The description concludes with a brief mention of burning the effigies, which, on these occasions, appear to have been of pasteboard.[75]
One of the great figurers in this ceremony was the doleful image of Sir Edmondbury Godfrey, a magistrate, supposed to have been killed by the Papists during the question of the plot. Dryden has a fine contemptuous couplet upon it, in one of his prologues;--
"Sir Edmondbury first in woful wise, Leads up the show, _and milks their maudlin eyes_."
We will begin with the left side, as we are there already; and first let us express our thanks for the neat opening by which St. Bride's church has been rendered an ornament to this populous thoroughfare. The steeple is one of the most beautiful of Wren's productions, though diminished, in consequence of its having been found to be too severely tried by the wind. But a ray now comes out of this opening as we pass the street, better even than that of the illuminated clock at night time; for there, in a lodging in the churchyard, lived Milton, at the time that he undertook the education of his sister's children. He was then young and unmarried. He is said to have rendered his young scholars, in the course of a year, able to read Latin at sight, though they were but nine or ten years of age. As to the clock, which serves to remind the jovial that they ought to be at home, we are loth to object to anything useful; and in fact we admit its pretensions; and yet as there is a time for all things, there would seem to be a time for time itself; and we doubt whether those who do not care to ascertain the hour beforehand, will derive much benefit from this glaring piece of advice.
"At the west end of St. Bride's Church," according to Wood, was buried Richard Lovelace, Esq., one of the most elegant of the cavaliers of Charles the First, and author of the exquisite ballad beginning--
"When Love with unconfined wings Hovers within my gates, And my divine Althea brings To whisper at my grates.
"When I lie tangled in her hair, And fetter'd in her eye, The birds that wanton in the air, Know no such liberty.
"Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage, Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage."