57 Wall-fleet 1674-82; Wain-fleet 1686. Wainfleet is in Lincolnshire, famous as the birthplace of the founder of Magdalen College, Oxford. I never heard Wainfleet oysters specially quoted, but if Walter White in his Eastern England (ii. 10) may be trusted, the place was not so very long ago excellent for cockles.
60 The ocean 'crawlers' are at any rate bigger than those of the Kennet.
75-6 This is a libel.
104 Ram-alley] The constantly cited street of coarse cook-shops.
107 'Nativity' is no doubt 'Christmas', as in 'Nativity-pie'. The reference is to 'plum-broth', the old Christmas dish, made of beef, prunes, raisins, currants, white bread, spices, wine, and sugar.
114 It would be a pity not to keep the form 'costard-monger'.
119 'Hogan' of course = 'Dutch'. This, the only positive recipe in the poem, would be a sort of salmagundy—not bad, but rather coarse, like most of the cookery of the time. Flatman, had he cared, might evidently have anticipated the earlier Dr. (not Bishop) King, who published his ingenious Art of Cookery in prose and verse (to be found in the ninth volume of Chalmers) some thirty years later.
125-6. If 'within 's' be extended to 'within is' we shall have in 'to-make' a pleasant Hudibrastic rhyme to 'stomach', which otherwise comes in but ill.
127 What the special use of Dutch tiles was I can only guess. For tankard stands?
141-2 The plagiarism-hunters may, if they like, accuse Sam Weller of stealing from Flatman when he observed, 'I'm very glad I've seen the 'rig'nal, cos it 's a gratifyin' sort of thing, and eases one's mind so much'.