CURRENT LITERATURE
SIGNS AND TAVERNS ROUND ABOUT LONDON BRIDGE By Kenneth Rogers
Dr. Rogers has long made a special study of the old London taverns and the tokens which they issued. To his mono- graphs on Cornhill and Lombard Street, the various Mermaids and Mitres, and the Boar's Head in Eastcheap he has now added a similar book (Homeland Association, 8s. 6d.) on the City inns to the north of the bridge, as far as Leaden- hall and Fenchurch Streets. Dr. Rogers is content to print his extracts from the City archives, and the relevant references in the Elizabethan plays, Pepys's diary and other sources, with little comment, and in no very logical order. But the mass of authentic detail which topographers will find valuable conjures up a vision of the bustling little city, crowded along the one highway from the south with the inns where travellers lodged and citizens dined. Pepys of course enlivens the pages about the Dolphin in Tower Street, which the Navy officials and their wives frequented, or the Hoop in Thames Street, where on one occasion Pepys and his friends not only drank much wine but " did eat above zoo walnuts." And the illustrations from old prints are uncommonly interesting, especially the view of Fenchurch Street—a very stately thoroughfare in 175o.
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