Augustus Hervey who afterwards became an admiral, which, we suspect, must have been even better reading than many of those to her clerical correspondent. To Mr. Morris, of necessity, she shows only the more serious side of her character, although even her communica- tions to him are sufficient to reveal her as a woman of great intellectual capacity, of very superior ability, and of a happy and cheerful habit of mind. To those she loved she was uniformly affectionate and sympathetic, and it is not difficult to believe her assertion that she never lost a friend except by death. She her- self died in September, 1768. Walpole, who dedicated to her the first three volumes of his ' Anecdotes of Painting,' and to whom she left a small remembrance in her will, thus writes her epitaph to Mann : ' She is a great loss to several persons ; her house was one of the 322 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. most agreeable in London ; and her own friend- liness, good breeding, and amiable temper, had attached all that knew her. Her sufferings, with the gout and rheumatism, were terrible, and yet never could affect her patience, or divert her attention to her friends.' There was a miniature of her at Strawberry Hill ; but her best likeness in middle life is another portrait by Allan Ramsay (referred to at page i6o of this volume), which also belonged to Walpole, and which Lady Hervey probably gave him in return for his own portrait by the same artist. Charles Lamb, THE TOUR OF COVENT GARDEN. IT^HO would imagine that the Covent Garden • ' of to-day, with its shady, many-scented arcade, — with its Babel of voices and crush of baskets, — its flowers ' a-growing and a-blow- ing,' — its curious mingling of town and country — who would now imagine that this had once been an ' Enclosure or Pasture,' ' browsed by deep-udder'd kine,' and where, maybe, the nightingale — ' in April suddenly Brake from a coppice gemm'd with green and red ' ? Yet SO it was. Covent Garden or ' Convent Garden,' lying between Long Acre and the Strand, originally formed part of the grounds of the ancient Abbey of Westminster. There is still extant a document, ' writ in choice Italian ' (if one may so style law Latin), describing it as ' le Covent Garden . . . nuper pertinens Monasterio Sancti Petri Westmonasteriensis.' Under Edward the Sixth it was granted by that king to his uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of 324 Eighteenth Century yignettes, Somerset, Jane Seymour's brother. At Somer- set's attainder it reverted to the Crown ; and then, says the meritorious Strype, ' with seven acres called Long Acre,' was re-granted by pat- ent to John, Earl of Bedford. This was in May, 1552. Upon part of the 'terre et pas- ture ' so acquired, the earl built the old semi- wooden structure known as Bedford House, which looked into the Strand, and the long wall of whose spacious garden at the back corre- sponded to what is now the south side of the market. Under Francis the fourth Earl about 163 1, the square was laid out, and the arcades or piazzas erected.^ Next came St. Paul's Church ; and Russell Street, Bow Street, Charles Street, Henrietta Street, and King Street followed in quick succession. For sev- eral years after this the square was little more than a gravelled space, and the market was con- fined to a ' small grotto ' or grove of trees which ran along the before-mentioned wall of Bedford House garden. In the centre of the square stood a tall dial, with four gnomons, and having a gilt ball at the top, a capital representation of 1 All of the houses in these latter, according to the Rate Books, were inhabited by persons of rank. ' Covent- garden (says J. T. Smith) was the first square inhabited by the great ' (' Nollekens and his Times,' 1828, i. 221). The Totir of Covent Garden. 325 which was to be seen at Burlington House, not very long ago, in a picture ascribed to Joseph Nollekens, father of the sculptor. In 1671, the market rising in importance, Charles II. granted it to William, fifth Earl of Bedford. Then, gradually, as Bedford House was pulled down, and Tavistock Row built, the market people be- gan to creep further into the body of the square ; and by the middle of the eighteenth century had begun to be largely supplemented by parasitic bakers, cooks, retailers of Geneva, and other personages — only Arcadian in one sense — who haunted the upper chambers of their sheds and booths, much to the ' injury and prejudice ' of the neighbouring householders. The doubtful reputation thus acquired clung long to the local- ity, and seems to have increased with its pros- perity. But in 1830 the present Market House was built, and apart from the disappearance of the eastern piazzas, in the last sixty years the general appearance of the place has little altered, while its character has improved. If, as is not impossible, its present owner should some day sell it, many of its traditional associa- tions may be expected to disappear. Other buildings in the towering modern taste will re- place its 'brown old taverns,' and 'fringe of houses studded in every part with anecdote and 326 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. history,' and the Covent Garden so dear to Addison and Steele, to Smollett and Fielding, to Dickens and Thackeray, will have vanished as a tale that is told. It is proposed, therefore, while it retains something of its ancient aspect, to make a brief tour of this time-honoured precinct. The old Church of St. Paul's, the portico of which forms a convenient starting place, still looks much the same as it does in Hogarth's ' Morning,' where the withered prototype of Bridget Allworthy, — ' With bony and unkercliief 'd neck defies The rude inclemency of wintry skies, And sails with lappet-head and mincing airs Duly at clink of bell to morning pray'rs.' As a matter of fact, however, it is not the same. The ' handsomest barn in England,' which Inigo Jones built about 1631 for Francis Earl of Bed- ford, was burnt down in September, 1795, by the carelessness of some workmen who were repairing its red-tiled roof ; but it was re-erected on the old plan and proportions by Thomas Hardwick. Many persons of distinction lie within its walls or inclosure. Butler, the author of ' Hudibras,' (' Of all his gains by verse, he could not save Enough to purchase flannel and a grave I ' ) The Tour of Covent Garden. 