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"The pungent grains of titillating dust"

are indebted to him for the famous compound entitled "37." "Being passionately fond of theatrical entertainments, he was seldom," says his biographer, "without embryo Richards and Hotspurs strutting and bellowing in his dining-room, or in the parlour behind his shop. The latter of these apartments was adorned with heads of most of the persons celebrated for dramatic excellence; and to these he frequently referred in the course of his instructions."

"There is one circumstance, however, in his private character," continues our authority, "which deserves a more honourable rescue from oblivion. His charity was extensive in an uncommon degree, and was conveyed to many of its objects in the most delicate manner. On account of his known integrity (for he once failed in business, more creditably than he could have made a fortune by it,) he was often entrusted with the care of paying little annual stipends to unfortunate women, and others who were in equal want of relief; and he has been known, with a generosity almost unexampled, to continue these annuities, long after the sources of them had been stopped by the deaths or caprices of the persons who at first supplied them. At the same time he persuaded the receivers that their money was remitted to them as usual, through its former channel. Indeed his purse was never shut even to those who were casually recommended by his common acquaintance."[78]

This admirable man died in 1772; and by his will bequeathed the interest of 20,000l. to a female acquaintance, and at her decease the principal, &c., to the poor of his native city, Chichester.

Returning over the way we come to Dorset Street and Salisbury Court, names originating in a palace of the Bishop of Salisbury, which he parted with to the Sackvilles. Clarendon lived in it a short time after the Restoration. At the bottom of Salisbury Court, facing the river, was the celebrated play-house, one of the earliest in which theatrical entertainments were resumed at that period. The first mention we find of it is in the following curious memorandum in the manuscript book of Sir Henry Herbert, master of the revels to King Charles I. "I committed Cromes, a broker in Longe Lane, the 16th of Febru., 1634, to the Marsalsey, for lending a church robe with the name of Jesus upon it to the players in Salisbury Court, to present a Flamen, a priest of the heathens. Upon his petition of submission, and acknowledgment of his fault, I released him, the 17 Febru., 1634."[79]

It is not certain, however, whether the old theatre in Salisbury Court, and that in Dorset Garden, were one and the same; though they are conjectured to have been so. The names of both places seem to have been indiscriminately applied. Be this as it may, the house became famous under the Davenants for the introduction of operas and of a more splendid exhibition of scenery; but in consequence of the growth of theatres in the more western parts of the town, it was occasionally quitted by the proprietors, and about the beginning of the last century abandoned. This theatre was the last to which people went in boats.

In a house, "in the centre of Salisbury Square or Salisbury Court, as it was then called," Richardson spent the greater part of his town life, and wrote his earliest work, Pamela. Probably a good part of all his works were composed there, as well as at Fulham, for the pen was never out of his hand. He removed from this house in 1755, after he had written all his works; and taking eight old tenements in the same quarter, pulled them down, and built a large and commodious range of warehouses and printing offices. "The dwelling-house," says Mrs. Barbauld, "was neither so large nor so airy as the one he quitted, and therefore the reader will not be so ready, probably, as Mr. Richardson seems to have been, in accusing his wife of perverseness in not liking the new habitation as well as the old."[80] This was the second Mrs. Richardson. He calls her in other places his "worthy-hearted wife;" but complains that she used to get her way by seeming to submit, and then returning to the point, when his heat of objection was over. She was a formal woman. His own manners were strict and formal with regard to his family, probably because he had formed his notions of life from old books, and also because he did not well know how to begin to do otherwise (for he was naturally bashful), and so the habit continued through life. His daughters addressed him in their letters by the title of "Honoured Sir," and are always designating themselves as "ever dutiful." Sedentary living, eternal writing, and perhaps that indulgence in the table, which, however moderate, affects a sedentary man twenty times as much as an active one, conspired to hurt his temper (for we may see by his picture that he grew fat, and his philosophy was in no respect as profound as he thought it); but he was a most kind-hearted generous man; kept his pocket full of plums for children, like another Mr. Burchell; gave a great deal of money away in charity, very handsomely too; and was so fond of inviting friends to stay with him, that when they were ill, he and his family must needs have them to be nursed. Several actually died at his house at Fulham, as at an hospital for sick friends.

