THE
London-Spy.
PART XII.
A Description of a famous Coffee-House in Aldersgate-Street; and how he engaged an Auctioneer there. A wonderful Relation of a pleasant Gentleman. A Description of the Spitting, Roasting and Eating of a whole Side of an Ox at the Kings-head Tavern at Chancery-Lane-End; with a Copy of Verses to the Vintner. A Description of the City-Triumphs on the Lord-Mayors-Day.
HAVING heard of a Fam’d Coffee-House in Aldersgate-Street, where Doctors of the Body, who Study Machiavel much more than Hippocrates, Metamorphose themselves into State Politicians; and the slippery Tongues of thoughtless Mechanicks, undertake to Expound the Mysteries of Scripture, by the Power of Grace without Learning; we were willing to refresh our Intelects with their Improving Discourses; in which, tho’ we had but little Expectancy of discovering much of the Innocency of the Dove, yet we had some hopes of Inspecting a little further into the Subtlety of the Serpent. Thither accordingly we Steer’d our Course, and enter’d the Antient Fabrick, by Antiquity made Venerable, whose inside was lin’d with as great a Number of Geneva Christians, as if they were met to Sign some Canting Address to Cheat the Government
intointo a good Opinion of their Loyalty, whose Zeal to the Good Old Cause was so Legible in their Looks, as if they had contracted their Faces into Lines and Shrivels by looking awry upon Monarchy. Some were highly extolling the Dutch Government; setting forth the Freedom and Prosperity of all such People who Flourish under the happy Constitution of a Common-Wealth. Others commending the Conduct of all Affairs under the Protector-ship of Cromwell; and how far the Felicity of the Nation in those Days exceeded the present Happiness of the Kingdom, so much boasted of by the Blind Lovers of Kingly Power and Episcopacy. At last up starts a bundle of Verbosity, who I had seen often at a Coffee-House near the Court of Requests, tho’ never here before, to my Rememberance, notwithstanding I have gone frequently to the House; He is not tall enough to be a Compleat Man, nor short enough to be a Monkey, having more Mercury in his Head than there is in a Weather-Glass. His Tongue began to flutter about his Mouth, like a Wild Bird trapan’d into a Cage; spitting as much Venom against Monarchy, as ever Was spew’d up after a full Stomach at a Calves-Head-Feast. His Voice is as untunable when he speaks, as the Screaking of a Country Sign in a high Wind, that were a Blind Man to hear him talk, he might easily mistake the Sound to be the Whining of some Puppy that wants the Dug in his Dams Absence. He has one Rhetorical Excellency which becomes him wonderfully, he will assert a Falsity to be Truth with as Graceful an Impudence, as ever the Salamanca-Saviour of our Lives and Liberties, did when he affirmed Don John of Austria to be a Tall Black Man, who was quite opposite to the Description. He is one who will never own himself to be in the Wrong, and yet is never in the Right; but takes: as much Pleasure in the Justification of a
Lye,