Of all the nooks of London associated with the memory of that good giant of literature, Dr. Johnson, not is more sacred to those who love that great and wise man than Bolt Court. To this monastic court Johnson came in , and remained till that December day in , when a procession of all the learned and worthy men who honoured him followed his body to its grave in the Abbey, near the feet of Shakespeare and by the side of Garrick. The great scholar, whose ways and sayings, whose rough hide and tender heart, are so familiar to us-thanks to that faithful parasite who secured an immortality by getting up behind his triumphal chariot--came to Bolt Court from , whither he had flitted from , where he was living when the young Scotch barrister who was afterwards his biographer knew him. His strange household of fretful and disappointed almspeople seems as well known as our own. At the head of these pensioners was the daughter of a Welsh doctor, (a blind old lady named Williams), who had written some trivial poems; Mrs. Desmoulins, an old Staffordshire lady, her daughter, and a Miss Carmichael. The relationships of these fretful and quarrelsome old maids Dr. Johnson has himself sketched, in a letter to Mr. and Mrs. Thrale:--

Williams hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them.

The annoyance of such a menagerie of angular oddities must have driven Johnson more than ever to his clubs, where he could wrestle with the best intellects of the day, and generally retire victorious. He had done nearly all his best work by this time, and was sinking into the sere and yellow leaf, not, like Macbeth, with the loss of honour, but with love, obedience, troops of friends, and golden opinions from all sorts of people. His Titanic labour, the Dictionary, he had achieved chiefly in ; his -that grave and wise Oriental story-he had written in a few days, in , to defray the expenses of his mother's funeral. In Bolt Court he, however, produced his a noble compendium of criticism, defaced only by the bitter Tory depreciation of Milton, and injured by the insertion of many worthless and the omission of several good poets.

It is pleasant to think of some of the events that happened [extra_illustrations.1.112.2]  Here he exerted himself with all the ardour of his nature to soothe the last moments of that wretched man,Dr. Dodd, who was hanged for forgery. From Bolt Court he made those frequent excursions to the Thrales, at Streatham, where the rich brewer and his brilliant wife gloried in the great London lion they had captured. To Bolt Court came Johnson's friends Reynolds and Gibbon, and Garrick, and Percy, and Langton; but poor Goldsmith had died before Johnson left . To Bolt Court he stalked home the night of his memorable quarrel with Dr. Percy, no doubt regretting the violence and boisterous rudeness with which he had attacked an amiable and gifted man. From Bolt Court he walked to service at on the day he rejoiced in comparing the animation of with the desolation of the Hebrides. It was from Bolt Court Boswell drove Johnson to dine with General Paoli, a drive memorable for the fact that on that occasion Johnson uttered his and only recorded pun.

Johnson was at Bolt Court when the Gordon Riots broke out, and he describes them to Mrs. Thrale.

a great day.

But two at a time there's no mortal can bear,

In Bolt Court we find Johnson now returning from pleasant, dinners with Wilkes and Garrick, Malone and Dr. Burney; now sitting alone over his Greek Testament, or praying with his black servant, Frank. We like to picture him on that Good Friday morning (), when he and Boswell, returning from service at , rested on the stone seat at the garden-door in Bolt Court, talking about gardens and country hospitality.

Then, finally, we come to almost the last scene of all, when the sick man addressed to his kind physician, Brocklesby, that pathetic passage of Shakespeare's,--

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased;

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;

Raze out the written troubles of the brain;

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart?

I must be in a wretched state indeed, when your company would not be a delight to me.

Sir, you cannot conceive with what acceleration I advance towards death.

as an idiot, sir; awkward as a turnspit when

first

put into the wheel, and sleepy as a dormouse.

