Boswell gives a pleasant sketch of a party at Bolt Court, when Mrs. Hall (a sister of Wesley) was there, and Mr. Allen, a printer; Johnson produced his silver salvers, and it was "a great day." It was on this occasion that the conversation fell on apparitions, and Johnson, always superstitious to the last degree, told the story of hearing his mother's voice call him one day at Oxford (probably at a time when his brain was overworked). On this great occasion also, Johnson, talked at by Mrs. Hali and Mrs. Williams at the same moment, gaily quoted the line from the Beggar's Opera,— "But two at a time there's no mortal can bear," and Boswell playfully compared the great man to Captain Macheath. Imagine Mrs. Williams, old and peevish; Mrs. Hall, lean, lank, and preachy; Johnson, rolling in his chair like Polyphemus at a debate; Boswell, stooping forward on the perpetual listen; Mr. Levett, sour and silent; Frank, the black servant, proud of the silver salvers—and you have the group as in a picture. In Bolt Court we find Johnson now returning from pleasant dinners with Wilkes and Garrick, Malone and Dr. Burney; now sitting alone over his Greek Testament, or praying with his black servant, Frank. We like to picture him on that Good Friday morning (1783), when he and Boswell, returning from service at St. Clement's, rested on the stone seat at the garden-door in Bolt Court, talking about gardens and country hospitality. Then, finally, we come to almost the last scene of all, when the sick man addressed to his kind physician, Brocklesby, that pathetic passage of Shakespeare's, "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased; Round Johnson's dying bed gathered many wise and good men. To Burke he said, "I must be in a wretched state indeed, when your company would not be a delight to me." To another friend he remarked solemnly, but in his old grand manner, "Sir, you cannot conceive with what acceleration I advance towards death." Nor did his old vehemence and humour by any means forsake him, for he described a man who sat up to watch him "as an idiot, sir; awkward as a turnspit when first put into the wheel, and sleepy as a dormouse." His remaining hours were spent in fervent prayer. The last words he uttered were those of bene 113 diction upon the daughter of a friend who came to ask his blessing. Some years before Dr. Johnson's death, when the poet Rogers was a young clerk of literary proclivities at his father's bank, he one day stole surreptitiously to Bolt Court, daringly to show some of his fledgeling poems to the great Polyphemus of literature. He and young Maltby, the father of the late Bishop of Durham, crept blushingly through the quiet court, and on arriving at the sacred door on the west side, ascended the steps and knocked at the door; but the awful echo of that knocker struck terror to the hearts of the young débutants, and long before the Doctor's old negro footman could appear, the two lads, like street-boys who had perpetrated a mischievous runaway knock, took to their heels and darted back into noisy Fleet Street. Mr. J. H. Jesse, who has collected so many excellent anecdotes, some even original, in his three large volumes on "London's Celebrated Characters and Places," says that the elder Mr. Disraeli, singularly enough, used in society to relate an almost similar adventure as a youth. Eager for literary glory, but urged towards the counter by his sober-minded relations, he enclosed some of his best verses to the celebrated Dr. Johnson, and modestly solicited from the terrible critic an opinion of their value. Having waited some time in vain for a reply, the ambitious Jewish youth at last, December 13, 1784, resolved to face the lion in his den, and rapping tremblingly (like his predecessor, Rogers), heard with dismay the knocker echo on the metal. We may imagine the feelings of the young votary at the shrine of learning, when the servant (probably Frank Barber), who slowly opened the door, informed him that Dr. Johnson had breathed his last only a few short hours before. Mr. Timbs reminds us of another story of Dr. Johnson, which will not be out of place here. It is an excellent illustration of the keen sagacity and forethought of that great man's mind. One evening Dr. Johnson, looking from his dim Bolt Court window, saw the slovenly lamp-lighter of those days ascending a ladder (just as Hogarth has drawn him in the "Rake's Progress"), and fill the little receptacle in the globular lamp with detestable whale-oil. Just as he got down the ladder the dull light wavered out. Skipping up the ladder again, the son of Prometheus lifted the cover, thrust the torch he carried into the heated vapour rising from the wick, and instantly the ready flame. sprang restored to life. "Ah," said the old seer, streets of London will be one of these days the lighted by smoke." Dictionary, and died in 1780. In Bensley's destruc- a century ago, the well-known society of the tive fire all the plates and stock of Dallaway's "History of Sussex" were consumed. Johnson's house, says Mr. Noble, was in 1858 purchased by the Stationers' Company, and fitted up as a school (the fee, two pounds a quarter). In 1861 Mr. Foss, Master of