says Lamb, in his delightful way, "attached our small talents to the forlorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation was now to write treason." Lamb hinted at possible abdications. Blocks, axes, and Whitehall tribunals were covered with flowers of so cunning a periphrasis-as, Mr. Bayes says, never naming the thing directly-that the keen eye of an Attorney-General was insufficient to detect the lurking snake among them.

for Tonson, and the first words that Lintot read were: "That Bernard Lintot is so great a scoundrel." In the same shop, which was then occupied by Jacob Robinson, the publisher, Pope first met Warburton. An interesting account of this meeting is given by Sir John Hawkins, which it may not be out of place to quote here. "The friendship of Pope and Warburton," he says, "had its commencement in that bookseller's shop which is situate on the west side of the gateway At the south-west corner of Chancery Lane leading down the Inner Temple Lane. Warbur- (No. 193) once stood an old house said to have ton had some dealings with Jacob Robinson, the been the residence of that unfortunate reformer, publisher, to whom the shop belonged, and may be | Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, who was burnt supposed to have been drawn there on business; in St. Giles's Fields in 1417 (Henry V.) In Pope might have made a call of the like Charles II.'s reign the celebrated Whig Green kind. However that may be, there they met, Ribbon Club used to meet here, and from the and entering into conversation, which was not balcony flourish their periwigs, discharge squibs, soon ended, conceived a mutual liking, and, as we and wave torches, when a great Protestant procesmay suppose, plighted their faith to each other. sion passed by, to burn the effigy of the Pope at The fruit of this interview and of the subsequent the Temple Gate. The house, five stories high and communications of the parties was the publication, covered with carvings, was pulled down for City in November, 1739, of a pamphlet with this title, improvements in 1799. "A Vindication of Mr. Pope's "Essay on Man," by the Author of "The Divine Legation of Moses." Printed for J. Robinson.' At the Middle Temple Gate, Benjamin Motte, successor to Ben Tooke, published Swift's "Gulliver's Travels," for which he had grudgingly given only £200.

Upon the site of No. 192 (east corner of Chancery Lane) the father of Cowley, that fantastic poet of Charles II.'s time, it is said carried on the trade of a grocer. In 1740 a later grocer there sold the finest caper tea for 24s. per lb., his fine green for 18s. per lb., hyson at 16s. per lb., and bohea at 7s. per lb.

The third door from Chancery Lane (No. 197, north No house in Fleet Street has a more curious side), Mr. Timbs points out, was in Charles II.'s pedigree than that gilt and painted shop opposite time a tombstone-cutter's; and here, in 1684, Howel, Chancery Lane (No. 17, south side), falsely called whose "Letters" give us many curious pictures of "the palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey." his time, saw a huge monument to four of the Oxen- It was originally the office of the Duchy of Cornham family, at the death of each of whom a white wall, in the reign of James I. It is just possible bird appeared fluttering about their bed. These that it was the house originally built by Sir Amyas miraculous occurrences had taken place at a town Paulet, at Wolsey's command, in resentment for Sir near Exeter, and the witnesses' names duly ap- Amyas having set Wolsey, when a mere parish peared below the epitaph. No. 197 was afterwards priest, in the stocks for a brawl. Wolsey, at the time Rackstrow's museum of natural curiosities and ana- of the ignominious punishment, was schoolmaster to tomical figures; and the proprietor put Sir Isaac the children of the Marquis of Dorset. Paulet Newton's head over the door for a sign. Among was confined to this house for five or six years, to other prodigies was the skeleton of a whale more appease the proud cardinal, who lived in Chancery than seventy feet long. Donovan, a naturalist, Lane. Sir Amyas rebuilt his prison, covering the succceded Rackstrow (who died in 1772) with his front with badges of the cardinal. It was afterLondon museum. Then, by a harlequin change, wards "Nando's," a famous coffee-house, where No. 197 became the office of the Albion newspaper. Thurlow picked up his first great brief. One night Charles Lamb was turned over to this journal from Thurlow, arguing here keenly about the celebrated the Morning Post. The editor, John Fenwick, the Douglas case, was heard by some lawyers with "Bigot" of Lamb's " Essay," was a needy, sanguine delight, and the next day, to his astonishment, man, who had purchased the paper of a person was appointed junior counsel. This cause won named Lovell, who had stood in the pillory for a him a silk gown, and so his fortune was made libel against the Prince of Wales. For a long time by that one lucky night at "Nando's." No. 17 Fenwick contrived to pay the Stamp Office dues by was afterwards the place where Mrs. Salmon (the money borrowed from compliant friends. "We," | Madame Tussaud of early times) exhibited her

