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Merrie England in the Olden Time, Vol. 1

by George Daniel · English · Gutenberg #46331 · 403,694 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Merrie England in the Olden Time, Vol. 1

Author: George Daniel

Illustrator: Robert Cruikshank
        Thomas Gilks
        John Leech


        
Release date: July 19, 2014 [eBook #46331]
                Most recently updated: March 15, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46331

Credits: Produced by David Widger from page images generously
        provided by the Internet Archive


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MERRIE ENGLAND IN THE OLDEN TIME, VOL. 1 ***




Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by the Internet Archive







MERRIE ENGLAND IN THE OLDEN TIME

By George Daniel

“Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes
and ale?” Shakspere.

In Two Volumes. Vol. I.

London:

Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street.

1841

[Illustration: 0008]

[Illustration: 0009]


“Merrie England in the Olden Time” having found favour with the Public
in “_Bentley's Miscellany_,” puts forth new attractions in the
present volumes. It has received numerous and important corrections
and additions; the story has been illustrated by those eminent artists
Messrs. Leech and Robert Cruikshank; and fac-similes, faithfully
executed by that “cunninge” limner Mr. Thomas Gilks, of rare and unique
portraits of celebrated Players, Jesters, Conjurers, and Mountebanks,
(preserved only in the cabinets of the curious,) exhibit “lively
sculptures” of once popular drolls and wizards that shook the sides and
“astonished the nerves” of our jovial-hearted and wondering ancestors.

To supply the antiquarian portion of Merrie England, a library and a
collection of prints and drawings of a highly curious and _recherche_
character have been resorted to; and, though the task of concentrating
and reducing into moderate compass such ample materials has not been an
easy one,

“The labour we delight in physics pain.”

This, and a large share of public approval, have made it a “labour of
love.”

In that part which is purely fiction the _characters_ can best speak for
themselves.

Canonbury,

Oct. 1841.




MERRIE ENGLAND IN THE OLDEN TIME.




INTRODUCTION.

|Youth is the season of ingenuousness and enjoyment, when we desire to
please, and blush not to own ourselves pleased. At that happy period
there is no affectation of wisdom; we look only to the bright and
beautiful: we inquire not whether it be an illusion; it is sufficient
that fairy land, with its flowers of every hue, is the path on which we
tread. To youth succeeds manhood, with its worldly prudence: then we are
taught to take nothing, not even happiness, upon trust; to investigate
until we are lost in the intricacies of detail; and to credit our
judgment for what is due only to our coldness and apathy. We lose
all sympathy for the past; the future is the subject of our anxious
speculation; caution and re serve are our guardian angels; and if the
heart still throb with a fond emotion, we stifle it with what speed
we may, as detrimental to our interests, and unworthy our new-born
intelligence and philosophy. A short acquaintance with the world will
convince the most sanguine that this stage is not the happiest; that
ambition and mercenary cares make up the tumultuous scene; and though
necessity compel a temporary submission, it is good to escape from the
toils, and breathe a purer air. This brings us to another period, when
reflection has taught us self-knowledge, and we are no longer overwise
in our own esteem. Then returns something of the simplicity that
characterised our early days. We welcome old friends; have recourse
to old amusements, and the fictions that enchained our youthful fancy
resume their wonted spell.

We remember the time when just emerging from boyhood, we affected a
disdain for the past. We had put on the man, and no urchin that put
on for the first time his holiday suit, felt more inexpressible
self-complacency. We had roared at pantomime, and gaped with delight
at the mysteries of melodrame--but now becoming too sober to be amused,
“puerile!”

“ridiculous!” were the critical anathemas that fulminated from our
newly-imbibed absolute wisdom! It might be presumption to say that we
have since grown wiser; certain it is, we are become less pleased with
ourselves, and consequently more willing to be pleased.

Gentle Reader, we are old enough to have enjoyed, and young enough
to remember many of the amusements, wakes, and popular drolleries of
_Merrie England_ that have long since submitted to “the tooth of time
and razure of oblivion.” Like Parson Adams, we have also been a great
traveller--in our books! Reversing the well-known epigram,

               “Give me the thing that's pretty, smart, and new:

               All ugly, old, odd things, I leave to you,”

we have all our life been a hunter after oddities. We have studied
attentively the past. For the future we have been moderately solicitous;
there being so many busy economists to take the unthankful task off our
hands. We have lost our friend rather than our joke, when the joke has
been the better of the two; and have been free of discourse where it has
been courteously received, preferring (in the cant of pompous ignorance,
which is dear at any price!) to make ourselves “_cheap_” rather than
be set down as exclusive and unkind. Disappointments we have had, and
sorrows, with ample experience of the world's ingratitude. But life is
too short to harbour enmities; and to be resentful is to be unhappy.
This may have cast a transient shade over our lucubrations, which let
thy happier humour shine upon and dispel! Wilt thou accept us for thy
Cicerone through a journey of strange sights? the curiosities of
nature, and the whimsicalities of art. We promise thee faster speed
than steam-boat and railroad: for thou shalt traverse the ground of two
centuries in two hours! With pleasant companions by the way, free from
the perils of fire and flood,

               “Fancy, like the finger of a clock,

               Runs the great circuit, and is still at home.”




CHAPTER I.

|Dost thou think because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes
and ale?” was the admirable reply of Sir Toby Belch to Malvolio when he
would have marred his Christmas * merrymaking with Sir Andrew and the
Clown. And how beautiful is Olivia's reply to the self-same precisian
when the searching apophthegms of the “foolish wise man, or wise foolish
man,” sounded like discords in his ears. “O, you are sick of selflove,
Malvolio, and taste all with a distempered appetite. To be generous,
guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things for
bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets. There is no slander in an
allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail; nor no railing in a known
discreet man, though he do nothing but reprove.”

     * Christmas being the season when Jack Frost commonly takes
     us by the nose, the diversions are within doors, either in
     exercise, or by the fire-side. Viz. a game at blind-man's-
     buff, puss-in-the-corner, questions and commands, hoop-and-
     hide; stories of hobgoblins, Tom-pokers, bull-beggars,
     witches, wizards, conjurors, Doctor Faustus, Friar Bacon,
     Doctor Partridge, and such-like horrible bodies, that
     terrify and delight!

     “O you merry, merry souls,
     Christmas is a-coming:
     We shall have flowing bowls,
     Dancing, piping, drumming.
     Delicate minced pies,
     To feast every virgin;
     Capon and goose likewise,
     Brawn, and dish of sturgeon.

We hate to be everlastingly bewailing the follies and vices of mankind;
and gladly turn to the pleasanter side of the picture, to contemplate
something that we can love and emulate. We know

               Then for Christmas-box,

                   Sweet plum-cake and money;

               Delicate holland smocks,

                   Kisses sweet as honey.

               Hey for Christmas ball,

                   Where we will be jolly;

               Coupling short and tall,

               Kate, Dick, Ralph, and Molly.

               To the hop we go,

                   Where we'll jig and caper;

               Cuckolds all a-row--

                   Will shall pay the scraper.

               Tom must dance with Sue,

                   Keeping time with kisses;

               We'll have a jolly crew

                   Of sweet smirking Misses!”--Old Song.

There are such things as opaque wits and perverse minds, as there are
squinting eyes and crooked legs; but we desire not to entertain such
guests either as companions or foils. We come not to the conclusion that
the world is split into two classes, _viz_. those who _are_ and those
who _ought to be_ hanged; that we should believe every man to be a rogue
till we find him honest. There is quite virtue enough in human life
to make our journey moderately happy. We are of the hopeful order of
beings, and think this world a very beautiful world, if man would not
mar it with his pride, selfishness, and gloom.

It has been a maxim among all great and wise nations to encourage public
sports and diversions. The advantages that arise from them to a state;
the benefit they are to all degrees of the people; the right purposes
they may be made to serve in troublesome times, have generally been so
well understood by the ruling powers, that they have seldom permitted
them to suffer from the assaults of narrow-minded and ignorant
reformers.

Our ancestors were wise when they appointed amusements for the people.
And as religious services (which are the means, not the end--the road to
London is not London) were never intended for a painful duty, the “drum
ecclesiastic,” which in latter times called its recruits to pillage and
bloodshed, often summoned Punch, Robin Hood, and their merry crew,
to close the motley ceremonies of a holy-appointed day! Then was the
calendar Devotion's diary and Mirth's manual! Rational pleasure is
heightened by participation; solitary enjoyment is always selfish. Who
ever inquires after a sour recluse, except his creditors and next heir?
Nobody misses him when there are so many more agreeable people to supply
his place. Of what use is such a negative, “crawling betwixt earth and
heaven?” If he hint that Diogenes, * dying of the dumps, may be found at
home in his tub, who cares to disinter him? Oh, the deep solitude of a
great city to a morose and selfish spirit! The Hall of Eblis is not more
terrible. Away, then, with supercilious exclusiveness! 'Tis the grave of
the affections! the charnel-house of the heart! What to us is the world,
if to the world we are nothing?

We delight to see a fool ** administer to his brethren.

     * Diogenes, when he trod with his dirty cobbled shoes on the
     beautiful carpets of Plato, exclaimed triumphantly, “I tread
     upon the pride of Plato!”--“Yes,” replied Plato, “but with
     a greater pride!”

     ** “A material fool,” as Jacques describes Touchstone. Such
     was Dr. Andrew Borde, the well-known progenitor of Merry
     Andrews; and the presumed author of the “Merry Tales of the
     Wise Men of Gotham,” composed in the early part of the
     sixteenth century. “In the time of Henry VIII. and after,”
      (says Anthony à Wood,) “it was accounted a book full of wit
     and mirth by the scholars and gentlemen.” It is thus
     referred to in an old play of 1560:--

     “Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
     I must needs laughe  in my slefe.
     The wise men of Gotum are risen againe.”

If merriment sometimes ran riot, it never exhibited itself in those
deep-laid villanies so rife among the pretenders to sanctity and
mortification. An appeal to “clubs” among the London apprentices; the
pulling down of certain mansions of iniquity, of which _Mrs. Cole_, * in
after days, was the devout proprietress; a few broken heads at the Bear
Garden; the somewhat opposite sounds of the “belles tolling for the
lectorer, and the trumpets sounding to the stages,” ** and sundry minor
enormities, were the only terrible results of this national licence.
Mark what followed, when masking, morris-dancing, ***

     * Foote's “Minor.” Act i. scene 1.

     ** Harleian MSS. No. 286.

     *** The morris-dance was one of the most applauded
     merriments of Old England. Robin Hood, Little John, Friar
     Tuck, Maid Marian, the Queen or Lady of the May, the fool,
     the piper, to which were afterwards added a dragon, and a
     hobbyhorse, were the characters that figured away in that
     truly ancient and grotesque movement. Will Kempe, “the
     comical and conceited jest-monger, and vicegerent to the
     ghost of Dicke Tarleton,” who “raised many a roar by making
     faces and mouths of all sorts,” danced the morris with his
     men of Gotham, in his “Nine daies' wonder from London to
     Norwich.” Kempe's “new jigg,” rivalled in popularity his
     Peter in Romeo and Juliet; Dogberry, in “Much ado about
     nothing;” and

     Justice Shallow, of which he was the original performer. In
     “Jacke Drum's Entertainment,” 4to. 1601, is the following
     song:

     ON THE INTRODUCTION OF A WHITSUN MORRIS-DANCE.

     “Skip it and trip it nimbly, nimbly,
     Tickle it, tickle it lustily,
     Strike up the tabour for the wenches' favour,
     Tickle it, tickle it, lustily.
     Let us be seene on Hygate Greene,
     To dance for the honour of Holloway.
     Sing we are come hither, let us spare for no leather,
     To dance for the honour of Holloway.”

May games, stage-plays, * fairs, and the various pastimes that delighted
the commonalty, were sternly prohibited. The heart sickens at the cant
and cruelty of these monstrous times, when fanaticism, with a dagger in
one hand, and “_Hooks and Eyes for an Unbeliever's Breeches_,” in the
other, revelled in the destruction of all that was intellectual in the
land.

     * Plays were suppressed by the Puritans in 1633. The actors
     were driven off the stage by the soldiers; and the only
     pleasantry that Messrs. “Praise-God-Barebones” and “Fight-
     the-good-fight,” indulged in, was  “Enter red coat, exit hat
     and cloak;” a cant phrase in reference to this devout
     tyranny. Randolph, in “The Muses' Looking-glass,” makes a
     fanatic utter this charitable prayer:

     “That the Globe,
     Wherein (quoth he) reigns a whole world of vice,
     Had been consum'd, the Phoenix burnt to ashes;
     The Fortune whipp'd for a blind--Blackfriars!

     He wonders how it 'scap'd demolishing I' the time of
     Reformation: lastly, he wished The Bull might cross the
     Thames to the Bear Gardens, And there be soundly baited.

     In 1599 was published “The overthrow of Stage Playes, by way
     of controversie betwixt D. Gager and D. Rainolde, where-
     in all the Reasons that ean be made for them are notably
     refuted, the objections answered, and the case so clear and
     resolved as that the judgment of any man that is not froward
     and perverse may casilic be satisfied; wherein is
     manifestly proved that it is not onely unlawfull to bee an
     actor, but a beholder of those vanities, &e. &c.”

When the lute, the virginals, the viol-de-gambo, were hushed for the
inharmonious bray of their miserable conventicles, * and the quaintly
appropriate signs ** of the ancient taverns and music shops were pulled
down to make room for some such horrible effigy as we see dedicated to
their high priest, _John Knox_, on a wall in the odoriferous Canongate
of _Modern Athens_. ***

     * “What a poor pimping business is a Presbyterian place of
     worship; dirty, narrow and squalid: stuck in the corner of
     an old Popish garden such as Linlithgow, and much more,
     Melrose.”--Robert Burns.

     ** Two wooden heads, with this inscription under it: “We
     three loggerheads be.” The third was the spectator. The
     tabor was the ancient sign of a music shop. Tarleton kept an
     eating-house with this sign. Apropos of signs--Two Irishmen
     beholding a hatchment fixed against a house, the one
     inquired what it was? “It's a bad sign!” replied the other
     mysteriously. Paddy being still at fault as to the meaning,
     asked for further explanation.--“It's a sign,” cried his
     companion with a look of immeasurable superiority, “that
     somebody is dead!”

     *** Those who would be convinced of the profaneness of the
     Cameronians and Covenanters have only to read “Scotch
     Presbyterian Eloquence displayed, or the Folly of their
     teaching discovered from their Books, Sermons, and Prayers,”
      1738,--a volume full of ludicrous impieties. We select one
     specimen.

     Mr. William Vetch, preaching at Linton, in Tiviotdale, said,
     “Our Bishops thought they were very secure this long time.

     “Like Willie Willie Wastel,
     I am in my castel.
     All the dogs in the town
     Dare nor ding me down.

     “Yea, but there is a doggie in Heaven that has dung them all
     down.”

Deep was the gloom of those dismal days! The kitchens were cool; the
spits motionless. * The green holly and the mystic mistletoe ** were
blooming abominations. The once rosy cheeks of John Bull looked as lean
as a Shrove-Tuesday pancake, and every rib like the tooth of a saw.

     * “The Lamentable Complaints of Nick Froth the Tapster, and
     Ruleroast the Cook,” 4to. 1641.

     * The magical properties of the mistletoe are mentioned both
     by Virgil and Ovid; and Apuleius has preserved some verses
     of the poet Lelius, in which he mentions the mistletoe as
     one of the things necessary to make a magician. In the dark
     ages a similar belief prevailed, and even to the present day
     the peasants of Holstein, and some other countries, call the
     mistletoe the “Spectre's Wand,” from a supposition that
     holding a branch of mistletoe in the hand will not only
     enable a man to see ghosts, but to force them to speak to
     him! The mistletoe is peculiar to Christmas.

Rampant were those times, when crop-ear'd Jack Presbyter was as blythe
as shepherd at a wake. * Down tumbled the Maypoles **--no more music

     * “We'll break the windows which the whore Of Babylon hath
     planted,
     And when the Popish saints are down,
     Then Burges shall be sainted;
     We'll burn the fathers' learned books,
     And make the schoolmen flee;
     We'll down with all that smells of wit,
     And hey, then, up go we!”

     ** The downfall of May-games, 4to. 1660. By Thomas Hall, the
     canting parson of King's-Norton.--Hear the caitiff,

     “There's not a knave in all the town,
     Nor swearing courtier, nor base clown,
     Nor dancing lob, nor mincing quean,
     Nor popish clerk, be't priest or dean,
     Nor Knight debauch'd nor gentleman,
     That follows drab, or cup, or can,
     That will give thee a friendly look,
     If thou a May-pole canst not brook.”

     On May 1, 1517, the unfortunate shaft, or May-pole, gave
     rise to the insurrection of that turbulent body, the London
     apprentices, and the plundering of the foreigners in the
     city, whence it got the name of Evil May-day. From that time
     the offending pole was hung on a range of hooks over the
     doors of a long row of neighbouring houses. In the 3rd of
     Edward VI. an over-zealous fanatic called Sir Stephen began
     to preach against this May-pole, which inflamed his audience
     so greatly, that the owner of every house over which it hung
     sawed off as much as depended over his premises, and
     committed piecemeal to the flames this terrible idol!

     The “tall May-pole” that “onee o'erlooked the Strand,”
      (about the year 1717,) Sir Isaac Newton begged of the
     parish, and it was carried to Wanstead in Essex, where it
     was erected in the park, and had the honour of raising the
     greatest telescope then known. The New Church occupies its
     site.

     “But now (so Anne and piety ordain),
     A church collects the saints of Drury Lane.”

and dancing! * For the disciples of _Stubbes_ and _Prynne_ having
discovered by their sage oracles, that _May-games_ were derived from
the Floralian Feasts and interludes of the pagan Romans, which were
solemnised on the first of May; and that dancing round a May-pole,
adorned with garlands of flowers, ribbons, and other ornaments, was
idolatry, after the fashion of Baal's worshippers, who capered about the
altar in honour of their idol; resolved that the Goddess Flora should
no longer receive the gratulations of Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, and Robin
Hood's merry men, on a fine May morning; a superstition derived from the
Sibyl's books, horribly papistical and pagan.

     *  “Good fellowes must go learne to daunce
     The brydeal is full near a:
     There is a brail come out of Fraunce,
     The fyrst ye harde this yeare a.
     For I must leape, and thou must hoppe,
     And we must turne all three a;
     The fourth must bounce it like a toppe,
     And so we shall agree a.
     praye the mynstrell make no stoppe,
     For we wyll merye be a.”

     From an unique black letter ballad, printed in 1569,
     “Intytuled, 'Good Fellowes must go learne to Daunce.'”

Nor was the “precise villain” less industrious in confiscation and
sacrilege. * Painted windows--Lucifer's Missal drawings!--he took
infinite pains to destroy; and with his long pike did the devil's work
diligently. He could endure no cross ** but that on silver; hence the
demolition of those beautiful edifices that once adorned Cheapside, and
other remarkable sites in ancient times.

     * Sir Robert Howard has drawn an excellent picture of a
     Puritan family, in his comedy of “The Committee.” The
     personages are Mr. Day, chairman to the committee of
     sequestrations; Mrs. Day, “the committee-man's utensil,”
      with “curled hair, white gloves, and Sabbath-day's cinnamon
     waistcoat;” Abel, their booby son, a fellow “whose heart is
     down in his breeches at every turn and Obadiah, chief clerk,
     dull, drawling, and heinously given to strong waters. We are
     admitted into the sanctum sanctorum, of pious fraud, where
     are seated certain honourable members, whose names cannot
     fail to enforce respect. Nehemiah Catch, Joseph Blemish,
     Jonathan Headstrong, and Ezekiel Scrape! The work of plunder
     goes bravely on. The robbing of widows and orphans is
     “building up the new Zion.” A parcel of notched rascals
     laying their heads together to cheat is “the cause of the
     righteous prospering when brethren dwell together in unity
     and when a canting brother gives up lying and the ghost, Mr.
     Day remarks that “Zachariah went off full of exhortation!”

     It was at the sacking of Basing House, the seat of the
     venerable Marquis of Winchester, that Harrison, the regicide
     and butcher's son, shot Major Robinson, exclaiming as he did
     the deed, “Cursed is he that doeth the work of the Lord
     negligently.” Hugh Peters, the buffooning priest, was of the
     party.

     ** The erection of upright stone crosses is generally
     supposed to have dated its origin from the custom which the
     first Christians in this island adopted of inscribing the
     Druid stones with a cross, that the worship of the converted
     idolator might be transferred from the idol to the emblem of
     his faith; and afterwards the Saxon kings frequently erected
     crosses previously to a battle, at which public prayers were
     offered up for victory. After the Norman conquest crosses
     became common, and were erected in market-places, to induce
     honesty by the sanction of religion: in churchyards, to
     inspire devout and pious feelings; in streets, for the
     deposit of a corpse when borne to its last home; and for
     various other purposes. Here the beggar stationed himself,
     and asked alms in the name of Him who suffered on the cross.
     They were used for landmarks, that men might learn to
     respect and hold sacred the boundaries of another's
     property. Du Cange says that crosses were erected in the
     14th Richard II. as landmarks to define the boundaries
     between Kesteven and Holland. They were placed on public
     roads as a check to thieves, and to regulate processions. At
     the Reformation (?!! ) most of the crosses throughout the
     kingdom were destroyed, when the sweeping injunction of
     Bishop Horne was formally promulgated at his Visitation in
     1571, that all images of the Trinity in glass windows, or
     other places of the church, be put out and extinguished,
     together with the stone cross in the churchyard! We devoutly
     hope, as Dr. Johnson hoped of John Knox, that Bishop Horne
     was buried in a cross-road.

The sleek rogue read his Bible * upside down, and hated his neighbour:
his piety was pelf; his godliness gluttony.

