ARCHITECTURE —TAYLOR, CHAMBERS. 381 We have traced * the progress of Architecture from Wren down to Kent and Burlington. From the era of churches and mansions, we have arrived at that of public and commercial buildings. Sir Robert Taylor was the leading architect when George III. ascended the throne. He was a man of taste and industry, but not of much original power: the wings he added to the Bank, an adaptation of a design by Bramante, were much admired at the time, but were ruthlessly swept away by his successor as bank architect, sir John Soane. Contemporary with Taylor was Dance, the architect of the Mansion House and of Newgate-the latter a work of most prison like character. The Woods (father and son), of Bath, and the brothers Adam, of Edinburgh an 1 London, call for honourable notice for their efforts to raise the character of our street architecture. Bath, "that beautiful city which charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and Palladio," † may be said to have been created by the Woods: the taste of Robert and James Adam is fairly shown in the Adelphi-though they erected a large number of other buildings. But the greatest architect of the time was sir William Chambers, whose fame-his Chinese fantasies being forgotten-now rests secure, on his one grand work, Somerset House-by far the noblest English building of its time, and, with all its faults, still one of the noblest buildings in the capital Unfortunately, it was never completed on its original plan; and the erection of King's College in an anomalous style itself about to be rendered still more anomalous by the perversion of the semiGreek chapel into semi-Gothic-will for ever prevent the completion of its eastern side, a misfortune rendered the more obvious by Mr. Pennethorne's recent admirable completion of the western portion. Somerset House was the last crowning triumph of the Italian style, introduced by Inigo Jones and carried on with very unequal success by succeeding architects. The investigations of two painters, James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, as made known in their "Antiquities of Athens,” (1762-94), by calling the attention of pro. fessional men and the public to the architecture of ancient Greece, effected an entire change in the received notions of architectural beauty. It was of course some time before the change became apparent in our public edifices, but, from the publication of the "Antiqiuties," there was a constantly growing approximation to Greek forms however much the Greek spirit might be absent, until in our own day it culminated in the works of sir Robert Smirke, and was followed by the inevitable reaction. Stuart himself, after the publication of the first volume of his great Vol v. chap. xviii. ↑ Macaulay. work, adopted the profession of an architect, and found considerable employment: his best known building is the Chapel of Greenwich Hospital-an elegant structure, but alone sufficient to show that he was by no means a purist in the application of Greek principles. Revett also practised as an architest, but without any marked success. It remains only to notice James Wyatt, who suddenly became famous by the erection of the Pantheon, Oxford-street (1772), and during the rest of the century secured a large share of public favour. His ambition in the first instance was to produce an Italianised Greek style; but later he unhappily turned his attention to Gothic, and to him is due the destruction of much, and the disfigurement of more, of the most precious of our mediæval remains. His tasteless additions are now for the most part removed, or in process of removal, but the injury to the originals is irreparable. We ought not, however, to quit this part of our subject without mentioning the names of two or three architects to whom we owe some bridges of great value and beauty, though unfortunately in the chief instances deficient in the essential quality of stability. Of these architects--for bridge-building was not then considered a branch of engineering-the earliest was Labelye, a Swiss, builder of Westminster bridge, opened in 1750, and now in process of replacement by a less picturesque but far more convenient and, we may hope, more lasting structure. Blackfriars bridge (opened in 1760), a more elegant but not more stable edifice than Labelye's, was the work of Richard Mylne. A competitor with Mylne for the erection of this bridge was John Gwyn, whose proposals for a Royal Academy we have mentioned. Gwyn had studied the subject of bridges and public ways closely, and was a man of remarkably clear insight. In his "London and Westminster. Improved," (1766, to which Johnson wrote the "Noble Dedication," as Boswell terms it), Gwyn not only urged the necessity of replacing old Londen bridge by a new one, carrying another bridge across the Thames near the site where Waterloo bridge now stands, and removing Smithfield and Fleet markets, but in maps, as well as in the text, clearly pointed out most of the new lines of thoroughfare and principal improvements which have been since effected in the metropolis, and others which yet remain unaccomplished. Gwyn was the builder of the well-known Magdalen bridge, Oxford, and of the handsome but inconveniently steep English bridge at Shrewsbury. Manners as depicted in the Literature of the period.-Changes in the commerce of Literature. Samuel Johnson the link between two periods.-Literature of George the Second's time.-The Novelists.-Richardson.-Fielding.-Smollett.-Sterne.→→ Goldsmith.-Literature of the first quarter of a century of the reign of George the Third.-Manners.-Stage Coaches.- Highwaymen.-The Post.- Inns.- Public refreshment places of London.-Ranelagh.-Vauxhall.-The Pantheon.-The Theatre.-Garrick.-Bath.