" His desire was fulfilled. He died at the old Bell Inn in
Warwick Lane, London, an old galleried hostel which was not demolished
until 1865. Dr. Johnson, when delighting in the comfort of the
Shakespeare's Head Inn, between Worcester and Lichfield, exclaimed:
"No, sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by
which so much happiness is provided as by a good tavern or inn." This
oft-quoted saying the learned Doctor uttered at the Chapel House Inn,
near King's Norton; its glory has departed; it is now a simple
country-house by the roadside. Shakespeare, who doubtless had many
opportunities of testing the comforts of the famous inns at Southwark,
makes Falstaff say: "Shall I not take mine ease at mine inn?"; and
Shenstone wrote the well-known rhymes on a window of the old Red Lion
at Henley-on-Thames:--
Whoe'er has travelled life's dull road,
Where'er his stages may have been,
May sigh to think he still has found
The warmest welcome at an inn.
Fynes Morrison tells of the comforts of English inns even as early as
the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 1617 he wrote:--
"The world affords not such inns as England hath, for as soon as a
passenger comes the servants run to him; one takes his horse and
walks him till he be cold, then rubs him and gives him meat; but
let the master look to this point.
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