[64] The taverns of the seventeenth century appear in many instances to have been upstairs, above shops. In 1679, there was a “Mr Crutch, goldsmith, near Temple Bar, at the _Palsgrave Head_.” In a similar way, a bookseller lived at the sign of the _Rainbow_, at the same time as one Farr, who opened this place as a coffee-house. Another bookseller, James Roberts, who printed most of the satires, epigrams, and other wasp-stings against Pope, lived at the _Oxford Arms_, a carriers’ inn in Warwick Lane. Finally, Isaac Walton sold his “Complete Angler” “at his shopp in Fleet Street, under the _King’s Head_ Tavern.” [65] Macaulay’s Biographical Essays, Frederick the Great. [66] Goldsmith’s Essay on the Versatility of Popular Favour. [67] For more particulars about Topham, _see_ p. 88. [68] Trades tokens in the Beaufoy Collection. [69] For several centuries, Fleet Street was the head-quarters for shows and exhibitions out of fair-time. Ben Jonson speaks of “the City of Nineveh at Fleetbridge.” This was in the reign of James I. Mrs Salmon’s waxworks were among the last remaining sights in that locality. [70] Richardsoniana, p. 140. [71] Grosley, in his Tour to London, 1772, vol i. p. 150, mentions this society, which at that period was held at the Robin Hood, and says it was a semi-public club, into which all sorts of people were admitted, and all sorts of topics, religious as well as political, were discussed. He makes an odd mistake, however, when he says that the president was a baker by trade. [72] This John Marshall afterwards, when he was appointed the king’s optician, changed his sign into the ARCHIMEDES AND KING’S ARMS, under which we find him, in 1718, advertising his “chrystall dressing-glasses for ladies, which shew the face as nature hath made it, which other looking-glasses do not.” [73] Banks’s Collection. [74] Banks’s Collection. [75] The Angler. Hawkins’s edition. 1784. [76] Bagford Bills, Bib. Harl. 5964. [77] “On the chair of Ben Johnson, now remaining at Robert Wilson’s, at the sign of the Johnson’s Head, in the Strand.”--_Wit and Drollery_, 1655, p. 79. [78] _The Newes_, August 24, 1655. This may have been the above-mentioned tavern, as York House was situated in the Strand on the site of the present York Buildings.