In those years plain little Thomas Gray,[281] who could see the ‘northern heights’ from his lodgings west of the museum, with their woods and massy elms, and loved them as much as Milton had done—Gray of the deathless ‘Elegy,’ that, had he never written another line, would have ranked him with the immortals, might occasionally have been met wandering alone upon the Heath, or in the company of friends in the walks, an incomprehensible poet to the author of ‘Rasselas,’ who could neither feel his sensitiveness to the influence of Nature nor the exquisite pathos of this poem. As one by one the bright lights of literature faded out, others arose in their stead, and found their way as visitors to the topmost of the London levels. Dr. Johnson still survives the greater number of his contemporaries, and is occasionally to be found at Hampstead, a guest at the suburban feasts given by his friends. In 1778 Miss Burney’s ‘Evelina’ appeared, to the surprise and delight of the world of letters, and little Fanny Burney, Dr. Johnson’s ‘Fannikin,’ became famous. Certain scenes in her novel assure us of her acquaintance with Hampstead Wells and its sometime visitors. Her description of the ball in the Long Room has done as much to memorise that building as Richardson’s ‘Clarissa’ did for the Upper Flask and Flask Walk. When, in 1782, ‘Cecilia’ was published, Miss Burney’s fame enlarged. The greatest men of the day eulogized her works, and overwhelmed her with compliments and congratulations, Burke, Johnson, Reynolds, Windham, Gibbon, and Sheridan being of the number. At public places she became the ‘observed of all observers,’ and the gaze of admiring crowds ‘followed her along the Steyne at Brighton, and the Pantiles at Tunbridge Wells.’ Two years later, in 1784, the year her friend Dr. Johnson died, Mrs. Barbauld was staying in London, and witnessed a balloon exhibition at the Pantheon, which occupied the site of the future opera-house. In a letter to her niece she observes that next to the balloon Miss Burney is the object of curiosity. In the next year, 1785, when the Barbaulds moved from Wimbledon to Hampstead, Mrs. Barbauld brought her literary reputation with her, and was at once received in the best local society, the centre of which at this time, as I have elsewhere said, was Heath House, the home of the liberal-minded Quaker banker, Samuel Hoare. Here she made the acquaintance of many literary persons of note, amongst others that of Dr. Beattie, and Dr. George Crabbe, the author of the ‘Borough,’ the poet of the poor as he was called, and subsequently that of Mrs. Hannah More, Miss Seward, Mme. Chapone, and, in curious contrast with them, the banker-poet, Samuel Rogers, and later still Montgomery, whose sobriquet was ‘Satan,’[282] and nearer again to this century Campbell, and Coleridge. In the autumn of 1788 I find Samuel Rogers writing to Mrs. Barbauld that they are to have an assembly at the