me, had distinguished Pope and Dryden, thus 'That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, At night I supped with him at the 'Mitre' tavern, that we might renew our social intimacy at the original place of meeting. But there was now considerable difference in his way of living. Having had an illness, in which he was advised to leave off wine, he had, from that period, continued to abstain from it, and drank only water or lemonade." "Mr. Beauclerk and I," says Boswell, in another place, "called on him in the morning. As we walked up Johnson's Court, I said, 'I have a veneration for this court,' and was glad to find that Beauclerk had the same reverential enthusiasm." The Doctor's removal Boswell thus duly chronicles :-" Having arrived," he says, "in London late on Friday, the 15th of March, 1776, I hastened next morning to wait on Dr. Johnson, at his house, but found he was removed from Johnson's Court, No. 7, to Bolt Court, No. 8, still keeping to his favourite Fleet Street. reflection at the time, upon this change, as marked in my journal, is as follows: '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 a happier man than when I went in; 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."" My Johnson was living in Johnson's Court when he was introduced to George III., an interview in which he conducted himself, considering he was an ingrained Jacobite, with great dignity, selfrespect, and good sense. That clever, but most shameless and scurrilous, paper, John Bull, was started in Johnson's Court, at the close of 1820. Its specific and real object was to slander unfortunate Queen Caroline and to torment, stigmatise, and blacken "the Brandenburg House party," as her honest sympathisers were called. Theodore Hook was chosen editor, because he knew society, was quick, witty, satirical, ́ and thoroughly unscrupulous. For his "splendid abuse "-as his biographer, the unreverend Mr. Barham, calls it-he received the full pay of a greedy hireling. Tom Moore and the Whigs now met with a terrible adversary. Hook did not hew or stab, like Churchill and the old rough lampooners of earlier days, but he filled crackers with wild fire, or laughingly stuck the enemies of George IV. over with pins. Hook had only a year before returned from the Treasuryship of the Mauritius, charged with a defalcation of £12,000-the result of the grossest and most culpable neglect. Hungry for money, as he had ever been, he was eager to show his zeal for the master who had hired his pen. Hook and Daniel Terry, the comedian, joined to start the new satirical paper; but Miller, a publisher in the Burlington Arcade, was naturally afraid of libel, and refused to have anything to do with the new venture. With Miller, as Hook said in his clever, punning way, all argument in favour of it proved Newgate-ory. Hook at first wanted to start a magazine upon the model of Blackwood, but the final decision was for a weekly newspaper, to be called John Bull, a title already discussed for a previous scheme by Hook and Elliston. The first number appeared on Saturday, December 16, 1820, in the publishing office, No. 11, Johnson's Court. The modest projectors only printed seven hundred and fifty copies of the first number, but the sale proved considerable. By the sixth week the sale had reached ten thousand weekly. The first five numbers were reprinted, and the first two actually stereotyped. Hook's favourite axiom-worthy of such a satirist-was "that there was always a concealed wound in every family, and the point was to strike exactly at the source of pain." Hook's clerical elder brother, Dr. James Hook, the author of "Pen Owen" and other novels, and afterwards Dean of Worcester, assisted him; but Terry was too busy in what Sir Walter Scott, his great friend and sleeping partner, used to call "Terryfying the novelists by not very brilliant adaptations of their works." Dr. Maginn, summoned from Cork to edit a newspaper for Hook (who had bought up two dying newspapers for the small expenditure of three hundred guineas), wrote only one article for the Bull. Mr. Haynes Bayley contributed some of his graceful verses, and Ingoldsby (Barham) some of his rather ribald fun. The anonymous editor of John Bull became for a time as much talked about as "Junius" in earlier times. By many witty James Smith was suspected, but his fun had not malignity enough for the Tory purposes of those bitter days. Latterly Hook let Alderman Wood alone, and set all his staff on Hume, the great economist, and the Hon. Henry Grey Bennett. Several prosecutions followed, says Mr. Barham, that for libel on the Queen among the rest; but the grand attempt on the part of the Whigs to crush the paper was not made till the 6th of May, 1821. A short and insignificant paragraph, containing some observations upon the Hon. Henry Grey Bennett, a brother of Lord Tankerville, was selected for attack, as involving a breach of privilege; in consequence of which the printer, Mr. H. F. Cooper, the editor, and Mr. Shackell were ordered to attend at the bar of the House of Commons. A long debate ensued, during which Ministers made as fair a stand as the nature of the case would admit in behalf of their guerrilla allies, but which terminated at length in the committal of Cooper to Newgate, where he was detained from the 11th of May till the 11th of July, when Parliament was prorogued. Meanwhile the most strenuous exertions were made to detect the real delinquents-for, of course, honourable gentlemen were not to be imposed upon by the unfortunate "men of straw" who had fallen into their clutches, and who, by the way, suffered for an offence of which their judges and accusers openly proclaimed them to be not only innocent, but incapable. The terror of imprisonment and the various arts of cross-examination proving insufficient to elicit the truth, recourse was had to a simpler and more conciliatory mode of treatment-bribery. The storm had failed to force off the editorial cloak-the golden beams were brought to bear upon it. We have it for certain that an offer was made to a member of the establishment to stay all impending proceedings, and, further, to pay down a sum of £500 on the names of the actual writers being given It was rejected with disdain, while such were the precautions taken that it was impossible to fix Hook, though suspicion began to be awakened, with any share in the concern. In order, also, to cross the scent already hit off, and announced by sundry deep-mouthed pursuers, the following "Reply"-framed upon the principle, we presume, that in literature, as in love, everything is fair-was thrown out in an early number: "MR. THEODORE HOOK. Our "The conceit of some people is amazing, and it has not been unfrequently remarked that conceit is in abundance where talent is most scarce. readers will see that we have received a letter from Mr. Hook, disowning and disavowing all connection with this paper. Partly out of good nature, and partly from an anxiety to show the gentleman how little desirous we are to be associated with him, we have made a declaration which will doubtless be quite satisfactory to his morbid sensibility and affected squeamishness. We are free to confess that two things surprise us in this business; the first, that anything which we have thought worth giving to the public should have been mistaken for Mr. Hook's; and, secondly that such a person as Mr. Hook should think himself disgraced by a connection with John Bull." For sheer impudence this, perhaps, may be admitted to "defy competition "; but in point of tact and delicacy of finish it falls infinitely short of a subsequent notice, a perfect gem of its class, added by way of clenching the denial :— "We have received Mr. Theodore Hook's second letter. We are ready to confess that we may have appeared to treat him too unceremoniously, but we will put it to his own feelings whether the terms of his denial were not, in some degree, calculated to produce a little asperity on our part. We shall never be ashamed, however, to do justice, and we readily declare that we meant no kind of imputation on Mr. Hook's personal character." The ruse answered for awhile, and the paper went on with unabated audacity. The death of the Queen, in the summer of 1821, produced a decided alteration in the tone and temper of the paper. In point of fact, its occupation was now gone. The main, if not the sole, object of its establishment had been brought about by other and unforeseen events. The combination it had laboured so energetically to thwart was now dissolved by a higher and resistless agency. Still, it is not to be supposed that a machine which brought in a profit of something above £4,000 per annum, half of which fell to the share of Hook, was to be lightly thrown up, simply because its original purpose was attained. The dissolution of the "League" did not exist then as a precedent. The Queen was no longer to be feared; but there were Whigs and Radicals enough to be held in check, and, above all, there was a handsome income to be realised. "Latterly Hook's desultory nature made him wander from the Bull, which might have furnished the thoughtless and heartless man of pleasure with an income for life. The paper naturally lost sap and vigour, at once declined in sale, and sank into a mere respectable club-house and party organ." "Mr. Hook," says Barham, "received to the day of his death a fixed salary, but the proprietorship had long since passed into other hands.” CHAPTER X. FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES. Dr. Johnson in Bolt Court-His motley Household-His Life there-Still existing-The gallant "Lumber Troop "-Reform Bill Riots-Sir Claudius Hunter-Cobbett in Bolt Court-The Bird Boy-The Private Soldier-In the House-Dr. Johnson in Gough Square-Busy at the Dictionary-Goldsmith in Wine Office Court-Selling "The Vicar of Wakefield "---Goldsmith's Troubles-Wine Office Court-The Old "Cheshire Cheese." Of all the nooks of London associated with the yellow leaf, not, like Macbeth, with the loss of memory of that good giant of literature, Dr. John-honour, but with love, obedience, troops of friends, son, not one is more sacred to those who love and golden opinions from all sorts of people. His that great and wise man than Bolt Court. To this Titanic labour, the Dictionary, he had achieved monastic court Johnson came in 1776, and re- chiefly in Gough Square; his "Rasselas"-that mained till that December day in 1784, when a grave and wise Oriental story—he had written in a procession of all the learned and worthy men who few days, in Staple's Inn, to defray