Some years before Dr. Johnson's death, when the poet [extra_illustrations.1.113.2] [extra_illustrations.1.113.1]  was a young clerk of literry proclivities a his father's bank, he day stole surreptitiously to Bolt Court, to daringly show some of his fledgeling poems to the great Polyphemus of literature. He and young Maltby, an ancestor of the late Bishop of Durham, crept blushingly through the quiet court, and on arriving at the sacred door on the west side, ascended the steps and knocked at the door; but the awful echo of that knocker struck terror to the young ' hearts, and before Frank Barber, the Doctor's old negro footman, could appear, the lads, like street-boys who had perpetrated a mischievous runaway knock, took to their heels and darted back into noisy . Mr. Jesse, who has collected so many excellent anecdotes, some even original, in his large volumes on says that the elder Mr. Disraeli, singularly enough, used in society to relate an almost similar adventure as a youth. Eager for literary glory, but urged towards the counter by his sober-minded relations, he enclosed some of his best verses to the celebrated Dr. Johnson, and modestly solicited from the terrible critic an opinion of their value. Having waited some time in vain for a reply, the ambitious Jewish youth at last () resolved to face the lion in his den, and rapping tremblingly (as his predecessor, Rogers), heard with dismay the knocker echo on the metal. We may imagine the feelings of the young votary at the shrine of learning, when the servant (probably Frank Barber), who slowly opened the door, informed him that Dr. Johnson had breathed his last only a few short hours before.

Mr. Timbs reminds us of another story of Dr. Johnson, which will not be out of place here. It is an excellent illustration of the keen sagacity and forethought of that great man's mind. evening Mr. Johnson, looking from his dim Bolt Court window, saw the slovenly lamp-lighter of those days ascending a ladder (just as Hogarth has drawn him in the ), and fill the little receptacle in the globular lamp with detestable whale-oil. Just as he got down the ladder the dull light wavered out. Skipping up the ladder again, the son of Prometheus lifted the cover, thrust the torch he carried into the heated vapour rising from the wick, and instantly the ready flame sprang restored to life.

Ah,

one

of these days the streets of London will be lighted by smoke,

Johnson's house (No. ), according to Mr. Noble, was not destroyed by fire in , as Mr. Timbs and other writers assert. The house destroyed was Bensley the printer's (next door to No. ), the successor of Johnson's friend, Allen, who in published Manning's Saxon, Gothic, and Latin Dictionary, and died in . In Bensley's destructive fire all the plates and stock of Dallaway's were consumed. Johnson's house, says Mr. Noble, was in purchased by the Stationers' Company, and fitted up as a cheap school ( a quarter). In Mr. Foss, Master of the Company, initiated a fund, and since then a university scholarship has been founded--

At

Dr. Johnson's

Lumber Troop

came out

strongly and sufficiently guarded.

In the same statement Sir Claudius says:--

The Lumber Troop are a respectable smoking club, well known to every candidate for a seat in Parliament for London, and most famed for the quantity of tobacco they consume and the porter they drink, which, I believe (from my own observation, made

nineteen

years ago, when I was a candidate for that office), is the only liquor allowed. They were to have had no pay, and I am sure they would have done their best.

Along the line of procession, to oppose this civic force, the right worshipful but foolish man reckoned there would be some persons. With all these aldermanic fears, and all these irritating precautions, a riot naturally took place. On Monday, , that glib, unsatisfactory man, Orator Hunt, the great demagogue of the day, addressed a Reform meeting at the Rotunda, in . At half-past , when the Radical gentleman, famous for his white hat (the lode-star of faction), retired, a man suddenly waved a tricolour flag (it was the year, remember, of the Revolution in Paris), with the word

Reform

Now for the West End!

Reform!

Down with the police!

No Peel!

No Wellington!

On Tuesday the riots continued. About halfpast m., or persons, chiefly boys, came along , shouting,

No Peel!

Down with the raw lobsters!

This way, my lads; we'll give it them!

Huzza!

To Bolt Court that scourge of King George III., [extra_illustrations.1.117.1] , came from to sell his Indian corn, for which no cared, and to print and publish his twopenny , for which the London Radicals of that day hungered. Nearly opposite the office of

this good hater,

Sir, he was impertinent, and I beat him.

A short biographical sketch of Cobbett will not be inappropriate here. This sturdy Englishman, born in the year , was the son of an honest and industrious yeoman, who kept an inn called the

Jolly Farmer,

My

first

occupation,

was driving the small birds from the turnip seed and the rooks from the peas. When I

first

trudged a-field with my wooden bottle and my satchel over my shoulder, I was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles.

