Street, Covent Garden, which runs from No. 2 Garrick Street to No. 11 Long Acre (see DRYDEN), and was pronounced by Aubrey 'one of the meanest streets in that part of the city.'

Butler was buried in the yard of St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden; but contemporary authorities differ as to the exact position of his grave.

Butler.

Butler was of a middle stature, strong sett, high coloured, with a heade of sorrell hair, a good fellowe and latterly much troubled with the gowt. . . . He dyed of a consumption Sep- Aubrey's tember 25 (Anno Dmi 1680 circiter) and was buried Lives: 27, according to his owne appointment in the church yard of Covent Garden in the north part, next the church, at the east end. His feet touch the wall. His grave two yards distant from the pillaster of the dore (by his desire) 6 foot deepe. About 25 of his old acquaintances at his funerall, I, myself, being one.

This Samuel Butler, who was a boon and witty companion, especially among the company he knew well, died of a consumption, September 25th, 1680, and was, according to his Anthony desire, buried six feet deep in the yard belonging to Wood's the Church of St. Paul in Covent Garden, within the onienses, liberty of Westminster, viz. at the west end of the said yard, on the north side and under the wall of the church, and under that wall which parts the yard from the common highway.

Athenæ Ox

vol. ii.

6

A tablet to the memory of Butler was placed on the south side of the church by the inhabitants of the parish' in 1786, nine years before the old edifice was destroyed by fire. It was not renewed when the church was rebuilt; and the clerk of the vestry in 1885 had no knowledge of it, or of the position of Butler's grave. The churchyard has been levelled and covered with grass, where it is not paved with fragments of the old tombstones it used to contain, and few memorials to its illustrious dead are now to be found.

LORD BYRON.

1788-1824.

BYRON was born at No. 16* Holles Street, Cavendish

Square, in a house since numbered 24, and marked by the tablet of the Society of Arts. It is probably unchanged. He was christened in St. Marylebone Church, on the Marylebone Road near the High Street, when he was about six weeks old; but Mrs. Byron took her son to Scotland in his infancy, and he did not again see London until 1799, when he was brought to a house in Sloane Terrace, Sloane Street, while an eminent surgeon was preparing an instrument for the support of his ankle. He was then sent to a school which stood near the Saline Spring, on Wells Lane, Sydenham, but has now disappeared.

Moore, in his 'Life of Byron,' makes few allusions to his subject's different homes in London and elsewhere, or to his home life; and it is only by the occasional headings of his letters, and by their indirect personal allusions, that he can be traced to his various lodgings in town. In August, 1806, he wrote to a college friend from No. 16 Piccadilly; but he does not appear to have remained then long in London. No. 16 Piccadilly was on the site of Piccadilly Circus, and the house disappeared when Regent Street was formed, a few years later.

In the winter of the same year Byron was for a short time at Dorant's Hotel, which stood in Jermyn Street, nearly opposite Bury Street. Cox's Hotel, No. 56 Jermyn Street, was its direct successor in 1885; and here it was that he read the criticism of the Edinburgh Review' upon

his Hours of Idleness,' which had such an effect upon him that the friend who found him in the first moments of excitement, fancied he had received a challenge to fight a duel, not being able in any other way to account for the hatred and defiance expressed in his face.

Byron occupied lodgings at No. 8 St. James's Street at various times, from early in the year 1808 to 1814. Here he published his 'Satire' in 1809, and from here, on the 30th March in the same year, he drove to take his seat for the first time in the House of Lords. Mr. Dallas writes:

Moore's Life

vol. i., 1809.

On that day, passing down St. James's Street, but with no intention of calling, I saw his chariot at his door, and went in. His countenance, paler than usual, showed that his mind was agitated. . . . He said to me, 'I am glad of Byron, you happened to come in; I am going to take my seat, perhaps you will go with me.' I expressed my readiness to attend him; while at the same time I concealed the shock I felt on thinking that this young man, who by birth, fortune, and talents, stood high in life, should have lived so unconnected and neglected by persons of his own rank, that there was not a single member of the Senate to which he belonged, to whom he could or would apply to introduce him in a manner becoming his birth. I saw that he felt the situation, and I fully partook of his indignation.

While living in this house, No. 8 St. James's Street, in 1812, and shortly after the publication of Childe Harold,' he woke up on that historic morning to find himself famous. The house, still standing in 1885, had been altered, and a story added; but the adjoining house, No. 7, showed how it appeared in Byron's time.

A number of letters of his are addressed from No. 4 Bennet Street, St. James's Street, which he sometimes called 'Benedictine Street,' a house that was still used as a lodginghouse half a century later. During these seven or eight years before his marriage he occasionally lived at Stevens's (afterwards Fischer's) Hotel, No. 18 New Bond Street,