68

CHAP. II.

ST. PAUL'S AND THE NEIGHBOURHOOD.

- Dr.

Armed

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. Johnson at St. Paul's. Paternoster Row. - Panyer's Alley. Stationers' Hall. - Almanacks. Knight-Riders' Street. Assemblies of the Citizens. Doctors' 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 Castle. Story of the Baron Fitzwalter. — Richard III. and Buckingham. — Diana's Chamber. The Royal Wardrobe. Marriages in the Fleet. -Fleet 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.

"The church of St. Faith," says Brayley, 66 was originally a 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 Sanctæ 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 breadth. 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. 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 connexion 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 omitted, who was at least as good a writer as a painter. Here Bonnycastle 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

* Brayley, vol. ii. p. 303.

In his Life, vol. iii. p. 98. Edit. 1827.

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 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-adays, 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 beneficence. In 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.

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.

The Seven Champions of Christendom, Valentine and Orson, and other books of the fictitious class, which have survived their more rational brethren, (as the latter thought themselves,) are of a much better order, and, indeed, survive by a natural instinct in society to that

72

CLERICAL NAMES OF STREETS.

effect. With many absurdities, they have a general tone of manly and social virtue, which may be safely left to itself. The absurdities wear out, and the good remains. Nobody in these times will think of meeting giants and dragons; of giving blows that confound an army, or tearing the hearts out of two lions on each side of him, as easily as if he were dipping his hands into a lottery. But there are still giants and wild beasts to encounter, of another sort, the conquest of which requires the old enthusiasm and disinterestedness; arms and war are to be checked in their career, and have been so, by that new might of opinion to which everybody may contribute much in his single voice; and wild men, or those who would become so, are tamed, by education and brotherly kindness, into ornaments of civil life.

The neighbourhood of St. Paul's retains a variety of appellations, indicative of its former connexion with the church. There is Creed Lane, Ave-Maria Lane, Sermon Lane*, Canon Alley, Pater-Noster Row, Holiday Court, Amen Corner, &c. Members of the cathedral establishment still have abodes in some of these places, particularly in Amen Corner, which is enclosed with gates, and appropriated to the houses of prebendaries and canons. Close to Sermon Lane is Do-little Lane; a vicinity which must have furnished jokes to the Puritans. Addle Street is an ungrateful corruption of Athelstan Street, so called from one of the most respectable of the Saxon kings, who had a palace in it.

We have omitted to notice a curious passage in Swift,

* Unless, indeed, we are to suppose, as has been suggested, that Sermon Lane is a corruption of Sheremoniers Lane, that is, the lane of the money clippers, or such as cut and rounded the metal which was to be coined or stamped into money. There was anciently a place in this lane for melting silver, called the Blackloft — and the Mint was in the street now called Old Change, in the immediate neighbourhood. See Maitland, ii. 880 (edit. of 1756).