This seemingly cabalistic reference stands for Principal John Thompson who presided over the inn for two terms in 1747. Dickens made fun of it in "Bleak House." Dr. Samuel Johnson moved into Staple Inn March 22, 1757, from Gough Square, Fleet Street, and during his residence here the great lexicographer wrote "Rasselas" in the evenings of a week, to pay the funeral expenses of his mother! The large red brick insurance building opposite Staple Inn on the north side of Holborn is on the site of Furnival's, one of the original ten Inns of Chancery, where Dickens lived when he was first married and where he began the writing of "Pickwick Papers." A narrow alley between the Holborn houses east of Fetter Lane and having over its entrance a jarring gilt sign leads to the smallest of the ten original Inns of Chancery--Barnard's Inn. Its ancientness is evidenced by its dwarfed courts and tiny Hall. Since 1874 it has been used by the Mercers' Company for their schools. Herbert Pocket in Dickens' "Great Expectations" had rooms here in which Pip slept on his arrival in London. Gray's Inn one of the four Inns of Court with its spacious gardens and its sober courts is a reminder of the reign of King Edward III. The Hall was built in 1560 and the gardens were laid out three centuries ago, the walks being planned by Francis Bacon. In Fox Court, which is off Gray's Inn Road close by Holborn, the Countess of Macclesfield lived, and here, on the south side, her famous son Richard Savage the poet was born in 1697. His father was Lord Rivers, but Savage was never cared for by him and was treated with gross neglect by his mother. His life was a dissipated one and he once killed a man in a drunken brawl for which he was sentenced to death but afterwards pardoned. His best poem is "The Bastard," in which he execrated his own mother the Countess for the illegitimacy of his birth. He died in 1743 in a Bristol jail to which he had been sent for debt. Close by, at the Gray's Inn Road corner of Holborn, is the crossing that was swept by the poor Jo of Dickens' "Bleak House." In Brooke Street, near at hand, the house No. 39, is famous as standing on the site of the lodging house where Thomas Chatterton ended his brief and remarkable career. Chatterton was born in Bristol, the son of a poor widow. He received some education at a charity school but otherwise was self-taught. In the few years of his life he developed a poetic quality wonderful even in an age noted for literary excellence. He was seventeen years old when in 1769 he came to London where he met great discouragement. He lived in the garret of the obscure Brooke Street lodging and here on August 24th, 1770, in dire want, among strangers, literally starving, he died of poison self-administered. He was buried in the pauper burial ground adjoining a workhouse in Shoe Lane.