Standing before the low-arched doorway, a genuine portal, the door itself a bit of oak, framed and duly knobbed, I remind myself that this picturesque tenement is associated, oddly enough, with some of the pleasantest literary memories. Like its mediæval neighbour, old “St. John’s Gate,” it was the refuge and shelter of the destitute “hack” more than a hundred and twenty years ago. A regular line of _littérateurs_ have had the odd fancy of deserting their busy Grub Street, and of lying _perdu_ here, either from choice or necessity; and it is easy to call up the rather ungainly figure of Doctor Goldsmith toiling up Canonbury Hill, and hiding here from his creditors. A worthy woman--albeit garrulous--guides us over the old tower. After saying that “she knew Oliver’s life well,” she added, “Them poets seem to be always poor and in want.” It was astonishing to see the number and spaciousness of the chambers in the old place, and their picturesque rambling disposition. One was struck with admiration at the two spacious rooms on the second and third floors, finely proportioned and baronial, each adorned with ebony-toned oak panelling reaching to the ceiling, and each with an elaborately carved mantelpiece, such as would have rejoiced Charles Lamb at Blakesware. The delicacy and finish of the work cannot be surpassed. There are old solid doors, black as ink, hanging on hinges a yard long; fragments of old oak banisters; while in the upper stories windows with diamond panes are still seen. The stair mounts in an irregular way: off which are curious chambers and many odd “crannies.” About 1766, the bookseller Newbery, as we learn from the pleasant account of him just published, contracted with a Mr. Fleming, the then tenant, to board and lodge the poet for £50 a year. According to this authority, Goldsmith’s room was that on the second floor, and here he is described as reading to one of the younger Newberys passages from his MS. George Daniel, the bibliophile, who made a pilgrimage to the tower--if he did not reside there--and gathered up the traditions, found that the first-floor room was believed to have been the Doctor’s, and “an old press bedstead in the corner” was shown in proof. Two families, the Tappses and the Evanses, had been in care of the place for over 140 years: and Mrs. Tapps used to retail many stories about the poet to her niece, who was in possession at the time of Mr. Daniel’s visit. Washington Irving was so much interested by the place that he took up his abode there for a time. Other tenants have been the eccentric Dr. Hill, of Garrick’s happy epigram-- For physic and farces His equal there scarce is: His farces are physic, His physic a farce is;