"Then enlarge on his cunning and wit;
Say, how he harang'd at the Fountain;
Say, how the old patriots were bit,
And a mouse was produc'd by a mountain."
Upon the Tavern site was a Drawing Academy, of which Cosway and Wheatley were pupils; here also was the lecture-room of John Thelwall, the political elocutionist. At No. 101, Ackermann, the printseller, illuminated his gallery with cannel coal, when gas-lighting was a novelty.
In Fountain-court, named from the Tavern, is the Coal-hole Tavern, upon the site of a coal-yard; it was much resorted to by Edmund Kean, and was one of the earliest night taverns for singing.
TAVERN LIFE OF SIR RICHARD STEELE.
Among the four hundred letters of Steele's preserved in the British Museum, are some written from his tavern haunts, a few weeks after marriage, to his "Dearest being on earth:"
"Eight o'clock, Fountain Tavern, Oct. 22, 1707.