| “Skip it and trip it nimbly, nimbly, Tickle it, tickle it, lustily, Strike up the tabor for the wenches favour, Tickle it, tickle it, lustily. Let us be seene on Hygate-Greene, To dance for the honour of Holloway. Since we are come hither, let’s spare for no leather, To dance for the honour of Holloway.” |
Drunken Barnaby, at the “Mother Red Cap,” at Holloway, found very bad company:—
| Veni Holloway, pileum rubrum, In cohortem muliebrem, Me adonidem vocant omnes Meretricis Babylonis; Tangunt, tingunt, molliunt, mulcent, At egentem, foris pulsant. |
Addison, the essayist and poet, 1672-1719, contributed a capital paper to the Spectator, on the subject of London Cries, which we deem so much to the purpose, that it is here reproduced in extenso.
| THE SPECTATOR. | ||
| No. 251. | TUESDAY, December 18. | |
| ——Linguæ centum sunt, oraque centum, ——Ferrea vox—— Virg., En. 6., v. 625. ——A hundred mouths, a hundred tongues, And throats of brass, inspir’d with iron lungs. Dryden. |
There is nothing which more astonishes a foreigner, and frightens a country ’squire, than the cries of London. My good friend Sir Roger often declares that he cannot get them out of his head, or go to sleep for them, the first week that he is in town. On the contrary, Will Honeycombe calls them the Ramage de la ville, and prefers them to the sound of larks, and nightingales, with all the music of the fields and woods. I have lately received a letter from some very odd fellow upon this subject, which I shall leave with my reader, without saying anything further of it.
SIR,
I am a man out of all business, and would willingly turn my head to anything for an honest livelihood. I have invented several projects for raising many millions of money without burdening the subject, but I cannot get the parliament to listen to me, who look upon me forsooth as a crack, and a projector; so that despairing to enrich either myself or my country by this public-spiritedness, I would make some proposals to you relating to a design which I have very much at heart, and which may procure me a handsome subsistence, if you will be pleased to recommend it to the cities of London and Westminster.