urse
between the poet and his 'learned counsel' was cordial and sincere; and
of the letters that passed between them sixty-eight have been published,
ranging from 1714 to the last year of Pope's life. They are short,
unaffected letters--more truly _letters_ than any others in the series."
Fortescue was promoted to the bench of the Exchequer in 1735, from
thence to the Common Pleas in 1738, and in 1741 was made Master of the
Rolls. Pope's letters are often addressed to "his counsel learned in the
law, at his house at the upper end of Bell Yard, near unto Lincoln's
Inn." In March, 1736, he writes of "that filthy old place, Bell Yard,
which I want them and you to quit."

Apollo Court, next Bell Yard, has little about it worthy of notice
beyond the fact that it derived its name from the great club-room at the
"Devil" Tavern, that once stood on the opposite side of Fleet Street,
and the jovialities of which we have already chronicled.

CHAPTER VII.

FLEET STREET (NORTHERN TRIBUTARIES--CHANCERY LANE).

The Asylum for Jewish Converts--The Rolls Chapel--Ancient
Monuments--A Speaker Expelled for Bribery--"Remember
Caesar"--Trampling on a Master of the Rolls--Sir William Grant's
Oddities--Sir John Leach--Funeral of Lord Gifford--Mrs. Clark and
the Duke of York--Wolsey in his Pomp--Strafford--"Honest Isaak"--The
Lord Keeper--Lady Fanshawe--Jack Randal--Serjeants' Inn--An Evening
with Hazlitt at the "Southampton"--Charles Lamb--Sheridan--The
Sponging Houses--The Law Institute--A Tragical Story.

Chancery, or Chancellor's, Lane, as it was first called, must have been
a mere quagmire, or cart-track, in the reign of Edward I., for Strype
tells us that at that period it had become so impassable to knight,
monk, and citizen, that John Breton, Custos of London, had it barred up,
to "hinder any harm;" and the Bishop of Chichester, whose house was
there (now Chichester Rents), kept up the bar ten years; at the end of
that time, on an inquisition of the annoyances of London, the bishop was
proscribed at an inquest for setting up two staples and a bar, "whereby
men with carts and other carriages could not pass." The bishop pleaded
John Breton's order, and the sheriff was then commanded to remove the
annoyance, and the hooded men with their carts once more cracked their
whips and whistled to their horses up and down the long disused lane.

Half-way up on the east side of Chancery Lane a dull archw