Chelsea in the olden & present times / by George Bryan.

  • Bryan, George.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chelsea in the olden & present times / by George Bryan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    92/240 (page 80)
    SHADWELL, POET LAUREAT. Swift has been very minute and circumstantial in describing the particulars relative to his residence here, and his aquaintance with Dr. Atterbury. I will select one instance of it:—“ I got here,” says he, “ with Patrick and my portmanteau for sixpence, and pay six shillings a week for one silly room, with confounded coarse sheets. I lodge just over against Dr. Atterbury’s house ; and yet, perhaps, I shall not like the place the better for that.” Thomas Shadwell, Esq., Poet Laureat, another resident of Church Street, was born at Stanton Hall, Norfolk, and received his education at Bury Shool, and Caius College, Cambridge. His father, who held a place of profit and distinction in the law in Ireland,, bestowed the learning and exercises of a gentleman upon him. Notwithstanding that. Lord Rochester has said, “ None seem to touch, true Comedy But haety Shadwell and slow Wycherlye,” yet that lord had a better opinion of his conversation than his writings when he said “ that if Shadwell had burned all he wrote, and printed all he spoke, he would have shewn more wit and humour than any other poet.” In the reign of William HI. he succeeded Dryden, as Poet Laureat, under whose lash he had previously fallen. His works, consisting of seventeen plays, were published in three volumes i2mo. in 1720, with a short account of his life written by his son. Sir John Shadwell, Knight, who was physician to Queen Anne, and resided in a house at Chelsea, which had been previously occupied by Dr. Arbuthnot. Shadwell died at Chelsea in 1692, aged 52, and was buried in the Church, November 24, when a funeral sermon was preached by his friend Dr. Nicholas Brady, in which he assures us that “ his natural and acquired abilities made him sufficiently re- markable to all that he conversed with, very few being equal to him in all the becoming qualities and accomplishments of a gentleman. His widow, who had been an actress, survived him, and resided at Chelsea some years. Dr. John Arbuthnot, a native of Scotland, had his education in the University of Aberdeen, where he took the degree of Doctor of Physic. He came to London about the year 1695, and at first taught the mathematics for his support. His facetious and agreeable conversation introduced him'by degrees into practice; and he became eminent in his profession. Being ^t Epsom when Prince George of Denmark was suddenly taken