We notice the fact, in order to observe _how fond
the poets were of occupying houses of this description. Milton seems to
have made a point of having one_. The only London residence of Chapman
which is known, was in Old Street Road; doubtless at that time a rural
suburb. Beaumont and Fletcher's house, on the Surrey side of the Thames,
(for they lived as well as wrote together,) most probably had a garden;
and Dryden's house in Gerard Street looked into the garden of the
mansion built by the Earls of Leicester. A tree, or even a flower, put
in a window in the streets of a great city, (and the London citizens, to
their credit, are fond of flowers,) affects the eye something in the
same way as the hand-organs, which bring unexpected music to the ear.
They refresh the common-places of life, shed a harmony through the busy
discord, and appeal to those first sources of emotion, which are
associated with the remembrance of all that is young and innocent."
Milton must have been a passionate lover of flowers and flower-gardens
or he could never have exhibited the exquisite taste and genial feeling
which characterize all the floral allusions and descriptions with which
so much of his poetry is embellished. He lived for some time in a house
in Westminster over-looking the Park. The same house was tenanted by
Jeremy Bentham for forty years.
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