"Welcome all, who lead or follow, To the _Oracle of Apollo_-- Here he speaks out of his pottle, Or the tripos, his Tower bottle; All his answers are divine, Truth itself doth flow in wine. Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers, Cries old Sim the king of skinkers; He that half of life abuses, That sits watering with the Muses. Those dull girls no good can mean us; Wine it is the milk of Venus, And the Poet's horse accounted: Ply it, and you all are mounted. 'Tis the true Phoebeian liquor, Cheers the brain, makes wit the quicker, Pays all debts, cures all diseases, And at once three senses pleases. Welcome all, who lead or follow, To the _Oracle of Apollo_." Beneath these verses was the name of the author, thus inscribed--"O Rare Ben Jonson," a posthumous tribute from his grave in Westminster Abbey. The bust appears modelled from the Apollo Belvedere, by some skillful person of the olden day, but has been several times painted. "The Welcome," originally inscribed in gold letters, on a thick black-painted board, has since been wholly repainted and gilded; but the old thickly-lettered inscription of Ben's day may be seen as an embossment upon the modern painted background. These poetic memorials are both preserved in the banking-house of the Messrs. Child. "The Welcome," says Mr. Burn, "it may be inferred, was placed in the interior of the room; so also, above the fireplace, were the Rules of the Club, said by early writers to have been inscribed in marble, but were in truth gilded letters upon a black-painted board, similar to the verses of the Welcome. These Rules are justly admired for the conciseness and elegance of the Latinity." They have been felicitously translated by Alexander Broome, one of the wits who frequented the Devil, and who was one of Ben Jonson's twelve adopted poetical sons. Latin inscriptions were also placed in other directions, to adorn the house. Over the clock in the kitchen, in 1731, there remained "_Si nocturna tibi noceat potatio vini, hoc in mane bibes iterum, et fuerit medicina_." Aubrey reports his uncle Danvers to have said that "Ben Jonson, to be near the Devil tavern, in King James's time, lived without Temple-barre, at a combemaker's shop, about the Elephant and Castle;" and James, Lord Scudamore has, in his _Homer à la Mode_, a travesty, said-- "Apollo had a flamen, Who in's temple did say Amen."