Then there are all the memories of gallant Elizabethan days, when the queen came and dined with the benchers in the great Middle Temple Hall and _Twelfth Night_ was first performed here. It was by his dancing at one of the famous revels that the handsome youth Christopher Hatton first attracted the notice of Elizabeth, a moment when as our allies would say he lost a good chance of remaining quiet. The Hall is shown to visitors before twelve o’clock and after three on week-days and after church on Sundays. Peter Cunningham says the roof is the best piece of Elizabethan architecture in London. What feasts they had there in the days when lawyers had time to make merry. Here is the account of one old chronicler: For every feast the steward provided five fat hams with spices and cakes, and the chief butler seven dozen gilt and silver spoons, twelve damask table-cloths and twenty candlesticks. The constable wore gilt armour and a plumed helmet, and bore a pole axe in his hands. On St. Thomas’s Eve a parliament was held, when the two youngest brothers, bearing torches, preceded the procession of benchers, the officers’ names were called and the whole society passed round the hearth singing a carol. On Christmas Eve the minstrels, sounding, preceded the dishes, and dinner done, sang a song at the high table; after dinner the oldest masters of the revels and other gentlemen sang songs. It sounds very cheerful and amiable, but it is difficult to imagine our modern lawyers passing round the hearth singing a carol. I suppose that the three best-loved dwellers in the Temple were Oliver Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb, and none of them were lawyers. Johnson was living in No. 1 Inner Temple Lane when Topham Beauclerk and Mr. Langton knocked him up at three in the morning to see if he could be persuaded to finish the night with them, and he came out with a poker, and his little black wig on, and said when he understood their errand, “What, is it you, you dogs, I’ll have a frisk with you.” The story of Goldsmith’s tenancy of the Temple reminds one of the tales told of Balzac, whose tastes and weaknesses he shared. Always in financial difficulties, as soon as he made a little money he bought quantities of clothes and furniture and ran into debt to his tailor, perhaps for the very red velvet coat with lace ruffles that you may see to-day in the London Museum at Lancaster House. Goldsmith had many London lodgings and only came to the Temple in 1764. When he died there ten years later the staircase of this improvident, extravagant genius was crowded with the poor he had managed to help. No one seems to know exactly where he lies buried in the Temple churchyard.