The Plough and Horses is a sign at Branston, Lincoln. The Plough and Harrow is very common. Two doors west from the Harrow Inn lived Isaac Walton, about 1624, carrying on the business of “milliner and sempster,” or what we should now call a linen-draper. He afterwards resided at a house in Chancery Lane, until he left London, for fear of having his morals corrupted—as he himself asserted. Goldsmith’s tailor, who lived at the sign of the Harrow, has gained immortality by the bad taste of poor Goldy. On one occasion—

“Goldsmith strutted about, bragging of his dress, and, I believe, was seriously vain of it, for his mind was wonderfully prone to such impressions. ‘Come, come,’ said Garrick, ‘talk no more of that, you are perhaps the worst—eh, eh.’ Goldsmith was eagerly attempting to interrupt him, when Garrick went on, laughing ironically, ‘Nay, you will always look like a gentleman, but I am talking of being well or ill drest.’ ‘Well, let me tell you,’ said Goldsmith, ‘when my tailor brought home my bloom-coloured coat, he said, “Sir, I have a favour to beg of you. When anybody asks you who made your clothes, be pleased to mention, John Filby, at the Harrow in Water Lane.”’ Johnson. ‘Why, sir, that was because he knew the strange colour would attract crowds to gaze at it, and then they might hear of him, and see how well he could make a coat even of so absurd a colour.’”[511]

Near Bagshot there is a public-house called the Jolly Farmer, a corruption of the Golden Farmer, a nickname obtained by one of the former possessors on account of his wealth, and his custom of paying his rent always in guineas, which—so says the legend—he obtained as a footpad on Bagshot Heath. That some such thing happened is evident from the Weekly Journal, March 29, 1718, where allusion is made to “Bagshot Heath, near the Gibbet where the Golden Farmer hanged in chains.” The use of this word Jolly, on the signboard, formerly so common in our “Merry England,” is now gradually dying away. Whatever be the opinion of our workmen upon the subject of national good humour, they no longer desire to be advertised as Jolly; it is vulgar, and they prefer Arms like their betters—hence those heraldic anomalies of the Graziers’ Arms, the Farmers’ Arms, the Chaff-Cutters’ Arms, the Puddlers’ Arms, the Paviors’ Arms, and so forth.

The Shepherd and Shepherdess is one of those signs reminding us of—

“The tea-cup days of hoop and hood
And when the patch was worn.”

calling up pictures of rouged shepherdesses with jaunty straw hats on the top of powdered hair a foot high, short quilted petticoats and high-heeled boots, courted in madrigals by shepherds dressed in the height of the elegance of the New Exchange gallants, with ribboned crooks and flowered-satin waistcoats. It was the sign of a pleasure resort in the City Road, Islington, much frequented in the eighteenth century for amusement, and by invalids for the pure, healthy, country air of Islington, which was then a charming village, more rural in the midst of its meadows and rivulets than Richmond is now. Cakes, cream, and furmity were its great attractions:—

“To the Shepherd and Shepherdess then they go
To tea with their wives for a constant rule,
And next cross the road to the Fountain also,
And there they sit so pleasant and cool,
And see in and out
The folks walk about,
And gentlemen angling in Peerless Pool.”[512]

PLATE XIV.
BRAZEN SERPENT.
(Reynold Wolfe, circa 1550.)		GREEN MAN.
(Banks’s Collection, 1760.)
SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY.
(Banks’s Collection, 1780.)		ASS PLAYING ON THE HARP.
(Chartres Cathedral, circa 1420.)