327 was buried here at the charges of an admirer, while Steele's friend, Dick Estcourt, Kynas- ton, Charles Macklin, Gibber's partner, Robert Wilks, Lely, Grinling Gibbons, Strange the engraver, and ' Peter Pindar' (Dr. Wolcot) are all somewhere in the vicinity. And there are small as well as great. In the church or church- yard lie Charles the First's diminutive favour- ites, the dwarf Richard Gibson and his wife — that fortunate couple, whose epithalamium was written by Edmund Waller : — ' Thrice happy is that humble pair, Beneath the level of all care I Over whose heads those arrows fly Of sad distrust and jealousy : Secured in as high extreme, As if the world held none but them.' Both lived to threescore years and ten, and (say the chroniclers) ' had nine children of a proper size.' In front of St. Paul's the members for Westminster were elected, and here, at the close of the last century, and even well into the present, took place, on these occasions, those ' fierce and protracted riots of the anti-Reform Bill days which survive in the prints of Gillray and Rowlandson. One of these exhibitions of popular feeling — as may be remembered by the readers of an earlier series of these ' Vignettes ' 338 Eighteenth Century yignettes. — was witnessed in 1782 by Parson Charles Moritz of Berlin.^ Passing from St. Paul's to the left, we come to King Street. At the corner of this, old plans show the Swan Tavern, perhaps the very hos- telry which, in Hogarth's (reversed) print, is distinguished by a pot or jug upon a post. In King Street dwelt Edward Arne, the ' Political Upholsterer' of the 'Tatler,' father of Thomas Augustine Arne the musician, and Mrs. Gibber the tragic actress. At the elder Arne's house, the 'Two Crowns and Cushions,' lodged the Iroquois Indian Kings who came to England in 1710 to assure themselves that the subjects of Her Majesty Queen Anne were not mere vas- sals of France, a fiction which had been care- fully instilled into their ' untutored minds ' by the Jesuits. Garrick and Rowe also lived in King Street, — Rowe, indeed, died in it. Just where King Street ends and Covent Garden begins, stands, at right angles to the fagade of St. Paul's, the National Sporting Club, once known to the amateurs of hot suppers and ^Integer piles'' as Evans's Hotel, or Evans's. The old house, one of the most prominent objects in the market, has a long and chequered 1 See ' A German in England ' in ' Eighteenth Century Vignettes,' 1892, pp. 222-3. The Tour of Covent Garden. 329 history. Among the earlier residents were Denzill Holies, and Sir Kenelm Digby of the ' Sympathetic Powder,' who, says Aubrey, had here his laboratory. A later tenant was the Lord Bishop of Durham, upon whose episcopal doorstep it seems to have been the pious but embarrassing custom to lay all the foundlings of the parish. Early in the century the house was rebuilt by Edward Russell, Earl of Orford, the famous admiral who beat the French oif Cape La Hogue. To his seafaring repute it must be attributed that the fagade was long held to represent the stern of a vessel, to which indeed it bears a rudimentary resemblance. This, however, as the late Sir George Scharf pointed out, is simply a feature it has in common with many Dutch houses, some of which probably served for its model. Lord Russell died in 1727, and the house passed to Lord Archer of Umberslade, who had married Russell's grand- niece, Catherine Tipping. Towards the middle of the last century, Lady Archer's stately figure was well known in the market, and may be discovered in more than one contemporary pic- ture. To the Archers succeeded James West, M.P., President of the Royal Society, and a notable bibliographer, who here accumulated the library so vaunted by the Lisardos and 33° Eighteenth Century yignettes. Lysanders of Dibdln for its wealth of Caxtons, Pynsons, and Wynkyn de Wordes. Subse- quently, the house was opened by one David Lowe, formerly a hairdresser, as a ' family hotel,' the first of its kind in London, and an hotel it continued to be until its present trans- formation into a club. Next door to Lord Orford once lived William Hunter, John Hunter's elder brother, the ' great surgeon and anatomist of Covent-garden,' whom Fielding sent for on his last journey to Lisbon. Hunter's house was afterwards known as Richardson's Hotel, the proprietor of which, besides being celebrated for his excellent wine, was also, says the ' Gentleman's Magazine,' ' a diligent collec- tor of everything relative to the parish of St. Paul, Covent Garden.' But we are already in the Piazzas. The Piazzas formerly extended from Lord Orford's house along the northern and eastern sides of the Market as far as Bedford house garden, — the northern side being known as the Great, the eastern as the Little Piazza. The Great Piazza still exists, and that portion of the Little Piazza which lay to the north of the present Russell Street existed until very recently.'- 1 It was removed in 1S89 in order to enlarge the market. The Tour of Covent Garden. 331 The portion south of Russell Street, however, disappeared as far back as 1769, when it was burned down. ' Yesterday morning about five o'clock,' says the ' London Chronicle' for March, 1821, ' a fire broke out at Mr. Bradley's shop and distil-house, the corner of the Piazza in Great Russel-Street,^ Covent Garden, which in a short time, there being no water, consumed the following houses, viz., Mr. Bradley's large shop and distil-house, where it began ; the apart- ment of Mr. Vincent, musician, over it ; Mr. Bradley's dwelling house in Russell-street ; Mr. Hall's, cheesemonger, in the same street ; Mr. Lovejoy's Bagnio; Mr. Rigg's Hummum ; Mr. Carrol's, Peruke Maker, another of the same business ; and great part of the Bedford Arms Tavern [this, it may be observed in paren- thesis, must have been the joyous hostelry from which Hogarth and his friends set out on their 'Five Days' Peregrination'],^ all under the Piazza. The whole front of the said Piazza fell down about eight o'clock, with the most terrible concussion. The flames were so rapid, 1 Russell Street was then divided into Great and Little Russell Streets — the former extending from Covent Garden to JBrydges Street; the latter, from Brydges Street to Drury Lane. 2 See ante, p. 135. 