A Dutch grocer, in the seventeenth century, put up the sign of the Burning Lamp, and wrote under it the following distich:—

The Brass Knocker in the Great Gardens, Bristol, is another sign taken from the exterior of the house; also the Flower-pot, which was very common in old London: one of the last remaining stood at the corner of Bishopsgate and Leadenhall Streets. It dated from an early period, and was, in the heyday of its fame, a celebrated coaching inn. The introduction of railroads, however, gave it a death-blow; for some time it continued to languish as a starting-point for omnibuses, and was finally demolished to make room for merchants’ offices in 1863. Trades tokens of this inn are extant in the Beaufoy collection. Mr Burn, the compiler of the catalogue of this collection, suggests that the Flower-pot was originally the vase of lilies, always represented in the old pictures of the Salutation or Annunciation; according to his theory the Angel and the Virgin were omitted at the Reformation, and nothing but the vase left. This, however, seems somewhat improbable. There is no apparent reason why it should not have been a real flower-pot, or rather vase, which our ancestors frequently had on the top of the pent-houses above their shops. In order to distinguish them from ordinary flower-pots, some painted theirs blue, thus the sign of the Blue Flower-pot, as appears from the advertisement of Cornelius a Tilborgh, who styles himself “sworn chirurgeon in ordinary to King Charles II., to our late sovereign King William, as also to her present majesty Queen Anne.” This worthy lived in Great Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Holborn Row, and besides the Blue Flower-pot at his front door, his customers might recognise the house, by “a light at night over the door,” and a Blue Ball at the back-door. The Two Blue Flower-pots used to be a sign in Dean Street, Soho; and the Two Flower-pots and Sun Dial in Parker’s Lane, near Drury Lane, (London Gazette, Sept. 16-19, 1700.)

Innumerable objects from the interior of the house were likewise adopted as signs, such as furniture of all kinds, and domestic utensils. The upholsterers, for instance, generally selected pieces of furniture. At the end of the last century The Royal Bed was a great favourite, as may be seen from engravings on several of the shop bills in the Banks collection; the bed in olden times was a very important article in a household, and was always particularly named in the will. Upholsterers in those days were also frequently called bed-joiners. Next we have the Board or Table, still a great favourite in the north—in Durham alone at least sixty public-houses with that sign could be named.

The mention of the Table affords an opportunity for particularising those good things which usually grace the festive board. First of all there is the Salt Horn, (at Bradford and Leeds,) which formerly at dinner marked the line of demarcation; for whether a guest was to be placed above or below the salt was a matter of etiquette strictly to be attended to. In Dudley we find a very substantial and tempting Round of Beef, with the following rhymes:—

The roast beef of old England is further represented by The Ribs of Beef, in Wensum Street, Norwich. The Flank Of Beef at Spalding, the much less tempting Cow Roast at Hampstead, besides a couple of unpretending Beef-steaks in Bath. Our bill of fare also contains plenty of mutton, sometimes rehaussé with a poetic sauce, as one that was at Hackney in the last century, The Shoulder of Mutton and Cat, having the following rhymes:—

The sign is still there, but the verses are gone. This suggested to another innkeeper on the common at Horsham, the sign of the Dog and Bacon. An epicurean publican at Yapton, Arundel, has a more gastronomic combination, viz.:—the Shoulder Of Mutton and Cucumbers. It was at the Shoulder of Mutton in Brecknock that Mrs Siddons, England’s greatest tragic actress, was born, July 14, 1755. “Fancy,” writes an enthusiastic biographer, “the English Melpomene behind the bar of such a place!” Legs of Mutton on the signboard do not appear to be so common as Shoulders. But by far the finest of all the dishes represented on the signboard was the Boar’s Head, in Eastcheap, for the character of the famous inn patronised by Jack Falstaff makes the association of an excellent dish much more natural than any heraldic origin. The first mention of this inn occurs in the testament of William Warden, in the reign of Richard II., who gave “all that tenement called the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap,” to a college of priests, or chaplains, founded by Sir W. Walworth, the Lord Mayor, in the adjoining church of St Michael, Crooked Lane. The presence of “Prince Hal” in this house was no invention of Shakespeare; history records his pranks, how one night, with his two brothers, John and Thomas, he made such a riot that they had to be taken before the magistrate. No wonder, then, at the proud inscription on the sign, which still existed in Maitland’s time:—“This is the chief tavern in London.” At one time the portal was decorated with carved oak figures of Falstaff and Prince Henry; and in 1834 the former was in the possession of a brazier of Eastcheap, whose ancestors had lived in the shop he then occupied since the great fire. The last great Shakespearian dinner-party at the Boar’s Head took place about 1784, on which occasion Wilberforce and Pitt were present, and though there were many professed wits, Pitt was the most amusing of the company.

On the removal of a mound of rubbish at Whitechapel, brought there after the great fire, a carved boxwood bas-relief boar’s head was found, set in a circular frame formed by two boars’ tusks, mounted and united with silver. An inscription to the following effect was pricked in the back:—“Wm. Brooke, Landlord of the Bore’s Hedde, Estchepe, 1566.” This object, formerly in the possession of Mr Stamford, the celebrated publisher, was sold at Christie and Manson’s, on January 27, 1855, and was bought by Mr Halliwell.[551]

The original inn having been destroyed by the fire, was rebuilt and continued in existence until 1831, when it was finally demolished to make way for the streets leading to new London Bridge. Its site was between Small Alley and St Michael’s Lane. The ancient sign, carved in stone, with the initials I. T. and the date 1668, is now preserved in the City of London Library, Guildhall.

In the month of May 1718, one James Austin, “inventor of the Persian ink powder,” desiring to give his customers a substantial proof of his gratitude, invited them to the Boar’s Head to partake of an immense plum-pudding. This pudding weighed 1000 lbs.; a baked pudding of 1 foot square, and the best piece of an ox roasted: the principal dish was put in the copper on Monday, May 12, at the Red Lion Inn, by the Mint in Southwark, and had to boil fourteen days. From there it was to be brought to the Swan Tavern, in Fish Street Hill, accompanied by a band of music playing—“What lumps of pudding my mother gave me;” one of the instruments was a drum in proportion to the pudding, being 18 feet 2 inches in length, and 4 feet diameter, which was drawn by “a device fixt on six asses.” Finally the monstrous pudding was to be divided in St George’s Fields, but apparently its smell was too much for the gluttony of the Londoners; the escort was routed, the pudding taken and devoured, and the whole ceremony brought to an end, before Mr Austin had a chance to regale his customers.

Puddings seem to have been the forte of this Austin. Twelve or thirteen years before this last pudding, he had baked one for a wager, ten feet deep in the Thames, near Rotherhithe, by enclosing it in a great tin pan, and that in a sack of lime: it was taken up after about two hours and a half, and eaten with great relish, its only fault being that it was somewhat overdone. The bet was for more than £100. Austin was also noted for his fireworks.

The back windows of the Boar’s Head looked out upon the burial-ground of St Michael’s Church,[552] and there rested all that was mortal of one of the waiters of this tavern. His tomb, in Purbeck stone, had the following epitaph:—

“Here lieth the bodye of Robert Preston, late Drawer at the Boar’s Head Tavern, Great Eastcheap, who departed this Life, March 16, Anno Domini, 1730, aged 27 years.”

Amongst other Boar’s Head Inns, we may notice one in Southwark, the property of Sir John Falstolf of Caistor Castle, Norfolk, who died in 1460, and whose name Shakespeare adopted in the play. Then there was another one without Aldgate, as appears from the following curious document:—

“At St James’s the v daye of September, an. 1557.

“A letter to the Lord Mayor of London, to give order forthwith that some of his officers do forthwith repaire to the Boreshed w^hout Aldgate, where the Lordes are enformed a lewde Playe, called ‘A Sacke full of Newse,’ shall be plaied this daye, the Playeres whereof he is willed to apprehende and to comitt to safe warde, untill he shall heare further from hence, and to take their Playsbook from them, and to send the same hither.

“At West^r the vj daye of Sep. 1557.”[554]

At the beginning of this century there was a noted tavern in Bond Street, called THE Brawn’s Head, and the general opinion was, that at one time it had a brawn or boar’s head for its sign; this, however, was a mistake; the house was named after the head of a noted cook whose name was Theophilus Brawn, formerly landlord of Rummer Tavern in Great Queen Street, and the article (as the letters THE were usually supposed to be) was simply an abbreviation of the man’s magnificent Christian name.

All these gastronomic signs, doubtless, originated in the old custom of landlords selling eatables:—

“You brave-minded and most joviall Sardanapalitans,” saith Taylor the Water poet, addressing the country tavern-keepers, “have power and prerogative (cum privilegio) to receive, lodge, feast, and feed, both man and beast. You have the happinesse to Boyle, Roast, Broyle, and Bake, Fish, Flesh, and Foule, whilst we in London have scarce the command of a Gull, a widgeon, or a woodcock.”

In a little volume of 1685, entitled “The Praise of Yorkshire ale,” we are told that Bacchus held a parliament in the Sun, behind the Exchange in York, to consider the adulteration of wine, the various drinking vessels, and other matters sold in alehouses, as:—

Hence, then, the once common sign of the Three Neats’ Tongues, one of which still exists in Spitalfields; another one in the eighteenth century was very appropriately situated in Bull and Mouth Street.[555] The Ham is the usual porkman’s sign, though at Walmyth, in Yorkshire, there is a public-house sign of the Ham and Firkin. The Crab and Lobster Inn occurs at Ventnor; the Lobster is a sign on trades tokens of a shop in Bearbinder (now St Swithin’s) Lane, and also near the Maypole in the Strand; the Crawfish at Thursford Guist, in Norfolk, and the Butt and Oyster at Chelmondiston, Ipswich. Those eatables, all more or less salt, were sold as incitements to drink, and went by the cant term of shoeing horns, gloves, or pullers-on. They are often alluded to by ancient authors:—

“Then, sir, comes me up a service of shoeing-horns of all sorts, salt cakes, red herrings, anchoves, and gammon of bacon, and abundance of such pullers-on.”—Bishop Hall’s Mundus alter et idem.

The Pie was a sign in very early times, and gave its name to Pie Corner, “a place so called from such a sign, sometimes a fair inn for receipt of travellers.”—Stow, p. 139. One of the most famous inns with that sign was the Pie in Aldgate.

De Foe, in his “History of the Plague,” tells of “a dreadful set of fellows” who used to revel and roar nightly in that inn during the time the plague was at its height, but within a fortnight all of them were buried. The Cock and Pie was once common. At an inn in Ipswich there used to be a rude representation of a cock perched on a pie, which was discovered whilst the house was undergoing some repairs. It was also, about the middle of last century, the sign of a house famed for conviviality, which stood on the site of the present Rathbone Place, Oxford Street, and was the resort of the “fancy” of those days. A row of fine elms connected this house with another, noted for the manufacture of Bath buns and Tunbridge water-cakes, the latter a dainty now almost obsolete, but which then was so famous, that it was one of the London cries, being sold by a man on horseback. With regard to the origin of the sign Cock and Pie, both the ancient Catholic oath, to swear by Cock and Pie, (by God and the Pie, or Roman Catholic service book,) and the fable of the magpie (Old English pie, or pye) and the peacocks, have each been duly considered by us; but the sign is probably only an abbreviation of the Peacock and Pie. In ancient times the peacock was a favourite dish, and was introduced on the table in a pie; the head, with gilt beak, being elevated above the crust, and the beautiful feathers of the tail expanded. As a dainty dish, then, it may have been put up, like the other good things of this world, just mentioned, as a trap to hungry or epicurean passers-by; at last the dish went out of fashion, the name even became a mystery, and was rendered by the sign-painters, according to their own understanding, by a Cock and Magpie, which is still very common. There is a public-house with such a sign in Drury Lane, which was already in existence more than two centuries ago, when the rest of Drury Lane was still occupied by farms and gardens, and the mansions of the Drury family. Hither the youths and maidens of the metropolis, who, on May-day, danced round the Maypole in the Strand, were accustomed to resort for cakes and ale, and other refreshments. This ale-house gave its name to the Cock and Pye Fields, between Drury Lane and St Giles’ Hospital. At Chatsworth, the original name was mutilated by a provincialism into the Cock and Pynot, (Derbyshire, for Magpie.) In this ale-house, still existing, the Revolution of 1688 was plotted, between Thomas Osborne Earl of Danby, William Cavendish Earl of Devonshire, and Mr John d’Arcy. They met by appointment on a heath adjoining the house, but a shower of rain coming on, they adjourned to the inn. The room is still shown in which the conspirators met. In Hone’s “Table Book” there is a woodcut of the inn, showing the wooden construction across the road, by which the signs in villages were generally suspended.

Lastly, we may mention the Pickled Egg, in Clerkenwell. As the origin of this sign, it is said that Charles II. here once partook of the dish, which so flattered the landlord, that he adopted it as his sign, and so it has remained till this day. It has given its name to a lane called Pickled Egg Walk, in which there was a notorious cocking-house, frequently mentioned in advertisements circa 1775.

We may very appropriately terminate the gastronomic signs with the Cheshire Cheese, which is still very common; there is a famous tavern of this name in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street, and numerous public-houses in the country have adopted it as their signs. And as we began with the Salt Horn we will end with the Mustard-pot, which was the sign of a mustard shop in Holland, in the seventeenth century, with these rhymes:—

This reminds us of a rather indelicate sign of a mustard shop, formerly in the Rue du Chatel, at Beauvais, but now in the Musée d’Antiquités of that town, representing a fool stirring mustard in a barrel with a large stick, whilst a tall grinning monkey stands just opposite, assisting him in a way we need not describe.

Drinkables are not frequent as signs, if we except such as the Rhenish Wine House, and the Canary House; two taverns of Old London, named after the wines they sold. Barley Broth, Bee’s-wing, and Yorkshire Stingo, are at present all three common: the first applies either to whisky or beer; the second is the delicate crimson film left in bottles by old port wine, and Yorkshire stingo is the well-known name of a kind of ale. From a house with this name in the New Road, the first pair of London omnibuses were started, July 4, 1829, running to the Bank and back: they were constructed to carry twenty-two passengers, all inside; the fare was one shilling, or sixpence for half the distance, together with the luxury of a newspaper. A Mr J. Shillibeer was the owner of these carriages, and the first conductors were the two sons of a British naval officer.

Drinking vessels are very appropriate ale-house signs. Amongst the oldest certainly ranks the Black Jack, common even in the present day, although the vessel that it represented is long since fallen into disuse: it was a leather bottle, sometimes lined with silver or other metal, and perhaps took its name from a part of the soldiers’ armour. Sometimes it was ornamented with little silver bells “to ring peales of drunkeness,” in which case it was called a “gyngle boy.”[557] This primitive bottle has been celebrated in one of the Roxburghe Ballads, (vol. iii., fol. 433:)—

Its various good qualities are next explained, and finally:—

There is another ballad in the same collection, (vol i., fol. 107,) entitled “Time’s Alteration, or the Old Man’s Rehearsal,” which speaks of the black jack in the following terms:—

But we may glean more full and complete particulars from Heywood’s “Philocothonista or Drunkard Opened, Dissected and Anatomized,” 1635, where we get a detailed inventory of all the various drinking vessels of the day:—

“Of drinking Cups divers and sundry sorts we have; some of elme, some of box, some of maple, some of holly, etc. Mazers, broad mouthed dishes, naggins, whiskins, piggins, creuzes, alebowles, wassel bowles, court dishes, tankards, kannes, from a pottle to a pint, from a pint to a gill. Other bottles we have of leather, but they are most used amongst the shepheards and harvest people of the countrey: small jacks wee have in many alehouses of the citie and suburbs lipt with silver: blackjacks and bombards at the Court; which when the Frenchmen first saw, they reported at their return into their countrey that the Englishmen used to drinke out of their bootes. We have besides cups made of hornes of beastes, of cockernuts,[558] of goords, of eggs of estriches; others made of the shells of divers fishes brought from the Indies and other places, and shining like mother of pearle. Come to plate, every taverne can afford you flat bowles, french bowles, prounet cups, beare bowles, beakers; and private householders in the citie, when they make a feaste to entertain their friends, can furnish their cupboards with flaggons, tankards, beere cups, wine bowles, some white, some percell guilt, some guilt all over, some with covers, others without, of sundry shapes and qualities.”

That they were of ancient use and high in price appears from an entry in the expenses of John, King of France, when prisoner in England after the battle of Poictiers, 1359-60:—

“Pour deux bouteilles de cuir achetées a Londres pour Monseigneur Philippe9s. 8d.”

