  Thus, gentle reader, we have led thee through a labyrinth of strange sights, of land-monsters and sea-monsters, many of man's own making, others the offspring of freakish nature, of Jove mellow with nectar and ambrosia. If the “proper study of mankind is man,” where can he be studied in a greater variety of character than in the scenes we have visited? The well-dressed automaton of a drawing-room, (a tailor made him!) fenced in with fashions and forms, moving, looking, and speaking but as etiquette pulls the wires, exhibits man in artificial life, and must no more be taken as a fair sample of the genus, than must pharmacy, in the person of the pimple-faced quack * mounted on his piebald pad, or charlatan's stage. * “Quacksalvers and mountebanks are as easy to be knowne as an asse by his eares, or the lyon by his pawes, for they delight most commonly to proclaime their dealings in the open streets and market-places, by prating, bragging, lying, with their labells, banners, and wares, hanging them out abroade.” Morbus Gallicus, 1585, by William Clowes. “In the yeare 1587, there came a Flemming into the cittie of Gloceter (Gloucester) named Wolfgang Frolicke, and there hanged forth his pictures, his flagges, his instruments, and his letters of marte, with long labells, great tassels, broad scales closed in boxes, with such counterfeit showes and knackes of knauerie, coesining the people of their monie, without either learning or knowledge.” A most excellent and compendious Method of curing Wounds, &c. translated by John Read, 8vo. 1588. We have shewn thee to what odd inventions men are put to provide fun for their fellows, and food for themselves. Yet if we ascend the scale of society it will be found that the Merry-Andrew is not the only wearer of the Fool's coat; that buffoons and jesters are not exclusively confined to fairs; that the juggler, * who steals his five pecks of corn out of a bushel. * The following description of an itinerant juggler of the olden time is exceedingly curious, and probably unique. “The third (as the first) was an olde fellowe, his beard milkewhite, his head couered with a round lowe-crownd rent silke hat, on which was a band knit in many knotes, wherein stucke two round stickes after the jugler's manner. Hisierkin was of leather cut, his cloake of three coulers, his hose paind with yellow drawn out with blew, his instrument was a bagpipe, and him I knew to be William Cuckoe, better knowne than lou'd, and yet, some thinke, as well lou'd as he was worthy.” Kind-Hart's Dreame. Hocus Pocus, junior, in his Anatomy of Legerdemaine, 1634, mentions one “whose father while he lived was the greatest jugler in England, and used the assistance of a familiar; he lived a tinker by trade, and used his feats as a trade by the by; he lived, as I was informed, alwayes betattered, and died, for ought I could hear, in the same estate.” The nostrum-vender who cures all diseases in the world, and one disease more; the Little-go man and thimble-rigger have their several prototypes among the starred and gartered; the laced and tinselled “Noodles” and “Doodles” of more elevated spheres, where the necessity for such ludicrous metamorphoses does not exist; except to shake off the ennui of idleness,—and idleness, said the great Duke of Marlborough, is a complaint quite enough to kill the stoutest General. How, gentle reader, has thy time been spent? If Utilitarian, * thou wilt say “Unprofitably!” * “To set downe the jugling in trades, the crafty tricks of buyers and sellers, the swearing of the one, the lying of the other, were but to tell the worlde that which they well knowe, and, therefore, I will ouerslip that. There is an occupation of no long standing about London, called broking, or brogging, whether ye will; in which there is pretty juggling, especially to blind law, and bolster usury. If any man be forst to bring them a pawne, they will take no interest, not past twelve pence a pound for the month: marry, they must haue a groat for a monthly bill, which is a bill of sale from month to month; so that no advantage can be taken for the usurie. I heare say it's well multiplied since I died; but I beshrewe them, for, in my life, many a time haue I borrowed a shilling on my pipes, and paid a groat for the bill, when I haue fetclit out my pawne in a day.” William Cuckoe to all close juglers, &c. “c.—Kind-Hart's Dreame. O the villany of these ancient pawnbrokers! If Puritan, “Profanely Presuming,” however, that thou art neither the greedy, all-grasping nor the over-reaching, preaching second; but a well-conditioned happy being, with religion enough to shew thy love to God by thy benevolence to man, thou wilt regard with an approving smile the various recreations that lighten the toil and beguile the cares of thy humbler brethren; and thy compassion (not the world's,—Heaven save them and thee from the bitterness of that!) will fall on the poor Mime and Mummer, whose antic tricks and contortions, grinning mask of red ochre and white paint, but ill conceal his poverty-broken spirit, hollow ghastly eyes, and sunken cheeks—and thou wilt not turn scornfully from the multitudes (none are to be despised but the wicked, and they rather deserve our pity) that such ( perhaps to thee) senseless sights can amuse. Self-complacent, predominant Self will be lost in generous sympathy, the electrical laughing fit will go round, and, though at the remotest end of the chain, thy gravity will not escape the shaking shock. Believing that thou art merry and wise; sightly, sprightly; learned, yet nothing loth to laugh; as we first met in a mutual spirit of communication and kindness, so we part. And when good fortune shall again throw us into thy company, not forgetting Mr. Bosky and the middle-aged gentleman with the satirical nose! we shall be happy to shake thy hand, ay, and thy sides to boot, with some merry tale or ballad, * (“Mirth, in seasonable time taken, is not forbidden by the austerest sapients,”) if haply time spare us one to tell or sing. Till then, health be with thee, gentle reader! a light heart and a liberal hand. * Henry Chettle, in his Kind-Hart's Dreame, gives the following description of a Ballad Singer. “The first of the first three was an od old fellow, low of stature, his head was couered with a round cap, his body with a side-skirted tawney coate, his legs and feete trust vppe in leather buskins, his gray haires and furrowed face witnessed his age, his treble violl in his hande assured me of his profession. On which (by his con-tinuall sawing, hauing left but one string,) after his best manner, he gaue me a huntsvp: whome, after a little musing, I assuredly remembred to be no other but old Anthony Now now.” Anthony Munday is supposed to be ridiculed in the character of cc Old Anthony Now now the latter was an itinerant fiddler, of whom this curious notice occurs in The Second Bart of the Gentle Craft, by Thomas Deloney, 1598. “Anthony cald for wine, and drawing forth his fiddle began to play, and after he had scrapte halfe a score lessons, he began thus to sing:— “When should a man shew himselfe gentle and kinde? When should a man comfort the sorrowful minde? O Anthony, now, now, now, O Anthony, now, now, now. When is the best time to drinke with a friend? When is the meetest my money to spend? O Anthony, now, now, now, O Anthony, now, now, now. When goeth the King of good fellows away, That so much delighted in dancing and play? O Anthony, now, now, now, O Anthony, now, now, now. And when should I bid my good master farewell, Whose bounty and curtesie so did excell? O Anthony, now, now, now, O Anthony, now, now, now. “Loe yee now, (quoth hee,) this song have I made for your sake, and by the grace of God when you are gone, I will sing it every Sunday morning under your wives' window.* * “Anthony in his absence sung this song so often in S. Martin's, that thereby he purchast a name which he never lost till his dying day, for ever after men cald him nothing but Anthony now now.” Braithwait thus describes one of the race of “metre ballad mongers.” “Now he counterfeits a natural base, then a perpetual treble, and ends with a counter-tenure. You shall heare him feigne an artfull straine through the nose, purposely to insinuate into the attention of the purer brother-hood.”
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