The noted tavern, with the sign of St. Dunstan pulling the Devil by the nose, stood between Temple Bar and the Middle Temple gate. It was a house of great resort in the reign of James I., and then kept by Simon Wadloe.
In Ben Jonson's _Staple of News_, played in 1625, Pennyboy Canter advises, to
"Dine in Apollo, with Pecunia At brave Duke Wadloe's."
"Content, i' th' faith; Our meal shall be brought thither; Simon the King Will bid us welcome."
At what period Ben Jonson began to frequent this tavern is not certain; but we have his record that he wrote _The Devil is an Asse_, played in 1616, when he and his boys (adopted sons) "drank bad wine at the Devil." The principal room was called "the Oracle of Apollo," a large room evidently built apart from the tavern; and from Prior's and Charles Montagu's _Hind and Panther Transversed_, it is shown to have been an upper apartment, or on the first story:--
"Hence to the Devil-- Thus to the place where Jonson sat, we climb, Leaning on the same rail that guided him."
Above the door was the bust of Apollo; and the following verses, "the Welcome," were inscribed in gold letters upon a black board, and "placed over the door at the entrance into the Apollo:
"Welcome all, who lead or follow, To the _Oracle of Apollo_-- Here he speaks out of his pottle, Or the tripos, his Tower bottle; All his answers are divine, Truth itself doth flow in wine. Hang up all the poor hop-drinkers, Cries old Sim the king of skinkers; He that half of life abuses, That sits watering with the Muses. Those dull girls no good can mean us; Wine it is the milk of Venus, And the Poet's horse accounted: Ply it, and you all are mounted. 'Tis the true Phoebeian liquor, Cheers the brain, makes wit the quicker, Pays all debts, cures all diseases, And at once three senses pleases. Welcome all, who lead or follow, To the _Oracle of Apollo_."
Beneath these verses was the name of the author, thus inscribed--"O Rare Ben Jonson," a posthumous tribute from his grave in Westminster Abbey. The bust appears modelled from the Apollo Belvedere, by some skillful person of the olden day, but has been several times painted. "The Welcome," originally inscribed in gold letters, on a thick black-painted board, has since been wholly repainted and gilded; but the old thickly-lettered inscription of Ben's day may be seen as an embossment upon the modern painted background. These poetic memorials are both preserved in the banking-house of the Messrs. Child.