LITMIR.BIZ

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the olden day, but has been several times painted. "The Welcome," originally inscribed in gold letters, on a thick black-painted board, has since been wholly repainted and gilded; but the old thickly-lettered inscription of Ben's day may be seen as an embossment upon the modern painted background. These poetic memorials are both preserved in the banking-house of the Messrs. Child.

      "The Welcome," says Mr. Burn, "it may be inferred, was placed in the interior of the room; so also, above the fireplace, were the Rules of the Club, said by early writers to have been inscribed in marble, but were in truth gilded letters upon a black-painted board, similar to the verses of the Welcome. These Rules are justly admired for the conciseness and elegance of the Latinity." They have been felicitously translated by Alexander Broome, one of the wits who frequented the Devil, and who was one of Ben Jonson's twelve adopted poetical sons. Latin inscriptions were also placed in other directions, to adorn the house. Over the clock in the kitchen, in 1731, there remained "Si nocturna tibi noceat potatio vini, hoc in mane bibes iterum, et fuerit medicina." Aubrey reports his uncle Danvers to have said that "Ben Jonson, to be near the Devil tavern, in King James's time, lived without Temple-barre, at a combemaker's shop, about the Elephant and Castle;" and James, Lord Scudamore has, in his Homer à la Mode, a travesty, said—

      "Apollo had a flamen,

       Who in's temple did say Amen."

      This personage certainly Ben Jonson represented in the great room of the Devil tavern. Hither came all who desired to be "sealed of the tribe of Ben." "The Leges Conviviales," says Leigh Hunt, "which Jonson wrote for his Club, and which are to be found in his works, are composed in his usual style of elaborate and compiled learning, not without a taste of that dictatorial self-sufficiency, which, notwithstanding all that has been said by his advocates, and the good qualities he undoubtedly possessed, forms an indelible part of his character. 'Insipida poemata,' says he, 'nulla recitantur' (Let nobody repeat to us insipid poetry); as if all that he should read of his own must infallibly be otherwise. The Club at the Devil does not appear to have resembled the higher one at the Mermaid, where Shakspeare and Beaumont used to meet him. He most probably had it all to himself."

      In the Rules of the Apollo Club, women of character were not excluded from attending the meetings—Probæ feminæ non repudiantur. Marmion, one of Jonson's contemporary dramatists, describes him in his presidential chair, as "the boon Delphic god:"—

      "Careless.I am full Of Oracles. I am come from Apollo.

      Emilia. From Apollo!

      Careless.From the heaven Of my delight, where the boon Delphic god Drinks sack, and keeps his bacchanalia, And has his incense and his altars smoaking, And speaks in sparkling prophecies; thence I come, My brains perfumed with the rich Indian vapour, And heightened with conceits. From tempting beauties, From dainty music and poetic strains, From bowls of nectar and ambrosial dishes, From witty varlets, fine companions, And from a mighty continent of pleasure, Sails thy brave Careless."

      Randolph was by Ben Jonson, adopted for his son, and that upon the following occasion. "Mr. Randolph having been at London so long as that he might truly have had a parley with his Empty Purse, was resolved to see Ben Jonson, with his associates, which, as he heard, at a set time kept a Club together at the Devil Tavern, neere Temple Bar: accordingly, at the time appointed, he went thither, but being unknown to them, and wanting money, which to an ingenious spirit is the most daunting thing in the world, he peeped in the room where they were, which being espied by Ben Jonson, and seeing him in a scholar's threadbare habit, 'John Bo-peep,' says he, 'come in,' which accordingly he did; when immediately they began to rhyme upon the meanness of his clothes, asking him if he could not make a verse? and without to call for a quart of sack: there being four of them, he immediately thus replied,

      "I, John Bo-peep, to you four sheep—

       With each one his good fleece;

       If that you are willing to give me five shilling,

       'Tis fifteen-pence a-piece."

      "By Jesus!" quoth Ben Jonson (his usual oath), "I believe this is my son Randolph;" which being made known to them, he was kindly entertained into their company, and Ben Jonson ever after called him son. He wrote The Muses' Looking-glass, Cambridge Duns, Parley with his Empty Purse, and other poems.

      We shall have more to say of the Devil Tavern, which has other celebrities besides Jonson.

      EARLY POLITICAL CLUBS.

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      Our Clubs, or social gatherings, which date from the Restoration, were exclusively political. The first we hear of was the noted Rota, or Coffee Club, as Pepys calls it, which was founded in 1659, as a kind of debating society for the dissemination of republican opinions, which Harrington had painted in their fairest colours in his Oceana. It met in New Palace Yard, "where they take water at one Miles's, the next house to the staires, where was made purposely a large ovall table, with a passage in the middle for Miles to deliver his coffee." Here Harrington gave nightly lectures on the advantage of a commonwealth and of the ballot. The Club derived its name from a plan, which it was its design to promote, for changing a certain number of Members of Parliament annually by rotation. Sir William Petty was one of its members. Round the table, "in a room every evening as full as it could be crammed," says Aubrey, sat Milton and Marvell, Cyriac Skinner, Harrington, Nevill, and their friends, discussing abstract political questions. Aubrey calls them "disciples and virtuosi." The place had its dissensions and brawls: "one time Mr. Stafford and his friends came in drunk from the tavern, and affronted the Junto; the soldiers offered to kick them down stayres, but Mr. Harrington's moderation and persuasion hindered it."

      To the Rota, in January, 1660, came Pepys, and "heard very good discourse in answer to Mr. Harrington's answer, who said that the state of the Roman government was not a settled government; and so it was no wonder the balance of prosperity was in one hand, and the command in another, it being therefore always in a posture of war: but it was carried by ballot that it was a steady government; though, it is true, by the voices it had been carried before that, that it was an unsteady government. So to-morrow it is to be proved by the opponents that the balance lay in one hand and the government in another." The Club was broken up after the Restoration; but its members had become marked men. Harrington's Oceana is an imaginary account of the construction of a commonwealth in a country, of which Oceana is the imaginary name. "Rota-men" occurs by way of comparison in Hudibras, part ii. canto 3:

      "But Sidrophel, as full of tricks

       As Rota-men of politics."

      Besides the Rota, there was the old Royalist Club, "The Sealed Knot," which, the year before the Restoration, had organized a general insurrection in favour of the King. Unluckily, they had a spy amongst them—Sir Richard Willis—who had long fingered Cromwell's money, as one of his private "intelligencers;" the leaders, on his information, were arrested, and committed to prison.

      THE OCTOBER CLUB.

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      The writer of an excellent paper in the National Review, No. VIII., well observes that "Politics under Anne had grown a smaller and less dangerous game than in the preceding century. The original political Clubs of the Commonwealth, the Protectorate, and the Restoration, plotted revolutions of government. The Parliamentary Clubs, after the Revolution of 1688, manœuvred for changes of administration. The high-flying Tory country gentleman and country member drank the health of the King—sometimes over the water-decanter, and flustered himself with bumpers in honour of Dr. Sacheverell and the Church of England, with true-blue spirits of his own kidney, at the October Club," which, like the Beef Steak Club, was named after the cheer for which it was famed—October ale; or rather, on account of the quantities of the ale which the members drank. The hundred and fifty squires, Tories to the backbone,

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