The Fleet: Its Rivers, Prison, and Marriages. John Ashton

looking grave,

      And Rake from Bacchanalian rout uprose,

      And mad festivity. Here, too, the Cit,

      With belly, turtle-stuff'd, and man of Gout,

      With leg of size enormous. Hobbling on,

      The Pump-room he salutes, and in the chair

      He squats himself unwieldy. Much he drinks,

      And much he laughs to see the females quaff

      The friendly beverage. He, nor jest obscene,

      Of meretricious wench, nor quibble quaint,

      Of prentic'd punster heeds, himself a wit

      And dealer in conundrums, but retorts

      The repartee jocosely. Soft! how pale

      Yon antiquated virgin looks! Alas!

      In vain she drinks, in vain she glides around

      The Garden's labyrinth. 'Tis not for thee,

      Mistaken nymph! these waters pour their streams," &c.

      And in the prologue to "Bon Ton: or High Life above Stairs," by David Garrick, acted at Drury Lane for the first time, for the benefit of Mr. King, in 1775, not much is said as to the character of its frequenters.

      "Ah! I loves life and all the joy it yields,

      Says Madam Fupock, warm from Spittlefields.

      Bon Ton's the space 'twixt Saturday and Monday,

      And riding in a one-horse chaise on Sunday,

      'Tis drinking tea on summer's afternoons

      At Bagnigge Wells, with china and gilt spoons."

      Footnotes

[34] Otherwise the Fleet.

[35] These papers appeared in the Illustrated Family Journal.

[36] In Cromwell's "History of Clerkenwell," p. 322, we read, "In memory of its supposed proprietor, the owner of some small tenements near the north end of the gardens styled them 'Nell Gwynn's Buildings;' but the inscription was erased before 1803."