A very appropriate, and not uncommon public-house sign is the TOBY PHILPOTT. That he well deserves this honour, appears from the following obituary notice, (in the _Gent. Mag._, Dec. 1810:)--
“At the Ewes farm-house, Yorkshire, aged 76, Mr Paul Parnell, farmer, grazier, and maltster, who, during his lifetime, drank out of one silver pint cup upwards of £2000 sterling worth of Yorkshire Stingo, being remarkably attached to Stingo tipple of the home-brewed best quality. The calculation is taken at 2d. per cupful. He was the _bon-vivant_ whom O’Keefe celebrated in more than one of his Bacchanalian songs under the appellation of Toby Philpott.”
Between St Albans and Harpenden, there was, some years ago, and perhaps there is still, a public-house called the OLD ROSON. This name also appears to be borrowed from the well-known song, “_Old Rosin_ the Beau,” beginning thus:--
“I have travell’d this wide world over, And now to another I’ll go, I know that good quarters are waiting To welcome old Rosin the Beau (ter.)
When I am dead and laid out on the counter, A voice you will hear from below, Singing out brandy and water To drink to old Rosin the Beau (ter.)
You must get some dozen good fellows, And stand them all round in a row, And drink out of half-gallon bottles, To the name of old Rosin the Beau,” &c.
These stanzas, and one or two more to the same import, were quite sufficient to make the old Beau a fit subject for the signboard, irrespective of his other amiable qualities held forth in the song. The very common OLD HOUSE AT HOME, too, is borrowed from a once-popular ballad, the verse of which is too well known to need quotation here.
The equally common HEARTY GOOD FELLOW is adopted from a Seven Dials ballad:--
“I am a hearty good fellow, I live at my ease, I work when I am willing, I play when I please.
With my bottle and my glass, Many hours I pass, Sometimes with a friend, And sometimes with a lass,” &c.
Of signboards portraying artists, but few instances occur; and when they do, they are almost exclusively the property of printsellers. We have only met with three: REMBRANDT’S HEAD, the sign of J. Jackson, printseller, at the corner of Chancery Lane, Fleet Street, 1759; and of Nathaniel Smith, the father (?) of J. T. Smith, in Great May’s Buildings, St Martin’s Lane. Another member of that family, J. Smith, who kept a printshop in Cheapside, where several of Hogarth’s engravings were published, assumed the HOGARTH’S HEAD for his sign. The third is the VAN DYKE’S HEAD, the sign of C. Philips, engraver and print-publisher in Portugal Street, in 1761. Hogarth also had a head of Van Dyke as his trade symbol, made from small pieces of cork, but being gilt, he called it the GOLDEN HEAD, (_see under_ Miscellaneous Signs.)