“Page. Why, sir, he hath chosen a street to lie in, so narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches, nor carts, nor any of these common noises; and therefore we that love him devise to bring him in such as we may now and then, for his exercise, to breathe him. He would grow resty else in his cage; his virtue would rust without action. I entreated a bearward, one day, to come down with the dogs of some four parishes that way, and I thank him he did; and cried his games under Master Morose’s window; till he was sent crying away, with his head made a most bleeding spectacle to the multitude. And, another time, a fencer marching to his prize had his drum most tragically run through, for taking that street in his way at my request.
“True. A good wag! How does he for the bells?
“Cler. O! In the queen’s time he was wont to go out of town every Saturday at ten o’clock, or on holiday eves. But now, by reason of the sickness, the perpetuity of ringing has made him devise a room with double walls and treble ceilings; the windows close shut and caulk’d; and there he lives by candlelight.”
The first class of noises, then, against which “Morose” protected his ears by “a huge turban of night-caps,” is that of the ancient and far-famed London Cries. We have here the very loudest of them—fish-wives, orange-women, chimney-sweepers, broom-men, costard-mongers. But we might almost say that there were hundreds of other cries; and therefore, reserving to ourselves some opportunity for a special enumeration of a few of the more remarkable of these cries, we shall now slightly group them, as they present themselves to our notice during successive generations.
We shall not readily associate any very agreeable sounds with the voices of the “fish-wives.” The one who cried “Mackerel” in Lydgate’s day had probably no such explanatory cry as the “Mackerel alive, alive ho!” of modern times. In the seventeenth century the cry was “New Mackerel.” And in the same way there was:—
 New Wall-Fleet Oysters. |  New Flounders. | |
 New Whiting. |  New Salmon. |
The freshness of fish must have been a considerable recommendation in those days of tardy intercourse. But quantity was also to be taken into the account, and so we find the cries of “Buy my dish of Great Smelts;” “Great Plaice;” “Great Mussels.” Such are the fish-cries enumerated in Lauron’s and various other collections of “London Cries.”
 Buy Great Smelts. |  Buy Great Plaice. | |
 Buy Great Mussels. |  Buy Great Eels. |
But, we are forgetting “Morose,” and his “turban of night-caps.” Was Hogarth familiar with the old noise-hater when he conceived his own:—