In Memoriam: Temple Bar [pp. 75-80]

8APPLE TONS' JO URNA,L.
to be in the pay of the crown for insuring the subserviency of their votes, and lolled about the compartment where Marvell sat dining. Having eaten
heartily of boiled beef, runs the chronicle, with some
roasted pigeons and a dish of asparagus, and finished
a pint of port, the serving-man brought in the reckoning. Taking the coin out of his pocket, and holding it between his finger and thumb within sight of
his venal associates, said Marvell, "Gentlemen, who
would let himself out for hire while he can have
such a dinner for half a crown?" Few men, we
should say, ought to have done so when a half-crown
could purchase so ample and appetizing a feast. The
rebuke was a severe one, and might have been retailed with profit to my Lord-Treasurer Danby, who
would then, doubtless, have been spared the wellmerited humiliation of repocketing the thousandpound Treasury order with which he attempted to
bribe the unimpeachable member for Hull. Mr.
Marvell's inward appreciation of good dishes seems
to have been judged his one assailable weakness by
his tempters, but happily without reason.
"Jack, child, what had I for dinner yesterday?"
asked Marvell of his serving-boy when the lordtreasurer, "out of pure affection," had laid a thousand-pound order upon the table.
"Don't you remember, sir? You had the little
shoulder of mutton that you ordered me to bring
from a woman in the market."
"Very right, child; what have I for dinner today?"
"Don't you know, sir, that you bid me lay the
blade-bone to broil?"
"'Tis so: very right, my child; go away.-My
lord, do you hear that? Andrew Marvell's dinner is
provided. There's your piece of paper; I want it
not.. I know the sort of kindness you intended. I
live here to serve my constituents. The ministry
may seek men for their purpose; I am not one."
Temple Bar truly was a bright and pleasing memodrial when it could recall to the memory so signal
an example of sturdy, uncompromising honesty combating single-handed the flagrant corruption of the
ministers of Charles II.'s reign. With truth it might
be said of Marvell what himself wrote of Cromwell:
"He nothing common did, or mean,
Upon that memorable scene."
Rummaging over some books in an old country
inn the other day, we took up a little volume bound
in the familiar marbled leather of a century or so
ago. It was a volume of poems by Mr. Dryden, and
was imprinted at the sign of "The Judge's Head,"
by Jacob Tonson, the "dog " "With leering looks, bull-faced, and speckled fair,
With two left legs and Judas-colored hair,
And frouzy pores that taint the ambient air "who used so to worry the poet that he threatened a
fuller portrait if the greedy old man didn't keep
within bounds. Temple Bar kept watch and ward
over Tonson's shop, and many a time must the irritated poet have paused at its threshold to consider
whether or not it were possible to stand another day
of the importunate bookseller's troubling. One day
came Dryden furious with anger, bruised with blows,
and bursting with revenge, and halted at Temple
Bar. He passed into Child's bank, then Mr. Blanchard the goldsmith's, and deposited fifty pounds as
a reward for any one who would discover the bullies
of Lord Rochester who had beaten him in Rose
Alley for some scurrilous verses really written by
the Earl of Dorset. Prudence and reason were for
the moment crushed by the spirit of revenge. Dryden promised, in the advertisement publishing the
reward, that, if the discoverer of the names of the
persons who had beaten him should be himself one
of the actors, "he shall still have the fifty pounds,
without letting his name be known or receiving the
least trouble by any prosecution."
Need the readers of this paper be reminded that
the memories of Richard Steele and his bitter enemy Jonathan Swift, two of our own earliest and most
valued friends, linger about Temple Bar? Not a
dozen footsteps from it "Gulliver's Travels," for
which Motte, the bookseller, grudgingly gave two
hundred pounds, was first published to the world.
The man who could "write finely upon a broomstick" must time and time again have halted beneath
the shade of the old city monument to exchange
greetings with a friend, too often perhaps, as the dean
was plodding wearily westward, one more ambitious
scheme checked in its growth. As for Dick Steele,
whose domestic life has been laid so bare to us that
it would seem impossible to scrape together a single
incident of it unknown to our generation, his doings
at the Kit-Cat leave us sufficient warranty that Temple Bar knew him full well. His "dear little, peevish, wise governess" must have cursed its very name,
conscious as she was that most of the letters to "Dear
Prue" were written on the farther side of it. Here
is one we dare venture to wage went through one of
the side-ways of Temple Bar:
"DEAREST BEING ON EARTH: Pardon me if
you do not see me till eleven o'clock, having met a
schoolfellow from India, by whom I am to be informed in things this night which extremely concern your obedient husband,
"RICHARD STEELE."
A fretful, shrewish, lecturing wife is, unfortunately, apt to make a lying husband. Swift, writing to
Stella, remarks: "He (Steele) is governed by his
wife abominably; I never saw her since I came, nor
has he ever made me an invitation. Either he dare
not, or he is such a Tisdal fellow that he never minds
it." We- do not believe in the schoolfellow from India, but unwillingly, and somewhat fearfully (lest
we should do his shade a grievous wrong), do believe
that poor Steele tucked sundry bottles of wine in
his band that night, which were most likely to have
been the things that Prue's husband was so extremely concerned to discuss.
Addison, Steele's fellow-worker and friend, was
another of the wits whose memory Temple Bar has
served to keep fresh and green. Almost daily he
walked to his work through one or other of its arched
ways, sometimes to discuss the literary projects of
78