  Great Queen Street—Former fashionable Houses there—Lewis and Miss Pope, the Comedians—Martin Folkes—Sir Godfrey Kneller and his Vanity—Dr. Radcliffe—Lord Herbert of Cherbury—Nuisance of Whetstone Park—The Three Dukes and the Beadle—Rogues and Vagabonds in the Time of Charles II—Former Theatres in Vere Street and Portugal Street—First appearance of Actresses—Infamous deception of one of them by the Earl of Oxford—Appearance of an avowed Impostor on the Stage—Anecdotes of the Wits and fine Ladies of the Time of Charles, connected with the Theatre in this Quarter—Kynaston, Betterton, Nokes, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Mountford, and other Performers—Rich—Joe Miller—Carey Street and Mrs. Chapone—Clare Market—History, and Specimens, of Orator Henley—Duke Street and Little Wild Street—Anecdotes of Dr. Franklin's Residence in those Streets while a Journeyman Printer. G Great Queen Street, in the time of the Stuarts, was one of the grandest and most fashionable parts of the town. The famous Lord Herbert of Cherbury died there. Lord Bristol had a house in it, Lord Chancellor Finch, and the Conway and Paulet families. Some of the houses towards the west retain pilasters and other ornaments, probably indicating, as Pennant observes, the abodes in question. Little thought the noble lords that a time would come, when a player should occupy their rooms, and be able to entertain their descendants in them; but in a house of this description, lately occupied by Messrs. Allman the booksellers, died Lewis, the comedian, one of the most delightful performers of his class, and famous to the last for his invincible airiness and juvenility. Mr. Lewis displayed a combination rarely to be found in acting, that of the fop and the real gentleman. With a voice, a manner, and a person, all equally graceful and light, and features at once whimsical and genteel, he played on the top of his profession like a plume. He was the Mercutio of the age, in every sense of the word mercurial. His airy, breathless voice, thrown to the audience before he appeared, was the signal of his winged animal spirits; and when he gave a glance of his eye, or touched his finger at another's ribs, it was the very punctum saliens of playfulness and inuendo. We saw him take leave of the public, a man of Next door but one to the Freemasons' Tavern (westward), for many years lived another celebrated comic performer, Miss Pope, one of a very different sort, and looking as heavy and insipid as her taste was otherwise. She was an actress of the highest order for dry humour; one of those who convey the most laughable things with a grave face. Churchill, in the Rosciad, when she must have been very young, mentions her as an actress of great vivacity, advancing in a "jig," and performing the parts of Cherry and Polly Honeycomb. There was certainly nothing of the Cherry and Honeycomb about her when older; but she was an admirable Mrs. Malaprop. OLD HOUSES IN GREAT QUEEN STREET. Queen Street continued to be a place of fashionable resort for a considerable period after the Revolution. As we have been speaking of the advancement of actors in social rank, we will take occasion of the birth of Martin Folkes in this street, the celebrated scholar and antiquary, to mention that he was one of the earliest persons among the gentry to marry an actress. His wife was Lucretia Bradshaw. It may be thought worth observing by the romantic, that the ladies who were first selected to give this rise to the profession, had all something peculiar in their Christian names. Lord Peterborough married Anastasia Robinson, and the Duke of Bolton, Lavinia Fenton. Sir Godfrey Kneller, and Radcliffe the physician, lived in this street. We mention them together because they were neighbours, and there is a pleasant anecdote of them in conjunction. The author of a book lately published, describes their neighbourhood as being in Bow Street; but Horace Walpole, the authority for the story, places it in the street before us; adding, in a note, that Kneller "first lived in Durham Yard (in the Strand), then twenty-one years in Covent Garden (we suppose in Bow Street), and lastly in Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields." "Kneller," says Walpole, "was fond of flowers, and had a fine collection. As there was great intimacy between him and the physician, he permitted the latter to have a door into his garden; but Radcliffe's servants gathering and destroying the flowers, Kneller sent him word he must shut up the door. Radcliffe replied peevishly, 'Tell him he may do anything with it but paint it.' 'And I,' answered Sir Godfrey, 'can take anything from him but physic.'"[215] Kneller, besides being an admired painter (and it is supposed from one of his performances, the portrait of a Chinese, that he could have been admired by posterity, if he chose), was a man of wit; but so vain, that he is described as being the butt of all the wits of his acquaintances. They played upon him undoubtedly, and at a great rate; but it has been suggested by a shrewd observer, that while he consented to have his vanity tickled at any price, he humoured the joke himself, and was quite aware of what they were at. Nor is this inconsistent with the vanity, which would always make large allowances for the matter of fact. The extravagance it would limit where it pleased; the truth remained; and Sir Godfrey, as Pope said, had a large appetite. With this probability a new interest is thrown upon the anecdotes related of his vanity, with the best of which the reader is accordingly presented. Kneller was a German, born at Lubec, so that his English is to be read with a foreign accent. The younger Richardson tells us, that Gay read Sir Godfrey a copy of verses, in which he had pushed his flattery so far, that he was all the while in dread lest the knight should detect him. When Kneller had heard this through, he said, in his foreign style and accent, "Ay, Mr. Gay, all what you have said is very fine, and very true; but you have forgot one thing, my good friend; by G—, I should have been a Perhaps it was this real or apparent obtuseness which induced Gay to add "engineering" to his other talents, in the verses describing Pope's welcome from Greece:— "Kneller amid the triumph bears his part, Who could (were mankind lost) a new create: What can the extent of his vast soul confine? A painter, critic, engineer, divine." The following is related on the authority of Pope:— "Old Jacob Tonson got a great many fine pictures, and two of himself, from him, by this means. Sir Godfrey was very covetous, but then he was very vain, and a great glutton; so he played these passions against the others; besides telling him that he was the greatest master that ever was, sending him, every now and then, a haunch of venison, and dozens of excellent claret. 'O, my G—, man,' said he once to Vander Gucht, 'this old Jacob loves me; he is a very good man; you see he loves me, he sends me good things; the venison was fat.' Old Geekie, the surgeon, got several fine pictures of him too, and an excellent one of himself; but then he had them cheaper, for he gave nothing but praises; but then his praises were as fat as Jacob's venison; neither could be too fat for Sir Godfrey." Pope related the following to Spence:— "As I was sitting by Sir Godfrey Kneller one day, whilst he was drawing a picture, he stopt, and said, 'I can't do as well as I should do, unless you flatter me a little, Mr. Pope! You know I love to be flattered.' I was for once willing," continues Pope, "to try how far this vanity would carry him; and after considering a picture which he had just finished, for a good while very attentively, I said to him in French (for he had been talking for some time before in that language), 'On lit dans les Ecritures Saintes, que le bon Dieu faisoit l'homme aprÈs son image: mais, je crois, que s'il voudroit faire un autre À prÉsent, qu'il le feroit aprÈs l'image que voilÀ.' Sir Godfrey turned round, and said very gravely, 'Vous avez raison, Monsieur Pope; par Dieu, je le crois aussi.'" It must not be omitted that Kneller was a kind-hearted man. At Whitton, where he had a seat, he was justice of the peace, and, "Was so much more swayed," says Walpole, "by equity than law, that his judgments, accompanied with