The Sun.
London, England, 1855-06-29 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Curiosities of London. By John Timbs, F.S.A.
David Bogue.
An extraordinary treasury of information in re-
gard to the wonders of our vast and populous
"Pital---a veritable microcosm of the metropolis--
oYae of those condensed repertories of facts and
figures which must render the mere names of
Timbs, and Haydn,
and Maunder "curiosities" of
themselves to our posterity. It appears from the
brief but sufficient preface to the present volume,
that the notion of the work originally presented
itself to the author's
mind as long ago as twenty-
: seven years from the date of its actual publication !
" In the parlour of No.
3, Charing-cross (then a
publisher's)," says Mr. Timbs, ~ I wrote (in 1828)
the title and plan of a volume to be called
4 Curiosities of London.' " Nearly three de-
cades pass by, and in 1855, instead of 1828,
I the book so designated makes its deliberate and
mature appearance. During the interval be-
tween those dates—in other words, during a
period of very nearly thirty years' duration, the
writer of the prospectus of 1828 and of the sub-
stantial fulfilment of that prospectus in 1855, has
been all the while unremittingly sedulous in his
endeavours to accumulate store upon store of in-
teresting particulars in reference to our chief city,
its history, and its antiquities. What, in regard
'to this, is our author's own naïve declaration ?
"Since the commencement of this design—pre-
cisely midway in my lifetime—l have scarcely for
a day or hour lost sight of the subject." All the
while, therefore, he has been gathering together
the sometimes homely and sometimes recondite
knowledge here amassed in 800 pages, abounding
variously with matter alike for instruction and
amusement. All the while he acknowledges he
has been "endeavouring to profit by every oppor-
tunity of increasing his stock of materials." All
the while he has been making his researches with a
view to the enhancement of the value of his principal
and favourite contribution to our popular literature.
And yet it must not be imagined for an instant
that Mr. Timbs has been a man of one idea, that
hi is a mind warped by one invariable " bent"
until it runs the risk, by which all such one-idea'd
minds are endangered, of becoming in the end
eccentric, crotchetty, and monomaniacal. During
these twenty-seven years of constant preparation
for the ultimate issue of "The Curiosities of Lon-
don," the compiler of this singular repertory—
" Exhibiting the most rare and remarkable objects
of interest in the metropolis, with nearly fifty
I years' personal recollections"—has displayed from
first to last, upon subjects totally different in cha-
racter, a really noteable intellectual activity. It
is seldom, indeed, that we have an opportunity of
observing the continuance of a mental industry so
sustained and pertinacious. Already, before the
date of his writing the prospectus of the present
work in the parlour of No. 3, Charing-cross, close
upon thirty years since, Mr. Timbs had some time
before then seriously entered upon his labours
both as a man-of-letters and as an antiquarian.
As far back as the year 1822, he had carried through
the press his maiden volume—" A Picturesque
Promenade round Dorking in Surrey." By the
year following his first work had attained the
honours of a second edition. In 1826 he had pro-
duced his three volumes of " Laconics," being, as
its supplementary title acquainted the reader,
" The Best Words of the Best Authors." Between
1827 and 1838, an interval which may be differ-
ently described as one of eleven years, and twenty-
two volumes, he had edited, the Mirror, a weekly
periodical, at that time enjoying rather extensive
popularity, but since then swallowed up by fate or
fickleness, like many another once well-known, but
now almost forgotten publication, such, for exam-
ple, as the Courier among daily papers, or as the
Metropolitan among magazines. In 1828 (" pre-
cisely midway in my lifetime," as we have already
heard Mr. Timbs observing in his preface to the
present undertaking)—the year when he was jotting
down the prospectus for his " Curiosities of Lon-
don," in the publisher's parlour at the west
end of the' Strand—besides editing the Mirror, as
he was then doing, he found leisure to produce two
separate volumes within the same twelvemonth,
the one entitled " Signs before Death," the other
" Cameleon Sketches." In the course of the next
year, namely 1829, he brought out his " Com-
panion to the Theatres." While during the ten
years which elapsed between 1828 and 1838, in ad-
dition to the labour of editing the Mirror he con-
trived to give to the world no less than eleven
volumes of the " Arcane, of Science and Art." In
1830, moreover, be issued the " Wine-Drinkei's
Manual," in 1831, a work called less convivially,
though quite as socially, the " Family Manual,"
and in 1831 and 1832 conjointly, he managed
in spite of all his other engagements to compile as
many as four volumes of "Knowledge for the
People," or, as he otherwise called it quaintly
