And so it is, to my mind, with the tobacco smoke of the Golden Lion, which stands upon the site of an old hostelry, or inn, of the Tudor age, which was pulled down in April, 1836, and was described soon afterwards in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine.’ While the work of destruction [Picture: Ancient tobacco pipe] was going on, a tobacco pipe of ancient and foreign fashion was found behind the old wainscot. The stem was a crooked shoot of bamboo, through which a hole had been bored, and a brass ornamental termination (of an Elizabethan pattern) formed the head of the pipe.—Why may not this have been the pipe of that Bishop of London who had risen into Elizabeth’s favour by attending Mary on the scaffold at Fotheringay, and who, having fallen into disgrace in consequence of a second marriage at an advanced period of his life, sought, we are told, in the retirement of his house at Fulham, “to lose his sorrow in a mist of smoke,”—and actually died there suddenly on the 15th June, 1596, “while sitting in his chair and smoking tobacco?” Could this have been the tobacco pipe produced at “Crowner’s ’quest” assembled at the Golden Lion to inquire into the cause of his lordship’s sudden death? It is not even impossible that it may have been produced there by his son, John Fletcher, whose name is associated with that of Francis Beaumont in our literature. Mr. Charles Knight has set the example of an imaginary biography of Shakespeare, and has brought many probable and some improbable things together on the subject.—Why, then, has he overlooked the Golden Lion in Fulham? The name of John Fletcher naturally leads to this question. At the time of his father’s death, he was in his twentieth year; and who will doubt that, at that period of his life, his father’s (the Bishop’s) house was his home. That he may have resorted to the Golden Lion, and there have met with Shakespeare, is, therefore, quite as probable as that our great dramatist associated with Fletcher at the Falcon or the Mermaid, if good cause can only be shown for Shakespeare’s having had as much reason to frequent Fulham as the Bank-side—or Borough of London.