evens, and aces, which he hath discarded."--No. 87.

XIII.

A TAVERN

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
spongy 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 theater 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] "E