Though these vessels are now completely superseded by pewter and glass, yet their memory still lives on the signboard, and the Leather Bottle is anything but an uncommon ale-house emblem at the present day. There is one still to be seen, carved in wood, suspended in front of an old ale-house at the corner of Charles Street, Hatton Garden. In Germany, also, the leather bottle was once in use; drinking vessels of various materials, in the shape of a boot, are common in that country, usually with this inscription:—

The Black-jack Tavern, in Clare Market, still in existence, acquired some celebrity from being the favourite haunt of Joe Miller, the reputed author of the famous Jest Book. The house was also for a long time known by the cant name of the Jump, which it had received from the fact of Jack Sheppard one day escaping the clutches of Jonathan Wild’s emissaries by jumping from a window into the street, and so making his escape. From the Leather Bottle to the Golden Bottle is not so great a step as would appear at first sight, the golden bottle being simply the leather bottle gilt, as may be seen above the door of Messrs Hoare the bankers, in Fleet Street, a firm established for centuries under the same sign, although not always occupying the same premises. In the “Little London Directory for 1677” we find:—“James Hore at the Golden Bottle in Cheapside,” one of the goldsmiths that kept “running cashes.” In 1693 we find Mr Richard Hoare, a goldsmith, “at the Golden Bottle” in Cheapside, but in 1718 the house in Cheapside seems to have had a second occupant:—

“DROPT or taken from a Ladies’ side on Tuesday, the 25^th of March, coming from the Spanish ambassadour’s at St James’ Square, a gold watch and chain, with a seal to it, a pendulum[559] on the outside; Windmill the maker. Whoever brings it to Mr Madding, Goldsmith at the Golden Bottle, the upper end of Cheapside, or to Jonathan Wilde, over against the Duke of Grafton’s Head in the Old Bailey, shall have 8 Guineas and no questions asked.”—Daily Courant, April 5, 1718.

That the Golden Can was also an old sign may be concluded from a mention in the nursery rhyme:—

Where the fact of little brown Betty brewing good ale points to a very old custom, when ale-wives flourished, and Eleanor Rumying and her gossips brewed their own ale. The Golden Can is still to be seen on two public-houses in Norwich. The Guilded Cup in Houndsditch is mentioned in a quaint little pamphlet on the virtues of “Warme Beere,” 1641.

The Flask was the sign of an old-established tavern in Ebury Square, Pimlico. In the last century there were two famous Flask taverns in Hampstead; the one called the Lower Flask was an inn at the foot of the hill, and is mentioned in the following advertisement, printed on the cover of the original edition of the Spectator, No. 428:—

“THIS IS TO GIVE NOTICE that Hampstead Fair is to be kept upon the Lower Flask Tavern Walk, on Friday, the first of August, and holds for four days.”

The Upper Flask was a place of public entertainment near the summit of Hampstead Hill, and is now a private residence. Here Richardson sends his Clarissa:—“The Hampstead coach, when the dear fugitive came to it, had but two passengers in it, but she made the fellow go off directly, paying for the vacant places. The two passengers directing the coachman to set them down at the Upper Flask, she bid them set her down there also.” The well-known Kit-Kat Club used to meet at this tavern in the summer months; and here, after it became a private abode, George Steevens, the celebrated critic and antiquary, lived and died.

Besides these, more homely vessels occur as publicans’ signs at the present day, which it requires no stretch of imagination to understand the meaning of, as the Pitcher and Glass, the Brown Jug, the Jug and Glass, the Bottle and Glass, the Foaming Quart, &c. At Newark the Bottle is accompanied by the following inscription:—

The Pewter Pot, an old sign, is thus alluded to by Randle Holme.[560]

“This should be looked upon by all good artists to be the most ignoble and dishonourable bearing; but as the custom takes away the sense of dislike, so the frequent use takes away the dishonour, which is seen by those[388] multitudes that have it for their cognizance, in so much that it is painted over their doors by the wayside.”[561]

The Pewter Pot, in Leadenhall Street, was a famous carriers’ and coaching inn in 1681. There are also the Six Cans, in High Holborn, (a sign evidently suggested by the Three Tuns;) and, in the same locality, the Six Cans and Punchbowl. This last object, the Punchbowl, was introduced on the signboard at the end of the seventeenth century, when punch became the fashionable drink; in one instance, at Penalney Kea, near Truro, we have the Punchbowl and Ladle, but most generally it is found in combination with other very heterogeneous objects. The reason of this is that punch, like music, had a sort of political prestige, and was the Whig drink, whilst the Tories adhered to sack, claret, and canary, connected in their memory with bygone things and times. Hence it followed that the punchbowl was added as a kind of party-badge to many of the Whig tavern signs, and hence such combinations as the following, all of which still survive at the present day:—

The Crown and Punchbowl, Somersham, St Ives.

The Magpie and Punchbowl, Bishopsgate Within.

The Rose and Punchbowl, Redman’s Row, Stepney, and elsewhere.

The Ship and Punchbowl, Wapping.

The Red Lion and Punchbowl, St John’s Street, Clerkenwell.

The Union Flag and Punchbowl, High Street, Wapping.

The Dog and Punchbowl, Lymm, Warrington, Cheshire.

The Halfmoon and Punchbowl, Buckle Street, Whitechapel.

The Parrot and Punchbowl, Aldringham, Suffolk.

The Fox and Punchbowl, Old Windsor, (perhaps meant for the great statesman, who was not disinclined to the beverage.)

The Two Pots is the sign of a public-house at Boxworth, St Ives, accompanied by the following verses, which are enough to set the teeth of a Bœotian on edge: how then must they shock the refined ears of the Cambridge dons?—

Another Two Pots, at Leatherhead, can boast a most venerable antiquity, for it is believed to be the very ale-house where the notorious Eleanor Rumying tunned her “noppy ale,” and made

There was, at the end of the last century, a painted sign still remaining, which, under a coating of summer’s dust and winter’s sludge, faintly showed two pots of beer placed in the same position as they are on the title-page of the original edition of Skelton’s poem.

The sign of the Two Pots again gave rise to that of the Three Pots, at Horseway Bridge, Chatteris, in the same county, and at Burbage, near Hinckley.

The Rummer, another drinking vessel, is also common: there is one in Old Fish Street, and there are three Rummer public-houses in Bristol alone. A tavern of that name was kept by Samuel Prior, uncle of Matthew Prior the poet. Uncle Sam took his nephew as an apprentice to learn the business, and be his successor. Prior alludes to this uncle and his little professional tricks in the following lines:—

To his stay in this tavern also alludes the bitter Whig satire in “State Poems,” (ii., p. 355,) beginning—

In 1709 there was another Rummer tavern “over against Bow Lane, in Cheapside,” where “the surprizing Mr Higgins, the posture master, that lately performed at the Queen’s Theatre Royal in the Haymarket,” was to be seen every evening at six; admission 18d. and 1s.

This sign was also common in Holland two centuries ago; at that time there was one in Amsterdam with this inscription:—

And another one at the Hague had this same idea, but added a caution to it on a double-sided signboard:—

On the other side:—

A near relative of the Rummer was the Bumper, a tavern in St James’ Street, Covent Garden, kept by Estcourt the actor. His drawer was “his old servant Trusty Anthony, who has so often adorned both the theatres in England and Ireland; and as he is a person altogether unknown in the Wine Trade, it cannot be doubted but that he will deliver the wine in the same natural purity as he receives it from the said merchants,” (Brooke & Hillier.)—Estcourt’s advertisements on the last page of the original Edition of the Spectator, cclx., 1711. To this occupation of Estcourt, Parnell alludes in the beginning of his poems:—

This same Estcourt was sometime provedore of the Beefsteak Club.

Finally, we may conclude this notice of drinking vessels on the signboard with the Tankard, which is still of frequent occurrence. There is a public-house at Ipswich with this sign, which was formerly part of the house of Sir Anthony Wingfield, one of the legal executors of Henry VIII.

The hanap or tankard was generally of silver, and was formerly one of the most valuable properties of an ale-house, for in the Act 13 Edw. I., it says that “if a tavern-keeper keep his house open after curfew he shall be put on his surety the first time by the hanap of the tavern, or by some other good pledge therein found.”[564] Silver tankards were more or less common in all the London taverns. In some houses they were reserved for the more distinguished visitors; in others, as at the Bull’s Head in Leadenhall Street, “every poor mechanic drank in plate.” They were of different sizes, and experienced topers well knew for which name to call when ordering a tankard proportionate to their thirst. From a curious old tippler’s handbook, published in the reign of Queen Anne or George the First, entitled, “A Vade Mecum for Maltworms,” we gather that the names of the tankards at the Sweet Apple, in Sweet Apple Yard, were “the Lamb,” “the Lion,” “the Peacock,” (in honour of the brewer,) “Sacheverell,” (in memory of the notorious divine of St Andrew’s, Holborn,) and “Nan Elton.” The same work also relates a curious instance of enthusiasm in a publican. His house, the Raven, in Fetter Lane, was famous for