[36] The president much resembles old Frieake, who was the master of Nourse, to whom the late Mr. Potts was a pupil.
Mr. Frieake was originally a member of the Barbers' Company, and lived in Salisbury Square. Being desirous of building a carriage on the most reasonable terms, he employed a number of journeymen coachmakers in his own garret. They performed their task, but found it was not possible to get this appendage to modern practice into the street by any other means than unroofing the house. This was done, and a bricklayer's bill for re-covering the attic storey rendered his saving scheme much more expensive than it would have been if he had employed the king's coachmaker.
[37] The importance of the brewery to the revenue will appear by the following statement:—
MALT AND BREWERS.
The duty on malt from July 5, 1785, to the same day 1786, produced a million and a half of money, from a liquor which invigorates the bodies of its willing subjects to defend the blessings they enjoy, while that from Stygian gin enervates and incapacitates.
One of the brewers (or Chevaliers de Malte, as an impertinent Frenchman styled Humphrey Parsons, when the King of France inquired who he was) within one year contributed fifty thousand pounds to his own share. The sight of a great London brewery exhibits a magnificence unspeakable. The vessels evince the extent of the trade. Mr. Meux of Liquorpond Street can show twenty-four vessels containing thirty-five thousand four hundred barrels of wholesome liquor, which enables our London porter-drinkers to perform tasks that ten gin-drinkers would sink under.
[38] This gentleman has been very properly baptized the Herring Poet.
[39] It is directed to the Trunkmaker, and contains five enormous folios, titled as follows:—Lauder on Milton. Politics, vol. 999. Modern Tragedies, vol. 12. Hill on the Royal Society, and Turnbull on Ancient Paintings. The two last are worthy of a better fate, for one has some wit, and the other many sensible remarks.
[40] It is not 400 years since a Baron of this realm was tried for high crimes and misdemeanours, and one of the chief accusations exhibited against him was, that he suffered himself to be carried about his garden by two of his own species.
[41] It is said, I don't know upon what authority, to be intended as a burlesque delineation of John Stephen Liotard, of whom Mr. Walpole thus writes in p. 195 of his Anecdotes:—