There is a letter of Pope addressed to Fortescue, his “counsel learned in the law,” at Tom’s coffee-house, in Devereux Court. Fortescue, the poet’s kind, unpaid lawyer, was afterwards (in 1738) Master of the Rolls. Pope’s imitation of the first satire of Horace, suggested by Bolingbroke, was addressed to Mr. Fortescue, and published in 1733. This lawyer was the author of the droll report in _Scriblerus_ of “Stradling _versus_ Styles,” wherein Sir John Swale leaves all his black and white horses to one Stradling, but the question is whether this bequest includes Swale’s piebald horses. It is finally proved that the horses are all mares.[60] Dr. Birch, the antiquary, the dull writer but good talker, frequented Tom’s; and there Akenside--short, thin, pale, strumous, and lame, scrupulously neat, and somewhat petulant, vain, and irritable--spent his winter evenings, entangled in disputes and altercations, chiefly on subjects of literature and politics, that fixed on his character the stamp of haughtiness and self-conceit, and drew him into disagreeable situations.[61] Akenside was a contradictory man. By turns he was placid, irritable; simple, affected; gracious, haughty; magnanimous, mean; benevolent, yet harsh, and sometimes even brutal. At times he manifested a childlike docility, and at other times his vanity and arrogance made him seem almost a madman.[62] Gay, in his _Trivia_, describes Milford Lane so faithfully that it might pass for a yesterday’s sketch of the same place. He writes-- “Where the fair columns of St. Clement stand, Whose straitened bounds incroach upon the Strand; Where the low pent-house bows the walker’s head, And the rough pavement wounds the yielding tread; Where not a post protects the narrow space, And strung in twines combs dangle in thy face. Summon at once thy courage--rouse thy care; Stand firm, look back, be resolute, beware! Forth issuing from steep lanes, the collier’s steeds Drag the black load; another cart succeeds; Team follows team, crowds heap’d on crowds appear.” Stow mentions Milford Lane, but gives no derivation for its name.[63] The coarse poem by Henry Savill, commonly attributed to the witty Earl of Dorset, beginning-- “In Milford Lane, near to St. Clement’s steeple.”[64] gave the street for a time such a disagreeable notoriety as the pillory gives to a rogue.