Cheapside. The presence of the same great poct and patriot has given happy memories to many parts of the metropolis. He lived in St Bride's Churchyard, Fleet Street; in Aldersgate Street, in Jewin Street, in Barbican, in Bartholomew Close; in Holborn, looking back to Lincoln's Inn Fields; in Holborn, near Red Lion Square; in Scotland Yard ; in a house looking to St James's Park, now belonging to an eminent writer on legislation, and lately occupied by a celebrated critic and metaphysician; and he died in the Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, and was buried in St Giles's, Cripplegate.

Ben Jonson, who was born "in Hartshorne Lane, near Charing Cross," was at one time "master" of a theatre in Barbican. He appears also to have visited a tavern called the Sun and Moon, in Aldersgate Street, and is known to have frequented, with Beaumont and others, the famous one called the Mermaid, which was in Cornhill. Beaumont, writing to him from the country in an epistle full of jovial wit, says :

"The sun (which doth the greatest comfort bring
To absent friends, because the self-same thing
They know they see, however absent) is
Here our best haymaker (forgive me this!
It is our country style) :-in this warm shine
I lie, and dream of your full Mermaid wine.

Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest

Held up at tennis, which men do the best

With the best gamesters. What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,

As if that every one from whom they came

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

And had resolved to live a fool the rest

Of his dull life then when there hath been thrown

Wit able enough to justify the town

For three days past,-wit that might warrant be

For the whole city to talk foolishly

Till that were cancell'd; and, when that was gone,

We left an air behind us, which alone

Was able to make the two next companies

Right witty;-though but downright fools, mere wise.

The other celebrated resort of the great wits of that time was the Devil Tavern, in Fleet Street, close to Temple Bar. Ben Jonson lived also in Bartholomew Close, where Milton afterwards lived. It is in the passage from the cloisters of Christ's Hospital into St Bartholomew's. Aubrey gives it as a common opinion, that at the time when Jonson's father-in-law made him help him in his business of bricklayer, he worked with his own hands upon the Lincoln's Inn garden-wall, which looks upon Chancery Lane, and which seems old enough to have some of his illustrious brick-and-mortar still remaining.

Under the cloisters in Christ's Hospital (which stand in the heart of the city unknown to most persons, like a house kept invisible for young and learned eyes) lie buried a multitude of persons of all ranks; for it was once a monastery of Grey Friars. Among them is John of Bourbon, one of the prisoners taken at the battle of Agincourt. Here also lies Thomas Burdett, ancestor of the present Sir Francis, who was put to death in the reign of Edward IV., for wishing the horns of a favourite white stag, which the king had killed, in the body of the person who advised him to do it. And here too (a sufficing contrast) lies Isabella, wife of Edward II.

"She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,
That tore the bowels of her mangled mate.'

GRAY.

Her "mate's" heart was buried with her, and placed upon her bosom a thing that looks like the fantastic incoherence of a dream. It is well we did not know of her presence when at school; or, after reading one of Shakspeare's tragedies, we should have run twice as fast round the cloisters at night-time as we used. Camden, "the nourice of Antiquitie," received part of his education in this school; and here also, not to mention a variety of others known in the literary world, were bred two of the most powerful and deep-spirited writers of the present day; whose visits to the cloisters we well remember.

In a palace on the site of Hatton Garden, died John of Gaunt. Brook House, at the corner of the street of that name in Holborn, was the residence of the celebrated Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brook, the "friend of Sir Philip Sydney." In the same street died, by a voluntary death, of poison, that extraordinary person, Thomas Chatterton

"The sleepless soul, that perish'd in his pride."

WORDSWORTH.

He was buried in the workhouse in Shoe Lane ;- -a circumstance, at which one can hardly help feeling a movement of indignation. Yet what could beadles and parish officers know about such a being? No more than Horace Walpole. In Gray's Inn lived, and in Gray's Inn garden meditated, Lord Bacon. In Southampton Row, Holborn, Cowper was a fellowclerk to an attorney with the future Lord Chancellor Thurlow. At the Fleet Street corner of Chancery Lane, Cowley, we believe, was born. In Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, was the house of Thomas Sackville, first Earl of Dorset, the precursor of Spenser, and one of the authors of the first regular English tragedy. On the demolition of this house, part of the ground was occupied by the celebrated theatre built after the Restoration, at which Betterton performed, and of which Sir William Davenant was manager. Lastly, here was the house and printing-office of Richardson. In Bolt Court, not far distant, lived Dr Johnson, who resided also for some time in the Temple. A list of his numerous other residences is to be found in Boswell.* Congreve died in Surrey Street, in the Strand, at his own house. At the corner of Beaufort Buildings was Lilly's, the perfumer, at whose house the "Tatler" was published. In Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, Voltaire lodged while in London, at the sign of the White Peruke. Tavistock Street was then, we believe, the Bond Street of the fashionable world; as Bow

