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church arose in confequence, and was dedicated to the then Pope, Clement the Second, or probably, as his reign was very fhort, it might only be termed "the Church of the Danes," and acquire the addition of St. Clement during the time of the Crufade, i, e. in the reign of Richard the Firft, as it is well known that Clement the Third, who then filled the papal chair, not only took an active part in the Holy War, but, by the means of the Knights Templars, and other orders, had a much greater influence in this country than any of his predeceffors: it is therefore probable he might become the nomenclature of this as of many other churches, which he was fond of having dedicated to St. Clement the Martyr, in the second century.

The well, which derived its name from the fame fource, was, about this period, much reforted to on account of the virtue of its water. It was fituated in Clement's-lane, and is still in ufe, having a pump erected over it; but its water has, I believe, long ceafed to be elteemed, either for its fanctity or efficacy in the cure of cutaneous and other diseases, for which it was once fo celebrated t.

On the weft fide of this lane, betwixt St. Clement's and Holy Well, was, till very lately, an inn, the Lamb, in ancient times the Holy Lamb, which, previous to the Reformation, was as much frequented by perfons who vifited thefe streams, either for devotion or health, as its neighbour the Angel Inn was, and perhaps still is, by Cornish and West Country lawyers.

At the corner of this lane and the Butcher Row, connected behind with the Robin Hood, had stood for ages a houfe, which I have frequently contemplated as an object of veneration, the lower part of this manfion was occupied as a grocer's fhop; this had been in fome fmall degree modernized, but the fabrick was, as I have been in

formed, betwixt three and four bundred years old at the period of its diffolution (which was very lately), and from the ftyle of the building I have reason to believe this informa tion to be correct, for notwithstanding it had been frequently patched and plaiftered, there was fomething of rude. nefs in its conftruction which is not to be found in the wooden buildings of a more modern date. It contained four stories remarkably low, and the upper jutting over the under, like the ward-room lights, lower and upper balconies, in the ftern of a man of war. The rooms within bore a strong refemblance to cabins, the beams of oak ftill remained, and, with respect to the joiner's work, exhibited stronger traces of architectural rudeness than even the outfde.

I have often thought, as I have obferved this building, which, in former ages, was unquestionably the habitation of perfons of confiderable opulence, that its history, on account of the many revolutions of its tenants, the variety of changes in circumstances, manners, principles, and modes of life, that had taken place in it from its firit foundation, must have been curious.

The internal tranfactions of palaces and fuperb manfions, even when unconnected with the politics of the age and country, feldom are fuffered to pals intirely unobferved; fathion acts with regard to the great world as a ftimulus to curiofity, and we in fome event or other generally find their domestic history connected with the history of the times; we learn through this channel, from the earliest ages to the prefent, many circumstances refpecting the private life of legiflators, heroes, philofophers, divines, lawyers, phylicians, men and women eminent for their talents, their beauty, their vices, their virtues, and misfortunes; all who have made a confpicuous figure upon the ancient or modern theatre of the

St. Clement, whom this Pope termed his Patronimick, was ordained Bishop of Rome in the year of our Lord 93; he governed the Church about ten years; he was banifhed to the Cherfonefus by the Emperor Trajan, and afterward, by his command, thrown into the fea, with an anchor about his neck, where the Christians might defpair to find him.

tRound the City again, and towards the North, arife certain excellent fprings at a small distance, whofe waters are sweet, falubrious, and clear, and "whofe runnels murmur o'er the fhining ftones." Amongst thefe, Holywell, Clerkenwell, and St. Clement's Well, may be efteemed the principal, as being much the most frequented, both by the scholars from the School and the youth from the City, when in a fummer's evening they are difpofed to take an airing. Fitzitephens' London.

wo:ld

world are here identified: we know to a ertainty that one Emperor was the ather of his people, and that another amufed himself with impaling flies upon the point of a bodkin, and that he probably was the founder of that ingenious fect by us termed Aurelians. All these, and an infinite number of other things, we know with refpect to palaces; but in houfes of the defcription of that to which I have alluded, which have been always devoted to the reception of the middle clafs of citizens, the tranfactions, whe. ther merry or ferious, that have occurred, unless very remarkable indeed, pafs away like the lives of the inhabitants, and are as foon obliterated from the memory. Yet it certainly would be in fome instances amufing, in others ufeful, especially for the elucidation of local history, if memorials of this clafs of perfons had been more frequently preferved. The only traces of their existence, in many inftances, now to be found, are upon tomb-ftones, occafionally in the tablet of benefactions to churches, and latterly in the parish regifters.

CLEMENT'S INN.

