These lines, often erroneously attributed to Lady Mary Wortley Montague, occur in Pope’s The Basset-table, an Eclogue.
[95] Rockhoult, or Rockholt House, was at Leyton, in Essex, and was “for a short period an auxiliary place of amusement for the Summer to the established Theatres” (Gentleman’s Magazine, July 1814). It was opened about 1742, and was apparently regarded as “the place to spend a happy day.” A ballad to “Delia” exclaimed—
“Delia, in whose form we trace
All that can a virgin grace,
Hark where pleasure, blithe as May,
Bids us to Rockholt haste away.”
[96] “The principal shareholder and manager of Ranelagh at this date was Sir Thomas Robinson, Bart., M.P., whose gigantic form was for many years familiar to frequenters of the Rotunda; a writer of 1774 calls him its Maypole, and Garland of Delights. Robinson lived at Prospect Place, adjoining the gardens.”
[97] The New Wells belonged to the Islington group of pleasure gardens, and stood on ground now occupied by Lower Rosomon Street, Clerkenwell. It flourished 1737-50, and numbered a collection of rattlesnakes among its attractions.
[98] Cuper’s Gardens, a great resort. The Feathers Tavern at the end of Waterloo Bridge is the successor of the tavern originally in the gardens, the site of which is traversed by the Waterloo Road. They were closed in 1759, after which Dr. Johnson, passing them in a coach with Langton, Beauclerk, and Lady Sydney Beauclerk (mother of his friend), jokingly proposed, to Lady Sydney’s horror, that they should lease them: “She had no notion of a joke, sir; she had come late into life, and had a mighty unpliable understanding.”
[99] Advertised as “the Pariton, an instrument never played in publick before.”