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which had been the chief feature in his career; and then in his old age, after such a faithful past, to be degraded on account of heresy ! It was hard, it was cruel. "Your holiness," he moaned, "is taking my life from me when you take from me the reputation of orthodoxy."

He spoke truly. Mortification, anxiety, and a humiliation that he knew was not deserved, were eating into his very heart and rapidly shortening his days. He had never been strong, and his sickly frame, weakened by recent ague and fever, was robbed of the vitality necessary to make a stand against the depression caused by severe disappointment and grievous injustice. He died within a few hours of the demise of his cousin and queen. Feeble and limited as was his view of the change of feeling consequent upon the accession of Elizabeth, he saw enough to prove to him that his "holy mission" had been a failure, and that a religion founded by force and built up by persecution is a vain and unstable thing, only requiring the terrorism that establishes it to be withdrawn to fall in swift ruin to the ground.

ALEX. CHARLES EWALD.

305

DR. JOHNSON AND THE FLEETSTREET TAVERNS.

THE

HE traces of Dr. Johnson in this metropolis are fast passing away. They were always interesting, owing to the feeling that they help us to realise many of the scenes depicted in Johnson's great work. Yet these are disappearing, and must disappear with the work of demolition and "opening up," though this last process amounts often to shutting up agreeable associations and pleasant memorials. The work, however, is not to be averted; it is as imperative as Fate; and if Shakespeare's house stood in the line of a new street, the Board of Works would take order that it came down.

Fleet Street is specially sacred to the memory of the Doctor. But Fleet Street is also the favourite scene of action for the spoiler. Temple Bar, on which Goldsmith jested with him, came down not long ago. His chambers in the Inner Temple Lane just by the entrance were levelled some years ago. They must have been like the overhanging houses at the entrance of Middle Temple Lane, one of the most curious bits of old work in London-substantial too, and in good order for their age. We recollect the doorway of his room being set up for auction by Messrs. Puttick or Messrs. Sotheby. One Dr. Richardson, who has written some curious recollections, declares that those who inhabited those rooms took a special pride in the former Occupancy.

Fleet Street, interesting in so many ways, is remarkable for many curious little courts and passages into which you make entry under small archways. These are "Johnson's Court," "Bolt Court," "Racquet Court," and the like. Indeed, it is evident that the curious little passage which leads in to the "Cock" must have been originally an entrance to one of these courts on which the tavern gradually encroached. Much the same are found in the Borough, only these lead into great courts and inn yards. But in Fleet Street they are specially interesting, for we can fancy the Doctor tramping up to his favourite tavern.

Passing into the dark alley known as "Wine Office Court," we VOL. CCL. NO. 1803.

X

come to the "Old Cheshire Cheese," in a narrow flagged passage, the house or wall on the other side quite close and excluding all light. The "Cheese" looks, indeed, a sort of dark den, an inferior public-house, its grimed windows like those of a shop which we can look in at from the passage. On entering, there is the little bar facing us, and always the essence of snugness and cosyness; to the right a small room, to the left a bigger one. This is the "Cheshire Cheese," with its dirty walls and sawdusted floor, a few benches put against the wall, and two or three rude tables of the rudest kind against the wall. The grill is heard hissing in some back region, where the chop or small steak is being prepared; and it may be said, en passant, that the flavour and treatment of the chop and "small dinner steak "—are there breakfast and luncheon steaks here ?-are quite different from those newer and more pretentious grills which have lately sprung up. On the wall is a testimonial portrait of a rather bloated waiter-Todd, I think, by name-quite suggestive of the late Mr. Liston. He is holding up his corkscrew of office to an expectant guest, either in a warning or exultant way, as if he had extracted the cork in a masterly style. Underneath is a boastful inscription that it was painted in 1812, to be hung up as an heirloom and handed down, having been executed under the reign of Dolamore, who then owned the place. It has its regular habitués; and on Saturday or Friday there is a famous "rump-steak pie," which draws a larger attendance; for it is considered that you may search the wide world round without matching that succulent delicacy. These great savoury meat pies do not kindle the ardour of many persons, being rather strong for the stomachs of babes.

Well, then, hither it was that Dr. Johnson used to repair. True, neither Boswell, nor Hawkins, nor after them Mr. Croker, take note of the circumstance; but there were many things that escaped Mr. Croker, diligent as he was. There is, however, excellent evidence of the fact. A worthy solicitor named Jay-who is garrulous but not unentertaining in a book of anecdotes which he has writtenfrequented the "Cheshire Cheese" for fifty-five years, during which long tavern life, he says, "I have been interested in seeing young men when I first went there, who afterwards married; then in seeing their sons dining there, and often their grandsons, and much gratified by observing that most of them succeeded well in life. This applies particularly to the lawyers, with whom I have so often dined when tudents, when barristers, and some who were afterwards judges.