It is impoffible, in even a flight furvey of this parish, to pass by an estabJishment of fuch antiquity as Clement's Inn, "which probably derived its appellation from St. Clement's Well, near which it is fituated, and which from a houfe wherein the ftudents of law refided at so early a period as the reign of Edward the Fourth became an Inn of Chancery, as may be feen in the Book of Entries 19 Edw. IVth, titulo Mifnomer, where the defendant, to thew that the right place of his abode was not named, pleaded, "dicit, quod tempore impetrationis brevis; fuit de hof. picio de Clements Inne, in parochia S. Clements Dacorum, extra barram Novi Templi Lon. in Comitatu Middlesexiæ ; quod quidem hofpicium eft, & tempora ante impetrationis brevis diu ante, fuit quoddam hofpicium hominum Curiæ legis temporalis, necnon hominum Confiliariorum ejufdem legis.

With refpect to the former inheritor of this Inn, the obliteration occafioned by the lapfe of time can only be fupplied by the imperfect veftiges which

tradition has preserved, and only aided by thofe fcanty materials which are thinly fcattered over the pages of our civic hiftorians. It has been ftated, that even antecedent to the foundation of St. Clement's Church, which has, as I have alluded, been, upon the unstable balis of conjecture, fixed to the time of King Ethelred, near this fpot stood an inn for the reception of pilgrims and penitents who came to St. Clement's Well, that a religious house was in procefs of time eftablished, and that the church rofe in confequence. Be this as it may, the Holy Brotherhood was probably removed to some other fituation; the Holy Lamb, as I have obferved, received the pilgrims; and the monaftery was converted, or rather perverted, from the purposes of the gofpel to thofe of the law, and was probably, in this profeffion, confidered as a houfe of very confiderable antiquity in the days of Shakspeare; for he, who with refpect to this kind of chronology may be fafely quoted, makes, in the fecond part of Henry the IVth, one of his Juftices a member of that Society.

"He must to the Inns of Court. I was of Clement's once myself, where they will talk of mad Shallow itill."

But to return from the uncertainty of conjecture, the inftability of tradi tion, and the licence, if any in this inftance was taken, of poetry, to the unerring guidance of legal records, it appears, that in the 2d year of the reign of Henry the VIIth, Sir John Cantlow, by a leafe bearing date 20th December, demited this Inn to John and William Elyot, probably in truit for the Students. About the 20th of Henry the VIIIth, Cantlow's right defcended to Sir William Holles, then Lord Mayor, and from him to the Earl of Clare, with whofe heirs it continues.

LINCOLN'S-INN-FIELDS NEW BUILD.

INGS, &c.

It may not be improper in a fpeculation of this nature, before we proceed further weftward in fearch of the veftiges of Old buildings, to turn a little to the North, and confider fome that are comparatively New, taking, at the fame time a curfory glance at others which have arifen from the brick kilns

Ethelred the Second, during whofe reign, and the fhort one of his fucceffor Edmund, the frequent incurfions of the Danes ended in their final conquest of the inland 1017, little more than a year after his decease.

on

on their fites, which may with great propriety be termed their bot-beds, with fuch rapidity, that, like many of the forced productions of horticulture, did we not know the excellence of their ftamina, we might almost be led to doubt, whether they were even annuals, and were we their tenants, in the literal fenfe of the word, to tremble, for the period of their existence.

In the year 1580, Queen Elizabeth iffued a proclamation forbidding the laying new foundations for houfes about London, the object of which was ftated to be the prefervation of the health of the inhabitants. This proclamation, owing perhaps to the increafe of trade which induced fuch a vaft multitude to flock to the metropolis, and caufed fuch a demand for houfes, that its reftrictive operation feems to have been but little attended to, was, I think, never enforced; for it is a curious circumstance, that at a fubfequent period it was, by the fucceeding Monarch, thought neceffary to publish a partial renewal of the prohibition. There is extant a letter, dated 4th September, an. 1613, 11 Jac. fent by the Lords of the Privy Council, under the fignatures of G. Cant. T. Ellesmere Canc. H. Northampton, E. Stanhope, &c. and addreffed to certain

Juftices of the Peace for the County of Middlefex, in which it is ftated to be "his Majefty's exprefs pleasure and commandment that the erection of new buildings in Lincoln's-inn-fields fhould be reftrained (this is stated to be principally done at the request of the Students of Lincoln's Inn), and requiring the faid Juftices to apprehend and commit to gaol any who thall be found fo offending, or to take fureties of him or them to appear before the privy council to answer the charge."