332 Eighteenth Century Signet tes. that several of the Inhabitants lost most of their effects. A party of Guards was sent from the Savoy to prevent the sufferers from being plun- dered.' The Piazza at this point was never restored; but 'Mr. Rigg's Hummum' (Hum- muras) was rebuilt as an hotel. It was at the old Hummums that Johnson's relative, Parson Cornelius Ford, the ' fortera validumque combi- bonem, Laetantem super amphora repleta,' of Vincent Bourne and the ' Midnight Modern Conversation,' ended his dissolute life ; and here his ghost is said to have appeared, appropriately haunting the cellar. Johnson himself told the story to Boswell. ' Sir,' said he, 'it was believed. A waiter at the Hummums, in which house Ford died, had been absent for some time, and returned, not knowing that Ford was dead. Going down to the cellar, according to the story, he met him ; going down again he met him a second time. When he came up, he asked some of the people of the house what Ford could be doing there. They told him Ford was dead. The waiter took a fever, in which he lay for some time. When he recovered, he said he had a message to deliver to some women from Ford ; but he was not to tell what, or to whom. He walked out ; he was followed ; but some- where about St. Paul's they lost him. He came The Tour of Covent Garden. 333 back, and said he had delivered the message, and the women exclaimed, "Then we are all undone." Dr. Pellet, who was not a credulous man, inquired into the truth of this story, and he said the evidence was irresistible.' But the Hummums are in the eastern corner of Covent Garden, and we have not yet gone further than Richardson's Hotel. Between this and James Street, where once, in the brave days when the ' best red port' was five shillings a gallon, stood the famous ' Bumper Tavern ' advertised in the 'Spectator' (Nos. 260 and 261), there seems to have been no resident of note, unless, indeed it be Lady Muskerry, the dancing ' Princess of Babylon ' who figures (not very worshipfully) in Grammont's 'Memoirs,' and, says Cunningham, lived 'in the north-west angle, corner of James Street.' In James Street itself once dwelt Sir Humphry Davy and Grignion the Engraver. If, however, the ' north-west angle of the Piazza ' has but a few memories, the north-east angle is crowded with them. The second house eastward from James Street was Sir James Thornhill's, where, from 1724 to 1734, he held his academy for drawing, and whence, in all probability, his handsome daugh- ter Jane ran off with William Hogarth.^ Some- • According to George Vertue's notes in the British Museum, Hogarth himself lived in tliis house while the 334 Eighteenth Century yignettes. where hard by, at an earlier date, lived the wit Tom Kiliigrew, in a house afterwards occupied by Aubrey de Vere, the last Earl of Oxford. Near this again were the famous sale rooms of Cock, whom Fielding introduced into the 'His- torical Register' as 'Mr. Auctioneer Hen'; and here, between 1745 and 1750, the ' Ma- riage & la Mode' was exhibited gratis to an ungrateful world. In the front apartments of Cock's, and in convenient proximity to a fa- vourite house of call, the 'Constitution' in Bedford Street, lodged Richard Wilson. Zof- fany seems also to have resided in this house, afterwards Messrs. Langford's and later George Robins's ; and here he painted the picture of Foote as ' Major Sturgeon ' in ' The Mayor of Garratt' which Boydell's engraving has made familiar. Here, too, according to ' Rainy Day Smith,' the second Beef Steak Society held its meetings, when it migrated from its eyrie at the top of Covent Garden Theatre. Another house of which it is difficult to fix the precise position, must also have been in the immediate neigh- bourhood. This was the tavern which Mack- lin, the actor, opened in March, 1754, and plates of the ' Harlot's Progress ' — the paintings of which had reconciled Sir James to the marriage — were being engraved. The Tour of Covent Garden. 335 which, with the nondescript ' Grand Inquisi- tion ' in Hart Street ' on Eloquence and the Drama/ brought him in brief space to the brink of ruin. In the advertisements Macklin's ordi- nary is stated to have been in the grand Piazza, and the author of his life says it was ' next door to the playhouse '(i- e. the Piazza entrance to Covent Garden). While it continued, it must have been a good speculation for everyone but Macklin. The price was three shillings, which included port, claret, or whatever liquor the guest preferred. The proceedings were of the most impressive character. Ten minutes after the hour fixed — which was four -o'clock — the doors were shut punctually. Then Macklin, in full dress, himself brought in the first dish, with a napkin slung across his left arm. Placing it on the table, ' he made a low bow, and retired a few paces back towards the side-board, which was laid out in very superb style. . . . Two of his principal waiters stood beside him, and one, two, or three more, as occasion required. . . . Thus was dinner entirely served up, and at- tended to, on the side of the house, all in dumb show. When dinner was over, and the bottles and glasses all laid upon the table, Macklin quitting his former situation, walked gravely up to the front of the table, and hoped " that all things 33^ Eighteenth Century yignettes. were found agreeable ; " after which he passed the bell-rope round the back of the chair of the person