     * “They like none but sanctified and shuttle-headed weavers,
     long-winded boxmakers, and thorough-stitching cobblers,
     thumping felt-makers, jerking coachmen, and round-headed
     button-makers, which spoyle Bibles while they thumb over the
     leaves with their greasie fingers, and sit by the fireside
     scumming their porridge-pot, while their zeal seethes over
     in applications and interpretations of Scripture delivered
     to their ignorant wives and handmaids, with the name and
     title of deare brethren and especially beloved sisters.”--
     The doleful Lamentation of Cheapside Crosse, or Old England
     sick of the Staggers, 1641.

His grace * was as long as his face. The gnat, like Macbeth's “Amen,”
 stuck in his throat; but the camel slid down merrily. What a weary,
working-day world would this have been under his unhospitable dominion!
** How unlovely and lachrymose! how sectarian and sinister! A bumper
of bitters, to be swallowed with a rising gorge, and a wry face! All
literature would have resolved itself into--

     * One Lady D'Arcy, a well-jointured, puritanical widow,
     having invited the next heir in the entail to dine with her,
     asked him to say grace. The young gentleman, thinking that
     her ladyship had lived quite long enough, expressed his
     wishes thus graciously:--

          “Good Lord of thy mercy,
          Take my good Lady D'Arcy
          Unto her heavenly throne;
          That I, little Frank,
          May sit in my rank,
          And keep a good house of my own!”

     ** John Knox proclaimed the mild sentence, which was loudly
     re-echoed by his disciples, that the idolator should die the
     death, in plain English (or rather, God be thanked! in plain
     Scotch) that every Catholic should be hanged. The bare
     toleration of prelacy--of the Protestant prelacy!--was the
     guilt of soul-murder. These were the merciful Christians!
     the sainted martyrs! who conducted the inquisitorial tyranny
     of the high commission, and imposed the test of that piece
     of impious buffoonery, the “Holy League and Covenant!!” who
     visited the west of Scotland with the free quarters of the
     military, and triumphed so brutally over the unfortunate,
     patriotic and gallant Montrose. The Scotch Presbyterians
     enacted that each episcopalian was liable to transportation
     who should baptize a child, or officiate as a clergyman to
     more than Jour persons, besides the members of his own
     family!

--“_The plain Pathway to Penuriousness;” Peachwns “Worth of a Penny, or a
caution to keep Money;” and the “Key to unknowne Knowledge, or a Shop of
Five Windows_”

               “Which if you do open, to cheapen and copen,

               You will be unwilling, for many a shilling,

               To part with the profit that you shall have of it;”

and the drama, which, whether considered as a school of eloquence or a
popular entertainment, is entitled to national regard, would have been
proscribed, because--having neither soul for sentiment, eye for beauty,
nor ear for poetry, it was his pleasure to be displeased. His humanity
may be summed up in one short sentence, “I will take care, my dear
brother, you shall not keep your bed in sickness, for I will take it
from under you.” There are two reasons why we don't trust a man--one,
because we don't know him, and the other because we do. Such a man
would have shouted “_Hosan-nah!_” when the Saviour entered Jerusalem in
triumph; and cried “_Crucify him!_” when he went up the mountain to die.

Seeing how little party spirit, religious controversy, and
money-grubbing have contributed to the general stock of human
happiness--that pre-eminence in knowledge is

               “Only to know how little can be known,

               To see all others' faults, and feel our own,”

we cry, with St. Patrick's dean, “_Vive la bagatelle!_” Democritus lived
to an hundred. Death shook, not his dart, but his sides, at the laughing
philosopher, and “delay'd to strike” till his lungs had crowed their
second jubilee: while Heraclitus was Charon's passenger at threescore.
But the night wanes apace; to-morrow we must rise with the lark. Fill we
a cup to Mercury, _à bon repos!_

               A bumper at parting! a bumper so bright,

               Though the clock points to morning, by way of good

                        night!

               Time, scandal, and cards, are for tea-drinking souls!

               Let them play their rubbers, while we ply the bowls!

               Oh who are so jocund, so happy as we?

               Our skins full of wine, and our hearts full of glee!


               Not buxom Dame Nature, a provident lass!

               Abhors more a vacuum, than Bacchus's glass,

               Where blue-devils drown, and where merry thoughts

                        swim--

               As deep as a Quaker, as broad as his brim!

               Like rosy fat friars, again and again

               Our beads we have told, boys I--in sparkling champagne!


               Our gravity's centre is good vin de grave,

               Pour'd out to replenish the goblet concave;

               And tell me what rubies so glisten and shine,

               Like the deep blushing ruby of Burgundy wine?

               His face in the glass Bibo smiles when he sees;

               For Fancy takes flight on no wing like the bee's!


               If truth in a well lie,--ah! truth, well-a-day!--

               I'll seek it in “Fmo,”--the pleasantest way!

               Let temperance, twankay, teetotallers trump;

               Your sad, sober swiggers at “_Veritas_” pump!

               If water flow hither, so crystal and clear,

               To mix with our wine--'tis humanity's tear.

               When Venus is crusty, and Mars in a miff,

               Their tipple is prime nectar-toddy and stiff,--

               And shall we not toast, like their godships above,

               The lad we esteem, and the lady we love?

               Be goblets as sparkling, and spirits as light,

               Our next merry meeting! A bumper--good night!



CHAPTER II.

               “The flow'ry _May_, who from her green lap throws

               The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.”

'Tis Flora's holiday, and in ancient times the goddess kept it with
joyous festivity. Ah! those ancient times, they are food for melancholy.
Yet may melancholy be made to “discourse most eloquent music,”--

          “O why was England 'merrie' called, I pray you tell

                   me why?--

          Because Old England merry was in merry times gone by!

          She knew no dearth of honest mirth to cheer both son

                   and sire,

          But kept it up o'er wassail cup around the Christmas

                   fire.

          When fields were dight with blossoms white, and leaves

                   of lively green,

          The May-pole rear'd its flow'ry head, and dancing round

                   were seen

          A youthful band, join'd hand in hand, with shoon and

                   kirtle trim,

          And softly rose the melody of Flora's morning hymn.

          Her garlands, too, of varied hue the merry milkmaid

                   wove,

          And Jack the Piper caprioled within his dancing grove;

          Will, Friar Tuck, and Little John, with Robin Hood

                   their king,

          Bold foresters! blythe choristers! made vale and moun

                   tain ring.

          On every spray blooms lovely May, and balmy zephyrs

                   breathe--

          Ethereal splendour all above! and beauty all beneath!

          The cuckoo's song the woods among sounds sweetly as of

                   old;

          As bright and warm the sunbeams shine,--and why

                   should hearts grow cold?” *


     * This ballad has been set to very beautiful music by Mr. N.
     I. Sporle. It is published by T. E. Purday, 50, St. Paul's
     Church Yard.

“A sad theme to a merry tune! But had not May _another_ holiday maker?
when the compassionate Mrs. Montague walked forth from her hall and
bower to greet with a smile of welcome her grotesque visitor, the poor
little sweep.”

Thy hand, Eugenio, for those gentle words! _Elia_ would have taken thee
to his heart. Be the turf that lies lightly on his breast as verdant
as the bank whereon we sit. On a cold, dark, wintry morning, he had too
often been disturbed out of a peaceful slumber by his shrill, mournful
cry; and contrasting his own warm bed of down with the hard pallet from
which the sooty little chorister had been driven at that untimely
hour, he vented his generous indignation; and when a heart so tender as
_Elia's_ could feel indignation, bitter must have been the provocation
and the crime! But the sweep, with his brilliant white teeth, and Sunday
washed face, is for the most part a cheerful, healthy-looking being. Not
so the squalid, decrepit _factory lad_, broken-spirited, overworked, and
half-starved! The little sweep, in process of time, may become a master
“chum-mie,” and have (without being obliged to sweep it,) a chimney of
his own: but the factory lad sees no prospect of ever emerging from his
heart-sickening toil and hopeless dependance; he feels the curse of Cain
press heavily upon him. The little sweep has his merry May-day, with its
jigs, rough music, gingling money-box, gilt-paper cocked-hat, and gay
patchwork paraphernalia. All days are alike to the factory lad,--“E'en
Sunday shines no Sabbath-day to him.” _His_ rest will be the Sabbath of
the tomb!

Nothing is better calculated to brace the nerves and diffuse a healthful
glow over body and mind than outdoor recreations. What is _ennui?_
Fogs, and over-feeding, content grown plethoric, the lethargy of
superabundance, the want of some rational pursuit, and the indisposition
to seek one. What its cure?

               “'Tis health, 'tis air, 'tis exercise--

               Fling but a stone, the giant dies!”

The money-grub, pent up in a close city, eating the bread of
carefulness, and with the fear of the shop always before his eyes,
is not industrious. He is the droning, horse-in-a-mill creature of
habit,--like a certain old lady of our acquaintance, who every morning
was the first up in the house, and good-for-nothing afterwards. A
century ago the advantages of early rising to the citizen were far more
numerous than at present. A brisk walk of ten minutes brought him into
the fields from almost any part of the town; and after luxuriating three
or four miles amidst clover, sorrel, buttercups, aye, and corn to boot!
the fresh breeze of morn, the fragrance of the flowers, and the pleasant
prospect, would inspire happy thoughts: and, as nothing better sharpens
the appetite than these delightful companions, what was wanting but a
substantial breakfast to prepare him for the business of the day? For
this certain frugal houses of entertainment were established in the
rural outskirts of the Metropolis, *

     *  “This is to give notice to all Ladies and Gentlemen, at
     Spencer's original Breakfasting-Hut, between Sir Hugh
     Middleton's Head and St. John Street Road, by the New River
     side, fronting Sadler's Wells, may be had every morning,
     except Sundays, fine tea, sugar, bread, butter, and milk, at
     four-penee per head; coffee at threepence a dish. And in the
     afternoon, tea, sugar and milk, at threepence per head, with
     good attendance. Coaches may come up to the farthest gar-
     den-door next to the bridge in St. John Street Road, near
     Sadler's Wells back gate.--Note. Ladies, &c. are desired to
     take notice that there is another person set up in
     opposition to me, the next door, which is a brick-house, and
     faces the little gate by the Sir Hugh Middleton's, and
     therefore mistaken for mine; but mine is the _little boarded
     place_ by the river side, and my backdoor faces the same as
     usual; for

          I am not dead, I am not gone,
          Nor liquors do I sell;
          But, as at first, I still go on,
          Ladies, to use you well.
          No passage to my hut I have,
          The river runs before;
          Therefore your care I humbly crave,
          Pray don't mistake my door.
          “Yours to serve,
          Daily Advertiser, May 6, 1745. “S. Spencer.”

where every morning, “except Sundays, fine tea, sugar, bread, butter,
and milk,” might be had at fourpence per head, and coffee “at three
halfpence a dish.'” And as a walk in summer was an excellent recruit
to the spirits after reasonable toil, the friendly hand that lifted
the latch in the morning repeated the kind office at evening tide,
and spread before him those refreshing elements that “cheer, but not
inebriate;” with the harmless addition of music and dancing. Ale, wine,
and punch, were subsequently included in the bill of fare, and dramatic
representations. But of latter years the town has walked into the
country, and the citizen can just espy at a considerable distance a
patch of flowery turf, and a green hill, when his leisure and strength
are exhausted, and it is time to turn homeward.

The north side of London was famous for suburban houses of
entertainment. Midway down Gray's Inn Lane stands Town's End Lane (so
called in the old maps), or Elm Street, which takes its name from some
elms that once grew there. To the right is Mount Pleasant, and on its
summit is planted a little hostelrie, which commanded a delightful
prospect of fields, that are now annihilated; their site and our sight
being profaned by the House of Correction and the Treadmill! Farther on,
to the right, is Warner Street, which the lover of old English ballad
poetry and music will never pass without a sigh; for there, while the
town were applauding his dramatic drolleries,--and his beautiful songs
charmed alike the humble and the refined,--their author, Henry Carey, in
a fit of melancholy destroyed himself. *

     * October 4, 1743.

Close by stood the old Bath House, which was built over a _Cold Spring_
by one Walter Baynes, in 1697. * The house is razed to the ground, but
the spring remains. A few paces forward is the Lord Cobham's Head,
** transmogrified into a modern temple for tippling; its shady gravel
walks, handsome grove of trees, and green bowling alleys, are long
since destroyed. Its opposite neighbour _was_ (for not a vestige of the
ancient building remains) the Sir John Oldcastle, *** where the wayfarer
was invited to regale upon moderate terms.

     * According to tradition, this was once the bath of Nell
     Gwynn. In Baynes's Row, close by, lived for many years the
     celebrated clown Joe Grimaldi.

     ** “Sir,--Coming to my lodging in Islington, I called at the
     Lord Cobham's Head, in Cold Bath Fields, to drink some of
     their beer, which I had often heard to be the finest,
     strongest, and most pleasant in London, where I found a very
     handsome house, good accommodation, and pleasantly situated.
     I afterwards walked in the garden, where I was greatly
     surprised to find a very handsome grove of trees, with
     gravel walks, and finely illuminated, to please the company
     that should honour them with drinking a tankard of beer,
     which is threepence. There will be good attendance, and
     music of all sorts, both vocal and instrumental, and will
     begin this day, being the 10th of August.

     “I am yours,

     “Tom Freeman.”

     Daily Advertiser, 9th August 1742.

     *** “Sir,--A few days ago, invited by the serenity of the
     evening, I made a little excursion into the fields.
     Returning home, being in a gay humour, I stopt at a booth
     near Sir John Oldcastle's, to hear the rhetoric of Mr.
     Andrew. He used so much eloquence to persuade his auditors
     to walk in, that I (with many others) went to see his
     entertainment; and I never was more agreeably amused than
     with the performances of the three Bath Morris Dancers. They
     showed so many astonishing feats of strength and activity,
     so many amazing transformations, that it is impossible for
     the most lively imagination to form an adequate idea
     thereof. As the Fairs are coming on, I presume these
     admirable artists will be engaged to entertain the town; and
     I assure your readers they can't spend an hour more
     agreeably than in seeing the performances of these wonderful
     men.

     “I am, &c.

     Daily Advertiser, 27th July 1743.

     See a rare print, entituled “A new and exact prospect of
     the North side of the City of London, taken from the Upper
     Pond near Islington. Printed and sold by Thomas Bake-well,
     Print and Map-seller, over against Birching Lane, Corn-hill,
     August 5, 1730.”

Show-booths were erected in this immediate neighbourhood for
Merry-Andrews and mor-ris-dancers. Onward was the Ducking Pond; *
(“Because I dwell at Hogsden,” says _Master Stephen, in Every Man in his
Humour_, “I shall keep company with none but the archers of Finsbury or
the citizens that come a ducking to Islington Ponds;”) and, proceeding
in almost a straight line towards “_Old Iseldon,_” were the London Spa,
originally built in 1206; Phillips's New Wells; *

[Illustration: 0041]

     * “By a company of English, French, and Germans, at
     Phillips's New Wells, near the London Spa, Clerkenwell, 20th
     August 1743.

     “This evening, and during the Summer Season, will be
     performed several new exercises of Rope-dancing, Tumbling,
     Vaulting, Equilibres, Ladder-dancing, and Balancing, by Ma--
     dame Kerman, Sampson Rogetzi, Monsieur German, and Monsieur
     Dominique; with a new Grand Dance, called Apollo and Daphne,
     by Mr. Phillips, Mrs. Lebrune, and others; singing by Mrs.
     Phillips and Mrs. Jackson; likewise the extraordinary
     performance of Herr Von Eeekenberg, who imitates the lark,
     thrush, blackbird, goldfinch, canary-bird, flageolet, and
     German flute; a Sailor's Dance by Mr. Phillips; and Monsieur
     Dominique flies through a hogshead, and forces both heads
     out. To which will be added The Harlot's Progress. Harlequin
     by Mr. Phillips; Miss Kitty by Mrs. Phillips. Also, an exact
     representation of the late glorious victory gained over the
     French by the English at the battle of Dettingen, with the
     taking of the White Household Standard by the Scots Greys,
     and blowing up the bridge, and destroying and drowning most
     part of the French army. To begin every evening at five
     o'clock. Every one will be admitted for a pint of wine, as
     usual.”

     Mahommed Caratha, the Grand Turk, performed here his
     “Surprising Equilibres on the Slack Rope.”

     In after years, the imitations of Herr Von Eeekenberg were
     emulated by James Boswell. (Bozzy!)

     “A great many years ago, when Dr. Blair and I (Boswell) were
     sitting together in the pit of Drury Lane Playhouse, in a
     wild freak of youthful extravagance, I entertained the
     audience prodigiously by imitating the lowings of a cow. The
     universal cry of the galleries was, 'Encore the cow!' In the
     pride of my heart I attempted imitations of some other
     animals, but with very inferior effect. My revered friend,
     anxious for my fame, with an air of the utmost gravity and
     earnestness, addressed me thus, My dear sir, I would confine
     myself to the cow!'”

the New Red Lion Cockpit; * the Mulberry Gardens; **

     * “At the New Red Lion Cockpit, near the Old London Spaw,
     Clerkenwell, this present Monday, being the 12th July 1731,
     will be seen the Royal Sport of Cock-fighting, for two
     guineas a-battle. To-morrow begins the match for four
     guineas a-battle, and twenty guineas the old battle, and
     continues all the week, beginning at four o'clock.”

     ** “Mulberry Gardens, Clerkenwell.--The gloomy clouds that
     obscured the season, it is to be hoped, are vanished, and
     nature once more shines with a benign and cheerful
     influence. Come, then, ye honest sons of trade and industry,
     after the fatigues of a well-spent day, and taste of our
     rural pleasures! Ye sons of care, here throw aside your
     burden! Ye jolly Bacchanalians, here regale, and toast your
     rosy god beneath the verdant branches! Ye gentle lovers,
     here, to soft sounds of harmony, breathe out your sighs,
     till the cruel fair one listens to the voice of love! Ye who
     delight in feats of war, and are anxious for our heroes
     abroad, in mimic fires here see their ardour displayed!

     “Note.--The proprietor being informed that it is a general
     complaint against others who offer the like entertainments,
     that if the gentle zephyrs blow ever so little, the company
     are in danger of having their viands fanned away, through
     the thinness of their consistence, promises that his shall
     be of such a solidity as to resist, the air!”--Daily
     Advertiser, July 8, 1745.

     The latter part of this picturesque and poetical
     advertisement is a sly hit at what, par excellence, are
     called, “Vauxhall slices.”

the Shakspeare's Head Tavern and Jubilee Gardens; * the New Tunbridge
Wells, **

     * In 1742, the public were entertained at the “Shakspeare's
     Head, near the New Wells, Clerkenwell,', with refreshments
     of all sorts, and music; “the harpsichord being placed in so
     judicious a situation, that the whole company cannot fail of
     equally receiving the benefit.” In 1770, Mr. Tonas exhibited
     “a great and pleasing variety of performances, in a
     commodious apartment,” up one pair.

     ** These once beautiful tea-gardens (we remember them as
     such) were formerly in high repute. In 1733, their Royal
     Highnesses the Princesses Amelia and Caroline frequented
     them in the summer time, for the purpose of drinking the
     waters. They have furnished a subject for pamphlets, poems,
     plays, songs, and medical treatises, by Ned Ward, George
     Col-man the elder, Bickham, Dr. Hugh Smith, &c. Nothing now
     remains of them but the original chalybeate spring, which is
     still preserved in an obscure nook, amidst a poverty-
     stricken and squalid rookery of misery and vice.

a fashionable morning lounge of the nobility and gentry during the
early part of the eighteenth century; the Sir Hugh Middleton's Head; the
Farthing Pie House; * and Sadler's Music House and “Sweet Wells.” ** A
little to the left were Merlin's Cave,

     * Farthing Pie Houses were common in the outskirts of London
     a century ago. Their fragrance caught the sharp set citizen
     by the nose, and led him in by that prominent member to
     feast on their savoury fare. One solitary Farthing Pie House
     (the Green Man) still stands near Portland Road, on the way
     to Paddington.

     ** Originally a chalybeate spring, then a music-house, and
     afterwards a “theatre-royal!” Cheesecakes, pipes, wine, and
     punch, were formerly part of the entertainment.

          “If at Sadler's sweet Wells the wine should be thick,
          The cheesecakes be sour, or Miss Wilkinson sick,
          If the fume of the pipe should prove pow'rful in June,
          Or the tumblers be lame, or the bells out of tune,

     We hope you will call at our warehouse at Drury,--We've a
     curious assortment of goods, I assure you.” Foote's Prologue
     to All in the Wrong, 1761.

     Its rural vicinity made it a great favourite with the play-
     going and punch-drinking citizens. See Hogarth's print of
     “Evening.”

     “A New Song on Sadler's Wells, set by Mr. Brett, 1740.

          'At eve, when Sylvan's shady scene
          Is clad with spreading branches green,
          And varied sweets all round display'd,
          To grace the pleasant flow'ry meads,
          For those who're willing joys to taste,
          Where pleasures flow and blessings last,
          And God of Health with transport dwells,
          Must all repair to Sadler's Wells.
          The pleasant streams of Middleton
          In gentle murmurs glide along,
          In which the sporting fishes play,
          To close each weary summer's day;
          And music's charm, in lulling sounds,
          With mirth and harmony abounds;
          While nymphs and swains, with beaus and belles,
          All praise the joys of Sadler's Wells.'”

Bagnigge Wells, * the English Grotto (which stood near the New River
Water-works in the fields), and, farther in advance, White Conduit
House. **

     * Once the reputed residence of Nell Gwynn, which makes the
     tradition of her visiting the “Old Bath House” more than
     probable. F or. upwards of a century it has been a noted
     place of entertainment.'Tis now almost a ruin! Pass we to
     its brighter days, as sung in the “Sunday Ramble,” 1778:--

          “Salubrious waters, tea, and wine,
          Here you may have, and also dine;
          But as ye through the gardens rove,
          Beware, fond youths, the darts of love!”

     ** So called after an ancient conduit that once stood hard
     by. Goldsmith, in the “Citizen of the World,” celebrates the
     “hot rolls and butter' of White Conduit House. Thither
     himself and a few friends would repair to tea, after having
     dined at Highbury Barn. A supper at the Grecian, or Temple
     Exchange Coffeehouses, closed the “Shoemaker's Holiday” of
     this exquisite English Classic,--this gentle and benignant
     spirit!

