A later poet, Lord Tennyson, was himself a frequenter of the “Cheese” in his young days, while it was there that Isaac Bickerstaff made the epigram: When late I attempted your pity to move, What made you so deaf to my prayers? Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love, But—why did you kick me down stairs? In fact, the “Cheese” was famous for epigrammatists. Who would not like to have seen the face of the old glutton and scandalmonger when, in the “Cheese,” the following lines were solemnly presented to him?— You say your teeth are dropping out— A serious cause of sorrow, Not likely to be cured, I doubt, To-day, or yet to-morrow. But good may come of this distress, While under it you labour, If, losing teeth you guzzle less, And don’t backbite your neighbour. That Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, and other distinguished men were in the habit of frequenting the Old Cheshire Cheese, there can be no manner of doubt, and they knew what they were about in choosing their place of rendezvous, for I find in a _brochure_ entitled “Round London” (1725), that the house is described as “Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese Tavern, near ye Flete Prison, an eating-house for goodly fare.” Wine Office Court, where the Cheshire Cheese is situated, took its name from the fact that wine licences were granted in a building close by. The present “wine office” of the Old Cheshire Cheese is exactly at the junction of the Court and Fleet Street. “In this court,” says Mr. Noble, “once flourished a fig tree, planted a century ago by the vicar of St. Bride’s, who resided at No. 12. It was a slip from another exile of a tree formerly flourishing in a sooty kind of grandeur at the sign of the Fig Tree in Fleet Street.” [Illustration: STAIRCASE IN “OLD CHESHIRE CHEESE.” _From an Original Drawing by Herbert Railton._] CHAPTER II JOHNSON AND GOLDSMITH AT THE “CHEESE” There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.—JOHNSON.