not?
And since, my Paul, you've gain'd your p'int, perhaps
you 'll stand your pot.
The Charlie quite, I've, honour bright, sent packing for a
cheat;
A watchman's wife, he'd whack me well when he was
on his beat.
“Adieu!” he said, and shook his head, “my dolor be
your dow'r;
And while you laugh, I 'll take my staff, and go and cry
—the hour.”
Last Greenwich Fair we wedded were; she's won, and
we are one;
And Sally, since the honey-moon, has had a little son.
Of all the girls that are so smart, there's none than Sally
smarter;
I said it 'fore I married her, and now I say it arter.
Geo. II. R.
“This is to give notice to all gentlemen, ladies and others, that there is to be seen from eight in the morning till nine at night, at the end of the great booth on Blackheath, a west of England woman 38 years of age alive, with two heads, one above the other; having no hands, fingers, nor toes; yet can she dress and undress, knit, sew, read, sing,” Query—a duet with her two mouths? “She has had the honour to be seen by Sir Hans Sloane, and several of the Royal Society. * “N.B. Gentlemen and ladies may see her at their own houses, if they please.
* That the caricaturist has been out-caricatured by Nature
no one will deny. Wilkes was so abominably ugly that he said
it always took him half an hour to talk away his face; and
Mirabeau, speaking of his own countenance, said, “Fancy a
tiger marked with the small-pox!” We have seen an Adonis
contemplate one of Cruikshank's whimsical figures, of which
his particular shanks were the bow-ideal, and rail at the
artist for libelling Dame Nature! How ill-favoured were Lord
Lovat, Magliabeeehi, Searron, and the wall-eyed, botde-nosed
Buekhorse the Bruiser! how deformed and frightful Sir Harry
Dimsdale and Sir Jeffrey Dunstan! What would have been said
of the painter of imaginary Siamese twins? Yet we have “The
true Description of two Monstrous Children, born in the
parish of Swanburne in Buekinghamshyre, the 4th of Aprill,
Anno Domini 1566; the two Children having both their belies
fast joyned together, and imbracing one another with their
armes: which Children were both alyve by the space of half
an hower, and wer baptised, and named the one John, and the
other Joan.”—A similar wonder was exhibited in Queen Anne's
reign, viz. “Two monstrous girls born in the Kingdom of
Hungary,” which were to be seen “from 8 o'clock in the
morning till 8 at night, up one pair of stairs, at Mr.
William Sutteliffe's, a Drugster's Shop, at the sign of the
Golden Anchor, in the Strand, near Charing-Cross.” The
Siamese twins of our own time are fresh in every one's
memory. Shakspere throws out a pleasant sarcasm at the
characteristic curiosity of the English nation. Trinculo,
upon first beholding Caliban, exclaims—“A strange fish!
were I in England now (as I once was), and had but this fish
painted, not a holiday fool there but would give a piece of
silver: there would this monster make a man: when they will
not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out
ten to see a dead Indian”
This great wonder never was shown in England before this, the 13th day of March, 1741. “Vivat Rex.” Peckham * and Blackheath Fairs are abolished;——
* Peckham Fair, August 1787.—Of the four-footed race were
bears, monkeys, dancing-dogs, a learned pig, &c. Mr.
Flockton in his theatrical booth opposite the Kentish
Drovers, exhibited the Italian fantocini; the farce of the
Conjuror; and his “inimitable musical-clock.” Mr. Lane,
“first performer to the King,” played off his “snip-snap,
rip-rap, crick-crack, and thunder tricks, that the grown
babies stared like worried cats.” This extraordinary genius
“will drive about forty twelve-penny nails into any
gentleman's breech, place him in a loadstone chair, and draw
them out without the least pain! He is, in short, the most
wonderful of all wonderful creatures the world ever wondered
at.”
Sir Jeffrey Dunstan sported his handsome figure within his
booth; outside of which was displayed a likeness of the
elegant original in his pink satin smalls. His dress,
address, and oratory, fascinated the audience; in fact,
“Jeffy was quite tonish!”
In opposition to the “Monstrous Craws” at the Royal Grove,
were shown in a barn “four wonderful human creatures,
brought three thousand miles beyond China, from the
Kickashaw Mackabee country, viz.
“A man with a chin eleven inches Ions:.
“Another with as many M'ens and warts on his face as knots
on an old thornback.
“A third with two large teeth five inches long, strutting
beyond his upper lip, as if his father had been a man-tiger!
“And the fourth with a noble large fiery head, that looked
like the red-hot urn on the top of the monument!”
“These most wonderful wild-born human beings (the Monstrous
Craws), two females and a male, are of very small stature,
being little more than four feet high; each with a monstrous
craw under his throat. Their country, language, &c. are as
yet unknown to mankind. It is supposed they started in some
canoe from their native place (a remote quarter in South
America), and being wrecked were picked up by a Spanish
vessel. At that period they were each of a dark-olive
complexion, but which has astonishingly, by degrees, changed
to the colour of that of Europeans. They are tractable and
respectful towards strangers, and of lively and merry
disposition among themselves; singing and daneing in the
most extraordinary way, at the will and pleasure