if there were eight feet of water below him. The season he chose for diving from a height twenty feet above the parapet of the highest London bridge was during an intense frost, when the river was full of ice, and the enormous masses floating with the tide scarcely appeared to leave a space for his plunge or his rise. He watched his moment, and the feat was performed over and over again with perfect safety. But he had been told, we presume, that the London populace wanted novelty. It was not enough that he should do day by day what no man had ever ventured to do before. To leap off the parapets of the Southwark and Waterloo Bridges into the half-frozen river had become a common thing; and so the poor man must have a scaffold put up, and he must suspend himself from its cross-bars by his arm, and his leg, and his neck. Twice was the last experiment repeated; but upon the third attempt the body hung motionless. The applause and the laughter, that death could be so counterfeited, were tumultuous; but a cry of terror went forth that the man was dead. He perished by administering to a morbid public appetite. Happily executions are no common spectacles, and so a mock one was to gratify the holiday curiosity. Every man who looked on that sight went away degraded. The conjurer's trade with us is losing its simplicity. This assertion may appear paradoxical. But the legitimate conjurer,-the man of cups and balls,is a true descendant of the personage, whether called joculator, or gleeman, or tregetour, who delighted our Saxon and Norman progenitors. He had no such dangerous tricks in his catalogue as that of being shot at with real powder and with real ball. He did not blind the spectators by their fears. He was a great artist, though, in his way;-probably greater than the modern wizards. What are the thimble-riggers of our degenerate day compared with Chaucer's sleight of hand man?— "There saw I eke Coll Tregetour Upon a table of sycamore, Under a walnut-shell." With tricks such as this did the Chinese jugglers astonish us some twenty years ago. The juggler is, indeed, of a corporation that has held the same feesimple in the credulity of mankind during all ages and in all countries. In an interlude of the reign of Elizabeth we have these lines : "What juggling was there upon the boards! What thrusting of knives through many a nose! Mr. Lane, in his interesting work, The Modern Egyptians,' tells us of the Kháwee, or conjurer of Cairo, that "in appearance, he forces an iron spike into the boy's throat; the spike being really pushed up into a wooden handle. He also performs another trick of the same kind as this: placing the boy on the ground, he puts the edge of a knife upon his nose, and knocks the blade until half its width seems to have entered." Amongst the other accomplishments of this gentleman, Mr. Lane inform us, "he puts cotton in his mouth and blows out fire." How universal must be the art when this, the commonest trick of a clown at a country fair, affords delight on the banks of the Nile! Hogarth has such a man in his Southwark Fair' riding a great horse. This was probably a real fire-eater, to whom hot coals in his mouth were a daily bread. We have had no such men since the great Mr. Powell, who, it is said, was honoured with a medal by the Royal Society. The foreigner who was amongst us a few years ago, and was ruined because he would not consent to be entirely roasted in his own oven, and he that shrunk from swallowing real corrosive sublimate, were manifest impositions. Our streets are dull, and require a Powell to enliven them. Where is the mountebank gone? He was a genuine Londoner. He set up his bills "That promis'd cure Of ague or the tooth-ach," amidst jokes and compliments which would go farther to cure some diseases than the gravity of the whole College of Physicians. Dr. Andrew Borde, whose 'Breviary of Health' was printed in 1547, was a great English mountebank. Hearne has thus described him :-" Dr. Borde was an ingenious man, and knew how to humour and please his patients, readers, and auditors. In his travels and visits he often appeared and spoke in public, and would often frequent markets and fairs where a conflux of people used to get together, to whom he prescribed; and to induce them to flock thither the more readily, he would make humorous speeches, couched in such language as caused mirth, and wonderfully propagated his fame : and 'twas for the same end that he made use of such expressions in his books as would otherwise (the circumstances not considered) be very justly pronounced 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 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. 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.' 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. 6 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." 6 66 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 Flect 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.' |