who happened to sit at the head of the table, and making a low bow at the door, re- tired. . . . The company generally consisted of wits, authors, players. Templars, and loung- ing men of the town.' Excellent, however, as was the entertainment at this 'temple of luxury,' as Fielding called it, it could not last. State ordinaries at four, lectures in Hart Street after- wards, and suppers into the small hours, were too much even for the energies of the eccentric projector. Moreover, he was robbed right and left by his servants; and in January, 1775, Charles Macklin, of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, figured in the ' London Gazette.' He paid twenty shillings in the pound ; but he was poorer by some thousands for his nine months' experience as ' Vintner, Coffeeman, and Chap- man.' In the angle of the Great and Little Piazza, with Rich's old theatre at its back, stood the Shakespeare Tavern, whose sign was painted by Clarkson, the artist of the picture of Henry VH. in Merchant Taylors' Hall. Next door to the Shakespeare was the Bedford Coffee House (not to be confused with the already mentioned Bedford Arms), long used by Quin, The tour of Covent Garden. 337 Murphy, Garrick, Foote, and others. ' This coffee-house,' says the 'Connoisseur,' in 1754, ' is every night crowded with men of parts. Almost everyone you meet is a polite scholar and a wit.' Later it was the home of the Beef Steak Society, whose laureate in the Sheridan era was Captain Charles Morris of the ' Life Guards ' and the musical ' Toper's Apology,' a chanson d boire that might have delighted the heart of Golias himself : — ' Then, many a lad I liked is dead, And many a lass grown old ; And as the lesson strikes my head, My weary heart grows cold. But wine, a while, drives off despair. Nay, bids a hope remain — And that I think 's a reason fair To fill my glass again.' Rich's house came next the Bedford. It must have been in the Little Piazza, too, that lived Sir Godfrey Kneller, whose garden ran back as far as Dr. Radcliffe's house in Bow Street, and gave rise to an oft-told anecdote. ' As there was great intimacy between him (Kneller) and the physician' (says Walpole), he permitted the latter to have a door into his garden ; but Rad- cliffe's servants gathering and destroying the flowers, Kneller sent him word he must shut up 338 Eighteenth Century l^ignettes. the door. Radcliffe replied peevishly, 'Tell him he may do anything with it but paint it 1 ' ' And I,' answered Sir Godfrey, ' can take any- thing from him but physic' It was Rad- cliffe whose conversational powers occasioned Prior's verses — ' The Remedy worse than the Disease ' : — ' I sent for Radcliffe ; was so ill, That other doctors gave me over ; He felt ray pulse, prescrib'd his pill. And I was likely to recover. ' But when the wit began to wheeze, And wine had warm'd the politician, Cur'd yesterday of my disease, I dy'd last night of my physician.' The author of ' Alma,' however, was not the man to spare his friend and spoil his epigram ; and it is probable that he was as unjust as he was obviously ungrateful to Radcliffe, who has the reputation of being a brilliant rather than a tedious talker. Russell Street, which turns out of the end of Covent Garden now extends as far as Drury Lane, passing Drury Lane Theatre. It would carry us beyond the limits of this paper to give any detailed account of its many illustrious resi- dents. But, in the short portion of it which The Tour of Covent Garden. 339 lies between Covent Garden and Bow Street were no less than three of those famous old coffee-houses of the Augustan and Georgian eras, the names of which can never be disasso- ciated from the market. At No. 17, on the left, two doors from the vanished Piazza, was Tom's (not to be confounded with Tom's in the Strand or Tom's in Cornhill). ' Here,' says Defoe in 1722, 'you will see blue and green ribbons and Stars sitting familiarly, and talking with the same freedom as if they had left their quality and degrees of distance at home.' Tom's survived until 1814. In the latter part of the eighteenth century it was frequented by John- son, Goldsmith, Sir Philip Francis, and a host of notabilities, literary and otherwise. From a water-colour by Shepherd in the British Museum, dated 1857, it was then a tea and colonial ware- house, occupied by one Allen. Nearly opposite Tom's was Button's, established in 171 3. Daniel Button, the first proprietor, was an old servant of Addison, who, with his 'little senate,' — Carey, Philips, Budgell, Tickell, and the rest, — patronized the house. It was at Button's that Philips hung up the legendary rod that was to chastize Pope for his perfidies in the ' Guar- dian,' and it was here, too, that as a post-ofiSce to the same paper, was erected the lion's head 340 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. letter-box upon the Venetian pattern which is still preserved at Woburn Abbey. When But- ton's was taken down, this grotesque relic was transferred to the Shakespeare Head Tavern ; thence it passed to the Bedford Coffee-house, where it was used for the ' Inspector' of Field- ing's rival, Dr. Hill. Finally it came into the hands of Mr. Charles Richardson above men- tioned, whose son sold it to its present possessor, the Duke of Bedford. Higher up Russell Street, on the same side as Tom's, and at the north cor- ner of Bow Street, was ' Will's,' an older house than either of the other two. ' Will's,' so called from its first proprietor, William Urwin, dated from the Restoration, and is mentioned by Pepys. Its centre of attraction was Dryden, who visited it regularly until his death. In winter his seat was by the fire ; in summer his chair was moved to the balcony. Cibber could recall him there ' a decent old man, arbiter of critical disputes ; ' and it is supposed that when Pope saw him in his last years it must have been at ' Will's.' ' Virgilium vidi tantum,' Pope said to Wycherley, but he nevertheless remembered that the au- thor of the ' Fables ' was ' plump, of a fresh colour, with a down look and not very con- versable.' He was, however, not unwilling to talk about himself, if we may trust an The Tour of Covent Garden. 