Porcupine Papers.

base, malignant, treacherous, unnatural, and blasphemous.

In he wrote a scurrilous (by many still attributed to a priest), in which he declared Luther, Calvin, and Beza to be the greatest ruffians that ever disgraced the world. In his old age, too late to be either brilliant or useful, Cobbett got into Parliament, being returned in (thanks to the Reform Bill) member for Oldham. He died at his house near Farnham, in . Cobbett was an egotist, it must be allowed, and a violent-tempered, vindictive man; but his honesty, his love of truth and liberty, few who are not blinded by party opinion can doubt. His writings are remarkable for vigorous and racy Saxon, as full of vituperation as Rabelais's, and as terse and simple as Swift's.

Mr. Grant, in his pleasant book, written , gives us an elaborate full-length portrait of old Cobbett. He was, he says, not less than feet high, and broad and athletic in proportion. His hair was silver-white, his complexion ruddy as a farmer's. Till his small eyes sparkled with laughter, he looked a mere dullpated clodpole. His dress was a light, loose, grey tail-coat, a white waistcoat, and sandy kerseymere breeches, and he usually walked about the House with both his hands plunged into his breeches pockets. He had an eccentric, half-malicious way of sometimes suddenly shifting his seat, and on important night, big with the fate of Peel's Administration, deliberately anchored down in the very centre of the disgusted Tories and at the very back of Sir Robert's bench, to the infinite annoy Dance of the somewhat supercilious party.

We next penetrate into , in search of the great lexicographer.

As far as can be ascertained from Boswell, Mr. Johnson resided at from to , an eventful period of his life, and of struggle, pain, and difficulty. In this gloomy side square near , he achieved many results and abandoned many hopes. Here he nursed his hypochondria--the nightmare of his life --and sought the only true relief in hard work. Here he toiled over books, drudging for Cave and Dodsley. Here he commenced both the and the , and formed his acquaintance with Bennet Langton. Here his wife died, and left him more than ever a prey to his natural melancholy; and here he toiled on his great work, the Dictionary, in which he and amanuenses effected what it took all the French Academicians to perform for their language.

A short epitome of what this great man accomplished while in [extra_illustrations.1.118.1]  will clearly recall to our readers his way of life while in that locality. n , Johnson formed a quiet club in , wrote that fine paraphrase of Juvenal, and brought out, with dubious success, under Garrick's auspices, his tragedy of . In , he commenced the . In , the year his wife died, he laboured on at the Dictionary. In , he became acquainted with Bennet Langton. In he wrote the life of his early patron, Cave, who died that year. In , the great Dictionary, begun in , was at last published, and Johnson wrote that scathing letter to the Earl of Chesterfield, who, too late, thrust upon him the patronage the poor scholar had once sought in vain. In , the still struggling man was arrested for a paltry debt of £., from which Richardson the worthy relieved him. In , when he began the , Johnson is described as

being in as easy and pleasant a state of existence as constitutional unhappiness ever permitted him to enjoy.

While the Dictionary was going forward,

Johnson,

lived part of the time in

Holborn

, part in

Gough Square

(

Fleet Street

); and he had an upper room fitted up like a countinghouse for the purpose, in which he gave to the copyists their several tasks. The words, partly taken from other dictionaries and partly supplied by himself, having been

first

written down with space left between them, he delivered in writing their etymologies, definitions, and various significations. The authorities were copied from the books themselves, in which he had marked the, passages with a black-lead pencil, the traces of which could be easily effaced. I have seen several of them in which that trouble had not been taken, so that they were just as when used by the copyists. It is remarkable that he was so attentive to the choice of the passages in which words were authorised, that

one

may read page after page of his Dictionary with improvement and pleasure; and it should not pass unobserved, that he has quoted no author whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and morality.

To this account Bishop Percy adds a note of great value for its lucid exactitude.

