Almost every tavern of note about town hath or had its club. The Mermaid
Tavern is immortalized as the house resorted to by Shakspeare, Jonson,
Fletcher, and Beaumont; the Devil--which, Pennant informs us, stood on
the site of Child's-place, Temple Bar--was the scene of many a merry
meeting of the choice spirits in old days; at Will's Coffee-house, in
the Augustan age of English literature, societies were held to which
Steele, and Pope, and Addison belonged; Doctor Johnson, Hawkesworth, the
elder Salter, and Sir John Hawkins, were members of a club formerly held
at the King's-head, in Ivy-lane; the notorious Dick England, Dennis
O'Kelly, and Hull, with their associates, had, many years ago, a
sporting-club at Munday's Coffee-house; the Three Jolly Pigeons, in
Butcher-hall-lane, was formerly the gathering place of a set of old
school bibliopoles, who styled themselves the Free and Easy Counsellors
under the Cauliflower; stay-maker Hugh Kelly, Goldsmith, Ossian
Macpherson, Garrick, Cumberland, and the Woodfalls, with several noted
men of that day, were concerned in a club at the St. James's
Coffee-house; the Kit-Cat, which took its name from one Christopher Cat,
a pastry-cook, was held at a tavern in King-street, Westminster;
Button's--but truly the task of enumerating the several clubs, of which
we find notices "in the books," as the lawyers have it, would be
endless.--_Every Night Book_.