341 anecdote in Spence. ' The second time that ever I was there ' [i. e. at ' Will's '] , says Dean Lockier, ' Mr. Dryden was speaking of his own things, as he frequently did, especially of such as had been lately published. " If any- thing of mine is good," says he, " 't is Mac- Fleckno ; and I value myself the more upon it, because it is the first piece of ridicule written in Heroics." On hearing this I plucked up my spirit so far as to say, in a voice but just, loud enough to be heard, that " Mac-Fleckno was a very fine poem ; but that I had not imagined it to be the first that was ever writ that way." On this Dryden turned short upon me, as sur- prised at my interposing ; asked me how long I had been a dealer in poetry ; and added with a smile, " Pray, Sir, what is that you did ima- gine to have been writ so before ? " I named Boileau's " Lutrin," and Tassoni's " Secchia Rapita," which I had read, and knew Dryden had borrowed some strokes from each. "'Tis true," said Dryden, " I had forgot them." A little after Dryden went out ; and in going, spoke to me again, and desired me to come and see him the next day. I was highly delighted with the invitation ; went to see him accord-, ingly : and was well acquainted with him after, as long as he lived.' 342 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. At No. 20, Russell Street, once lodged Charles Lamb, commanding from his windows, to his intense satisfaction, both Covent Garden and Drury Lane Theatres, while Davies, the bookseller and quondam actor, whose ' very pretty wife ' survives in a couplet of Churchill, had his shop on the south side, No. 8, opposite ' Tom's.' It was in Davies' back parlor that Boswell was first introduced to Johnson, and it was here, also, that the ' great Cham of Litera- ture ' might have been heard inquiring the price of a thick stick (such as we learn from old sketches were sold in the neighboring Piazza) in order to protect himself against the insolence of Foote. Here, too, came the arrogant War- burton (in a coach 'sprinkled with mitres'), and Goldsmith and Reynolds, and Beauclerc and Bennet Langton. But we must turn once more into Covent Garden. The 'Hummums ' has already been described ; and about that portion of the south-eastern side once occupied by the extension of the Piazza burned down in 1769 there is little to say. At the extreme end of it, where Tavistock Row began, stood that highly popular puppet-show of the younger Powell, to which — witness the undersexton's letter in No. 14 of the 'Spectator' — the public used to flock whenever the bell of The Tour of Covent Garden. 343 St. Paul's tolled for morning and evening prayers. ' I have placed my Son at the Pia^\as,'' writes the worthy man, ' to acquaint the Ladies that the Bell rings for Church, and that it stands on the other side of the Garden; but they only laugh at the Child.' Powell's show went by the name of ' Punch's Theatre,' and seems to have included set pieces such as ' Whittington and his Cat ' and the ' History of Susanna ; or. Innocence betrayed' (with a 'Pair of new Elders'). At the same house was exhibited another popular show — Mr. Penkethman's ' Pantheon : or, the Temple of the Heathen Gods,' where, as per advertisement, ' the Figures, which are above 100, move their Heads, Legs, Arms, and Fingers so exactly to what they perform, and setting one Foot before another, like living Creatures, that it justly deserves to be esteem'd the greatest Wonder of the Age.' Tavistock Row, mentioned above, ran half- way along the southern side of the market, where of yore went the old garden wall of Bedford House. At No. 4 lived Lord Sand- wich's mistress, the unfortunate Miss Martha Reay, whom, under the influence of ungovern- able jealousy the Rev. James Hackman shot in the Piazza as he was quitting Covent Garden 344 Eighteenth Century Vignettes. Theatre.^ In the same house died Macklin. But Tavistock Row seems to have been most patronized by artists. Vandervelde the younger, the miniaturist and enameller Zincke, Nathaniel Dance, and Thomas Major the engraver, all had abodes in this little range of houses. In front of Tavistock Row, according to J. T. Smith, stood a shed or building, which, ap- parently by artistic license, Hogarth, in his print of ' Morning,' has placed under the por- tico of St. Paul's. This was the coffee-house, ' well-known,' says Arthur Murphy, ' to all gen- tlemen to whom beds are unknown,' which went by the name of ' King's ' or ' Tom King's.' Fielding refers to it more than once (in ' Pas- quin ' his ' comic poet ' is arrested as he is leav- ing this questionable resort) ; and it frequently occurs in eighteenth-century literature. King, its first proprietor, had been an Eton boy, but he is not enrolled among Sir Edward Creasy's ' Eminent Etonians.' At his death his dutiful widow continued the business, ultimately retir- ing, after an ill-spent life, to Haverstock Hill, 1 This tragically terminated story, told originally in Sir Herbert Croft's ' Love and Madness,' 1780, has recently been cleverly rearranged by Mr. Gilbert Burgess in an attractive volume entitled ' The Love Letters of Mr. H. and Miss R., 1775-1779' (Heinemann, 1895). The Tour of Covent Garden. 