The Town Part 33

"Dryden," says Sir Walter, in his life of the poet, "seems to have been particularly affronted at a presumptuous plan of that publisher (a keen whig, and Secretary to the Kit-Cat Club) to drive him into inscribing the translation of 'Virgil' to King William. With this view Tonson had an especial care to make the engraver aggravate the nose of Eneas in the plates into a sufficient resemblance of the hooked promontory of the Deliverer's countenance, and foreseeing Dryden's repugnance to his favourite plan, he had recourse, it would seem, to more unjustifiable means to further it; for the poet expresses himself as convinced that, through Tonson's means, his correspondence with his sons, then at Rome, was intercepted. I suppose Jacob, having fairly laid siege to his author's conscience, had no scruple to intercept all foreign supplies, which might have confirmed him in his pertinacity. But Dryden, although thus closely beleagured, held fast his integrity; and no prospect of personal advantage, or importunity on the part of Tonson, could induce him to take a step inconsistent with his religious and political sentiments. It was probably during the course of these bickerings with his publisher, that Dryden, incensed at some refusal of accommodation on the part of Tonson, sent him three well-known coa.r.s.e and forcible satirical lines descriptive of his personal appearance:--

'With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair, With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair, And frouzy pores, that taint the ambient air.'

"'Tell the dog,' said the poet to the messenger, 'that he who wrote these can write more.' But Tonson, perfectly satisfied with this single triplet, hastened to comply with the author's request, without requiring any further specimen of his poetical powers. It would seem, on the other hand, that when Dryden neglected his stipulated labour, Tonson possessed powers of animadversion, which, though exercised in plain prose, were not a little dreaded by the poet. Lord Bolingbroke, already a votary of the Muses, and admitted to visit their high-priest, was wont to relate, that one day he heard another person enter the house. 'This,' said Dryden, 'is Tonson; you will take care not to depart before he goes away, for I have not completed the sheet which I promised him; and if you leave me unprotected, I shall suffer all the rudeness to which his resentment can prompt his tongue.'"[278]

Fielding lived some time in Bow Street, probably during his magistracy.

We turn out of Bow Street into Russell Street, so called from the n.o.ble family of that name, who possess great property in this quarter.

It is pleasant to think that the name is accordant with the reputation of the place, for we are more than ever in the thick of wits and men of letters, especially of a race which was long peculiar to this country, literary politicians. At the north-east corner of the two streets was the famous Will's coffee-house, formerly the Rose, where Dryden presided over the literature of the town; and on the other side of the way, on a part of the site of the present Hummums, stood b.u.t.ton's coffee-house, no less celebrated as the resort of the wits and poets of the time of Queen Anne.

Dryden is identified with the neighbourhood of Covent Garden. He presided in the chair at Russell Street; his plays came out in the theatre at the other end of it; he lived in Gerrard Street, which is not far off; and, alas! for the anti-climax! he was beaten by hired bravos in Rose Street, now called Rose Alley. Great men come down to posterity with their proper aspects of calmness and dignity; and we do not easily fancy that they received anything from their contemporaries but the grateful homage which is paid them by ourselves. "But the life of a wit," says Steele, "is a warfare upon earth." Sir Walter Scott, speaking of the beautiful description given by Dryden of the Attic nights he enjoyed with Sir Charles Sedley and others, observes, "He had not yet experienced the disadvantages attendant on such society, or learned how soon literary eminence becomes the object of detraction, of envy, of injury, even from those who can best feel its merit, if they are discouraged by dissipated habits from emulating its flight, or hardened by perverted feeling against loving its possessors."[279]

The outrage perpetrated upon the sacred shoulders of the poet was the work of Lord Rochester, and originated in a mistake not creditable to that would-be great man and dastardly debauchee. The following is Sir Walter's account of the matter.

