SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS.-ST. MARTIN'S LANE.-HOGARTH. 353

he settled finally in Leicester Square. In Newport Street was born the celebrated Horne Tooke, the son of a poulterer in the adjoining market; which made him say, that his father was a "Turkey merchant." He was, perhaps, the hardest-headed man that ever figured in the union of literature and politics; meaning, by that epithet, the power to discuss, and impenetrability to objection. He died at his house at Wimbledon, and was buried at Ealing. His history trenches too closely on the politics of our own day, to allow us to expatiate upon it in a work expressly devoted to the past.

St. Martin's Lane (see Charing Cross, for a notice of the church,) was once as famous for artists as Newman Street has been since. In Salisbury Court and in St. Martin's Lane the Royal Academy may be said to have originated, for in those places successively its original members first came together as a society established by themselves. Perhaps there was not a single artist, contemporary with Sir Joshua, who was unconnected with St. Martin's Lane, either as a lodger, student, or visitor. Old Slaughter's coffee-house, in the same lane, became celebrated on the same account, and as a resort of the contemporary wits, especially Hogarth, who may be said to have amalgamated in his works the wit and the painter. St. Martin's Lane and Leicester Square are the head-quarters of the memory of English art. In the annals of the former we meet with the names of Wilson and Gainsborough: in the latter flourished and died Hogarth and Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Sir Joshua's house in Leicester Square was on the eastern side, four doors from Sydney's Alley.* It was there he kept a handsome table, and was visited by Johnson and Goldsmith, and had the whole round of the fashionable world fluttering before him, and steadying itself to become immortal in his pictures: if, indeed, immortal they are to be, in the ordinary meaning of that word; for, out of certain misgivings, which perhaps argued a want of perfect claim to that destiny, he dabbled in experiments upon colours which have failed; and his pictures, though but of yesterday, already look old and worn out, while Titian's are as blooming as Apollo.

Hogarth, the greatest name in English art, lived in one of the two houses which now form Sabloniere's hotel. It was the one to the north. He was a little bustling man, with a face more lively than refined, a sort of knowing jockey look ;

*The house was probably on the site now occupied by the southeast corner of New Coventry Street.

A A

and was irritable and egotistical, but not ungenerous.

As

a painter, he did what no man ever did before or sincebrought out the absurdities of artificial life,

"Showed vice her own features, scorn her own image,"

and fairly painted even goods and chattels with a meaning! His intentions were less profound than his impulses; that is to say, he sometimes had an avowed common-place in view, as in the instance of the Industrious and Idle Apprentice, while the execution of it was full of much higher things and profounder humanities. As to the rest, if ever there was a wit on canvass, it was he. To take one instance alone, his spider's web over the poor's box is a union of remote ideas, coalescing but too perfectly.*

Leicester Square, formerly Leicester Fields, was not built upon till towards the restoration of Charles II. It took its name from a family mansion of the Sydneys, Earls of Leicester, which stood on the north side, on the site of the present houses and of Leicester Place.

"It was for a short time," says Pennant, "the residence of Elizabeth, daughter of James I., the titular Queen of Bohemia, who, on February 13th, 1661, here ended her unfortunate life. It has been tenanted for

*For masterly criticisms on Hogarth, see the "Works of Charles Lamb," vol. ii., p. 88, and the "Picture Galleries of England," p. 181.

a great number of years. It was successively the pounting-place of princes. The late King [George II.], when Prince of Wales, after he had quarrelled with his father, lived here several years. His son Frederic followed his example, succeeded him in his house, and in it finished his days."

"Behind Leicester House," the same author informs us, " stood, in 1658, the Military-yard, founded by Henry Prince of Wales, the spirited son of our peaceful James. M. Faubert afterwards kept here his academy for riding and other gentlemanlike exercises, in the reign of Charles II., which, in later years, was removed to Swallow Street, opposite the end of Conduit Street. Part is retained for the purpose of a riding-house; the rest is converted into a workhouse for the parish of St. James's."*

But the glory of the neighbourhood of Leicester Fields is in St. Martin's Street, where the house is still remaining which was occupied by the great Newton.

CHAPTER IX.

CHARING CROSS AND WHITEHALL.