345 where, facing Steele's cottage, she built three substantial houses, long known as ' Moll King's Row.' Mr. Edward Draper, of Vincent Square, Westminster, has a picture of her, attributed to Hogarth, in which she is represented as a bold, gypsy-looking woman, with a cat in her lap. Southampton Street, with its recollections of Garrick and Nance Oldfield, and Henrietta ^reet, sacred to Kitty Clive, need not long detain us. In Henrietta Street lived Nathaniel Hone the painter, extracts from whose interest- ing diary for 1752-3 were published some years since in the ' Antiquary,' and the engravers Strange and McArdell ; while it was in the Castle Tavern that Richard Brinsley Sheri- dan fought the memorable duel with Captain Mathews (afterwards so discreditably repeated at Bath) for his beautiful ' St. Cecilia,' Miss Linley. A few steps bring us once more to the portico of St. Paul's, and the Tour of Covent Garden is at an end. GENERAL INDEX. GENERAL INDEX N. B. — The titles of articles are in capitals. Abington, Mrs., 4, 6, 7, 15. Absolute, Sir Anthony, 83, 84. Adam, The Brothers, 2. Addison, Joseph, 47, 66, 176, 18S. Adventures of a Guinea, Johnstone's, 89. Adventures of Five Days, The, 133-146. /Ssop, Barlow's, 48. Aiguillon, Duchess d', 316. Aitken, Mr. George A., 228. Alchemist, Jonson's, 10. Alcidalis and Zelida, Vol- ture's, 218. Alma, Prior's, 240, 254. Amelia, Justice's, 90. Anatomy, Burton's, 165. Ancient Mariner, Cole- ridge's, 45. Anecdotes of Painting, Wal- pole's, 213, 321. Anne, Lady, 21. Anson, Lord, 183. 201. Apprentice, Murphy's, 86. Aram, Eugene, 129. Arbuthnot, Dr., 30, 303. Archer, 14, 20, 27. Archer, Lady, 329. Arne, Edward, 328. Askew, Dr., 49, 50. Atalantis, The New, 88. Atterbury, Bishop, 123. Audley End, Winstanley's 39- Authors, Royal and Noble, Walpole's, 2og. Bacon, 280. Bacon, Roger, Jebb's, 41. Baillie, Dr., 48. Baker, George, 220. Baker, Samuel, 168. Bannister, 22, 26. Barbadoes, Ligon's, 45. Barbauld, Mrs., 25. 3SO General Index. Bartolozzi, F., 71. Bath, Lord, 192, 320. Bathoe, William, 207. Beauclerk, Lady Di., 86. Beaux Stratagem, Farqu- har's, 15. Beckford, Lord Mayor, 71, 73- Bedford Arms, 135, 145. Bedford Coffee House, 336, 337- Bedford, Duke of, 56. Bedford House, 324. Bedlam, 77. Beef Steak Society, The, 334. 337- Belle, Simon-Alexis, 223, 244. Bellenden, Mary, 224, 294, 297, 299. Belloy, M. Buyrette de, 58. Benedick, 15, 20. Bennett, Charles H., 47. Ben-money, 112. Bentley, Richard, the younger, 178, 208, 21 r. Betsy Thoughtless, Hay- wood's, 88, 92, 96, 97- 100 Bewick, Thomas, 291. Binning, Lord, 147. Birds, Bewick's, 48. Bishop Bonnet's Ghost, More's, 219. Blackmore, Sir Richard, 30- Boase, Mr. G. C, 273. Boccalini, Trajan, 44, 282. Boileau, 225. Boissy, M. Louis de, 51. Bolingbroke, 172, 240. Bon Ton, Garrick's, 20. Boscawen, Mrs., 147. Boswell, 147, 150. Boufflers, Madame de, 316. Bourne, Charles, 118. Boyle, Hamilton, 192. Bradford, Mrs., 11 1. Bragg, Thomas, 290. Branstons, The, 289. Branville, Sir Anthony, 7. Bristol, John, Earl of, 294, 298, 299, 300, 30s, 306, 308, 309, 310, 317, 318. Bristol, Lady, 304-306. Brooke, Miss Mary, 295. Brothers, The, 249. Browne, Isaac Hawkins, 181. Browning, Robert, 133. Brute, Sir John, 13, 14, 27. Bryant, Jacob, 180. Brydges Street, 2, 331. Bunbury, Lady Sarah, 69. Burnet, Judge, 173. Burney, Dr., 26. Burney, Fanny, 8, 14, 183, 184, 200. General Index. 351 Bute, Lord, 56, 155. Butler, Samuel, 326. Button's Coffee House, 339. 340- Byfield, Mary, 290. Byron, Lord, 56, 71, 72. Caine, Mr. Hall, 118. Calprenide, 84. ' Cambridge, the Every- thing,' 150, 178-204. Cane, the Gold Headed, Hunk's, 48. Canning, Elizabeth, 149, 312. Cap of Grey Hairs for a Green Head, Trench- field's, 277. Cassandra, Cotterell's, 117. Castle of Otranto, Wal- pole's, 215. Castle Tavern, 345. Charolais, Mdlle. de, 315. Chatterton, Letter on, Wal- pole's, 217. Chaworth, Mr., 56, 71. Cherry, 15. Chesterfield, Lord, 62, 67, 75, 191, 194, 202, 314, 319- Cheyne, Dr., 30, 79. Chinese Letters, Goldsmith's, loi. Chudleigh, Miss Elizabeth, 57. 307- Churchill, Charles, 59, 158, 179. Chute, John, 207. Cibber, Mrs., 67, 328. Ciccio, Abate, 154. Cicero, Olivet's, 39. Clandestine Marriage, Gar- rick and Colman's, 28. Clarinda and Chloe, Steele's, 46. Clenardus, Nicolaus, 46, 47- Clifton, Francis, 121, 122, 124. Clive, Lord, 198. Clive, Mrs., 6, 178. Closterman, J. B., 277. ' Club,' Puckle's, 269-291. Caches d'eau, 152, 153. Cock, the Auctioneer, 334. Colin Clout, Spenser's, 43. Colman, George, 5, 83, 86, 91, 194. Condamine, M. de la, 63, 80. Conti, Prince de, 316. Conversation, Prior's, 225, 247, 253. Z5S- Cook, Captain, 198. Cordelia, 22, 24. Cornllie, Henault's, 215. Coromandel, War in, Cam- bridge's 197. 352 General Index. Country-Mouse and City- Mouse, Prior's, 231, 232. CovENT Garden, The Tour of, 323-345. Coventry, Francis, 89, 192. Cowper, 226, 227. Coysevox, Antoine, 244. Croker, J. W., 295, 307. Crown Inn, Rochester, 139. Crudities, Coryat's, 43. Cuckold's Point, Gibbets at, 136. Cumberland, Richard, 22, 212. Cunningham, Dr. Alexan- der, 151. Cunningham, Allan, 155, 158. Cuzship, 112, 113. Dacier, M., 54. Dance, Nathaniel, 28, 344. Daniel, George, 210. D'Arblay, Madame. See Burney. Dark House, Billingsgate, 136. Davies, Thomas, 342. Davy, Sir Humphry, 333. Defoe, Daniel, 89. Denis, Charles, 59, 261. Denmark, Molesworth's, 46. DentrecoUes, Pfere, 103. D'fion de Beaumont, M., 58, 66. Derrick, Samuel, 76. Descazeaux, M. du Halley, 79- Dibben, Thomas, 229. Dice, Varieties of False, 285. Dick, Sir Alexander, 152, 160. Dickens, Charles, 33. Discovery, Mrs. Sheridan's, 7. Dispensatory, Quincy's, 47. Dobell, Mr. Bertram, 271. Doctor, Southey's, 105. Dorinda, Fitzpatrick's, 201, 218. Dorset, Lord, 229, 234, 235. Douglas, Home's, 313. Down Hall, Prior's, 241- 243. 253- Drake, Nathan, 104. Dr. Mead's Library, 29- 50. Draper, Daniel, 130. Draper, Mr. Edward, 345. Draper, Mrs. (Sterne's Eliza), 130. Drugger, Abel, 10, ii, 12, 13, 14, 19, 27. Dryden, John, 232, 340, 341. Dubourdieu, Jean Armand, IIS. Duenna, Sheridan's, 2, 3, 5. Dyer the actor, 67. General Index. 353 Edward VI., Letters of, 216. Edwards, Thomas, 181. Edwards the Ornithologist, 49. £ikon Basilike, 43. Eliot, George, 165. Elwin, Rev. Whitwell, 166. English Padlock, Prior's, 261, 262. Engravers, Catalogue of, Walpole's, 213. Epigrams, Prior's, 262, 263. Estcourt, Richard, 327. Estimate, Brown's, 53, 313. £tat des Arts, Rouqiiet's, 29. Evan's Hotel, 328. Every Man in his Humour, Jonson's, 12. Exeter, Lord, 234. ' Exit Roscius,' 1-28. Ezio, Metastasio's, 68. Fable of Jotham, Cam- bridge's, 195. Fables, Croxall's, 48. Faerie Queene, Spenser's, 43. Fancourt, Rev. Samuel, 206. Farington, Joseph, 19, 20. Felix, Don, 24. Female Quixote, Lenox's, 84. Ferguson of Pitfour, James, 74- Fielding, Henry, 75, 84, 100, loi, 149. Fielding's Library, 163- 177- Fielding, Sir John, 172. Fitzpatrick, General Rich- ard, 201, 218. Five Days, The Adven- tures OF, 133-146. Five Days' Peregrination, The, 134. Fleet, Liberties of the, 123. Flitcroft, Henry, 318. Fontenelle, M. de, 316. Foote, Samuel, 57, 65, 66, 334. 