"The 'Essay on Satire' (by Lord Mulgrave, afterwards Duke of Buckinghamshire), though written, as appears from the t.i.tle-page of the last edition, in 1675, was not made public until 1679, with this observation:--I have sent you herewith a libel, in which my own share is not the least. The king having perused it, is no way dissatisfied with his. The author is apparently Mr. Dr[yden], his patron Lord M[ulgrave], having a panegyric in the midst. From hence it is evident that Dryden obtained the reputation of being the author; in consequence of which, Rochester meditated the base and cowardly revenge which he afterwards executed; and he thus coolly expressed his intention in another of his letters:--'You write me word that I am out of favour with a certain poet, whom I have admired for the disproportion of him and his attributes. He is a rarity which I cannot but be fond of, as one would be of a hog that could fiddle, or a singing owl. If he falls on me at the blunt, which is his very good weapon in wit, I will forgive him if you please, and _leave the repartee to black Will with a cudgel_.'

"In pursuance of this infamous resolution, upon the night of the 18th December, 1679, Dryden was waylaid by hired ruffians, and severely beaten, as he pa.s.sed through Rose Street, Covent Garden, returning from Will's coffee-house to his own house in Gerrard Street. A reward of fifty pounds was in vain offered in the 'London Gazette' and other newspapers, for the discoverers of the perpetrators of this outrage. The town was, however, at no loss to pitch upon Rochester as the employer of the bravos, with whom the public suspicion joined the d.u.c.h.ess of Portsmouth, equally concerned in the supposed affront thus avenged. In our time, were a n.o.bleman to have recourse to hired bravos to avenge his personal quarrels against any one, more especially a person holding the rank of a gentleman, he might lay his account with being hunted out of society. But in the age of Charles, the ancient high and chivalrous sense of honour was esteemed Quixotic, and the civil war had left traces of ferocity in the manners and sentiments of the people.

Encounters, where the a.s.sailants took all advantages of number and weapons, were as frequent, and held as honourable, as regular duels. Some of these approached closely to a.s.sa.s.sination; as in the famous case of Sir John Coventry, who was waylaid and had his nose slit by some young men of rank, for a reflection upon the King's theatrical amours. This occasioned the famous statute against maiming and wounding, called the Coventry Act, an Act highly necessary, for so far did our ancestors' ideas of manly forbearance differ from ours, that Killegrew introduces the hero of one of his comedies, a cavalier, and the fine gentleman of the piece, lying in wait for, and slashing the face of a poor courtezan, who had cheated him.

"It will certainly be admitted, that a man, surprised in the dark, and beaten by ruffians, loses no honour by such a misfortune. But if Dryden had received the same discipline from Rochester's own hand, without resenting it, his drubbing could not have been more frequently made a matter of reproach to him: a sign, surely, of the penury of subjects for satire in his life and character, since an accident, which might have happened to the greatest hero that ever lived, was resorted to as an imputation on his honour. The Rose Alley ambuscade became almost proverbial; and even Mulgrave, the real author of the satire, and upon whose shoulders the blows ought in justice to have descended, mentions the circ.u.mstance in his 'Art of Poetry,' with a cold and self-sufficient sneer:--

'Though praised and punished for another's rhymes, His own deserve as great applause _sometimes_.'

To which is added in a note, 'A libel for which he was both applauded and wounded, though entirely ignorant of the whole matter.' This flat and conceited couplet, and note, the n.o.ble author judged it proper to omit in the corrected edition of his poem. Otway alone, no longer the friend of Rochester, and, perhaps, no longer the enemy of Dryden, has spoken of the author of this dastardly outrage with the contempt it deserved:--

'Poets in honour of the truth should write, With the same spirit brave men for it fight; And though against him causeless hatreds rise, And daily where he goes of late, he spies The scowls of sudden and revengeful eyes; 'Tis what he knows with much contempt to bear.

And serves a cause too good to let him fear, He fears no poison from incensed drab, No ruffian's five-foot sword, nor rascal's stab; Nor any other snares of mischief laid, _Not a Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade_; From any private cause where malice reigns, Or general pique all blockheads have to brains.'"[280]

We dismiss this specimen of the times, that we may enjoy the look of Dryden as posterity sees it,--that is to say, as that of the first poet of his cla.s.s, presiding over the tastes and aspirations of the town. Milton sat in his suburban bower, equally removed from outrage and compliment, and contemplating a still greater futurity. In the following pa.s.sage from the 'Country and City Mouse,' by Prior and Montagu, Dryden, it is true, is spoken of with hostility, but his acknowledged predominance shines through it. Prior's instinct misgave him in writing against his natural master.

