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bombast. * 'Twas from the doctor's method of using such speeches at markets and fairs, that in aftertimes those that imitated the like humorous, jocose language were styled Merry Andrews, a term much in vogue on our stages."

No wonder that so great a scholar and ingenious a man should have left disciples who would emulate his fame, and in two centuries produce so illustrious a person as the mountebank of Hammersmith, immortalized in the Spectator :'"There is scarcely a city in Great Britain but has one of this tribe who takes it into his protection, and on the market-day harangues the good people of the place with aphorisms and receipts. You may depend upon it he comes not there for his own private interest, but out of a particular affection to the town. I remember one of these public-spirited artists at Hammersmith, who told his audience that he had been born and bred there, and that, having a special regard for the place of his nativity, he was determined to make a present of five shillings to as many as would accept of it. The whole crowd stood agape, and ready to take the doctor at his word; when, putting his hand into a long bag, as every one was expecting his crown-piece, he drew out a handful of little packets, each of which he informed the spectators was constantly sold at five shillings and sixpence, but that he would bate the odd five shillings to every inhabitant of that place the whole assembly immediately closed with this generous offer, and took off all his physic, after the doctor had made them vouch for one another that there were no foreigners among them, but that they were all Hammersmith men." Alas! who could find a mountebank at Hammersmith now? We must take the physic without the jest. Newspapers have annihilated the mountebank. Advertisements usurp the office of the Merry Andrew. And thus we flee to Morison's

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pills. Was there more credulity in those times when, after a trembling of the earth, an itinerant professor was eminently successful in the sale of a medicine "very good against an earthquake?" We have as much; but the form of the thing is changed.

The morris-dancers went out before the mountebanks. London has been no place for them for two centuries. They still linger in the midland villages; but the tabor and bells have not set foot in London for many a year. The greatest morris-dancer upon record was Will Kemp, the Liston of his day, who in 1599 danced the entire way from London to Norwich; and moreover wrote a book about his dancing, which a learned body has lately republished. The opening passage of this curious pamphlet is descriptive of a state of society such as exists not amongst us now. Kemp was a person of high celebrity in his profession, and respectable in his private life. Imagine such an actor making a street exhibition at the present day, and taking sixpences and groats amidst hearty prayers and God-speeds. There is something more frank and cordial in this scene than would be compatible with our refinements.

"The first Monday in Lent, the close morning promising a clear day (attended on by Thomas Sly, my taborer, William Bee, my servant, and George Sprat, appointed for my overseer that I should take no other ease but my prescribed order), myself, that's I, otherwise called Cavaliero Kemp, head master of morricedancers, high head-borough of heighs, and only tricker of your trill-lilles and best bell-shangles between Sion and Mount Surrey,* began frolickly to foot it from the Right Honorable the Lord Mayor's of London towards the Right Worshipful (and truly bountiful) Master Mayor's of Norwich.

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My setting forward was somewhat before seven in the morning; my taborer struck up merrily; and as fast as kind people's thronging together would give me leave, through London I leapt. By the way many good old people, and divers others of younger years, of mere kindness gave me bowed sixpences and groats, blessing me with their hearty prayers and God-speeds.

"Being past White Chapel, and having left fair London with all that northeast suburb before named, multitudes of Londoners left not me; but, either to keep a custom which many hold, that Mile-end is no walk without a recreation at Stratford Bow with cream and cakes, or else for love they bear toward me, or perhaps to make themselves merry if I should chance (as many thought) to give over my morrice within a mile of Mile-end; however, many a thousand brought me to Bow, where I rested awhile from dancing, but had small rest with those that would have urg'd me to drinking. But, I warrant you, Will Kemp was wise enough to their full cups kind thanks was my return, with gentlemanlike protestations, as 'Truly, sir, I dare not.'

