Pepys and Evelyn record no more interesting incidents connected with the Great Fire than are to be found in the reports, given by other writers, of the deaths of these two distinguished pupils of Merchant Tailors’. Shirley had exceeded by two years the allotted aggregate of “threescore years and ten” when he and his second wife, Frances, were driven from their habitation in Fleet-street. They took refuge from the flames in the neighbouring parish of St. Giles’s in the Fields. But so overcome were this much-tried and ancient pair, that they both died on the same day, and within a month of the great calamity. The hapless couple were buried in one grave in St. Giles’s, and became the associates of a goodly but silent company,—among others, Chapman, the poet, and translator of Homer, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury; a company that was afterwards enlarged by the mute presence of Charles the Second’s “Dick Penderell,” Andrew Marvell, the infamous Countess of Shrewsbury, who held Buckingham’s horse while the Duke slew her husband in a duel, and Sir Roger L’Estrange, who is called “the wit,” upon the principle of naming ill-painted animals on village sign-boards,—you would not have made the necessary discovery without the explanatory ‘legend.’ As for poor Calamy, he too died of the Fire. He was driven through the burning ruins, and so shocked was he at the sight of the destruction that had fallen on the great theatre of his popularity, that he never again quitted the room at Enfield, whither he was conveyed, but died on the day that Shirley and his wife were buried. Thus perished two of the greatest of the _alumni_ of whom Merchant Tailors’ can boast. To the roll of those pupils we will again resort. First among them we find handsome Ezekiel Hopkins, with whom all the women were in love,—in love both with his preaching and his person. Oh, happy Ezekiel! cunning Hopkins! Presbyterian when Presbytery was in power; Independent when to be so was to be “No. 1;” and winning all hearts from the episcopal pulpit of St Mary’s, Exeter, and subsequently St. Mary’s, Aldermanbury, when Episcopacy and Royalty walked hand-in-hand among the lieges. Excellent Ezekiel! But, if he had his conceits, his schoolfellow Webb had his hobby; and nothing could convince _him_ that the Chinese language was not the language spoken by Adam and Eve before the Fall.