Chapter III: Fleet Street (3)

"Sir John Hawkins," says Boswell in a note on this passage, "has preserved very few _memorabilia_ of Johnson." There is, however, to be found in his bulky tome, a very excellent one upon this subject. "In contradiction to those who, having a wife and children, prefer domestic enjoyments to those which a tavern affords, I have heard him assert, that _a tavern chair was the throne of human felicity_. 'As soon' (said he), 'as I enter the door of a tavern, I experience an oblivion of care, and a freedom from solicitude: when I am seated, I find the master courteous, and the servants obsequious to my call, anxious to know and ready to supply my wants: wine there exhilarates my spirits, and prompts me to free conversation, and an interchange of discourse with those whom I most love; I dogmatise, and am contradicted; and in this conflict of opinion and sentiments I find delight.'"

The following anecdote is highly to Johnson's credit, and equally worthy of every one's attention. "Johnson was known to be so rigidly attentive to the truth," says Boswell, "that even in his common conversation the slightest circumstance was mentioned with exact precision. The knowledge of his having such a principle and habit made his friends have a perfect reliance on the truth of everything that he told, however it might have been doubted if told by many others. As an instance of this I may mention an odd incident, which he related as having happened to him one night in Fleet Street. 'A gentlewoman' (said he) 'begged I would give her my arm to assist her in crossing the street, which I accordingly did; upon which she offered me a shilling, supposing me to be the watchman. I perceived that she was somewhat in liquor.' This, if told by most people, would have been thought an invention; when told by Johnson, it was believed by his friends, as much as if they had seen what passed."[124]

The gentlewoman, however, might have taken him for the watchman without being in liquor, if she had no eye to discern a great man through his uncouthness. Davies, the bookseller, said, that he "laughed like a rhinoceros." It may be added he walked like a whale; for it was rolling rather than walking. "I met him in Fleet Street," says Boswell, "walking, or rather, indeed, moving along; for his peculiar march is thus described in a very just and picturesque manner, in a short life of him published very soon after his death:--'When he walked the streets, what with the constant roll of his head, and the concomitant motion of his body, he appeared to make his way by that motion independent of his feet.' That he was often much stared at," continues Boswell, "while he advanced in this manner, may be easily believed; but it was not safe to make sport of one so robust as he was. Mr. Langton saw him one day, in a fit of absence, by a sudden start, drive the load off a porter's back, and walk forwards briskly, without being conscious of what he had done. The porter was very angry, but stood still, and eyed the huge figure with much earnestness, till he was satisfied that his wisest course was to be satisfied and take up his burden again."[125]

There is another remark on Fleet Street and its superiority to the country, which must not be passed over. Boswell, not having Johnson's reasons for wanting society, was a little over-weening and gratuitous on this subject; and on such occasions the doctor would give him a knock. "It was a delightful day," says the biographer; "as we walked to St. Clement's Church, I again remarked that Fleet Street was the most cheerful scene in the world; 'Fleet Street,' said I, 'is in my mind more delightful than Tempè.' _Johnson._--'Ay, sir, but let it be compared with Mull.'"[126]

The progress of knowledge, even since Johnson's time, has enabled us to say, without presumption, that we differ with this extraordinary person on many important points, without ceasing to have the highest regard for his character. His faults were the result of temperament; perhaps his good qualities and his powers of reflection were, in some measure, so too; but this must be the case with all men. Intellect and beneficence, from whatever causes, will always command respect; and we may gladly compound, for their sakes, with foibles which belong to the common chances of humanity. If Johnson has added nothing very new to the general stock, he has contributed (especially by the help of his biographer) a great deal that is striking and entertaining. He was an admirable critic, if not of the highest things, yet of such as could be determined by the exercise of a masculine good sense; and one thing he did, perhaps beyond any man in England, before or since--he advanced, by the powers of his conversation, the strictness of his veracity, and the respect he exacted towards his presence, what may be called the personal dignity of literature. The consequence has been, not exactly what he expected, but certainly what the great interests of knowledge require; and Johnson has assisted men, with whom he little thought of co-operating, in setting the claims of truth and beneficence above all others.

East from Fetter Lane, on the same side of the street, is Crane Court--the principal house in which, facing the entry, was that in which the Royal Society used to meet, and where they kept their museum and library before they removed to their late apartments in Somerset House. The society met in Crane Court up to a period late enough to allow us to present to our imaginations Boyle and his contemporaries prosecuting their eager inquiries and curious experiments in the early dawn of physical science, and afterwards Newton presiding in the noontide glory of the light which he had shed over nature.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] See Walter Scott's edition of Dryden, vol. x., p. 372. "Abhorrers" were addressers on the side of the court, who had avowed "abhorrence" of the proceedings of the Whigs. The word was a capital one to sound through a trumpet.

[76] Aubrey says that his death took place in a cellar in Long Acre; and adds; "Mr. Edm. Wylde, &c., had made a collection for him, and given him money." But Aubrey's authority is not valid against Wood's. He is to be read like a proper gossip, whose accounts we may pretty safely reject or believe, as it suits other testimony.

[77] Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses, fol. vol. ii., p. 145.

[78] Baker's Biographia Dramatica. Reed's edition, 1782, vol. i., p. 207.

[79] Malone in the Prolegomena to Shakspeare, as above, vol, iii., p. 287.

[80] Correspondence of Samual Richardson, &c., by Anna Letitia Barbauld, vol. i., p. 97.

[81] Our authority (one of the highest in this way) is Mr. Nichols, in his Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, vol. iv., p. 579.

[82]

"---- Apoplexy cramm'd intemperance knocks
Down to the ground at once, as butcher felleth ox;"--

says Thomson, in his Castle of Indolence. It was the death which the good-natured, indolent poet probably expected for himself, and which he would have had, if a cold and fever had not interfered; for there is an apoplexy of the head alone, as well as of the whole body; and men of letters who either exercise little, or work overmuch, seem almost sure to die of it, or of palsy; which is a disease analogous. It is the last stroke, given in the kind resentment of nature, to the brains which should have known better than bring themselves to such a pass. In the biography of Italian literati, "Mori' d' apoplessia"--(he died of apoplexy)--is a common verdict.

[83] Correspondence, as above, vol. i., p. 177.

[84] Correspondence, &c., by Mrs. Barbauld, vol.i., p. 183.

[85] Life and Reign of King James I., quoted in Howell's State Trials, vol. ii., p. 745.

[86] State Trials, _ut supra_, p. 762.

[87] "It is an opinion which universally prevails with regard to those cross-legged monuments," says Dr. Nash, "that they were all erected to the memory of Knights Templars. Now to me it is very evident that not one of them belonged to that order; but, as Mr. Habingdon, in describing this at Alve church, hath justly expressed it, to Knights of the Holy Voyage. For the order of Knights Templars followed the rule of the Canons regular of St. Austin, and, as such, were under a vow of celibacy. Now there is scarcely one of these monuments which is certainly known for whom it is erected; but it is as certain, that the person it represented was a married man. The Knights Templars always wore a white habit, with a red cross on the left shoulder. I believe, not a single instance can be produced of either the mantle or cross being carved on any of these monuments, which surely would not have been omitted, as by it they were distinguished from all other orders, had these been really designed to represent Knights Templars. Lastly, this order was not confined to England only, but dispersed itself all over Europe: yet it will be very difficult to find one cross-legged monument anywhere out of England; whereas they would have abounded in France, Italy, and elsewhere, had it been a fashion peculiar to that famous order. But though, for these reasons, I cannot allow the cross-legged monuments to have been for Knights Templars, yet they had some relation to them, being the memorials of those zealous devotees, who had either been in Palestine, personally engaged in what was called the Holy War, or had laid themselves under a vow to go thither, though perhaps they were prevented from it by death. Some few, indeed, might possibly be erected to the memory of persons who had made pilgrimages there merely out of private devotion. Among the latter, probably, was that of the lady of the family of Mepham, of Mepham in Yorkshire, to whose memory a cross-legged monument was placed in a chapel adjoining to the one collegiate church of Howden, in Yorkshire, and is at this day remaining, together with that of her husband on the same tomb. As this religious madness lasted no longer than the reign of Henry III. (the tenth and last crusade being published in the year 1268), and the whole order of Knights Templars was dissolved by Edward II., military expeditions to the Holy Land, as well as devout pilgrimages there, had their period by the year 1312; consequently none of those cross-legged monuments are of a later date than the reign of Edward II., or beginning of Edward III., nor of an earlier than that of King Stephen, when these expeditions first took place in this kingdom."--_History and Antiquities of Worcestershire_, fol. vol. i., p. 31. Since Dr. Nash wrote, however, it has been denied that even the cross legs had any thing to do with crusades.

