ng trout to
pull it," we never could understand; but Byron was no angler, and we
suppose he thought Walton's advice about sewing up frogs' mouths, &c.,
somewhat hard-hearted.

North, in his life of that faithful courtier of Charles II., Lord Keeper
Guildford, mentions that his lordship "settled himself in the great
brick house in Serjeants' Inn, near Chancery Lane, which was formerly
the Lord Chief Justice Hyde's, and that he held it till he had the Great
Seal, and some time after. When his lordship lived in this house, before
his lady began to want her health, he was in the height of all the
felicity his nature was capable of. He had a seat in St. Dunstan's
Church appropriated to him, and constantly kept the church in the
mornings, and so his house was to his mind; and having, with leave, a
door into Serjeants' Inn garden, he passed daily with ease to his
chambers, dedicated to business and study. His friends he enjoyed at
home, and politic ones often found him out at his chambers." He rebuilt
Serjeants' Inn Hall, which had become poor and ruinous, and improved all
the dwellings in Chancery Lane from Jackanapes Alley down to Fleet
Street. He also drained the street for the first time, and had a rate
levied on the unwilling inhabitants, after which his at first reluctant
neighbours thanked him warmly. This same Lord Keeper, a time-server and
friend of arbitrary power, according to Burnet, seems to have been a
learned and studious man, for he encouraged the sale of barometers and
wrote a philosophical essay on music. It was this timid courtier that
unscrupulous Jeffreys vexed by spreading a report that he had been seen
riding on a rhinoceros, then one of the great sights of London. Jeffreys
was at the time hoping to supersede the Lord Keeper in office, and was
anxious to cover him with ridicule.

Besides the Caesars, Cecils, Throckmortons, Lincolns, Sir John Franklin,
and Edward Reeve, who, according to Mr. Noble, all resided in Chancery
Lane, when it was a fashionable legal quarter, we must not forget that
on the site of No. 115 lived Sir Richard Fanshawe, the ambassador sent
by Charles II. to arrange his marriage with the Portuguese princess.
This accomplished man, who translated Guarini's "Pastor Fido," and the
"Lusiad" of Camoens, died at Madrid in 1666. His brave yet gentle wife,
who wrote some interesting memoirs, gives a graphic account of herself
and her husband taking leave of his royal master, Charles I., at H