humour, are said to have occasioned those lines by Pope:— "I think Sir Godfrey should decide the suit, Who sent the thief (that stole the cash) away, And punish'd him that put it in his way." "This alluded to his dismissing a soldier who had stolen a joint of Poor Radcliffe, after reigning as a physician so despotically, that Arbuthnot, in his projected map of diseases, was for putting him up at the corner of it disputing the empire of the world, became a less happy man than Sir Godfrey, by reason of his falling in love in his old age. He set up a coach, adorned with mythological paintings,—at least, Steele says so; but soon had to put it in mourning for the death of his flame, who was a Miss Tempest, one of the maids of honour. Radcliffe was the Tory physician, and Steele, in the "Tatler," with a party spirit that was much oftener aggrieved than provoked in that good-natured writer, was induced, by some circumstance or other, perhaps Radcliffe's insolence, to make a ludicrous description of him, "as the mourning Esculapius, the languishing, hopeless lover of the divine Hebe." Steele accuses him of avarice. Others have said he was generous. He was the founder of the Radcliffe Library at Oxford, and made other magnificent bequests; which prove nothing either way. But it is not favourable to a reputation for generosity, to own (as he did), that he was fond of spunging, and to avoid the paying of bills. However, when he lost 5,000l. in a speculation, he said "he had nothing to do but to go up so many pair of stairs to make himself whole again." He was undoubtedly a very clever physician, though he made little use of books. Like many men who go upon their own grounds in this way, he had an abrupt and clownish manner, which he probably thought of use. According to Richardson, he one day said to Dr. Mead, "Mead, I love you; now I will tell you a sure secret to make your fortune. Use all mankind ill." It is worth observing, that Mead acted on the reverse principle, and made double the fortune of his adviser. Radcliffe is said have attended the lady of Judge Holt, in a bad illness, with unusual assiduity, "out of pique to her husband;" a very new kind of satire. He used to send huffing messages to Queen Anne, telling her that he would not come, and that she only had the vapours; and when King William consulted him on his swollen ankles and thin body, Radcliffe said he "would not have his Majesty's But the most remarkable inhabitant of Queen Street was Lord Herbert of Cherbury, one of those extraordinary individuals who, with a touch of madness on the irascible side, and subject to the greatest blindness of self-love, possess a profound judgment on every other point. Such persons are supposed to be victims of imagination; but they are rather mechanical enthusiasts (though of a high order), and, for want of an acquaintance with the imaginative, become at the mercy of the first notion which takes their will by surprise. Lord Herbert, who in the intellectual part was intended for a statist and a man of science, was unfortunately one of the hottest of Welchmen in the physical. Becoming a Knight of the Bath, he took himself for a knight-errant, and fancied he was bound to fight everybody he met with, and to lie under trees in the fields of Holland. He thought Revelation a doubtful matter, and so he had recourse to the Deity for a revelation in his particular favour to disprove it. We have related an anecdote of him at Northumberland House, and shall have more to tell; but the account of his having recourse to Heaven for the satisfaction of his doubts of its interference, must not be omitted here. Perhaps it took place in this very street. His Lordship was the first Deist in England that has left an account of his opinions. Speaking of the work he wrote on this subject, he says:— "My book 'De Veritate prout distinguitur À Revelatione verisimili, possibili, et À falso,' having been begun by me in England, and formed there in all its principal parts, was about this time finished; all the spare hours which I could get from my visits and negotiations being employed to perfect this work; which was no sooner done, but that I communicated it to Hugo Grotius—that great scholar, who, having escaped his prison in the Low Countries, came into France, and was much welcomed by me and Monsieur Tieleners, also one of the greatest scholars of his time; who, after they had perused it, and given it more commendations than is fit for me to repeat, exhorted me earnestly to print and publish it; howbeit, as the frame of my whole work was so different from anything which had been written heretofore, I found I must either renounce the authority of all that I had written formerly, concerning the method of finding out truth, and consequently "Being thus doubtful in my chamber one fair day in the summer, my casement being open towards the south, the sun shining clear, and no wind stirring, I took my book, 'De Veritate,' in my hand, and kneeling on my knees, devoutly said these words:— "'Oh, thou eternal God, author of the light which now shines upon me, and giver of all inward illuminations, I do beseech thee of thy infinite goodness to pardon a greater request than a sinner ought to make; I am not satisfied enough whether I shall publish this book 'De Veritate;' if it be for thy glory, I beseech thee give me some sign from heaven; if not, I shall suppress it.' "I had no sooner spoken these words, but a loud though gentle noise came from the heavens (for it was like nothing on earth) which did so comfort and cheer me, that I took my petition as granted, and that I had the sign I demanded; whereupon also I resolved to print my book. This (how strange soever it may seem) I protest, before the eternal God, is true; neither am I any way superstitiously deceived herein; since I did not only hear the noise, but, in the serenest sky that ever I saw, being without all cloud, did to my thinking see the place from whence it came."[217] "How could a man," justly observes Walpole on this passage, "who doubted of partial, believe individual revelation! What vanity to think his book of such importance to the cause of truth, that it could extort a declaration of the Divine will, when the interest of half mankind could not!" Yet the same writer is full of admiration of him in other respects. It is well observed by the editor of the Autobiography (in reply to the doubts thrown on his lordship's veracity respecting his chivalrous propensities, the consequences of which always fell short of duels), that much of the secret might be owing "to his commanding aspect and acknowledged reputation; and a little more to a certain perception of the Quixote in his character, with which it might be deemed futile to contend. His surprising defence of himself against the attack of Sir John Ayres, forcibly exhibits his personal strength and mastery; and his spirited treatment of the French Minister, Luynes, and the general esteem of his contemporaries, sufficiently With all this elegance of neighbourhood, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in the time of Charles II., had one eyesore of an enormous description, in a place behind Holborn row, entitled Whetstone Park. It is now a decent passage between Great and Little Turnstiles. "It is scarcely necessary," says Mr. Malcolm, "to remind the reader of a well-known fact, that all sublunary things are subject to change:—he who passes through the Little Turnstile, Holborn, at present, will observe on the left hand, near Lincoln's Inn Fields, a narrow street, composed of small buildings, on the corner of which is inscribed Whetstone Park. The repose and quiet of the place seem to proclaim strong pretensions to regular and moral life in the inhabitants; and well would it have been for the happiness of many a family, had the site always exhibited the same appearance. On the contrary, Whetstone Park contributed to increase the dissoluteness of manners which distinguished the period between 1660 and 1700. Being a place of low entertainment, numerous disturbances occurred there, and rendered it subject to the satire and reprehension even of 'Poor Robin's Intelligencer,' a paper almost infamous enough for the production of a keeper of this theatre of vice. The publication alluded to says, in 1676, 'Notwithstanding the discourses that have been to the contrary, the boarding-school is still continued here, where a set of women may be readily untaught all the studies of modesty or chastity; to which purpose they are provided with a two-handed volume of impudence, loosely bound up in greasy vellum, which is tied by the leg to a wicker chair (as you find authors chained in a library), and is always ready to give you plain instructions and directions in all matters relating to immorality or irreligion.' * * "Incomprehensible as it certainly is," continues our author, "the brutal acts of a mob are sometimes the result of a just sense of the ill consequences attending vice; and, although almost every individual composing it is capable of performing deeds which deserve punishment from the police, they cannot collectively view long and deliberate offences against the laws of propriety, without assuming the right of reforming them. 'The Loyal and Impartial Mercury' of Sept. 1, 1682, has this paragraph:—'On Saturday last, about 500 apprentices, and such like, being got together in Smithfield, went into Lincoln's Inn Fields, where they drew up, and marching into Whetstone Park, fell upon the lewd houses there, where, having broken open the doors, they entered, and made great spoil of the goods; of which the constables and watchmen having notice, and not finding themselves strong enough to quell the tumult, procured a party of the King's guards who dispersed them, and took eleven, who were committed to New Prison; yet on Sunday night they came again, and made worse In the "State Poems" is a doggrel set of verses on a tragical circumstance occasioned by a frolic of three of Charles's natural sons in this place. It is entitled "On the three Dukes killing the Beadle on Sunday morning, Feb. the 26th, 1671." A great sensation was made by this circumstance, which was naturally enough regarded as a signal instance of the consequences of Charles's mode of life. Our Grub Street writer selected his title well—the "Dukes," the "Beadle," and the "Sunday." His first four lines might have been put into Martinus Scriblerus, as a specimen of the Newgate style. "Near Holborn lies a park of great renown, The place, I do suppose, is not unknown: For brevity's sake the name I shall not tell, Because most genteel readers know it well." The three Dukes pick a quarrel with one poor damsel, and "murder" was cried. "In came the watch, disturbed with sleep and ale, By noises shrill, but they could not prevail T' appease their Graces. Strait rose mortal jars, Betwixt the night blackguard and silver stars; Then fell the beadle by a ducal hand, For daring to pronounce the saucy stand. See what mishaps dare e'en invade Whitehall, This silly fellow's death puts off the ball, And disappoints the Queen, poor little chuck; I warrant t'would have danced it like a duck. The fiddlers, voices, entries, all the sport, And the gay show put off, where the brisk court Anticipates, in rich subsidy coats, All that is got by necessary votes. Yet shall Whitehall, the innocent, the good, See these men dance, all daubed with lace and blood."[219] The "subsidy coats" allude to Charles's raising money for his profligate expenditure under pretence of the public service. The last couplet would have done credit to a better satire. As we are upon the subject of a neighbourhood to which they apply, we shall proceed to give a few more extracts from Mr. Malcolm, highly characteristic of the lower orders of desperadoes in Charles's reign. "The various deceivers," he tells us, "who preyed upon the public at this time were exposed in a little filthy work called the 'Canting Academy,' which went through more than one edition (the second is dated 1674). I shall select from it enough to show the variety of villany practised under their various names. The Ruffler was a wretch who assumed the character of a maimed soldier, and begged from the claims of Naseby, Edgehill, Newbury, and Marston Moor. Those who were stationed in the city of London were generally found in Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden; and their prey was people of fashion, whose coaches were attacked boldly; and if denied, their owners were told, ''Tis a sad thing that an old crippled cavalier should be suffered to beg for a maintenance, and a young cavalier that had never heard the whistle of a bullet should ride in his coach.' "There were people called Anglers, from the nature of their method of depredating, which was thus.—They had a rod or stick, with an iron hook affixed: this they introduced through a window, or any other aperture, where plunder might be procured, and helped themselves at pleasure; the day was occupied by them in the character of beggars, when they made their observations for the angling of the night. "Wild Rogues were the offspring of thieves and beggars, who received the rudiments of the art even before they left their mothers' backs: "To go into churches and great crowds, and to nim golden buttons off men's cloaks; and being very little are shown how to creep into cellar windows, or other small entrances, and in the night to convey out thereat whatever they can find to the thievish receivers, who wait without for that purpose; and sometimes do open the door to let in such who have designed to rob the house; if taken, the tenderness of their age makes an apology or an excuse for their fault, and so are let alone to be hanged at riper years.' "Palliards or Clapperdogeons, were those women who sat and reclined in the streets, with their own borrowed or stolen children hanging about them, crying through cold, pinching, or real disease, who begged relief as widows, and, in the name of their fatherless children, gaining by this artifice, 'a great deal of money, whilst her comrogue lies begging in the fields, with climes or artificial sores.' The way they commonly take to make them is by sperewort or arsenic, which will draw blisters; or they take unslacked lime and soap, mingled with the rust of old iron: these being well tempered together, and spread thick upon two pieces of leather, they apply to the leg, binding it thereunto very hard, which in a very little time would fret the skin so that the flesh would appear all raw, &c. &c. "Fraters were impostors who went through the country with forged patents for briefs, and thus diverted charity from its proper direction. "Abram men were fellows whose occupations seem to have been forgotten. They are described in the 'Canting Academy' in these words:—'Abram men are otherwise called Tom of Bedlams; they "The Whip-Jacks have left us a specimen of their fraternity. They were counterfeit mariners, whose conversations were plentifully embellished with sea-terms, and falsehoods of their danger in the exercise of their profession. Instead of securing their arms and legs close to their bodies, and wrapping them in bandages (as the modern whip-jack is in the habit of doing, to excite compassion for the loss of limbs and severe wounds), the ancients merely pretended they had lost their all by shipwreck, and were reduced to beg their way to a sea-port, if in the country; or to some remote one, if in London. "Mumpers.—The persons thus termed are described as being of both sexes: they were not solicitors for food, but money and cloathes. 'The male mumper, in the times of the late usurpation, was clothed in an old torn cassock, begirt with a girdle, with a black cap, and a white one peeping out underneath.' With a formal and studied countenance he stole up to a gentleman, and whispered him softly in the ear, that he was a poor sequestered parson, with a wife and many children. At other times, they would assume the habit of a decayed gentleman, and beg as if they had been ruined by their attachment to the royal cause. Sometimes the mumper appeared with an apron before him, and a cap on his head, and begs in the nature of a broken tradesman, who, having been a long time sick, hath spent all his remaining stock, and so weak he cannot work! The females of this class of miscreants generally attacked the ladies, and in a manner suited to make an impression on their finer feelings. "Domerars are such as counterfeit themselves dumb, and have a notable art to roll their tongues up into the roof of their mouth, that you would verily believe their tongues were cut out; and, to make you have a stronger belief thereof, they will gape and show you where it was done, clapping in a sharp stick, and, touching the tongue, make it bleed—and then the ignorant dispute it no further.' "Patricos are the strolling priests: every hedge is their parish, and every wandering rogue their parishioner. The service, he saith, is the marrying of couples, without the Gospel, or Book of Common Prayer, the solemnity whereof is thus: the parties to be married find out a dead horse, or any other beast, and standing the one on the one side and the other on the other, the patrico bids them to live together till death them part; and, so shaking hands, the wedding is ended.'"[221] OLD THEATRE IN PORTUGAL STREET. On the southern side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, at the back of Portugal Row, is Portugal Street, formerly containing a theatre, as celebrated as Covent Garden or Drury Lane is now. This was the Duke's Theatre, so called from the Duke of York, afterwards James II., who, at the Restoration, patronised one of the principal companies of players, as his brother Charles did the other. The latter was the Drury Lane company. Readers of theatrical history are generally It is conjectured, that the first appearance of an actress on the English stage, to the scandal of the Puritans, and with many apologies for the "indecorum" of giving up the performances of female characters by boys, took place in the theatre in Vere Street, on Saturday, Dec. 8, 1660. The part first performed was certainly that of Desdemona; a very fit one to introduce the claims of the sex.[224] Mr. Malone has given us the prologue written for this occasion by Thomas Jordan; which, as it shows the "sensation" that was made, sets us in a lively manner in the situation of the spectators, and gives a curious account of some of the male actors of gentle womanhood, we shall here repeat. It is entitled "A Prologue, to introduce the first Woman that came to act on the Stage, in the Tragedy called the Moor of Venice:" "I came unknown to any of the rest, To tell the news; I saw the lady drest: The woman plays to-day; mistake me not, No man in gown, or page in petticoat: A woman to my knowledge, yet I can't, If I should die, make affidavit on't. Do you not twitter, gentlemen? I know You will be censuring: do it fairly, though; 'Tis possible a virtuous woman may Abhor all sorts of looseness, and yet play; Play on the stage—where all eyes are upon her: Shall we count that a crime France counts an honour? In other kingdoms husbands safely trust 'em; The difference lies only in the custom. And let it be our custom, I advise; I'm sure this custom's better than th' excise, And may procure us custom: hearts of flint Will melt in passion, when a woman's in't. But, gentlemen, you that as judges sit In the Star-chamber of the house—the pit, Have modest thoughts of her; pray, do not run To give her visits when the play is done, With 'damn me, your most humble servant, lady;' She knows these things as well as you, it may be; Not a bit there, dear gallants, she doth know Her own deserts,—and your temptations too. But to the point:—in this reforming age We have intents to civilize the stage. Our women are defective, and so sized, You'd think they were some of the guard disguised; For to speak truth, men act, that are between Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen; With bone so large, and nerve so incompliant, When you call Desdemona, enter giant. We shall purge everything that is unclean, Lascivious, scurrilous, impious, or obscene; And when we've put all things in this fair way, Barebones himself may come to see a play."[225] The epilogue, "which consists of but twelve lines, is in the same strain of apology." "And how do you like her; Come, what is't ye drive at? She's the same thing in public as in private, As far from being what you call a whore, As Desdemona injured by the Moor; Then he that censures her in such a case, Hath a soul blacker than Othello's face. But, ladies, what think you? for if you tax Her freedom with dishonour to your sex, She means to act no more, and this shall be No other play, but her own tragedy. She will submit to none but your commands, And take commission only from your hands."[226] From the nature of this epilogue, and the permission accorded by the ladies, the women actors appear to have met with all the success they could wish; yet a prologue to the second part of Davenant's "Siege of Rhodes," acted in April, 1662, "Hope little from our poet's withered wit, From infant players scarce grown puppets yet; Hope from our women less, whose bashful fear Wondered to see me dare to enter here: Each took her leave, and wished my danger past, And though I came back safe and undisgraced, Yet when they spy the wits here, then I doubt No amazon can make them venture out, Though I advised them not to fear you much, For I presume not half of you are such."[227] It was in the Theatre at Vere Street that Pepys first saw a woman on the stage.[228] One of the earliest female performers mentioned by him was an actress whose name is not ascertained, but who attained an unfortunate celebrity in the part of Roxana in the "Siege of Rhodes." She was seduced by Aubery de Vere, the last Earl of Oxford of that name, under the guise of a private marriage—a species of villany which made a great figure in works of fiction up to a late period. The story is "got up" in detail by Madame Dunois, in her "History of the Court of Charles II.;"[229] but it is told with more brevity in Grammont; and as the latter, though apocryphal enough, pretends to say nothing on the subject in which he is not borne out by other writers, his lively account may be laid before the reader. "The Earl of Oxford," says one of his heroines, "fell in love with a handsome, graceful actress, belonging to the Duke's theatre, who performed to perfection, particularly the part of Roxana in a very fashionable new play; insomuch that she ever after retained that name. This creature being both very virtuous and very modest, or, if you please, wonderfully obstinate, proudly rejected the presents and addresses of the Earl of Oxford. The resistance inflamed his passion; he had recourse to invectives and even spells; but all in vain. This disappointment had such an effect upon him, that he could neither eat nor drink; this did not signify to him; but his passion at length became so violent, that he could neither play nor smoke. In this extremity, Love had recourse to Hymen; the Earl of Oxford, one of the first peers of the realm, is, you know, a very handsome man: he is of the order of the Garter, which greatly adds to an air naturally noble. In short, from his outward appearance, you would suppose he was really possessed of some sense; but as soon as ever you hear him speak, you are perfectly convinced to the contrary. This passionate lover presented her with a promise of marriage, in due form, signed with his own hand; she would not, however, rely This scoundrel Earl (whose alleged want of sense is extremely probable, and was his best excuse, as well as the worst thing to say for the lady), died full of years and honours, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. In 1664, Mr. Pepys witnessed a scene in the theatre in Portugal Street, which shows the extremity to which the speculation of managers and the curiosity of the British public can go. This was no other than the appearance of an imposter, called the German Princess, in the part of her own character, after having been tried for it at the Old Bailey. She was tried for bigamy, and acquitted; but she had inveigled a young citizen into marriage under pretence of being a German Princess, the citizen pretending at the same time to be a nobleman. The impudence of the thing was completed by the badness of her performance. Granger, however, who appears to have read a vindication of her, which she published, thinks she had great natural abilities. The following is curious:—4th (Feb. 1666-7). "Soon as dined," says Pepys, "my wife and I out to the Duke's playhouse, and there saw Heraclius, an excellent play, to my extraordinary content; and the more from the house being very full, and great company; among others Mrs. Stuart,[231] very fine, with