Mr. Fitzgerald then goes on to quote from Jay the extract given in an earlier chapter, and concludes by saying, “Be that as it may, it is an interesting locality and a pleasing sign—the Old Cheshire Cheese, Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, which will afford the present generation, it is hoped, for some time to come an opportunity of witnessing the kind of tavern in which our forefathers delighted to assemble for refreshment.” * * * * * G. A. S. (“Twice Round the Clock: Six P.M.”) (talking of the ancient Roman repasts): “Better I take it, a mutton chop at the Cheshire Cheese than those nasty ancient Roman repasts.” * * * * * THE “GENTLEMAN’S MAGAZINE,” April, 1895 (“A Six Days’ Tour in London with a Pretty Cousin”):— “We must take a glance at a tavern of the good old pattern close by, which has a regular pedigree and has had books written about it—the Cheshire Cheese to wit. We go up Wine Office Court and there it stands with its blinking windows and somewhat shaky walls.... Not so, Mr. Sylvanus Urban, the windows of the good old house may blink, but there is nothing shaky about the walls, they at all events are founded on a rock solid as the credit of the house. No wonder too, for it carries its two hundred years or so bravely enough, and like its extinct neighbour, the Cock, witnessed the Plague and Fire. It is needless to say that the older Cheshire Cheese perished in the Fire of London, which stopped about a hundred yards west of Wine Office Court, just on the City side of St. Dunstan’s Church. Here the floor is sanded—or rather sawdusted; here are boxes and rude tables; the chop is done on a gridiron before you, and there is a beefsteak pudding which delights epicures.” * * * * * WALTER THORNBURY (“Old and New London”): “Goldsmith appears to have resided at No. 6 Wine Office Court from 1760 to 1762. They still point out Johnson and Goldsmith’s favourite seats in the north-east corner of the window of that cosy though utterly unpretentious tavern, the Cheshire Cheese in this court. “It was while living in Wine Office Court that Goldsmith is supposed to have partly written that delightful novel, the ‘Vicar of Wakefield,’ which he had begun at Canonbury Tower. We like to think that seated in the ‘Cheese’ he perhaps espied and listened to the worthy but credulous vicar and his gosling son attending to the profound theories of the learned and philosophic but shifty Mr. Jenkinson. We think now, by the windows, with a cross light upon his coarse Irish features and his round prominent brow, we see the watchful poet sit eyeing his prey, secretly enjoying the grandiloquence of the swindler and the admiration of the honest country parson.” * * * * * MR. LEWIS HOUGH, in “Once a Week,” Oct. 26, 1867: