did imagine to have been writ so before?' I named Boileau's "Lutrin," and Tassoni's "Secchia Rapita," which I had read, and knew Dryden had borrowed some strokes from each. 'Tis true,' said Dryden, 'I had forgotten them.' A little after, Dryden went out, and in going spoke to me again, and desired me to come and see him the next day. I was highly delighted with the invitation, went to see him accordingly, and was well acquainted with him ever after as long as he lived."*

Button's coffee-house stood also in Russell Street, on the south side, about two doors from Covent Garden Market. Here assembled Pope, Swift, Addison, Garth, Arbuthnot, Steele, Ambrose Phillips, and all the most celebrated men of the Augustan age of England. Button's, as is well known, was the favourite resort of Addison. According to Spence, on the authority of Pope, Button was an old servant of Addison, who, after the death of Dryden, had influence enough to transfer the wits from Will's to the house of his protégé. Dr. Johnson has entered further into particulars. "Button," he says, "had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick's family, who, under the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the south side of Russell Street, about two doors from Covent Garden. Here it was that the wits of that time used to assemble. It is said that when Addison had suffered any vexation from the Countess, he withdrew the company from Button's house. From the

* Spence's "Anecdotes."

ADDISON AND POPE.

43

"Ad

coffee-house he went again to a tavern, where he often sat late, and drank too much wine."* dison," says Pope, "usually studied all the morning, then met his party at Button's, dined there, and stayed for five or six hours, and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me. It hurt my health, and so I quitted it."+

It was at Button's, according to Pope, that Addison took him aside, "after their long coldness, to explain the circumstances under which he had patronized Tickell's translation of the Iliad in opposition to that of Pope; but the particulars of their misunderstanding are too well known to require repetition. It was here, too, that Ambrose Phillips hung the rod over the seat which was usually occupied by Pope. Phillips, while a young student at St. John's College, Cambridge, had published his "Six Pastorals," the intrinsic merit of which is said to have excited the jealousy of Pope, who certainly lashed them severely and with great humour in the "Guardian." It was under these circumstances that Phillips suspended the rod over Pope's seat at Button's. The insult fell harmless on the great poet, who retaliated by his well-known lines in the "Prologue to the Satires,"

The bard whom pilfered pastorals renown,
Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown,

Just writes to make his barrenness appear,

And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a-year.

*Johnson's "Life of Addison."

+ Spence's "Anecdotes."

After the death of Addison, Button's fell into disrepute, and a few years afterwards it is known that Addison's old servant was receiving relief from the parish of St. Paul's, Covent Garden.

In the "Guardian," Button's coffee-house is spoken of as being "over against Tom's, in Covent Garden." This house (No. 17, Russell Street), memorable from the days of Queen Anne to the reign of George the Third, is still standing. In the preface to a work, entitled, "Descriptive Particulars of English Coronation Medals," the author, Mr. Till, thus writes :-" The room in which I conduct my business, as a coin dealer, is that which, in 1764,-by a general subscription among nearly seven hundred of the nobility, foreign ministers, gentry, and geniuses of the age,-became the cardroom and place of meeting for many of the now illustrious dead, till 1768, when a voluntary subscription among its members induced Mr. Haines, the proprietor, to take in the next room westward as a coffee-room; and the whole floor, en suite, was converted into card and conversation rooms. Here assembled Dr. Johnson, Garrick, Murphy, Dr. Dodd, Dr. Goldsmith, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Foote, Moody, Count Bruhl, Sir Philip Francis, George Colman, the elder, the Dukes of Northumberland and Montague, Lord Rodney, George Steevens, Warner, and many others, all of whom have long since passed to thatbourne from whence no traveller returns.” ”

In connection with Russell Street, Covent Garden, there is a very curious passage in Gibbon's

GIBBON'S ABJURATION OF PROTESTANTISM.

45

"Memoirs of his Life and Writings," in which the great historian, then a student of Magdalen College, Oxford, describes the circumstances attending his abjuration of the Protestant faith. They were still the days when, in the words of Blackstone, "where a person is reconciled to the See of Rome, or procures others to be reconciled, the offence amounts to high-treason." There were other laws, too, which condemned the priest to perpetual banishment, and transferred the proselyte's estate to his nearest relation: the visit, therefore, to Russell Street, was one of danger, and was paid with great secrecy. "In my last excursion to London," says Gibbon, "I addressed myself to Mr. Lewis, a Roman Catholic bookseller in Russell Street, Covent Garden, who recommended me to a priest, of whose name and order I am at present ignorant. In our first interview he soon discovered that persuasion was needless. After sounding the motives and merits of my conversion, he consented to admit me into the pale of the church; and at his feet, on the eighth of June, 1753, I solemnly, though privately, abjured the errors of heresy. The seduction of an English youth of family and fortune was an act of as much danger as glory; but he bravely overlooked the danger, of which I was not then sufficiently informed. An elaborate controversial epistle, approved by my direction and addressed to my father, announced and justified the step which I had taken. My father was neither a bigot nor a philosopher; but his affection deplored the loss of an only son;

and his good sense was astonished at my strange departure from the religion of my country. In the first sally of passion he divulged a secret which prudence might have suppressed, and the gates of Magdalen College were for ever shut against my return."

At No. 8, Russell Street, now the "Caledonian Coffee House," lived the well-known "Tom Davies," the bookseller and actor. To the admirers of Dr. Johnson, and especially of Boswell's inimitable biography, this house will always be interesting as that which witnessed the introduction of these two remarkable men to each other.* Boswell, it seems, had more than once been disappointed in his eager desire to be introduced to Dr. Johnson, but at length fortune threw him in the way of the great mammoth of literature. "At last," says Boswell, and with Boswell the day was one indeed notanda cretá; " on Monday, the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's back-parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies having perceived him, through the glass door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing towards us, he rumoured his awful approach to me, somewhat in the manner of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost,- Look, my lord, it comes.' I

* "No. 8," says Boswell, "the very place where I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the illustrious subject of this work, deserves to be particularly marked. I never pass by it without feeling reverence and regret." Boswell's "Life of Johnson," note.