It is a fact not generally known (none of his biographers seem to have known of it) that Richardson was the son of a joiner, received what education he had (which was very little, and did not go beyond English), at Christ's Hospital.[81] It may be wondered how he could come no better taught from a school which had sent forth so many good scholars; but in his time, and indeed till very lately, that foundation was divided into several schools, none of which partook of the lessons of the others; and Richardson, agreeably to his father's intention of bringing him up to trade, was most probably confined to the writing-school, where all that was taught was writing and arithmetic. It was most likely here that he intimated his future career, first by writing a letter, at eleven years of age, to a censorious woman of fifty, who pretended a zeal for religion; and afterwards, at thirteen, by composing love-letters to their sweethearts for three young women in the neighbourhood, who made him their confidant. To these and others he also used to read books, their mothers being of the party; and they encouraged him to make remarks; which is exactly the sort of life he led with Mrs. Chapone, Miss Fielding, and others, when in the height of his celebrity. "One of the young women," he informs us, "highly gratified with her lover's fervour, and vows of everlasting love, has said, when I have asked her direction, 'I cannot tell you what to write, but (her heart on her lips) you cannot write too kindly;' all her fear was only that she should incur a slight for her kindness." This passage, with its pretty breathless parenthesis, is in the style of his books. If the writers among his female coterie in after-life owed their inspiration to him, he only returned to them what they had done for himself. Women seem to have been always about him, both in town and country; which made Mrs. Barbauld say, very agreeably, that he "lived in a kind of flower-garden of ladies." This has been grudged him, and thought effeminate; but we must make allowance for early circumstances, and recollect what the garden produced for us. Richardson did not pretend to be able to do without female society. Perhaps, however, they did not quiet his sensibility so much as they charmed it. We think, in his Correspondence, a tendency is observable to indulge in fancies, not always so paternal as they agree to call them; though doubtless all was said in honour, and the ladies never found reason to diminish their reverence. A great deal has been said of his vanity and the weakness of it. Vain he undoubtedly was, and vanity is no strength; but it is worth bearing in mind, that a man is often saved from vanity, not because he is stronger than another, but because he is less amiable, and did not begin, as Richardson did, with being a favourite so early. Few men are surrounded, as he was, from his very childhood, with females; and few people think so well of their species or with so much reason. In all probability too, he was handsome when young, which is another excuse for him. His vanity is more easily excused than his genius accounted for considering the way in which he lived. The tone of Lovelace's manners and language, which has created so much surprise in an author who was a city printer, and passed his life among a few friends between Fleet Street and a suburb, was caught, probably, not merely from Cibber, but from the famous profligate Duke of Wharton, with whom he became acquainted in the course of his business. But the unwearied vivacity with which he has supported it is wonderful. His pathos is more easily accounted for by his nerves, which for many years were in a constant state of excitement, particularly towards the close of his life; which terminated in 1761, at the age of seventy-two, with the death most common to sedentary men of letters, a stroke of apoplexy.[82] He was latterly unable to lift a glass of wine to his mouth without assistance.

At Fulham and Parson's Green (at which latter place he lived for the last five or six years), Richardson used to sit with his guests about him, in a parlour or summer-house, reading, or communicating his manuscripts as he wrote them. The ladies made their remarks; and alterations or vindications ensued. His characters, agreeably to what we feel when we read of them (for we know them all as intimately as if we occupied a room in their house), interested his acquaintances so far that they sympathised with them as if they were real; and it is well known that one of his correspondents, Lady Bradshaigh, implored him to reform Lovelace, in order "to save a soul." In Salisbury Court, Richardson, of course, had the same visitors about him; but the "flower-garden" is not talked of so much there as at Fulham. In the evening the ladies read and worked by themselves, and Richardson retired to his study; a most pernicious habit for a man of his bad nerves. He should have written early in the morning, taken good exercise in the day, and amused himself in the evening. When he walked in town it was in the park, where he describes himself (to a fair correspondent who wished to have an interview with him, and who recognised him from the description) as "short, rather plump, about five feet five inches, fair wig, one hand generally in his bosom, the other a cane in it, which he leans upon under the skirts of his coat, that it may imperceptibly serve him as a support when attacked by sudden tremors or dizziness, of a light brown complexion, teeth not yet failing." "What follows," observes Mrs. Barbauld, "is very descriptive of the struggle in his character, between innate bashfulness and a turn for observation:"—"Looking directly forwards, as passengers would imagine, but observing all that stirs on either hand of him, without moving his short neck; a regular even pace, stealing away ground rather than seeming to rid it; a grey eye, too often overclouded by mistiness from the head, by chance lively, very lively if he sees any he loves; if he approaches a lady, his eye is never fixed first on her face, but on her feet, and rears it up by degrees, seeming to set her down as so and so."[83]

