[62] Gent. Mag., March 1842.
[63] Peacham’s Compleat Gentleman, p. 79.
[64] The taverns of the seventeenth century appear in many instances to have been upstairs, above shops. In 1679, there was a “Mr Crutch, goldsmith, near Temple Bar, at the Palsgrave Head.” In a similar way, a bookseller lived at the sign of the Rainbow, at the same time as one Farr, who opened this place as a coffee-house. Another bookseller, James Roberts, who printed most of the satires, epigrams, and other wasp-stings against Pope, lived at the Oxford Arms, a carriers’ inn in Warwick Lane. Finally, Isaac Walton sold his “Complete Angler” “at his shopp in Fleet Street, under the King’s Head Tavern.”
[65] Macaulay’s Biographical Essays, Frederick the Great.
[66] Goldsmith’s Essay on the Versatility of Popular Favour.
[67] For more particulars about Topham, see p. 88.
[68] Trades tokens in the Beaufoy Collection.
[69] For several centuries, Fleet Street was the head-quarters for shows and exhibitions out of fair-time. Ben Jonson speaks of “the City of Nineveh at Fleetbridge.” This was in the reign of James I. Mrs Salmon’s waxworks were among the last remaining sights in that locality.
[70] Richardsoniana, p. 140.
[71] Grosley, in his Tour to London, 1772, vol i. p. 150, mentions this society, which at that period was held at the Robin Hood, and says it was a semi-public club, into which all sorts of people were admitted, and all sorts of topics, religious as well as political, were discussed. He makes an odd mistake, however, when he says that the president was a baker by trade.