laughed, at another you cried; now he terrified you, and presently you conceived yourself something horrible, he seemed so terrified at you. Afterwards he drew his features into the appearance of such dignified wisdom that Minerva might have been proud of the portrait; and then-degrading, yet admirable, transition-he became a driveller. In short, his face was what he obliged you to fancy it-age, youth, plenty, poverty, everything it assumed."

The following lines were written by Garrick to a

139

conversation with him said, "Dear sir, I wish you were a little taller;" to which he replied, "My dear madam, how happy should I be, did I stand higher in your estimation."

"Will your figures be as large as life, Mr. Foote?" asked a titled lady, when he was about to bring out at the Haymarket his comedy of The Primitive Puppet Show. "No, my lady," replied Foote, "they will be hardly larger than Garrick." Garrick having a green-room wrangle with Mrs.

being in Parliament :

"More than content with what my labours gain, Of public favour tho' a little vain, Yet not so vain my mind, so madly bent, To wish to play the fool in parliament; In each dramatic unity to err, Mistaking time and place, and character! Were it my fate to quit the mimic art, I'd strut and fret' no more in any part; No more in public scenes would I engage, Or wear the cap and mask of any stage.' Garrick's stature was slightly under the middle size, but manliness, elasticity, ease, and grace, characterised his deportment. A lady one day in

* Gentleman's Magazine, 1761.

"I have heard of tartar and brimstone, and know the effects of both; but you are the cream of one and the flower of the other."

Garrick once gave at his lodgings a dinner to Harry Fielding, Macklin, Havard, Mrs. Cibber, &c., and fees to servants being then much the fashion, Macklin, and most of the company, gave Garrick's man (David, a Welshman) something at parting-some a shilling, some half-a-crown, &c., whilst Fielding, very formally, slipped a piece of paper in his hand, with something folded in the inside. When the company were all gone, David seeming to be in high glee, Garrick asked him how much he got. "I can't tell you yet, sir," said Davy, "here is half-a-crown from Mrs. Cibber, Got pless

hur-here is a shilling from Mr. Macklin-here is two from Mr. Havard, &c.—and here is something more from the poet, Got pless his merry heart." By this time David had unfolded the paper, when, to his great astonishment, he saw it contained no more than one penny! Garrick felt nettled at this, and next day spoke to Fielding about the impropriety of jesting with a servant. "Jesting!" said Fielding, with a seeming surprise, "so far from it, that I meant to do the fellow a real piece of service; for had I given him a shilling or half-a-crown, I knew you would have taken it from him; but by giving him only a penny, he had a chance of calling it his own."

A gentleman asked a friend who had seen Garrick perform his first and last character if he thought him as good an actor when he took his leave of the stage at old Drury as when he first played at Goodman's Fields, he gave for an answer the following extempore :—

"I saw him rising in the East

In all his energetic glows;

I saw him setting in the West

In greater splendour than he rose."

Mr. Cradock writes in his "Literary Memoirs":"The strongest likenesses of Garrick are best preserved by Sir George Beaumont, who was intimately acquainted with him; the two drawings of Garrick, in "Richard," and "Abel Drugger," are superior, in point of resemblance, to either of the celebrated pictures, from which they are chiefly taken; the prints from them are just published by Mr. Colnaghi."

Garrick's widow continued to occupy the villa long after her husband's death, and she entertained her friends here nearly to the last. She died in the Adelphi, in the year 1822, at the age of nearly 100.

Old anglers who have fished in the Thames about here will remember at the bottom of the lawn two willows, rendered sacred by adjoining the temple erected to Shakespeare. They were planted by Garrick's own hand. In the midst of a violent storm, which proved fatal to one of them, Mrs. Garrick was seen running about, like Niobe, all tears, exclaiming, "Oh, my Garrick ! my Garrick !"

A fonder pair never lived than David Garrick

to be a better actor than Ned Shuter :

"I've very often heard it said,

Nine tailors make a man ;
But can nine Wilsons make a Ned?
No, bless me if they can."

It is related by a friend of Garrick that, in walking up the stage with him, until the burst of applause which followed one of his displays in Lear should subside, the great actor thrust his tongue in his cheek, and said in a chuckle, "Joe, this is stage feeling."

We have seen how that Garrick and Johnson came up to London with the view of starting in the "race for wealth." While the career of the former was one long-continued success, that of Johnson was anything but prosperous, the great lexicographer being at times almost on the verge of starvation. "Sudden prosperity had turned Garrick's head," writes Lord Macaulay; "continued adversity had soured Johnson's temper. Johnson saw with more envy than became so great a man the villa, the plate, the china, the Brussels carpet, which the little mimic had got by repeating what wiser men had written, and the exquisitely sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the thought that whilst all the rest of the world was applauding him, he could obtain from one morose cynic, whose opinion it was impossible to despise, scarcely any compliment not acidulated with scorn."

claimed the Dunmow flitch of bacon.