Latterly Richardson attended little to business. He used even to give his orders to his workmen in writing; a practice which Sir John Hawkins is inclined to attribute to stateliness and bad temper, but for which Mrs. Barbauld finds a better reason in his bad nerves. His principal foreman also was deaf, as the knight himself acknowledges. Richardson encouraged his men to be industrious, sometimes by putting half-a-crown among the types as a prize to him who came first in the morning, at others by sending fruit for the same purpose from the country. Agreeably to his natural bashfulness, he was apt to be reserved with strangers. Sir John Hawkins tells us, that he once happened to get into the Fulham stage when Richardson was in it (most likely he got in on purpose); and he endeavoured to bring the novelist into conversation, but could not succeed, and was vexed at it. But Sir John was one of that numerous class of persons who, for reasons better known to others than to themselves,

"Deemen gladly to the badder end,"

as the old poet says; and Richardson probably knew this pragmatical person, and did not want his acquaintance.

Johnson was among the visitors of Richardson in Salisbury Court. He confessed to Boswell, that although he had never much sought after anybody, Richardson was an exception. He had so much respect for him, that he took part with him in a preposterous undervaluing of Fielding, whom he described in the comparison as a mere writer of manners, and sometimes as hardly any writer at all. And yet he told Boswell that he had read his Amelia through "without stopping:" and according to Mrs. Piozzi she was his favourite heroine. In the comparison of Richardson with Fielding, he was in the habit of opposing the nature of one to the manners of the other; but Fielding's manners are only superadded to his nature, not opposed to it, which makes all the difference. As to Richardson, he was so far gone upon this point, in a mixture of pique and want of sympathy, that he said, if he had not known who Fielding was, "he should have taken him for an ostler." Fielding, it is true, must have vexed him greatly by detecting the pettiness in the character of Pamela. Richardson, as a romancer, did not like to have the truth forced upon him, and thus was inclined to see nothing but vulgarity in the novelist. This must have been unpleasant to the Misses Fielding, the sisters, who were among the most intimate of Richardson's friends. Another of our author's visitors was Hogarth. It must not be forgotten that Richardson was kind to Johnson in money matters; and to use Mrs. Barbauld's phrase, had once "the honour" to be bail for him.

We conclude our notice, which, on the subject of so original a man, has naturally beguiled us into some length, with an interesting account of his manners and way of life, communicated by one of his female friends to Mrs. Barbauld. "My first recollection of him," says she, "was in his house in the centre of Salisbury Square, or Salisbury Court as it was then called; and of being admitted as a playful child into his study, where I have often seen Dr. Young and others; and where I was generally caressed and rewarded with biscuits or bonbons of some kind or other; and sometimes with books, for which he, and some more of my friends, kindly encouraged a taste, even at that early age, which has adhered to me all my long life, and continues to be the solace of many a painful hour. I recollect that he used to drop in at my father's, for we lived nearly opposite, late in the evening to supper; when, as he would say, he had worked as long as his eyes and nerves would let him, and was come to relax with a little friendly and domestic chat. I even then used to creep to his knee and hang upon his words, for my whole family doated on him; and once, I recollect that at one of these evening visits, probably about the year 1753, I was standing by his knee when my mother's maid came to summon me to bed; upon which, being unwilling to part from him and manifesting some reluctance, he begged I might be permitted to stay a little longer; and, on my mother's objecting that the servant would be wanted to wait at supper (for, in those days of friendly intercourse and real hospitality, a decent maid-servant was the only attendant at his own and many creditable tables, where, nevertheless, much company was received), Mr. Richardson said, 'I am sure Miss P. is now so much a woman, that she does not want anyone to attend her to bed, but will conduct herself with so much propriety, and put out her own candle so carefully, that she may henceforward be indulged with remaining with us till supper is served.' This hint and the confidence it implied, had such a good effect upon me that I believe I never required the attendance of a servant afterwards while my mother lived; and by such sort of ingenious and gentle devices did he use to encourage and draw in young people to do what was right. I also well remember the happy days I passed at his house at North End; sometimes with my mother, but often for weeks without her, domesticated as one of his own children. He used to pass the greatest part of the week in town; but when he came down, he used to like to have his family flock around him, when we all first asked and received his blessing, together with some small boon from his paternal kindness and attention, for he seldom met us empty-handed, and was by nature most generous and liberal.

