Viscount Wimbledon. It was burnt down; and Stow says, that the day before, his lordship's country house at Wimbledon was blown up. The late Lyceum was built about the year 1765, as an academy and exhibition-room, in anticipation of the royal one then contemplated. It did not succeed; and part of it was converted into a theatre for musical performances. It then became a place of exhibition for large panoramic pictures, among which we remember with pleasure the battle pieces of Robert Ker Porter (Seringapatam, Acre, &c.) A species of entertainment then took place in it, which has justly been called "useful and liberal," presenting, on a regular stage, pictures or scenes of famous places, while a person read accounts of them from a desk. We remember the Ægyptiana, or description of Ægypt, and, if we mistake not, an attempt, not quite so well founded, to illustrate the scenes of Milton's Allegro and Penseroso. Neither of the attempts met with success; but the former, perhaps, might be tried again with advantage, now that information and the thirst for it have so wonderfully increased. The panorama, however, may have realised all that can be done in this way. Visitors to those admirable contrivances may be almost said to become travellers; and a reader at hand might disturb them, like an impertinence. We recollect being so early one morning at a panorama, that we had the place to ouselves. The room was without a sound, and the scene Florence; and when we came out, the noise and crowd of the streets had an effect on us, as if we had been suddenly transported out of an Italian solitude. The Lyceum has since been handsomely rebuilt as a new English Opera House, under the management of Mr. Arnold, who has done much to cultivate a love of music in this country. Over the former theatre, we believe, was a room built by him for the members of the famous Beef-Steak Club, equally celebrated for loving their steaks and roasting one another.* *The author of a "History of the Clubs of London" (vol. ii. p. 3.), says that this is not the Beef-Steak Club of which Estcourt, the comedian, was steward, and Mrs. Woffington president. He derives its origin from an accidental dinner taken by Lord Peterborough in the scenic room of Rich the Harlequin, over Covent Garden Theatre. The original gridiron, on which Rich broiled the Peer's beef-steak, is still preserved, as the palladium of the club; and the members have it engraved on their buttons. It has generally, we believe, admitted the leading men of the day, of whatever description, The little crowded nest of shop-counters and wild beasts, called Exeter Change, which has lately been pulled down, took its name from a mansion belonging to the Bishop of Exeter, whether on the south or north side of the street does not appear. It is not necessary that the spot should have been the same. Any connection with a large mansion, or its neighbourhood, is sufficient to give name to a new house. Pennant thinks, we know not on what authority, that the great Lord Burleigh had a mansion on the spot; and he adds, that he died here. Exeter Change was supposed to have been built in the reign of William and Mary, as a speculation. The lower story, at the beginning of the last century, was appropriated to the shops of milliners; and upholsterers had the upper. In the year 1721, the town were invited to this place to look at a bed. "Mr. Normond Cony," saith the historian, "exhibited a singular bed for two shillings and sixpence each person, the product of his own ingenuity; the curtains of which were woven in the most ingenious manner, with feathers of the greatest variety and beauty he could procure; the ground represented white damask, mixed with silver and ornaments of various descriptions, supporting vases of flowers and fruits. Each curtain had a purple border a foot in breadth, branched with flowers shaded with scarlet, the valence and bases the same. The bed was eighteen feet in height; and from the description must have been a superior effort of genius, equally original with the works of the South Sea Islanders, whose cloaks, mantles, and caps, grace the collection formed by Captain Cook, now preserved in the British Museum."* This was a gentle exhibition enough. Sixty years ago, instead of the bed, was presented the right honourable body of Lord Baltimore, a personage who ran away with young ladies against their will. The body lay" in state," previously to its interment at Epsom. Lord Baltimore was succeeded by the wild beasts, who kept possession in their narrow unhealthy cages till the death of the poor elephant in 1826, which conspiring with the new spirit of improvement to call final attention to this excresence in the Strand, it was adjudged to be rooted out. The death of this unfortunate animal, who seems to have had just reason enough to grow mad, had its effect, in exciting the public to guard against similar evils ; nor is it likely that these intelligent and noble creatures, nor proper provided they can joke and bear joking. The author just mentioned says, that Lord Sandwich's and Wilkes's days are generally quoted as the golden period of the society. * Londinium Redivivum, vol. iv., p. 302. LINCOLN'S INN, AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. Lincoln's Inn-Ben Jonson's Bricklaying - Enactments against Beards-Oliver Cromwell, More, Hale, and other eminent Students of Lincoln's Inn-Lincoln's Inn Fields, or Square-Houses there built by Inigo Jones-Pepys's Admiration of the Comforts of Mr. Povey-Surgeons' College-Sir Richard and Lady Fanshawe, and Lord Sandwich-Execution of the patriotic Lord Russell, with an Account of the Circumstances that led to and accompanied it, and some Remarks on his Character-Affecting Passages from the Letters of his Widow-Ludicrous Story connected with Newcastle House. INCOLN'S INN, upon the side of Chandcery Lane, presents a long, old front of brick, more simple than clean, It is saturated with the London smoke. Within is a handsome row of buildings, and Mona garden, in which Bickerstaff describes himself as walking, by favour of the Benchers, who had grown old with him.