the expenses of honoured him followed his body to its grave in the his mother's funeral. In Bolt Court he, however, Abbey, near the feet of Shakespeare and by the produced his "Lives of the Poets," a noble comside of Garrick. The great scholar, whose ways pendium of criticism, defaced only by the bitter and sayings, whose rough hide and tender heart, Tory depreciation of Milton, and injured by the are so familiar to us-thanks to that faithful parasite insertion of many worthless and the omission of who secured an immortality by getting up behind several good poets. his triumphal chariot-came to Bolt Court from Johnson's Court, whither he had flitted from Inner Temple Lane, where he was living when the young Scotch barrister who was afterwards his biographer first 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." This Levett was a poor eccentric apothecary, whom Johnson supported, and who seems to have been a charitable man. The annoyance of such a menagerie of singular 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 To It is pleasant to think of some of the events that happened while Johnson lived in Bolt Court. 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 Johnson's Court. 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 St. Clement's Church on the day he rejoiced in comparing the animation of Fleet Street 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 first and only recorded pun. Johnson was at Bolt Court when the Gordon Riots broke out, and he describes them to Mrs. Thrale. Boswell gives a pleasant sketch of a party at Bolt Court, when Mrs. Hall (a sister of Wesley) was there, and Mr. Allen, a printer; Johnson produced his silver salvers, and it was "a great day." It was on this occasion that the conversation fell on apparitions, and Johnson, always superstitious to the last degree, told the story of hearing his mother's voice call him one day at Oxford (probably at a time when his brain was overworked). On this great occasion also, Johnson, talked at by Mrs. Hall and Mrs. Williams at the same moment, gaily quoted the line from the Beggar's Opera,— "But two at a time there's no mortal can bear," and Boswell playfully compared the great man to Captain Macheath. Imagine Mrs. Williams, old and peevish; Mrs. Hall, lean, lank, and preachy; Johnson, rolling in his chair like Polyphemus at a debate; Boswell, stooping forward on the perpetual listen; Mr. Levett, sour and silent; Frank, the black servant, proud of the silver salvers-and you have the group as in a picture. 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 (1783), when he and Boswell, returning from service at St. Clement's, 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; Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff Round Johnson's dying bed gathered many wise and good men. To Burke he said, "I must be in a wretched state indeed, when your company would not be a delight to me." To another friend he remarked solemnly, but in his old grand manner, "Sir, you cannot conceive with what acceleration I advance towards death." Nor did his old vehemence and humour by any means forsake him, for he described a man who sat up to watch him "as an idiot, sir; awkward as a turnspit when first put into the wheel, and sleepy as a dormouse." His remaining hours were spent in fervent prayer. The last words he uttered were those of benc diction upon the daughter of a friend who came to ask his blessing. Some years before Dr. Johnson's death, when the poet Rogers was a young clerk of literary proclivities at his father's bank, he one day stole surreptitiously to Bolt Court, daringly to show some of his fledgeling poems to the great Polyphemus of literature. He and young Maltby, the father 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 débutants' hearts, and before Frank Barber, the Doctor's old negro footman, could appear, the two lads, like street-boys who had perpetrated a mischievous runaway knock, took to their heels and darted back into noisy Fleet Street. Mr. Jesse, who has collected so many excellent anecdotes, some even original, in his three large volumes on "London's Celebrated Characters and Places," 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, December 13, 1784, 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. One evening Dr. 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 "Rake's Progress"), 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," said the old seer, streets of London will be one of these days the lighted by smoke." 1 Dictionary, and died in 1780. In Bensley's destruc- a century ago, the well-known society of the tive fire all the plates and stock of Dallaway's "History of Sussex" were consumed. Johnson's house, says Mr. Noble, was in 1858 purchased by the Stationers' Company, and fitted up as a school (the fee, two pounds a quarter). In 1861 Mr. Foss, Master of the Company, initiated a fund, and since then eight university scholarships have "Lumber Troop" once drained their porter and held their solemn smokings. This gallant force of supposititious fighting men "came out" with great force during the Reform Riots of 1830. These useless disturbances originated in a fussy, foolish warning letter, written by Sir John Key, Lord Mayor elect (he was generally known in the City as Don |