VESTIGES, that in the course of thirty-seven years a considerable number of houses had accumulated round St. Paul's: whether they were all encroachments we shall not pretend to determine; though we believe that we shall risk little in the COLLECTED AND RECOLLECTED, BY JOSEPH MOSER, ESQ. No. LX. A PHILOSOPHICAL AND MORAL VIEW OF assertion that many of them were, as ANCIENT AND MODERN LONDON. WITH NOTES, &c. Chapter XXV. Continuation of Observations on the Cathedral of St. Paul's. the last chapter IN contemplating the plan of London, alluded, and comparing it with one published about the year 1600,* we observe, * In this plan, however strange the assertion, or, rather, however notorious the fact may be, that the spire steeple of St. Paul's was never rebuilt after the accident of 1561; yet it plainly appears: we should, therefore (could we trace the smallest record to bear us out in the conjecture, as it is so often alluded to by the writers at the beginning of the seventeenth century), suggest, that a temporary wooden spire was actually erected; but of this not the least authentic document is to be found. In the print of St. Paul's in flames, 1666 (which will be given in the next number), the fabricis spireless; which we have no doubt was the real state of it. This seems in some respects to have been considered by the Puritans as a compliment to them; at least it is certain that they thwarted and opposed the building of steeple-houses; and it is said, that in their sermons they pretty broadly hinted, that the accident at Paul's augured the downfal of the establishment, which was in the course of the next century fully verified. The poets of the times, on the contrary, equally discerning, and dreading the influence of opinions which in their zenith became subversive of law, order, and religion, took every opportunity to oppose the spread of ignorance and its concomitant anarchy, and by ridicule and admonition to apprise and warn the government of the impending danger, an instance of which now lies before us. Randolph, in his comedy of the Muses' Looking Glass, evidently written at once to ridicule and reform the Puritans, has introduced two characters; the one BANAUsus, who is represented as ostentatious and vain-gloriously expensive; the other, MICROPREPES, who is in public works equally sordid and penurious: the latter (and we take this satire to be levelled at the parsimony of the times with respect to the metropolitan cathedral) says, "1 am churchwarden, and we are this year To build our steeple up; now to save charges, I'll get a high-crown'd hat with five low bells, To make a peal shall serve as well as Bow." Europ. Mag. Vol. LII. Aug. 1807. they did not, as now, encircle the church, and form a regular, though certainly, if we consider the august size and exquisite beauty of the building, too contiguous a boundary, but were dispersed in clumps over the cemetery, and interspersed with trees, or else adhered closely to, and seemed to form a part of the fabric. These were unquestionably encroachments, and, what was much worse, as we have already in a small degree seen, encroachments lit. To this Colar (the flatterer) replies, "'Tis wisely cast, and like a careful steward Of which the steeple is no part, at least, no necessary part." of the church, those instruments Bird (the Puritan). "Verily, it is true, Banausus then displays the magnificent ideas afloat in the minds of a few zealous pro testants. thercocks "And cause there be such swarmes of heresies rising, I'le have an artist frame two wonderous weaOf gold to set on Paul's and Grantham steeple, To shew to all the kingdom what fashion next The wind of humour hither means to blow." The pulpit, which was deemed by far too mean for tice church, does not escape the observation of the poet. MICROPREPES says, "A wicker chair will fit them for a PULPIT." Colax. "It is the doctrine, Sir, that you respect." Flowerdew (another Puritan). " In sooth, I have heard as wholesome instructions From a zealous wicker chair as c'er I did From the care'd idol of wamscot," In another part of the same scene, the erection of a pair of organs in the great cathedral church at Hog's Norton is proposed. The organs at Paul's and other churches had, by the Puritans, been declaimed against as popish and antichristian: the use that was inade of them will be mentioned in a subsequent number. Bird calls them Babylonian bagpipes. N tle sanctified by the professions of many of their tenants *. ***On the north-east side of the church, Christopher Kendal and Widow Lownds had houses, whose cellars and a warehouse were vaults of the church; the entrance a wmdow converted into a door. John Howe, verger, represented that the