uried.'"

Poppin's Court (No. 109) marks the site of the ancient hostel (hotel) of
the Abbots of Cirencester--though what they did there, when they ought
to have been on their knees in their own far-away Gloucestershire
abbey, history does not choose to record. The sign of their inn was the
"Poppingaye" (popinjay, parrot), and in 1602 (last year of Elizabeth)
the alley was called Poppingay Alley. That excellent man Van Mildert
(then a poor curate, living in Ely Place, afterwards Bishop of Durham--a
prelate remarkable for this above all his many other Christian virtues,
that he was not proud) was once driven into this alley with a young
barrister friend by a noisy illumination-night crowd. The street boys
began firing a volley of squibs at the young curate, who found all hope
of escape barred, and dreaded the pickpockets, who take rapid advantage
of such temporary embarrassments; but his good-natured exclamation, "Ah!
here you are, popping away in Poppin's Court!" so pleased the crowd that
they at once laughingly opened a passage for him. "Sic me servavit,
Apollo," he used afterwards to add when telling the story.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] "This Scott lived in Pudding Lane, and had some time been a page (or
such-like) to the Lord Norris."

[5] "Davy Ramsay brought a half-quartern sack to put the treasure in."

CHAPTER XII.

FLEET STREET TRIBUTARIES SOUTH.

Worthy Mr. Fisher--Lamb's Wednesday Evenings--Persons one would wish
to have seen--Ram Alley--Serjeants' Inn--The _Daily News_--"Memory"
Woodfall--A Mug-House Riot--Richardson's Printing Office--Fielding
and Richardson--Johnson's Estimate of Richardson--Hogarth and
Richardson's Guest--An Egotist Rebuked--The King's
"Housewife"--Caleb Colton: his Life, Works, and Sentiments.

Falcon Court, Fleet Street, took its name from an inn which bore the
sign of the "Falcon." This passage formerly belonged to a gentleman
named Fisher, who, out of gratitude to the Cordwainers' Company,
bequeathed it to them by will. His gratitude is commonly said to have
arisen from the number of good dinners that the Company had given him.
However this may be, the Cordwainers are the present owners of the
estate, and are under the obligation of having a sermon preached
annually at the neighbouring church of St. Dunstan, on the 10th of July,
when certain sums are given to the poor. Formerly it was the custom to
drink sack in the church to the pious memory of Mr. Fish