All About the Dquil Gavequ. THIS famous hostelry was situated in Fleet Street, nearly opposite St. Dunstan's Church, between the site of Temple Bar and the Middle Temple Gate. It owed its startling designation to its sign, which represented St. Dunstan pulling the devil by the nose; and its ancient reputation to the circumstance that in its "Apollo" room Ben Jonson loved to assemble his literary "sons" and boon companions, ruling with a genial despotism over the club for which he had drawn up his "Leges Conviviales" in his purest Latin. It long retained its fame, and in our literature it may be said to hold a recognised place. It was here that the dramatist Shadwell, Dryden's MacFlecknoe, but a man of some ability and scholarship, obtained admission into the company of Ben Jonson's youngsters. It was here that Tom Killigrew has laid an amusing scene in his not too decent comedy of The Parson's Wedding. A witness in a case in which, in 1682, the notorious Jeffreys was concerned as prosecuting counsel, is described as having been "a waiter at the Devil tavern" and a fanatical Puritan, who, some years before, had been caught on his knees praying against the Cavaliers —“ Scatter them, good Lord, scatter them!"—and had thereby acquired the nickname of "Scatter'em." In cross-examination by Jeffreys he chanced to say, "I don't care to give evidence of anything but the truth. I was never on my knees before Parliament for anything." Sharp upon him came Jeffreys' retort: "Nor I neither for much, yet you were once on your knees when you cried, Scatter them, good Lord! Was it not so, Mr. Scatter'em?" The splendid Buckingham-George Villiers, second Duke of that ilk-frequently dined in public at this tavern (1667). And here were sold, on March 18th, 1703, the jewels of the beautiful Frances Stewart, Duchess of Richmond, who so long figured as Britannia on the reverse of our English coins. Here were rehearsed the courtly odes and birthday verses of the Poets Laureate. Says an epigrammatist— "When Laureates make odes, do you ask of what sort? Do you ask if they're good or are evil? You may judge. From the Devil they come to the Court, Here, on October 12th, 1711, Swift dined with Addison and Dr. Garth, the latter acting as host. Sir Richard Steele, too, was a frequent visitor; and it is at this tavern that, after the wedding of Miss Jenny Distaff, he represents The Tatler as entertaining the company with a dinner suitable to the occasion, being "a place," he says, "sacred to mirth tempered with discretion, where Ben Jonson and his sons used to make their liberal meetings." "As soon as the company were come into that ample room [the Apollo], Lepidus Wagstaffe began to make me compliments for choosing that place, and fell into a discourse upon the subject of pleasure and entertainment, drawn from the rules of Ben's Club, which are [that is, were] in gold letters over the chimney." Here took place the meetings of a shilling whist-club to which Oliver Goldsmith belonged. Its members seem to have been partial to practical jokes, of which simple-hearted 'Goldy " was the frequent victim. One night, when he had come to the club in a hackney-coach, he gave the driver a guinea instead of a shilling-a blunder of which he could ill afford to be guilty. The next club-night he was told that a person wanted to see him; to his surprise and gratification it was the coachman with the guinea. To reward such honesty he collected a small sum among the members, added to it from his own purse, and sent away the coachman with the honorarium. On his return one of the club asked to look at the guinea. It turned out to be a counterfeit; and amid general laughter Goldsmith was informed that the honest coachman was a counterfeit also -in short, that he had been victimised. But one cannot help asking, What became of the members' contributions? Were these repaid? If not, one can hardly say that Goldsmith had the worst of the joke. The publication, in 1751, of Mrs. Charlotte Lenox's first book, "The Life of Harriet Stuart," was celebrated here, at Dr. Johnson's suggestion, by "a whole night spent in festivity." Mrs. Lenox, her husband, and also the members of the Ivy Lane club and their friends, twenty in all, were present. The chief article of the menu was a magnificent apple pie, stuck with bay leaves in compliment to the authoress, for whom Johnson had likewise prepared a crown of laurel. "The night passed," says Hawkins, “as must be imagined, in pleasant conversation and harmless mirth, intermingled at different periods with the refresh ments of coffee and tea. About five a.m. Johnson's face shone with meridian splendour, though his drink had been only lemonade." Hither, in 1788, came the noble army of bricklayers, demolishing this historic tavern, and erecting on its site Child's Place-now Child's Bank-Fleet Street. The Story of the Cock Lane Chost. IN Cock Lane, a narrow thoroughfare in West Smithfield, lived, in 1760, a Mr. Parsons, clerk of St. Sepulchre's Church, who, to eke out his small income, let lodgings. It came to pass that among his tenants was a Miss Fanny, the chère amie of a certain Mr. Kent. She was his deceased wife's sister, and the law, of course, prevented him from marrying her, as he would gladly have done if it had been possible. During her pseudo-husband's absence in the country Miss Fanny took as her bed-fellow Mr. Parsons' little eleven-years-old daughter-an unfortunate arrangement, for, from that moment, she began to be kept awake all night by violent knockings. As they were thought to resemble the hammering of a shoemaker on his lap-stone, a neighbouring cobbler was pitched upon as the disturbing cause. But this explanation failed when the noises were repeated on the Sunday, during the cobbler's hours of rest. Friends, acquaintances, and neighbours flocked to hear the mysterious sounds, and all came to the conclusion that a ghost must lie perdu behind the wainscoting. Application was therefore made to the parochial clergyman to exorcise the unquiet spirit; but being no believer in spiritualism he declined to interfere, and besides, the Church of England has made no provision for meeting this kind of difficulty. At length Miss Fanny grew disgusted at the publicity in which |