shroudes and cloysters under the convocation howse (where not long since sermons in foule weather were wont to be preached, and, according to the venerable Bishop Latimer, a terrible foul smell used to be experienced t) are made a common laystall for boardes, trunks, &c. being let out to trunk-makers, where, by means of their daily knocking and noise the church is greatly disturbed." The house of Thomas China stood against the church. Mr. China had a closet in one of the rooms, four feet in height, two in depth, and two in width, which was literally dug in the wall. This might have been termed a china closet. + His words were, "I think verily many a man taketh his death in Paul's Churchyard; this I speak of experience; for I myself, when I have been there some mornings to hear the sermons, have felt such an ill-favored unwholesome savour, that I was worse for it a great while after; and I think no less, but that it is the occasion of great sicknesses and diseases." The shrowdes, as they were termed, were a covered place on the side of the church, by which, in bad weather, the congregation assembled at Paul's Cross were in some degree protected from the inclemency of the weather; but as they stood upon the loose earth of frequently new made graves, as the bishop says, the smell must have been intolerable. This is a curious notice of a profession that has made a considerablenoise, not only in the metropolis, but has been celebrated in all parts of the world; for it was a standing toast with British sailors of a Saturday night, after their wives and sweethearts had been given, to drink "the TRUNK-MAKER at the corner of St. Paul's." How the TRUNKMAKER became such a favourite in our navy, we are yet to learn. We know that he has been immortalised ty Addison as a theatrical entic; and it is probable that the toast might have been introduced by Dogget, in the FAIR QUAKER OF DIAL; a piece which was, from the time of its first exhibition, the daring of the sailors, who might have caught the sentiment from their favourite representative, There are at present two trunk-makers at the corners of St. Paul's, in Cheapside; and onquestionably in ancient times many more were in its vicinity: but we believe the British tars, in their cups, meant to commemorate abeir ancient friend CLEMENTS, who, for what reason we do not pretend to guess, was called the original trunk-maker. When the liberty of ST. MARTIN'S LE GRAND, curtailed of the power of protecting the enormities which its boundaries had for ages nurtured, had become not only reformed in religion but in morality, a great number of its inhabitants, who had long endeavoured to obtain an honest livelihood by administering to the vices of the younger class of citizens and others, removed still nearer PAUL's; and it is said, the consecrated ground of its immediate vicinity became the site of gaminghouses, or, as they were termed, gaming ordinaries, and of other houses, which have, or rather had, for we think the term is almost obsolete, obtained the appellation of bagnios. We are at this period to contemplate the cathedral of St. Paul, in a state of very considerable, though not that complete degradation to which it afterward became liable; and it has often been a subject of wonder, that Queen Elizabeth, whose visit to it must (even supposing that the church itself was purified from the filth, &c.) have made her acquainted with the encroachments, and, generally speaking, its state with respect to the decorum observed in it, and the morality of its neighbours, did not, in these particulars, take some measures for its reformation. It would carry * Among these, we learn from Beaumont and Fletcher, that NETTLETON'S and ANTHO NIE'S ordinaries were the principal. + In Dugdale's History of St. Paul's Ca. thedral, occurs an epitaph for Robert Braybrook, bishop of London:- Orate pro anima, &c. In a copy of this work which formerly belonged to Lord Colerain, and is now in the Harleian library, toward the end of it is a manuscript note, of which we shall quote a part, because it shows the state of the said cathedral in the time of the good bishop. "For the further reviving or preservation of the memory of Bishop Braybrook I shall add this, that I suppose him descended from Henry Braybrook, a judge of assize temp. Henry III. He was consecrated Jan. 5, 1581; was esteemed a very zealous and devout pillar of the church, as appears by several acts of his at his visitation, viz. in his enjoining chantries for the better performing divine service, &c, and that none, on pain of excomraunication, should bury in the cathe. dral, or defile so much as the church-yard with excrements; so that perhaps it was he that caused this verse