her locks done up in puffes, as my wife calls them: and several other One little thinks, now-a-days, in turning into Portugal Street, that all the fashionable world, with the wits and poets, once thronged into that poor-looking thoroughfare, with its bailiffs at one end, and its butchers at the other. The difference, however, between beaux and butchers was not so great at that time as it became afterwards; though none arrogated the praise of high breeding more than the fine gentlemen of Charles II. Next year Pepys speaks of a fray at this house between Harry Killigrew and the Duke of Buckingham, in which the latter beat him, and took away his sword. Another time, according to his account, Rochester beat Tom Killigrew, at the Dutch Ambassador's, and in the King's presence. Blows from people of rank do not appear to have been resented as they would be now. In the following passage we have an author's first night before us, and that author the gallant Etherege, with dukes and wits about him in the pit. He makes, however, a very different figure in our eyes from what we commonly conceive of him, for he is unsuccessful and complaining. "My wife," says Pepys, "being gone before (6th Feb. 1667-8), I to the Duke of York's playhouse, where a new play of Etheridge's, called 'She would if she could;' and, though I was there by two o'clock, there was one thousand people put back that could not have room in the pit; and I at last, because my wife was there, made shift to get into the 18d. box, and there saw. But Lord! how full was the house, and how silly the play, there being nothing in the world good in it, and few people pleased in it. The King was there; but I sat mightily behind, and could see but little, and hear not at all. The play being done, I into the pit to look for my wife, it being dark and raining; but could not find her, and so staid, going between the two doors and through the pit, an hour and a half, I think, after the play was done, the people staying there till the rain was over, and to talk one with another. And among the rest here was the Duke of Buckingham to-day openly sat in the pit; and there I found him with my Lord Buckhurst, and Sedley, and Etheridge the poet; the last of whom I did hear mightily find fault with the actors, that they were The ensuing is a specimen of the manners of one of the fine ladies:- "5th (May, 1668), Creed and I to the Duke of York's playhouse; and there, coming late, up to the balcony-box, where we find my Lady Castlemaine (the King's mistress) and several great ladies; and there we sat with them, and I saw the 'Impertinents' once more than yesterday! and I for that reason like it, I find, the better too. By Sir Positive At-all I understand is meant Sir Robert Howard. My lady pretty well pleased with it; but here I sat close to her fine woman, Wilson, who indeed is very handsome, but they say with child by the King. I asked, and she told me this was the first time her lady had seen it, I having a mind to say something to her. One thing of familiarity I observed in my Lady Castlemaine; she called to one of her women, another that sat by this, for a little patch off of her face, and put it into her mouth and wetted it, and so clapped it upon her own by the the side of her mouth; I suppose she feeling a pimple rising there."[234] More manners of this gallant reign. Pepys says he went to see a woman with a great bushy beard, "which pleased him mightily." "Thence to the Duke's playhouse, and saw 'Macbeth.' The King and Court there; and we sat just under them and my Lady Castlemaine, and close to a woman that comes into the pit, a kind of a loose gossip, that pretends to be like her, and is so something. And my wife, by my troth, appeared, I think, as pretty as any of them; I never thought so much before; and so did Talbot and W. Hewer, as they said, I heard, to one another. The King and Duke of York minded me, and smiled upon me, at the handsome woman near me; but it vexed me to see Moll Davies, in the box over the King and my Lady Castlemaine, look down upon the King and he up to her; and so did my Lady Castlemaine once to see who it was; but when she saw Moll Davies, she looked like fire; which troubled me."[235] Modes of thinking. Mr. Pepys is of opinion that the "Tempest," which he saw at this house, is an "innocent" play; "no great wit, but yet good above ordinary plays." This appears to have been his general opinion of Shakspeare. That year he says, "After dinner to the Duke of York's playhouse, and there saw 'Sir Martin Mar-all,' which I have seen so often, and yet am mightily pleased with it, and think it mighty witty, and the fullest of proper matter for mirth that was ever writ; and I do clearly see that they do improve in their acting of it. Here a mighty company of citizens, 'prentices, and others; and it makes me observe, that What he calls the vanity of the age, was one of the best signs of its advancement. Plays, at the time above mentioned, began as early as they did before the civil wars; and when they were over, people rode out in their coaches to take the air. Our author, when the King visited the theatre, speaks of being there by one o'clock to get a seat. Kynaston, a favourite actor at this house, used to be taken out airing by the ladies, in the dress which he wore as a female. Cibber mentions this particular among others in an entertaining account of Kynaston, whom the ladies do not appear to have spoiled:— "Though women," he says, "were not admitted to the stage till the return of King Charles, yet it could not be so suddenly supplied with them, but that there was still a necessity, for some time, to put the handsomest young men into petticoats, which Kynaston was then said to have worn with success; particularly in the part of Evadne, in the 'Maid's Tragedy,' which I have heard him speak of; and which calls to my mind a ridiculous distress that arose from these sort of shifts, which the stage was then put to. The King, coming a little before his usual time to a tragedy, found the actors not ready to begin, when his Majesty, not choosing to have as much patience as his good subjects, sent to them to know the meaning of it; upon which the master of the company came to the box, and rightly judging that the best excuse for their default would be the true one, fairly told his Majesty that the queen was not shaved yet: the King, whose good humour loved to laugh at a jest as well as to make one, accepted the excuse, which served to divert him till the male queen could be effeminated. In a word, Kynaston, at that time, was so beautiful a youth, that the ladies of quality prided themselves in taking him with them in their coaches to Hyde Park in his theatrical habit, after the play; which in those days they might have sufficient time to do, because plays then were used to begin at four o'clock: the hour that people of the same rank are now going to dinner. Of this truth I had the curiosity to inquire, and had it confirmed from his own mouth, in his advanced age: and, indeed, to the last of him, his handsomeness was very little abated; even at past sixty his teeth were sound, white and even, as one would wish to see in a reigning toast of twenty. He had something of a formal gravity in his mien, which was attributed to the stately step he had been so early confined to, in a female decency. But even that, in characters of superiority, had its proper graces; it misbecame him not in the part of Leon, in Pepys does not speak much of Betterton, the chief performer at the Portugal-street playhouse. The reason must be, either that Betterton played chiefly in tragedy, or that his comic talent (which is probable) was not equal to his tragic. He was the great actor of his time, as Garrick was of the last century, and Mr. Kean lately. His most admired character appears to have been that of Hamlet; though Steele, in a paper to his memory in the 'Tatler,' seems to have been most impressed by his performance of Othello. If an actor's Othello is really fine, perhaps it must be his best part, as in Mr. Kean's instance, owing to the nature of the character. Hamlet speaks to the reflecting part of us; Othello to the sensitive. We will not present the reader with extracts from Cibber which contain little respecting this actor that might not be said of others; only it may be observed, that in the better parts of the performances of the old players we have something perhaps handed down to us of the manner of these ancient ornaments of the stage. The liveliest idea remaining of the genius of Betterton is furnished by an anecdote of Booth, who, when he first performed the Ghost to Betterton's Hamlet, is said to have been so astonished at the other's look of surprise, that for some moments he was unable to speak. Betterton died old and poor, rather, it should seem, from misfortune than imprudence. The actors in those times, though much admired, were not rewarded as they have been since; nor received anything like the modern salaries. His death is said to have been hastened by tampering with the gout, in order to perform on his benefit night. His person was rather manly than graceful. He was a good-natured man; and, like MoliÈre, would perform when he was ill, rather than hinder the profits of his brother actors.