Lives of Famous London Beggars / With Forty Portraits of the Most Remarkable.

Transcriber's Note.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation and spelling have been retained.
ST MARTIN The Patron Saint of the Beggars. From a rare print in the possession of Thos. Lloyd, Esq.
WITH FORTY PORTRAITS OF THE MOST REMARKABLE.
DRAWN FROM LIFE BY JOHN THOMAS SMITH.
London: DIPROSE AND BATEMAN, SHEFFIELD STREET, Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Mr Granger, at the close of his Biographical History of England, says, I shall conclude this volume with observing, that Lord Bacon has somewhere remarked, that biography has been confined within too narrow limits; as if the lives of great personages only deserved the notice of the inquisitive part of mankind. I have, perhaps, in the foregoing strictures extended the sphere of it too far. I began with Monarchs, and have ended with Ballad-Singers, Chimney-Sweepers, and Beggars. But they that fill the highest and the lowest classes of human life, seem, in many respects, to be more nearly allied than even themselves imagine. A skilful anatomist would find little or no difference, in dissecting the body of a king and that of the meanest of his subjects; and a judicious philosopher would discover a surprising conformity, in discussing the nature and qualities of their minds.
Beggary, of late, particularly for the last six years, had become so dreadful in London, that the more active interference of the legislature was deemed absolutely necessary; indeed, the deceptions of the idle and sturdy were so various, cunning, and extensive, that it was in most instances extremely difficult to discover the real object of charity from the impostor.
Concluding, therefore, from the reduction of the metropolitan beggars, that several curious characters would disappear by being either compelled to industry, or to partake of the liberal parochial rates provided for them in their respective workhouses, it occurred to the author of the present publication, that likenesses of the most remarkable of them, with a few particulars of their habits, would not be unamusing to those to whom they have been a pest for several years.