to be set on the walls near the cathedral door, Hic locus est sacer 3 kremulli mingere fus est. us much too far beyond the limits of our subject, were we to attempt accurately to inquire into the religious principles of the queen, or to assign any other reason for the neglect and disornamenting of churches, of which in this reign there are many instances, except those that are to be gathered from the prevalence of meeting-house doctrines, and the desire of at least some members of her administration to obtain popularity by complimenting a rising party. Be this as it may, the indecorums and enormities both within and without St. Paul's continued long after her death, and were indeed succeeded by still greater enormities, to which we shall in the sequel haye occasion to allude. Considering the churchyard of this national edifice as the emporium of gayety, gallantry, and their concomitants, idleness and profligacy, which have, in the course of years that have elapsed since the reigns of Elizabeth and James, travelled westward, and settled first in the Black and White Friars, then in Covent-garden and in its vicinity, and for the present rested in Bondstreet, it becomes a necessary appendage to the moral purposes of this work to contemplate the manners of the juvenile class of metropolitans; and this cannot perhaps be better done than by viewing one of them at one of the houses, which, as we have before observed, had obtained the appellation of ORDINARIES, because in those places, devoted to relaxation, the human mind. was unbent, and free scope, as we apprehend, was given to the human passions and propensities: we shall therefore, from a work of very considerable humour, and consequently entertainment, entitled, "THE GULS HORNE-BOOKE Printed at London, for RS. 1609." quote part of the chapter in which the author instructs a young gallant how he should behave himself in an ordinary. "СHАР. 5. "* First having diligently enquired out an ordinary of the largest reckon * It is a pleasing speculation to contemplate and to compare that coincidence of ing, whither most of your courtly gallants do resort, let it be your use to repaire thither, some halfe an houre after eleven, for then you shall find most of your fashion-mongers planted in the roome waiting for meate: ride thither upon your galloway nag or your Spanish jennet a swift ambling pace in your hose and doublet (gilt rapier and thought, or, to express ourselves more correctly, of genius, which has, in different ages, stimulated men to the same pursuits, and produced works, the ideas of which are in a considerable degree similar. Swift has been allowed to possess as much originality as any modern writer, for we do not upon this occasion mean to allude to the ancient. His satiric prose has been thought to display a pithiness peculiarly its own, which we are certainly not prepared to dispute; and with respect to irony, he is generally believed to have been the father of it. But upon this subject it is best to hear what he says of himself. "Arbuthnot is no more my friend, Who dares to TRONY pretend, Which I was born to introduce; Refin'd it first, and shew'd its use." Yet that IRONY was known and practised long before the birth of Swift, the chapter above quoted is a proof, to which, were it necessary, we could add many other. But it is not only the circumstance of using a mode of writing in which the meaning is contrary to the words, that a coincidence is to be observed betwist Dekker and the Dean, butin the ideas and arrangement of the matter. This is particularly apparent in "THE GULS HORNE-BOOKE' of the former, and the DIRECTIONS TO SERVANTS" of the latter. They both proceed upon the same principle: the first instructs the young gallant how he shall behave at the play, the ordinary, &c. and the second, more diffusive certainly, as the nature of his subject obliged hun to be, directs his introductory rules to servants in general, and then to each in his or her individual capacity; yet both pursue the same end, reprobation of vice and folly, by the same means, ridicule reflected through the medium of instruction: both hold the mirror up to nature, and shew to parents, guardians, masters, &c. all the different shades of relative and domestic deformities. Whether Swift, whose reading had, we think, beca pretty desuftory, had ever seen the work of Dekker, of which we have quoted part of a chapter, now impossible to say; but certainly if he had not, the coincidence upon which we have observed is extremely singular. If he had, his originality with respect to his "Directions to Servants" we must, without attempting to detract from its merit, observe, is less than has been generally estimated, it is |