Boswell's account of the manner in which Johnson compiled his. Dictionary,

is confused and erroneous. He began his task (as he himself expressly described to me) by devoting his

first

care to a diligent perusal of all such English writers as were most correct in their language, and under every sentence which he meant to quote he drew a line, and noted in the margin the

first

letter of the word under which'it was to occur. He then delivered these books to his clerks, who transcribed each sentence on a separate slip of paper and arranged the same under the word referred to. By these means he collected the several words, and their different significations, and when the whole arrangement was alphabetically formed, he gave the definitions of their meanings, and collected their etymologies from Skinner, and other writers on the subject.

Dr. Johnson,

who, before this time, together with his wife, had lived in obscurity, lodging at different houses in the courts and alleys in and about

the Strand

and

Fleet Street

, had, for the purpose of carrying on this arduous work, and being near the printers employed in it, taken a handsome house in

Gough Square

, and fitted up a room in it with books and other accommodations for amanuenses, who, to the number of

five

or

six

, he kept constantly under his eye. An interleaved copy of

Bailey's Dictionary

, in folio, he made the repository of the several articles, and these he collected by incessantly reading the best authors in our language, in the practice whereof his method was to score with a black-lead pencil the words by him selected. The books he used for this purpose were what he had in his own collection, a copious but a miserably ragged

one

, and all such as he could borrow; which latter, if ever they came back to those that lent them, were so defaced as to be scarce worth owning, and yet some of his friends were glad to receive and entertain them as curiosities.

Mr. Burney,

during a visit to the capital, had an interview with Johnson in

Gough Square

, where he dined and drank tea with him, and was introduced to the acquaintance of Mrs. Williams. After dinner Mr. Johnson proposed to Mr. Burney to go up with him into his garret, which being accepted, he found there about

five

or

six

Greek folios, a poor writing-desk, and a chair and a half. Johnson, giving to his guest the entire seat, balanced himself on

one

with only

three

legs and

one

arm. Here he gave Mr. Burney Mrs. Williams's history, and showed him some notes on Shakespeare already printed, to prove that he was in earnest. Upon Mr. Burney's opening the

first

volume at the

Merchant of Venice

he observed to him that he seemed to be more severe on Warburton than on Theobald.

Oh, poor Tib!

said Johnson,

he. was nearly knocked down to my hands; Warburton stands between me and him.

But, sir,

said Mr. Burney,

You'll have Warburton on your bones, won't you?

No, sir; he'll not come out; he'll only growl in his den.

But do you think, sir, Warburton is a superior critic to Theobald?

Oh, sir, he'll make two-and-fifty Theobalds cut into slices! The worst of Warburton is that he has a rage for saying something when there's nothing to be said.

Mr. Burney then asked him whether he had seen the letter Warburton had, written in answer to a pamphlet addressed

to the most impudent man alive.

He answered in the negative. Mr. Burney told him it was supposed to be written by Mallet. A controversy now raged between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke, and Warburton and Mallet were the leaders of the several parties. Mr. Burney asked him then if he had seen Warburton's book against Bolingbroke's philosophy!

No, sir; I have never read Bolingbroke's impiety, and therefore am not. interested about its refutation.

Goldsmith appears to have resided at No. , Wine Office Court from to , during which period he earned a precarious livelihood by writing for the booksellers.

They still point out [extra_illustrations.1.119.2]  in the north-east corner of the window of that cozy though utterly unpretentious tavern, the

Cheshire Cheese

,

It was while living in Wine Office Court that Goldsmith is supposed to have partly written that delightful novel which he had begun at Canonbury Tower. We like to think that, seated at the

Cheese,

One

day,

Johnson was called abruptly from our house at

Southwark

, after dinner, and, returning in about

three

hours, said he had been with an enraged author, whose landlady pressed him within doors while the bailiffs beset him without; that he was drinking himself drunk with Madeira to drown care, and fretting over a novel which, when finished, was to be his whole fortune; but he could not get it done for distraction, nor dared he stir out of doors to offer it for sale. Mr. Johnson, therefore,

sent away the bottle and went to the bookseller, recommending the performance, and devising some immediate relief; which; when he brought back to the writer, the latter called the woman of the house directly to partake of punch and pass their time in merriment. It was not,

till

ten

years after, I dare say, that something in Dr. Goldsmith's behaviour struck me with an idea that he was the very man; and then Johnson confessed that he was so.

