[STEWART, John?].

First edition of this fascinating, almost satirical pamphlet with detailed observations and remarks on building activity in Dr Johnson’s London and ‘the bad taste of the city’ – with anecdotes and short notes on the public improvements of streets, squares, gardens and buildings. Though published anonymously, it has been variously attributed to James Stuart or John Donaldson, but more probably to John Stewart, of whom nothing is known. The main idea behind this pamphlet was that ‘it is the right of every individual to discuss with decent freedom the merits and demerits of public works, and even of private undertakings as far as they relate to public ornament’, so as to ‘introduce a greater correctness of taste for the future’ and remedy ‘the palpable inconveniences of old London’. The author mentions ‘the reformation in the streets […] for the ease of the horses’ for which ‘the midway was paved with huge shapeless rocks, and the footpath with sharp pebbles’, as well as the removal of inn signs ‘which choaked up and disgraced the streets’. Most interesting are the remarks on squares, of which St James’ is considered a fine model and Cavendish Square the worst, with ‘a few frightened sheep’ grazing there, and the addition of the Duke of Cumberland’s statue in 1770, after the completion of the pamphlet, being mentioned in a footnote. Indeed, almost all squares in London were ‘gardens, […] parks, […] sheep-walks, in short they are every thing but what they should be’. As for green spaces in the streets, they are ‘preposterous at best’ and ‘mock-parks’, as London includes major parks that should suffice: ‘a garden in a street is not less absurd than a street in a garden’, and ‘he that wishes to have a row of trees before his door in town, betrays […] false taste’. Also mentioned are Hanover Sq, Red Lion Sq, Oxford Road (i.e., Street), which he hoped to become the greatest boulevard in Europe, ‘Marybone’, Bingley House, Burlington House, St Paul’s at Covent Garden, and the Thames. Among the requests for public improvements are works on the Thames embankments, the construction of an additional bridge, and halls for the inferior courts of justice, while hospitals for foundlings are looked at with suspicion as they encouraged the poor to ‘throw the charge of their offspring on the public’. A most interesting work on the social history of London topography and building development.