“I may here mention,” wrote an old City solicitor named Jay, “that the ‘Cock Tavern’ in Fleet Street has been a noted resort of lawyers for more than two centuries. When I first went there, no chops or steaks were cooked, but gentlemen and tradesmen went there in the afternoon to smoke their pipes (cigars being then very little used). The landlord at that time held a high position in Whitbread’s brewery. It was at this time kept open during the night, and until the early hours of morning were far advanced it was often a difficult matter to find an unoccupied seat. The gentlemen who frequented it were members of the Temple and other Inns of Court, and used their own silver tankards bearing their crests, which were exposed to view against the wall of the bar or coffee-room; and I have still many pleasant reminiscences of oyster and other suppers furnished at this house; a man from a neighbouring fishmonger’s being specially retained to open oysters for the numerous customers, who with sharp appetites kept him fully employed.” To many persons who have never entered a tavern in their lives, “The Cock” had a certain charm of association, mainly owing to its having been celebrated in verse by the Poet Laureate. Perhaps few, again, are familiar with all he has said or sung upon the subject, contenting themselves with the oft-quoted lines to the “plump head waiter at ‘The Cock,’” which gave that personage an immortality. The lines on “Will Waterproof’s” visit have an extraordinary charm of pensive retrospect and solitary meditation, and convey an idea of the tone of the old place, and of the fancies it is likely to engender in some solitary and perhaps depressed guest. A series of pictures and moods is unfolded in this charming poem, a sort of dreamy rumination and pleasant sadness; visions float upwards in the curling fumes of the smoker’s “long clay.” But only a great poet could extract a refined quintessence from the mixed vapours of chops and steaks. WILL WATERPROOF’S LYRICAL MONOLOGUE. MADE AT “THE COCK.” O, plump head waiter at “The Cock,” To which I most resort, How goes the time? ’Tis five o’clock. Go fetch a pint of port: But let it not be such as that You set before chance comers, But such whose father-grape grew fat On Lusitanian summers. * * * * * And hence this halo lives about The waiter’s hands that reach To each his perfect pint of stout, His proper chop to each. He looks not like the common breed That with the napkin dally; I think he came like Ganymede, From some delightful valley. * * * * * Ah, let the rusty theme alone! We know not what we know. But for my pleasant hour, ’tis gone, ’Tis gone, and let it go. ’Tis gone: a thousand such have slipt Away from my embraces, And fallen into the dusty crypt Of darken’d forms and faces.