A more scrupulous and patient writer,

corrects some inaccuracies of the lively little lady, and professes to give the anecdote authentically from Johnson's own exact narration.

I received one morning,

Boswell represents Johnson to have said,

a message from poor Goldsmith, that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea, and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had got a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it and saw its merits, told the landlady I should soon return, and, having gone to a bookseller, sold it for £ 60. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used him so ill.

The arrest is plainly connected with Newbery's reluctance to make further advances, and of all

merit

And, sir,

a sufficient price, too, when it was sold, for then the fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as it afterwards was, by his

Traveller,

and the bookseller had faint hopes of profit by his bargain. After

The Traveller,

to be sure, it was accidentally worth more money.

On the poem, meanwhile, the elder Newbery had consented to speculate, and this circumstance may have made it hopeless to appeal to him with a work of fancy. For, on that very day of the arrest, lay completed in the poet's desk. The dream of years, the solace and sustainment'of his exile and poverty, verged at last to fulfilment or extinction, and the hopes and

Oliver Goldsmith came to London in ,

bear leader

Wine Office Court is supposed to have, derived its name from an office where licences to sell wine were formerly issued.

In this court,

once flourished a fig-tree, planted a century ago by the Vicar of

St. Bride's

, who resided, with an absence of pride suitable, if not common, to Christianity, at No.

12

. It was a slip from another exile of a tree, formerly flourishing, in a sooty kind of grandeur, at the sign of the

Fig Tree,

in

Fleet Street

. This tree was struck by lightning in

1820

, but slips from the growing stump were planted in

1822

, in various parts of England.

The old-fashioned and changeless character of the

Cheese,

Brain Street,

Cheshire Cheese

The vast establishments,

of Messrs. Pewter & Antimony, typefounders (Alderman Antimony was Lord Mayor in the year '46); of Messrs. Quoin, Case, & Chappell, printers to the Board of Blue Cloth; of Messrs. Cutedge & Treecalf, bookbinders; with the smaller industries of Scawper & Tinttool, wood-engravers; and Treacle, Gluepot, & Lampblack, printing-roller makers, are packed together in the upper part of the court as closely as herrings in a cask. The Cheese is at the Brain Street end. It is a little lop-sided, wedged--up house, that always reminds you, structurally, of a highshouldered. man with his hands in his pockets. It is full of holes and corners and cupboards and sharp turnings; and in ascending the stairs to the tiny smoking-room you must tread cautiously, if you would not wish to be tripped up by plates and dishes, momentarily deposited there by furious waiters.. The waiters at the Cheese are always furious. Old customers abound in the comfortable old tavern, in whose sanded-floored eating-rooms a new face is a rarity; and the guests and the waiters are the oldest of familiars. Yet the waiter seldom fails to bite your nose off as a preliminary measure when you proceed to pay him. How should it be otherwise when on that waiter's soul there lies heavy a perpetual sense of injury caused by the savoury odour of steaks, and muts to follow; of cheese-bubbling in tiny tins--the specialty of the house; of floury potatoes and fragrant green peas; of cool salads, and cooler tankards of bitter beer; of extra-creaming stout and goes of Cork and rack, by which is meant gin; and, in the winter-time, of Irish stew and rump-steak pudding, glorious and grateful to every sense? To be compelled to run to and fro with these succulent viands from noon to late at night, without being able to spare time to consume them in comfort--where do waiters dine, and when, and how?--to be continually taking other people's money only for the purpose of handing it to other people--are not these grievances sufficient to crossgrain the temper of the mildest-mannered waiter? Somebody is always in a passion at the Cheese : either a customer, because there is not fat enough on his point --steak, or because there is too much bone in his mutton-chop; or else the waiter is wroth with the cook; or the landlord with the waiter, or the barmaid with all. Yes, there is a barmaid at the Cheese, mewed up in a box not much bigger than a birdcage, surrounded by groves of lemons, ones of cheese, punch-bowls, and cruets of mushroom-catsup. I should not care to dispute with her, lest she should quoit me over the head with a punch-ladle, having a William-the-Third guinea soldered in the bowl.

