Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1913 — DEVIL TAVERN STILL EXISTS [ARTICLE]

DEVIL TAVERN STILL EXISTS

Was Favorite Resort of Ben Jonson and Shandwell Located in London. London.—At the present time it would be difficult to discover a London tavern ever called by the name of "The Devil.” But in the eighteenth century 1 Fleet street, still in existence, was so called. “The Devil’s Tavern” was so called owing to the proximity of St Dunstan's church and the fond recollection of afi interlude between the saint and the Evil One. This was Ben Jonson’s favorite resort and here he presided over a club of which he was the founder. He wrote once: “The first speech in my ‘Catiline,’

spoken to Scylla’s ghost, was writ afted I had parted with my friends at the Devil Tavern; I had drank well that night and had brave notions.” It was also the resort of Shadwell, pillorized as Og by~ Dryden in his “Absalom and Achitophel." Here the poets laureate used to rehearse their birthday odes, so carefully written with the minimum of emotion in the Augustan style, and here Killigrew had one of the scenes in his “Parson’s Wedding.” Swift, in his “Journal to Stella," the human document of a passionate being, mentions dining here with Addison and Garth. Pope has embalmed it in the amber of his classic verse. Here Goldsmith, in his prosperous hours, played at cards, and in 1751 Dr. Jonson assembled his merry and, almost famous party to celebrate the publication of the delightful Mrs. Charlotte Lennox’s first novel, “The Life of Harriet Stuart”