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St. James's Street, Piccadilly, where the Cocoa Tree Club afterwards was built.

Among his other places of resort were Squire's Coffee House in Fulwood's Rents, No. 34 High Holborn, where were, in 1885, old houses dating back to Addison's time; Serle's Coffee House, on the corner of Serle and Portugal Streets, Lincoln's Inn Fields, the old-fashioned door-posts of which were preserved in the stationer's shop on its site in 1885; Dick's," No. 8 Fleet Street, a modernized French restaurant in 1885, the windows of whose square room at the back looked on the trees of Hare Court in the Temple ; and the Bull and Bush, a quaint and picturesque old countrified inn, still standing in 1885, at the bottom of North End Road, Hammersmith.

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Addison, after his return from the Continent in 1704, joined the famous Kit Kat Club, which was 'composed of thirty-nine noblemen and gentlemen, zealously attached to the Protestant succession of the House of Hanover.' It met originally in Shire Lane, at the Cat and Fiddle, which is said to have been called subsequently the Trumpet, and as such, is mentioned by Steele in the 'Tatler.' Still later it was known as the Duke of ork's. With the street in which it stood, it has long since disappeared. Shire Lane itself, afterwards called Lower Serle's Place, was swept out of existence in 1868, with some thirty other disreputable lanes and alleys, to make way for the new Law Courts in Fleet Street and the Strand. It was on the east side of the present buildings, and had several outlets into the Strand at or near Temple Bar. Its reputation was always bad, and in the reign of the first James it was known as Rogue's Lane.13

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You have heard of the Kit Kat Club.

The

Spence's
Anecdotes:
Pope.

master of the house where the club met was Christopher Kat. . . . Steele, Addison, Congreve, Garth, Vanbrugh, etc., were of it. . . . Jacob [Tonson] had his own and all their

pictures by Sir Godfrey Kneller. Each member gave his; and he is going to build a room for them at Barn-Elms.

Smith's

Rambles in

The forty-two pictures presented by the members of this club to Tonson the bookseller were removed by him in the beginning of the last century to Barn-Elms, and placed near his house, in a handsome room lately standing on the Antiquarian grounds of Henry Hoare, Esq. It was lined with red London, cloth, and measured forty feet in length, twenty in width, and eighteen in height. At the death of Mr. Tonson, in 1736, they became the property of his great-nephew, who died in 1767. They were then removed to Water Oakley, near Windsor, and afterwards to Mr. Baker's, in Hertingfordbury.

vol. i.

Barn-Elms was at Barnes on the Thames, between Putney and Mortlake. Copies of the Kit Kat portrait of Addison are in the National Portrait Gallery, South Kensington, and in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The club met later at the King's Arms Tavern, which stood on the north side of Pall Mall, near the Haymarket, and on the site of the Opera Colonnade. It went out of existence as a club early in the eighteenth century. Its place of summer resort was the Upper Flask, a tavern on the edge of Hampstead Heath, which has been for many years a private house. It was on the corner of East Heath Road in 1885; its old entrancehall and low-ceilinged rooms still unchanged, although many additions and alterations had been made.

And in its

gardens, nearly opposite the Pool, stood, until destroyed in the great storm of Christmas, 1876, the famous mulberrytree, showing every sign of its gray old age, under which had sat, through so many Arcadian afternoons, Addison, Pope, Steele, Congreve, and their compeers, when, because . of their presence,

Hampstead, towering in superior sky,

Did with Parnassus in honor vie.'

MARK AKENSIDE.

1721-1770.

AKENSIDE came to London in 1747, when he took

up his residence for a year or two in the house of his warm friend and patron, Jeremiah Dyson, on the top of Golder's Hill, near North End, Hampstead. In 1749 or 1750, through Dyson's generosity, he was established as a practising physician in Bloomsbury Square.

