Boswell has this remarkable passage respecting the house:--"We had a good supper, and port-wine, of which he (Johnson) sometimes drank a bottle. 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 experienced." SHIP TAVERN, TEMPLE BAR. This noted Tavern, the site of which is now denoted by Ship-yard, is mentioned among the grants to Sir Christopher Hatton, 1571. There is, in the Beaufoy Collection, a Ship token, dated 1649, which is evidence that the inner tavern of that sign was then extant. It was also called the Drake, from the ship painted as the sign being that in which Sir Francis Drake voyaged round the world. Faithorne, the celebrated engraver, kept shop, next door to the Drake. "The Ship Tavern, in the Butcher-row, near Temple Bar," occurs in an advertisement so late as June, 1756. The taverns about Temple Bar were formerly numerous; and the folly of disfiguring sign-boards was then, as at a later date, a street frolic. "Sir John Denham, the poet, when a student at Lincoln's-Inn, in 1635, though generally temperate as a drinker, having stayed late at a tavern with some fellow-students, induced them to join him in 'a frolic,' to obtain a pot of ink and a plasterer's brush, and blot out all the signs between Temple Bar and Charing Cross. Aubrey relates that R. Estcourt, Esq., carried the ink-pot: and that next day it caused great confusion; but it happened Sir John and his comrades were discovered, and it cost them some moneys." THE PALSGRAVE HEAD, TEMPLE BAR. This once celebrated Tavern, opposite the Ship, occupied the site of Palsgrave-place, on the south side of the Strand, near Temple Bar. The Palsgrave Frederick, afterwards King of Bohemia, was affianced to the Princess Elizabeth (only daughter of James I.), in the old banqueting house at Whitehall, December 27, 1612, when the sign was, doubtless, set up in compliment to him. There is a token of the house in the Beaufoy Collection. (See _Burn's Catalogue_, p. 225.) Here Prior and Montague, in _The Hind and Panther Transversed_, make the Country Mouse and the City Mouse bilk the Hackney Coachman: "But now at Piccadilly they arrive, And taking coach, t'wards Temple Bar they drive, But at St. Clement's eat out the back; And slipping through the Palsgrave, bilkt poor hack." HEYCOCK'S, TEMPLE BAR,