Passing by the Old Red Lion, bearing the date of 1415, and since
brightened up with some regard to the taste of ancient times; and the
Angel,--now a _fallen_ one!--a huge structure, the architecture of which
is anything but angelic, having risen on its ruins, we enter Islington,
described by Goldsmith as “a pretty and neat town.” In ancient times it
was not unknown to fame.

               “What village can boast like fair Islington town

               Such time-honour'd worthies, such ancient renown?

               Here jolly Queen Bess, after flirting with Leicester,

               '_Undumpish'd'_ herself with Dick Tarleton her jester.


               Here gallant gay Essex, and burly Lord Burleigh,

               Sat late at their revels, and came to them early;

               Here honest Sir John took his ease at his inn--

               Bardolph's proboscis, and Jack's double chin!


               Here Finsbury archers disported and quaff'd,

               Here Raleigh the brave took his pipe and his draught;

               Here the Knight of St. John pledged the Highbury Monk,

               Till both to their pallets reel'd piously drunk.” *


In “The Walks of Islington and Hogsdon, with the Humours of Wood Street
Compter,” a comedy, by Thomas Jordan, 1641, the scene is laid at the
Saracen's Head, Islington; and the prologue celebrates its “bottle-beer,
cream, and (gooseberry) fools and the “Merry Milkmaid of Islington,

     *  “The Islington Garland.”

or the Rambling Gallant defeated,” a comedy, 1680, is another proof of
its popularity. Poor Robin, in his almanac, 1676, says,

                   “At Islington

                        A Fair they hold,

                   Where cakes and ale

                   Are to be sold.

                   At Highgate and

                   At Holloway

                   The like is kept

                   Here every day.

                   At Totnam Court

                        And Kentish Town,

                   And all those places

                   Up and down.”

Drunken Barnaby notices some of its inns. Sir William d'Avenant,
describing the amusements of the citizens during the long vacation,
makes a “husband gray” ask,

               “Where's Dame? (quoth he.) Quoth son of shop

               She's gone her cake in milk to sop--

               Ho! Ho!--to _Islington_--enough!”

Bonnel Thornton, in “The Connoisseur,” speaks of the citizens smoking
their pipes and drinking their ale at Islington; and Sir William Wealthy
exclaims to his money-getting brother, “What, old boy, times are changed
since the date of thy indentures, when the sleek crop-eared 'prentice
used to dangle after his mistress, with the great Bible under his arm,
to St. Bride's on a Sunday, bring home the text, repeat the divisions of
the discourse, dine at twelve, and regale upon a gaudy day with buns and
beer at _Islington_ or Mile-end.” *

Among its many by-gone houses of entertainment, the _Three Hats_ has a
double claim upon our notice. It was the arena where those celebrated
masters, Johnson, ** Price, Sampson, *** and Coningham exhibited
their feats of horsemanship, and the scene of Mr. Mawworm's early
back-slidings. “I used to go,” (says that regenerated ranter to old Lady
Lambert,) “every Sunday evening to the Three Hats at Islington; it's a
public house; mayhap your Ladyship may know it.

     *  “The Minor,” Act I.

     ** Johnson exhibited in 1758, and Price, at about the same
     time,--Coningham in 1772. Price amassed upwards of fourteen
     thousand pounds by his engagements at home and abroad.

     *** “Horsemanship, April 29, 1767.

     Mr. Sampson will begin his famous feats of horsemanship next
     Monday, at a commodious place built for that purpose in a
     field adjoining the Three Hats at Islington, where he
     intends to continue his performance during the summer
     season. The doors to be opened at four, and Mr. Sampson will
     mount at five. Admittance, one shilling each. A proper band
     of music is engaged for the entertainment of those ladies
     and gentlemen who are pleased to honour him with their
     company.”

I was a great lover of skittles, too; but now I can't bear them.” At
Dobney's Jubilee Gardens (now entirely covered with mean hovels),
Daniel Wildman * performed equestrian exercises; and, that no lack of
entertainment might be found in this once merry village, “a new booth,
near Islington Turnpike,” for tricks and mummery, was erected in
September 1767; “an insignificant erection, calculated totally for the
lowest classes, inferior artisans, superb apprentices, and journeymen.”
 ** It may not be out of place to mention that “the Pantheon *** in Spa
Fields,

     * “The Bees on Horseback!” At the Jubilee Gardens, Dobney's,
     1772. “Daniel Wildman rides, standing upright, one foot on
     the saddle, and the other on the horse's neck, with a
     curious mask of bees on his face. He also rides, standing
     upright on the saddle, with the bridle in his mouth, and, by
     firing a pistol, makes one part of the bees march over a
     table, and the other part swarm in the air, and return to
     their proper places again.”

     ** Animadvertor's letter to the Printer of the Daily
     Advertiser, 21st September 1767.

     *** August 22nd, 1770, Mr. Craven stated in an
     advertisement, that he had “established rules for the
     strictest maintenance of order” at the Pantheon. How far
     this was true, the following letter “To the Printer of the
     St. James's Chronicle” will show:--

     “Sir,--Happening to dine last Sunday with a friend in the
     city, after coming from church, the weather being very
     inviting, we took a walk as far as Islington. In our return
     home towards Cold Bath Fields, we stepped in to view the
     Pantheon there; but such a scene of disorder, riot, and
     confusion, presented itself to me on my entrance, that I was
     just turning on my heel in order to quit it, when my friend
     observing that we might as well have something for our money
     (for the doorkeeper obliged each of us to deposit a tester
     before he granted us admittance), I acquiesced in his
     proposal, and became one of the giddy multitude. I soon,
     however, repented of my choice; for, besides having our
     sides almost squeezed together, we were in danger every
     minute of being scalded by the boiling water which the
     officious Mercuries were circulating with the utmost
     expedition through their respective districts. We therefore
     began to look out for some place to sit down in, which with
     the greatest difficulty we at length procured, and producing
     our tickets, were served with twelve-penny worth of punch.
     Being seated towards the front of one of the galleries, I
     had now a better opportunity of viewing this dissipated
     scene. The male part of the company seemed to consist
     chiefly of city apprentices and the lower class of
     tradesmen. The ladies, who constituted by far the greater
     part of the assembly, seemed most of them to be pupils of
     the Cyprian goddess, and I was sometimes accosted with,
     'Pray, sir, will you treat me with a dish of tea?' Of all
     the tea-houses in the environs of London, the most
     exceptionable that I have had occasion to be in is the
     Pantheon.

     “I am sir, your constant reader,

     “Speculator.”

     “Chiswick, May 5, 1772.”

near Islington,” * was opened in 1770 for the sale of tea, coffee, wine,
punch, &c., a “tester” being the price of admission to the promenade
and galleries. It was eventually turned to a very different use, and
converted into a lay chapel by the late Countess of Huntingdon.

     * Spa-Fields (like “Jack Plackett's Common” the site of
     Dalby Terrace, Islington) was famous for duck-hunting, bull-
     baiting, and other low sports. “On Wednesday last, two women
     fought for a new shift valued at half-a-guinea, in the Spaw-
     Fields near Islington. The battle was won by a woman called
     Bruising Peg, who beat her antagonist in a terrible
     manner.”--22nd June 1768.

But by far the most interesting ancient hostelrie that has submitted
to the demolishing mania for improvement is the _Old Queen's Head_,
formerly situate in the Lower Street, Islington. This stately edifice
was one of the most perfect specimens of ancient domestic architecture
in England. Under its venerable roof Sir Walter Raleigh, it is said,
“puffed his pipe;” and might not Jack Falstaff have taken his ease
there, when he journeyed to string a bow with the Finsbury archers? For
many years it was a pleasant retreat for retired citizens, who
quaffed their nut-brown beneath its primitive porch, and indulged in
reminiscences of the olden time. Thither would little Quick, King George
the Third's favourite actor, resort to drink cold punch, and “babble” of
his theatrical contemporaries. Plays * were formerly acted there.

     * The following curious “Old Queen's Head” play-bill, temp.
     George the Second, is presumed to be unique:--

     G. II. R.

     By a Company of Comedians, at the Queen's Head, in the Lower
     Street, Islington,

     This present evening will be acted a Tragedy, called the
     Fair Penitent.

     Sciolto, Mr. Malone.--Horatio, Mr. Johnson.
     Altamont, Mr. Jones.--Lothario, Mr. Dunn.
     Rosano, Mr. Harris.--Calista, Mrs. Harman.
     Lavinia, Mrs. Malone.--Lucilla, Miss Platt.
     To which will be added, a Farce called The Lying Valet.
     Prices--Pit, 2s.; Gallery, Is. To begin at 7 o'clock.”

On Monday, October 19, 1829, it was razed to the ground, to make
room for a misshapen mass of modern masonry. The oak parlour has been
preserved from the wreck, and is well worth a visit from the antiquary.
Canonbury Tavern and Highbury Barn still maintain their festive honours.
Farther a-field are the Sluice, or Eel-pie House; Copenhagen House;
Hornsey-wood House, formerly the hunting seat of Queen Elizabeth;
Chalk Farm; Jack Straw's Castle; the Spaniards, &c. as yet undefiled by
pitiful prettinesses of bricks and mortar, and affording a delightful
opportunity of enjoying pure air and pastime. The canonised Bishop
of Lichfield and Mademoiselle St. Agnes have each their wells. What
perambulator of the suburbs but knows St. Chad, in Gray's Inn Lane, and
St. Agnes le Clair, * at Hoxton? Paneras **

     * Whit, in Jonson's Bartholomew Fair, promises to treat his
     company with a clean glass, washed with the water of Agnes
     le Clare.

     ** “At Edward Martin's, at the Hornes at Pancrass, is that
     excellent water, highly approved of by the most eminent phy-
     sitians, and found by long experience to be a powerful
     antidote against rising of the vapours, also against the
     stone and gravel. It likewise cleanses the body, purifies
     and sweetens the blood, and is a general and sovereign help
     to nature. I shall open on Whitson-Monday, the 24th of May
     1697; and there will be likewise dancing every Tuesday and
     Thursday all the summer season at the place aforesaid. The
     poor may drink the waters gratis.” Then follow sixteen lines
     of rhyme in praise of “this noble water,” and inviting
     ladies and gentlemen to drink of it. Of this rare hand-bill
     no other copy is known.

     “And although this place (Paneras) be as it were forsaken of
     all, and true men seldome frequent the same but upon de-vyne
     occasions, yet is it visyted and usually haunted of roages,
     vagabondes, harlettes and theeves, who assemble not ther to
     pray, but to wayte for praye, and manie fall into their
     hands clothed, that are glad when they are escaped naked.
     Walke not ther too late.”--Speculi Britannio Pars, by John
     Norden, MS. 1594.

and Hampstead Wells, renowned for their salubrious waters, are dried up.
Though the two latter were professed marts for _aqua pura_, liquids more
exhilarating were provided for those who relished stronger stimulants.
We may therefore fairly assume that John Bull anciently travelled
northward ho! when he rambled abroad for recreation.

As population increased, houses of entertainment multiplied to meet the
demand. South, east, and west they rose at convenient distances, within
the reach of a short stage, and a long pair of legs. Apollo Gardens,
St. George's Fields; Bohemia's Head; Turnham Green; Cuper's Gardens,
Lambeth; China Hall, Rotherhithe; Dog and Duck, St. George's Fields;
Cherry Gardens Bowling-green, Rotherhithe; Cumberland Gardens,
Vaux-hall; Spa Gardens, Bermondsey; Finch's Grotto Garden's, St.
George's Fields; Smith's Tea Gardens, Vauxhall; Kendal House, Isleworth;
New Wells, Goodman's Fields; Marble Hall, Vaux-hall; Staton's Tea-House,
opposite Mary-le-bone Gardens; the Queen's Head and Artichoke,
Mary-le-bone Fields; Ruckholt House, in Essex, of which facetious
Jemmy Worsdale was the Apollo; Old Chelsea Bun-house; Queen Elizabeth's
Cheesecake House, in Hyde Park; the Star and Garter Tavern, * and Don
Saltero's coffeehouse, **

     *  “Star and Garter Tavern, Chelsea, 1763. Mr. Lowe will
     display his uncommon abilities with watches, letters, rings,
     swords, cards, and enchanted clock, which absolutely tells
     the thoughts of any person in the company. The astonishing
     Little Man, only four inches high, pays his respects to the
     company, and vanishes in a flash of fire. Mr. Lowe commands
     nine lighted candles to fly from the table to the top of the
     ceiling! Added, a grand entertainment, with musick and
     dancing, &c. &c.”

     ** The great attraction of Don Saltero's Coffeehouse was its
     collection of rarities, a catalogue of which was published
     as a guide to the visitors. It comprehends almost every
     description of curiosity, natural and artificial. “Tigers'
     tusks; the Pope's candle; the skeleton of a Guinea-pig; a
     fly-cap monkey; a piece of the true Cross; the Four
     Evangelists' heads cut on a cherry-stone; the King of
     Morocco's tobacco-pipe;

     Mary Queen of Scot's pincushion; Queen Elizabeth's prayer-
     book; a pair of Nun's stockings; Job's ears, which grew on a
     tree; a frog in a tobacco stopper,” and five hundred more
     odd relies! The Don had a rival, as appears by “A Catalogue
     of the Rarities to be seen at Adams's, at the Royal Swan, in
     Kingsland Road, leading from Shoreditch Church, 1756.” Mr.
     Adams exhibited, for the entertainment of the curious, “Miss
     Jenny Cameron's shoes; Adam's eldest daughter's hat; the
     heart of the famous Bess Adams, that was hanged at Tyburn
     with Lawyer Carr, January 18, 1736-7; Sir Walter Raleigh's
     tobacco-pipe; Vicar of Bray's clogs; engine to shell green
     pease with; teeth that grew in a fish's belly; Black Jack's
     ribs; the very comb that Abraham combed his son Isaac and
     Jacob's head with; Wat Tyler's spurs; rope that cured
     Captain Lowry of the head-ach, ear-ach, tooth-ach and belly-
     ach; Adam's key of the fore and back door of the Garden of
     Eden, &e. &e.” These are only a few out of five hundred
     others equally marvellous. Is this strange catalogue a quiz
     on Don Saltero?

Chelsea; Mary-le-bone and Ranelagh Gardens; *

     * The Rotunda was first opened on the 5th of April, 1742,
     with a public breakfast. At Ranelagh House (Gentleman's
     Magazine for 1767) on the 12th of May, were performed the
     much-admired catches and glees, selected from the curious
     collection of the Catch Club; being the first of the kind
     publickly exhibited in this or any other kingdom. The
     entertainment consisted of the favourite catches and glees,
     composed by the most eminent masters of the last and present
     age, by a considerable number of the best vocal and
     instrumental performers. The choral and instrumental parts
     were added, to give the catches and glees their proper
     effect in so large an amphitheatre; being composed for that
     purpose by Dr. Arne. The Masquerades at Ranelagh are
     represented in Fielding's “Amelia” as dangerous to morals,
     and the “Connoisseur” satirises their Eve-like beauties with
     caustic humour.

and the illuminated saloons and groves of Vauxhall. * These, and many
others, bear testimony to the growing spirit of national jollity during
a considerable part of the eighteenth century. How few now remain, “the
sad historians of the pensive tale,” of their bygone merriments!

     * “The extreme beauty and elegance of this place is well
     known to almost every one of my readers; and happy is it for
     me that it is so, since to give an adequate idea of it would
     exceed my power of description. To delineate the particular
     beauties of these gardens would indeed require as much
     pains, and as much paper too, as to rehearse all the good
     actions of their master; whose life proves the truth of an
     observation which I have read in some other writer, that a
     truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with an
     excellency of heart; or in other words, that true virtue is
     indeed nothing else but true taste.” Amelia, b. ix. c. ix.




CHAPTER III.

|The Genius of Mirth never hit upon a happier subject than the humours
of Cockneyland. “Man made the town and a pretty sample it is of the
maker! Behind or before the counter, at home and abroad, the man of
business or the beau, the Cockney is the same whimsical original,
baffling imitation, and keeping description in full cry. See him sally
forth on a fine Sunday to inhale his weekly mouthful of fresh air, * the
world all before him, where to choose occupying his meditations, till he
finds himself elevated on High-gate Hill or Hampstead Heath. From those
magnificent summits he beholds in panorama, woods, valleys, lofty trees,
and stately turrets, not forgetting that glorious cupola dedicated to
the metropolitan saint, which points out the locality where, six days
out of the seven, his orisons are paid to a deity not contemplated by
the apostle.

     *  Moorfields, Pimlico Path, and the Exchange, were the
     fashionable parades of the citizens in the days of Elizabeth
     and James I.

He lays himself out for enjoyment, and seeks good entertainment for
man and (if mounted, or in his cruelty-van) for horse. Having taken
possession of a window that commands the best prospect, the waiter is
summoned, the larder called over, the ceremony of lunch commenced,
and, with that habitual foresight which marks his character, the
all-important meal that is to follow, duly catered for. The interval for
rural adventure arrives; he takes a stroll; the modest heath-bell
and the violet turn up their dark blue eyes to him; and he finds
blackberries enough (as Falstaff's men did _linen!_) on every hedge.
Dinner served up, and to his mind, he warms and waxes cosey, jokes with
the waiter, talks anything, and to anybody,

                        Drinks a glass

                        To his favourite lass!”

pleased with himself, and willing to please. If his phraseology provoke
a laugh, he puts it to the account of his smart sayings, and is loudest
in the chorus; for when the ball of ridicule is flying about, he ups
with his racket and strikes it off to his neighbour.

He is the worst mortal in the world to be put out of his way. The
slightest inconvenience, the most trifling departure from his wonted
habits, he magnifies into a serious evil. His well-stocked larder and
cheerful fireside are ever present to his view: beef and pudding have
taken fast hold of him; and, in default of these, his spirits flag; he
is hipped and melancholy. Foreign travel exhibits him in his natural
light; his peculiarities break forth with whimsical effect, which,
though not always the most amiable, are nevertheless entertaining.
He longs to see the world; and having with due ceremony arranged his
wardrobe, put money in his purse, and procured his passport to strange
lands, he sets forward, buttoned up in his native consequence, to the
capital of the grand monarque, to rattle dice, and drink champagne.
His expectations are not the most reasonable. Without considering the
different manners and customs of foreign parts, he bends to nobody,
yet takes it as an affront if everybody bend not to him! His baggage is
subjected to rigorous search. The infernal _parlez-vous!_--nothing like
_this_ ever happens in old England! His passport is inspected, and his
person identified. The inquisitors!--to take the length and breadth of
a man, his complexion and calling! The barriers are closed, and he must
_bivouac_ in the Diligence the live-long night. Monstrous tyranny! Every
rogue enjoys free ingress and egress in a land of liberty! He calls
for the bill of fare, the “_carte_,” and in his selection puts the cart
before the horse! Of course there is a horrible conspiracy to poison
him! The wines, too, are sophisticated. The champagne is gooseberry; the
Burgundy, Pontac; and the _vin ordinaire_ neither better nor worse than
a dose of “Braithwait's Intermediate.” The houses are dirty and dark;
the streets muddy and gay; the madames and mademoiselles pretty well, I
thank'e; and the Mounseers a pack of chattering mountebanks, stuck over
with little bits of red ribbon, and blinded with snuff and whiskers!
Even the air is too thin: he misses his London smoke! And but one
drunken dog has he encountered (and _he_ was his countryman!) to bring
to fond remembrance the land we live in! * What wonder, then, if he
sigh for luxurious bachelorship in a Brighton boarding-house? Beds
made, dinner provided, the cook scolded by proxy, and all the agreeable
etceteras incidental to good living set before him, without the
annoyance of idle servants, and the trouble of ordering, leaving him
to the delightful abandonment of every care, save that of feasting and
pleasure-taking!

     * Beware of those who are homeless by choice. Show me the
     man who cares no more for one place than another, and I will
     show you in the same person one who loves nothing but
     himself. Home and its attachments are dear to the ingenuous
     mind--to cherish their remembrance is the surest proof of a
     noble spirit.

With moderate gastronomical and soporific powers, he may manage to
eat, drink, and sleep out three guineas a-week; for the sea is a rare
provocative to feeding and repose. Besides, a Brighton boarding-house
is a change both of air and condition; bachelors become Benedicks, and
widows wives, for three guineas a-week, more or less! It furnishes an
extensive assortment of acquaintance, such as nowhere else can be found
domiciled under the same roof. Each finds it necessary to make himself
and herself agreeable. Pride, _mauvaise honte_, modesty? that keep
people apart in general society, all give way. The inmates are like one
family; and when they break up for the season, 'tis often in pairs!

“Uncle Timothy to a T! Pardon me, sir, but he must have sat to you for
the portrait. If you unbutton his native consequence a little, and throw
a jocular light over his whim-whams and caprices, the likeness would be
perfect.”

This was addressed to us by a lively, well-to-do-in-the-world-looking
little gentleman, who lolled in an arm-chair opposite to an adjoining
window, taking things in an easy pick-tooth way, and coquetting with a
pint of old port.

“The picture, sir, that you are pleased to identify is not an
individual, but a species,--a slight off-hand sketch, taken from general
observation.”

“Indeed! That's odd.”

“Even so.”

“Never knew Uncle Tim was like all the world. Would, for all the world's
sake, that all the world were like Uncle Tim!”

“A worthy character.”

“Sir, he holds in his heart all the four honours,--Truth, Honesty,
Affection, and Benevolence,--in the great game of humanity, and
plays not for lucre, but love! I fear you think me strangely
familiar,--impertinent too, perhaps. But that portrait, so graphical and
complete, was a spell as powerful as Odin's to break silence. Besides,
I detest your exclusives,--sentimentalising! soliloquising!--Their
shirt-collars, affectedly turned down, puts my choler up! Give _me_
the human face divine, the busy haunts of men, the full tide of human
existence.”