337- Ford, Cornelius, 332. Forrest, Ebenezer, 134, 146. Forrest-, Theodosius, 134. Fraiifais i Loiidres, Boissy's, SI, S2. Francklin, Richard, 207. Freind, Dr., 30, 244. Fugitive Pieces, Walpole's, 210. Gainsborough, 70. Gamesters, Puckle, on, 283. Garrick, David, i-z8, 57, 58, 69, 78, 80, 86, 172, 328. 23 354 General Index. Garrick, Mrs., 26, 27. Garth, Samuel, 30. Gay, John, 47, 297, 298. Gent, Alice, 132. Gent, Thos., Printer, 90, 104-132. George, Dr. William, 180. G^vaudan, The Beast of the, 57. Gibbons, Grinling, 160, 327. Gibbs, James, 243. Gibson, Richard, the Dwarf, 327- Girardon, Francois, 152. Goldsmith, Oliver, 76, loi, 179. Gostling, Rev. W., 146. Grammonfs Memoirs, 215. Granby, Marquis of, 70. Gray, Thomas, 180, 198, 205. Great Eastern Window, Gent's, 130. Great Ormond Street Hos- pital, 32, 33. Green, Matthew, 142. Green, Valentine, 104. Grenville, George, 73. Cresham Professors, Ward's, 41. Grey Cap for a Green Head, Puckle's, 269, 277. Grignion, Charles, 333. Grolier, 35. Grosley's 'Londres,' 51- 82. Grosley, M. Pierre Jean, S3-S6- Guerchy, Count de, 58, 66. Guicciardini, Francesco, 44. Guy, Alice, 114, 118, 120, 121, 125. Hackman, Rev. James, 343, Hailstone, Edward, 105. Halde, Du, 102, 103. Hamlet, Garrick's, r6, 17, 18, 19, 20. Hampton House, 69, 78. Harding, Silvester, 220. Hare, James, 201. Harrington, Lady, 79. Harvey, William, 289. Hatchett, Mr., loi. Hawkins, Sir John, 36. Hayman's Vauxhall pic- tures, 64. Haywood, Eliza, 96. Helv^tius, M., 319. Henrietta Street, 345. Henry and Emma, Prior's, 256. Herbert of Cherbury, Wal- pole's, 214. Hervey, Augustus, 307, 321. Hervey, Carr Lord, 303. General Index. 355 Hervey, John Lord, 298, Z99> 301. 3°2- Hervey, Mary Lepel, Lady, 160, 292-322. Hervey, Rev. S. H. A., 295. Hickey, Mr., 178, 179. Hieroglyphic Tales, Wal- pole's, 217, 218. Hill, Robert, 211. Hi/id and Panther, Dry- den's, 231. Histoire de yenni, Voltaire's, 319- Historic Doubts, Walpole's, 215. Historia Naturalis, Pliny's, 39- Historia stii Temporis, De Thou's, 41. History of the World, Ra- leigh's, 43, 227. Hodgkin, Mr. J. Eliot, 79, 272. Hogarth, William, 10, 47, 50, 69, 71, 89, 134, 156, 171. 333- Hommes Illustres,Vena.\ilt's, 43- Hone, Nathaniel, 345. ' Honeycombe, Polly, ' 83-103. Honywood, General, 70. Howard, Mrs., 296, 299, 300. Hudibras, Grey's, 37. Hudson, 178. Hull, History of, Gent's, 128. Hunie, David, 158, 159, 160. 319- Hunter, Rev. Joseph, 105. Hunter, William, 330. Imperiali, Francesco, 154. Indian Kings, The, 328. Influenza, The, i. Inkle and Yarico, Steele's, 46. Intruder, Cambridge's, 196. Island, Byron's, 183. James Street, Covent Gar- den, 333. Jardins Modernes, Essai sur I' Art des, Walpole's, 217. Jemmy and Jenny Jessamy, Haywood's, 97. Jenyns, Soame, 192. Joe Thompson, Kimber's, 92. Johnson, John, 290. Johnson, Samuel, 15, 36, 46, 148, i6i, 200, 342. Journal of a Voyage to Lis- bon, Fielding's, 167, 172. 3S6 General Index. Journey into England, Hentzner's, 208, 209. Jusserand, M., 52. Killigrew, Tom, 334. Kimber, Edward, 92. King, Moll, 345. King's Coffee House, 344. Kingston, Duchess of, 1. Kingston-^pon-HuU, History of, Gent's, 128. King Street, Covent Gar- den, 328. King, Thomas, g. Kirgate, Thomas, 215, 220. Kitely, 12, 13, 17, 24, 27. Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 337. Kohlmetz, Mr. George W., 277. Lacy, Willoughby, 4. Lamb, Charles, 342. Langfords, the Auctioneers, 334. Langton, Bennet, 46. Languish, Miss Lydia, 83. Layer, Christopher, 126. Lear, 24. Le Blanc, Abb^ S^- Le Brun, Charles, 65, 238. Lenox, Charlotte, 2,88, loi. Leon, 15. Lepel, Nicholas Wedig, 296, 297. Lesage, Alain Rene, 59. Lethe, Garrick's, 179. Lettres Philosophiques, Vol- taire's, 52. Lever, Sir Ashton, 183. Leveridge, Richard, 135. Library, Fielding's, 163- 177. Lichtenberg, G. C, 11, 17, 28. Lifford, Viscount, i6o. Lion's Head Letter-Box, 340. Lloyd, Robert, 59. Locker Lampson, F., 241. Lockier, Dean, 341. ' LONDRES, GROSLEY's,' 51- 82. Loutherbonrg, Philip de, 9. Love Letters of Mr. H. and Miss R., Burgess's, 344- Lowe's Hotel, 330. Lumpkin, Tony, 47. Lusignan, 7, 8, 27. Lyttelton, Lord, 73, 191. Lytton, Robert Lord, 11. Maeaulay, Lord, 83. Macbeth, 16. Macdonald, Sir James, 62. General Index. 357 Macklin, Charles, 327, 336. Macmichael, Dr., 48. Magliabecchi, 210. Magfie and her Brood, Wal- pole's, 218. Major, Thomas, 344. Mallet, David, 173. Manager in Distress, Col- man's, 199. Man of Quality, 15. Mansfield, Lord, 158. March, Lord, 320. Marriage Act, Shebbeare's, 89. Mary Lepel, Lady Her- vEY, 292-322. Matthew Prior, 222-268. Matthews, John, 123. Maurler, Mr. George du, 223. Maydieu, Abb^, 81. McArdell, James, 345. Mead, Richard, 29-50, 154. Medicinal Dictionary, Dr. Robert James's, 41. Memoirs, Wordsworth's, 44. Micro-cosmografhie, Earle's, 280, 281. Middleton, Dr. Conyers, 3"- Midwinter, Edward, 109, "3, 124- Minster (Sheppey), 144. Milton, Lauder on, 48. Miscellaneous Antiquities, Walpole's 216. Missal, Mead's Raphael, 34, 38. Moli^re, 30. Montagu, Charles, Earl of Halifax, 231, 235. Montagu, Sir James, 230. Montagu, Lady Mary Wort- ley, 89, 302. Moore, Edward, 191, 194. More, Hannah, 10, 13, 17, 19, 25. Morris, Captain Charles, 337- Morris, Rev. Edmund, 307, 308, 310, 315, 319. Moritz, Pastor, 60, 328. Much Ado about Nothing, Shakespeare's, 15. Munk, Dr., 48. Muralt, M., 52. Murphy, Arthur, 164, 337. Muse Recalled, Jones's, 219. Muskerry, Lady, 333. Mysterious Mother, Wal- pole's, 86, 215. Naime, Lord, 119. National Sporting Club, 328. Necker, Madame, 23, 25. Nesbit, Charlton, 289. 