[238] At Caen Wood, Hampstead, the seat of Lord Mansfield, there is a portrait of him by Pope, who was an amateur in painting. They became acquainted when the latter was young, and the Another celebrated actor in Portugal Street during the reign of Charles II. was Nokes, who appears, from Cibber's account of him to have been something between Liston and Munden. By a line in one of Dryden's Epistles, the town seem to have thought a comedy deficient in which he did not make his appearance. The poet says to Southern on his play of the 'Wives' Excuse'— "The hearers may for want of Nokes repine, But rest secure, the readers will be thine." Nokes was one of those actors who create a roar the moment they are seen, and make people ache with laughter. These were among the older performers in Portugal Street. When Congreve took a share in the theatre, some others had joined it, and become celebrated, two of whom, Mr. Mountford and Mrs. Bracegirdle, we have already described. Another two, whose names remain familiar with posterity, are Mrs. Mountford and Mrs. Barry. Mrs. Mountford was a capital stage coquette; besides being able to act male coxcombs and country dowdies. Mrs. Barry was a fine tragedian, both of the heroic and tender cast. Dryden pronounced her the best actress he had seen. It is said she was a mistress of Lord Rochester's when young; that it was to her his love-letters were addressed; and that she owed her celebrity to his instructions. She was not handsome, and her mouth was a little awry, but her countenance was very expressive. This is the actress, who, in the delirium of her last moments, is said to have alluded in an extempore blank verse to a manoeuvre played by Queen Anne's ministry some time before:— "Ha! ha! and so they make us lords by dozens!" Cibber's sketch of Mrs. Mountford, in the character of Melantha is the masterpiece of his book, and presents a portrait sufficiently distinct to be extracted. "Melantha," says our lively critic (himself a coxcomb of the first water), "is as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-room, and seems to contain the most complete system of female foppery that could possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a fine lady. Her language, dress, motion, manners, soul and body, are in a continual hurry to do something more than is necessary or commendable. And though I doubt it will be a vain labour to offer you Three of Congreve's plays, 'Love for Love,' the 'Mourning Bride,' and the 'Way of the World,' came out at the theatre in Portugal Street. In the first paper of the 'Tatler,' Steele gives a criticism on the performance of 'Love for Love,' which contains one or two curious points of information respecting the customs of play-goers in the reign of Anne. The "article" begins like that of a modern newspaper. "On Thursday last was acted, for the benefit of Mr. Betterton, the celebrated comedy called 'Love for Love.' Those excellent players, Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Bracegirdle, and Mr. Dogget, though not at present concerned in the house, acted on that occasion. There has not been known so great a concourse of persons of distinction as at that time: the stage itself was covered with gentlemen and ladies; and when the curtain was drawn, it discovered even there a very splendid audience. This unusual encouragement, which was given to a play for the advantage of so great an actor, gives an undeniable instance that the true relish for manly entertainments and rational pleasures is not wholly lost. All the parts were acted to perfection: the actors were careful of their carriage, and no one was guilty of the affectation to insert witticism of his own; but a due respect was had to the audience for encouraging this accomplished player. It is not now doubted but plays will revive, and take their usual course in the opinion of persons of wit and merit, notwithstanding their late apostacy in favour of dress and sound. The place is very much altered since Mr. Dryden The last proprietor of this theatre was Rich, the famous harlequin, who, having a poor company, unable to compete with Drury Lane, introduced that love of show and spectacle which has ever since been willing to forego the regular drama, however reproached by the critics. Pope has hitched him into the 'Dunciad,' (book iii.), as one of the ministers of Dulness. "Immortal Rich! how calm he sits at ease, 'Midst snows of paper, and fierce hail of pease; And proud his mistress' order to perform, Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm." He had the merit, however, of producing the 'Beggar's Opera,' which was acted scores of nights together all over England, and finally rendered its heroine a duchess, and is said to have made "Gay Rich, and Rich Gay." Rich had no education. He was in the habit, when conversing, of saying mister, instead of sir. One of Rich's actors was Quin, of whom more by and by. Garrick was never at this theatre. It closed a little before his time, and was never reopened. The vulgar attributed its desertion to a supernumerary devil, who made his appearance in the pantomine of 'Harlequin and Dr. Faustus,' and took his exit through the roof instead of the door; which so frightened the manager that he had not the courage to open the theatre again. The only memorial now remaining in Portugal Street of theatres and play-goers, and all their lively generation, is a table set up in the burial-ground to the memory of the famous Joe Miller, author of so many posthumous good things. He was an actor in Congreve's time, and has the reputation of having been an honest, as well as a pleasant fellow. The jest-book, which passes for his publication, was collected by a companion of his, who is thought to have owed to him nothing but his name. It is but reasonable to conclude, however, that many of the jests were of the comedian's relating. In Carey Street, when she was first married, lived Mrs. Chapone. She afterwards resided in Arundel Street. When we have no greater names to mention, we think it our duty to avail ourselves of those of any intelligent and amiable Clare Market stands on a spot formerly called Clement's Inn Fields, the property of the Earls of Clare, one of whom built the market about the year 1657. He is said to have lived close by, in a style of magnificence. The names of the family, Denzel, Holles, &c., are retained in some of the neighbouring streets. Clare Market became notorious in the time of Pope, for the extravagance of Orator Henley, a clever, but irregular-minded man, who overrated himself, and became, it may be said, mad with impudence. Some describe his Oratory as being in the Market, others in Duke Street, which is the street going out of the western side of Lincoln's Inn Square through the archway. Another writer says it was the old theatre of Sir William Davenant, in Gibbon's Tennis Court, of which we have just spoken, and which is said to have been in Vere Street. Most likely all these accounts are to be reconciled. A tenement is often described as existing in a certain street, when the street presents nothing but a passage to it; and we take Henley's Oratory to have been the old theatre, with a passage to it from the market, from Vere Street, and from Duke Street. Having settled this magnificent point, we proceed with the no less magnificent