The poet promised a fuller portrait if the "dog" the well-known Tory publisher. Murray tried tormented him further.

trained bird can reach a certain spot (a flight, of course, previously known to the bird), generally in Belgium.

The first St. Dunstan's Church-"in the West," as it is now called, to distinguish it from one near Tower Street-was built prior to 1237. The present building was erected in 1831. The older church stood thirty feet forward, blocking the carriage-way, and shops with projecting signs were built against the east and west walls. The churchyard was a favourite locality for booksellers. One of the most interesting stories connected with the old building relates to Felton, the fanatical assassin of the Duke of Buckingham, the favourite of Charles I. The murderer's mother and sisters lodged at a haberdasher's in Fleet Street, and were attending service in St. Dunstan's Church when the news arrived from Portsmouth; they swooned away when they heard the name of the assassin. Many of the clergy of St. Dunstan's have been eminent men. Tyndale, the translator of the New Testament, did duty here. The poet Donne was another of the St. Dunstan's worthies; and Sherlock and Romaine both lectured at this church. The rectory house, sold in 1693, was No. 183. The clock of old St. Dunstan's was one of the great London sights in the last tury. The giants that struck the hours had been set up in 1671, and were made by Thomas Harrys, of Water Lane, for £35 and the old clock. Lord Hertford purchased them, in 1830, for £210, and set them up at his villa in Regent's Park. When a child he was often taken to see them; and he then used to say that some day he would buy "those giants." Hatton, writing in 1708, says that these figures were more admired on Sundays by the populace than the most eloquent preacher in the pulpit within; and Cowper, in his "Table Talk," cleverly compares dull poets to the St. Dunstan's giants:

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the building falling. Every face turned pale; but the preacher, full of faith, sat calmly down in the pulpit till the panic subsided, then, resuming his sermon, said reprovingly, "We are in the service of God, to prepare ourselves that we may be fearless at the great noise of the dissolving world when the heavens shall pass away and the elements melt with fervent heat."

Mr. Noble, in his record of this parish, has remarked on the extraordinary longevity attained by the incumbents of St. Dunstan's. Dr. White held the living for forty-nine years; Dr. Grant, for fifty-nine; the Rev. Joseph Williamson (Wilkes's chaplain) for forty-one years; while the Rev. William Romaine continued lecturer for forty-six years. The solution of the problem probably is that a good and secure income is the best promoter of longevity. Several members of the great banking family of Hoare are buried in St. Dunstan's; but by far the most remarkable monument in the church bears the following inscription :

"HOBSON JUDKINS, ESQ., late of Clifford's Inn, the Honest Solicitor, who departed this life June 30, 1812. This tablet was erected by his clients, as a token of gratitude and respect for his honest, faithful, and friendly conduct to them throughout life. Go, reader, and imitate Hobson Judkins."

Among the burials at St. Dunstan's noted in the registers, the following are the most remarkable:-1559-60, Doctor Oglethorpe, the Bishop of Carlisle, who crowned Queen Elizabeth; 1664, Dame Bridgett Browne, wife of Sir Richard Browne, major-general of the City forces, who offered £1,000 reward for the capture of Oliver Cromwell; 1732, Christopher Pinchbeck, the inventor of the metal named after him and a maker of musical clocks. The Plague seems to have made great havoc in St. Dunstan's, for in 1665, out of 856 burials, 568 in only three months are marked "P.," for Plague. The present church, built in 1830-3, was designed by John Shaw, who died on the twelfth day after the completion of the outer shell, leaving his son to finish his work. The church is of a flimsy Gothic, the true revival having hardly then commenced. The eight bells are from the old church. The two heads over the chief entrance are portraits of Tyndale and Dr. Donne; and the painted window is the gift of the Hoare family.

"When labour and when dulness, club in hand, Like the two figures at St. Dunstan stand, Beating alternately, in measured time, The clock-work tintinnabulum of rhyme." The most interesting relic of modern St. Dunstan's is that unobtrusive figure of Queen Elizabeth at the east end. This figure first came to the old church from Ludgate when the City gates were destroyed in 1786. It was bought for £16 10s. when the old church came to the ground, and was re-erected over the vestry entrance. The com- According to Aubrey, Drayton, the great topopanion statues of King Lud and his two sons graphical poet, lived at "the bay-window house were deposited in the parish bone-house. On next the east end of St. Dunstan's Church." Now one occasion when Baxter was preaching in it is a clearly proved fact that the Great Fire the old church of St. Dunstan's, there arose a stopped just three doors east of St. Dunstan's, panic among the audience from two alarms of as did also, Mr. Timbs says, another remarkable

fire in 1730; so it is not impossible that the author of "The Polyolbion," that good epic poem, once lived at the present No. 180, though the next house eastward is certainly older than its neighbour. We have given a drawing of the house.

"Pewter

translators lay three in a bed at the Platter Inn" at Holborn. He published the most disgraceful books and forged letters. Curll, in his revengeful spite, accused Pope of pouring an emetic into his half-pint of canary when he and Curll and That shameless rogue, Edmund Curll, lived at Lintot met by appointment at the "Swan Tavern,"

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the "Dial and Bible," against St. Dunstan's Church. | Fleet Street. By St. Dunstan's, at the "Homer's When this clever rascal was put in the pillory at Head," also lived the publisher of the first correct Charing Cross, he persuaded the mob he was in edition of "The Dunciad." for a political offence, and so secured the pity of the crowd. The author of "John Buncle" describes Curll as a tall, thin, awkward man, with goggle eyes, splay feet, and knock-knees. His

Among the booksellers who crowded round old St. Dunstan's were Thomas Marsh, of the "Prince's Arms," who printed Stow's "Chronicles;" and William Griffith, of the "Falcon," in St. Dunstan's

Churchyard, who, in the year 1565, issued, without the authors' consent, Gorboduc, written by Thomas Norton and Lord Buckhurst, the first real English tragedy and the first play written in English blank verse. John Smethwicke, a still more honoured name, "under the diall" of St. Dunstan's Church,

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the three timid publishers who ventured on a certain poem, called "The Paradise Lost," giving John Milton, the blind poet, the enormous sum of £5 down, £5 on the sale of 1,300 copies of the first, second, and third impressions, in all the munificent recompense of £20; the agreement

published "Hamlet" and "Romeo and Juliet." | was given to the British Museum in 1852, by Samuel Richard Marriot, another St. Dunstan's bookseller, Rogers, the banker poet. published Quarles' "Emblems," Dr. Donne's "Sermons," that delightful, simple-hearted book, Isaak Walton's "Complete Angler," and Butler's "Hudibras," that wonderful mass of puns and quibbles, pressed close as potted meat. Matthias Walker, a St. Dunstan's bookseller, was one of

Nor in this list of Fleet Street printers must we forget to insert Richard Pynson, from Normandy, who had worked at Caxton's press, and was a contemporary of De Worde. According to Mr. T. C. Noble, to whose work we are deeply indebted, Pynson printed, at his office, the "George " (first