Club Life of London, Vol. 2 (of 2): With Anecdotes of the Clubs, Coffee-Houses and Taverns of the Metropolis During the 17th, 18th, and 19th CenturiesTimbs, John
History
Club Life of London, Vol. 2 (of 2): With Anecdotes of the Clubs, Coffee-Houses and Taverns of the Metropolis During the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries
Timbs, John
Clubs -- England -- London; Literary landmarks -- England -- London; London (England) -- Social life and customs
"'Julian, in verse, to ease thy wants I write,
Not moved by envy, malice, or by spite,
Or pleased with the empty names of wit and sense,
But merely to supply thy want of pence:
This did inspire my muse, when out at heel,
She saw her needy secretary reel;
Grieved that a man, so useful to the age,
Should foot it in so mean an equipage;
A crying scandal that the fees of sense
Should not be able to support the expense
Of a poor scribe, who never thought of wants,
When able to procure a cup of Nantz.'
"Another, called a 'Consoling Epistle to Julian,' is said to have been
written by the Duke of Buckingham.
"From a passage in one of the _Letters from the Dead to the Living_,
we learn, that after Julian's death, and the madness of his successor,
called Summerton, lampoon felt a sensible decay; and there was no more
that brisk spirit of verse, that used to watch the follies and vices
of the men and women of figure, that they could not start new ones
faster than lampoons exposed them."
How these lampoons were concocted we gather from Bays, in the _Hind
and the Panther transversed_:--"'Tis a trifle hardly worth owning; I
was 'tother day at Will's, throwing out something of that nature; and,
i' gad, the hint was taken, and out came that picture; indeed, the
poor fellow was so civil as to present me with a dozen of 'em for my
friends; I think I have here one in my pocket.... Ay, ay, I can do it
if I list, tho' you must not think I have been so dull as to mind
these things myself; but 'tis the advantage of our Coffee-house, that
from their talk, one may write a very good polemical discourse,
without ever troubling one's head with the books of controversy."
Tom Brown describes "a Wit and a Beau set up with little or no
expense. A pair of red stockings and a sword-knot set up one, and
peeping once a day in at Will's, and two or three second-hand sayings,
the other."
Pepys, one night, going to fetch home his wife, stopped in Covent
Garden, at the Great Coffee-house there, as he called Will's, where he
never was before: "Where," he adds, "Dryden, the poet (I knew at
Cambridge), and all the Wits of the town, and Harris the player, and
Mr. Hoole of our College. And had I had time then, or could at other
times, it will be good coming thither, for there, I perceive, is very
witty and pleasant discourse. But I could not tarry; and, as it was
late, they were all ready to go away."
Addison passed each day alike, and much in the manner that Dryden did.
Dryden employed his mornings in writing, dined _en famille_, and then
went to Will's, "only he came home earlier o' nights."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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