Finally, from the “Indicator” we learn, that to Mr. Leigh Hunt “a tavern and coffee-house is a pleasant sight, from its sociality; not to mention the illustrious club memories of the times of Shakspeare and the Tatlers. The rural transparencies, however, which they have in their windows, with all our liking of the subject, would perhaps be better in any others; for tavern sociality is a town-thing, and should be content with town ideas. A landscape in the window makes us long to change it at once for a rural inn; to have a rosy-faced damsel attending us, instead of a sharp and serious waiter; and to catch, in the intervals of chat, the sound of a rookery instead of cookery. We confess that the commonest public-house in town is not such an eyesore to us as it is with some. It may not be very genteel, but neither is every thing that is rich. There may be a little too much drinking and roaring going on in the middle of the week; but what, in the mean time, are pride and avarice, and all the unsocial vices about? Before we object to public-houses, and above all to their Saturday evening recreations, we must alter the systems that make them a necessary comfort to the poor and laborious. Till then, in spite of the vulgar part of the polite, we shall have an esteem for the Devil and the Bag o’ Nails; and like to hear, as we go along on Saturday night, the applauding knocks on the table that follow the song of ‘Lovely Nan,’ or ‘Brave Captain Death,’ or ‘Tobacco is an Indian Weed,’ or ‘Why, Soldiers, why,’ or ‘Says Plato why should man be vain,’ or that judicious and unanswerable ditty, commencing
Now what can man more desire
Nor sitting by a sea-coal fire;
And on his knees, &c.”
[258] Academy of Armory.