*The Temple must have had many eminent inmates. Among them, it is believed, was Chaucer, who is also said, upon the strength of an old record, to have been fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street.

In

Street was before. The change of Bow Street from fashion to the police, with the theatre still in attendance, reminds one of the spirit of the "Beggar's Opera." Button's Coffee-house, the resort of the wits of Queen Anne's time, was in Russell Street,we believe, near where the Hummums now stand. We think we recollect reading, also, that in the same street, at one of the corners of Bow Street, was the tavern where Dryden held regal possession of the arm-chair. The whole of Covent Garden is classic ground, from its association with the dramatic and other wits of the times of Dryden and Pope. Butler lived, perhaps died, in Rose Street, and was buried in Covent Garden Churchyard; where Peter Pindar the other day followed him. Leicester Square, on the site of Miss Linwood's exhibition and other houses, was the town mansion of the Sydneys, Earls of Leicester, the family of Sir Philip and Algernon Sydney. In the same square lived Sir Joshua Reynolds. Dryden lived and died in Gerrard Street, in a house which looked backwards into the garden of Leicester House. Newton lived in St Martin's Street, on the south side of the square. Steele lived in Bury Street, St James's: he furnishes an illustrious precedent for the loungers in St James's Street, where a scandal-monger of those times delighted to detect Isaac Bickerstaff in the person of Captain Steele, idling before the coffee-houses, and jerking his leg and stick alternately against the pavement. We have mentioned the birth of Ben Jonson near Charing Cross. Spenser died at an inn, where he put up on his arrival from Ireland, in King Street, Westminster,-the same which runs at the back of Parliament Street to the Abbey. Sir Thomas More lived at Chelsea. Addison lived and died in Holland House, Kensington, now the residence of the accomplished nobleman who takes his title from it. In Brook Street, Grosvener Square, lived Handel; and in Bentinck Street, Manchester Square, Gibbon. We have omitted to mention that De Foe kept a hosier's shop in Cornhill; and that on the site of the present Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, stood the mansion of the Wriothes

leys, Earls of Southampton, one of whom was the celebrated friend of Shakspeare. But what have we not omitted also? No less an illustrious head than the Boar's, in Eastcheap,-the Boar's Head Tavern, the scene of Falstaff's revels. We believe the place is still marked out by a similar sign. But who knows not Eastcheap and the Boar's Head? Have we not all been there time out of mind? And is it not a more real as well as notorious thing to us than the London Tavern, or the Crown and Anchor, or the Hummums, or White's, or What's-hisname's, or any other of your contemporary and fleeting taps?

But a line or two, a single sentence, in an author of former times, will often give a value to the commonest object. It not only gives us a sense of its duration, but we seem to be looking at it in company with its old observer; and we are reminded at the same time of all that was agreeable in him. We never saw, for instance, even the gilt ball at the top of the College of Physicians, without thinking of that pleasant mention of it in Garth's "Dispensary," and of all the wit and generosity of that amiable man :—

"Not far from that most celebrated place,*

Where angry Justice shows her awful face;
Where little villains must submit to fate,
That great ones may enjoy the world in state;
There stands a dome, majestic to the sight,
And sumptuous arches bear its oval height:
A golden globe, placed high with artful skill,
Seems, to the distant sight, a gilded pill."

Gay, in describing the inconvenience of the late narrow part of the Strand, by St Clement's, took away a portion of its unpleasantness to the next generation, by associating his memory with the objects in it. We did not miss without regret even the "combs" that hung "dangling in your face" at a shop which he describes, and which was standing till the improvements took place. The rest of the picture is still alive. ("Trivia," Book III.)

The Old Bailey,