The little gentleman translated the “full tide” into a full glass to our
good healths and better acquaintance, at the same time drawing his
chair nearer, and presenting a handsomely embossed card, on which
was inscribed, in delicate Italian calligraphy, “Mr. Benjamin Bosky,
Dry-salter, Little Britain.”

_Drysalter_,--he looked like a thirsty soul!

“Pleasant prospect from this window; you may count every steeple in
London. There's the 'tall bully,'--how gloriously his flaming top-knot
glistens in the setting sun! Wouldn't give a fig for the best view in
the world, if it didn't take in the dome of St. Paul's! Beshrew the
Vandal architect that cut down those beautiful elms.--

               'The rogue the gallows as his fate foresees,

               And bears the like antipathy to trees,'

and run up the wigwam pavilions, the Tom-foolery baby-houses, the
run mad, shabby-genteel, I-would-if-I-could-but-I-can't cottages
_ornée--ornée?_--horney!--the cows popping in their heads at the parlour
windows, frightening the portly proprietors from their propriety and
port!”

It was clear that Mr. Bosky was not to be so frightened; for he drew
another draught on his pint decanter, though sitting beneath the umbrage
of a huge pair of antlers that were fixed against the wall, under
which innumerable Johnny New-comes had been sworn, according to ancient
custom, at the Horns at Highgate. It was equally clear, too, that Mr.
Bosky _himself_ might have sat for the portrait that he had so kindly
appropriated to Uncle Timothy.

A fine manly voice without was heard to troll with joyous melody,--

          “The lark, that tirra-lirra chants,--

               With hey! with hey! the thrush and the jay,--          Are summer songs for
me and my aunts,

               While we lie tumbling in the hay.”

“Uncle Tim! Uncle Tim!” shouted the mercurial little Drysalter, and up
he started as if he had been galvanised, scampered out of the room,
made but one leap from the top of the stairs to the bottom, descended
_à plomb_, was up again before we had recovered from our surprise, and
introduced a middle-aged, rosy-faced gentleman, “more fat than bard
beseems,” with a perforating eye and a most satirical nose. “Uncle
Timothy, gentlemen.--A friend or two, (if I may presume to call them
so,) Uncle Timothy, that I have fallen in with most unexpectedly and
agreeably.”

There is a certain “I no _not_ like thee, _Doctor Fell_,” feeling,
and an “I do,” that have rarely deceived us. With the latter, the
satirical-nosed gentleman inspired us at first sight. There was the
humorist, with a dash of the antiquary, heightened with a legible
expression that nature sometimes stamps on her higher order of
intelligences. What a companion, we thought, for “_Round about our coal
fire_” on a winter's evening, or, “_Under the green-wood tree_” on a
summer's clay!

We were all soon very good company; and half a dozen tea-totallers, who
had called for a pint of ale and six glasses, having discussed their
long division and departed, we had the room to ourselves.

“Know you, Uncle Timothy,” cried Mr. Bosky, with a serio-comic air,
“that the law against vagabonds and sturdy beggars is in full force,
seeing that you carol in broad daylight, and on the King's highway,
a loose catch appertaining to one of the most graceless of their
fraternity?”

“Beggars! varlet! I beg nothing of thee but silence, which is gold, if
speech be silver. * Is there aught unseemly in my henting the stile
with the merry Autolycus? Vagabonds! The order is both ancient and
honourable. Collect they not tribute for the _crown?_ Take heed,
Benjamin, lest thine be scored on! Are they not solicitors as old as
Adam?”

     *  A precept of the Koran.

“And thieves too, from Mercury downwards, Uncle Timothy.”

“Conveyancers, sirrah! sworn under the Horns never to beg when they can
steal. Better lose my purse than my patience. Thou, scapegrace! rob best
me of my patience, and beggest nought but the question.”

“Were not the beggars once a jovial crew, sir?” addressing ourselves to
the middle-aged gentleman with the satirical nose.

“Right merry! Gentlemen--

                   'Sweeter than honey

                   Is other men's money.'

“The joys of to-day were never marred by the cares of to-morrow; for
to-morrow was left to take care of itself; and its sun seldom went down
upon disappointment. The beggar, * though his pockets be so low, that
you might dance a jig in one of them without breaking your shins against
a halfpenny; while from the other you might be puzzled to extract as
much coin as would pay turnpike for a walking-stick, sings with a light
heart; his fingers no less light! playing administrators to the farmer's
poultry, and the good housewife's sheets that whiten every hedge!

          *  “Cast our nabs and cares away,--
          This is Beggars' Holiday;
          In the world look out and see
          Who's so happy a king as he?
          At the crowning of our king,
          Thus we ever dance and sing.
          Where's the nation lives so free
          And so merry as do we?
          Be it peace, or be it war,
          Here at liberty we are.
          Hang all Harmanbccks! we cry,
          And the Cuffinquiers, too, by.
          We enjoy our ease and rest,
          To the fields we are not press'd;
          When the subsidy's increas'd,
          We are not a penny cost;
          Nor are we called into town
          To be troubled with a gown;
          Nor will any go to law
          With a beggar for a straw.
          All which happiness he brags
          He doth owe unto his rags!”

     Of all the mad rascals that belong to this fraternity, the
     _Abraham-Man_ is the most fantastic. He calls himself by
     the name of _Poor Tom_, and, coming near to any one, cries
     out “Poor Tom's a-cold!” Some are exceedingly merry, and do
     nothing but sing songs, fashioned out of their own brains;
     some will dance; others will do nothing but laugh or weep;
     others are dogged, and so sullen, both in look and speech,
     that, spying but small company in a house, they boldly
     enter, compelling the servants, through fear, to give them
     what they demand, which is commonly something that will
     yield ready money. The “_Upright Man_” (who in ancient times
     was, next to the king and those “o' th' blood,” in dignity,)
     is not a more terrible enemy to the farmer's poultry than
     Poor Tom.

     How finely has Shakspeare spiritualized this strange
     character in the part of Edgar in King Lear!

     The middle aisle of old St. Paul's was a great resort for
     beggars.

          “In Paul's Church, by a pillar,
          Sometimes ye have me stand, sir,
          With a writ that shews
          What care and woes
          I pass by sea and land, sir.
          With a seeming bursten belly,
          I look like one half dead, sir,
          Or else I beg With a wooden leg,
          And with a night-cap on my head, sir.”

          Blind Beggars Song.
          Wit and Drollery. Jovial Poems. 1682.

Mendicity is a monarchy; it is governed by peculiar laws, and has a
language of its own. Reform has waged war to the knife with it. The
_soap-eater_, whose ingenious calling was practised in the streets
of London as far back as Henry the Eighth and Edward the Sixth, is
admonished to apply the raw material of his trade to an exterior use;
* and the tatterdemalions of the Beggar's Opera no longer enjoy the
privileges that belonged to their ancestors three centuries ago,
when the Barbican, Turnmill Street, and Houndsditch, rang with their
nocturnal orgies; and where not unfrequently “an alderman hung in
chains” gratified their delicate appetites; as in more recent times,

     *  Like the Dutchman, who being desired to rub his rheumatic
     limb with brandy, improved upon the prescription. “I dosh
     better as dat,” roared Mynheer, “I drinks de prandy, and den
     I rubs mine leg wit de pottle!”

the happy but bygone days of Dusty Bob and Billy Waters. * The well-
known mendicants of St. Paul's churchyard, Waithman's crossing, and Par-
liament-Street have, by a sweeping act of the

          *  The Sons of Carew Made a mighty ado,--
          The news was a terrible damper;
          The blind, in their fright,
          Soon recovered their sight,
          And the lame thought it prudent to scamper.
          They summon'd the nobs of their nation,
          St. Giles's was all consternation;
          The street they call Dyott
          Portended a riot,
          Belligerents all botheration!
          Mendicity Bill,
          Who for prowess and skill
          Was dubb'd the bold Ajax of Drury,
          With a whistle and stride
          Flung his fiddle aside,
          And his sky-scraper cock'd in a fury!
          “While a drop's to be had to get queer-a,
          I'll ne'er go a-begging for beer-a:
          Our ducks and green peas
          Shall the constable seize,--
          Our sherry, our port, and Madeira?”
           But Law the bold heroes did floor, O!
          On dainty fine morsels no more,
          O! They merrily sup:
          Dusty Bob's doubled up,--
          Poor Bill's occupation is o'er, O!

legislature, been compelled to brush; their brooms are laid up in
ordinary, to make rods for their backs, till the very stones they once
swept are ready to rise and mutiny. Well might Epicurus say, 6 Poverty,
when cheerful, ceases to be poverty.'”

“Suppose, gentlemen, as the day is closing in, we each of us take our
wallet and staff, trudge forth, and levy contribution! I am in a valiant
humour to cry 'stand!' to a too powerfully refreshed citizen of light
weight and heavy purse.” And Mr. Bosky suited the action to the word.

“Sit down, soul of a grasshopper! The very ghost of his wife's tweezers
would snuff out thy small courage. Thou hast slandered the beggars'
craft, and, like greater rogues, shalt be condemned to live by thine
own! Thou '_gibier de potence_!' Thou a prigger! Why thou art only a
simple prig, turned out by thy tailor! Steal if thou canst into our good
graces; redeem thy turpitude by emulating at least _one_ part of the
beggars' calling, ballad-singing. Manifest thy deep contrition by a
song.”

“A bargain, Uncle Timothy. If thou wilt rake from a sly corner of that
old curiosity shop, thy brain, some pageant of the ancient brethren
of _Bull-Feathers-Hall_. What place more fitting for such pleasant
chronicle, than the _Horns at Highgate?_”

This proposal being assented to by the middle-aged gentleman, Mr. Bosky
“rosined,” (swallowed a bumper) and sounded a musical flourish as a
_preludio_.

“But gentlemen, you have not said what I shall sing.”

“_Beggars_, Mr. Bosky, must not be choosers!”

“Something heroic?

               Wonderful General Wolfe,

                   Uncommon brave; partic'lar!

               Swam over the Persian Gulf,

                   And climb'd rocks perpendic'lar!


Sentimental and tender?

               'The mealy potato it grows

                   In your garden, Miss Maddison cries;

               'So I cannot walk there, for I knows,

                   Like love--that potatoes have _eyes!_'”


“No buffoonery, if you please, Benjamin Bosky,” cried Uncle Tim.

“Or furiously funny--eh?”

               My pipe at your peeper I'll light,

                   So pop out your jazey so curly;

               A jorum of _yeast_ over night,

                   Will make you next morning _rise_ early!


               Arrah I thro' your casement and blind

                   I'll jist sky a copper and toss one,,

               If you do not, Miss Casey, look kind,

                   Wid your good-natured eye that's a _cross_ one!”


“My good friends,” sighed the middle-aged gentleman, “this unhappy
nephew of mine hath as many ballads in his budget as Sancho Panza had
proverbs in his belly. And yet--but he seems determined to break my
heart.”

Mr. Bosky appeared more bent upon cruelly cracking Uncle Timothy's
sides.

“Now I bethink me of a ditty of true love, full of mirth and pastime.”
 And Mr. Bosky began in a droll falsetto, and with mock gravity,


THE LAST OF THE PIGTAILS.

               “When I heard she was married, thinks I to myself,

               I'm now an old bachelor laid on the shelf;

               The last of the Pigtails that smok'd at the Sun,

               My Dora has done me, and I am undone!

               I call'd at her lodgings in Dean Street, Soho;

               My love's gone for ever! alas! she's no go.

               A nip of prime Burton shall warm my cold blood,

               Since all my enjoyments are nipp'd in the bud!

               The picture of famine, my frame half reduced;

               I can't eat a quarter the vittles I us'd!

               O dear! what can ail me? I once was so hale--

               When my head's underground let this verse tell my tale.


               I sought the Old Bailey, despairing and lank,

               To take my last cut of boil'd buttock and flank,

               To sniff my last sniff in those savoury scenes,

               And sigh my last sigh over carrots and greens!

               'A pot of mild porter, and take off the chill,'

               A damsel came smirking, in curls, cap, and frill.

               I started! she scream'd! 'twas my Dora! off flew

               Flank, buttock, greens, carrots, and peas-pudding too!


               'Yes, I am your true love!' she curtsey'd, and said,

               'At home I'ma widow, but here I'm a maid!

               My spouse kick'd the bucket last Sunday at Leeds,

               And left me, a rose-bud, all cover'd with weeds.'


               'For all your fine speeches, a widow, in fine,

               Is an article madam, I mean to decline I

               Though wedlock's a bolus to physic and fright,

               A black draught--a widow! would finish me quite.”


“A vile stave! Commend me to 'fonde Elderton,' * and the troop of 'metre
ballad-mongers' that sleep among the dull of ancient days; but save me
from that doleful doggrel of which, I shrewdly suspect, thou, Benjamin
Bosky, art the perpetrator.

     * The following is a description of Elderton by a
     contemporary writer in 1582. See “Reporte of the Death and
     Martyr-dome of M. Campion, Jesuit, &c.”

          “Fonde Elderton, call in thy foolish rhime,
          Thy scurill balates are to bad to sell;
          Let good men rest, and mende thy self in time,
          Confesse in prose thou hast not metred well;
          Or if thy folly cannot chuse but fayne
          Write alehotise toys, blaspheme not in thy vain.”

It smells woundily of thy peculiar locality, and might have befringed
the walls of Bedlam and Soho. Henceforth be the _Magnus Apollo_ of thy
native _Little Britain_, and divide the crown with Thomas Delony, of
huck-ster-fame! Jack of Newbery, the Gentle Craft, garlands, strange
histories,

                        'And such small deer,

               Had been Tom's food for many a year,'

and may serve for _thine_, Benjamin; for, in poetical matters, thou hast
the maw of a kite and the digestion of an ostrich.”

“A sprat to catch a herring!”

“A tittlebat! thou triton of the minnows!”

“But the _Bull-Feather!_ Uncle Timothy, the _Bull-Feather_

                   'Must not be forgotten

                   Until the world's rotten.'

Let me refresh thy memory. Once upon a time----”

“Peace, babbler! If I must take the bull by the horns, it shall be
without thy jockeyship. I will not ride double. 'Tis an idle tale,
gentlemen; but there are charms in association that may render it
interesting.”

Uncle Tim regaled with a fragrant pinch his satirical nose, and began


“A MIRTHFUL PAGEANT OF THE BULL-FEATHERS TO THE HORNS AT HIGHGATE.

“The ancient brethren of Bull-Feathers-Hall were a club of warm
citizens; 'rich fellows enough! fellows that have had losses, with
everything handsome about them.' Their place of rendezvous was the
Chequer-Yard in Whitechapel, every Tuesday and Thursday at seven
o'clock. The intent of their meeting was to solace themselves with
harmless merriment, and promote good fellowship * among neighbours.

     * How good fellowship had declined a century before this
     will be seen by the following extract from a black-letter
     ballad, intituled, “A balade declaryng how neybourhed loue,
     and trew dealyng is gone. Imprinted at London by Richard
     Lant.” (Circa 1560.)

          “Where shall one fynde a man to trust,
          Alwaye to stande in tyme of neede;
          Thee most parte now, they are unjust,
          Fayre in wordes, but false in deede:
          Neybourhed nor loue is none,
          True dealyng now is fled and gone.”

The president, arrayed in his crimson satin gown, with his cap furred
and surmounted by a pair of antlers, and seated in a chair of state
beneath a canopy, commanded (by the crier of the court) every member to
be covered; and in the twinkling of an eye their horns were exalted.
On a velvet cushion before him lay the comuted sceptre and sword. The
brethren drank out of horn-cups, and made oath upon a book of statutes
bound in horn. Their revenues were derived from a toll upon all the
gravel carried up Highgate Hill and Hornsey;--Cow-lane; and beyond sea,
Crook-horn; Leg-horn; and Ox-mantown paying them yearly tribute!
On Monday, the 2nd May, 1664, a deputation of the fraternity met at
_Busby's Folly_, * near Sadler's Wells, ** Islington, from whence
they marched in grand order, headed by their Captain of Pioneers, with
between thirty and forty of his men, with pick-axes and spades to level
the hill, and baskets to carry the gravel;

     * A print of Busbys Folly occurs in a rare volume, called
     “Views of divers noted places near London, 1731,” of which
     Gough, the antiquary never saw hut one copy. Its site is
     particularly pointed out in Ogilby's map of London to
     Holyhead.

     * “Sadler's Wells being lately opened, there is likely to be
     a great resort of strolling damsels, half-pay officers,
     peripatetic tradesmen, tars, butchers, and others, musically
     inclined.”--Weekly Journal, 16th March 1718.

     It is curious to read at the bottom of the old bills and
     advertisements of Sadler's Wells the following _alarming_
     announcements:--“A _horse patrol_ will be sent in the New
     Road that night for the _protection_ of the nobility and
     gentry who go from the squares and that end of the town. The
     road also towards the city will be properly _guarded_.”

     “June 1783. _Patroles of horse and foot_ are stationed from
     Sadler's Wells' gate along the New Road to Tottenham Court
     turnpike; likewise from the City Road to Moorfields; also to
     St. John Street, and across the Spafields to Rosoman Row,
     from the hours of eight to eleven.”

After which followed the standard, an enormous pair of horns mounted on
a lofty pole, borne by three officers, and attended by the master of the
ceremonies, the mace-bearer, the herald at-arms, the sword-bearer and
the crier, their footsteps keeping time to a flourish of trumpets and
horns. *

     *  “On Tuesday next, being Shrove Tuesday, there will be a
     fine _hog bar-byqu'd_ whole, at the house of Peter Brett, at
     the Rising Sun, in Islington Road, with other diversions.--
     Note. It is the house where the ox was roasted whole at
     Christmas last.” Mist's Journal, Feb. 9, 1726.

     A hog barbecu'd is a West Indian term, and means a hog
     roasted whole, stuffed with spice, and basted with Madeira
     wine. Oldfield, an eminent glutton of former days,
     gormandised away a fortune of fifteen hundred pounds a-year.
     Pope thus alludes to him,--

     “Oldfield, with more than harpy throat endu'd,
     Cries, 'Send me, gods, a whole hog barbecu'd!'”

     “On Thursday next, being 13th March 1718, the Bowling-
     Greens will be opened at the Prospect House, Islington,
     where there will be accommodation for all gentlemen
     bowlers.”

     Bowling-greens were among the many amusements of Merrie
     England. The author of “Night Thoughts” established a
     bowling-green in the village confided to his pastoral care,
     for innocent and healthful recreation.

     “True piety is cheerful as the day.”

     “May 1757. To be bowl'd for on Monday next, at the Red Cow,
     in St. George's Fields, a pair of Silver Buckles, value
     fourteen shillings, at five pins, each pin a yard apart. He
     that brings most pins at three bowls has the buckles, if the
     money is in; if not, the money each man has put in. Three
     bowls for sixpence, and a pint of beer out of it, for the
     good of the house,”

Arriving near the Gate-house--(gentlemen, we are within a few yards of
the _very spot!_)--the viceroy of the gravel-pits went forth to meet
them, presenting the horn of plenty as a token of hearty welcome; and
passing through the gate, they made a circuit round the old pond,
and returning to their starting-post, one of the brethren delivered
a poetical oration, humorously descriptive of Bull-Feathers-Hall, and
expatiating on the antiquity and dignity of horns. The speech being
ended, they paraded to the dinner-table, which groaned under every
luxury of the season. There they regaled themselves, amidst the sounding
of trumpets and the winding of horns. Between dinner and dessert, those
of the officers who had singing faces volunteered a festive chant, in
which the whole company joined chorus.

               The shortest, the tallest, the foulest, the fairest,

               The fattest, the leanest, the commonest, rarest,

               When they and their cronies are merry together,

               Will all do their best to advance the _Bull's Feather!_

               A king and a cobbler, a lord and a loon,

               A prince and a pedlar, a courtier, a clown;

               Put all their degrees and conditions together,

               Are liable always to wear the _Bull's Feather_.

Any candidate desirous of being admitted a member of the fraternity was
proposed by the sword-bearer; and the master of the ceremonies placing
him in the adopting chair, the comptroller made three ejaculations, upon
which the brethren doffed their hats. Then the master of the ceremonies
exchanged his own comuted castor for a cap, and administered to his
newly elected brother, on a book horned on all sides, an oath in rhyme,
recapitulating a long string of duties belonging to their peculiar art
and mystery, and enjoining their strict performance.

               Lastly, observe thou shalt esteem none other

               Equal to this our club;--so welcome brother!” *

     * Bull-Feathers-Hall; or, The Antiquity and Dignity of Horns
     amply shown. Also a Description of the Manners,

     Rites, Customs, and Revenues belonging to that ingenious and
     numerous society of Bull-Feathers-Hall. London: printed for
     the Society of Bull-Feathers-Hall. 1664.

     A copy of this rare tract produced at Bindley's sale five
     pounds ten shillings, and at Strette's five pounds.

“Thus ends my story, gentlemen; and if you have found it tedious, visit
the offence on the Lauréat of Little Britain, by enjoining him the
penance of a bumper of salt and water.”

But mine host of the Horns, very prim about the wig, his coat marked
with his apron strings, which left a seam all round, as if he had been
cut in two, and afterwards stitched together again, having been slyly
telegraphed, that obedient functionary, who was as neat as his wines,
entered, bearing before him what Mr. Bosky facetiously called “_a
good afternoon_,” to wit, a brimming bowl, in which _whiskey_ had been
judiciously substituted for _salt_. Uncle Timothy rose; so did the voice
of Mr. Bosky! and to such an altitude as to drown his expostulations
in contumacious carolling, which, truth obliges us to add, received
laughing impunity from the company.

               Come merrily push round the toddy,

                   The cold winter nights are set in;

               To a roquelaire wrapp'd round the body

                   Add a lining of lamb's-wool within!


               This liquor was brew'd by my grandam,

                   In a snug quiet still of her own;

               'Tis fit for my Lord in his tandem,

                   And royal King Will on his throne.


               In the glass, see it sparkles and ripples,

                   And how it runs merrily down!

               The absolute monarch of tipples,

                   And richly deserving a crown!


