London, an intimate picture . of All Hallows, torn down in 1878,where Milton was baptized. A few steps back, nearto Cheapside, at what is now No. 63, Miltons fathercarried on the trade of a scrivener, and there thepoet was born in 1608. A great wholesale shop ofwomens hats now stands upon the site. It is in-teresting to compare the knowledge we have concern-ing those two poets, Shakespeare and , the professional actor, followed a call-ing so comparatively disreputable in those days thatnot even his supreme genius was able to rescue muchof his history from obscurity. We know a
London, an intimate picture . of All Hallows, torn down in 1878,where Milton was baptized. A few steps back, nearto Cheapside, at what is now No. 63, Miltons fathercarried on the trade of a scrivener, and there thepoet was born in 1608. A great wholesale shop ofwomens hats now stands upon the site. It is in-teresting to compare the knowledge we have concern-ing those two poets, Shakespeare and , the professional actor, followed a call-ing so comparatively disreputable in those days thatnot even his supreme genius was able to rescue muchof his history from obscurity. We know almostnothing about him. Of Milton, the scholar, bornwhile Shakespeare was yet alive, we know almosteverything. We know not only where he was born,where baptized, and where he lies buried, but weknow where he was married and remarried, and alsoevery one of his dwelling-places. Back we go into Cheapside and again we are inthe stream of traffic that thinks not upon Milton,nor yet on Shakespeare. Bow Church alone per- [98] ••. THE CITY haps arrests their gaze, not because Wren built it,or because it dates originally to the beginning ofthe Norman Era, but because it has a clock over-hanging the pavement that reminds them to wonders whether this was not a happier regionin Tudor times or in Stuart, when the cry of Pren-tices and Clubs, brought out from the shops hun-dreds of young ruffians with bludgeons to upholdtheir rights — ruffians who afterwards grew intogreat city merchants and Lord Mayors, like Ho-garths industrious apprentice. Pepys recalls oneof these little Cheapside riots protesting againsttwo lads of the prentice order being put in the pil-lory, and a small apprentice of thirteen informinghim that it was an unheard of outrage, and one re-calls Chaucers apprentice of Chepe: Out of the shop thider would he lepe, And til he had all the sight ysein, And danced wel, he wold not come agen. Chepe certainly seems remote from those times, orfrom the days when a kni
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1913
