|Garrick never introduced a hero upon the scene without a flourish of trumpets,--nor shall we.
Giants and giantesses, dwarfs and pigmies,
Songs, dances, music, in their amplest order.
Mimes, pantomimes, and all the mimic motion
For St. Bartholomew makes his first bow in _The Ancient Records of the Rounds_.
The learned need not be told that a fair was originally a market for the purchase and sale of all sorts of commodities; and what care the unlearned for its derivation? For them it suffices that 'tis a market for fun. Our merry Prior of St. Bartholomew knowing the truth of the old proverb, that, “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” mingled pastime with business, and put Momus into partnership with Mammon. For many years they jogged on together, somewhat doggedly, to be sure, for Momus was a fellow of uproarious merriment; and while Mammon, with furred gown and gold chain, was weighing atoms and splitting straws, Momus split the sides of his customers, and so entirely won them over to his jocular way of doing business, that Mammon was drummed out of the firm and the fair. But Mammon has had his revenge, by causing Momus to be confined to such narrow bounds, that his lions and tigers lack space to roar in, and his giants are pinched for elbow room. * Moreover, he and his sly bottle-holder, Mr. Cupidity Cant (who from the time of Prynne to the present has been a bitter foe to good fellowship), threaten to drive poor Momus out of house and home. Out upon the ungracious varlets! let them sand their own sugar, ** not ours! and leave Punch alone.
* The American giant refuses to come over to England this summer, because the twenty-first of June is not long enough for him to stand upright in! And the Kentucky dwarf is so short that he has not paid his debts these five years!
** “Have you sanded the sugar, good Sandy, And water'd the treacle with care? Have you smuggled the element into the brandy?” “Yes, master.”--“Then come in to prayer!”
Let them be content to rant in their rostrums, and peep over their particular timber, lest we pillory the rogues, and make them peep through it!
Father Rahére founded the Priory, Hospital, and Church of St. Bartholomew in Smithfield, at the instigation ['tis said) of the saint himself, who appeared to him in Rome, whither he had repaired on a pilgrimage. We learn from the Cottonian MSS. that he “of te hawnted the Kyng's palice, and amo'ge the noysefull presse of that tumultuous courte, enforsed hymselfe with jolite and carnal suavité: ther yn spectaclis, yn metys, yn playes, and other courtely mokkys and trifyllis, intruding he lede forth the besynesse of alle the daye.” He was a “pleasant witted gentleman,” and filled the post of minstrel to King Henry the First, which comprehended musician, improvisatore, jester, &c.; and Henry the Second granted to the monastery of St. Bartholomew (of which Rahére was the first prior) the privilege of a three days' fair for the drapers and clothiers: hence Cloth Fair. His ashes rest under a magnificent tomb in the church of St. Bartholomew the Great. This beautiful shrine is still carefully preserved. How different has been the fate of the desecrated sepulchre of the “moral Gower,” which the Beetian Borough brawlers would have pounded, with their Ladye Chapel, to macadamise the road!