A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times.

by Henry Sampson

There were also within the sacred edifice tobacco, book, and sempstress’ shops; there was a pillar at which serving-men stood for hire, and another place where lawyers had their regular stands, like merchants on ’Change. At the period when Decker wrote his curious “Gull’s Horn-Book” (1609), and for many years after, the cathedral was the lounging place for all idlers and hunters after news, as well as of men of almost every profession, cheats, usurers, and knights of the post. The cathedral was likewise a seat of traffic and negotiation, even pimps and procuresses had their stations there; and the font itself, if credit may be given to a black-letter tract on the “Detestable Use of Dice-play,” printed early in Elizabeth’s reign, was made a place for the advance and payment of loans, and the sealing of indentures and obligations for the security of the moneys borrowed. Such a busy haunt was, of course, the very best place for bills and advertisements to be posted.

No bonâ fide siquis has come down to us, but it appears that among them the applications for ecclesiastics were very common, as Bishop Earle in his “Microcosmographia,” published in 1629, describes “Paul’s Walke” as the “market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes;” and this allusion is confirmed by a passage in Bishop Hall’s “Satires” (B. ii. s. 5), in which also the custom of affixing advertisements to a particular door is distinctly noticed:—

Saw’st thou ere siquis patch’d on Paul’s church door
To seek some vacant vicarage before?
Who wants a churchman that can service say,
Read fast and fair his monthly homily,
And wed, and bury, and make cristen souls,
Come to the left side alley of St Poule’s.

But the siquis door was not confined to notices of ecclesiastical matters; it was appropriated generally to the variety of applications that is now to be found in the columns of a newspaper or the books of a registry office. Though no authentic specimens of the siquis remain, we are possessed of several imitations, as the old dramatists delighted in reproducing the inflated language of these documents. Thus, in Holiday’s “Technogamia” (1618), Act i. scene 7, Geographus sets up the following notice:—

If there be any gentleman that, for the accomplishing of his natural endowment, intertaynes a desire of learning the languages; especially the nimble French, maiestik Spanish, courtly Italian, masculine Dutch, happily compounding Greek, mysticall Hebrew, and physicall Arabicke; or that is otherwise transported with the admirable knowledge of forraine policies, complimentall behaviour, naturall dispositions, or whatsoever else belongs to any people or country under heaven; he shall, to his abundant satisfaction, be made happy in his expectation and successe if he please to repair to the signe of the Globe.

Again, Ben Jonson’s “Every Man out of his Humour” introduces Shift, “a threadbare shark,” whose “profession is skeldring and odling, his bank Paul’s.” Speaking of Shift in the opening scene of the third act, which the dramatist has laid in “the middle aisle of Paules,” Cordatus says that Shift is at that moment in Paules “for the advancement of a siquis or two, wherein he hath so varied himselfe, that if any one of them take, he may hull up and doune in the humorous world a little longer.” Shift’s productions deserved to succeed, as they were masterpieces of their kind, and might even now, though the world is so much older, and professes to be so much wiser, be studied with advantage by gentlemen who cultivate the literature of advertisements in the interest of certain firms. Here are some of his compositions, which would certainly shine among the examples of the present day:—

If there be any lady or gentlewoman of good carriage that is desirous to entertain to her private uses a young, straight, and upright gentleman, of the age of five or six and twenty at the most; who can serve in the nature of a gentleman usher, and hath little legs of purpose,[19] and a black satin suit of his own to go before her in; which suit, for the more sweetening, now lies in lavender;[20] and can hide his face with her fan if need require, or sit in the cold at the stair foot for her, as well as another gentleman; let her subscribe her name and place, and diligent respect shall be given.

The following is even an improvement:—

If this city, or the suburbs of the same, do afford any young gentleman of the first, second, or third head, more or less, whose friends are but lately deceased, and whose lands are but new come into his hands, that, to be as exactly qualified as the best of our ordinary gallants are, is affected to entertain the most gentlemanlike use of tobacco; as first to give it the most exquisite perfume; then to know all the delicate, sweet forms for the assumption of it; as also the rare corollary and practice of the Cuban ebolition, euripus and whiff,[21] which we shall receive or take in here at London, and evaporate at Uxbridge, or farther, if it please him. If there be any such generous spirit, that is truly enamour’d of these good faculties; may it please him but by a note of his hand to specify the place or ordinary where he uses to eat and lie; and most sweet attendance with tobacco and pipes of the best sort, shall be ministered. Stet quæso, candide lector.

It is noticeable that most of these advertisements commence with the English equivalent for the Latin si quis, and furthermore that Ben Jonson concludes with the same formula as Caxton, stet quæso, imploring the “candid reader” not to tear off the bill. The word siquis is of frequent occurrence in the old writers. Green, for instance, in his “Tu Quoque,” says of certain women that “they stand like the devil’s siquis at a tavern or alehouse door.” At present the term has more particular reference to ecclesiastical matters. A candidate for holy orders who has not been educated at the University, or has been absent some time from thence, is still obliged to have his intention proclaimed, by having a notice to that effect hung up in the church of the place where he has recently resided. If, after a certain time, no objection is made, a certificate of his siquis, signed by the churchwardens, is given to him to be presented to the bishop when he seeks ordination.