Square, we know that this quarter was then fashionable, and the names of such men as Bolingbroke and Lord Peterborough were connected with it, the former as a resident, often visited by Swift and Harley; the latter coming hither to see his future wife, the beautiful and talented Anastasia Robinson whose father had established, in the Square, weekly concerts much affected by the fashionable world.

Friendship also drew Esmond to the far west of the town-to Kensington Square where Lady Castlewood had a house, where, by the bye, Mrs. Scurlock, when being courted by her future husband, Dick Steele, also lodged. Dick and Harry used to meet constantly at Kensington, we are told. "They were always prowling about the place, or dismally walking thence, or eagerly running thither. They emptied scores of bottles at the King's Arms,' each man prating of his love." The "King's Arms " I have been unable to identify, but we know that Knightsbridge and Kensington teemed with inns, and no doubt the place has its actual prototype, even if it was not known under the name (a common enough one) selected by Thackeray.

Which house in Kensington Square (off which, in Young Street, Thackeray himself lived) was in the author's eye for the residence of Lady Castlewood, it is, of course, impossible to say. There are still houses remaining in this picturesque old-fashioned quarter, one of which might easily have been the scene of those episodes which are so familiar to readers of "Esmond." The Square was becoming fashionable at this period; it had but recently been

completed (1698), and besides the Castlewood ménage, Addison is said to have lodged here for some weeks before his marriage with Lady Warwick,* and Steele put up at a house kept by a Mrs. Hardresse in 1708, while the Duchess of Mazarin flaunted her beauty in the precincts at a slightly earlier date.

If there is any doubt as to Addison ever having been an inhabitant of Kensington Square, there is none regarding his sojourn in "The Haymarket," whither he took Esmond and Steele to crack a bottle on a famous occasion. In Chapter XI. we are told how Dick and Harry were on their way down Jermyn Street,† when they saw a gentleman poring over a folio volume in a book-shop near to St. James's Church. This was no other than the great Mr. Addison who invited the friends to his lodging hard by. There Steele read portions of "The Campaign," the manuscript of which lay on the table, with the enthusiasm of a poet and a friend. To this small attic, over a shop, in after years, came a little deformed man with a friend. "In this garret Addison wrote his Campaign," the former exclaimed, with flashing eyes. It was Pope pointing out the workshop of genius to Harte, the actor. Within a month after the day when Addison took his friends home with him, "All the town was in an uproar of admiration of The Campaign'," writes Thackeray, "which Dick Steele was spouting at every coffee-house in Whitehall and Covent Garden." But real campaigns, not the listen*There has been some doubt cast on this, however.

6

†Thackeray spells it Germain Street, as it was once written, although it took its name from Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans, who laid out St. James's Square. Shadwell in his "Virtuoso," 1676, writes it Germin Street.

ing to poet's polished stanzas commemorating them, were again to claim Esmond, and at Oudenarde, and Wynendael, which Webb won although Marlborough did his best to rob him of the glory, he was present, and later, in defence of his friend Webb, fought a duel with Mohun. After this affair he returned to England where he was hospitably entreated of the old Dowager at Chelsea, whither he, however, escaped to the more congenial company in Kensington Square. One more campaign, that made bloody by Malplaquet, and to Esmond, interesting because he first saw the King, "James III.,” with whom he was to be later so closely associated, saw the end of his "Battles and Bruises," and he again came to home and Kensington, where he "took a lodging near to his mistresses." It is not here the place to follow Esmond's fortunes or the course of the history of the period, which can be read so much better in the actual pages of Thackeray's masterpiece. We get glimpses of Marlborough's fall from almost regal power; of the wits, Garth, and Arbuthnot and Gay and Prior; we meet the redoubtable Dean in the coffe-houses, or coming from his lodgings in Bury Street, St. James's; we wander with Esmond so far east as The Exchange, in the Strand, to buy a fan or a pair of gloves for Beatrix-that Exchange built on the site of Durham House Stables (where the Adelphi is now), where Don Pantaleon Sa had once disturbed the peace, and "The White Milliner " had later hidden the identity of the Duchess of Tyrconnel.

The two incidents on which the latter part of "Esmond" turns, are connected with London. The