How far this order was acted upon, it is impoffible now to fay. It does not feem, if we may judge by the vast increafe of buildings northward, any more than the proclamation of Eliza beth f, to have had much effect; but it appears that the learned profeffion, who were then the complainants, upon account of the disturbance which new buildings created, have fince been the encouragers of the fpeculators, as well as owners and tenants, of thofe fuperb manfions which have, in the feventeenth and eighteenth centuries, not only been erected upon the prohibited fpot, but alfo on the vaft space from the other fide of Holborn to Pancras, and thence "God knows where !" Whether the inconvenience which in the faid letter it was augured would be felt

"Though the operation of trade," fays an ingenious fpeculator on this subject, "has caufed a progreflive increase of the metropolis from the first, yet this increase has been accelerated during the last thirty or forty years, from a cause well known, though little confidered in this point of view, which has affected other towns as well as London. It is found upon an average, that the natural finall-pox destroys, one in feven; it is now above forty years fince this diforder began to be inoculated upon prepared be dies, of which the Bishop of Worcester, in his celebrated fermon on this fubject, informs us, that but one in five hundred were found to die; hence, in every five hundred children inoculated feventy lives are preferved to fociety, though few reflect how much this circumftance must advance population. Since the Bishop of Worcefter's time, the hazard is almoft reduced to nothing; and the practice obtaining chiefly in towns, they will increale fafter than the acceffion of new comers will occafion." Northouck's Hiftory of London, published 17-3.

Death feems, with refpe&t to this difeafe, to have been ablolutely difarmed of his dart, fince the introduction of the vaccine inoculation; and what, though not quite fo material, is certainly of confiderable importance, its influence upon perfonal beauty is totally counteracted. We should now as foon expect to fee a calf pitted with the fmallpox, as a child that has undergone this process, which I think circumfcribes the malignity of the diforder to one puttule upon the arm, and, as the circulation of a cow is fuppofed to be purer than that of the human fyftem, prevents the introduction of humours baneful to the conftitution, which a vulgar eirer predominant in the minds of many mothers and nurfes induces them to believe might be engendered under the former regimen.

In the year 1604 (2d Jac.), another general proclamation was iffued against inmates and the increafe of new buildings, which being little regarded was renewed two years after, with an addition, commanding that the fore fronts and windows of new buildings fhould be of ftone; for the difobeying which many were called to the Star Chamber, and there fined. Baker's Chronicle, p. 421,

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by the "fwelling multitudes of people, which the new erections occafion to be drawn together from all parts of the kingdom, in regard to provifions and victuals, which (fay the Lords of the Council) are now grown to a high rate," has increased or diminished, it is not poffible for me to determine; but it is certain, that the annoyance complained of by the learned Society to which I have alluded, has, in my apprehenfion, a hundred fold encreafed; though, with refpect to its operation upon the exquifite fenfibility of the members that have, from the date of the letter down to the prefent period, compofed it, we must conclude, either that the irritability of their nervous fyftem must have been rendered obtufe, that their feelings must have been blunted, or, as it frequently happens with refpect to noife, and many other difagreeable circumftances, that they have been fo long accustomed to the nuifance, that they have become callous to its difagreeable effects; which naturally leads me to obferve upon what flight grounds matters which, from the mediumthrough which they pafs, affume an afpe&t of the utmoft gravity and importance, are fometimes erected, and to conclude that a body of men fo learned, whofe

profeffional habits obliged them to be fo well acquainted with the laws of their country, muft at least have thought their firft application regular, and that, in confequence, the Juftices of Middlefex were bound to commit any man to gaol who chose to let his ground upon a building leafe, or, the still more atrocious offender, who dared to pile bricks and mortar upon it. How extremely different do the fame objects appear in different ages! In the eighth year of George the Second, an Act paffed to encourage building, to enclose Lincoln's-inn-fields, which were, previous to that period, the refort of loofe, idle, diforderly perfons, gamblers, mountebanks, &c. *, as we remember Upper Moorfields, before the building of Finfbury-fquare, to have been, to appoint Trustees to carry its enactments into effect, and, in fact, to render that fpot, the buildings around which had at first fo annoyed the Students of the adjacent Inn, and produced the order of Council to which I have alluded, and which, by the bye, fhould rather have been an order to the Justices to fend their Officers to difperfe, or, under 39 Eliz. to apprehend the vagrants there affembled, one of the greateft ornaments of the metropolis.

CRITICAL REMARKS ON AN ODE OF GRAY.
Line 5.

PERFECTION is not to be found in the

works of man, elfe, from Gray's extenfive learning, nice tafte, full leifure, and the great attention he was known to give to his poetical productions, one would have expected them in the end to have been perfectly accurate in compofition. This appears, however, not to be the cafe; and by way of amufement, let us here, with a view only to that particular, juft criticife a little clofely his beautiful Ode on a diftant Profpect of Eton College.