orator. He was a native of Melton Mowbray, in the county of Leicester, the son of a clergyman, and after going to St. John's College, Cambridge, returned to his native place, and became master of the school there. "Feeling, or fancying," says the author of the 'Lounger's Common-Place Book,' "that a genius like his ought not to be buried in so obscure a situation, having been long convinced that many gross errors and impostures prevailed in the various institutions and establishments of mankind; being also ambitious of restoring ancient "Several candidates offering for this situation, a warm contest ensued; probation sermons were preached; and Henley's predominating vanity made him expect an easy victory. "We may guess at his disappointment, when this disciple of Demosthenes and Cicero was informed that the congregation had no objection to his language or his doctrine, but that he threw himself about too much in the pulpit, and that another person was chosen. "Losing his temper as well as his election, he rushed into a room where the principal parishioners were assembled, and thus addressed them, in all the vehemence of outrageous passion:— "'Blockheads! are you qualified to judge of the degree of action necessary for a preacher of God's word? Were you able to read, or had you sufficient sense, you sorry knaves, to understand the renowned orator of antiquity, he would tell you, almost the only requisite of a public speaker was action, action, action. "'But I despise and defy you; provoco ad populum; the public shall decide between us.' He then hastily retired, and, to vindicate his injured fame, published the probationary discourse he had delivered. "Thus disappointed in the regular routine of his profession, he became a quack divine; for this character he was eminently qualified, possessing a strong voice, fluent language, an imposing magisterial air, and a countenance, which no violation of propriety, reproach, or self-correction, was ever known to embarrass or discompose. "He immediately advertised that he should hold forth publicly, two days in the week, and hired for this purpose, a large room in or near Newport Market, which he called the Oratory; but previous to the commencement of his 'academical discourses,' he chose to consult Mr. Whiston, a learned clergyman of considerable mathematical and astronomical research, but who had rendered himself remarkable by eccentric simplicity of heart, and the whimsical heterodoxy of his creed. "In a letter to this gentleman he desired to be informed, whether he should incur any legal penalties by officiating as a separatist from the Church of England. Mr. Whiston did not encourage Henley's project, and a correspondence took place, which, ending in virulence and ill-language, produced, a few years after, the following letter:— "'To Mr. William Whiston, 'Take notice, that I give you warning not to enter my room in Newport Market, at your peril. 'John Henley.'"[240] Henley succeeded in his speculation, by lecturing, in the most important manner, on all sorts of subjects, from the origin of evil down to a shoe. He also published a variety of pamphlets, and a periodical farrago called the 'Hyp Doctor,' for which he is said to have had pay from Sir "And has not Colley still his lord—— His butchers Henley, his freemasons Moore." Pope had been attacked by him. The poet speaks of him again, several times, in the 'Dunciad:' "Imbrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands, Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands. How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue! How sweet the periods, neither said nor sung! Still break the benches, Henley! with thy strain, While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach in vain. O great restorer of the good old stage, Preacher at once and zany of the age! O worthy thou of Egypt's wise abodes, A decent priest where monkeys were the gods." Book iii., v. 199. Pope says he had a "gilt tub," and insinuates that he sometimes got drunk. Among the sleeping worthies in the 'Dunciad,' "—— Henley lay inspired beside a sink, And to mere mortals seemed a priest in drink." A contemporary journalist, who says that the fame of Henley induced him to be present at one of the lectures in Newport Market, describes him as entering like a harlequin by a door behind the pulpit, and "at one large leap jumping into it, and falling to work." "His notions," he says, "the orator beat into the audience with hands, arms, legs, and head, as if people's understandings were to be courted and knocked down with blows." The price of admission was a shilling. The following are samples of Henley's extraordinary advertisements:— "At the Oratory in Newport Market, to-morrow, at half-an-hour after ten, the sermon will be on the Witch of Endor. At half-an-hour after five, the theological lecture will be on the conversion and original of the Scottish nation, and of the Picts and Caledonians; St. Andrew's relics and panegyric, and the character and mission of the Apostles. "On Wednesday, at six, or near the matter, take your chance, will be a medley oration on the history, merits, and praise of confusion, and of confounders, in the road and out of the way. "On Friday, will be that on Dr. Faustus and Fortunatus, and conjuration; after each, the Chimes of the Times, No. 23 and 24. N.B. Whenever the prices of the seats are occasionally raised in the week days, notice will be given of it in the prints. An account of the performances of the Oratory from the 1st of August is published, with the Discourse on Nonsense; and if any bishop, clergyman, or other subject of his Majesty, or the subject of any foreign prince or state, can at my years, and in my circumstances and opportunities, without the least assistance or any patron in the world, parallel the study, choice, variety, and discharge of the said performances of the Oratory by his own or any others, I will engage forthwith to quit the said Oratory. "J. Henley."[241] In the bill of fare issued for Sunday, September 28, 1729, the most extraordinary theological speculations are followed by a list of the fashions in dress. "At the Oratory, the corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields, near Clare Market, to-morrow, at half-an-hour after ten: 1. The postil will be on the turning of Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. 2. The sermon will be on the necessary power and attractive force which religion gives the spirit of a man with God and good spirits. "II. At five: 1. The postil will be on this point: in what language our Saviour will speak the last sentence on mankind. 2. The lecture will be on Jesus Christ's sitting at the right hand of God; where that is; the honours and lustre of his inauguration; the learning, criticism, and piety of that glorious article. "The Monday's orations will shortly be resumed. On Wednesday, the oration will be on the skits of the fashions, or a live gallery of family pictures in all ages; ruffs, muffs, puffs manifold; shoes, wedding-shoes, two-shoes, slip-shoes, heels, clocks, pantofles, buskins, pantaloons, garters, shoulder-knots, periwigs, head-dresses, modesties, tuckers, farthingales, corkins, minikins, slammakins, ruffles, round robins, tollets, fans, patches; dame, forsooth, madam, my lady, the wit and beauty of my grannum; Winnifred, Joan, Bridget, compared with our Winny, Jenny, and Biddy; fine ladies, and pretty gentlewomen; being a general view of the beau monde, from before Noah's flood to the year 29. On Friday will be something better than last Tuesday. After each, a bob at the times."[242] Henley must have lectured a long while; for one of his "bobs at the times" was occasioned by the dismissal of Dr. Cobden, a chaplain to George II. in the year 1748, for preaching from the following text: "Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness." The wicked, we believe, meant the king's "Away with the wicked before the king, And away with the wicked behind him; His throne it will bless With righteousness, And we shall know where to find him." This must be what the reviewers call a "favourable specimen." "Sometimes," says the 'Lounger's Common-Place Book,' "one of his old Bloomsbury friends caught the speaker's eye; on these occasions, he could not resist the temptation to gratify his vanity and resentment; after a short pause he would address the unfortunate interloper in words to the following effect: 'You see, sir, all mankind are not exactly of your opinion; there are, you perceive, a few sensible people in the world, who consider me as not wholly unqualified for the office I have undertaken.' "His abashed and confounded adversaries, thus attacked in a public company, a most awkward species of distress, were glad to retire precipitately, and sometimes were pushed out of the room by Henley's partizans."[243] It is probable that Henley's partizans were sometimes necessary to secure him from the results of his imprudence, though his boldness appears to have been on a par with it. He once attracted an audience of shoemakers by announcing that he could teach them a method of making shoes with wonderful celerity. The secret consisted in cutting off the tops of old boots. His motto to the advertisement (omne majus continet in se minus, the greater includes the less) had a pleasantry in it, which makes the disappointment of the poor shoemakers doubly ludicrous. Henley, on one occasion, was for several days in the custody of the King's messenger, having incurred the displeasure of the House of Lords. "Lord Chesterfield, at that time secretary of state," says the 'Lounger,' "amused himself and his associates in office by sporting with the hopes and fears of our restorer of ancient eloquence; during his examination before the privy council, he requested permission to sit, on account of a real, or, as it was supposed, pretended rheumatism. Occasioning considerable merriment by his eccentric answers, and sometimes by the oddity of his questions, he was observed to join heartily and loudly in the laugh he had himself created. "The Earl having expostulated with him on the impropriety of ridiculing the exertions of his native country, at the moment rebellion raged in the heart of the kingdom, Henley replied, 'I thought there was no harm, my Lord, in cracking a joke on a red-herring:' alluding to the worthy primate of that name, who proposed, and, I believe, had actually commenced, arming and arraying the clergy. "Many disrespectful and unwarrantable expressions he had applied to persons high in office, being mentioned to him, he answered, without embarrassment, 'My Lords, I must live.' "'I see no kind of reason for that,' said Lord Chesterfield, 'but many against it.' The council were pleased, and laughed at the retort; the prisoner, somewhat irritated, observed, 'That is a good thing, but it has been said before.' "A few days after, being reprimanded for his improper conduct, and cautioned against repeating it, he was dismissed, as an impudent, but entertaining fellow."[244] To complete the history of this man, he struck medals for his tickets, with a star rising to the meridian; over it the motto, Ad summa (to the height), and below, Inveniam viam aut faciam (I will find a way or make one). As might be expected, he found no way at last, but that of falling into contempt. He appears to have been too imprudent to make money by his vagaries; and his manners, probably in consequence, became gross and ferocious. He died in 1756. His person makes a principal figure in two humorous plates, attributed to Hogarth. Duke Street and Little Wild Street have had an inhabitant, as illustrious afterwards as he was then obscure, in the person of Benjamin Franklin, who, when he was first in England, worked in the printing office of Mr. Watts, in the latter street, and lodged in the former. When he came to England afterwards, as the agent of Massachusetts, he went into this office, "and going up," says his biography, "to a particular press [now in America], thus addressed the two workmen: 'Come, my friends, we will drink together: it is now forty years since I worked like you at this press, as a journeyman printer.'" The same publication gives an account of him during this period, which, besides containing more than one curious local particular, is highly worth the attention of those who confound stimulus with vigour. "After the completion," says the writer, "of twelve months at Palmer's" (in Bartholomew Close), "Franklin removed to the printing-office of Mr. Watts, in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where he continued during the whole of his subsequent stay in the British metropolis. He found a contiguous lodging with a widow lady in "During the first weeks of his engagement with Mr. Watts, he worked as a pressman, drinking only water, while his companions had their five pints of porter each, per day; and his strength was superior to theirs. He ridiculed the verbal logic of strong beer being necessary for strong work; contending that the strength yielded by malt liquor could only be in proportion to the quantity of flour or actual grain dissolved in the liquor, and that a pennyworth of bread must have more of this than a pot of porter. The Water-American, as he was called, had some converts to his system; his example, in this case, being clearly better than his philosophy.[245] "Franklin was born to be a revolutionist, in many good senses of the word. He now proposed and carried several alterations in the so-called chapel-laws of the printing office; resisted what he thought the impositions, while he conciliated the respect of his fellow-workmen; and always had cash and credit in the neighbourhood at command, to which the sottish part of his brethren were occasionally, and sometimes largely indebted. He thus depicts this part of his prosperous life:—'On my entrance, I worked at first as a pressman, conceiving that I had need of bodily exercise, to which I had been accustomed in America, where the printers work alternately, as compositors and at the press. I drank nothing but water. The other workmen, to the number of about fifty, were great drinkers of beer. I carried occasionally a large form of letters in each hand, up and down stairs, while the rest employed both hands to carry one. They were surprised to see by this and many other examples, that the American aquatic, as they used to call me, was stronger than those that drank porter. The beer-boy had sufficient employment during the whole day in serving that house alone. My fellow-pressman drank every day a pint of beer before breakfast, a pint with bread and cheese for breakfast, one between breakfast and dinner, one at dinner, one again about six o'clock in the afternoon, and another after he had finished his day's work. This custom appeared to me abominable; but he had need, he said, of all this beer, in order to acquire strength to work. "'I endeavoured to convince him, that the bodily strength furnished by the beer could only be in proportion to the solid part of the barley dissolved in the water of which the beer was composed; that there was a larger portion of flour in a penny-loaf, and that, consequently, if he ate this loaf, and drank a pint of water, he would derive more strength from it than from a pint of beer. This reasoning, however, did not prevent him from drinking his accustomed quantity of beer, and paying every Saturday night a score of four or five shillings a-week for this cursed beverage; an expense from which I was wholly exempt. Thus do these poor devils continue all their lives in a state of voluntary wretchedness and poverty. "'My example prevailed with several of them to renounce their abominable practice of bread and cheese with beer; and they procured, like me, from a neighbouring house, a good basin of warm gruel, in which was a small slice of butter, with toasted bread and nutmeg. This was a much better breakfast, which did not cost more than a pint of beer, namely, three halfpence, and at the same time "'This circumstance, added to the reputation of my being a tolerable good gabber, or, in other words, skilful in the art of burlesque, kept up my importance in the chapel. I had, besides, recommended myself to the esteem of my master by my assiduous application to business, never observing Saint Monday. My extraordinary quickness in composing always procured me such work as was most urgent, and which is commonly best paid; and thus my time passed away in a very pleasant manner.'"[246] THE PRINTING PRESS AT WHICH FRANKLIN WORKED. |
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