"During the time I have frequented this house, there have been only three landlords-Mr. Carlton, Mr. Dolamore, and Mr. Beaufoy

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Moore, the present landlord; and during each successive occupation the business has increased. I may here mention that, when I first visited the house, I used to meet several very old gentlemen who remembered Dr. Johnson nightly at the Cheshire Cheese'; and they have told me, what is not generally known, that the Doctor, whilst living in the Temple, always went to the 'Mitre' or the 'Essex Head'; but when he removed to 'Gough Square' and 'Bolt Court,' he was a constant visitor at the 'Cheshire Cheese,' because nothing but a hurricane would have induced him to cross Fleet Street. All round this neighbourhood, if you want to rent a room or an office, you are sure to be told that it was once the residence of either Dr. Johnson or Oliver Goldsmith! Be that as it may, it is an interesting locality, and a pleasing sign-the 'Old Cheshire Cheese Tavern,' Wine-office Court, Fleet Street-which will afford the present generation, it is hoped, for some time to come, an opportunity of witnessing the kind of tavern in which our forefathers delighted to assemble for refreshment."

Doctor Johnson died in 1788-and this solicitor's acquaintance with the place began scarcely twenty years after the Doctor's death. The old frequenter's memory would therefore have been very fresh. His dedication, too, is pleasant. This worthy reminiscent dedicates his labours, in a quaint inscription, "To the Lawyers and Gentlemen with whom I have dined for more than half a century at the 'Old Cheshire Cheese Tavern,' Wine Office Court, Fleet Street; this work is respectfully dedicated by their obedient servant, Cyrus Jay."

The reader will note the pleasant distinction between lawyers and gentlemen. "I often dined at the 'Mitre' and the 'Cheshire Cheese;' Johnson and his friends, I was informed, used to do the same, and I was told I should meet individuals who had met them there; this I found to be correct. The company then was more select than in later times. Johnson had been dead above twenty years, but there were Fleet Street tradesmen who well remembered both Johnson and Goldsmith in those places. There was Tyers, a silk merchant of Ludgate Hill, with Colonel Lawrence, who carried the colours of the twentieth regiment at the battle of Minden, ever fond of repeating that his regimental comrades bore the brunt of that celebrated day. The evening was the time we thus met, when the day's business was over. Few then, comparatively, lived at a distance from their offices or shops; if they did, it was mostly in country residences, some way beyond the suburbs of town, to which they repaired on the Saturday, returning on the Monday morning. There

was also a sprinkling of lawyers, old demi-soldes, and men of science. Among the latter, was a Mr. Adams, an optician of Fleet Street, from whom I obtained information about barometers, for I had been an early experimentalist. The left-hand room on entering the 'Cheshire,' and the table on the right on entering that room, having the window at the end, was the table occupied by Johnson and his friends almost uniformly. This table and the room are now as they were when I first saw them, having had the curiosity to visit them recently. They were, and are, too, as Johnson and his friends left them in their time. Johnson's seat was always in the window, and Goldsmith sat on his left hand.”

On the other side of Fleet Street we can see the "Mitre Tavern,” closing up the end of a court-but not the old original “Mitre" where Johnson sat with Boswell. It was pulled down within living memory, and with it the corner in which the sage used to sit, and which was religiously marked by his bust. Yet even as it stands in its restoration there is something quaint in the feeling, as you enter through a low covered passage from Fleet Street, and see its cheerful open door at the end. There are other taverns with such approaches in the street. The "Old Bell" is curiously retired. The passage to the "Mitre" is as it was in Johnson's day, and his eyes must have been often raised to the old beams that support its roof. Even in its modern shape it retains much that is old-fashioned and rococo. It is like a country tavern in London, with its "ordinary” at noonand a good one too-and its retirement so close and yet so far from the hum and clatter of Fleet Street.

We have yet another tavern to which we can track him, and which still "stands where it did." We pass from the open Place where St. Clement-Danes stands-one of the most Dutch-like spots in London, to which idea the quaint and rather elegant tower lends itself. To hear its chimes, not at midnight, but on some December evening, when the steeple is projected on a cold blue background, while you can see the shadows of the ringers in the bell-tower, is a picturesque feeling. They fling out their janglings more wildly than any peal in London; they are nearer the ground, and the hurly burly is melodious enough. Those tones the Doctor often heard in Gough Square and Bolt Court, and inside he had his favourite seat, to this day reverently marked by a plate and inscription. Yet St. Clement's is in a precarious condition, and when the Law Courts are completed its fate will be decided.

It is, perhaps, GOUGH SQUARE, to which one of the little passages out of Fleet Streçt leads, that most faithfully preserves the memory

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