the Company, initiated a fund, and since then eight university scholarships have "Lumber Troop" once drained their porter and held their solemn smokings. This gallant force of supposititious fighting men "came out" with great force during the Reform Riots of 1830. These useless disturbances originated in a fussy, foolish warning letter, written by Sir John Key, Lord Mayor elect (he was generally known in the City as Don Key after this), to the Duke of Wellington, then as the lode-star of faction, retired, a man sudden.y terribly unpopular with the English Reformers as waved a tricolour flag (it was the year, remember, he had been with the French after the battle of of the Revolution in Paris), with the word "ReWaterloo, urging him (the duke) if he came with form" painted upon it, and a preconcerted cry King William and Queen Adelaide to dine with was raised by the more violent of, "Now for the new Lord Mayor, (his worshipful self), to the West End!" About one thousand men then come "strongly and sufficiently guarded." This rushed over Blackfriars bridge, shouting, "Reform!" imprudent step greatly offended the people, who "Down with the police!" "No Peel!" "No Welwere also just then much vexed with the severities lington!" Hurrying along the Strand, the mob of Peel's obnoxious new police. The result was first proceeded to Earl Bathurst's, in Downing that the new king and queen (for the not over- Street. A foolish gentleman of the house, hearbeloved George IV. had died only in June of ing the cries, came out on the balcony, armed that year) thought it better to decline coming with a brace of pistols, and declared he would to the City festivities altogether. Great, then, fire on the first man who attempted to enter the was even the Tory indignation, and the fattest place. Another gentleman at this moment came alderman trotted about, eager to discuss the out, and very sensibly took the pistols from his grievance, the waste of half-cooked turtle, and friend, on which the mob retired. The rioters the general folly and enormity of the Lord Mayor were then making for the House of Commons, elect's conduct. Sir Claudius Hunter, who had but were stopped by a strong line of police, just shared in the Lord Mayor's fears, generously arrived in time from Scotland Yard. One hundred marched to his aid. In a published statement that and forty more men soon joined the constables, he made, he enumerated the force available for and a general fight ensued, in which many heads the defence of the (in his mind) endangered were quickly broken, and the Reform flag was capCity in the following way:-tured. Three of the rioters were arrested, and taken to the watch-house in the Almonry in Westminster. A troop of Royal Horse Guards (blue) remained during the night ready in the court of the Horse Guards, and bands of policemen paraded the streets. Ward Constables Fellowship, Ticket, and Tackle Porters Corn Porters Extra men hired City Police or own men ... ... ... ... 400 250 ... 150 130 54 In the same statement Sir Claudius says:"The Lumber Troop are a respectable smoking club, well known to every candidate for a seat in Parliament for London, and most famed for the quantity of tobacco they consume and the porter they drink, which, I believe, from my own observation, made nineteen years ago, when I was a candidate for that office, is the only liquor allowed. They were to have had no pay, and I am sure they would have done their best." Along the line of procession, to oppose this civic force, the right worshipful but foolish man reckoned there would be some 150,000 persons. With all these aldermanic fears, and all these irritating precautions, a riot naturally took place. On Monday, November 8th, that glib, unsatisfactory man, Orator Hunt, the great demagogue of the day, addressed a Reform meeting at the Rotunda, in Blackfriars Road. At half-past eleven, when the Radical gentleman, famous for his white hat On Tuesday the riots continued. About halfpast five p.m., 300 or 400 persons, chiefly boys, came along the Strand, shouting, "No Peel!" "Down with the raw lobsters !" (the new police); "This way, my lads; we'll give it them!" At the back of the menageries at Charing Cross the police rushed upon them, and after a skirmish put them to flight. At seven o'clock the vast crowd by Temple Bar compelled every coachman and passenger in a coach, as a passport, to pull off his hat and shout "Huzza!" Stones were thrown, and attempts were made to close the gates of the Bar. The City marshals, however, compelled them to be reopened, and opposed the passage of the mob to the Strand, but the pass was soon forced. The rioters in Pickett Place pelted the police with stones and pieces of wood, broken from the scaffolding of the Law Institute, then building in Chancery Lane. Another mob of about 500 persons ran up Piccadilly to Apsley House and hissed and hooted the stubborn, unprogressive old Duke, Mr. Peel, and the police; the constables, however, soon dispersed them. The same evening dangerous mobs collected in Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, and Whitechapel, one party of them displaying tricoloured flags. They broke a lamp and a window or two, but did little else. Alas for poor Sir Claudius and his profound computations! His 2,284 loyal fighting men dwindled down to 600, including even those strange hybrids, the firemen-watermen ; and as for the gallant Lumber Troop, they were nowhere visible. To Bolt Court that scourge of King George III., William Cobbett, came from Fleet Street to sell his Indian corn, for which no one cared, and to print and publish his twopenny Political Register, for which the London Radicals of that day hungered. Nearly opposite the office of "this good hater," says Mr. Timbs, Wright (late Kearsley) kept shop, and published a searching criticism on Cobbett's excellent English Grammar as soon as it appeared. We only wonder that Cobbett did not reply to him as Johnson did to a friend after he knocked Osborne (the grubbing bookseller of Gray's Inn Gate) down with a blow-"Sir, he was impertinent, and I beat him." 117 Cobbett grew Radical and progressive, and in 1809 was fined £500 for libels on the Irish Government. In 1817 he was fined £1,000 and imprisoned two years for violent remarks about some Ely militiamen who had been flogged under a guard of fixed bayonets. This punishment he never forgave. He followed up his Register by his Twopenny Trash, of which he eventually sold 100,000 a number. The Six Acts being passed-as he boasted, to gag him-he fled, in 1817, again to America. The persecuted man returned to England in 1819, bringing with him, much to the amusement of the Tory lampooners, the bones of that foul man, Tom Paine, the infidel, whom (in 1796) this changeful politician had branded as "base, malignant, treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous." During the Queen Caroline trial Cobbett worked heart and soul for that questionable martyr. He went out to Shooter's Hill to welcome her to London, and boasted of having waved a laurel bough above her head. In 1825 he wrote a scurrilous "History of the Reformation" (by many still attributed to a priest), in which he declared Luther, Calvin, and Beza to be the greatest ruffians that ever disgraced the world. In his old age, too late to be either brilliant or useful, Cobbett got into Parliament, being returned in 1832, thanks to the Reform Bill, member for Oldham. He died at his house near Farnham, in 1835. Cobbett was an egotist, it must be allowed, and a violent-tempered, vindictive man; but his honesty, his love of truth and liberty, few who are not blinded by party opinion can doubt. His writings are remarkable for vigorous and racy Saxon, as full of vituperation as Rabelais's, and as terse and simple as Swift's. A short biographical sketch of Cobbett will not be inappropriate here. This sturdy Englishman, born in the year 1762, was the son of an honest and industrious yeoman, who kept an inn called the "Jolly Farmer," at Farnham, in Surrey. "My first occupation," says Cobbett, "was driving the small birds from the turnip seed and the rooks from the peas. When I first trudged a-field with my wooden bottle and my satchel over my shoulder, I was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles." In 1783 the restless lad (a plant grown too high for the pot) ran away to London, and turned lawyer's clerk. At the end of nine months he enlisted, and sailed for Nova Scotia. Before long he became sergeant-major, over the heads of thirty other non-commissioned officers. Frugal and diligent, the young soldier soon educated Mr. Grant, in his pleasant book, "Random himself. Discharged at his own request in 1791, Recollections of the House of Commons," written he married a respectable girl, to whom he had circa 1834, gives us an elaborate full-length before entrusted £150 hard-earned savings. Obtain- portrait of old Cobbett. He was, he says, not less ing a trial against four officers of his late regiment than six feet high, and broad and athletic in for embezzlement of stores, for some strange reason proportion. His hair was silver-white, his com Cobbett fled to France on the eve of the trial, plexion ruddy as a farmer's. Till his small eyes but finding the king of that country dethroned, he sparkled with laughter, he looked a mere dullstarted at once for America. At Philadelphia pated clodpole. His dress was a light, loose, grey he boldly began as a high Tory bookseller, and tail-coat, a white waistcoat, and sandy kerseymere denounced Democracy in his virulent "Porcupine breeches, and he usually walked about the House Papers." Finally, overwhelmed with actions for with both his hands plunged into his breeches libel, Cobbett in 1800 returned to England. pockets. He had an eccentric, half-malicious way Failing with a daily paper and a bookseller's shop, of sometimes suddenly shifting his seat, and on Cobbett then started his Weekly Register, which one important night, big with the fate of Peel's for thirty years continued to express the changes Administration, deliberately anchored down in the of his honest but impulsive and vindictive mind. very centre of the disgusted Tories and at the very Gradually—it is said, owing to some slight shown back of Sir Robert's bench, to the infinite annoyhim by Pitt (more probably from real conviction)-ance of the somewhat supercilious party. |