you." One cannot but smile now, in that
doleful, silent tavern, where no pots rattle,
or busy waiters scream down kitchen
speaking-tubes, to think of the almost deifying
reverence with which that clever simpleton
Boswell speaks of it. He says: "The orthodox
high church sound of the MITRE, the figure and
manner of the celebrated SAMUEL JOHNSON, the
extraordinary power and precision of his
conversation, and the pride arising from finding myself
admitted as his companion, produced a variety
of sensations and a pleasing elevation of mind
beyond what I had ever before experienced."

It was on another occasion, at this same low-
browed tavern, that Johnson made that dreadful
remark to a Scotchman, who spoke of the
prospect round Edinburgh, that has ever since
been cruelly used as a universally known great
British joke: "I believe, sir," said the
tremendous man, whose voice was like a cathedral
bell—"I believe, sir" (repeated for dignity and
not from hesitation), "you have a great many
trees—so has Norway, so has England—but, sir,
let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a
Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads
him to England."

And now we are inside the Mitre, it is not so
long across the road, defying and dodging the
cab, to that red, lighthouse sort of lamp that
points us up Wine-office-court, where Goldsmith
lived when he wrote children's books (as it is
supposed), and certainly a grammar for
Newberry the bookseller in St. Paul's-churchyard,
and where Dr. Percy, who used to quarrel
with Dr. Johnson about the old ballads he
so usefully collected. Here, on the right
hand, following a tract of sawdust that looks
like powdered ginger, you will find the Cheshire
Cheese Tavern, where in a certain window,
snug on the right, they still point out (as they do
at the Mitre) Johnson's seat, and, in this
instance, Goldsmith's too.

Another of Johnson's clubs was at the Queen's
Arms, in St. Paul's-churchyard, which the
doctor had got a friend to form as a City Club,
of quiet, well-behaved men: not patriots. He
dined there, the very day his old friend Thrale,
the brewer, died; for, from sorrow and self-
torture, this hypochondriacal wise man always
resorted to company, and not to solitude; which
he dreaded as much as he did death.

Many as are the London doors we have
knocked at following the ghost of Johnson,
we still have not recorded all the places in which
he twitched, and shouted, and extinguished,
and felled conversational adversaries, from the
time when he and Garrick set their faces
towards London, until the day when their coffins
were laid together in the south transept of
Westminster Abbey, near Shakspeare's monument.

He had lived in Woodstock-street, Hanover-
square, far away from printers and taverns; in
the Strand, at the Black Boy, opposite the
Adelphi; in Fetter-lane, that grimy defile; at
the Golden Anchor, Holborn-bars; at Staple Inn;
at Gray's Inn; and at number seven, Johnson's-
court. In this last place, which did not derive
its name from him, lived the doctor, with blind
Miss Williams on the ground-floor, Mr. Levett,
his pensioner, in the garret, and below him
Johnson's study, and untidy, ill-bound, but well
read, folios. Here, he read, and wrote, and
planned with more light and air than previously
in the Temple. Here, often paced up Boswell, his
staring eyebrows arched, his mouth protruding,
his double chin swaying. Here, when one dismal
Friday in March, 1776, he hastened, the day
after his arrival in London, to attend his
monarch's levees, and found Johnson still in his
favourite Fleet-street, but removed to Bolt-
court, he wrote down that night solemnly in his
journal: "I felt a foolish regret that he had
left a court which bore his name; but it was not
foolish to be affected with some tenderness of
regard for a place in which I had seen him a
great deal, from whence I had often issued a
better and happier man than when I entered,
and which had often appeared to my imagination,
while I trod its pavement in the solemn darkness
of the night, to be sacred to wisdom and piety."
Verily, there was some glimmer of true loyalty
to this intellectual monarch, in this strange man.

Often, indeed, by day and night, I fancy I
see in the distance that burly and sturdy ghost.
In Covent-garden, where on one occasion he
strolled with some rakes, who had knocked him
up in the Temple for a morning frolic, and
astonished the nurserymen by helping them to
unpack their cabbages; in Leicester-square, where
he used to visit Reynolds; in Clerkenwell, where
he went to see the editor of the Gentleman's
Magazine, at St. John's Gateway; in Salisbury-
square, where he used to visit Richardson the
printer and novelist, and where Hogarth, hearing
him denounce the cruelty with which the Jacobites
were treated, and judging from his rolling
eyes and frothing mouth, took him for a madman.

There is no name, indeed, more deeply
associated with the streets of London than that of
Dr. Samuel Johnson, who has been wandering
to-night, like a tax-collector's ghost going the
rounds.

"What are those white streaks over the black
chimney-pots of Chancery-lane?"

It is daybreak.

On the 31st of May will be published, price
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To be completed in Eight Monthly Parts.
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