"Then on they jogg'd; and since an hour of talk Might cut a banter on the tedious walk, As I remember, said the sober mouse, I've heard much talk of the Wits' Coffee-house; Thither, says Brindle, thou shalt go and see Priests supping coffee, sparks and poets tea; Here rugged frieze, there quality well drest, These baffling the grand Senior, those the Test, And there shrewd guesses made, and reasons given, That human laws were never made in heaven; But, above all, what shall oblige thy sight, And fill thy eye-b.a.l.l.s with a vast delight, Is the poetic judge of sacred wit, Who does i' th' darkness of his glory sit; And as the moon who first receives the light, With which she makes these nether regions bright, So does he shine, reflecting from afar The rays he borrowed from a better star; For rules, which from Corneille and Rapin flow, Admired by all the scribbling herd below, From French tradition while he does dispense Unerring truths, 'tis schism, a d.a.m.ned offence, To question his, or trust your private sense."[281]

Will's Coffee-house was at the western corner of Bow Street. It first had the t.i.tle of the Red Cow, then of the Rose; and we believe is the same house alluded to in the pleasant story in the second number of the 'Tatler:'--

"Supper and friends expect we at the Rose."

The Rose, however, was a common sign for houses of public entertainment. The company, of which our poet was the arbiter, sat up-stairs in what was then called the dining, but now the drawing-room; and there was a balcony, to which his chair was removed in summer from its prescriptive corner by the fire-side in winter.

"The appeal," says Malcolm, "was made to him upon every literary dispute. The company did not sit in boxes, as at present, but at various tables which were dispersed through the room. Smoking was permitted in the public room: it was then so much in vogue that it does not seem to have been considered a nuisance. Here, as in other similar places of meeting, the visitors divided themselves into parties; and we are told by Ward, that the young beaux and wits, who seldom approached the princ.i.p.al table, thought it a great honour to have a pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box."[282]

A lively specimen of a scene with Dryden in this coffee-house has been afforded us by Dean Lockier. "I was about seventeen when I first came up to town," says the Dean, "an odd-looking boy, with short rough hair, and that sort of awkwardness which one always brings up at first out of the country with one. However, in spite of my bashfulness and appearance, I used, now and then, to thrust myself into Will's, to have the pleasure of seeing the most celebrated wits of that time, who then resorted thither. The second time that ever I was there, Mr.

Dryden was speaking of his own things, as he frequently did, especially of such as had been lately published. 'If anything of mine is good,' says he, "tis "Mac-Flecno;" and I value myself the more upon it, because it is the first piece of ridicule written in heroics.' On hearing this I plucked up my spirit so far as to say, in a voice but just loud enough to be heard, 'that "Mac-Flecno" was a very fine poem, but that I had not imagined it to be the first that was ever writ that way.' On this, Dryden turned short upon me, as surprised at my interposing; asked me how long 'I had been a dealer in poetry; and added, with a smile, 'Pray, sir, what is it that you did imagine to have been writ so before?'--I named Boileau's 'Lutrin,' and Ta.s.soni's 'Secchia Rapita,' which I had read, and knew Dryden had borrowed some strokes from each. "Tis true,' said Dryden, 'I had forgot them.' A little after, Dryden went out, and in going, spoke to me again, and desired me to come and see him the next day. I was highly delighted with the invitation; went to see him accordingly; and was well acquainted with him after, as long as he lived."[283]

Dryden's mixture of simplicity, good-nature, and good opinion of himself, is here seen in a very agreeable manner. It must not be omitted, that it was to this house Pope was taken when a boy, by his own desire, on purpose to get a sight of the great man; which he did.

According to Pope, he was plump, with a fresh colour and a down look, and not very conversable. It appears, however, that what he did say was much to the purpose; and a contemporary mentions his conversation on that account as one of the few things for which the town was desirable. He was a temperate man; though, for the last ten years of his life, Davies informs us that he drank with Addison a great deal more than he used to do, "probably so far as to hasten his end."

It is curious, considering his peculiar sort of reputation with posterity, that Addison's name should be found so connected in his own time with this species of irregularity. The same cause is supposed to have hastened his own end; and it is related by Pope, that he was obliged to avoid the Russell Street Coffee-house, and the bad hours of Addison, otherwise they might have hastened his.

