ntimates are happily described in Mr. Forster's biography.
Supper-parties were frequent, "preceded by blind-man's-buff, forfeits, or
games of cards, when Goldsmith, festively entertaining them all, would
make frugal supper for himself off boiled milk." He would "sing all kinds
of Irish songs," and with special enjoyment "gave them the Scotch ballad
of 'Johnny Armstrong' (his old nurse's favorite);" with great cheerfulness
"he would put the front of his wig behind, or contribute in any other way
to the general amusement;" and to an "accompaniment of uncontrolled
laughter he once danced a minuet with Mrs. Seguin," the wife of an Irish
merchant.

A volume would not contain the thrilling story of the trials and triumphs,
the struggles and successes, of the dead-and-gone generations whose feet
have polished the cool gray flags of the purlieus of the Temple. Comedy
and tragedy have been enacted within its walls; penury and prodigality
have dwelt beneath the same rafters; the versatile genius and the plodding
dullard have taken their maiden flights toward fame in its halls. Soldiers
and statesmen, poets and playwrights, courtiers, wits, and adventurers,
have herein acted their various parts. Yet, despite the checkered lives
that have run their course within its pale, and notwithstanding the lustre
shed upon its history by the many great jurists nurtured there, the Temple
gains its greatest renown from the residence therein of that famous trio,
Johnson, Goldsmith, and Lamb.

The immortal pump, so often alluded to in the Temple annals, stands in the
centre of Hare Court,--not in Pump Court, as might not unreasonably be
expected. It yields a copious supply of the coolest spring-water, and the
office-lads of the surrounding chambers make many pilgrimages hither,
stone pitcher in hand, during the sultry summertime. Charles Lamb, in an
epistle to Coleridge, in his happiest vein, says, "I have been turned out
of my chambers in the Temple by a landlord who wanted them for himself;
but I have got others at No. 4, Inner Temple Lane, far more commodious and
roomy.... The rooms are delicious, and the best look backwards into Hare
Court, where there is a pump always going; just now it is dry. Hare
Court's trees come in at the window,--so that it's like living in a
garden." Again, writing from the Temple in 1810 to his friend Manning, who
is in China, Lamb says, "The household gods are slow to come, but here I
mean to live and die. Come, an