50

IRREVERENT REMARKS ON

cathedral, which is finer than the outside, seems like a magnificent vault over his single body. The effect is very grand, especially if the organ is playing. A similar one, as far as the music is concerned, is observable when we contemplate the statues of Nelson and others. The grand repose of the church, in the first instance, gives them a mortal dignity, which the organ seems to waken up and revive, as if in the midst of the

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Pomp and threatening harmony,"* their spirits almost looked out of their stony and sightless eyeballs. Johnson's ponderous figure looks down upon us. with something of sourness in the expression; and in the presence of Howard we feel as if pomp itself were in attendance on humanity. It is a pity that the sculpture of the monuments in general is not worthy of these emotions, and tends to undo them.

A poor statue of Queen Anne, in whose reign the church was finished, stands in the middle of the front area, with the figures of Britain, France, Ireland, and America, round the base. Garth, who was a Whig, and angry with the councils which had dismissed his hero Marlborough, wrote some bitter lines upon it, which must have had double effect, coming from so good-natured a man.

Near the vast bulk of that stupendous frame,
Known by the Gentiles' great apostle's name,
With grace divine great Anna's seen to rise,
An awful form that glads a nation's eyes:
Bencath her feet four mighty realms appear,
And with due reverence pay their homage there.
Britain and Ireland seem to own her grace,
And e'en wild India wears a smiling face.
But France alone with downcast eyes is seen,
The sad attendant on so good a queen.
Ungrateful country! to forget so soon
All that great Anna for thy sake has done,
When sworn the kind defender of thy cause,
Spite of her dear religion, spite of laws,
For thee she sheath'd the terrors of her sword,
For thee she broke her gen'ral-and her word:
For thee her mind in doubtful terms she told,
And learn'd to speak like oracles of old:
For thee, for thee alone, what could she more?
She lost the honour she had gain'd before;
Lost all the trophies which her arms had won,
(Such Cæsar never knew, nor Philip's son ;)

*Wordsworth,

THE STATUE OF QUEEN ANNE.

Resign'd the glories of a ten years' reign,

And such as none but Marlborough's arm could gain:
For thee in annals she's content to shine,

Like other monarchs of the Stuart line.

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Many irreverent remarks were also made by the coarser wits of the day, in reference to the position of her Majesty, with her back to the church and her face to a brandy shop, which was then kept in that part of the churchyard. The calumny was worthy of the coarseness. Anne, who was not a very clever woman, had a difficult task to perform; and though we differ with her politics, we cannot, even at this distance of time, help expressing our disgust at personalities like these, especially against a female.

CHAPTER II.

ST. PAUL'S AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD.

The Church of St. Faith-Booksellers of the Churchyard-Mr. Johnson's-Mr. Newberry's-Children's Books-Clerical Names of Streets near St. Paul's-Swift at the top of the Cathedral-Dr. Johnson at St. Paul's Paternoster Row - Panyer's Alley Stationers' Hall - Almanacks - Knight-Riders' Street - Armed Assemblies of the Citizens-Doctor's Commons-The Heralds' College-Coats of Arms-Ludgate-Story of Sir Stephen Forster -Prison of Ludgate-Wyatt's Rebellion-The Belle Sauvage Inn -Blackfriars-Shakspeare's Theatre-Accident at Blackfriars in 1623-Printing House Square-The Times-Baynard's CastleStory of the Baron Fitzwalter-Richard III. and Buckingham— Diana's Chamber-The Royal Wardrobe-Marriages in the FleetFleet Ditch-The Dunciad.

E remember, in our boyhood, a romantic story of a church that stood under St. Paul's. We conceived of it, as of a real good sized church actually standing under the other; but how it came there nobody could imagine. It was some ghostly edification of providence, not lightly to be inquired into; but as its name was St. Faith's, we conjectured that the mystery had something to do with religious belief. The mysteries of art do not remain with us for life, like those of Nature. Our phenomenon amounted to this:

66 was originally a

"The church of St. Faith," says Brayley, distinct building, standing near the east end of St. Paul's; but when the old cathedral was enlarged, between the years 1256 and 1312, it was taken down, and an extensive part of the vaults was appropriated to the use of the parishioners of St. Faith's, in lieu of the demolished fabric. This was afterwards called the church of St. Faith in the Crypts (Ecclesia Sancta Fidei in Cryptis) and, according to a representation made to the Dean and Chapter, in the year 1735, it measured 180 feet in length, and 80 in breath. After the fire of London, the parish of St. Faith was joined to that of St. Augustine; and on the rebuilding of the cathedral, a portion of the churchyard belonging to the former was taken to enlarge the avenue round the east end of St. Paul's, and the remainder was inclosed within the cathedral railing."*

The parishioners of St. Faith have still liberty to bury their dead in certain parts of the churchyard and the Crypts. *Brayley, vol. ii., p. 303.