Will's Coffee-house was the great emporium of libels and scandal. The channels that have since abounded for the dregs of literature had scarcely then begun to exist; and, instead of purveying for periodical publications, the retailers of obloquy attended among the minor wits of this place, and distributed the last new lampoon in ma.n.u.script.

There was a drunken fellow of that time, named Julian, who acquired an infamous celebrity in this way. Sir Walter Scott, in his edition of Dryden, has given the following account of him and his vocation.

"The extremity of license in manners necessarily leads to equal license in personal satire, and there never was an age in which both were carried to such excess as in that of Charles II.

These personal and scandalous libels acquired the name of lampoons, from the established burden formerly sung to them:--

'Lampone lampone, camerada lampone,'

"Dryden suffered under these violent and invisible a.s.saults, as much as any of his age; to which his own words in several places of his writing, and also the existence of many of the pasquils themselves in the Luttrel Collection, bear ample witness. In many of his prologues and epilogues, he alludes to this rage for personal satire, and to the employment which it found for the half and three-quarter wits and courtiers of the time!

'Yet these are pearls to your lampooning rhymes; Ye abuse yourselves more dully than the times; Scandal, the glory of the English nation, Is worn to rags, and scribbled out of fashion: Such harmless thrusts, as if, like fencers wise, They had agreed their play before their prize.

Faith, they may hang their harp upon the willows; 'Tis just like children when they box their pillows.'

"Upon the general practice of writing lampoons, and the necessity of finding some mode of dispersing them, which should diffuse the scandal widely while the authors remained concealed, was founded the self-erected office of Julian, Secretary, as he calls himself, to the Muses. This person attended Will's, the Wits' Coffee-house, as it was called; and dispersed among the crowds who frequented that place of gay resort copies of the lampoons which had been privately communicated to him by their authors. 'He is described,' says Mr. Malone, 'as a very drunken fellow, and at one time was confined for a libel.' Several satires were written, in the form of addresses to him as well as the following. There is one among the 'State Poems,' beginning--

'Julian, in verse, to ease thy wants I write, Not moved by envy, malice or by spite, Or pleased with the empty names of wit and sense, But merely to supply thy want of pence: This did inspire my muse, when out at heel, She saw her needy secretary reel; Grieved that a man, so useful to the age, Should foot it in so mean an equipage; A crying scandal that the fees of sense Should not be able to support the expense Of a poor scribe, who never thought of wants, When able to procure a cup of Nantz.'

"Another, called a 'Consoling Epistle to Julian,' is said to have been written by the Duke of Buckingham.

"From a pa.s.sage in one of the letters from the 'Dead to the Living,' we learn, that after Julian's death, and the madness of his successor, called Summerton, lampoon felt a sensible decay; and there was no more that 'brisk spirit of verse, that used to watch the follies and vices of the men and women of figure, that they could not start new ones faster than lampoons exposed them."[284]

These "brisk spirits" have still their descendants, and always will have till their betters cease to set the example of railing, or to encourage it. There is a difference, indeed, between the lampoons of such men and those of Dryden, or the literary personalities to which some ingenious minds will give way, before they well know what they are about, out of mere emulation, perhaps, of the names of Pope and Boileau. But it is not to be expected that the others will stop where they do, or refine with the progress of their years and knowledge. The most generous sometimes find it difficult to leave off saying ill-natured things of one another, out of shame of yielding, or the habit of indulging their irritability. They endeavour to reconcile themselves to it by trying to think that the abuse has a utility; but when they come to this point, the doubt is a proof that they ought to forego it, and help to teach the world better. Honest contention, however, is one thing, and scandal is another. The dealer in the latter has always a petty mind and inferior understanding, most likely accompanied with conscious unworthiness; the great secret of the love of scandal lying in the wish to level others with the calumniators.