Park's

Mr. Dyson parted with his villa at North End, and settled his friend [Akenside] in a sensible house in BloomsHampstead bury Square, assigning him, with unexampled liberality, £300 a year, which enabled him to keep a chariot and make a proper appearance in the world.

(1818), p.331.

Although Bucke, in his 'Life of Akenside,' says that the remainder of his life was passed in Bloomsbury Square, he is known to have been living in Craven Street, Strand, in 1759, before houses were numbered; and in 1762 he took a house in Old Burlington Street, Burlington Gardens, where, in 1770, he died. He was buried in an unmarked grave in St. James's Church, Piccadilly.

Akenside, in 1759, was appointed physician to St. Thomas's Hospital, then situated in Southwark, on the Borough High Street, between Thomas, Denman, and Joiner Streets. It was removed in 1871. Akenside's favorite resorts were Serle's Coffee House, on the corner of Serle and Portugal Streets (see ADDISON, p. 8); the Grecian, Devereux Court, Strand (see ADDISON, p. 7); and Tom's Coffee House, also in Devereux Court, which no longer exists, but which is

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not to be confounded with the Tom's of Russell Street, Covent Garden. He was also frequently to be found at the sign of The Tully's Head, the book-shop of Robert Dodsley, and a popular meeting-place of men of letters in London for several generations. It stood at the present No. 51 Pall Mall, the house with the archway leading into King's Place.' King's Place, running from King Street to Pall Mall, and subsequently called Pall Mall Place for some mysterious reason, was arched over, in 1885, by an old house; but no book-shop existed there, although there were bookdealers in plenty in its immediate neighborhood.

FRANCIS BACON.

1560-61-1626.

BACO

ACON was born at York House, on the Thames, in January, 1560-61, and christened in the old Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, standing on the site of the present structure.

He returned to York House in later years, and lived there for a time as Lord Chancellor of England, when it is recorded that in 1620 he kept his birthday in great splendor and magnificence, Ben Jonson celebrating the occasion by a short performance in verse.'

Lord Bacon, being in Yorke House garden looking on fishers throwing their nett, asked them what they would take for their draught. They answered so much. His lordship Aubrey's would offer them no more, but so much. They drew Lives of up their nett, and in it were only two or three little Persons: fishes. His lordship told them it had been better for them to have taken his offer. They replied they hoped to have

Eminent

Bacon.

had a better draught. But said his lordship: Hope is a good breakfast, but an ill supper.

York House, afterwards the property of the Dukes of Buckingham, when it was still called York House, stood on the site of George Court, and of Villiers, Duke, and Buckingham Streets, Strand; its later tenants perpetuating their names and their occupancy of the mansion in that way. Nothing is left of it now but the grand old watergate at the foot of Buckingham Street, the work of Inigo Jones; although portions of the old house, with the original highly decorated ceilings, were preserved until 1863, when the erection of the Charing Cross Railway Station and Hotel wiped them completely out of existence.

In 1592 Bacon entertained Queen Elizabeth at Twickenham Park, Twickenham, but his house has been taken down. The estate is covered with villas; and no trace of it, as it existed at that time, remains.

Bacon was married, in 1606, at the Chapel of St. Marylebone, described by Hepworth Dixon, in his 'Personal History of Bacon,' as standing then 'two miles from the Strand, among the lanes and suburbs wandering towards the foot of Hampstead Hill.' This church was on the site of the parish church built in 1741 near Marylebone Road, on Marylebone High Street.

Bacon was a member of Gray's Inn, and occupied chambers there for many years.

Lord Bacon, whom we have already mentioned as a member of Gray's Inn, lived at No. 1 Coney Court, which was unforJesse's tunately burnt down in 1678. The site is occupied London, vol. iii.: Gray's by the present [1868] row of buildings at the west end of Gray's Inn Square, adjoining the gardens in which the great philosopher took such delight.

Inn.

He is said to have designed these gardens, and to have planted the old catalpa-tree still standing there in 1885.

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