-Gaming Tables. On a rainy day, somewhere about the year 1780, a man of advanced age stood bareheaded in the market of Uttoxeter, making strange contortions of visage whilst he remained for an hour in front of a particular stall. It was Dr. Samuel Johnson, who had gone from Lichfield to this small market town, to subject himself to the penance of rough weather and mocking by-standers, for expiation of an act of filial disobedience which he had committed fifty years before. His father was a bookseller at Lichfield, who died in 1731, a man who knew something more of books than their titles; a proud man struggling to conceal his poverty. He had a shop with a good stock of the solid folios and quartos of the age of Anne and George I. "He propagates learning all over this diocese," said a chaplain in 1716. His manner of trade was nevertheless somewhat different from that of the bookseller of a cathedral town in the next century. He carried some of his most vendible stock to markets around Lichfield. "At that time booksellers' shops in the provincial towns of England were very rare, so that there was not one even in Birmingham, in which town old Mr. Johnson used to open a shop every market-day." The old man, being on a sick-bed, had requested his son Samuel to attend the book-stall at Uttoxeter. The young student had come home from Oxford too poor to complete his academical career. "My pride prevented me from doing my duty, and I gave my father a refusal,” said the literary veteran, whose pride, during the fifty years that had elapsed between the committal of the fault and its singular atonement, had sustained many a grievous trial and sore indignity. As Johnson was enduring his hour of penance, we may well believe that thoughts of the great changes that he had witnessed in the com Boswell's "Life of Johnson," chap. i. merce of literature would come into his mind. He had seen his father's book-stall at Birmingham succeeded by the Circulating Library which William Hutton established there in 1751. When he was a lad of sixteen, idling, as some thought, in the desultory reading offered to him in his father's shop, he might have learnt from a pamphlet of that time, that there were only twenty-eight "Printing-houses in all the Corporation towns of England," seven towns having two printers each, and fourteen towns only one each.* Half a century later the desire for News had called forth a Print ing House in every considerable town, to provide its own "Postman," or "Mercury," or "Gazette," or Courant,” or “Chronicle," or "Times," or "Advertiser." In 1782 there were in England fifty Provincial Journals. In the year that Johnson's father died, 1731, Cave issued his "Gentleman's Magazine." The "London Magazine" immediately followed. The rapid extension of a class of readers somewhat distinct from "the learned " produced “the Golden Age of Magazines, when their pages were filled with voluntary contributions from men who never aimed at dazzling the public, but came each with his scrap of information or his humble question, or his hard problem, or his attempt at verse." Johnson was to nurse the infant into manhood, with food more substantial than this spoon-meat. If the Printer of St. John's Gate had no other claim to the respect of coming generations, it would have been praise enough that he was the first who gave the hard-earned bread of literature to Samuel Johnson, as a regular coadjutor in his Magazine, "by which," says Boswell, "he probably obtained a tolerable livelihood." That form of popular literature which Cave originated was followed up, some twenty years later, by the more ambitious "Review." The "Monthly Review" was the parent of "The Critical," "The London," and other Reviews, that addressed a great mixed class of readers. "The History of the Works of the Learned" might have higher aims, but it was not calculated for a large and enduring success. The Monthly Magazine and Reviews called into existence a new race of authors. The division of large books into weekly or monthly numbers, so as to suit a more extended market, was another of the many indications of the growth of a different race of book buyers than the purchasers of costly works, Johnson came to London, a literary adventurer, in 1737. He was long destined to bear the poverty, and to encounter the sup See Nicholl's Literary Anecdotes," voli. p. 288. + Andrews's "History of Journalism," p. 274. Southey-"The Doctor," chap. cxii. JOHNSON THE LINK BETWEEN TWO PERIODS. 385 posed degradation, that surrounded the author who wrote for subsistence the successor of the author who wrote for preferment. Coming at a period when the circle of readers was rapidly and steadily enlarging, he was rescued from the shivery of waiting in a lord's antechamber for five guineas for a dedication, to pass through the scarcely less painful dependence upon the capricious or mercenary publisher for a guinea for an article. But from this second stage of the author's misery relief was sure to come in time. Johnson swallowing the scraps from Cave's table, hidden behind a screen to conceal his ragged clothes,-Johnson wandering about the streets, hungry and houseless, with Savage; or collecting a few shillings, when his acquaintances were few and as poor as himself, to redeem the clothes of Boyse from the pawnbroker,-and Johnson the acknowledged head of the Literary Club of which Burke and Reynolds were members, - are indications of social changes that were of more importance than the vicissitudes in the life of the individual. In many respects Johnson may be regarded as the Representative Man of the Literature of half a century-the Magazine-writer, the Essayist, the Critic, the Poet, the Philologist —the chapman, with many articles of use or ornament in a crowded market. But, in a point of view not altogether fanciful, Johnson was something higher than a Representative-he was a King. Of his death, in 1784, it has been said, "it was not only the end of a reign, but the end of kingship altogether, in our literary system. For king Samuel has had no successor; nobody since his day, and that of his contemporary Voltaire, has sat on a throne of Literature, either in England or in France."* More fortunate than most sovereigns, king Samuel from the time when he began really to reign instead of fighting his way to the royal chair, had an annalist who has not damaged the character of the potentate by a minute record of the frailties and prejudices of the man. Johnson has indeed an interest apart from that of being the hero of the most amusing book in any language, from his position as the chief connecting link between the Literature of two periods which appear, at the first glance to be very widely separated. In 1738, Johnson published anonymously his poem of "London"; and Pope is reported to have said, "the author, whoever he is, will not be long concealed.” In 1783, Johnson "read with great delight" Crabbe's poem of "The Village," and suggested alterations in some of the lines. The association with Pope carries us back to the time of Anne. The association with Crabbe leads us onward to the time of William IV. But Johnson, isolated from the literature that preceded * G. L. Craik-" Literature and Learning in England." VOL. VI.-25 |