enough the " Plain Why and Because." In 1834
appeared his "Popular Zoology :" and in 1835,
besides his " Domestic Life in England,"
volume itwo of a work called. ‘, T.L.- i--,—._

tor," written for the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge. In 1837, Mr. Timbs
iis his " TN,,;13, IT.mlhook"—between 1839
and 1810, the three volumes of his "Literary
World"—in 1848 his two volumes of "London
Anecdote" (a foretaste of his larger work then
after the lapse of a score of years still in prepara-
tion)—between 1850 and 1851 the two volumes of
his " Illustrated Year Book"—in 1852 his " Wel-
lingtoniana"—and between 1839 and the present
year of grace 1855 his important annual serial, po-
pularly known as the "Year Book of Facts," a scien-
tific gathering of memorabilia, seventeen volumes
of which have consequently by this time made their
appearance. Altogether, therefore, John Timbs
has already as author, as editor, or as compiler
produced, apart from this goodly book of London
Curiosities, scarcely credible though it may
seem, no less, actually, than-.-SETENTY-FIVE
VOLUMES ! A rather remarkable evidence,
we take it, of his being no one-idea'd man,
notwithstanding all those twenty-seven years
during which he tells us he has " scarcely for a day
or hour lost sight of the subject" of this most che-
rished and elaborated of his productions. A not-
able testimony, moreover, as it appears to us, of
honourable industry, research, and perseverance.
It were impossible, therefore, all things consi-
dered to receive this volume of " The Curiosities

of Loudon," otherwise than with the respect duo
to the result. of so much laudable toil, and pains-
taking investigation. We do so. We receive
the volume gratefully as a contribution almost
inestimable in its instrinsie worth towards the
history of the capital of England—the metropolis
of Great Britain—the chief city of the whole world
in many particulars, in wealth, in extent, and in
enterprise, if not also in the numerical vastness of
its population. And assuredly for these and
other (kindred) reasons London is especially
entitled to this species of antiquarian celebration.
A metropolis extending over an area of 115 square
miles, or 73,715 statute acres—comprising 176
parishes—having (according to the census of 1851)
a population of 1,103,730 males, and of 1,257,910
females, altogether of 2,361,640 inhabitauts—con-
taining 307,722 inhabited and 16,889 uninhabited
houses, 329,428 altogether, besides 4,817 in course
of erection—a city in which 130 persons are each
day added to the mass of the population ! So that,
according to an eminent statistician, " if the popu-
lation continue to increase in the same ratio as in
1851, 1.515 per cent. per annum, it will amount at
the close of the century to 4,816,062 !" To accom-
modate which multitude, the same individual cal-
culates that the present enormous area of London
will require to be doubled--so that the acres com-
prised within its circumference instead of being
as at present over 70,000, will be upwards
of 160,000, while the houses, instead of
being as already observed in excess of 300,000, will
surpass even as many as 650,000 in the aggregate !
It is this wonderful assemblage of human beings,
it is this marvellous accumulation of riches, it is this
astonishing agglomeration of industrial enter-
prise and commercial activity that Mr. Timbs'
volume undertakes to illustrate. A theme un-
questionably abounding in suggestiveness. One
capable of securing the attention of even the most
indifferent. We venture to remark of this one
compact little volume that it condenses within
itself, so to speak, in some sort, the interest of a
whole library. It might, in a manner, stand in lieu
of the marrow of an entire encyclopaedia. It is the
epitome, and pith, and quintessence of many years
of careful scrutiny and laborious investigation. It is
an authority upon the subject upon which it treats,
which may be confidently relied upon, relied
upon, in truth, as confidently as any work of refe-
rence of the most standard character and established
reputation. It were idle, of course, to attempt to
speak of the volume at any length otherwise than
in generalities. As well, almost, attempt to
afford an accurate notion of a dictionary
by extracts, as attempt to convey an adequate
idea of the book under notice by quotations. An ex-
cerpt from its pages given with this intent would
be not one jotless ridiculous in its way than the brick
offered to a would-be purchaser of a house by the
redoubtable voXaarixocr of Hierocles. Neverthe-
less we cannot but presume that a few casual
references to the contents of this ample but com-
pact production may be welcome as in some cursory
way illustrative of its agreeable lucidity of style,
and of the general merit of its alphabetical arrange-
ment. Its arrangement we say is alphabetical,
bringing us, for example, from the Adelphi to
Whitehall, from A lmack's to the Zoological Gar-
dens, from Battersea to Vauxhall. Ordered in
this manner, the articles making up the rates of
the contents comprise amongst them, however,