"The piety, order, decorum, and strict regularity that prevailed in his family were of infinite use to train the mind to good habits and to depend upon its own resources. It has been one of the means which, under the blessing of God, has enabled me to dispense with the enjoyment of what the world calls pleasures, such as are found in crowds, and actually to relish and prefer the calm delights of retirement and books. As soon as Mrs. Richardson arose, the beautiful Psalms in Smith's Devotions were read responsively in the nursery, by herself and daughters standing in a circle: only the two eldest were allowed to breakfast with her and whatever company happened to be in the house, for they were seldom without. After breakfast, we younger ones read to her in turns the Psalms and Lessons for the day. We were then permitted to pursue our childish sports, or to walk in the garden, which I was allowed to do at pleasure; for, when my father hesitated upon granting that privilege for fear I should help myself to the fruit, Mrs. Richardson said, 'No, I have so much confidence in her, that, if she is put upon honour, I am certain that she will not touch so much as a gooseberry.' A confidence I dare safely aver that I never forfeited, and which has given me the power of walking in any garden ever since, without the smallest desire to touch any fruit, and taught me a lesson upon the restraint of appetite, which has been useful to me all my life. We all dined at one table, and generally drank tea and spent the evening in Mrs. Richardson's parlour, where the practice was for one of the young ladies to read while the rest sat with mute attention round a large table, and employed themselves in some kind of needle-work. Mr. Richardson generally retired to his study, unless there was particular company.

"These are trifling and childish anecdotes, and savour, perhaps you may think too much of egotism. They certainly can be of no further use to you than as they mark the extreme benevolence, condescension, and kindness of this exalted genius, towards young people; for, in general society, I know he has been accused as being of few words and of a particularly reserved turn. He was, however, all his lifetime the patron and protector of the female sex. Miss M. (afterwards Lady G.) passed many years in his family. She was the bosom friend and contemporary of my mother; and was so much considered as enfant de famille in Mr. Richardson's house, that her portrait is introduced into a family piece.

"He had many protégees;—a Miss Rosine, from Portugal, was consigned to his care; but of her, being then at school, I never saw much. Most of the ladies that resided much at his house acquired a certain degree of fastidiousness and delicate refinement, which, though amiable in itself, rather disqualified them from appearing in general society to the advantage that might have been expected, and rendered an intercourse with the world uneasy to themselves, giving a peculiar air of shyness and reserve to their whole address; of which habits his own daughters partook, in a degree that has been thought by some a little to obscure those really valuable qualifications and talents they undoubtedly possessed. Yet this was supposed to be owing more to Mrs. Richardson than to him; who, though a truly good woman, had high and Harlowean notions of parental authority, and kept the ladies in such order, and at such a distance, that he often lamented, as I have been told by my mother, that they were not more open and conversable with him.

"Besides those I have already named, I well remember a Mrs. Donellan, a venerable old lady, with sharp piercing eyes; Miss Mulso, &c., &c.; Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury; Sir Thomas Robinson (Lord Grantham), &c., &c., who were frequent visitors at his house in town and country. The ladies I have named were often staying at North End, at the period of his highest glory and reputation; and in their company and conversation his genius was matured. His benevolence was unbounded, as his manner of diffusing it was delicate and refined."[84]

Richardson was buried in the nave of St. Bride's Church; and a stone was placed over his remains, merely recording his name, the year of his death, and his age. In this church were also interred Wynken de Worde, the famous printer; the bowels of Sackville the poet, whom we shall presently have occasion to mention again; and Sir Richard Baker, the author of the well-known book of English Chronicles. De Worde resided in Fleet Street.