               Of mirth 'tis the spring and the fountain,

                   And Helicon's stream to the Muse;

               The pleasantest dew of the mountain--

                   So give it, good fellows, its dues.


               It opens the heart of the miser,

                   And conjures up truth from the knave;

               It makes my Lord Bishop look wiser,--

                   More frisky the curate, his slave.


               It makes the glad spirit still gladder,

                   And moistens the splenetic vein;

               When I can't see a hole through a ladder,

                   It mounts on the sly to my brain.


               Then push round the glasses, be cosey,

                   Fill bumpers to whiskey and whim;

               Good luck to each man, while his nose he

                   Hangs pleasantly over the brim!


               There's nothing remarkably odd in

                   A gent who to nap is inclined;

               He can't want a blanket while noddin',

                   When he's two or three sheets in the wind.


“Sirs,” exclaimed the satirical-nosed gentleman, “I alone am to blame
for this audacious vivacity of my sister's son. I turned it on, and lo!
it hath inundated us with buffoonery. Sirrah!” shaking the identical
plant that Dr. Johnson travelled with through the Hebrides, Tom Davies's
shilling's worth for the broad shoulders of Macpherson, “thou shalt find
in future that I joke with my cudgel!” *

     * “Hombre burlo yo con mi escopeta!” was the characteristic
     saying of the celebrated Spanish bandit Josse Maria.

But it was labour in vain; the “laughing devil,” so peculiar to the
eye of the middle-aged gentleman, leered ludicrous defiance to his
half-smiling half-sulky mouth. As a last determined effort, he shook his
_head_ at Mr. Bosky, whereupon Mr. Bosky shook his _hand_. The mutual
grasp was electrical, and thus ended the brief farce of Uncle Timothy's
furor.

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Bosky, in a subdued tone, “if I could believe that
Uncle Timothy had been really in earnest, my penitential punch should
be turned into bitter aloes, sweetened with assafoetida, to expiate an
offence against the earliest, best, and dearest friend I ever knew! But
I owed Uncle Timothy a revenge. Of late he has worn a serious brow, a
mournful smile. There has been melancholy in his mirth, and sadness in
his song; this, he well knows, cuts me to the quick; and it is not until
he is angry,--or, rather” (smiling affectionately at Uncle Tim) “until
he _thinks_ himself so,”--(here Uncle Tim gave Mr. Bosky one of his
blandest looks) “that he is 'cockered and spirited up,' and the cloud
passes away. What do I not owe to my more than father?”

Uncle Timothy got enormously fidgety; he beat Lucifer's tattoo with
his right leg, and began fumbling in both waistcoat pockets for his
snuffbox.

“A precocious young urchin, gentlemen, in every sort of mischief!”
 interrupted Uncle Timothy with nervous impetuosity, “on whose
birch-provoking little body as many besoms were bestowed as would set up
the best chandler in Christendom!”

“An orphan too--”

“Benjamin Bosky! Benjamin Bosky! don't--_don't_ be a blockhead!”

“He reared, educated, and made me what I am. And, though _sometimes_ I
may too far presume upon his good-nature, and foolishly, fondly fancy
myself a boy again--”

“Putting hot parched peas and cherry-stones into my boots, as being good
for chilblains, * and strewing the inside of my bed with horse-hair to
send me to sleep, after a fortnight's dancing round my room with the
toothache!”

“Three strokes from the club of Caliban would not so effectually break
my head, as the reflection would break my heart that I had done aught
to displease him! Now, gentlemen, the murder's out; and if for blabbing
family secrets Uncle Timothy in his wrath _will_ insist upon fining
me--an extra glass of punch! in truth I must submit and sip.”

“You see, my good friends,” said Uncle Timothy, after a short pause,
“that the rogue is incorrigible! But Benjamin Bosky”--(here Uncle Tim
tried to look sententious, and adopted the _bowwow_ style)--“I cannot
but blush, deeply blush for thy morals, or rather, Benjamin Bosky,
for thy no-morals, when thou canst thus blurt thy flattery in my face,
because I simply did a duty that kindred imposed upon me, and the sweet
consciousness of performing made light and pleasant.

     * When the dreadful earthquake at Lisbon had frightened the
     English people into an apprehension of the like calamity at
     home, a quack advertised his pills as “being good for
     earthquakes.”

What I have done was at the whisper of a higher monitor than man; and
from Him alone--even if I could suppose myself worthy, which I do not--I
hope for reward. He who is capable of ingratitude is incapable of any
virtue. But gratitude, the most dignified return we can lavish on our
benefactor, is the silent aspiration of the heart, and must not, good
Benjamin, be placarded on every wall, like a play-bill, a lottery puff,
or thy rigmarole ballads, three yards for a penny! There is not a being,
however humble his station, but may find some deserving object to awake
his friendship and share his benevolence. And be assured, dear Benjamin,
that a judicious and timely distribution of fortune's good gifts is
the best preparation for that final moment when we must resign them
altogether.

               And when life's sweet fable ends,

               May soul and body part like friends;

               No quarrels, murmurs, no delay,--

               A kiss, a sigh, and so away.”

“As Cicero said of Plato, I say of Uncle Timothy,--I would rather be
wrong with _him_ than right with anybody else. One more volunteer
from the Laureate's 'three yards for a penny,' and then my nest of
nightingales--”

“Tom-tits! Benjamin Bosky, tom-tits!”

“Well, then, tom-tits! dear Uncle Timothy,--shall go to roost for the
night.”


MR. BOSKY'S L'ENVOY,

          From childhood he rear'd me, how fondly my heart

               Forgets not, nor lets not my tongue silent be;

          But whispers, while sweet tears of gratitude start,

               A blessing and pray'r for his kindness to me!


          I'll breathe not his name, though its record is deep

               In my warm beating bosom, for fear he should frown,

          Go read it where angels their register keep

               Of the gifted and good, for 'tis there written down.


The conversation now took a more lively turn. Mr. Bosky fired off his
jokes right and left; and if there be truth in physiognomy, the animated
countenance of Uncle Timothy beamed with complacency and joy. He was
in full song, and showered forth his wit and eloquence in glorious
profusion, beauty following upon beauty. Thus another Attic hour glided
imperceptibly away. The midnight chimes at length admonished us to
depart. A galaxy of stars had risen in the unclouded firmament, and
a refreshing air breathed around. And as we had many times during the
evening filled _our_ horns, the harvest moon had filled _hers_ also to
light us home.




CHAPTER IV.

|A merry morning, Eugenio. Did not soft slumbers and pleasant dreams
follow the heart-stirring lucubrations of Uncle Timothy? I am mistaken
if you rose not lighter and happier, and in more perfect peace with
yourself and the world.”

“My dreams were of ancient minstrelsy, Christmas gambols, May-day games,
and merriments. Methought Uncle Timothy was a portly Apollo, Mr. Bosky a
rosy Pan--”

“And you and I, Eugenio?”

“Foremost in the throng--”

“Of capering satyrs! Well, though our own dancing * days are over, we
still retain a relish for that elegant accomplishment.

     * There were rare dancing doings at The original dancing
     room at the field-end of King-Street, Bloomsbury,.
     in the year 1742

     Hickford's great room, Panton-Street, Haymarket, 1743

     Mitre Tavern, Charing-Cross,... 1743

     Barber's Hall,.... 1745

     Richmond Assembly,.... 1745

     Lambeth Wells,.....1747

     Duke's long room, Paternoster-Row,.. 1748

     Large Assembly Room at the Two Green Lamps, near Exeter
     Change, (at the particular desire of Jubilee Diekey!).... in
     the year 1749 The large room next door to the Hand and
     Slippers, Long-Lane, West Smithfield,... 1750 Lambeth Wells,
     where a Penny Wedding, in the Scotch manner, was celebrated
     for the benefit of a young couple,......1752 Old Queen's
     Head, in Cock-Lane, Lambeth,. 1755 and at Mr. Bell's, at the
     sign of the Ship, in the Strand, where, in 1755, a Scotch
     Wedding was kept. The bride “to be dressed without any
     linen; all in ribbons, and green flowers, with Scotch masks.
     There will be three bag-pipes; a band of Scotch music, &c.
     &c. To begin precisely at two o'clock. Admission, two
     shillings and sixpence.”

As antiquaries, we have a reverence for dancing. Noah danced before the
ark. The boar's head and the wine and wassail were crowned with a dance
to the tune of '_The Black Almayne,' 'My Lorde Marques Galyarde,' and
'The firste Traces of due Passa.'_

                   'Merrily danc'd the Quaker's wife,

                   And merrily danc'd the Quaker!'

Why not? Orpheus charmed the four-footed family with his fiddle: shall
it have less effect on the two?

“The innocent and the happy, while the dews of youth are upon them,
dance to the music of their own hearts. 'See the blind beggar dance, the
cripple sing!' The Irishman has his lilt; the Scotchman his reel, which
he not unfrequently dances to his own _particular fiddle!_ and the
Englishman his country-dance.

[Illustration: 0089]

With dogs and bears, horses and geese, * game-cocks and monkeys
exhibiting their caprioles, shall man be motionless and mute?

     * There is an odd print of “Vestris teaching a goose to
     dance.” The terms, for so fashionable a professor as he was
     in his day, are extremely moderate; “Six guineas entrance,
     and one guinea a lesson.” The following song is inscribed
     underneath.

     “Of all the fine accomplishments sure dancing far the best
     is,
     But if a doubt with you remains, behold the Goose and
     Vestris;.
     And a dancing we will go, will go, &c.

     Let men of learning plead and preach; their toil 'tis all in
     vain,
     Sure, labour of the heels and hands is better than the
     brain:
     And a dancing, &c.

     Then talk no more, ye men of arts, 'bout keeping light and
     shade,
     Good understanding in the heels is better than the head:
     And a dancing, &c.

     Great Whigs, and eke great Tories too, both in and out will
     dance,
     Join hands, change sides, and figure in, now sink, and now
     advance.
     And a dancing, &c.

     Let Oxford boast of ancient lore, and Cam of classic rules,
     Noverre might lay you ten to one his heels against your
     schools!
     And a dancing, &c.

     Old Homer sung of gods and kings in most heroic strains,
     Yet scarce could get, we have been told, a dinner for his
     pains.
     And a dancing, &c.

     Poor Milton wrote the most sublime,'gainst Satan, Death, and
     Vice,
     But very few would quit a dance to purchase Paradise.
     And a dancing, &c.

     The soldier risks health, life, and limbs, his fortune to
     advance,
     While Pique and Vestris fortunes make by one night's single
     dance.
     And a dancing, &c.

     'Tis all in vain to sigh and grieve, or idly spend our
     breath,
     Some millions now, and those unborn, must join the dance of
     death.
     And a dancing, &c.

     Yet while we live let's merry be, and make of care a jest,
     Since we are taught what is, is right; and what is right is
     best!
     And a dancing, &c.

Sweetly singeth the tea-kettle; merrily danceth the parched pea on the
fire-shovel! Even grim Death has his dance.”

“And music, Eugenio, in which I know you are an enthusiast. The Italians
have a proverb,

'Whom God loves not, that man loves not music.' The soul is said to be
music.

               'But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

               Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.'

“Haydn used to say that without melody the most learned and singular
combinations are but unmeaning, empty sound. What but the simplicity and
tenderness of the Scotch and Irish airs constitutes their charm? This
great composer was so extravagantly fond of Scotch, Irish, and Welsh
melodies, that he harmonised many of them, and had them hung up in
frames in his room. We remember to have heard somewhere of an officer in
a Highland regiment, who was sent with a handful of brave soldiers to a
penal settlement in charge of a number of convicts; the Highlanders grew
sick at heart; the touching strains of '_Lochaber nae mair_.' heard far
from home, made them so melancholy, that the officer in command forbade
its being played by the band.

So, likewise, with the national melody, the '_Rans-des-Vaches_' among
the Swiss mountaineers. When sold by their despotic chiefs, and torn
from their dearest connexions, suicide and desertion were so frequent
when this melody was played, that orders were issued in all their
regiments, prohibiting any one from playing an air of that kind on pain
of death. _La maladie du pays_,--that sickening after home! But Handel's
music has received more lasting and general applause than that of any
other composer. By Boyce and Battishall his memory was adored; Mozart
was enthusiastic in his praise; Haydn could not listen (_who can?_) to
his glorious Messiah * without weeping; and Beethoven has been heard
to declare, that were he ever to come to England he should uncover his
head, and kneel down at his tomb!

     *  Bishop Ken says,

          “Sweet music with blest poesy began,
          Congenial both to angels and to Man,
          Song was the native language to rehearse
          The elevations of the soul in verse:
          And through succeeding ages, all along,
          Saints praised the Godhead in devoted song.”

     And he adds in plain prose, that the Garden of Eden was no
     stranger to “singing and the voice of melody.” Jubal was the
     “father of those who handled the harp and organ.” Long-
     before the institution of the Jewish church, God received
     praise both by the human voice and the “loud timbrel and
     when that church was in her highest prosperity, King David
     seems to have been the composer of her psalmody--both poetry
     and music. He occupied the orchestra of the temple, and
     accounted it a holy privilege “to play before the Lord” upon
     “the harp with a solemn sound.” Luther said, “I verily think
     that, next to divinity, no art is comparable to music.”

     And what a glorious specimen of this divine art is his
     transcendant “Hymn!” breathing the most awful grandeur, the
     deepest pathos, the most majestic adoration! The Puritans--
     devils and Puritans hate music--are piously economical in
     their devotions, and eschew the principle “not to give unto
     the Lord that which costs us nothing!” Their gift is
     snuffled through the “vocal nose”--“O most sweet voices!”

“Blessings on the memory of the bard, * and 'Palms eternal flourish
round his urn,' who first struck his lyre to celebrate the wooden walls
of unconquered and unconquerable Merrie England! If earth hide him,

          'May angels with their silver wings o'ershade

          The ground, now sacred by his reliques made

if ocean cover him, calm be the green wave on its surface! May his
spirit find rest where souls are blessed, and his body be shrined in the
holiest cave of the deep and silent sea!”

     * A few old amateurs of music and mirth may possibly
     remember Collins's Evening Brush, that rubbed off the rust
     of dull care from the generation of 1790. His bill comprised
     “Actors of the old school and actors of the new; tragedy
     tailors, and butchers in heroics; bell-wethers in buskins,
     wooden actors, petticoat caricatures, lullaby jinglers,
     bogglers and blunderers, buffoons in blank-verse, &c. &c.”
      The first of the three Dibdins opened a shop of merriment at
     the Sans Souci, where he introduced many of his beautiful
     ballads, and sang them to his own tunes. The navy of England
     owe lasting obligations to this harmonious Three. It
     required not the aid of poetry and music (and how
     exquisitely has Shield set the one to the other!) to
     stimulate our gallant seamen; but it needed much to awaken
     and keep alive enthusiasm on shore, and elevate their moral
     character--for landsmen “who live at home at ease/' were
     wont to consider the sailor as a mere tar-barrel, a sea-
     monster. How many young bosoms have been inspired by the
     lyrics of the three Dibdins! What can surpass the homely
     pathos of “I thought my heart would break when I sang, Yo!
     heave O!”

     “The Last Whistle” and “Here, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom
     Bowling!” stirring the manly heart like the sound of a
     trumpet! It is wise to infuse the amorpatriæ into popular
     amusements; national songs work wonders among the million.
     In Little Russia, no sooner are the postilions mounted for a
     journey, than they begin to hum a patriotic air, which often
     continues for hours without intermission. The soldiers sing
     during a long and fatiguing march; the peasant lightens his
     labour in the same manner; and in a still evening the air
     vibrates with the cheerful songs of the surrounding
     villages.

“'Hark! the lark at Heaven's gate sings.'”

“I was not unmindful of the merry chorister! But the lark has made a
pause; and I have your promise of a song. Now is the time to fill up the
one, and to fulfil the other.”


EUGENIO'S SONG.

               “Sweet is the breath of early morn

                   That o'er yon heath refreshing blows:

               And sweet the blossom on the thorn,

                   The violet blue, the blushing rose.


               When mounts the lark on rapid wing,

               How sweet to sit and hear him sing!

               No carols like the feathered choir,

               Such happy, grateful thoughts inspire.


               Here let the spirit, sore distress'd,

                   Its vanities and wishes close:

               The weary world is not the rest

                   Where wounded hearts should seek repose.


               But, hark! the lark his merry strain,

               To heav'n high soaring, sings again.

               Be hush'd, sweet songster! ev'ry voice

               That warbles not like thee--Rejoice!”


“Short and sad! Eugenio. We must away from these bewitching solitudes,
or thy note will belong more to the nightingale than to the lark!
Let imagination carry thee back to the reign of Queen Anne, when the
Spectator and Sir Roger de Coverley embarked at the Temple-Stairs on
their voyage to Vauxhall. We pass over the good knight's religious
horror at beholding what a few steeples rose on the west of Temple-Bar;
and the waterman's wit, (a common thing in those days, * ) that made him
almost wish himself a Middlesex magistrate!

     * What a sledge-hammer reply was Doctor Johnson's to an
     aquatic wag upon a similar occasion. “Fellow! your mother,
     under the _pretence_ (!!!) of keeping a ------------ is a
     receiver of stolen goods!”

'We were now arrived at _Spring Garden_ says the Spectator, 'which is
exquisitely pleasant at this time of the year. When I considered the
fragrancy of the walks and bowers, with the choir of birds that sang
upon the trees, and the loose tribe of people that walked under their
shades, I could not but look upon the place as a kind of Mahometan
paradise. Sir Roger told me it put him in mind of a little coppice by
his house in the country, which his chaplain used to call an aviary of
nightingales.' “And mark in what primitive fashion they concluded their
walk, with a glass of Burton ale and a slice of hung-beef!

“Bonnel Thornton furnishes a ludicrous account of a stingy old citizen,
loosening his purse-strings to treat his wife and family to Vauxhall;
and 'Colin's * 'Description to his wife of _Greenwood Hall_, or the
pleasures of _Spring Gardens_,' gives a lively picture of what this
modern Arcadia was a century ago.

1 May 20, 1712.

          * 'Mary! soft in feature,
          I've been at dear Vauxhall;
          No paradise is sweeter,
          Not that they Eden call.
          At night such new vagaries,
          Such gay and harmless sport;
          All look'd like giant fairies,
          At this their monarch's court.
          Methought when first I enter'd,
          Such splendours round me shone,
          Into a world I ventured
          Where rose another sun:
          Whilst music, never cloying,
          As skylarks sweet I hear;
          The sounds I'm still enjoying,
          They 'll always soothe my ear.
          Here paintings, sweetly glowing,
          Where'er our glances fall,
          Here colours, life bestowing,
          Bedeck this green-wood hall!
          The king there dubs a farmer,
          There John his doxy loves;*
          But my delight's the charmer
          Who steals a pair of gloves!
          As still amazed, I'm straying
          O'er this enchanted grove;
          I spy a harper playing
          All in his proud alcove.
          I doff my hat, desiring
          He'd tune up Buxom Joan;
          But what was I admiring?
          Odzooks! a man of stone.
          But now the tables spreading,
          They all fall to with glee;
          Not e'en at Squire's fine wedding
          Such dainties did I see!
          I long'd (poor starveling rover!)
          But none heed country elves;
          These folk, with lace daub'd over,
          Love only dear themselves.
          Thus whilst,'mid joys abounding,
          As grasshoppers they're gay;
          At distance crowds surrounding
          The Lady of the May.
          The man i' th' moon tweer'd slily,
          Soft twinkling through the trees,
          As though 'twould please him highly
          To taste delights like these.” **

But its days are numbered. The axe shall be laid to the roots of its
beautiful trees; its green avenues turned into blind alleys;

     * Alluding to the three pictures in the Pavilions,--viz. the
     King and the Miller of Mansfield,--Sailors in a tippling
     house in Wapping,--and the girl stealing a kiss from a
     sleepy gentleman.

     ** The statue of Handel.

its variegated lamps give place to some solitary gas-burner, to light
the groping inhabitants to their dingy homes; and the melodious strains
of its once celebrated vocalists be drowned in the dismal ditty of some
ballad-singing weaver, and the screeching responses of his itinerant
family. What would the gallant Mr. Lowe and his sprightly Euphrosyne,
Nan Catley, say, could they be told to what “base uses” their
harmonious groves are condemned to be turned?

     * Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales sitting under her
     splendid Pavilion.

Truly their wonder would be on a par with Paganini's, should ever that
musical magician encounter on the other side Styx “My Lord Skaggs and
his Broomstick!” *

     * This celebrated professor played on his musical broomstick
     at the Haymarket Theatre, November 1751.

          “Each buck and jolly fellow has heard of Skegginello
          The famous Skegginello, that grunts so pretty
          Upon his broomstieado, such music he has made, O,
          'Twill spoil the fiddling trade, O,
          And that's a pity!
          But have you heard or seen, O, his phiz so pretty,
          In picture shops so grin, O,
          With comic nose and chin, O,
          Who'd think a man could shine so At Eh, Eh, Eh, Eh?”

     There is a curious Tobacco Paper of Skaggs playing on his
     broomstick in full concert with a jovial party! One of the
     principal performers is a good-humoured looking gentleman
     beating harmony out of the salt-box.

     ** Certain utilitarians affect to ridicule this ancient
     civic festival, on the score of its parade, right-royally
     ridiculous! and gross gluttony--as if the corporation of
     London were the only gourmands who had offered sacrifices to
     Apicius, and died martyrs to good living! We have been at
     some pains to peep into the dining-parlours of the ancients,
     and from innumerable examples of gastronomy have selected
     the following, which prove that the epicures of the olden
     time yielded not in taste and voracity to their brethren of
     the new:--

     The emperor Septimus Severus died of eating and drinking too
     much. Valentinianus went off in a surfeit. Lucullus being
     asked one day by his attendant, what company he had invited
     to his feast, seeing so many dainties prepared, answered,
     “Lucullus shall dine with Lucullus?” Vitellius Spinter was
     so much given to gluttony, that at one supper he was served
     with two thousand several kinds of fishes, and with seven
     thousand flying fowl. Maximilian devoured, in one day, forty
     pounds of solid meat, which he washed down with a hogshead
     of wine. The emperor Geta continued his festival for three
     days, and his dainties were introduced in alphabetical
     order. Philoxenes wished he had a neck like a crane, that
     the delicious morsels might be long in going down. Lucullus,
     at a costly feast he gave to certain ambassadors of Asia,
     among other trifles, took to his own cheek a griph (query
     Griffin'!) boiled, and a fat goose in paste. Hercules and
     Lepreas had a friendly contest, which could, in quickest
     time, eat up a whole ox; Hercules won, and then challenged
     his adversary to a drinking bout, and again beat him hollow.

