PORTRAITS

OF

CURIOUS CHARACTERS.

NATHANIEL BENTLEY, ESQ.
Known by the name of Dirty Dick,

Late a Hardware Merchant in Leadenhall-street, London. MR. BENTLEY resided at the corner of the av enue leading to the house formerly the Old Crown

HYPL

Tavern, Leadenhall-street, not far from the EastIndia House.

The house and character of this eccentric individual are so well described in a poem published in the European Magazine, for January, 1801, that we shall transcribe it:

"Who but has seen (if he can see at all) 'Twixt Aldgate's well-known pump and Leadenhall, A curious hard-ware shop, in general full Of wares, from Birmingham and Pontipool? Begrim'd with dirt, behold its ample front, With thirty years collected filth upon 't.

See festoon'd cobwebs pendent o'er the door,

While boxes, bales, and trunks, are strew'd around the floor.

"Behold how whistling winds and driving rain

Gain free admission at each broken pane,

Save where the dingy tenant keeps them out
With urn or tray, knife-case, or dirty clout!
Here snuffers, waiters, patent-screws for corks;

There castors, card-racks, cheese-trays, knives and forks:
Here empty cases pil'd in heaps on high;

There pack-thread, papers, rope, in wild disorder lie.

"O say, thou enemy to soap and towels!
Hast no compassion lurking in thy bowels?
Think what thy neighbors suffer by thy whim
Of keeping self and house in such a trim!
The officers of health should view the scene,
And put thy shop and thee in quarantine.
Consider thou, in summer's ardent heat,
When various means are tried to cool the street,
What must each decent neighbor suffer then
From various vapours issuing from thy den.

"When fell Disease, with all her horrid train,
Spreads her dark pinions o'er ill-fated Spain,
That Britain may not witness such a scene,
Behoves us doubly now to keep our dwellings clean.

68. Say, if, within the street where thou dost dwell, Each house were kept exactly like thy cell;