Is a degree, or (if you will,) a pair of stairs above an ale-house,
where men are drunk with more credit and apology. If the vintner's
nose[24] be at door, it is a sign sufficient, but the absence of this is
supplied by the ivy-bush: the rooms are ill breathed like the drinkers
that have been washed well over night, and are smelt-to fasting next
morning; not furnished with beds apt to be defiled, but more necessary
implements, stools, table, and a chamber-pot. It is a broacher of more
news than hogsheads, and more jests than news, which are sucked up here
by some spungy brain, and from thence squeezed into a comedy. Men come
here to make merry, but indeed make a noise, and this musick above is
answered with the clinking below. The drawers are the civilest people in
it, men of good bringing up, and howsoever we esteem of them, none can
boast more justly of their high calling. 'Tis the best theatre of
natures, where they are truly acted, not played, and the business as in
the rest of the world up and down, to wit, from the bottom of the cellar
to the great chamber. A melancholy man would find here matter to work
upon, to see heads as brittle as glasses, and often broken; men come
hither to quarrel, and come hither to be made friends: and if Plutarch
will lend me his simile, it is even Telephus's sword that makes wounds
and cures them. It is the common consumption of the afternoon, and the
murderer or maker-away of a rainy day. It is the torrid zone that
scorches _the_[25] face, and tobacco the gun-powder that blows it up.
Much harm would be done, if the charitable vintner had not water ready
for these flames. A house of sin you may call it, but not a house of
darkness, for the candles are never out; and it is like those countries
far in the North, where it is as clear at mid-night as at mid-day. After
a long sitting, it becomes like a street in a dashing shower, where the
spouts are flushing above, and the conduits running below, while the
Jordans like swelling rivers overflow their banks. To give you the total
reckoning of it; it is the busy man's recreation, the idle man's
business, the melancholy man's sanctuary, the stranger's welcome, the
inns-of-court man's entertainment, the scholar's kindness, and the
citizen's courtesy. It is the study of sparkling wits, and a cup of
canary[26] their book, whence we leave them.