"Will's continued to be the resort of the wits at least till 1710," says Mr. Malcolm. "Probably Addison established his servant [b.u.t.ton] in a new house about 1712, and his fame after the production of 'Cato,' drew many of the Whigs thither."[285]

"Addison," says Pope, "pa.s.sed each day alike; and much in the manner that Dryden did. Dryden employed his mornings in writing, dined _en famille_, and then went to Will's: only he came home earlier a'nights." And again: "Addison usually studied all the morning; then met his party at b.u.t.ton's; dined, and staid there five or six hours; and sometimes far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found it too much for me: it hurt my health, and so I quitted it."[286]

b.u.t.ton had been a servant of the Countess of Warwick, whom Addison married. It is said that when the latter was dissatisfied with the Countess (we believe during the period of his courtship), he used to withdraw the company from her servant's coffee-house. Unfortunately it is as easy to believe a petty story of Addison as a careless one of Steele. Addison, intellectually a great man, was complexionally a little one. He was timid, bashful, and reserved, and instinctively sought success by private channels and disingenous measures.

Under the influence of these eminent persons, b.u.t.ton's became the head-quarters of the Whig literati, as Will's had been that of the Tory. Steele, however, dated his poetical papers in the 'Tatler' from Will's, as the old haunt of the town muse. Perhaps the Whiggery of b.u.t.ton's was one of the reasons why Pope left off going there, as he did not wish to identify himself with either party. Ambrose Philips is said to have hung up a rod at that coffee-house, as an intimation of what Pope should receive at his hands, in case the satirist chose to hazard it. A similar threat is related of Cibber. The behaviour of both has been cried out against as unhandsome, considering the little person and bodily infirmities of the ill.u.s.trious offender: but as the threateners were so much his inferiors in wit, and he exercised his great powers at their expense, it might not be difficult to show that their conduct was as good as his. Why attack a man, if he is to be allowed no equality of retaliation? The truth is, that personal satire is itself an unhandsome thing, and a childish one, and there will be no end to childish retorts, till the more grown understandings reform.

Pope accused Philips of pilfering his pastorals, and of "turning a Persian tale for half-a-crown;" the one an offence not very likely, unless, indeed, all common-places may be said to be stolen; the other no offence at all, though it might have been a misfortune. These littlenesses in great men are a part of the childhood of society. They show us how young it still is, and what a parcel of wrangling schoolboys (in that respect) a future period may consider us.

One of the most agreeable memories connected with b.u.t.ton's is that of Garth, a man whom, for the sprightliness and generosity of his nature, it is a pleasure to name. He was one of the most amiable and intelligent of a most amiable and intelligent cla.s.s of men--the physicians.

Armstrong, another poet and physician and not unworthy of either cla.s.s, for genius and goodness of heart, though he had the weakness of affecting a bluntness of manners, and of swearing, drew his last breath in this street. He is well known as the author of the most elegant didactic poem in the language,--the 'Art of Preserving Health.' The affectations of men of genius are sometimes in direct contradiction to their best qualities, and a.s.sumed to avoid a show of pretending what they feel. Armstrong, who had bad health, and was afraid perhaps of being thought effeminate, affected the bully in his prose writings; and he was such a swearer, that the late Mr. Fuseli's indulgence in that infirmity has been attributed to his keeping company with the Doctor when a youth. We never met with a habitual swearer in whom the habit could not be traced to some feeling of conscious weakness. Fuseli swore as he painted, in the hope of making up for the defects of his genius by the violence of his style.

At No. 8, Russell Street, Boswell was introduced to his formidable friend of whom he became the biographer. The house then belonged to Davies the bookseller. The account given us of his first interview is highly characteristic of both parties. Boswell had a thorough specimen of his future acquaintance at once, and Johnson evidently saw completely through Boswell.

"Mr. Thomas Davies, the actor," saith the particular Boswell, "who then kept a bookseller's shop in Russell Street, Covent Garden, told me that Johnson was very much his friend, and came frequently to his house, where he more than once invited me to meet him; but by some unlucky accident or other he was prevented from coming to us.

"Mr. Thomas Davies was a man of good understanding and talents, with the advantage of a liberal education. Though somewhat pompous, he was an entertaining companion; and his literary performances have no inconsiderable share of merit. He was a friendly and very hospitable man. Both he and his wife (who had been celebrated for her beauty), though upon the stage for many years, maintained an uniform decency of character, and Johnson esteemed them, and lived in as easy an intimacy with them as any family which he used to visit. Mr. Davies recollected several of Johnson's remarkable sayings, and was one of the best of the many imitators of his voice and manner, while relating them. He increased my impatience more and more to see the extraordinary man whose works I highly valued, and whose conversation was reported to be so peculiarly excellent.

