down the other;
and against the sky no more relics remained of a barbarous and
unchristian revenge. In April, 1773, Boswell, whom we all despise and
all like, dined at courtly Mr. Beauclerk's with Dr. Johnson, Lord
Charlemont (Hogarth's friend), Sir Joshua Reynolds, and other members of
the literary club, in Gerrard Street, Soho, it being the awful evening
when Boswell was to be balloted for. The conversation turned on the new
and commendable practice of erecting monuments to great men in St.
Paul's. The Doctor observed: "I remember once being with Goldsmith in
Westminster Abbey. Whilst we stood at Poet's Corner, I said to him,--

"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur istis."--OVID.

When we got to Temple Bar he stopped me, and pointing to the heads upon
it, slily whispered,--

"Forsitan et nostrum nomen miscebitur _istis_."

This anecdote, so full of clever, arch wit, is sufficient to endear the
old gateway to all lovers of Johnson and of Goldsmith.

According to Mr. Timbs, in his "London and Westminster," Mrs. Black, the
wife of the editor of the _Morning Chronicle_, when asked if she
remembered any heads on Temple Bar, used to reply, in her brusque,
hearty way, "_Boys, I recollect the scene well!_ I have seen on that
Temple Bar, about which you ask, two human heads--real heads--traitors'
heads--spiked on iron poles. There were two; I saw one fall (March 31,
1772). Women shrieked as it fell; men, as I have heard, shrieked. One
woman near me fainted. Yes, boys, I recollect seeing human heads upon
Temple Bar."

The cruel-looking spikes were removed early in the present century. The
panelled oak gates have often been renewed, though certainly shutting
them too often never wore them out.

As early as 1790 Alderman Pickett (who built the St. Clement's arch),
with other subversive reformers, tried to pull down Temple Bar. It was
pronounced unworthy of form, of no antiquity, an ambuscade for
pickpockets, and a record of only the dark and crimson pages of history.

A writer in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, in 1813 chronicling the
clearance away of some hovels encroaching upon the building, says: "It
will not be surprising if certain amateurs, busy in improving the
architectural concerns of the City, should at length request of their
brethren to allow the Bar or grand gate of entrance into the City of
London to stand, after they have so repeatedly sought to obtain its
destruction." In 1852 a proposal for its re