     If the Stoic held that the goal of life is death, and that
     we live but to learn to die--if the Pythagorean believed in
     the transmigration of souls, and scrupled to shoot a
     woodcock lest he should dispossess the spirit of his
     grandam--how much more rational was the doctrine of the
     Epicurean, (after such a goodly catalogue of gormandizers!)
     that there was no judgement to come.

Who has not heard of Guildhall on Lord Mayor's Day, ** and the Easter
Ball at the Mansion-House? But we profane not the penetralia where even
Common-Councilmen fear to tread! The City Marshals, and men in armour
(_Héros malgré eux!_); the pensive-looking state-coachmen, in all the
plumpness, pomp, and verdure of prime feeding, wig, and bouquet; the
postilion, “a noticeable man,” with velvet cap and jockey boots; the
high-bred and high-fed aristocracy of the Poultry and Cheapside, and
their Banquet, which might tempt Diogenes to blow himself up to such a
pitch of obesity, that, instead of living in a tub, a tub might be said
to live in him, are subjects too lofty for plebeian handling. Cæsar was
told to beware of the Ides of March; and are not November fogs equally
ominous to the London citizen? If, then, by some culinary magic, he can
be induced to cram his throat rather than to cut it,--to feast himself
instead of the worms,--to prefer a minuet in the Council Chamber to the
Dance Macabre in the shades below,--the gorgeous anniversaries of Gog
and Magog have not been celebrated in vain. *

     * “Search all chronicles, histories, and records, in what
     language or letter soever,--let the inquisitive man waste
     the deere treasures of his time and eye-sight,--he shall
     conclude his life only in this certainty, that there is no
     subject upon earth received into the place of his government
     with the like state and magnificence as is the Lord Maior of
     the Citty of London.” This was said by the author of the
     “Triumphs of Truth” in 1613. The following list of City
     Poets will show that the office was not an unimportant one
     in the olden time: George Peele; Anthony Munday; Thomas
     Dekker; Thomas Middleton; John Squire; John Webster; Thomas
     Heywood; John Taylor (the Water-Poet, one of Ben Jonson's
     adopted poetical sons, and a rare slang fellow); Edward G ay
     ton, and T. B. (of the latter nothing is known), both
     Commonwealth bards; John Tatham; Thomas Jordan; Matthew
     Taubman, and Elkanah Settle, the last of the poetical
     parsons who wedded Lord Mayors and Aldermen to immortal
     verse. One of the most splendid of these anniversary
     pageants was “London's Triumph; or, the Solemn and
     Magnificent reception of that Honourable Gentleman, Robert
     Titeliburn, Lord Maior, after his return from taking his
     oath at Westminster, the morrow after Simon and Jude day,
     being October 29, 1656. With the Speeches spoken at Foster-
     lane-end and Soper-lane-end.”--“In the first place,” (says
     the City Poet T. B.) “the loving members of the honourable
     societie exercising arms in Cripplegate Ground being drawn
     up together, march'd in a military order to the house of my
     Lord Maior, where they attended on him, and from thence
     march'd before him to the Three Crane Wharfe, where part of
     them under the red colours embarqued themselves in three
     severall barges; and another part took water at Stone
     Staires, being under green colours, as enemies to the other;
     and thence wafting to the other side of the water, there
     began an encounter between each party, which continued all
     the way to Westminster; a third body, consisting of pikes
     and musquets, march'd to Bainard's Castle, and there from
     the battlements of the castle gave thundering echoes to the
     vollies of those that pass'd along the streame. Part before
     and part behind went the severall barges, with drums
     beating, and trumpets sounding, and varietie of other musiek
     to take the eare, while the flags and silver pendents made a
     pleasant sight delectable to the beholders.

     “After these came severall gentlemen-ushers adorn'd with
     gold eliaines; behind them certaine rich batelielours,
     wearing gownes furr'd with foynes, and upon them sattin
     hoods; and lastly after them, followed the Worshipfull
     Company of Skinners itself, whereof the Lord Maior is a
     member. Next these, the city officers passing on before,
     rode the Lord Maior with the Sword, Mace, and Cap of
     Maintenance before him, being attended by the Recorder, and
     all the aldermen in scarlet gowns on horseback. (Aldermen on
     horseback!!) Thus attended, he rode from Bainard's Castle
     into

     Cheapside, the Companies standing on both sides of the way
     as far as the upper end of the Old Jury, ready to receive
     him. When he was come right against the old Change, a
     pageant seem'd to meet him. On the pageant stood two
     leopards bestrid by two Moors, attir'd in the habit of their
     country; at the foure corners sate foure virgins arraid in
     cloth of silver, with their haire dishriveld, and coronets
     on their heads. This seem'd to be the embleme of a city
     pensive and forlorn, for want of a zealous governor: the
     Moors and leopards, like evill customs tyrannizing over the
     weak virginitie of undefended virtue; which made an aged
     man, who sate at the fore part of the pageant, mantled in a
     black garment, with a dejected countenance, seem to bewaile
     the condition of his native city; but thus he remaind not
     long: for at the approach of the Lord Maior, as if now he
     had espy'd the safety of his country, he threw off his
     mourning weeds, and with the following speech made known the
     joy he had for the election of so happy and just a
     magistrate.

     “The speech being spoken, the first pageant past on before
     the Lord Maior as far as Mercers' Chappel; a gyant being
     twelve foot in height going before the pageant for the
     delight of the people. Over against Soper-lane End stood
     another pageant also; upon this were plac'd severall sorts
     of beasts, as lyons, tygers, bears, leopards, foxes, apes,
     monkeys, in a great wildernesse; at the forepart whereof
     sate Pan with a pipe in his hand; in the middle was a
     canopie, at the portal whereof sate Orpheus in an antique
     attire, playing on his harp, while all the beasts seem'd to
     dance at the sound of his melody. Under the canopie sate
     four satyrs playing on pipes. The embleme of this pageant
     seem'd proper to the Company out of which the Lord Maior was
     elected; putting the spectators in mind how much they ought
     to esteem such a calling, as clad the Judges in their
     garments of honour, and Princes in their robes of majestic,
     and makes the wealthy ladies covet winter, to appear clad in
     their sable funs. A second signification of this emblem may
     be this,--that as Orpheus tam'd the wild beasts by the
     alluring sound of his melody, so doth a just and upright
     governor tame and govern the wild affections of men, by good
     and wholesome lawes, causing a general joy and peace in the
     place where he commands. Which made Orpheus, being well
     experienced in this truth, to address himself to the Lord
     Maior in these following lines.

     “The speech being ended, the Lord Maior rode forward to his
     house in Silver Street, the military bands still going
     before him. When he was in this house, they saluted him with
     two volleys of shot, and so marching again to their ground
     in Cripple-gate Churchyard, they lodg'd their colours; and
     as they began, so concluded this dayes triumph.”

     When the barges wherein the soldiers were, came right
     against Whitehall, they saluted the Lord Protector and his
     Council with several rounds of musketry, which the Lord
     Protector answered with “signal testimonies of grace and
     cour-tesie.” And returning to Whitehall, after the Lord
     Mayor had taken the oath of office before the Barons of the
     Exchequer, they saluted the Lord Protector with “another
     volley” The City of London had been actively instrumental in
     the deposition and death of King Charles the First, and
     Cromwell could not do less than acknowledge, with some show
     of respect, the blank cartridges of his old friends. The
     furr'd gowns and gold chains, however, made the amende
     honorable, when they “jumped Jim Crow,” and helped to
     restore King Charles the Second.

But Easter-Monday was not made only for the city's dancing dignitaries.
It draws up the curtain of our popular merriments; and Whit-Mon-day, *
not a whit less merry, trumpets forth their joyous continuation.

     * June 9, 1786. On Whit-Tuesday was celebrated at Hendon in
     Middlesex, a burlesque imitation of the Olympic Games.

     One prize was a gold-laced hat, to be grinned for by six
     candidates, who were placed on a platform, with horses'
     collars to exhibit through. Over their heads was printed in
     capitals,

          Detur Tetriori; or
          The ugliest grinner
          Shall be the winner.

     Each party grinned five minutes solus, and then all united
     in a grand chorus of distortion. This prize was carried by a
     porter to a vinegar merchant, though he was accused by his
     competitors of foul play, for rinsing his mouth with
     verjuice. The whole was concluded by a hog, with his tail
     shaved and soaped, being let loose among nine peasants; any
     one of which that could seize him by the queue, and throw
     him across his shoulders, was to have him for a reward. This
     occasioned much sport: the animal, after running some miles,
     so tired his hunters that they gave up the chase in despair.
     A prodigious concourse of people attended, among whom were
     the Tripoline Ambassador, and several other persons of
     distinction.

We hail the return of these festive seasons when the busy inhabitants of
Lud's town and its suburbs, in spite of hard times, tithes, and taxes,
repair to the royal park of Queen Bess to divert their melancholy! We
delight to contemplate the mirthful mourners in their endless variety of
character and costume; to behold the forlorn holiday-makers hurrying to
the jocund scene, to participate in those pleasures which the genius of
wakes, kindly bounteous, prepares for her votaries. *

     * On the Easter-Monday of 1840, the Regent's Park, Primrose
     Hill, and the adjoining fields, presented one merry mass of
     animated beings. At Chalk Farm there was a regular fair,--
     with swings, roundabouts, ups-and-downs, gingerbread-stalls,
     theatres, donkey-races, penny chaises, and puppet-shows,
     representing the Islington murder, the Queen's marriage, the
     arrival of Prince Albert, and the departure of the Chartist
     rioters! Hampstead Heath, and the surrounding villages,
     turned out their studs of Jerusalem ponies. Copenhagen
     House, Hornsey Wood House and the White Conduit, echoed with
     jollity; the holiday-makers amusing themselves with cricket,
     fives, and archery. How sweetly has honest, merry Harry
     Carey described the origin of “Sally in our Alley” which
     touelied the heart of Addison with tender emotion, and
     called forth his warmest praise. “A shoemaker's 'prentice,
     making holiday with his sweetheart, treated her with a sight
     of Bedlam, the puppet-shows, the flying-chairs, and all the
     elegancies of Moorfields, from whence proceeding to the
     Farthing Pye-house, he gave her a collation of buns,
     cheese-cakes, gammon of bacon, stuffed beef, and bottled
     ale; through all which scenes the author dodged them.
     Charmed with the simplicity of their courtship, he drew from
     what he had witnessed this little sketch of Nature.”

The gods assembled on Olympus presented not a more glorious sight than
the laughing divinities of One-Tree-Hill!

[Illustration: 0106]

What an animated scene! Hark to the loud laugh of some youngsters that
have had their roll and tumble. Yonder is a wedding party from the
neighbouring village. See the jolly tar with his true blue jacket and
trousers, checked shirt, radiant with a gilt brooch as big as a crown
piece, yellow straw-hat, striped stockings, and pumps; and his pretty
bride, with her rosy cheeks and white favours. How light are their
heels and hearts! And the blythesome couples that follow in their
train--noviciates in the temple of Hymen, but who ere long will be
called upon to act as principals! All is congratulation, good wishes,
and good humour. Scandal is dumb; envy dies for the day; disappointment
gathers hope; and one wedding, like a fool, or an Irish wake, shall make
many.

                   “O yes! O yes! O yes!

          When the peripatetic pieman rings his bell

               At morning, noon, or when you sit at eve;

                   Ladies and gentlemen, I guess

                        It needs no ghost to tell,

                        In song, recitative,

          He warbles cakes and gingerbread to sell!

          Tarts of gooseberry, raspberry, cranberry;

          Rare bonne-bouches brought from Banbury;

                   Puffs and pie-ses

                   Of all sorts and sizes;

                   Ginger beer,

                   That won't make you queer,

               Like the treble X ale of Taylor and Hanbury!”

“Here, good Christians, are five Reasons why you _shouldn't_ go to a
fair, published by the London Lachrymose Society for the suppression of
fun.”

“And here, good Christians, are five-and-fifty why you _should!_
published by my Lord Chancellor Cocke Lorel, President of the High Court
of Mummery, and Conscience-keeper to his merry Majesty of Queerumania,
for the promotion of jollity.”

One of the better order of mendicants, on whose smooth, pale brow, hung
the blossoms of the grave, arrested our attention with the following
madrigal which pleased us, inasmuch as it seemed to smack of the olden
time.

               “I love but only one

                   And thou art only she

               That loves but only one--

                   Let me that only be!

               Requite me with the like,

                   And say thou unto me

               Thou lov'st but only one,

                   And I am only he!”

“Cold comfort this, broiling and frying under a burning hot sun!”
 soliloquized a blind ballad-singer. And, having two strings to his bow,
and one to his fiddle, he put a favourite old tune to the rack, and
enforced us to own the soft impeachment of


THE BALLAD SINGER'S APOLOGY FOR GREENWICH FAIR.

          Up hill and down hill,'tis always the same;

          Mankind ever grumbling, and fortune to blame!

          To fortune,'tis uphill, ambition and strife;

          And fortune obtain'd--then the downhill of life!


          We toil up the hill till we reach to the top;

          But are not permitted one moment to stop!

          O how much more quick we descend than we climb!

          There's no locking fast the swift wheels of Old Time.

          Gay Greenwich! thy happy young holiday train

          Here roll down the hill, and then mount it again.

          The ups and downs life has bring sorrow and care;

          But frolic and mirth attend those at the fair.


          My Lord May'r of London, of high city lineage,

          His show makes us glad with, and why shouldn't

                   Greenwich?

          His gingerbread coach a crack figure it cuts!

          And why shouldn't we crack our gingerbread nuts?


          Of fashion and fame, ye grandiloquent powers,

          Pray take your full swing--only let us take ours!

          If you have grown graver and wiser, messieurs,

          The grinning be ours, and the gravity yours!


          To keep one bright spark of good humour alive,

          Old holiday pastimes and sports we revive.

          Be merry, my masters, for now is your time--

          Come, who'll buy my ballads? they're reason and

                   rhyme.”

Peckham and Blackheath fairs were celebrated places of resort in former
times, and had their modicum of strange monsters.

                        “Geo. I. R.

“To the lovers of living curiosities. To be seen during the time of
_Peckham Fair_, a Grand Collection of Living Wild Beasts and Birds,
lately arrived from the remotest parts of the World.

“1. The _Pellican_ that suckles her young with her heart's, blood, from
Egypt.

“2. The Noble _Vultur Cock_, brought from _Archangell_, having the
finest talions of any bird that seeks his prey; the fore part of his
head is covered with hair, the second part resembles the wool of a
Black; below that is a white ring, having a Ruff, that he cloaks his
head with at night.

“3. An _Eagle of the Sun_, that takes the loftiest flight of any bird
that flies. There is no bird but this that can fly to the face of the
Sun with a naked eye.

“4. A curious Beast, bred from a _Lioness_, like a foreign _Wild Cat_.

“5. The He-_Panther_, from Turkey, allowed by the curious to be one of
the greatest rarities ever seen in _England_, on which are thousands of
spots, and not two of a likeness.

“6 & 7. The two fierce and surprising _Hyaenas_, Male and female, from
the River _Gambia_. These Creatures imitate the human voice, and so
decoy the Negroes out of their huts and plantations to devour them. They
have a mane like a horse, and two joints in their hinder leg more than
any other creature. It is remarkable that all other beasts are to be
tamed, but Hyaenas they are not.

“8. An _Ethiopian Toho Savage_, having all the actions of the human
species, which (when at its full growth) will be upwards of five feet
high.

“Also several other surprising Creatures of different sorts. To be seen
from 9 in the morning till 9 at night, till they are sold. Also, all
manner of curiosities of different sorts, are bought and sold at the
above place by John Bennett.”

The grand focus of attraction was in the immediate vicinity of the
“_Kentish Drovers_.” This-once merry hostelrie was a favourite suburban
retreat of Dicky Suett. Cherub Dicky! who when (to use his own
peculiar phrase) his “copper required cooling,” mounted the steady,
old-fashioned, three mile an hour Peckham stage, and journeyed hither to
allay his thirst, and qualify his alcohol with a refreshing draught of
Derbyshire ale. The landlord (who was quite a character) and he were old
cronies; and, in the snug little parlour behind the bar, of which Dicky
had the entrée, their hob-and-nobbings struck out sparks of humour that,
had they exhaled before the lamps, would have set the theatre in a roar.
Suett was a great frequenter of fairs. He stood treat to the conjurors,
feasted the tragedy kings and queens, and many a mountebank did he make
muzzy. Once in a frolic he changed clothes with a Jack Pudding, and
played _Barker_ and _Mr. Merriman_ to a precocious giantess; when he
threw her lord and master into such an ecstacy of mirth, that the fellow
vowed hysterically that it was either the _devil_, or (for his fame had
travelled before him) _Dicky Suett_. He was a piscator, *

     * All sports that inflict pain on any living thing, without
     attaining some useful end, are wanton and cowardly. Wild
     boars, wolves, foxes, &c. may be hunted to extermination,
     for they are public robbers; but to hunt the noble deer, for
     the cruel pleasure of hunting him, is base.

     With all our love of honest Izaak Walton, we feel a
     shuddering when the “sentimental old savage” gives his
     minute instructions to the tyro in angling how most
     skilfully to transfix the writhing worm, (as though you
     “loved him!”) and torture a poor fish. Piscator is a
     cowardly rogue to sit upon a fair bank, the sun shining
     above, and the pure stream rippling beneath, with his
     instruments of death, playing pang against pang, and life
     against life, for his contemplative recreation. What would
     he say to a hook through his own gullet? Would it mitigate
     his dying agonies to hear his dirge (even the milkmaid's
     song!) chanted in harmonious concert with a brother of the
     angle, who had played the like sinister trick on his
     companion in the waters?

and would make a huge parade of his rod, line, and green-painted
tin-can, sallying forth on a fine morning with malice prepense against
the gudgeons and perch: but Dicky was a merciful angler: he was the
gudgeon, for the too cunning fishes, spying his comical figure, stole
his bait, and he hooked nothing but tin pots and old shoes. Here he sat
in his accustomed chair and corner, dreaming of future quarterns, and
dealing out odd sayings that would make the man in the moon hold his
sides, and convulse the whole planet with laughter. His hypocrene was
the cream of the valley; *

     * Suett had at one time a landlady who exhibited an
     inordinate love for that vulgar fluid ycleped geneva; a
     beverage which Dicky himself by no means held in abhorrence.
     She would order her servant to procure supplies after the
     following fashion:--“Betty, go and get a quartern loaf and
     half a quartern of gin.” Off bolted Betty,--she was speedily
     recalled: “Betty, make it half a quartern loaf and a
     quartern of gin.” But Betty had never got fairly across the
     threshold, ere the voice was again heard:--“Betty, on second
     thoughts, you may as well make it all gin!”

he dug his grave with his bottle, and gave up the ghost amidst a troop
of spirits. Peace to his _manes!_ Cold is the cheerful hearth, where he
familiarly stirred the embers and silent the walls that echoed to “_Old
Wigs!_” chanted by _Jeffery Dunstan_ when he danced hop-scotch on a
table spread out with tumblers and tobacco-pipes! Hushed is the voice of
song. At this moment, as if to give our last assertion what Touchstone
calls “the lie direct,” some Corydon from Petty France, the Apollo of
a select singing party in the first floor front room, thus musically
apostrophised his Blouzellinda of Bloomsbury.

          She's all that fancy painted her, she's rosy without rouge,

          Her gingham gown a modest brown turned up with

                   bright gamboge;

          She learns to jar the light guitar, and plays the harpsi-

                   chols,

          Her fortune's five-and-twenty pounds in Three per Cent

                   Consols.

          At Beulah Spa, where love is law, was my fond heart

                   beguiled;

          I pour'd my passion in her ear--she whisper'd, “Draw

                   it mild!”

          In Clerkenwell you bear the bell: what muffin-man does

                   not?

          And since, my Paul, you've gain'd your p'int, perhaps

                   you 'll stand your pot.


     The Charlie quite, I've, honour bright, sent packing for a

                   cheat;

          A watchman's wife, he'd whack me well when he was

                   on his beat.

          “Adieu!” he said, and shook his head, “my dolor be

                   your dow'r;

          And while you laugh, I 'll take my staff, and go and cry

                   --the hour.”

          Last Greenwich Fair we wedded were; she's won, and

                   we are one;

          And Sally, since the honey-moon, has had a little son.

          Of all the girls that are so smart, there's none than Sally

                   smarter;

          I said it 'fore I married her, and now I say it _arter_.


Geo. II. R.

“This is to give notice to all gentlemen, ladies and others,
that there is to be seen from eight in the morning till nine at night,
at the end of the great booth on _Blackheath_, a west of England woman
38 years of age _alive_, with _two heads_, one above the other; having
no hands, fingers, nor toes; yet can she dress and undress, knit, sew,
read, sing,” _Query--a duet with her two mouths?_ “She has had the
honour to be seen by Sir Hans Sloane, and several of the Royal Society.
* “N.B. Gentlemen and ladies may see her at their own houses, if they
please.