"At last," continues Mr. Boswell, "on the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's back parlour, after having drank tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop, and Mr. Davies having perceived him through the gla.s.s-door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing towards us--he announced his awful approach somewhat as an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost, 'Look, my lord, it comes.' I found that I had a very perfect idea of Johnson's figure, from the portrait of him painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after he had published his 'Dictionary,' in the att.i.tude of sitting in his easy chair in deep meditation; which was the first picture his friend did for him, which Sir Joshua very kindly presented to me, and from which an engraving has been made for this work. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him; I was much agitated, and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, 'Don't tell where I come from.'--'From Scotland,'

cried Davies, roguishly. 'Mr. Johnson,' said I, 'I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.' I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to soothe and conciliate him, and not as a humiliating abas.e.m.e.nt at the expense of my country. But however that might be, this speech was somewhat unlucky; for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression 'come from Scotland!' which I used in the sense of being of that country; and, as if I had come away from it, or left it, retorted, 'That, sir, I find, is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help.' This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I felt myself not a little embarra.s.sed, and apprehensive of what might come next. He then addressed himself to Davies: 'What do you think of Garrick? he has refused me an order for the play for Miss Williams, because he knows the house will be full, and that an order will be worth three shillings.' Eager to take any opening to get into conversation with him, I ventured to say, 'O, sir, I cannot think Mr. Garrick would grudge such a trifle to you.' 'Sir (said he, with a stern look,) I have known David Garrick longer than you have done; and I know no right you have to talk to me on the subject.' Perhaps I deserved this check; for it was rather presumptuous in me, an entire stranger, to express any doubt of the justice of his animadversion upon his old acquaintance and pupil. I now felt myself much mortified, and began to think that the hope I had long indulged of obtaining his acquaintance was blasted. And, in truth, had not my ardour been uncommonly strong, and my resolution uncommonly persevering, so rough a reception might have deterred me for ever from making any further attempts. Fortunately, however, I remained upon the field, not wholly discomfited." * * * "I was highly pleased with the extraordinary vigour of his conversation, and regretted that I was drawn away from it by an engagement at another place. I had, for a part of the evening, been left alone with him, and had ventured to make an observation now and then, which he received very civilly; so that I was satisfied that, though there was a roughness in his manner, there was no ill-nature in his disposition. Davies followed me to the door, and when I complained to him a little of the hard blows which the great man had given me, he kindly took upon him to console me by saying, 'Don't be uneasy. I can see he likes you very well.'"[287]

The Hummums Hotel and Coffee-house which occupies the south-west corner of this street, and stretches round into Covent Garden market, is so called from an eastern word signifying baths. It was one of the earliest houses set up in England of that kind, and thence called bagnios; and one of the few that retained their respectability. The generality were so much the reverse, that the word bagnio came to mean a brothel. It appears from a story we are about to relate, that people went to the Hummums not only to bathe, but to get themselves cupped.

Bathing is too much neglected in this country; but the consequences of our sedentary habits have forced upon us a greater degree of attention to it, and the imitation of the Turkish system of cleanliness has been carried further in vapour baths and the startling luxury of shampooing, which makes people discover that they have in general two or three skins too many. Englishmen, in the pride of their greater freedom, often wonder how Eastern nations can endure their servitude.

This is one of the secrets by which they endure it. A free man in a dirty skin is not in so fit a state to endure existence as a slave with a clean one; because nature insists, that a due attention to the clay which our souls inhabit, shall be the first requisite to the comfort of the inhabitant. Let us not get rid of our freedom; let us teach it rather to those that want it; but let such of us as have them, by all means get rid of our dirty skins. There is now a moral and intellectual commerce among mankind, as well as an interchange of inferior goods; we should send freedom to Turkey as well as clocks and watches, and import not only figs, but a fine state of the pores.

Of the Hummums there is a ghost-story in Boswell, a thing we should as little dream of in this centre of the metropolis, as look for a ghost at noonday. The reader will see how much credit is to be given it, by the style of the narrator, who, with all his good-will towards superst.i.tion (and it is no less a person that speaks than Dr.

Johnson), had an inveterate love of truth, which led him to defeat his own object.