The

Garrick's villa is still kept, so far as modern taste will allow, in the same state in which it was when occupied by its illustrious owner. The paintings and the sculptures on the wall are still there; their colours have been slightly renewed where necessary, and the modern furniture has been dressed in Chinese patterned chintz to correspond. classical medallions, designed by Bentley or Wedg wood, still run round the walls below the cornices, and the marble mantelpieces, with their slight and slender carvings, remain in statu quo. The eastern wing and the central portion of the house are unaltered, or almost unaltered; but the old diningroom on the west of the entrance-hall is now made to do duty as a billiard-room, a new dining-room of lofty proportions having been added to the western end. In order to add this room to the house, it was found necessary to sacrifice four fine trees, under which Garrick doubtless had often sat. The lower room in the eastern wing is low, the height so gained being thrown into the upper room, which was evidently designed for music, and is still used as the chief drawing-room. Garrick's bed-room, on the first floor, has a northern aspect, and it remains but little changed.

The original statue of Shakespeare in the octagonal temple in the garden was of marble; a duplicate of it, worked in less ambitious stone, still occupies the same post of honour, The

walls of the temple are adorned with stuffed fish, trophies of the rod, caught in the river adjoining. It forms a large and pleasant summer-house. It is overshadowed by a noble group of cedars, Scotch firs, and lime-trees, and the land slopes deliciously down to the river.

The villa was owned by Mrs. Garrick till her death in the year 1822 (as above stated), when it was bought by a gentleman named Carr. He sold it to a Mr. Philips, from whom it was purchased, about 1864, by Mr. Edward Grove, whose widow still occupies it, and feels a most praiseworthy pride in the preservation of the fabric and all its associations.

The greater part of the village of Hampton forms the margin of an extensive "green," on one side of which is a broad roadway, and also a footpath overshadowed by trees, known as the "Maids of Honour Walk."

At the end of,his long and active career, Sir Christopher Wren retired in peace to his home at Hampton Court Green, his spirit not embittered by the ungrateful treatment which he had received, and simply saying that henceforth he desired to spend his days in tranquil study. Cheerful in his solitude, and as well content to die in the shade as in the blaze of his noontide fame, his son observes of him, in his "Parentalia," that "the vigour of his mind continued with a vivacity rarely found in persons of his age till within a short period of his death, and not till then could he quit the great aim of his life-to be a benefactor to mankind." | The five last years of his life were spent here in complete repose, returning to London occasionally to superintend the repairs of Westminster Abbey, his only remaining employment, and filling up his leisure hours with mathematical and astronomical studies. Time, though it enfeebled his limbs, left his faculties unclouded to the last. His great delight, to the very close of life, was to be carried into the heart of the huge city to see his great work, "the beginning and completion of which," says Horace Walpole, was an event which one cannot wonder left such an impression of content on the mind of the good old man, that it seemed to recall a memory almost deadened to every other use." Wren's death was as calm and tranquil as the tenor of his existence had been. On the 25th of February, 1723, his servant, conceiving that he slept after his dinner longer than usual, entered his room, and found him dead in his chair.

Holland, the actor, who was buried at Chiswick, was the son of a baker in this village. On the stage he was an imitator of Garrick, who so much valued him that he played the Ghost in Hamlet to aid

141

his benefit. Foote, who attended his funeral, regarded him in another light, as may be gathered from the fact that, after the interment was over, a friend accosting him with, "So, Foote, you have just come from my dear friend Holland's funeral," he replied, sarcastically and heartlessly, "Yes; we have just put the little baker into his oven."

Lord Sandwich (writes Cradock in his "Memoirs"), as First Lord of the Admiralty, in 1771-2, occupied “a retired mansion belonging to Lord Halifax, on the edge of Hampton Green."

Here, too, lived Sir Andrew Halliday, the eminent physician, to whom we owe the first general movement in favour of the lunatic poor. When a poor and unknown student at the University of Edinburgh, he addressed a pamphlet on the subject to Lord Henry Petty, afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne, then Chancellor of the Fxchequer. A Parliamentary inquiry was appointed, which led to the passing of an Act in 1808 for the establishment of county asylums.

