A FLEET STREET CHURCH.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2050, 11 January 1901, Page 6

A FLEET STREET CHURCH.

Miss Isabella Fyvie Mayo, in an article entitled ‘ In the Heart of London,’ in ‘ Sunday at Home,’ refers among other matters to St. Bride’s Church, which has recently attracted a good deal of attention through the reconstruction of the buildings facing Fleet street, and over which the father of -ar Anthony Hope, the novelist, officiates as vicar. Of the church and its surroundings Miss Mayo says : The church of St. Bride’s, standing in a tiny quadrangle at the end of a court opening on the left side of Fleet street (going westward), is justly counted one of Sir Christopher Wren’s architectural triumphs. It contains the graves of many interesting people. There lies Richard Lovelace, the poet, of whom few know much nowadays, though everybody is familiar with his beautiful lines— Stone wails do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage ; Minds innocent and quiet take That for their hermitage. Lovelace knew what he was writing about, for he, a young, aristocratic, popular Royalist, was more than once in prison during the contests preceding the Commonwealth. Alas, in the course of one of these confinements the lady of his love, hearing that lie was dead, proved faithless to his memory and married another man! . This was she to whom, on bis going beyond the seas,” he had addressed the exquisite verses—

Though seas and land betwixt us both, Our faith and troth, Like separated souls, All time and space controls; Above the highest sphere wc meet Unseen, unknown, and greet as angels greet. It was she, too, whom he thus apostrophised— I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more.

Her default was a blow from which Lovelace never rallied. Though the Parliamentarians, when finally triumphant, did not deal harshly with him, he was 'a man broken in health and fortune, and at forty years of age he died in a poor lodging in Shoe lane. Lovelace was buried in the old church destroyed by the Fire, and the present bt. Bride’s seems to have no memorial of him. Also buried in St. Bride’s is the widow of a more' fortunate poet of about the same period, and on the same side m politics—Su William Davenaut. He had many ups and downs in his career, and his poems are now little known, though in the end he basked m Royal favor ” and was poet laureate. Probably the best worth remembering of his history is the story that when he was in prison, during the Parliamentary triumphs, Milton interceded successfully in his behalf, and that when the Royalist party were again in the ascendant Davenant interposed in favor of Milton —a suggestion of how intellectual aninities must tend to ameliorate the bitterness of political conflict. (Samuel Richardson, the bookseller novelist, is also buried in ot. Bride’s Church. Though he died at Parson s Green his remains were brought here, under his own directions, that they might be interred by the side of his first wife, not her with whom he had lived in the neighboring Salisbury court —where Oliver Goldsmith had corrected proofs for him. Mr Hutton report?: “ A large stone in the pavement of the middle aisle, near the centre of the church, and by the side of the pews numbered 12 and 13 (in 1885), records the fact that Richardson lies beneath it. The parish, during the century or more that has elapsed since his death, has not had interest enough in the father of the English novel to erect a tablet to his memory, and the stone above him, placed there by the loving hands of his family, is concealed from the public by the coarse matting which generally covers it.” The chief interest of St. Bride’s churchyard is that for a time Milton had a home there. Some authorities believe that it was to this house that he brought his young wife, Mary Powcl, who so ill bore the change from her merry country home to the quiet, studious city abode that she broke away from her wifely duty and rushed home to her own family, who consented to harbor her. The poet husband took the sternest view of her conduct, and made it the basis of apublic consideration of the whole question of maried life. Yet giddy Mary Powcl must have felt that a wounded heart beat beneath the austere garb of the controversialist, for it was not very long before her mind was changed, and a single and sudden interview with him in his Aldersgate street home (to which he had removed in the interval) sufficed not only to win his forgiveness tor herself, but his friendship and furtherance for her relatives, whom he even welcomed into his Puritan home, when the Royalist side was for the time ruined. Mary’s father had never paid her promised dowry, and it is said that her mother had encouraged her rebellion and flight. Under such circumstances it may well be said that the records of private life do not contain a. more magnanimous example of practical and complete forgiveness. Milton must surely have had this episode in his mind when he wrote of the reconciliation of Adam and live.