Between Water Lane and the Temple, and leading out of Fleet Street by a street formerly called Whitefriars, which has been rebuilt, and christened Bouverie Street, is one of these precincts which long retained the immunities derived from their being conventual sanctuaries, and which naturally enough became as profane as they had been religious. The one before us originated in a monastery of White Friars, an order of Carmelites, which formerly stood in Water Lane, and it acquired an infamous celebrity under the slang title of Alsatia. The claims, however, which the inhabitants set up to protect debtors from arrest, seem to have originated in a charter granted to them by James I., in 1608. For some time after the Reformation and the demolition of the old monastery, Whitefriars was not only a sufficiently orderly district, but one of the most fashionable parts of the city. Among others of the gentry, for instance, who had houses here at this period, was Sir John Cheke, King Edward VI.'s tutor, and afterwards Secretary of State. The reader of our great modern novelist has been made almost as well acquainted with the place in its subsequent state of degradation and lawlessness, as if he had walked through it when its bullies were in full blow. The rags of their Dulcineas hang out to dry, as if you saw them in a Dutch picture; and the passages are redolent of beer and tobacco. The sanctuary of Whitefriars is now extremely shrunk in its dimensions; and the inhabitants retain but a shadow of their privileges. The nuisance, however, existed as late as the time of William III., who put an end to it; and the neighbourhood is still of more than doubtful virtue. One alley, dignified by the title of Lombard Street, is of an infamy of such long standing, that it is said to have begun its evil courses long before the privilege of sanctuary existed, and to have maintained them up to the present moment. The Carmelites complained of it, and the neighbours complain still. In the Dramatis Personæ to Shadwell's play called the Squire of Alsatia, we have a set of characters so described as to bring us, one would think, sufficiently acquainted with the leading gentry of the neighbourhood; such as—

"Cheatley. A rascal, who by reason of debts dares not stir out of White-fryers, but there inveigles young heirs in tail, and helps them to goods and money upon great disadvantages; is bound for them, and shares for them till he undoes them. A lewd, impudent, debauch'd fellow, very expert in the cant about the town.

"Shamwell. Cousin to the Belfonds; an heir, who being ruined by Cheatley, is made a decoy-duck for others: not daring to stir out of Alsatia, where he lives: is bound with Cheatley for heirs, and lives upon 'em a dissolute, debauched life.

"Capt. Hackman. A block-head bully of Alsatia; a cowardly, impudent, blustering fellow; formerly a sergeant in Flanders, run from his colours, retreated into White-fryers for a very small debt, where by the Alsatians he is dubbed a Captain, marries one that lets lodgings, sells cherry brandy, &c.

"Scrapeall. A hypocritical, repeating, praying, psalm-singing, precise fellow, pretending to great piety, a godly knave, who joins with Cheatley, and supplies young heirs with goods and money."

But Sir Walter, besides painting the place itself as if he had lived in it (vide Fortunes of Nigel, vol. ii.), puts these people in action, with a spirit beyond anything that Shadwell could have done, even though the dramatist had a bit of the Alsatian in himself—at least as far as drinking could go, and a flood of gross conversation.

Infamous, however, as this precinct was, there were some good houses in it, and some respectable inhabitants. The first Lord Sackville lived there; another inhabitant was Ogilby, who was a decent man, though a bad poet, and taught dancing; and Shirley another. It appears also to have been a resort of fencing-masters, which probably helped to bring worse company. They themselves, indeed, were in no good repute. One of them, a man of the name of Turner, living in Whitefriars, gave rise to a singular instance of revenge recorded in the State Trials. Lord Sanquire, a Scotch nobleman, in the time of James I., playing with Turner at foils, and making too great a show of his wish to put down a master of the art (probably with the insolence common to the nobility of that period), was pressed upon so hard by the man, that he received a thrust which put out one of his eyes. "This mischief," says Wilson, "was much regretted by Turner; and the baron, being conscious to himself that he meant his adversary no good, took the accident with as much patience as men that lose one eye by their own default use to do for the preservation of the other." "Some time after," continues this writer, "being in the court of the late great Henry of France, and the King (courteous to strangers), entertaining discourse with him, asked him, 'How he lost his eye:' he (cloathing his answer in a better shrowd than a plain fencer's) told him 'It was done with a sword.' The King replies, 'Doth the man live?' and that question gave an end to the discourse, but was the beginner of a strange confusion in his working fancy, which neither time nor distance could compose, carrying it in his breast some years after, till he came into England, where he hired two of his countrymen, Gray and Carliel, men of low and mercenary spirits, to murther him, which they did with a case of pistols in his house in Whitefriars many years after."[85] For many years—read five—enough, however, to make such a piece of revenge extraordinary. Gray and Carliel were among his followers. Gray, however, did not assist in the murder. His mind misgave him; and Carliel got another accomplice, named Irweng. "These two, about seven o'clock in the evening (to proceed in the words of Coke's report), came to a house in the Friars, which Turner used to frequent, as he came to his school, which was near that place, and finding Turner there, they saluted one another; and Turner, with one of his friends, sat at the door asking them to drink; but Carliel and Irweng, turning about to cock the pistol, came back immediately, and Carliel, drawing it from under his coat, discharged it upon Turner, and gave him a mortal wound near the left pap; so that Turner, after having said these words, 'Lord, have mercy upon me! I am killed,' immediately fell down. Whereupon Carliel and Irweng fled, Carliel to the town, Irweng towards the river; but mistaking his way, and entering into a court where they sold wood, which was no thoroughfare, he was taken. Carliel likewise fled, and so did also the Baron of Sanchar. The ordinary officers of justice did their utmost, but could not take them; for, in fact, as appeared afterwards, Carliel fled into Scotland, and Gray towards the sea, thinking to go to Sweden, and Sanchar hid himself in England."[86]

James, who had shown such favour to the Scotch as to make the English jealous, and who also hated an ill-natured action, when it was not to do good to any of his favourites, thought himself bound to issue a promise of reward for the arrest of Sanquire and the others. It was successful; and all three were hung, Carliel and Irweng in Fleet Street, opposite the great gate of Whitefriars (the entrance of the present Bouverie Street), and Sanquire in Palace Yard, before Westminster Hall. He made a singular defence, very good and penitent, and yet remarkably illustrative of the cheap rate at which plebeian blood was held in those times; and no doubt his death was a great surprise to him. The people, not yet enlightened on these points, took his demeanour in such good part, that they expressed great pity for him, till they perceived that he died a Catholic!

This and other pretended sanctuaries were at length put down by an Act of Parliament passed about the beginning of the last century. It is curious that the once lawless domain of Alsatia should have had the law itself for its neighbour; but Sir Walter has shown us, that they had more sympathies than might be expected. It was a local realisation of the old proverb of extremes meeting. We now step out of this old chaos into its quieter vicinity, which, however, was not always as quiet as it is now. The Temple, as its name imports, was once the seat of the Knights Templars, an order at once priestly and military, originating in the crusades, and whose business it was to defend the Temple at Jerusalem. How they degenerated, and what sort of vows they were in the habit of making, instead of those of chastity and humility, the modern reader need not be told, after the masterly pictures of them in the writer from whom we have just taken another set of ruffians. The Templars were dissolved in the reign of Edward II., and their house occupied by successive nobles, till it came into the possession of the law, in whose hands it was confirmed "for ever" by James I. We need not enter into the origin of its division into two parts, the Inner and Middle Temple. Suffice to say, that the word Middle, which implies a third Temple, refers to an outer one, or third portion of the old buildings, which does not appear to have been ever occupied by lawyers, but came into possession of the celebrated Essex family, whose name is retained in the street where it was situated, on the other side of Temple Bar. There is nothing remaining of the ancient buildings but the church built in 1185, which is a curiosity justly admired, particularly for its effigies of knights, some of whose cross legs indicate that they had either been to the Holy Land, or have been supposed to or vowed to go thither. One of the band is ascertained to have been Geoffrey de Magnavile, Earl of Essex, who was killed at Benwell in Cambridgeshire, in 1148. Among the others are supposed to be the Marshals, first, second, and third Earls of Pembroke, who all died in the early part of the thirteenth century. But even these have not been identified upon any satisfactory grounds; and with regard to some of the rest, not so much as a probable conjecture has been offered.

TOMBS OF KNIGHTS IN TEMPLE CHURCH.

As it is an opinion still prevailing, that these cross-legged knights are Knights Templars, we have copied below the most complete information respecting them which we have hitherto met with. And the passage is otherwise curious.[87]

The two Temples, or law colleges, occupy a large space of ground between Whitefriars and Essex Street; Fleet Street bounding them on the north, and the river on the south. They compose an irregular mass of good substantial houses, in lanes and open places, the houses being divided into chambers, or floors for separate occupants, some of which are let to persons not in the profession. The garden about forty years ago was enlarged, and a muddy tract under it, on the side of the Thames, converted into a pleasant walk. This garden is still not very large, but it deserves its name both for trees and flowers. There is a descent into it after the Italian fashion, from a court with a fountain in it, surrounded with trees, through which the view of the old walls and buttresses of the Middle Temple Hall is much admired. But a poet's hand has touched the garden, and made it bloom with roses above the real. It is the scene in Shakspeare, of the origin of the factions of York and Lancaster.

PLANTAGENET.

"Since you are tongue-ty'd, and so loth to speak,

In dumb significence proclaim your thoughts;

Let him that is a true born gentleman,

And stands upon the honour of his birth,

If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,

From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.

SOMERSET.

Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer,

But dare maintain the party of the truth,

Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

WARWICK.

I love no colours; and, without all colour

Of base insinuating flattery,

I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.

SUFFOLK.

I pluck this red rose with young Somerset;

And say withal I think he held the right."

There were formerly rooks in the Temple trees, a colony brought by Sir Edward Northey, a well-known lawyer in Queen Anne's time, from his grounds at Epsom. It was a pleasant thought, supposing that the colonists had no objection. The rook is a grave legal bird, both in his coat and habits; living in communities, yet to himself; and strongly addicted to discussions of meum and tuum. The neighbourhood, however, appears to have been too much for him; for, upon inquiring on the spot, we were told that there had been no rooks for many years.

The oldest mention of the Temple as a place for lawyers has been commonly said to be found in a passage of Chaucer, who is reported to have been of the Temple himself. It is in his character of the Manciple, or Steward, whom he pleasantly pits against his learned employers, as outwitting even themselves:

"A gentle manciple was there of a temple,

Of which achatours (purchasers) mighten take ensample,

For to ben wise in buying of vitáille.

For whether that be paid, or took by taille,

Algate he waited so in his achate,

That he was ay before in good estate;

Now is not that of God a full fair grace,

That such a lewèd (ignorant) mannès wit shall pass

The wisdom of a heap of learned men?"[88]

Spenser, in his epic way, not disdaining to bring the homeliest images into his verse, for the sake of the truth in them, speaks of—

—— "those bricky towers

The which on Thames' broad aged back do ride,

Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers;

There whilom wont the Templar Knights to bide,

Till they decayed through pride."[89]

The "studious lawyers," in their towers by the water side, present a quiet picture. Yet in those times, it seems, they were apt to break into overt actions of vivacity, a little excessive, and such as the habit of restraint inclines people to, before they have arrived at years of discretion. In Henry VIII.'s time the gentlemen of the Temple were addicted to "shove and slip-groats,"[90] which became forbidden them under a penalty; and in the age in which Spenser wrote, so many encounters had taken place, of a dangerous description, that Templars were prohibited from carrying any other weapon into the hall (the dining room), "than a dagger or knife,"—"as if," says Mr. Malcolm, "those were not more than sufficient to accomplish unpremeditated deaths."[91] We are to suppose, however, that gentlemen would not kill each other, except with swords. The dagger, or carving knife, which it was customary to carry about the person in those days, was for the mutton.[92]

A better mode of recreating and giving vent to their animal spirits, was the custom prevalent among the lawyers at that period of presenting masques and pageants. They were great players, with a scholarly taste for classical subjects; and the gravest of them did not disdain to cater in this way for the amusement of their fellows, sometimes for that of crowned heads. The name of Bacon is to be found among the "getters up" of a show at Gray's Inn, for the entertainment of the sovereign; and that of Hyde, on a similar occasion, in the reign of Charles I.

A masque has come down to us written by William Browne, a disciple of Spenser, expressly for the society of which he was a member, and entitled the Inner Temple Masque. It is upon the story of Circe and Ulysses, and is worthy of the school of poetry out of which he came. Beaumont wrote another, called the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. A strong union has always existed between the law and the belles-lettres, highly creditable to the former, or rather naturally to be expected from the mode in which lawyers begin their education, and the diversity of knowledge which no men are more in the way of acquiring afterwards. Blackstone need not have written his farewell to the Muses. If he had been destined to be a poet, he could not have taken his leave; and, as an accomplished lawyer, he was always within the pale of the literæ humaniores. The greatest practical lawyers, such as Coke and Plowden, may not have been the most literary, but those who have understood the law in the greatest and best spirit have; and the former, great as they may be, are yet but as servants and secretaries to the rest. They know where to find, but the others know best how to apply. Bacon, Clarendon, Selden, Somers, Cowper, Mansfield, were all men of letters. So are the Broughams and Campbells of the present day. Pope says, that Mansfield would have been another Ovid. This may be doubted; but nobody should doubt that the better he understood a poet, the fitter he was for universality of judgment. The greatest lawyer is the greatest legislator.

