Note 7 — William Hogarth: PAINTER, ENGRAVER, AND PHILOSOPHER. Essays on the Man, the Work, and the Time.

Daniel Button’s well-known coffee-house was on the south side of Russell Street, Covent Garden, nearly opposite Tom’s. Button had been a servant of the Countess of Warwick, and so was patronized by her spouse, the Right Hon. Joseph Addison. Sir Robert Walpole’s creature, Giles Earl, a trading justice of the peace (compare Fielding and “300l. a year of the dirtiest money in the world”) used to examine criminals, for the amusement of the company, in the public room at Button’s. Here, too, was a lion’s head letter-box, into which communications for the Guardian were dropped. At Button’s, Pope is reported to have said of Patrick, the lexicographer, who made pretensions to criticism, that “a dictionary-maker might know the meaning of one word, but not of two put together.”