     * That the caricaturist has been out-caricatured by Nature
     no one will deny. Wilkes was so abominably ugly that he said
     it always took him half an hour to talk away his face; and
     Mirabeau, speaking of his own countenance, said, “Fancy a
     tiger marked with the small-pox!” We have seen an Adonis
     contemplate one of Cruikshank's whimsical figures, of which
     his particular shanks were the bow-ideal, and rail at the
     artist for libelling Dame Nature! How ill-favoured were Lord
     Lovat, Magliabeeehi, Searron, and the wall-eyed, botde-nosed
     Buekhorse the Bruiser! how deformed and frightful Sir Harry
     Dimsdale and Sir Jeffrey Dunstan! What would have been said
     of the painter of imaginary Siamese twins? Yet we have “The
     true Description of two Monstrous Children, born in the
     parish of Swanburne in Buekinghamshyre, the 4th of Aprill,
     Anno Domini 1566; the two Children having both their belies
     fast joyned together, and imbracing one another with their
     armes: which Children were both alyve by the space of half
     an hower, and wer baptised, and named the one John, and the
     other Joan.”--A similar wonder was exhibited in Queen Anne's
     reign, viz. “Two monstrous girls born in the Kingdom of
     Hungary,” which were to be seen “from 8 o'clock in the
     morning till 8 at night, up one pair of stairs, at Mr.
     William Sutteliffe's, a Drugster's Shop, at the sign of the
     Golden Anchor, in the Strand, near Charing-Cross.” The
     Siamese twins of our own time are fresh in every one's
     memory. Shakspere throws out a pleasant sarcasm at the
     characteristic curiosity of the English nation. Trinculo,
     upon first beholding Caliban, exclaims,--“A strange fish!
     were I in England now (as I once was), and had but this fish
     painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of
     silver: there would this monster make a man: when they will
     not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out
     ten to see a dead Indian”

This great wonder never was shown in England before this, the 13th
day of March, 1741. “Vivat Rex.” Peckham * and Blackheath Fairs are
abolished;----

     * Peckham Fair, August 1787.--Of the four-footed race were
     bears, monkeys, dancing-dogs, a learned pig, &c. Mr.
     Flockton in his theatrical booth opposite the Kentish
     Drovers, exhibited the Italian fantocini; the farce of the
     Conjuror; and his “inimitable musical-clock.” Mr. Lane,
     “first performer to the King,” played off his “snip-snap,
     rip-rap, crick-crack, and thunder tricks, that the grown
     babies stared like worried cats.” This extraordinary genius
     “will drive about forty twelve-penny nails into any
     gentleman's breech, place him in a loadstone chair, and draw
     them out without the least pain! He is, in short, the most
     wonderful of all wonderful creatures the world ever wondered
     at.”

     Sir Jeffrey Dunstan sported his handsome figure within his
     booth; outside of which was displayed a likeness of the
     elegant original in his pink satin smalls. His dress,
     address, and oratory, fascinated the audience; in fact,
     “Jeffy was quite tonish!”

     In opposition to the “Monstrous Craws” at the Royal Grove,
     were shown in a barn “four wonderful human creatures,
     brought three thousand miles beyond China, from the
     Kickashaw Mackabee country, viz.

     “A man with a chin eleven inches Ions:.

     “Another with as many M'ens and warts on his face as knots
     on an old thornback.

     “A third with two large teeth five inches long, strutting
     beyond his upper lip, as if his father had been a man-tiger!

     “And the fourth with a noble large fiery head, that looked
     like the red-hot urn on the top of the monument!”

     “These most wonderful wild-born human beings (the Monstrous
     Craws), two females and a male, are of very small stature,
     being little more than four feet high; each with a monstrous
     craw under his throat. Their country, language, &c. are as
     yet unknown to mankind. It is supposed they started in some
     canoe from their native place (a remote quarter in South
     America), and being wrecked were picked up by a Spanish
     vessel. At that period they were each of a dark-olive
     complexion, but which has astonishingly, by degrees, changed
     to the colour of that of Europeans. They are tractable and
     respectful towards strangers, and of lively and merry
     disposition among themselves; singing and daneing in the
     most extraordinary way, at the will and pleasure of the
     company.”

and those of Camberwell * and Wandsworth ** are

     * A petty session (how very petty!) was held at Union Hall
     on the 4th July, 1823, in order to put down Camberwell Fair,
     which is as old as Domesday Book. Shakspere has truly
     described these ill-conditioned, peddling, meddling
     Dogberrys “You wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing
     a cause between an orange-wife and a fosset-seller; and then
     rejourn the controversy of three-pence to a second day of
     audience. When you speak best to the purpose, it is not
     worth the wagging of your beards, and your beards deserve
     not so honourable a grave, as to stuff a botcher's cushion,
     or to be entombed in an ass's pack-saddle.”

     ** Wandsworth Fair exhibited sixty years ago Mount Vesuvius,
     or the burning mountain by moonlight, rope, and hornpipe-
     dancing; a forest, with the humours of lion-catching;
     tumbling by the young Polander from Sadler's Wells; several
     diverting comic songs; a humorous dialogue between Mr.
     Swatehall and his wife; sparring matches; the Siege of
     Belgrade, &c. all for three-penee!

     On Whit-Monday, 1840, Messrs. Nelson and Lee sent down a
     theatrical caravan to Wandsworth Fair, and were moderately
     remunerated. But the “Grand Victoria Booth” was the rallying
     point of attraction. Its refectory was worthy of the
     ubiquitous Mr. Epps--of ham, beef, tongue, polony, portable
     soup, and sheep's trotter memory!

     Cold beef and ham, hot ribs of lamb, mock-turtle soup that's
     portable,

     Did blow, with stout, their jackets out, and made the folks
     comfortable!

fast going the way of all fairs. Bow, Edmonton, * Highgate, ** Brook
Green (Hammersmith,) and

     * In the year 1820, the keeper of a menagerie at Edmonton
     Fair walked into the den of a lioness, and nursed her cubs.
     He then paid his respects to the husband and father, a
     magnificent Barbary Lion. After the usual complimentary
     greetings between them, the man somewhat roughly thrust open
     the monster's jaws, and put his head into its mouth, giving
     at the same time a shout that made it tremble. This he did
     with impunity. But in less than two months afterwards, when
     repeating the same exhibition at a fair in the provinces, he
     eried, like the starling, “I can't get out!--I can't get
     out!” demanding at the same time if the lion wagged its
     tail? The lion, thinking the joke had been played quite
     often enough, did wag its tail, and roared “Heads!” The
     keeper fell a victim to his temerity.

     ** “July 2,1744.--This is to give notice that Highgate Fair
     will be kept on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday next, in a
     pleasant shady walk in the middle of the town.

     “On Wednesday a pig will be turned loose, and he that takes
     it up by the tail and throws it over his head, shall have
     it. To pay two-pence entrance, and no less than twelve to
     enter.

     “On Thursday a match will be run by two men, a hundred yards
     in two sacks, for a large sum. And, to encourage the sport,
     the landlord of the Mitre will give a pair of gloves, to be
     run for by six men, the winner to have them.

     “And on Friday a hat, value ten shillings, will be run for
     by men twelve times round the Green; to pay one shilling
     entrance: no less than four to start; as many as will may
     enter, and the second man to have all the money above four.”

West-end (Hampstead * ), Fairs, with their swings, roundabouts, spiced
gingerbread, penny-trumpets, and halfpenny rattles are passed away. The
showmen and Merry Andrews of Moorfields ** are

     * “The Hampstead Fair Ramble; or, The World going quite Mad.
     To the tune of 'Brother Soldier dost hear of the News,'
     London: Printed for J. Bland, near Holbourn, 1708.” A
     curious broadside.

     ** Moorfields during the holiday seasons was an epitome of
     Bartlemy Fair. Its booths and scaffolds had flags flying on
     the top. A stage near the Windmill Tavern, opposite Old
     Beth-lem, was famous for its grinning-matches. Moorfields
     had one novel peculiarity, viz. that whilst the Merry Andrew
     was practising his buffooneries and legerdemain tricks in
     one quarter, the itinerant Methodist preacher was holding
     forth in another. Foote makes his ranting parson exclaim,

     “Near the mad mansions of Moorfields I 'll bawl,

     Come fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, all,

     Shut up your shops and listen to my call!”

     The Act 12 of Queen Anne aimed at the suppression of the
     Moorfields' merriments. The showmen asked Justice Fuller to
     license them in April, 1717, but in vain. Fuller had a
     battle-royal with Messrs. Saunders and Margaret, two
     Middlesex justices, who sided with the conjurors, and
     forbade the execution of his warrant. Justice Fuller,
     however, having declared war against Moorfields'
     mountebanking, was inexorable, and committed the insurgents
     to the house of correction; from whence, after three hours'
     durance vile, they were released by three other magistrates.

     Kennington Common was also a favourite spot for this odd
     variety of sports. It was here that Mr. Mawworm encountered
     the brick-bats of his congregation, and had his “pious tail”
      illuminated with the squibs and crackers of the unre-
     generate.

     This fair commenced in the New River pipe-fields, and
     continued in a direct line as far as the top of Elm Street,
     where it terminated. The equestrians always made a point of
     galloping their donkeys furiously past the house of
     correction!

no more; the Gooseberry Fairs * of Clerkenwell and Tottenham Court
Road, (the minor Newmarket and Doncaster of Donkey-racing!) are come to
a brick-and-mortary end.

     * “April 9, 1748.--At the Amphitheatrical Booth at Tottenham
     Court, on Monday next (being Easter Monday), Mr. French,
     designing to please all, in making his Country Wake complete
     by doubling the prizes given to be played for, as well as
     the sports, has engaged some of the best gamesters, Country
     against London, to make sides. For Cudgelling, a laced hat,
     value one pound five shillings, or one guinea in gold; for
     Wrestling, one guinea; Money for Boxing, besides Stage-
     money. And, to crown the diversion of the day, he gives a
     fine Smock to be jigged for by Northern Lasses against the
     Nymphs to the westward of St. Giles's Church--to be entered
     at the Royal Oak, in High Street, by Hob, Clerk of the
     Revels, or his deputy. The doors will be opened at eleven
     o'clock; the sport to begin at two. Cudgelling as usual
     before the prizes. Best seats, Two Shillings; Pit and First
     Gallery, One Shilling; Upper Gallery, Sixpence.”

     Mr. French advertises, May 12, 1748, at his booth at
     Tottenham Court, six men sewed up in sacks to run six times
     the length of the stage backwards and forwards for a prize,--
     a prize for wrestling and dancing to the pipe and tabor,--
     and the gladiator's dance. He also kept the race-course in
     Tothill-Fields, August 4, 1749.

     “August 8, 1730.--At Reynold's Great Theatrical Booth, in
     Tottenham Court, during the time of the Fair, will be
     presented a Comical, Tragical, Farcical Droll, called The
     Rum Duke and the Queer Duke, or a Medley of Mirth and
     Sorrow. To which will be added a celebrated Operatical
     Puppet-Show, called Punch's Oratory, or the Pleasures of the
     Town; containing several diverting passages, particularly a
     very elegant dispute between Punch and another great Orator
     (Henley?); Punch's Family Lecture, or Joan's Chimes on her
     tongue to some tune. No Wires--all alive! With
     entertainments of Daneing by Monsieur St. Luce, and others.”

High-smoking chimneys and acres of tiles shut out the once pleasant
prospect, and their Geffray Gambados (now grey-headed jockeys!) sigh,
amidst macadamisation and dust, for the green sward where, in their
hey-day of life, they witched the fair with noble donkeyship!--Croydon
(famous for roast-pork, and new walnuts ), Harley-Bush, and Barnet
fairs, are as yet unsuppressed; but the demons of mischief--[the
English populace (their _Majesty the Many!_) are notorious for this
barbarity]--have

     * “At the London Spaw (1754), during the accustomed time of
     the Welsh Fair, will be the usual entertainment of Roast
     Pork, with the fam'd soft-flavor'd Spaw Ale, and every other
     liquor of the neatest and best kinds, agreeable
     entertainments, and inviting usage from the Publick's most
     obedient servant, George Dowdell.”

     In the year 1795 a Dutch Fair was held at Frogmore, when a
     grand fête was given by King George the Third, in
     celebration of his Queen's birth-day, and the recent arrival
     of the Princess of Wales. A number of dancers were dressed
     as haymakers; Mr. Byrne and his company danced the Morris-
     dance; and Savoyards, in character, assisted at the
     merriments. Feats of horsemanship were exhibited by
     professors from the Circus; and booths erected for good
     eating and drinking, and the sale of toys, work-bags,
     pocket-books, and fancy articles. Munden, Rock, and Incledon
     diverted the company with their mirth and music; and Majesty
     participated in the general joy. The Royal Dutch Fair lasted
     two days, and was under the tasteful direction of the
     Princess Elizabeth.

totally destroyed the magnificent oak that made Fairlop Fair * a
favourite rendezvous with those who could afford a tandem, tax-cart,
or Tim-whisky. How often have we sat, and pirouetted too, under its
venerable shade.

May Fair (which began on May-day), during the early part of the
last century, was much patronised by the nobility and gentry. It had
nevertheless its Ducking Pond for the ruder class of holiday makers. **

     * By an act passed 3rd of 2nd Victoria (not Victoria for the
     Fair!) it was rendered unlawful to hold Fairlop Fair beyond
     the first Friday (“Friday's a dry day!”) in July. This was
     the handy work of the Barking Magistrates.

     “And when I walk abroad let no dog bark!”

     ** “June 25, 1748.--At May Fair Ducking Pond, on Monday
     next, the 27th inst., Mr. Hooton's Dog Nero (ten years old,
     with hardly a tooth in his head to hold a duck, but well
     known for his goodness to all that have seen him hunt) hunts
     six ducks for a guinea, against the bitch called the Flying
     Spaniel, from the Ducking Pond on the other side of the
     water, who has beat all she has hunted against, excepting
     Mr. Hooton's Good-Blood. To begin at two o'clock.

     “Mr. Hooton begs his customers won't take it amiss to pay
     Twopence admittance at the gate, and take a ticket, which
     will be allowed as Cash in their reckoning. No person
     admitted without a tickct, that such as are not liked may be
     kept out.

     “Note. Right Lincoln Ale.”

     Apropos of other mirthful rendezvous.

     “A new Ducking Pond to be opened on Monday next at
     Lirneiouse Cause, being the 11th August, where four dogs
     are to play for Four Pounds, and a lamb to be roasted whole,
     to be given away to all gentlemen sportsmen. To begin at Ten
     o'clock in the forenoon.”--Postman, 7th August 1707.

     “Erith Diversion, 24th May 1790.--This is to acquaint the
     publick, that on Whit-Monday, and during the holidays, the
     undermentioned diversions will take place. First, a new Hat
     to be run for by men; a fine Ham to be played for at Trap-
     ball; a pair of new Pumps to be jumped for in a sack; a
     large Plumb-pudding to be sung for; a Guinea to be cudgelled
     for,--with smoking, grinning through a collar, with many
     other diversions too tedious to mention.

     “N.B. A Ball in the evening as usual.”

     But what are the hopes of man! A press-gang (this is the
     freedom of the press with a vengeance! this the boasted
     monarchy of the middle classes!) interrupted and put an end
     to these water-side sports.

     Kent has long been renowned for strong muscles and strong
     stomachs!

     “Bromley in Kent, July 14, 1726.--A strange eating worthy is
     to perform a Tryal of Skill on St. James's Day, which is
     the day of our Fair for a wager of Five Guineas,--viz.: he
     is to eat four pounds of bacon, a bushel of French beans,
     with two pounds of butter, a quartern loaf, and to drink a
     gallon of strong beer.”

     The old proverb of “buttering bacon” here receives
     farinaceous illustration!

“In a fore one-pair room, on the west side of Sun-court,” a Frenchman
exhibited, during the time of May Fair, the “astonishing strength of the
'Strong Woman,' * his wife.”

“She first let down her hair, of a length descending to her knees, which
she twisted round the projecting part of a blacksmith's anvil, and then
lifted the ponderous weight from the floor. She also put her bare feet
on a red-hot salamander, without receiving the least injury.” May Fair
is now become the site of aristocratical dwellings, where a strong purse
is required to procure a standing. At Horn Fair, a party of humorists of
both sexes, counted in all the variety of Bull-Feather fashion, after
perambulating round Cuckold Point, startled the little quiet village
of Charlton on St. Luke's day, shouting their emulation, and blowing
voluntaries on rams' horns, in honour of their patron saint. Ned
Ward gives a curious picture of this odd ceremony,--and the press of
_Stonecutter Street_ (the worthy successor of _Aldermary Churchyard_)
has consigned it to immortality in two Broadsides ** inspired by the
Helicon of the Fleet,

     * This was probably Mrs. Alchorne, “who had exhibited as the
     Strong Woman” and died in Drury Lane in 1817, at a very
     advanced age. Madame also performed at Bartholomew Fair in
     1752.

     ** “A New Summons to all the Merry (Wagtail) Jades to attend
     at Horn Fair”--“A New Summons to Horn Fair” both without a
     date.

                   “Around whose brink

          Bards rush in droves, like cart-horses to drink,

          Dip their dark beards among its streams so clear,

          And while they gulp it, wish it ale or beer,”

and illustrated by the Cruikshank of his day. Mile-end Green, in ancient
times, had its popular exhibitions;--

          “Lord Pomp, let nothing that's magnificall,

          Or that may tend to London's graceful state,

          Be unperformed--as showes and solemne feastes,

          Watches in armour, triumphes, cresset-lightes,

          Bonefiers, belles, and peales of ordinance.

          And, Pleasure, see that plaies be published,

          Maie-games and maskes, with mirth and minstrelsie;

          Pageants and School-feastes, beares and puppit-plaies:

          Myselfe will muster upon Mile-end-greene,

          As though we saw, and feared not to be seene.”


And the royal town of Windsor, * and the racecourse in Tothill-Fields **
were not without their merriments.

     *  “The Three Lordes and Three Ladies of London,” 1590.

     ** “On Wednesday the 13th, at Windsor, a piece of plate is
     to be fought for at cudgels by ten men on a side, from,
     Berkshire and Middlesex. The next day a hat and feather to
     be fought for by ten men on a side, from the counties
     aforesaid. Ten Bargemen are to eat ten quarts of hasty-
     pudding, well buttered, but d----d hot! He that has done
     first to have a silver spoon of ten shillings value; and the
     second five shillings. And as they have anciently had the
     title of The Merry Wives of Windsor, six old women belonging
     to Windsor town challenge any six old women in the universe,
     (we need not, however, go farther than our own country) to
     out-scold them. The best in three heats to have a suit of
     head-cloths, and, (what old women generally want!) a pair of
     nut-crackers.”--Read's Journal, September 9, 1721.

     “According to Law. September 22, 1749.--On Wednesday next,
     the 27th inst., will be run for by Asses (I!) in Tothill
     Fields, a purse of gold, not exceeding the value of Fifty
     Pounds. The first will be entitled to the gold; the second
     to two pads; the third to thirteen pence halfpenny; the last
     to a halter fit for the neck of any ass in Europe. Each ass
     must be subject to the following articles

     “No person will be allowed to ride but Taylors and Chimney-
     sweepers; the former to have a cabbage-leaf fixed in his
     hat, the latter a plumage of white feathers; the one to use
     nothing but his yard-wand, and the other a brush.

     “No jockey-tricks will be allowed upon any consideration.

     “No one to strike an ass but the rider, lest he thereby
     cause a retrograde motion, under a penalty of being ducked
     three times in the river.

     “No ass will be allowed to start above thirty years old, or
     under ten months, nor any that has won above the value of
     fifty pounds.

     “No ass to run that has been six months in training,
     particularly above stairs, lest the same accident happen to
     it that did to one nigh a town ten miles from London, and
     that for reasons well known to that place.

     “Each ass to pay sixpence entrance, three farthings of which
     are to be given to the old clerk of the race, for his due
     care and attendance.

     “Every ass to carry weight for inches, if thought proper.”

     Then follow a variety of sports, with “an ordinary of proper
     victuals, particularly for the riders, if desired.”

     “Run, lads, run! there is rare sport in Tothill Fields!”




CHAPTER V.

|Southwark Fair ranked next to St. Bartholomew, and comprehended all the
attractions for which its rival on the other side of the water was so
famous. On the 13th day of September 1660, John Evelyn visited it.
“I saw,” said this entertaining sight-seer, “in Southwark, at St.
Margaret's Faire, monkies and apes daunce, and do other feates of
activity on ye high rope: they were gallantly clad _à la mode_, went
upright, saluted the company, bowing and pulling off their hats;
they saluted one another with as good a grace as if instructed by a
dauncing-master; they turned heels over head with a basket having eggs
in it, without breaking any; also with lighted candles in their hands,
and on their heads, without extinguishing them, and with vessels of
water, without spilling a drop. I also saw an Italian wench daunce and
performe all the tricks of ye tight rope to admiration. All the Court
went to see her. Likewise here was a man who tooke up a piece of iron
cannon, of about 400 lbs weight, with the haire of his head onely.”
 September 15, 1698, the curious old narrator paid it another visit. “The
dreadful earthquake in Jamaica this summer” (says he) “was prophanely
and ludicrously represented in a puppet-play, or some such lewd pastime
in the fair of Southwark, wch caused the Queane to put downe that idle
and vicious mock shew.” The fair, however, revived, and outlived her
Majesty many merry years. How slept the authorities some seasons
ago, when Messrs. Mathews and Yates dramatised an “Earthquake” at the
Adelphi!

The Bowling Green in Southwark was the high 'Change of the Fair. Mr.
Fawkes, the conjuror, exhibited at his booth, over against the Crown
Tavern, near St. George's Church. Dramatic representations, music and
dancing, the humours of Punch and Harlequin, a glass of “good wine, and
other liquors,” were to be had at the several booths held at the “Golden
Horse-shoe,” * the “Half-Moon Inn,” ** and other well-known houses of
entertainment. Thither resorted Lee and Harper to delight the denizens
of Kent Street, Guy's Hospital, and St. Thomas's, with Guy of Warwick,
Robin Hood, the comical adventures of Little John and the Pindar's wife,
and the Fall of Phaëton! In July 1753, the Tennis Court and booths that
were on the Bowling Green, with some other buildings where the fair used
to be held, were pulled down; and shortly after, that pleasant Bowling
Green was converted into a potato and cabbage market!