Let it be noted in candour that Law finds its way to the Cheese as well as Literature; but the Law is, as a rule, of the non-combatant and, consequently, harmless order. Literary men who have been called to the bar, but do not practise; briefless young barristers, who do not object to mingling with newspaper men; with a sprinkling of retired solicitors (amazing dogs these for old port-wine; the landlord has some of the same bin which served as Hippocrene to Judge Blackstone when he wrote his Commentaries)-these make up the legal element of the Cheese. Sharp attorneys in practice are not popular there. There is a legend that a process-server once came in at a back door to serve a writ; but being detected by a waiter, was skilfully edged by that wary retainer into Wine Bottle Court, right past the person on whom he was desirous to inflict the Victoria, by the grace, & c. Once in the court, he was set upon by a mob of inky-faced boys just released from the works of Messrs. Ball, Roller, & Scraper, machine printers, and by the skin of his teeth only escaped being converted into pie.

Mr. William Sawyer has also written a very admirable sketch of the

Cheese

We are a close, conservative, inflexible body --we, the regular frequenters of the

Cheddar,

No new-fangled notions, new usages, new customs, or new customers for us. We have our history, our traditions, and our observances, all sacred and inviolable. Look around! There is nothing new, gaudy, flippant, or effeminately luxurious here. A small room with heavily-timbered windows. A low planked ceiling. A huge, projecting fire-place, with a great copper boiler always on the simmer, the sight of which might have roused even old John Willett, of the Maypole, to admiration. High, stiff-backed, inflexible settles, hard and grainy in texture, box off the guests, half-a-dozen each to a table. Sawdust covers the floor, giving forth that peculiar faint odour which the French avoid by. the use of the vine sawdust with its pleasant aroma. The only ornament in which we indulge is a solitary picture over the mantelpiece, a full-length of a now departed waiter, whom in the long past we caused to be painted, by subscription of the whole room, to commemorate his virtues and our esteem. He is depicted in the scene of his triumphs--in the act of giving change to a customer. We sit bolt upright round our tables, waiting, but not impatient. A time-honoured solemnity is about to be observed, and we, the old stagers, is it for us to precipitate it? There are men in this room who have dined here every day for a quarter of a century --aye, the whisper goes that one man did it even on his wedding-day! In all that time the more staid and well-regulated among us have observed a steady regularity of feeding. Five days in the week we have our Rotherham steak --that mystery of mysteries-or our chop and chop to follow, with the indispensable wedge of Cheddar-unless it is preferred stewed or toasted-and on Saturday decorous variety is afforded in a plate of the worldrenowned Cheddar pudding. It is of this latter luxury that we are now assembled to partake, and that with all fitting ceremony and observance. As we sit, like pensioners in hall, the silence is broken only by a strange sound, as of a hardly human voice, muttering cabalistic words, Ullo mul lum de loodle wumble jum! it cries, and we know that chops and potatoes are being ordered for some benighted outsider, ignorant of the fact that it is pudding-day.

[extra_illustrations.1.112.1] Johnson Club

[extra_illustrations.1.112.2] while Johnson lived in Bolt Court.

[extra_illustrations.1.113.3] a party at Bolt Court

[extra_illustrations.1.113.2] Rogers

[extra_illustrations.1.113.1] Rogers' House

[extra_illustrations.1.116.1] Duke of Wellington

[extra_illustrations.1.116.4] Duchess of Wellington

[extra_illustrations.1.116.2] King William

[extra_illustrations.1.116.3] Sir Claudius Hunter

[extra_illustrations.1.117.1] William Cobbett

[extra_illustrations.1.117.2] Tom Paine

[extra_illustrations.1.118.1] Gough Square

[extra_illustrations.1.119.2] Johnson and Goldsmith's favourite seats