Mr. Knight successfully defends Tonson from Ward's satire, and nobly stands forth for the bookseller who identified himself with Milton, by first making _Paradise Lost_ popular, and being the first bookseller who threw open Shakespeare to a reading public. "The statesmen of the Kit-Kat Club," he adds, "lived in social union with the Whig writers who were devoted to the charge of the poetry that opened their road to preferment; the band of orators and wits were naturally hateful to the Tory authors that Harley and Bolingbroke were nursing into the bitter satirists of the weekly sheets. Jacob Tonson naturally came in for a due share of invective. In a poem entitled '_Factions Displayed_,' he is ironically introduced as "the Touchstone of all modern wit;" and he is made to vilify the great ones of Barn Elms:
"'I am the founder of your loved Kit-Kat, A club that gave direction to the State: 'Twas there we first instructed all our youth To talk profane, and laugh at sacred truth: We taught them how to boast, and rhyme, and bite, To sleep away the day, and drink away the night.'"
Shire-lane, _alias_ Rogue-lane, (which falleth into Fleet-street by Temple Bar,) has lost its old name--it is now called Lower Serle's-place. If the morals of Shire-lane have mended thereby, we must not repine.
Here lived Sir Charles Sedley; and here his son, the dramatic poet, was born, "neere the Globe." Here, too, lived Elias Ashmole, and here Antony à Wood dined with him: this was at the upper end of the lane. Here, too, was the _Trumpet_ tavern, where Isaac Bickerstaff met his Club. At this house he dated a great number of his papers; and hence he led down the lane, into Fleet-street, the deputation of "Twaddlers" from the country, to Dick's Coffee-house, which we never enter without remembering the glorious humour of Addison and Steele, in the _Tatler_, No. 86. Sir Harry Quickset, Sir Giles Wheelbarrow, and other persons of quality, having reached the Tatler's by appointment, and it being settled that they should "adjourn to some public-house, and enter upon business," the precedence was attended with much difficulty; when, upon a false alarm of "fire," all ran down as fast as they could, without order or ceremony, and drew up in the street.