     * “Joseph Parnes's Musiek Rooms, at the sign of the Whelp
     and Bacon, during Southwark Fair, are at the Golden Horse-
     Shoe, next to the King's Bench, where you may be entertained
     with a variety of musick and dancing after the Scotch,
     Italian, and English ways. A Girl dances with sharp swords,
     the like not in England.”--Temp. W. 3.

     “There is to be seen at Mr. Hocknes, at the Maremaid, near
     the King's Bench, in Southwark, during the time of the Fair,
     A Changeling Child, being A Living Skeleton, Taken by a
     Venetian Galley from a Turkish Vessel in the Archipelago.
     This was a fairy child, supposed to be born of Hungarian
     parents, but changed in the nursery; aged 9 years and more,
     not exceeding a foot and a half high. The legs and arms so
     very small, that they scarcely exceed the bigness of a man's
     thumb; and the face no bigger than the palm of one's hand.
     She is likewise a mere anatomy.”--Temp. W. 3.

     ** “Sept. 12, 1729.--At Reynold's Great Theatrical Booth, in
     the Half-Moon Inn, near the Bowling-Green, Southwark, during
     the Fair will be presented the Beggar's Wedding,--Southwark
     Fair, or the Sheep-Shearing,--an opera called Flora,--and
     The Humours of Harlequin.”

Southwark, or Lady Fair, has long since been suppressed. Thanks,
however, to the “great painter of mankind,” that we can hold it as often
as we please in our own breakfast-parlours and drawing-rooms! The works
of Hogarth are medicines for melancholy. If the mood be of Jacques's
quality, “a most humorous sadness,” it will revel in the master's whim;
if of a deeper tinge, there is the dark side of the picture for mournful
reflection. Though an unsparing satirist, probing vice and folly to the
quick, he has compassion for human frailty and sorrow. He is no vulgar
caricaturist, making merry with personal deformity; he paints wickedness
in its true colours, and if the semblance be hideous, the original, not
the copy, is to blame. His scenes are faithful transcripts of life, high
and low. He conducts us into the splendid saloons of fashion;--we pass
with him into the direst cells of want and misery. He reads a lesson to
idleness, extravagance, and debauchery, such as never was read before.
He is equally master of the pathetic and the ludicrous. He exhibits the
terrible passions, and their consequences, with almost superhuman
power. Every stroke of his pencil points a moral; every object, however
insignificant, has its meaning. His detail is marvellous, and bespeaks
a mind pregnant with illustration, an eye that nothing could escape.
Bysshe's Art of Poetry, the well-chalked tally, the map of the gold
mines, and the starved cur making off with the day's lean provision,
are in perfect keeping with the distressed poet's ragged finery, his
half-mended breeches, and all the exquisite minutiae of his garret. His
very wig, most picturesquely awry, is a happy symbol of poetical and
pecuniary perplexity. Of the same marking character are the cow's
horns, rising just above the little citizen's head, in the print of
“_Evening_,” telling a sly tale; while the _dramatis personae_ of
the Strollers' Barn, the flags, paint-pots, pageants, clouds, waves,
puppets, dark-lanterns, thunder, lightning, daggers, periwigs, crowns,
sceptres, salt-boxes, ghosts, devils, and tragedy queens exhibit such an
unique miscellany of wonders, that none but an Hogarth ever thought
of bringing together. Turn, by way of contrast, to “Gin Lane,” and its
frightful accompaniments!

Hogarth went quite as much to see Southwark Fair and its fun (for which
he had a high relish) as to transfer them to his canvass. 'Tis a holiday
with the mountebanks, and he has caught them in all their grimacerie and
glory. A troop of strollers, belonging to Messrs. Cibber and Bullock,
attitudinising and making mouths, as a prologue to the “Fall of
Bajazet,” are suddenly surprised into the centre of gravity by the
breaking down of their scaffold, and Kings, Queens, Turks, tumblers,
monkeys, and Merry Andrews descend topsy-turvy into a china-shop below!
At Lee and Harper's grand booth are the celebrated Wooden Horse of
Troy, the Temptation of Adam and Eve, and Punch's Opera. A fire-eater
is devouring his red-hot element, and his periwigged Jack-Pud-ding is
distributing his quack nostrums. A tragedy hero has a brace of bailiffs
in his train; and a prize-fighter, with his hare sconce dotted with
sable patches, and a nose that might successfully bob for black-beetles
against a brick wall, mounted on a blind bone-setter, perambulates the
fair, challenging the wide world to mortal combat!

These, with a pretty female drummer of amazonian proportions; an
equilibrist swinging on the slack rope; a juggler with his cups and
balls; a pickpocket and a couple of country boobies; a bag-piper; a
dancing dog; a dwarf drummer, and a music-grinder, make up a dramatis
jiersono only to be equalled by the Strolling Players * and the March to
Finchley.

     * Pannard, a minor French poet, whom Marmontel styles the La
     Fontaine of Vaudeville, has written some verses admirably
     descriptive of an opera behind the scenes.

          “J'ai vu le soleil et la lune
          Qui tenoient des discours en l'air:
          J'ai vu le terrible Neptune
          Sortir tout frisé de la mer.
          “J'ai vu l'aimable Cythéré
          Au doux regard, au teint fleuri,
          Dans un machine entourée
          D'amours natifs de Chambérie.”

     And, after having seen a great number of other things
     equally curious, he concludes with,--

          “J'ai vu des ombres très-palpables Se trémousser aux bords
          du Styx;
          J'ai vu l'enfer et tous les diables A quinze pieds du
          Paradis,”

     Some years ago, a strolling company at Ludlow, in
     Shropshire, printed a playbill nearly as large as their
     drop-scene. It announced “The Doleful History of King Lear
     and his Three Daughters, with the Merry Conceits of his
     Majesty's Fool, and the valorous exploits of the Duke of
     Gloucester's Bastard; all written by one William
     Shakespeare, a mighty great poet, who was born in
     Warwickshire, and held horses for gentlemen at the sign of
     the Red Bull in St. John's Street, where was just such
     another playhouse as this (I!!), at which we hope the
     company of all friends round the Wrekin.

          “All you who would wish to cry or laugh,
          Had better spend your money here than in the alehouse by
          half;
          And if you wish more about these things to know,
          Come at six o'clock to the barn in the High Street, Ludlow,
          Where, presented by live actors, the whole may be seen,
          So Vivat Rex, God save the King, not forgetting the Queen.”

     Just as a strolling actor at Newcastle had advertised his
     benefit, a remarkable stranger, no less than the Prince
     Annamaboo arrived, and placarded the town that he granted
     audiences at a shilling a-head. The stroller, without delay,
     waited on the proprietor of the Prince, and for a good round
     sum prevailed on him to command his Serene Highness to
     exhibit his august person on his benefit night. The bills of
     the day announced, that between the acts of the comedy
     Prince Annumaboo would give a lively representation of the
     scalping operation* sound the Indian war-whoop in all its
     melodious tones, practise the tomahawk exercise, and dine à
     la cannibal. An intelligent mob were collected to witness
     these interesting exploits. At the conclusion of the third
     act, his Highness marched forward flourishing his tomahawk,
     and shouting, “Ha, ha!--ho, ho!” Next entered a man Avith
     his face blacked, and a piece of bladder fastened to his
     head with gum; the Prince, with an enormous carving-knife,
     began the scalping part of the entertainment, which he
     performed in a truly imperial style, holding up the piece of
     bladder as a token of triumph. Next came the war-whoop, an
     unearthly combination of discordant sounds; and lastly, the
     banquet, consisting of raw beef-steaks, which he rolled up
     into rouleaus, and devoured with right royal avidity. Having
     finished his delicate repast, he wielded his tomahawk in an
     exulting manner, bellowed “Ha, ha!--ho, ho!” and made his
     exit. The beneficiare strolling through the marketplace the
     following day, spied the most puissant Prince Annama-boo
     selling pen-knives, scissors, and quills, in the character
     of a Jew pedlar. “What!” said the astonished Lord Townley,
     “my Prince, is it you? Are you not a pretty circumcised
     little scoundrel to impose upon us in this manner?” Moses
     turned round, and with an arch look, replied, “Princh be d--d!
     I vash no Princh; I vash acting, like you. Your troop
     vash Lords and Ladies last night; and to-night dey vil be
     Kings, Prinches, and Emperors! I vash hum pugs, you vash
     humpugs, all vash humpugs!”

There is a fair,--an extraordinary one,--the holding of which depends
not on the caprice of magisterial wiggery. Jack Frost--a bold fellow!
for he has taken Marlborough and Wellington by the nose--twice or thrice
in a century proclaims his fair. No sooner is the joyful tidings bruited
abroad, than the dutiful sons and daughters of Old Father Thames flock
to his paternal bosom, which, being icy cold, they warm by roasting
an ox upon it, and then transfer to its glassy surface the turmoil,
traffic, and monstrosities of dry land.

Evelyn has given an interesting description of Frost Fair in 1683-4.
This amusing chronicler of passing events possessed more than Athenian
curiosity. He entered the penetralia of the court of King Charles the
Second; and while he whispered in his closet pathetic Jeremiads over
its immorality, he shocked his averted vision day after day with its
impurities--still peeping! still praying! For all and sundry of the
merry Monarch's “misses,” and for poor _Nelly_ (by far the best of
them) in particular, he expressed a becoming horror in his private
meditations; yet his outward bearing towards them indicated no such
compunctious visitings. He was an excellent tactician. He crept into the
privy councils of the regicides, and, _mirabile dictu!_ retired from the
enemy's camp in a whole skin; and while fortunes were being confiscated,
and heads were falling on all sides, he kept his own snug in his pocket,
and erect on his shoulders. Monarchy, Anarchy, High Church, Low Church,
No Church, Catholicism, Anything-ism, Every-thing-ism.! plain John (he
declined a baronetcy) passed over the red-hot ploughshares of political
and religious persecution unsinged. And we rejoice at his good luck; for
whether he treat of London's great Plague or Fire, the liaisons of his
“kind master” King Charles the Second, the naughtiness of Nelly and her
nymphs, or the ludicrous outbreaks of Southwark, St. Bartholomew, and
Frost Fairs, he is a delightful, gentlemanly old gossiper!

On the 1st of January 1683-4, the cold was so intense, that booths (a
novel spectacle) were erected on the Thames, and Jack Frost proclaimed
his earliest recorded fair.

“I went crosse the Thames,” says Evelyn, January 9, 1683-4, “on the ice,
which now became so thick as to bear not only streetes of boothes, in
which they roasted meate, and had divers shops of wares, quite acrosse
as in a towne, but coaches, carts, and horses passed over. So I went
from Westminster Stay res to Lambeth, and din'd with the Archbishop.
I walked over the ice (after dinner) from Lambeth Stayres to the
Horseferry.”

“The Thames (Jany 16) was filled with people and tents, selling all
sorts of wares as in a citty. The frost (Jany 24) continuing more and
more severe, the Thames before London was still planned with boothes
in formal streetes, all sorts of trades and shops furnished and full
of commodities, even to a printing-presse, where the people and ladyes
tooke a fancy to have their names printed on the Thames. This humour
tooke so universally, that 'twas estimated the printer gain'd 51. a-day,
for printing a line only, at sixpence a name, besides what he got by
_ballads_, &c. Coaches plied from Westminster to the Temple, and from
several other staires to and fro, as in the streetes, sleds, sliding
with skeates, a bull-baiting, horse and coach races, puppet playes and
interludes, cookes, tipling, and other lewd places, so that it seem'd to
be a bacchanalian triumph, or carnival on the water.”

“It began to thaw (Feb. 5), but froze againe. My coach crossed from
Lambeth to the Horseferry at Millbank, Westminster. The booths were
almost all taken downe; but there was first a map, or landskip, * cut
in copper, representing all the manner of the camp, and the several
actions, sports, and pastimes thereon, in memory of so signal a frost.”

     * These “Landskips” are interesting, and very difficult to
     be obtained. Thirteen, representing the Frost Fairs of 1683,
     --1715-16,--and 1739-40, now lie before us. “An exact and
     lively Mapp or Representation of Booths, and all the
     varieties of Showes and Humours upon the Ice on the River
     of Thames, by London, during that memorable Frost in the
     35th yeare of the reigne of his Sacred Maty King Charles the
     2d. Anno Dni 1683. With an Alphabetical Explanation of the
     most remarkable figures,” exhibits “The Temple Staires, with
     people going upon the ice to Temple Street--The Duke of
     Yorkes Coffee House--The Tory Booth--The Booth with a
     Phoenix on it, and Insured as long as the Foundation Stand--
     The Roast Beefe Booth--The Half-way House--The Beare Garden
     Shire Booth--The Musiek Booth--The Printing Booth--The
     Lottery Booth--The Horne Tavern Booth--The Temple Garden,
     with Crowds of People looking over the wall--The Boat
     drawnc with a Hors--The Drum Boat--The Boat drawne upon
     vehiceles--The Bull-baiting--The Chair sliding in the Ring--
     The Boyes Sliding--The Nine Pinn Playing--The sliding on
     Scates--The Sledge drawing Coales from the other side of the
     Thames--The Boyes climbing up the Tree in the Temple Garden
     to sec ye Bull Baiting--The Toy Shoops--London Bridge.”

     Another of these “lively Mapps” has a full-length portrait
     of Erra Pater, referred to by Hudibras,

          “In mathematics he was greater
          Than Tycho Brahe or Erra Pater”--
          prophesying in the midst of the fair.
          “Old Erra Pater, or his rambling Ghost,
          Prognosticating of this long strong Frost,
          Some Ages past, said. yl ye Ice-bound Thames
          Shou'd prove a Theatre for Sports and Games,
          Her Wat'ry Green be turn'd into a Bare,
          For Men a Citty seem, for Booths a Faire;
          And now this Stragling Sprite is once more come
          To visit Mortalls and foretel their doom:
          When Maids grow modest, ye Dissenting crew
          Become all Loyal, the Falsehearted true,
          Then you may probably, and not till then,
          Expect in England such a Frost agen.

In 1715-16 Jack Frost paid Old Father Thames a second visit. * But
whether maids had grown modest, dissenters loyal, and false-hearted men
and true,

     *  “The best prospect of the frozen Thames with the booths
     on it, as taken from the Temple Stairs ye 2O day of January
     1715-6, by C. Woodfield,” is rich in fun, and a capital
     piece of art. We owe great obligations to “Mr. Joshua Bangs”
      for the following:--

     “Mr. Joshua Bangs.

     Printed at Holme's and Broad's Booth, at the Sign of the
     Ship, against Old Swan Stairs, where is the Only Real
     Printing Press on the Frozen Thames, January the 14th, 1715-
     6.

          “Where little Wherries once did use to ride,
          And mounting Billows dash'd against their side,
          Now Booths and Tents are built, whose inward Treasure
          Affords to many a one Delight and Pleasure;
          Wine, Beer, Cakes, hot Custards, Beef and Pies,
          Upon the Thames are sold; there, on the Ice
          You may have any
          Thing to please the Sight,
          Your Names are Printed, tho' you cannot write;
          Therefore pray lose no Time, but hasten hither,
          To drink a Glass with Broad and Holmes together.”

     'Several “Landskips” were published of this Frost Fair, in
     which are shown “York Buildings Water Works--A Barge on a
     Mountain of Ice--A drinking Tent on a Pile of Ice--
     Theodore's Printing Booth--C.'s Piratical Song Booth--Cat in
     the Basket Booth--King's Head Printing Booth--The Cap Musiek
     Booth--The Hat Musick Booth--Dead Bodies floating in ye
     Channel--Westminster Bridge, wh ye Works demolish'd--Skittle
     Playing and other Diversions--Tradesmen hiring booths of ye
     Watermen--A Number of confus'd Barges and Boats--Frost
     Street from Westminster Hall to the Temple.

          “This transient scene, a Universe of Glass,
          Whose various forms are pictur'd as they pass,
          Here future Ages may wth wonder view,
          And wl they scarce could think, acknowledge true.

     Printed on the River Thames in ye month of January 1740.

          “Behold the liquid Thames now frozen o'er
          That lately ships of mighty Burthen bore;
          Here Watermen, for want to row in boats,
          Make use of Bowze to get them Pence and Groats.

     Frost Fair. Printed upon the Ice on the River Thames, Jan.
     23, 1739-40.”

          “The bleak North-East, from rough Tartarian Shores,
          O'er Europe's Realms its freezing Rigour pours,
          Stagnates the flowing Blood in Human Veins,
          And binds the silver Thames in ley Chains.
          Their usual Courses Rivulets refrain,
          And ev'ry Pond appears a Glassy Plain;
          Streets now appear where Water was before,
          And Thousands daily walk from Shore to Shore.

     Frost Fair. Printed upon the River Thames when Frozen, Jan.
     the 28.1739-40.”

          “The View of Frost Fair, Jan? 1739-40.
          Scythians of old, like us remov'd,
          In tents thro' various climes they rov'd;
          We, bolder, on the frozen Wave,
          To please your fancies toil and slave;
          Here a strange group of figures rise,
          Sleek beaus in furs salute your eyes;
          Stout Soldiers, shiv'ring in their Bed,
          Attack the Gin and Gingerbread;
          Cits with their Wives, and Lawyers' Clerks,
          Gamesters and Thieves, young Girls and Sparks.
          This View to Future Times shall
          Show The Medley Scene you Visit now.”

according to old _Erra Pater's_ prognostication in 1663, is a question;
and in 1739-40 * he honoured him with a third, which was no less joyous
than the preceding two. In 1788-9, the Thames was completely frozen over
below London Bridge. Booths were erected on the ice; and puppet-shows,
wild beasts, bear-baiting, turnabouts, pigs and sheep roasted, exhibited
the various amusements of Bartholomew Fair multiplied and improved. From
Putney Bridge down to Redriff was one continued scene of jollity during
this seven weeks' saturnalia. The last Frost Fair was celebrated in the
year 1814. The frost commenced on 27th December 1813, and continued to
the 5th February 1814. *

     * “The River Thames (4th Feby 1814) between London and
     Blackfriars Bridges was yesterday about noon, a perfect
     Dutch Fair. Kitchen fires and furnaces were blazing,
     roasting and boiling in every direction; while animals, from
     a sheep to a rabbit, and a goose to a lark, turned on
     numberless spits. The inscriptions on the several booths and
     lighters were variously whimsical, one of which ran thus:--
     This Shop to Let. N.B. It is charged with no Land Tax or
     even Ground Tient! Several lighters, lined with baize, and
     decorated with gay streamers, were converted into
     coffeehouses and taverns. About two o'clock a whole sheep
     was roasted on the ice, and cut up, under the inviting
     appellation of Lapland Mutton, at one shilling a slice!”

There was a grand walk, or mall, from Blackfriars Bridge to London
Bridge, that was appropriately named _The City Road_, and lined on each
side with booths of all descriptions. Several printing presses were
erected, and at one of these an orange-coloured standard was hoisted,
with “_Orange Boven_” printed in large characters. There were E O and
Rouge et Noir tables, tee-totums and skittles; concerts of rough music,
viz. salt-boxes and rolling-pins, gridirons and tongs, horns, and
marrow-bones and cleavers. The carousing booths were filled with merry
parties, some dancing to the sound of the fiddle, others sitting round
blazing fires smoking and drinking. A printer's devil bawled out to the
spectators, Now is your time, ladies and gentlemen,--now is your time to
support the freedom of the press! * Can the press enjoy greater liberty?
Here you find it working in the middle of the Thames!” And calling upon
his operatical powers to second his eloquence, he, with “vocal voice
most vociferous,” thus out-vociferated e'en sound itself,--

               Siste Viator! if sooner or later

          You travel as far as from here to Jerusalem,

          Or live to the ages of Parr or Methusalem,--

               On the word of old Wynkyn,

               And Caxton, I'm thinking,

               Tho' I don't wear a clothes--

               Brush under my nose,

               Or sweep my room

               With my beard, like a broom,

          I prophecy truly as wise Erra Pater,

          You won't see again sick a wonder of Natur!”


A “Swan of Thames,” too--an Irish swan!--whose abdominal regions looked
as if they were stuffed with halfpenny doggrel,

     * The following is one among many specimens of Frost Fair
     verse in 1813-14:--“Printed on the River Thames.

          Behold the River Thames is frozen o'er,
          Which lately ships of mighty burden bore;
          Now different arts and pastimes here you see,
          But printing claims the superiority.”

entertained a half-frozen audience, who gave him shake for shake with


THE METRICAL, MUSICAL, COLD, AND COMICAL HUMOURS OF FROST FAIR.

               Open the door to me, my love,

                   Prithee open the door,--

               Lift the latch of your h'gant thatch,

               Your pleasant room, attic! or what a rheumatic

                   And cold I shall catch!

               And then, Miss Clark, between you and your spark

                   'Twill be never a match!

               I've been singing and ringing, and rapping and tapping,

               And coughing and sneezing, and wheezing and freezing,

                   While you have been napping,

               Miss Clark, by the Clock of St. Mark,

                   Twenty minutes and more!

               Little Jack Frost the Thames has cross'd

               In a surtout of frieze, as smart as you please!--

                   There's a Bartlemy Fair and a thorough--

               Slopsellers, sailors, three Tooley Street tailors,

               All the élite of St. Thomas's Street,

                   The Mint, and the Fleet!


               The bear's at Polito's jigging his jolly toes;

               Mr. Punch, with his hooked nose and hunch;

               Patrick O'Brien, of giants the lion;

               And Simon Paap, that sits in his lap;

               The Lady that sews, and knits her hose,

               And mends her clothes, and rubs her nose,

               And comes and goes, without fingers and toes!


               You may take a slice of roast beef on the ice;

               At the Wellington Tap, and Mother Red-cap,

               The stout runs down remarkably brown!

               To the Thimble and Thistle, the Pig and Whistle,

               Worthy Sir Felix has sent some choice relics

               Of liquor, I'm told, to keep out the cold!

               If you 've got a sweet tooth, there 's the gingerbread

                        booth--

               To the fife and the 

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