n on Theobald. 'Oh, poor Tib!' said Johnson, 'he was nearly knocked
down to my hands; Warburton stands between me and him.' 'But, sir,' said
Mr. Burney, 'You'll have Warburton on your bones, won't you? 'No, sir;'
he'll not come out; he'll only growl in his den.' 'But do you think,
sir, Warburton is a superior critic to Theobald?' 'Oh, sir, he'll make
two-and-fifty Theobalds cut into slices! The worst of Warburton is that
he has a rage for saying something when there's nothing to be said.' Mr.
Burney then asked him whether he had seen the letter Warburton had
written in answer to a pamphlet addressed 'to the most impudent man
alive.' He answered in the negative. Mr. Burney told him it was supposed
to be written by Mallet. A controversy now raged between the friends of
Pope and Bolingbroke, and Warburton and Mallet were the leaders of the
several parties. Mr. Burney asked him then if he had seen Warburton's
book against Bolingbroke's philosophy!'No, sir; I have never read
Bolingbroke's impiety, and therefore am not interested about its
refutation.'"

Goldsmith appears to have resided at No. 6, Wine Office Court from 1760
to 1762, during which period he earned a precarious livelihood by
writing for the booksellers.

They still point out Johnson and Goldsmith's favourite seats in the
north-east corner of the window of that cozy 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 at
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
window, 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.

"One day," says Mrs. Piozzi, "Johnson was called abruptly from our house
at Southwark, after dinner, and, returning in about three hours, said he
had been with an enraged author, whose landlady pressed him within doors
while the bailiffs beset him without; that he was drinking himself drunk
with Madeira to drown care, and fretting over a novel which, when
finished, was to be