* It will be recollected that Bickerstaff lived in Shire Lane, which leads into this inn from Temple-bar. The garden*Tatler, No. 100. BEN JONSON'S BRICKLAYING. 193 a wall on the side next Chancery Lane is said by Aubrey to have been the scene of Ben Jonson's performance as a bricklayer. We have spoken of it in our remarks on that lane; but shall now add the particulars. "His mother, after his father's death," says Aubrey, "married a bricklayer; and 'tis generally said that he wrought for some time with his fatherin-law, and particularly on the garden-wall of Lincoln's Inn, next to Chancery Lane.' Aubrey's report adds, that " knight, or bencher, walking through and hearing him repeat some Greek names out of Homer, discoursing with him, and finding him to have a wit extraordinary, gave him some exhibition to maintain him at Trinity College in Cambridge."* Fuller says, that he had been there before at St. John's, and that he was obliged by the family poverty to return to the bricklaying." And let them not blush," says this goodhearted writer, "that have, but those who have not a lawful calling. He helped in the building of the new structure of Lincoln's Inn, where, having a trowell in his hand, he had a book in his pocket." A late editor of Ben Jonson rejects these literary accounts of the poet's bricklaying as "figments." And he brings his author's own representations to prove that he left the business, not for the University, but the continent. As this writer has nothing, however, to oppose to what Aubrey and Fuller believed respecting the rest, the reports, so far, are worth as much as they were before. Nobody was more likely than Ben Jonson to carry a Greek or Latin book with him on such occasions; nor, as far as that matter goes, to let others become aware of it. Pennant's sketch of Lincoln's Inn continues to be the best, notwithstanding all that has been said of it since his time. He begins with observing, that "the gate is of brick, but of no small ornament to the street." This is the gate in Chancery Lane. "It was built," he continues, "by Sir Thomas Lovel, once a member of this inn, and afterwards treasurer of the household to Henry VII. The other parts were rebuilt at different times, but much about the same period. None of the original building is left, for it was formed out of the house of the Black Friars, which fronted Holborn end of the palace of Ralph Nevil, Chancellor of Eugland, and Bishop of Chichester, built by him in the reign of Henry III., on a piece of ground granted to him by the king. It continued to be in "Lives and Letters," ut supra. Gifford's "Works of Ben Jonson," vol. i., p. ix. 194 ENACTMENTS AGAINST BEARDS. habited by some of the successors in the see. This was the original site of the Dominicians or Black Friars, before they removed to the spot now known by that name. On part of the ground, now covered with buildings, Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, built an Inne, as it was in those days called, for himself, in which he died in 1312. The ground did belong to the Black Friars; and was granted by Edward I. to that great Earl. The whole has retained his name. One of the Bishops of Chichester, in after times, did grant leases of the buildings to certain students of the law, reserving to themselves a rent, and lodgings for themselves whenever they came to town. This seems to have taken place about the time of Henry VII.” "The chapel," continues our author, "was designed by Inigo Jones; it is built upon massy pillars, and affords, under its shelter, an excellent walk. This work evinces that Inigo never was designed for a Gothic architect. The Lord Chancellor holds his sittings in the great hall. This, like that of the Temple, had its revels, and great Christmasses. Instead of the Lord of Misrule, it had its King of the Cocknies. They had also a Jack Straw; but in the time of Queen Elizabeth he, and all his adherents, were utterly banished. I must not omit, that in the same reign sumptuary laws were made to regu late the dress of the members of the house; who were forbidden to wear long hair, or great ruffs, cloaks, boots, or spurs. In the reign of Henry VIII. beards were prohibited at the great table, under pain of paying double commons. His daughter, Elizabeth, in the first year of her reign, confined them to a fortnight's growth, under penalty of 3s. 4d. but the fashion prevailed so strongly, that the prohibition was repealed, and no manner of size limited to that venerable ex says the proverb; but the lawyers in those days had already so many refreshments to their solemnity, in masks and revels, that it was thought necessary to provide for decency of mastication in ordinary. Attempts to regulate trifles of this sort, however, have always been found more difficult than any others, the impertinence of the interference being in proportion. Think of the officers watching the illegal growth of the beard; the vexation of the "dandies," who wanted their beards out of doors; and the resentment of the unservile part of the elders! He that parted with his beard, rather than his three and fourpence, would be looked upon as an alien. In the hall of Lincoln's Inn is Hogarth's celebrated failure of "Paul preaching before Felix." It seems hard upon a great man to exhibit a specimen of what he could not do. However, the subject does not appear to have been of the society's choosing. A bequest had been made them which produced a commission to Hogarth, probably in expectation * Pennant, ut supra, p. 176. |