as well as the clergy,
used 'Child's' as a convenient place of resort.]
[Footnote 8: The 'Postman', established and edited by M. Fonvive, a
learned and grave French Protestant, who was said to make L600 a year by
it, was a penny paper in the highest repute, Fonvive having secured for
his weekly chronicle of foreign news a good correspondence in Italy,
Spain, Portugal, Germany, Flanders, Holland. John Dunton, the
bookseller, in his 'Life and Errors,' published in 1705, thus
characterized the chief newspapers of the day:
'the 'Observator' is best to towel the Jacks, the 'Review' is best to
promote peace, the 'Flying Post' is best for the Scotch news, the
'Postboy' is best for the English and Spanish news, the 'Daily
Courant' is the best critic, the 'English Post' is the best collector,
the 'London Gazette' has the best authority, and the 'Postman' is the
best for everything.']
[Footnote 9: 'St. James's' Coffee House was the last house but one on
the south-west corner of St. James's Street; closed about 1806. On its
site is now a pile of buildings looking down Pall Mall. Near St. James's
Palace, it was a place of resort for Whig officers of the Guards and men
of fashion. It was famous also in Queen Anne's reign, and long after, as
the house most favoured Whig statesmen and members of Parliament, who
could there privately discuss their party tactics.]
[Footnote 10: The 'Grecian' Coffee House was in Devereux Court, Strand,
and named from a Greek, Constantine, who kept it. Close to the Temple,
it was a place of resort for the lawyers. Constantine's Greek had
tempted also Greek scholars to the house, learned Professors and Fellows
of the Royal Society. Here, it is said, two friends quarrelled so
bitterly over a Greek accent that they went out into Devereux Court and
fought a duel, in which one was killed on the spot.]
[Footnote 11: The 'Cocoa Tree' was a Chocolate House in St. James's
Street, used by Tory statesmen and men of fashion as exclusively as 'St.
James's' Coffee House, in the same street, was used by Whigs of the same
class. It afterwards became a Tory club.]
[Footnote 12: Drury Lane had a theatre in Shakespeare's time, 'the
Phoenix,' called also 'the Cockpit.' It was destroyed in 1617 by a
Puritan mob, re-built, and occupied again till the stoppage of
stage-plays in 1648. In that theatre Marlowe's 'Jew of Malta,'
Massinger's 'New Way to Pay Old Debts,' and other pieces of good
lite
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