MR. JOHNSON.-MR. NEWBERRY.

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Other portions of the latter have been used as storehouses for wine, stationery, &c. The stationers and booksellers of London, during the fire, thought they had secured a great quantity of their stock in this place; but on the air being admitted when they went to take them out, the goods had been so heated by the conflagration of the church overhead, that they took fire at last, and the whole property was destroyed. Clarendon says it amounted to the value of two hundred thousand pounds.*

One of the houses on the site of the old episcopal mansion, now converted into premises occupied by Mr. Hitchcock the linendraper, was Mr. Johnson's the bookseller-a man who deserves mention for his liberality to Cowper, and for the remarkable circumstance of his never having seen the poet, though his intercourse with him was long and cordial. Mr. Johnson was in conection with a circle of men of letters, some of whom were in the habit of dining with him once a week, and who comprised the leading polite writers of the generation-Cowper, Darwin, Hayley, Dr. Aikin, Mrs. Barbauld, Godwin, &c. Fuseli must not be ommitted, who was Here Bonnycastle

at least as good a writer as a painter. hung his long face over his plate, as glad to escape from arithmetic into his jokes and his social dinner as a great boy; and here Wordsworth, and we believe Coleridge, published their earliest performances. At all events they both visited at the house.

But the most illustrious of all booksellers in our boyish days, not for his great names, not for his dinners, not for his riches that we know of, nor for any other full-grown celebrity, but for certain little penny books, radiant with gold and rich with bad pictures, was Mr. Newberry, the famous children's bookseller, "at the corner of St. Paul's churchyard," next Ludgate Street. The house is still occupied by a successor, and children may have books there as formerly -but not the same. The gilding, we confess, we regret: gold, somehow, never looked so well as in adorning literature. The pictures also-may we own that we preferred the uncouth coats, the staring blotted eyes, and round pieces of rope for hats, of our very badly drawn contemporaries, to all the proprieties of modern embellishment? We own the superiority of the latter, and would have it proceed and prosper; but a boy of our own time was much, though his * In his Life, vol. iii., p. 98. Edit. 1827.

coat looked like his grandfather's. The engravings probably were of that date. Enormous, however, is the improvement upon the morals of these little books; and there we give them up, and with unmitigated delight. The good little boy, the hero of the infant literature in those days, stood, it must be acknowledged, the chance of being a very selfish man. His virtue consisted in being different from some other little boy, perhaps his brother; and his reward was having a fine coach to ride in, and being a King Pepin. Now-a-days, since the world has had a great moral earthquake that set it thinking, the little boy promises to be much more of a man; thinks of others, as well as works for himself; and looks for his reward to a character for good sense and benefiIn no respect is the progress of the age more visible, or more importantly so, than in this apparently trifling matter. The most bigoted opponents of a rational education are obliged to adopt a portion of its spirit, in order to retain a hold which their own teaching must accordingly undo: and if the times were not full of hopes in other respects, we should point to this evidence of their advancement, and be content with it.

cence.

One of the most pernicious mistakes of the old children's books, was the inculcation of a spirit of revenge and cruelty in the tragic examples which were intended to deter their readers from idleness and disobedience. One, if he did not behave himself, was to be shipwrecked, and eaten by lions; another to become a criminal, who was not to be taught better, but rendered a mere wicked contrast to the luckier virtue; and, above all, none were to be poor but the vicious, and none to ride in their coaches but little Sir Charles Grandisons, and all-perfect Sheriffs. We need not say how contrary this was to the real spirit of Christianity, which, at the same time, they so much insisted on. The perplexity in after life, when reading of poor philosophers and rich vicious. men, was in proportion; or rather virtue and mere worldly success became confounded. In the present day, the profitableness of good conduct is still inculcated, but in a sounder spirit. Charity makes the proper allowance for all; and none are excluded from the hope of being wiser and happier. Men, in short are not taught to love and labour for themselves alone or for their little dark corners of egotism; but to take the world along with them into a brighter sky of improvement; and to discern the want of success in success itself, if not accompanied by a liberal knowledge.