Not content with the town house in Bury Street already mentioned, Sir Richard Steele, on his marriage with Mistress Scurlock in 1707, took for his wife a country house here, which he called "The Hovel," and to which he soon added a chariot and pair, enjoying also the luxury of a horse for his own riding, and going abroad like a dandy of the time, in a laced coat and a large black buckled periwig, which, Thackeray reckons, must have cost somebody fifty guineas. He was at this time a well-to-do gentleman, with the proceeds of an estate in Barbadoes, and his twofold office of gentleman-waiter on H.R.H. Prince George and one of the writers of the Gazette. "But," adds Thackeray, "it is melancholy to relate that with these houses, and chariots and horses, and income, Captain Steele was constantly in want of money, for which his beloved bride was asking as constantly. In the course of a few pages we find the shoemaker calling for money, and some directions from the captain, who has not thirty pounds to spare. He sends his wife-' the beautifullest object in the world,' as he calls her

now a guinea, then half a guinea, then a couple of guineas, then half a pound of tea; and again no money and no tea at all, but a promise that his darling Prue' shall have some in a day or two; with a request, perhaps, that she will send over his nightgown and shaving plate to the temporary lodgings where the nomadic captain is lying hidden from the bailiffs. To think that the pink and pride of chivalry should turn pale before

* See "Old and New London," Vol. IV., p. 202.

a writ! Addison sold the house and furniture at Hampton, and after deducting the sums which his incorrigible friend was indebted to him, handed over the residue of the proceeds of the sale to poor Dick, who was not in the least angry at Addison's summary proceedings, and, I dare say, was very glad of any sale or execution the result of which was to give him a little ready money."

Hampton Wick is that portion of the parish abutting upon the Thames at the foot of Kingston Bridge. It was made into a separate parish for ecclesiastical purposes, and the chapel of St. John the Baptist, which was built in 1830, has become the parish church of the district. It consists almost entirely of detached villas, inhabited by

wealthy Londoners. In a map of 1823, a park on the west side of the village of Hampton, away from the river, appears as belonging to the late Sir C. Edmonstone, Bart.

Near Hampton Court was a pleasant seat, 'Abbs Court," which belonged in Pope's days to Edward Wortley Montagu, the husband of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose general avarice and habit of selling his game is satirised (under the name of Wordley) by Pope in his "Imitations of Horace":-

"Delightful Abbs Court, if its fields afford
Their fruits to you, confesses you its lord.
All Wordly's hens, nay, partridges, sold to town,
His venison too, a guinea makes your own."

In the preceding chapter we have seen how, early in the reign of Henry VIII., Cardinal Wolsey acquired a lease of the manor of Hampton from the prior of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, or Knights Hospitallers. He had been induced to fix upon this spot as the site of his residence by certain physicians, whom he had asked to choose for him the most healthy and pleasant site within an easy distance of London, the springs of Coombe Wood, in the immediate neighbourhood of Hampton, affording water best suited to the requirements of the cardinal, who was at that time suffering from some internal complaint. In the Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1834, is printed a copy of the lease of the manor and manor-house, extracted from the Cottonian Manuscripts as follows:

"This Indenture made between Sir Thomas Docwra, Priour of the Hospitall of Seynt John Jerusalem, in England, and his bredren knights of the same hospitall, upon that oone partie, and the most reverend fader in god Thomas Wulcy, Archebisshop of Yorke and primate of England upon that

other partie, Witnessith that the said priour and his bredren with theire hole assent and auctorite of their Chapitur, have graunted and letten to fferme to the said Archebusshop, their manor of Hampton Courte, in the countie of Midd., with all landes and tenements, medowes, leanes, and pastures, rentes, and services, vewe of ffranciplegis, perquesites of courts, ffishing and ffishing weres, and with the waren of conys, and with all manner proufites and commodites, and other things what so ever they be in any manner of wise to the forseid manor belonging or apperteigning. To have and to holde the foreseid manor with the appurtenaunces to the foreseid most Reverend ffader in god Thomas Wulcy, Archebisshop of Yorke, and to his assignes ffro the ffest of the Nativite of Seynt John Baptist last past before the date hereof unto thend and terme of lxxxxix yeres than next following, and fully to be ended, yielding and paying therefor yerely to the seid priour and his successours in the tresoury of there hous of Seynt John's of Clarkenwell beside London, fifty poundes sterling at the ffestes of the purification of our Lady and of Seynt Barnabe thappostle, by even porcions. And also payeing and supporting all manner of charges ordinary and extraordinary due and goying oute of the seid manor, with the appurtenances during the seid terme. And the seid Archebusshop and his assignes yerely during the seid terme shal have allowance of the seid priour and his successors in the paymentes of the rent and ferme of fifty poundes aforesaid