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Kemp was a player of Shakspere's theatre-a privileged man sanctioned by the Lord Chamberlain's licence-welcomed into good society-not hunted about from town to town under the terrors of the laws against vagabonds. During the reign of Elizabeth any baron of the realm might license a company of players; but in the first year of her successor this questionable privilege was removed, and "interlude players, minstrels, jugglers, and bear-wards," were left to the full penalties which awaited "idle persons." While the people, however, were willing to encourage them, it was not very easy for statutes to put them down; and if there were fewer licensed players, the number of unlicensed, who travelled about with motions or puppet-shows, were prodigiously increased. The streets of London appear to have swarmed with motions. They were sometimes called

* Sion near Brentford, and Mount Surrey by Norwich.

drolleries. The poor Italian boy who travels to London from his native Apennines, and picks up a few daily pence with his monkey or his mouse, calls his exhibition his comedy. But the puppet-showman, in the palmy days of itinerancy, had a very good comedy to exhibit, which modern farce and pantomime have not much improved upon. The puppet actors, according to Ben Jonson, lived in baskets, and they "were a civil company." 'They offer not to fleer or jeer, nor break jests, as the great players do." Their master was "the mouth of them all." But in the hands of a clever mouth their satire and burlesque must have been irresistible. Jonson has given us a fair specimen of the burlesque in his own puppet-show of 'Hero and Leander.' Old Pepys did not like the puppetshow; but that is no great matter from the man who calls A Midsummer Night's Dream' " the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life." We believe that they were very good puppets; and the classical story very much improved by being made "a little easy and modern for the times." The writer of the motion thus explains the scene and the characters :-"As for the Hellespont, I imagine our Thames here; and then Leander I make a dyer's son about Puddle-wharf; and Hero a wench o' the Bank-side, who going over one morning to Old Fish Street, Leander spies her land at Trig-stairs, and falls in love with her. Now do I introduce Cupid, having metamorphosed himself into a drawer, and he strikes Hero in love with a pint of sherry." This was rivalled two centuries afterwards by the immortal show-woman of the Round Tower at Windsor, who began her explanation of the old tapestry whose worsted told this tragedy of true love, with the startling announcement of "Hero was a nun,” and ended with," Leander's body was picked up by his Majesty's ship the Britannia, and carried into Gibraltar."

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The puppet-show continued to be a real street sight, not only for children, but for "people of quality," in the reign of Anne. Mr. Powell placed his show under the Piazzas of Covent Garden; and the sexton of St. Paul's Church complained to the Spectator,' that when the bell was ringing for daily morning prayers, it was deemed a summons to the puppet-show, and not to the church. The town, according to the same authority, was divided between the attractions of Rinaldo and Armida at the Italian Opera, and Whittington and his Cat in Mr. Powell's exhibition. Powell was an innovator; for, whilst his contemporary puppet-show managers represented the Old Creation of the World,' and 'Noah's Flood,' after the fashion in which the puppet-shows continued the attractions of the ancient mysteries and moralities, Powell introduced a pig to dance a minuet with Punch. All the old fine things have perished. Where can we now go to see "a new motion of the City of Nineveh, with Jonas and the Whale," which were once to be daily found at Fleet Bridge?* Punch and the Fantoccini are the only living representations of the puppets. But Punch is still with us and of us. The police legislators tried to exterminate him, but he was too mighty for them. He is the only genuine representative which remains of the old stage. When we hear his genial cry at the corner of some street, and note the chuckle of unforced merriment which comes up from the delighted crowd, we know that he has passed the mortal struggle with the fiend, and that he has conquered him, as the Vice of old conquered. Punch has, however, lost something of his primitive

* Jonson's 'Every Man out of his Humour.'