358 General Index. Newbery, John, 9, 38. Newcastle, Duke of, 73. Newton, 49. Nivernais, Duke of, 57, 61, 79. '57, is8- Northcote, James, 162. Novelisfs Magazine, Har- rison's, gi. Nugent, Dr. Thomas, 81. Odes, Gray's, 208. Officina Aebuteana, The, 205-221. O'Keeife, John, 22. Old City Manners, Lenox's, 2. Oracle, Saint-Foix's, 67. Orme, Robert, igS. Our Mutual Friend, Dick- ens's, 33, 64. Overbury, Sir Thomas, 280, 283. Oyseaux, Belon's, 48. Fainting, Ancient, Turnbull on, 47. Pamela, Richardson's, 102. Pantaleon, St., 55. Parallel, Spence's, 210. Peiresc, N. C. F. de, 35. Pelham, Henry, 172. Penkethman's Pantheon, 343- Pensies, Pascal's, 43. Peregrination, The Five Days', 134. Peterborough, Lord, 303. Petrarch, The Aldine, 39. Pharsalia, Lucan's, 2H. Phipps, Mrs., 307, 321. Physiognomonia, Porta's, 47. Piazzas, Covent Garden, 324, 330. 331. 332. 342. 343- Pindar, Peter, 158. Pitcairn, Dr., 48. Pitt, William, 71. Poe, Edgar Allan, 269. Poems, Countess Temple's, 214. Poems on Several Occasions, Prior's, 222, 223, 251, 253. 254- Poems, Hoyland's, 215. Pollard, Mr. A. W., 284. ' Polly Honeycombe,' 83-103. Pomfret, Lord, 73. Pomfey the Little, Coven- try's, 89. Pont de Veyle, M., 217. Pope, Alexander, 96, igo, 296, 297, 298. Pope Loan Museum (1888), 222. General Index. 359: Pope, Miss, 86. Porder, Richarde, 285. Portland, Duchess of, 250, 251, 267. Powell's Puppet Show, 342. Prior, Matthew, 170, 222-268, 293, 338. Pritchard, Mrs., 178. Proctors, 138. Provoked Wife, Vanbrugh's, J3. 70- Puckle's ' Club,' 269- 291. Puckle's Machine, 272. Puddle Dock, 136, 193. Pursuits of Literature, Mat- hias's, 189. Queenborough, 142. Quin, James, 13, 278, 338. Radcliffe, Dr. John, 31, 32, 48, 337. 338. Ragguagli di Parnasso, Boc- calini's, 282. Ramsay, Allan (Painter), 49, 70, 149-162, 322. Ramsay, Allan (Poet), 150. Ramsay, Mrs., 159. Ranger, 12, 20. Ranelagh, 63. Reay, Miss Martha, 343. Reinagle, Philip, 155, 160. Reynolds, A Rival of, 147-162. Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 22, 69, 147, 150. Rhenish Wine House, 228, 231. Rhopalic Verse, i88. Rich, Christopher, 336, 337. Richard the Third, 10, 16, 20,21, 28, 66. Richardson, Charles, 330, 340- Richardson, Samuel, 126, 163, 174- Richardson's Hotel, 330. Rippon, History of, Gient's, 104, 129, Rival of Reynolds, A, 147-162. Rivals, Sheridan's, 83. Robertson, Dr., 160. Robin Hood Club, 75, 76. Robinson Crusoe (abridged), 125. Robinson, William, 207, 208, 2X1. Rogers, Samuel, 22. Roubillac, 49, 50, 70, 79, Rouquet, Jean, 29, 156. Rousseau, 57, 158, 159, 313, 319- Royal Society, Hills, 48. 360 General Index. Kubrick, Jack, 9. Rudd, Mrs. Margaret Caro- line, I. Stile a Wife and Have a Wife, Beaumont and Fletcher's, 14. Rassell, Earl of Oxford, 329- Russell Street, 331, 338, 340, 342- Russia, Whitworth's, 191, 210. Sacheverell, Rev. Henry, no. St. Paul's, Covent Garden, 326. Saintsbury, Prof., 171, 175. Sanchoniathon, 44. Savage, Richard, 122. Saxe, Maurice de, 64. Scharf, Sir George, 329. Scott, Samuel, 134, 179, 182. Scott, Sir Walter, 266. Scribleriad, Cambridge's, 184-188. Scrub, 16, 27. Scudery, 84, 313. Select Fables, Bewick's, 48. Select Society, Edinburgh, 160. Shakespeare Tavern, 336. She Stoops to Conquer, Gold- smith's, 47. Shepherd, Fleetwood, 229, 234- Sheridan, R. B., i, 6, 83, 345. Shurland, Sir Robert de, 144. Siddons, Mrs., 20, 21, 22. Siige de Calais, Belloy's, 58. Sleep Walker,\jikdrj Craven's, 217. Sloane, Sir Hans, 31, 45. Smibert, John, 154. Smith, Adam, 160. Smith, J. T., 26. Smollett, Dr., 54. Solimena, Francesco, 154. Solomon, Prior's, 255, 256, 316. Songes and Sonnets,S\iXTsy's, 43- Sorbi^res, M. Samuel de, 52, S3. 55- Southampton Street, 346. Spleen, Colman's, 9. Spleen, Green's, 142. Sprat, Bishop, 52. Standish, Anne, 117, 121. Steinman, G. Steinman, 271. Steme, Laurence, 56, 90, 129. Stevens, George Alexander, 65, 90. Stothard, Thomas, 91. General Index. 361 Stowe, 78. Strange, Sir Robert, 71,327, 34S- Strawberry Hill, 78. Strawberry Hill, Description of, Walpole's, 216, 217. Strawberry Hill Press, 205- 221. Strickland, Mrs., 21. Stultifera Nams, Brandt's, 39- Suffolk, Lady, 178. Suspicious Husband, Hoad- ly's, 12, 20, 21. Sullen, Mrs., 15. Swift, Jonathan, 106, 107, "o, 313. Swinburne, Mr. A. C, 267. Tavistock Row, 325, 343. Taylor, John, 19, 21. Teague's Ramble, Gent's, 125. Temple, Lord, 62, 73, 78. Tewrdannckh, Pfintzing's, 39- Thackeray, W. M., 163, 226, 227. Theophrastus, 281. Thompson, John, 289. Thornhill, John, 134. Thornhill, Sir James, 333, 334- Thornton, Bonnell, 194. Thorpe, Thomas, 105. Thos. Gent, Printer, 104- 132. Thrale, Mrs., 69. Thurston, John, 289, 290. Tom Folio, Addison's, 281. Tom's Coffee House, 339. Tonson, Jacob, 120. Tothall, William, 134. Tour of Covent Gar- den, The, 323-345. Train-bearers, Pages as, 68. Travels, Maundevile's, 43. Tristram Shandy, 57, 86, 89, 313- Tug, Tom, 26. VanderVelde the younger, 344- Vanloo, Michael, 58. Vauxhall, 65. Vergy, Treyssac de, 58. Vertue, George, 212, 223. Vertues and Vices, Hall's, 280. Virgil, the Spira, 39. Voltaire, 17, 319. Voyage Round the World, Shelvocke's, 44. Voyage to Russia, Justice's, 90. 362 General Index. Walmsley, Edward, 289. Walpole, Horace, 12, 34, 37, 57, 62, 78, III, 156, 160, 178, 179, 180, 181, 190, 191, 192, 194, 198, 319, 321. Waterman, Dibdin's, 26. Warburton, Bishop, 342. Watts's Charity at Roches- ter, 138. Watts, John, 120. Welsh, Mr. Charles, 38. West, James, iii, 329. West, Richard, 180. Weston, Thomas, 10, 11, 16, 27. Wharton, Thbmas, 207. Wheatley, Mr. H. B., 221. Whirler, Jack, 9. White, Henry, 289. White, John, 113, 118. Whitefield, G., 57. Whitefield, Mrs., 182. Whitehead, William, 184, 185, 195. Whitehead, Paul, 178, 179. Wilkes, John, 57. Wilks, Robert, 327. Williams, Sir Charles Han- bury, 192. Wills's Coffee House, 340. Wilson, Bishop Thomas, 119. Wilson, Richard, 334. Wilton, Joseph, 71. Wonder, Centlivre's, 24, 26. Woodward, Dr., 42. World, Dodsley's, 179, 191. Wright, Joseph, of Derby, 70. Wyat, Thomas (the elder), 216. Yates, Mrs. 4. York Journal, Gent's, 128. York, History of, Gent's, 128. York Press, Davies', 128. Younge, Miss, 4, 7, 24. Zara, Volt^re's, 7, 9, 27. Zincke, 345. ZofEany, 70, 334.