Buckburst, Beaumont the poet, Sir William Follett, and Judge Jeffries of
infamous memory, were all students within the Temple precincts.

Charles Lamb, whose father, John Lamb, was clerk to Mr. Salt, a bencher of
the Inner Temple, was born in Crown Office Row. In 1809 he took chambers
at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, where some of the delightful "Elia" essays
were penned. In one of these he says, "I was born and passed the first
seven years of my life in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens,
its fountains, its river, I had almost said,--for in those young years
what was the king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleasant
places?--these are of my oldest recollections. I repeat to this day no
verses more frequently or with kindlier emotion than those of Spenser
where he speaks of this spot. Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the
metropolis. What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the
first time,--the passing from the crowded Strand or Fleet Street by
unexpected avenues into its magnificent ample squares, its classic green
recesses! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that portion of it which,
from three sides, overlooks the greater garden, that goodly pile

Of buildings strong, albeit of paper hight,[A]

confronting with massy contrast the lighter, older, more fantastically
shrouded one named of Harcourt, with the cheerful Crown Office Row (place
of my kindly engendure), right opposite the stately stream which washes
the garden foot with her yet scarcely trade-polluted waters and seems but
just weaned from Twickenham Na?es! A man would give something to have been
born in such places. What a collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan
hall where the fountain plays which I have made to rise and fall how many
times, to the astonishment of the young urchins my contemporaries, who,
not being able to guess at its recondite machinery, were tempted to hail
the wondrous work as magic." Though its courts may have been "magnificent"
and "ample" to the contemplation of the kindly Lamb, they would scarce be
so accounted now.

[Footnote A: Paper Buildings.]

The "great Cham of Literature," Dr. Samuel Johnson, resided for some time
at No. 1, Inner Temple Lane. Indeed, it was while the doctor was living in
the Temple that the world-famous "Literary Club" was founded. The faithful
and receptive Boswell, too, as might be expected, lived within easy
distance of the object of his veneration, at th