course, with his two friends, Davenant and the great Ben Jonson, and a tribe of Porter cousins and his handsome wife, the party no doubt distinguished amongst the country bumpkins by their courtly elegance; while the Master of the Revels hurried to and fro, gorgeous in a crimson suit which had belonged to no less a person than the king, and had been presented through Mr. Porter. There was dancing, racing, singing, wrestling, throwing the hammer, and all such true old English sports as you may witness in a Cornish Parish Revel to this day.

In Peacham's Worth of a Penny is a charming catalogue of the country sports proper to the gentry. 'Walking, 'riding upon pleasure, shooting, hunting, hawking, bowling, 'ringing, Paille-Maille, and the like; but the truth is, the 'most pleasing of all is riding with a good horse and a ' good companion in the spring or summer season into 'the country when blossoms are on the trees, flowers in the fields, corn and fruit are ripe; in autumn what 'sweet and goodly prospects shall you have on both sides ' of you uppon the way, delicate green fields, low meadows, 'divorces of christall streames, woody hills, parkes with ' deere, hedge-rows, orchards, fruit-trees, churches, villages, 'the houses of gentlemen and husbandmen, severall habits ' and faces, variety of country labour and exercises, and if you happen (as it often falleth out) to converse with country men of the place, you shall find them for the 'most part understanding enough to give you satisfaction, ' and sometimes the maids and market wenches will give 'you as unhappy answers as they be asked knavish and ' uncivill questions; others there be who out of their 'natural simplicity will afford you matter of mirth if you stay to talk with them. I remember once, riding by 'Horncastle nere to Stikeswold in Lincolnshire, in the 'heat of summer, I met a swineherd keeping his hogs upon a fallow field. My friend (quoth I), you keep here a company of unruly cattell. I, poore soules, they are 'indeed (quoth he). I believe, said I, they have a language

' among themselves, and can understand one another as ' well as you or I were they ever taught? Alas, poore things, they have not a letter of the booke, I teach them 'all I have. Why, what says that great hog with red spots? '(quoth I) that lies under another, in his grunting language. 'Marry, he bids him to lie further off.' With this lesson in the pig's language our Compleat Gentleman goes on his way, as well entertained with his swineherd as the Compleat Angler with his handsome milkmaid. And we too must turn our backs on the fields and bend our steps to that busy hive the city.'

CHAPTER II

TOWN LIFE

If we may to a certain extent realise the beauty of the country as it must have been some three hundred years ago, it is well-nigh impossible to reconstruct in our mind's eye the London of our forefathers. Instead of a huge amorphous town, swallowing up in its ever-stretching advance suburb, village, hamlet, it was then a small, compact city with walls and gates lying upon the river with the adjacent city of Westminster, surrounded east, north, and north-west by the open country, separated by green fields and lanes with an occasional farm or country house from the neighbouring villages of Chelsea, Kensington, Paddington, or Finsbury, while even Holborn was described as 'near London.' The heights round about were crested with windmills and dotted here and there with a clustered hamlet between sloping woods: as to such outlying districts as Hampstead or Shepherd's Bush, they were divided from town by stretches of heath and moorland which were the haunt of highwaymen, and over which it was dangerous to ride alone after nightfall. Near the river, where the principal theatres stood, were gardens and groves of trees. Lincoln's Inn Fields, Covent Garden, and other open spaces in the immediate vicinity were just beginning to be built over; new and handsome houses were rapidly springing up, and that neighbourhood was quite in the van of the march of fashion which was then, as for long after, westward. The Strand was, how

ever, still quite a fashionable quarter, and on the south side were very good houses with large gardens running down to the river. In the year 1610 the population was estimated by the Venetian Ambassador, Marc Antonio Correr, as about 300,000 souls.1

In Milton's boyhood 2 the city was not merely the place of business to which men resorted by day, but the abode of merchants, shopkeepers, scriveners, and the like, while the poor for the most part lived herded together in close alleys behind the better streets, in such insanitary conditions that periodically the plague swept through the town, reducing the population to an alarming extent, and driving the fashionable world off in dismay to Oxford or Winchester. The Great Fire made almost a clean sweep of these wretched quarters, which were chiefly built of wood, and in burning out these nests of plague was probably a blessing in disguise, much as we must lament the destruction of many ancient city churches and fine old houses.

With all its drawbacks it must have been a beautiful city, this London of old, with its picturesque houses standing gable-end on to the street, with deep eaves and carved corbels, projecting upper stories, lattice windows, and a sign swinging over the door. For it was by the sign, not the shop-front, that people knew what manner of goods were to be found inside: shops were low and dark, with but little display in their narrow windows, and it was by the Golden Fleece, the Flowerpot, the Three Lutes, the Three Bibles, or some such device that customers could find the dealer in the commodity they needed, or by the cry of the 'prentice, 'What d'ye lack, gentles? What d'ye lack?' Of all these signs the barber's pole, the golden balls, and the Highlander alone survive. Not shops only, but all who exercised any public calling displayed signs; the father of Milton, who was a scrivener, lived at the sign of the Spread Eagle in Bread Street.

1 Rye's England as seen by Foreigners.

2 Masson's Life of Milton.

Bread Street, the birthplace of the great poet, was in the very centre of the city, running from Cheapside to the river, and was inhabited principally by well-to-do merchants, drapers, silk mercers, and the like, while goldsmiths chiefly congregated in Cheapside. At the corner of Watling Street stood the church of All Hallows, which was attended by the Milton family, and close by was the Mermaid tavern, where, not long before, Sir Walter Raleigh had started a kind of literary club. Old St. Paul's was still standing, and its broad middle aisle was the chief resort of business men-a kind of general meeting-place. Bishop Earle thus describes the gathering there:

'Men of all professions, merchants, gentry, courtiers, ' used to meet by II, walk in the middle aisle till 12, and ' after dinner from 3 to 6. . . . The noise is like that of 'bees, a strange humming or buzz mixed of walking tongues and feet: it is a kind of still roar or loud 'whisper. It is the great exchange of all discourse, ' and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and 'a-foot... the general mint of all famous lies.'

On the pillars were posted advertisements of servants out of place or all manner of persons wanting employment. In The Gul's Horn-booke there is a reference to it: 'A 'horne-booke have I invented because I would have you 'well schooled: Powles is your Walk, but this your Guid.'

All round the Churchyard as well as in Paternoster Row swarmed the booksellers, and on the north side stood the famous covered pulpit of wood raised on stone steps from which every Sunday forenoon sermons were preached by some learned divine. On the east side was St. Paul's School.

The streets must have been quite as busy and as noisy as now, for though coaches were as yet far from common, drays, pack-horses, sumpter-mules, and porters jostled each other as they do to-day in the narrow streets

1 Earle's Microcosmography.