astonishment of Doctor Johnson, and whose fate is denounced by Dryden as the disgrace of the age, expired of sheer distress in this miserable, crowded, suffocating Rose Street, and was buried, at the cost of a friend, in the neighbouring churchyard of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, close under the north wall of the church at the east end. The ashes of its houses may be blown to the four winds, and far-reaching improvements, noble thoroughfares, and grand edifices, may obliterate all traces of its whereabouts; but as long as our language lasts, pilgrims will come to seek the spot where Butler died, as Colley Cibber says, “with the highest esteem of the Court, in a garret.”
It was under the same reign, and very close upon the same time, that Rose Street was the scene of another incident, no less memorable in our literary annals, although not quite so tragical. In this narrow gorge, which, remembering how scantily even the Strand was lighted with paper lanterns at that period, must have been pitch dark, Dryden, the poet, was set upon at night by three hired assassins, and beaten, to use the expressive phrase, “within an inch of his life.” His biographers tell us that when this ferocious assault was made upon him, he was going home to his house in Gerard Street, from Will’s Coffee-house, which he was in the habit of frequenting nightly, and which stood at the south-western corner of Bow Street, looking into Russell Street. This statement has given occasion to much controversy and debate. Concerning the main fact of this beating, there is no question; but proof is wanting that Dryden had been at Will’s that night, and, wherever he was going, he certainly could not have been going to Gerard Street, if it be true, as it is alleged, that Gerard Street was not built for two years afterwards. Quiet, intelligent people who read books for their amusement, and, in a general way, for their instruction, have no notion, happily for themselves, of the voluntary drudgery a literary antiquary undergoes in the pursuit of small, and, apparently, trivial details. A date, which does not seem of much value when it is got, may cost weeks of research; and the tiniest scraps and fragments of rectified information, which occupy hardly a line in the relation, and which are utterly insignificant in comparison with the large masses of well-known particulars in which they are set, may be the result of patient inquiry, never lost sight of through the miscellaneous studies of half a life. Don’t disparage the antiquary. Let him work on in his own way, and fall out with his fellow-labourers, and abuse everybody after the bent of his temper, and believe that nobody knows anything except himself. If he be conscientious, the world will gain something by his labours; and if he be not, he will assuredly “come to grief.” As for accuracy in small facts, it is a quality not to be lightly estimated. He who is indifferent to accuracy in small facts, is not very likely to appreciate the full importance of accuracy in large ones. The sum total is made up of items. Hours are composed of minutes. If you do not set your watch accurately to the minutes, it will be wrong in the hour, although the error may be slight. Besides, in literature there is this additional motive for observing a vigilant precision, that it keeps us always on the right track for fresh suggestions and further discoveries.
It must be confessed, however, in spite of our respect for the antiquaries, that they have not rendered us much help towards the solution of the problem as to where Dryden was going on the night of the assault. Perhaps we have no right to inquire; but as the question has been raised, we are bound to see exactly how it stands.
Not very long after the new theatre, called the “Duke’s House,” was opened in Dorset Gardens, under the management of Lady Davenant, on the site of the old playhouse that stood in Salisbury Court before the civil wars, Dryden went to live in Fleet Street, on the verge of Salisbury Court, close to the theatre. He had no immediate interest in the house; for, although he had been intimate with Sir William Davenant, who died some four or five years before, and had helped him to metamorphose the “Tempest” into an opera, and had succeeded him in the office of Laureate, he was too closely allied by politics and literary engagements with the King’s company, whose house in Drury Lane had been lately burned down, and who were just then playing in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, to take any direct concern in Lady Davenant’s establishment. He did concern himself in it afterwards, no doubt; and was complained against to the Lord Chamberlain by Killigrew’s people for violating his contract with them, by writing for the rival establishment. But that has nothing to do with our present business. Dryden is stated on the authority of the rate books of the parish, to have lived in Fleet Street from 1673 to 1682, when he removed to a house in Long Acre, exactly facing the dismal embouchure of Rose Street. Here he lived till 1686, when he went further west to the house, 43, Gerard Street, where he died on the 1st of May, 1700.
Now, as the assault took place on the night of the 18th of December, 1679, there would be no great difficulty in determining where Dryden was living at the time—if these dates be correct. And here it is that our friends, the antiquaries, darken counsel; for we find that while the rate books of St. Bride’s are quoted to show that in 1679 he was living in Fleet Street,—the rate books of St. Martin’s are relied upon, with equal confidence, to prove that he was living at the same time in Long Acre. The biographers who have escaped the dilemma by sending him on to Gerard Street at once, may, therefore, turn out to be right after all. Fleet Street at all events is put out of court. We know from the contemporary account of the circumstance that he was going from Covent Garden; and, if he were going home, as must be inferred from the lateness of the hour, he could not have been going to Fleet Street, which would take him in the opposite direction, while the way both to Gerard Street and Long Acre lay direct through this unsavoury Rose avenue. To one or other of these residences he must have been going. Perhaps most readers will be of opinion that it is not very material which.
That he had just left Will’s Coffee-house, may be taken for granted. The newspaper of the