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A COFFEE-ROOM CHARACTER.

It was about the year 1805 that we were first ushered into the dining-house called the Cheshire Cheese, in Wine-office-court.  It is known that Johnson once lodged in this court, and bought an enormous cudgel while there, to resist a threatened attack from Macpherson, the author, or editor, of Ossian’s Poems.  At the time we first knew the place (for its visiters and keepers are long since changed for the third or fourth time,) many came there who remembered Johnson and Goldsmith spending their evenings in the coffee-room; old half-pay officers, staid tradesmen of the neighbourhood, and the like, formed the principal portion of the company.

Few in this vast city know the alley in Fleet-street which leads to the sawdusted floor and shining tables; those tables of mahogany, parted by green-curtained seats, and bound with copper rims to turn the edge of the knife which might perchance assail them during a warm debate; John Bull having a propensity to commit such mutilations in the “torrent, tempest, and whirlwind” of argument.  Thousands have never seen the homely clock that ticks over the chimney, nor the capacious, hospitable-looking fire-place under,[3] both as they stood half a century ago, when Fleet-street was the emporium of literary talent, and every coffee-house was distinguished by some character of note who was regarded as the oracle of the company.

    [3] We may add that still fewer have seen the characteristic
        whole-length portrait of “Harry,” the waiter, which has
        been placed over the fireplace, by subscription among the
        frequenters of the room. Wageman is the painter, and nothing
        can describe the bonhommie of Harry, who has just drawn the
        cork of a pint of port, exulting in all the vainglory of crust
        and bees’ wing.—­ED. MIRROR.

Among these was old Colonel L——­e, in person short and thick-set.  He often sacrificed copiously to the jolly god, in his box behind the door; he was a great smoker, and had numbered between seventy and eighty years.  Early in the evening he was punctually at his post; he called, for his pipe and his “go of rack,” according to his diurnal custom; and surveying first the persons at his own table, and then those in other parts of the room, he commonly sat a few minutes in silence, as if waiting the stimulating effect of the tobacco to wind up his conversational powers, or perhaps he was bringing out defined images from the dim reminiscences which floated in his sensorium.  If a stranger were near, he commonly addressed him with an old soldier’s freedom, on some familiar topic which little needed the formalities of a set introduction; but soon changed the subject, and commenced fighting “his battles o’er again.”  He talked much of Minden, and the campaigns of 1758 and 59.  He boasted of