* * * * * “CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL,” Saturday, June 2, 1883, after speaking of an imaginary journey from Temple Bar eastward, thus describes the “Cheese”: “There is another old City tavern where Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith often sat together over a snug dinner, a tavern in Wine Office Court called the Old Cheshire Cheese. Passing along Fleet Street and glancing up this court, those magic words seem to take up all the space in the distance as completely as though they were being glanced at through a telescope, and if you follow the instincts of your nature you will dive down the telescope towards the attractive lamp above the door, and enter the tavern. The customary pint of stout in an old pewter will be placed before you, if your taste lies that way; and when you have finished your chop, or steak, or pudding as the case may be, there will follow that speciality for which the Cheshire Cheese is principally noted, a dish of bubbling and blistering cheese, which comes up scorching in an apparatus resembling a tin of Everton toffee in size and shape. “It was the same when frequented by Johnson and Goldsmith, and their favourite seats in the north-east corner of the window are still pointed out. Nothing is changed—except the waiters, in course of nature—in this conservative and cosy tavern. If Goldsmith did not actually write parts of the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ in that corner, he must have thought out more chapters than one while seated there. He lived in Wine Office Court, and here it is supposed the novel begun at Canonbury Tower was finished.” * * * * * “PICTURESQUE LONDON” (Percy Fitzgerald): “Fleet Street, interesting in so many ways, is remarkable for the curious little courts and passages into which you make entry under small archways. These are Johnson’s Court, Bolt Court, Racquet Court, and the like. But in Fleet Street there is one that is specially interesting. We can fancy the Doctor tramping up to his favourite tavern, the Cheshire Cheese.