There is a rare Token of this house, with the date, 1665. The locality of the "Canary House in the Strande," says Mr. E. B. Price, "is now, perhaps, impossible to trace; and it is, perhaps, as vain to attempt a description of the wine from which it took its name, and which was so celebrated in that and the preceding century. Some have erroneously identified it with sack. We find it mentioned among the various drinks which Gascoyne so virtuously inveighs against in his _Delicate Diet for daintie mouthde Droonkardes_, published in 1576: "_We_ must have March beere, dooble-dooble Beere, Dagger ale, Bragget, Renish wine, White wine, French wine, Gascoyne wine, Sack, Hollocke, Canaria wine, _Vino greco_, _Vinum amabile_, and al the wines that may be gotten. Yea, wine of its selfe is not sufficient; but Suger, Limons, and sundry sortes of Spices must be drowned therein." The bibbers of this famed wine were wont to be termed "Canary birds." Of its qualities we can perhaps form the best estimate from the colloquy between "mine hostess of the Boar's Head and Doll Tearsheet;" in which the former charges the latter with having "drunk too much _Canaries_; and that's a _marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood ere one can say, What's this?_"[36] FOOTNOTE: [36] We learn from Collier's _Roxburghe Ballads_ (_Lit. Gaz._ No. 1566) that in the reign of James I. "sparkling sack" was sold at 1_s._ 6_d._ per quart, and "Canary--pure French wine," at 7 pence. THE FOUNTAIN TAVERN, Strand, now the site of Nos. 101 and 102, Ries's Divan, gave the name to the Fountain Club, composed of political opponents of Sir Robert Walpole. Strype describes it as "a very fine Tavern, with excellent vaults, good rooms for entertainment, and a curious kitchen for dressing of meat, which, with the good wine there sold, make it well resorted to." Dennis, the Critic, describes his supping here with Loggan, the painter, and others, and that after supper they "drank Mr. Wycherley's health by name of Captain Wycherley." Here, Feb. 12, 1742, was held a great meeting, at which near 300 members of both Houses of Parliament were present, to consider the ministerial crisis, when the Duke of Argyll observed to Mr. Pulteney, that a grain of honesty was worth a cart-load of gold. The meeting was held too late to be of any avail, to which Sir Charles Hanbury Williams alludes in one of his odes to Pulteney, invoking his Muse thus:-- "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.