Stanza 1, line 2.

That crown the wat’ry glade. Granting the term watry to be locally juft, as it contains an unpleafing idea, it feems not to be well chofen.

And ye that from the ftately brow.

Here ye undoubtedly refers to diftant fires and antique towers in line 1 but, from the construction, one would at first take it to refer to living spe&ators, &c.

Of grove, of lawn, of mead furvey; Whofe turf, whofe fhade, whofe flowers

among,

Wanders the hoary Thames along
His filver winding way.

To have arranged the correlates of the two first lines properly, ought not either the first of them to have ftood thus, of lawn, of grove, &c. or the other thus, Whofe fhade, whofe turf, &c. ? Moreover, in the two laft lines the

The letter to which I have alluded does not flate, nor even hint, that the learned body complaining had fuffered the leaft inconvenience from this diforderly allembiage of perlons, in the repreffions of which the Magistrates might properly have interfered, but merely from the new buildings, which were more likely to drive them away than attract them.

.

Thames

Thames is evidently perfonified as an old man with a boary head; but, in the latter of them the perfonality feems to be in the waters of the river, fimply as flowing or exifting in the whole length of their channel; which two-fold image certainly manifefts an incongruity, and I am afraid of the kind, too, which is figured by the whimfical idea of a man leaping down his own throat. For what else can we call the Thames reprefented as a man, wandering along a channel at the fame time reprefented to be his identical felf. This fault (if I am correct in judging it to be one) might very easily have been avoided by putting a different epithet (as gentle) in the place of boary, and changing bis into its.

In Stanza 2 I can find nothing exceptionable, fave it be in the fourth line, A ftranger yet to pain; where pain feems to itand for care; the care which annoys the more advanced ftages of life. To this annoyance children may be faid to be ftrangers, as is more fully expreffed Stanza 6,

No fenfe have they of ills to come,
No care beyond to day.

But as to pain itself, it is doubtless an
evil to which they are as liable, and
which they feel as keenly, as people in
more mature years. This the author
could not fail of knowing; but the
rhymes, lucklessly, would not admit of
the proper term.

In the first line of Stanza 4, While fome on earnest business bent; it might be juit afked, if the word bufinefs be fufficiently poetical ?

Gay hope is their's by fancy fed, Lefs pleafing when poffefs'd. Thefe initial lines of Stanza 5, I prefume, exhibit a confiderable, though not uncommon, inaccuracy. Hope in the first of them means the paffion or afellion of hope; while what is afferted of the fame hope in the fecond can evidently only refer to the object of hope; a very different thing. Hence, allowing the fact, that the objects of our hopes moftly difappoint us in fruition, yet thofe hopes themfelves muft ever be pleafing, and that too in the degree they are felt; a truth which the latter line, from the double or metony

VOL. XLII. JULY 1802.

mical ufe of the term, has abfolutely denied.

Stanza 8, line 5.

The flings of falsehood these shall try.

What try means here is not evident on
a curfory glance. At first it seems to
fignify attempt actively confidered, but
its juft fignification must be patively
taken as meaning prove, or put to the test.
In cafes of this kind, however, it can-
not always be eafy to fay, whether a
poet fails in due perfpicuity, or his
reader in due apprehenfion.

And happiness too fwiftly flies,
Thought would destroy their paradife.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wife.

How a poet of that curious ear (poken of by Mafon* (a no lefs curious judge) could fuffer the concluding lines of this Ode to contain four fuch fucceffive terminations as flies, dife, blifs, wife, is not eafy to conceive; efpecially as there feems to be fo obvious a way to avoid their monotony, and to produce the full and varied cadence which fhould diftinguith the clofe of every poem, but more particularly one in rhyme. Had he written the two middle lines thus, we fhould have had exactly the fame fenfe, and a much more tuneable found:

Thought would their paradife deftroy.
No more; where ignorance is joy, &c.

This Ode, it may be obferved, like most others of our author, where the lines are fhort, contains many faulty rhymes (as towers, adores-brow, below -cleave, wave-doom, come-train, men -beneath, death-men, train-groan, own); but here they appear to be juftifiable, as perfect rhymes falling fo near one another might have a rather cloying effect. Heroic lines, indeed, feem to be of about fuch a length as to exclude this indulgence. Hence, one would infer (by-the-bye), that the many bad rhymes in Pope's Effay on Man (in particular) are a blemish which (as far as compofition is concerned) fome little impeaches his industry in revifion; fince we fcarce can attribute it to inaccuracy of judgment or want of ear.

In his English Garden, b. iii.

D

Gray

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