ss
of the listeners. There seemed to be no partisanship either for the
speaker or the Grand. Once, when the former was more than usually
emphatic in his denunciations, a tall pale man, with a Shakespeare
forehead, rose suddenly, with a determined air, as if about to fiercely
interrupt; but it turned out he only wanted to catch the waiter's eye,
and this done, he pointed silently to his empty glass, and remarked, in
a hoarse whisper, 'Without sugar, as before.'"

[Illustration: COGERS' HALL (_see page 124_).]

Gunpowder Alley, a side-twig of Shoe Lane, leads us to the death-bed of
an unhappy poet, poor Richard Lovelace, the Cavalier, who, dying here
two years before the "blessed" Restoration, in a very mean lodging, was
buried at the west end of St. Bride's Church. The son of a knight, and
brought up at Oxford, Anthony Wood describes the gallant and hopeful lad
at sixteen, when presented at the Court of Charles I., as "the most
amiable and beautiful youth that eye ever beheld. A person, also, of
innate modesty, virtue, and courtly deportment, which made him then, but
specially after, when he retired to the great city, much admired and
adored by the female sex." Presenting a daring petition from Kent in
favour of the king, the Cavalier poet was thrown into prison by the Long
Parliament, and was released only to waste his fortune in Royalist
plots. He served in the French army, raised a regiment for Louis XIII.,
and was left for dead at Dunkirk. On his return to England, he found
Lucy Sacheverell--his "Lucretia," the lady of his love--married, his
death having been reported. All went ill. He was again imprisoned, grew
penniless, had to borrow, and fell into a consumption from despair for
love and loyalty. "Having consumed all his estate," says Anthony Wood,
"he grew very melancholy, which at length brought him into a
consumption; became very poor in body and purse, was the object of
charity, went in ragged clothes (whereas when he was in his glory he
wore cloth of gold and silver), and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty
places, more befitting the worst of beggars than poorest of servants."
There is a doubt, however, as to whether Lovelace died in such abject
poverty, poor, dependent, and unhappy as he might have been. Lovelace's
verse is often strained, affected, and wanting in judgment; but at times
he mounts a bright-winged Pegasus, and with plume and feather flying,
tosses his hand up, gay and chivalrous as Rupert's br