The "pert Templar," of whom we hear so much between the reigns of the Stuarts and the late King, came up with the growth of literature and the coffee-houses. Every body then began to write or to criticise; and young men, brought up in the mooting of points, and in the confidence of public speaking, naturally pressed among the foremost. Besides, a variety of wits had issued from the Temple in the reign of Charles and his brother, and their successors in lodging took themselves for their heirs in genius. The coffee-houses by this time had become cheap places to talk in. They were the regular morning lounge and evening resource; and every lad who had dipped his finger and thumb into Dryden's snuff-box, thought himself qualified to dictate for life. In Pope's time these pretensions came to be angrily rejected, partly, perhaps, because none of the reigning wits, with the exception of Congreve, had had a Temple education.

"Three college sophs, and three pert Templars came,

The same their talents, and their tastes the same;

Each prompt to query, answer, and debate,

And smit with love of poetry and prate."[93]

We could quote many other passages to the same purpose, but we shall come to one presently which will suffice for all, and exhibit the young Templar of those days in all the glory of his impertinence. At present the Templars make no more pretensions than other well-educated men. Many of them are still connected with the literature of the day, but in the best manner and with the soundest views; and if there is no pretension to wit, there is the thing itself. It would be endless to name all the celebrated lawyers who have had to do with the Temple. Besides, we shall have to notice the most eminent of them in other places, where they passed a greater portion of their lives. We shall therefore confine ourselves to the mention of such as have lived in it without being lawyers, or thrown a grace over it in connection with wit and literature.

Chaucer, as we have just observed, is thought, upon slight evidence, to have been of the Temple. We know not who the Mr. Buckley was, that says he saw his name in the record; and the name, if there, might have been that of some other Chaucer. The name is said to be not unfrequent in records under the Norman dynasty. We are told by Thynne, in his Animadversions on Speght's edition of the poet's works (published a few years ago from the manuscript by Mr. Todd, in his Illustrations of Chaucer and Gower), that "it is most certain to be gathered by circumstances of records that the lawyers were not in the Temple until towards the latter part of the reign of King Edward III., at which time Chaucer was a grave man, holden in great credit, and employed in embassy." "So that methinketh," adds the writer, "he should not be of that house; and yet, if he then were, I should judge it strange that he should violate the rules of peace and gravity in those years."

The first English tragedy of any merit, Gorbuduc, was written in the Temple by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, afterwards the celebrated statesman, and founder of the title of Dorset. He was author of a noble performance, the Induction for the Mirrour of Magistrates, in which there is a foretaste of the allegorical gusto of Spenser. Raleigh was of the Temple; Selden, who died in Whitefriars; Lord Clarendon; Beaumont; two other of our old dramatists, Ford and Marston (the latter of whom was lecturer of the Middle Temple); Wycherly, whom it is said the Duchess of Cleveland used to visit, in the habit of a milliner; Congreve, Rowe, Fielding, Burke, and Cowper. Goldsmith was not of the Temple, but he had chambers in it, died there, and was buried in the Temple Church. He resided, first on the Library Staircase, afterwards in King's Bench Walk, and finally at No. 2, Brick Court, where he had a first floor elegantly furnished. It was in one of the former lodgings that, being visited by Dr. Johnson, and expressing something like a shame-faced hope that he should soon be in lodgings better furnished, "Johnson," says Boswell, "at the same time checked him, and paid him a handsome compliment, implying that a man of talent should be above attention to such distinctions. 'Nay, sir, never mind that: Nil te quæsiveris extra.'[94] (It is only yourself that need be looked for). He died in Brick Court. It is said that when he was on his deathbed, the landing-place was filled with inquirers, not of the most mentionable description, who lamented him heartily, for he was lavish of his money as he went along Fleet Street. We are told by one of the writers of the life prefixed to his works (probably Bishop Percy, who contributed the greater part of it), that "he was generous in the extreme, and so strongly affected by compassion, that he has been known at midnight to abandon his rest in order to procure relief and an asylum for a poor dying object who was left destitute in the streets." This, surely, ought to be praise to no man, however benevolent: but it is, in the present state of society. However, the offices of the good Samaritan are now reckoned among the things that may be practised as well as preached, without diminution of a man's reputation for common-sense; and this is a great step. We will here mention, that Goldsmith had another residence in Fleet Street. He wrote his Vicar of Wakefield in Wine Office Court. Of the curious circumstances under which this delightful novel was sold, various inaccurate accounts have been given. The following is Boswell's account, taken from Dr. Johnson's own mouth:—