Old Charing Cross, and New St. Martin's Church-Statue of Charles I. -Execution of Regicides-Ben Jonson-Wallingford House, now the Admiralty-Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; Sir Walter Scott's Account of him-Misrepresentation of Pope respecting his DeathCharles's Horse a Satirist-Locket's Ordinary-Sir George Etherege. -Prior and his Uncle's Tavern-Thomson-Spring GardensMrs. Centlivre-Dorset Place, and Whitcombe Street, &c., formerly Hedge Lane-The Wits and the Bailiffs-Suffolk Street-Swift and Miss Vanhomrigh-Calves' Head Club, and the Riot it occasioned-Scotland Yard-Pleasant Advertisement-Beau Fielding, and his Eccentricities-Vanbrugh-Desperate Adventure of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

IN the reign of Edward I., on the country road from London to Westminster, stood the hamlet of Charing; a rustic spot, containing a few houses, and the last cross set up by that Prince in honour of the resting-places of his wife's body on its way to interment in the Abbey. The Cross was originally of wood, but afterwards of stone. The reader may see it in the old map of London by Aggas. He will there observe, that towards the beginning of Elizabeth's, reign Charing Cross was united with London on the Strand side, and at little intervals with Whitehall; but Spring Gar

* Pennant, p. 120.

dens was then and long after what its name implies; and, in the reign of Charles II., Hedge Lane (now Whitcomb Street) and the Haymarket were still real lanes and passages into the fields. In Elizabeth's time, you might set out from the site of the present Pall-mall, and, leaving St. Giles in the Fields on the right hand, walk all the way to Hampstead without encountering perhaps a dwelling-place. Lovers plucked flowers in Cranbourne Alley, and took moonlight walks in St. James's market.

On this spot, in Dr. Johnson's opinion, is to be found the fullest "tide of human existence" in the metropolis. We know not how that may be at present when the tide is so full everywhere; but Charing Cross has long been something the reverse of a rural village, and is now exhibiting one of the newest and grandest evidences of an improving metropolis.

By way of north front, the Mews (formerly the mews of the King's falcons) has given way to a sorry palace for the Fine Arts; on the west is a handsome edifice including the new college of Physicians; on the east St. Martin's church has obtained its long desired opening and in the midst of these buildings and of the Strand-end is a new square, named after the greatest of our naval victories, adorned with a column surmounted by their hero, and disgraced by a couple of shabby

:

ST. MARTIN'S CHURCH.

357

fountains. Here also is an equestrian statue of George the Fourth. What for?

"In the reign of Henry VIII.," says Pennant, "speaking of St Martin's," a small church was built here at the King's expense, by reason of the poverty of the parishioners, who possibly were at that period very poor. In 1607 it was enlarged because of the increase of buildings. In 1721 it was found necessary to take the whole down, and in five years from that time this magnificent temple was completed at the expense of near thirty-seven thousand pounds. This is the best performance of Gibbs, the architect of the Radcliffe Library. The steeple is far the most elegant of any of that style which I named the pepper-box; and with which (I beg pardon of the good people of Glasgow) I marked their boasted steeple of St. Andrew.”*

Our lively biographer seems chiefly to admire the steeple of this church. The Corinthian portico, we believe, is the usual object of praise. Both of them may deserve praise separately; nor, indeed, will their size and situation allow them to be regarded with indifference in conjunction; but the elevation of the steeple on the neck of the church, or without any apparent or proper base to rest upon, is a fault not to be denied; and Mr. Pennant perhaps would not have been in the wrong, had he found an ill name for steeples in general, as well as for the species which he "peppered." Steeples, however noble, and porticoes, however Greek, can never truly coalesce. The finest steeple with a portico to it is but an excrescence and an anomaly, a horn growing out of the church's neck. The Italians felt this absurdity so much, that they have often made a separate building of the steeple, converting it into a beautiful tower aloof from the church, as in the instances of the famous Hanging Tower in Pisa, and the Campanile in Florence. Suppose a shaft like the Monument, in a space near St. Martin's church, and the church itself a proper building with a portico, like St. Paul's Covent Garden, and you have an improvement in the Italian style. The best thing to say for

sharpèd steeples high shot up in air (as Spenser calls them) is, that they seem to be pointing to heaven, or running up into space like an intimation of interminability. An idea of this kind is supposed to have given rise to them. But they always have a meagre, incongruous look, considered in their union with the body to which they are attached. Their best appearance is at a distance, and when they are numerous, as in the view of a great city; but * Page 143.