'Truly I had thought that every one had read the "Alarm." What dost thou think, then, of "Faithful Contendings" ?' 'I have not read it.' 'Or of Baxter's Sermons ?' she asked.
'I have not read them.' 'Of Bull's "Spirit Cordial," then ?' 'I have not read it.' Mistress Ruth Timewell stared at him in undisguised wonder.

'You may think me ill-bred to say it, sir,' she remarked, 'but I cannot but marvel where you have been, or what you have done all your life.

Why, the very children in the street have read these books.' 'In truth, such works come little in our way in London,' Sir Gervas answered.

'A play of George Etherege's, or a jingle of Sir John Suckling's is lighter, though mayhap less wholesome food for the mind.
A man in London may keep pace with the world of letters without much reading, for what with the gossip of the coffee-houses and the news-letters that fall in his way, and the babble of poets or wits at the assemblies, with mayhap an evening or two in the week at the playhouse, with Vanbrugh or Farquhar, one can never part company for long with the muses.

Then, after the play, if a man is in no humour for a turn of luck at the green table at the Groom Porter's, he may stroll down to the Coca Tree if he be a Tory, or to St.James's if he be a Whig, and it is ten to one if the talk turn not upon the turning of alcaics, or the contest between blank verse or rhyme.