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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, with

out 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 400lbs weight, with the haire of his head onely." September 15, 1692, 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

"Joseph Parnes's Musick 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."

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!

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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 minutiæ 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 persona of the Strollers' Barn, the flags, paint-pots, pageants, clouds, waves, puppets, dark-lanterns, thunder, lightning, daggers,

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