simplicity. We are not quite sure that the dog is genuine,-but that may be tolerated. There are a great many societies formed amongst us for reviving things which the world had unwisely agreed to forget; and we are not without our hopes that there may be room for an association that would restore us the genuine puppet-show. It is an objection, however, that there is not much left of the black-letter literature of the puppets. Punch in his present shape is probably Italian. From Italy come the puppets that perform the most diverting antics upon a board, to the sound of pipe and drum. But these were once genuine English. We have put together in our engraving the exhibitor of dancing dolls, such as he is represented in Hogarth's 'Southwark Fair,' and the Italian stroller of our own day. Mr. Smith, the late keeper of the prints in the British Museum, complains, in his Cries of London,' that the streets are infested with these Italian boys; and yet he gives us a most spirited etching of one of them. Mr. Smith thought it necessary to be solemn and sarcastic when he had pen in hand; and in that curious farrago Nollekens and his Times,' he is perfectly scandalized that the old sculptor enjoyed Punch. He gravely adds, "In this gratification, however, our sculptor did not stand alone; for I have frequently seen, when I have stood in the crowd, wise men laugh at the mere squeaking of Punch, and have heard them speak of his cunning pranks with the highest ecstasy." We are glad to find, upon such grave testimony, that the race of wise men is not extinct.

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We have some fears that the immigration of Italian boys is declining. We do not see the monkey and the white mice so often as we could wish to do. The ape-bearer is a personage of high antiquity. We have the ape on shoulder in a manuscript three hundred years earlier than the date of him who is

"Led captive still in chain

Till he renounce the Pope and Spain."

Let us cleave to old customs. What if the monkey of the streets be but a monkey, and his keeper know nothing of the peculiarities which distinguish the many families of his race! What if he be but the commonest of monkeys! Is he not amusing? Does he not come with a new idea into our crowded thoroughfares, of distant lands where all is not labour and traffic-where "a wilderness

of monkeys" sit in the green trees, and throw down the fruit to the happy savages below? And then these Italian boys themselves, with their olive cheeks and white teeth-they are something different from your true London boy of the streets, with his mingled look of cunning and insolence. They will show you their treasures with a thorough conviction that they are giving you pleasure; and if you deny the halfpenny, they have still a smile and a bon jour-for they all know that French is a more current coin than their own dialect. We fear the police is hard upon them. We would put in a word for them, in the same spirit of humanity with which our delightful Elia pleaded for the beggars. They, by the way, were amongst the street sights, and we may well be glad to have an opportunity for such quotation: :

"The mendicants of this great city were so many of her sights-her lions ; I can no more spare them than I could the cries of London. No corner of a street is complete without them. They are as indispensable as the ballad-singer; and, in their picturesque attire, as ornamental as the signs of old London. They were the standing morals, emblems, mementos, dial mottos, the spital sermons, the books for children, the salutary checks and pauses to the high and rushing tide of greasy citizenry

"Look

Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there."

Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the wall of Lincoln's Inn Garden, before modern fastidiousness had expelled them, casting up their ruined orbs to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible) of light, with their faithful dogguide at their feet;—whither are they fled? or into what corners, blind as themselves, have they been driven, out of the wholesome air and sun-warmth? ** These dim eyes have in vain explored, for some months past, a well-known figure, or part of the figure, of a man who used to glide his comely upper-half over the pavements of London, wheeling along with most ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood-a spectacle to natives, to foreigners, and to children. He was of a robust make, with a florid sailor-like complexion, and his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was a natural curiosity-a speculation to the scientific-a prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the mighty man brought down to his own level. The common cripple would despise his own pusillanimity, viewing the hale stoutness and mighty heart of this half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him: for the accident which brought him low took place during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling so long. He seemed earth-born-an Antæus—and to suck in fresh vigour from the soil which he neighboured. He was a grand fragment—as good as an Elgin marble. The nature which should have recruited his reft legs and thighs was not lost, but only retired into his upper parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremendous voice thundering and growling, as before an earthquake,-and casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake reviling a steed that had started at his portentous appearance. He seemed to want but his just stature to have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He was as the man-part of a centaur, from which the horse-half had been cloven in dire Lapithan controversy. He moved on as if he could have made shift with the yet half body-portion which was left him. The os sublime was not wanting; and he threw out yet a jolly countenance upon

the

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