Richardson, the novelist and printer; after that a tormented and jaded
usher at a Peckham school; last, and worst of all, a hack writer of
articles for Griffith's _Monthly Review_, then being opposed by Smollett
in a rival publication. In Green Arbour Court Goldsmith spent the
roughest part of the toilsome years before he became known to the world.
There he formed an acquaintance with Johnson and his set, and wrote
essays for Smollett's _British Magazine_.

Wine Office Court is supposed to have derived its name from an office
where licenses to sell wine were formerly issued. "In this court," says
Mr. Noble, "once flourished a fig tree, planted a century ago by the
Vicar of St. Bride's, who resided, with an absence of pride suitable, if
not common, to Christianity, at No. 12. It was a slip from another exile
of a tree, formerly flourishing, in a sooty kind of grandeur, at the
sign of the 'Fig Tree,' in Fleet Street. This tree was struck by
lightning in 1820, but slips from the growing stump were planted in
1822, in various parts of England."

The old-fashioned and changeless character of the "Cheese," in whose
low-roofed and sanded rooms Goldsmith and Johnson have so often hung up
their cocked hats and sat down facing each other to a snug dinner, not
unattended with punch, has been capitally sketched by a modern essayist,
who possesses a thorough knowledge of the physiology of London. In an
admirable paper entitled "Brain Street," Mr. George Augustus Sala thus
describes Wine Office Court and the "Cheshire Cheese":--

"The vast establishments," says Mr. Sala, "of Messrs. Pewter & Antimony,
typefounders (Alderman Antimony was Lord Mayor in the year '46); of
Messrs. Quoin, Case, & Chappell, printers to the Board of Blue Cloth; of
Messrs. Cutedge & Treecalf, bookbinders; with the smaller industries of
Scawper & Tinttool, wood-engravers; and Treacle, Gluepot, & Lampblack,
printing-roller makers, are packed together in the upper part of the
court as closely as herrings in a cask. The 'Cheese' is at the Brain
Street end. It is a little lop-sided, wedged-up house, that always
reminds you, structurally, of a high-shouldered man with his hands in
his pockets. It is full of holes and corners and cupboards and sharp
turnings; and in ascending the stairs to the tiny smoking-room you must
tread cautiously, if you would not wish to be tripped up by plates and
dishes, momentarily deposited there by furious waiters. The waiters at
the