[88] Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. We quote no edition, because where we could we have modernised the spelling; which is a justice to this fine old author in a quotation, in order that nobody may pass it over. With regard to Chaucer being of the Temple, and to his beating the Franciscan in Fleet Street, all which is reported, depends upon the testimony of a Mr. Buckley, who, according to Speght, had seen a Temple record to that effect.

[89] Prothalamion.

[90] "Shove-groat, named also Slyp-groat, and Slide-thrift, are sports occasionally mentioned by the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and probably were analogous to the modern pastime called Justice Jervis, or Jarvis, which is confined to common pot-houses, and only practised by such as frequent the tap-rooms."--_Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the People of England_, 1828, chap, i., sect. xix. It is played with halfpence, which are jerked with the palm of the hand from the edge of a table, towards certain numbers described upon it.

[91] Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 290.

[92] Sir John Davies, who was afterwards Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and wrote a poem on the Art of Dancing (so lively was the gravity of those days!) "bastinadoed" a man at dinner in the Temple Hall, for which he was expelled. The man probably deserved it, for Davies had a fine nature; and he went back again by favour of the excellent Lord Ellesmere.

[93] Dunciad, book ii.

[94] Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit., 8vo. 1816, vol. iv., p. 27.

[95] Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit. 1816, vol. i., p. 398.

[96] Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit. 1816, vol. i., p. 378.

[97] Ibid., vol. ii., p. 421.

[98] Ibid., vol. ii., p. 271.

[99] Spence's Anecdotes, Singer's edit. p. 355.

[100] Swift's Works, _ut supra_, vol. iv., p. 41.

[101] _Tatler_, No. 142. According to the author of a lively rattling book, conversant with the furniture of old times, Arbuthnot was a great amateur in sticks. "My uncle," says he, "was universally allowed to be as deeply skilled in caneology as any one, Dr. Arbuthnot not excepted, whose science on important questions was quoted even after his death; for his collection of the various headed sticks and canes, from the time of the first Charles, taken together, was unrivalled."--_Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i., p. 242.

[102] Tatler, No. 86.

[103] Spence's Anecdotes, by Singer, p. 337.

[104] Ibid.

[105] Tatler, as above, vol. iv., p. 600.

[106] Censura Literaria, vol. iv., p. 345.

[107] Imitations of Horace, Ep. i., book ii.

[108] Pennant, _ut supra_, p. 172.

[109] Faerie Queen, book vi., canto iii.

[110] Britannia's Pastorals, book i., song iii.

[111] Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 279.

[112] See Malcolm's Londinium Redivivum, vol. iii., 453.

[113] Boswell, _ut supra_, vol. i., p. 441.

[114] Malone, on the passage in Boswell, ibid.

[115] Boswell, vol. ii., p. 117.

[116] Beauclerk, of the St. Alban's family, was a descendant of Charles II., whom he resembled in face and complexion, for which Johnson by no means liked him the less.

[117] Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, &c. Allman, 1822, p. 69.

[118] Boswell, vol. iii., p. 398.

[119] Johnson's Court runs into Gough Square, "a place lately built with very handsome houses, and well inhabited by persons of fashion."--_Maitland's History and Survey of London_, by Entick, folio, 1756 p. 961.

[120] Boswell, vol. i., p. 384.

[121] Boswell, vol. i., p. 400.

[122] Id., p. 408.

[123] Boswell, vol. ii., p. 469.

[124] Boswell, vol. ii., p. 455.

[125] Ibid., vol. iv., p. 77.

[126] Ibid., vol. iii., p. 327.