Backster, flitting in the evening grey, motioned him, in imagination, to enter. He made his way to the low-roofed side parlour, where were assembled a troop of showmen and conjurors. One fellow was busily employed in shaving a baboon,2 which he intended to exhibit as a fairy; and another was rasping the rough chin of a muzzled

John Backster kept the Mother Red Cap at Holloway in 1667. We are in possession of his very curious and rare Token, on the right side of which is engraved Mother Red Cap holding a Black Jack, with his initials of "J. B. His Half Peny:" and on the reverse, "John Backster, att-the Mother Read-Capp in hollway, 1667."

2 The baboon and the monkey were popular drolls in ancient times. The following lines occur in a work called "Ayres or Phantasticke Sprites for three Voices," published by Thomas Weelkes, "Batchelar of Musicke," 1608.

"The ape, the monkey, and baboon did meet, And breaking of their fast in Friday Street;

bear, that bore the operation with exemplary patience, sitting in an arm-chair, dressed in a check waiscoat and trowsers, in his professional character of an Ethiopian savage! A conjuror was looking at a large dragon-fly through a magnifying glass, to see how it would pass off for the great high German highter-flighter; and the proprietor of an aviary was supplying a young blackbird with an artificial comb and wattles of red velvet, to find a customer for him as the great cocky, or olla bird of the desert. A showman was mending the fractured bridge of Mr. Punch's nose, while his stage-manager tried a new tail on the devil.1

Two of them sware together solemnly
In their three natures was a sympathy.
'Nay,' quoth Baboon, I do deny that strain,
I have more knavery in me than you twain.'

"Why,' quoth the Ape, 'I have a horse at will
In Paris Garden, for to ride on still,

And there show tricks.'- Tush,' quoth the Monkey, 'I
For better tricks in great men's houses lie.'

"Tush!' quoth Baboon; when men do know I come, For sport from town and country they will run.'"

1 In some of the old plays the devil was dressed in a black suit, painted with flames, and made to shine. "Let the devil wear black for me, I'll have a suit of sables," says Hamlet. In the mysteries and moralities of an earlier date, he was decorated with a hairy dress, like a wild beast.

The master of the monster tea-kettle, who had recently been" up the spout," was tricking out his red-haired, strapping Dulcinea with peacocks' feathers, bits of stained glass, catskins, strips of coloured leather, and teaching her to sing some unintelligible gibberish, for the purpose of extracting from the Bartholomew Fair gulls a penny for the prodigious sight of a real wild Indian. A mermaid was in process of completion; a dog was practising a minuet, to see how his fifth leg fitted him; a learned pig1 was going through his lesson in numbers and cards; a cat of extraordinary intelligence was feeding a kitten with starch, to make it stand upright; and a monkey instructing an intellectual goose how to carry a

1 The earliest account that we have seen of a learned pig is in an old Bartholomew Fair bill, issued by Mr. Conjuror Fawkes, which exhibits the portrait of the swinish pundit holding a paper in his mouth, with the letter Y inscribed upon it. This "most amazing pig," which had a particularly curly tail, was the pattern of docility and sagacity: the "Pig of Knowledge, Being the only one ever taught in England." He was to be visited "at a Commodious Room, at the George, West-Smithfield, During the time of the Fair :" and the spectators were required to "See and Believe!" Three-pence was the price of admission to behold "This astonishing animal” perform with cards, money, and watches, &c. &c. The bill

pair of miniature milkpails. A poetical licensed victualler had just painted on his board, which was emblazoned with the sign of the Griffin and Hoop, the following lines in capitals,

"I, John Stubbs lyveth hear,

Sels goode Brandy, Gin, and Bere,

I maid mi borde a leetle whyder,

To let you nowe I sels goode Syder:"

the lines, like the liquors, being composed by the said John Stubbs! A giant,' well padded out, was adding some inches to his stature by a pair

concludes with the following apotheosis to the pig.

"A learned pig in George's reign,

To Æsop's brutes an equal boast;
Then let mankind again combine,

To render friendship still a toast."

Stella said that Swift could write sublimely upon a broomstick. Who ever, as the Methodists say, better "improved" a pig? Except by roasting it! In 1732, Mr. Fawkes exhibited a "learned goose" opposite the George Inn, West-Smithfield.

I Giants have been " At Home" not at fairs only. Og, King of Bashan, was more than twelve English feet in height. Goliah was about nine feet nine inches high—or eleven feet, according to some commentators. The Emperor Maximinus is said to have been nine feet. Turner, the naturalist, mentions having seen on the Brazil coast a race of gigantic savages, one of whom measured twelve feet! And Monsieur Thevet, in his description of America, published at Paris in 1575,

of German hogloshes, with extra high heels; a fresh water sailor, with one eye, and one leg, had a seal that exhaled an odour "most ancient and fish-like;" a ballad-singer was whitening his head with chalk,' and several poor Italian boys, with tortoises, squirrels, monkeys, and white mice, were jabbering away their patois in a corner with great animation. One lively little fellow, the lion of

declares that he saw and measured the skeleton of a South American, which was eleven feet five inches in length. Diemerbroeck saw at Utrecht a well-proportioned living man, measuring eight feet six inches; and Dr. Becamus was introduced to a youth who was nearly nine feet high; a man almost ten feet, and a woman quite ten feet. The Patagonians have been represented as a nation of giants. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society contain accounts of skeletons dug up in England, measuring eight and nine feet in length, which probably were Roman. In the forty-first and forty-second volumes of the same work are two engravings taken from an os frontis and an os bregmatis, the former of which is reckoned to have belonged to a person between eleven and twelve feet high; the latter to a giant of thirteen feet four inches. Walter Parsons, porter to King James the First, was seven feet seven inches in stature. The Chinese would have us believe that they possess giants fifteen feet high. More of these prodigies hereafter.

1

Powdering the hair is supposed to have taken its rise in modern Europe from some ballad singers at the fair of St. Germain's in 1614, whitening their heads to make themselves ludicrous!