* Spinacuta's monkey amused the French King and Court by dancing and tumbling on the slack and tight rope; balancing a chandelier, a hoop, and a tobacco-pipe, on the tip of his nose and chin, and making a melodramatic exit in a shower of fireworks. He afterwards exhibited at Sadler's Wells and Bartholomew Fair.
** "August 31, 1768. Died Jonathan Gray, aged nearly one hundred years, the famous Merry Andrew, who formerly exhibited at the fairs about London, and gained great applause by his acting at Covent Garden Theatre, in the entertainment called Bartholomew Fair"
"October 3, 1777. Yesterday, died in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Thomas Carter, the dwarf who was exhibited at last
Bartholomew Fair. He was about 25 years of age, measuring only three feet four inches high. It is supposed that over drinking at the fair caused his death."
That crackling dainty, which would make a man _manger son propre père!_ gave place to horrible fried sausages, from which even the mongrels and tabbies of Smithfield instinctively turned aside with anti-cannibal misgivings! Unsavoury links! fizzing, fuming, bubbling, and squeaking in their own abominable black broth! "An ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten mine imagination!" Your Bartlemy Fair kitchen is not the spice islands.
In 1661, one of Dame Ursula's particular orders to Mooncalf was to froth the cans well. In 1655,
"For a penny you may see a fine puppet play,
Only six! Mark to what immeasurable enormity these subdivisions of cans had risen fifty years after. Well might _Roger in Amaze_ * exclaim,--
* "Roger in Amaze; or the Countryman's Ramble through Bartholomew Fair. To the tune of the Dutch Woman's Jigg. 1701."
"They brought me cans which cost a penny a piece,
I'm zure twelve (!!) ne'er could fill our country quart"
"Remember twelve!" Yet these were days of comparative honesty--"a ragged virtue," which, as better clothes came in fashion, was cast off by the drawers, and an indescribable liquid succeeded, not in a great measure, but "small by degrees and beautifully less," to the transcendant tipple of _Michael Roots_. From the wry faces and twinges of modern drinkers (it seems impossible to stand _upright_ in the presence of a Bar-tlemy Fair brewing!) we guess the tap has not materially improved. The advance of prices on the "fine puppet play" * and the two-penny "_rare piece of art_" were not resisted; the O.P.'s were made to mind their P's and Q's by the terrors of the Pied Poudre.