Good wine is said to need no bush, but the acceptability of that at the Holly-bush to men who frequented Powlet’s and ‘knew a hawk from a hernshaw,’ where honest port and good claret were in question, had given a prestige to the wayside inn, not lost even when these lines were first written, especially in the estimation of literary men. One must put a mask on (as the women did who listened to his plays) to penetrate the pleasant parlour during the symposia, at which the handsome, but vicious and immoral Wycherley presided. No such compromise in modesty is needed when Goldsmith turns host, and entertains at no small cost (for the little inn had always a reputation for its cuisine), Garrick, Sir Joshua, Boswell, and the Great Leviathan of learning, Dr. Johnson. I forget the occasion on which the dinner at the Holly-bush came off. I have no doubt it commemorated some rare event that had put money in the pocket of our improvident author—the profits of ‘The Good-Natured Man,’ perhaps. [Illustration: _Sir Joshua Reynolds._] We all know how warmly and truly Johnson regarded Goldsmith, and yet he was capable of wounding him to the quick by his cruel pleasantries. On one occasion—let us hope it was not this—when Goldy, a little jealous of the success of Beattie’s ‘Essay on Truth,’ exclaimed, ‘Here’s a stir about a fellow that has written one book, and I have written many’—‘Ah, doctor, doctor,’ observed the terrible man, ‘there go two-and-forty sixpences to one guinea.’ But time has justified poor Goldy, and the ‘Deserted Village’ is still read, and the delightful ‘Vicar of Wakefield’; Moses and the rest of the Primrose family live on, perennial as their name; while Beattie, except by bookmen, is almost wholly forgotten.[153] Telford, Leigh Hunt, and Lamb, showed the same faith in the capital cellar and culinary skill to be found at the Holly-bush Tavern. Modern men of their craft have been of the same opinion, and the inn continued till recent times to be a favourite with literary men and artists. The Holly-bush had also the honour (perhaps has it still) of being the headquarters of the Masonic Lodge of St. John; but otherwise its prestige has departed. The Assembly-Room, if it exists, is now the meeting-place of political and other local clubs, and its exterior and surroundings are so altered as to be scarcely recognisable to one who first saw it half a century ago. To return to the sister eminence, Windmill Hill, so called from having been the site of one of the two windmills that anciently added to the picturesque charms of Hampstead, the mound on which it stood was, when I first knew this delightful spot, plainly discernible in the artificially rising ground on which Netley Cottage stands. In Elizabeth’s time another windmill stood in a field near the church, which Gerard distinguished as the habitat of the white butterfly orchis.