Minerva also is not uncommon—probably not so much because she was the goddess of wisdom, but as “ye patroness of scholars, shoemakers, diers,” &c.[82] Juno has a temple in Church Lane, Hull, and Neptune of course is of frequent occurrence in a country that holds the

“Imperium pelagi sævumque tridentem.”

The smith “being generally a thirsty soul, his patron Vulcan constitutes an appropriate alehouse sign, and in that capacity he frequently figures, particularly in the Black country. Amongst the quaint Dutch signboard inscriptions there is one which, in the seventeenth century, was written under a sign of Vulcan lighting his pipe:—

“In Vulcanus. Hy steekt zyn pyp op aan ’t vyer
Die goed tabak wil hebben die komt alhier.
Je krygt een gestopte pyp toe en op kermis een glas dik bier.”[83]

Vulcan, as the god of fire, without which there is no smoke, was a common tobacconist’s sign in Holland two hundred years ago. One of these dealers had the following rhymes affixed to his Vulcan sign:—

“Vulcan die lamme smid als hy was moei van smeden
Ging hy wat zitten neer en ruste zyne leden
De Goden zagen ’t aan, hy haalde uit zyn zak
Zyn pypye en zyn doos en rookte doen tabak.”[84]

Mercury, the god of commerce, was of frequent occurrence, as might be expected. Amongst the Banks collection of shop-bills there is one of a fanshop in Wardour Street with the sign of the [Mercury and Fan]. Both Cupid and Flora were signs at Norwich in 1750,[85] and Comus is frequently the tutelary god of our provincial public-houses. Castor and Pollux, represented in the dress of Roman soldiers of the empire standing near a cask of tallow, was the sign of T. & J. Bolt, tallow-chandlers, at the corner of Berner Street, Oxford Street, at the end of the last century, for the obvious reason that, like the Messrs Bolt, they were two brothers that spread light over the world. Our admiration for athletic strength and sports suggested the sign of Hercules, as well as his biblical parallel Samson.

As for the Hercules Pillars, this was the classic name for the Straits of Gibraltar, which by the ancients was considered the end of the world; in the same classic sense it was adopted on outskirts of towns, where it is more common now to see the World’s End. In 1667 it was the sign of Richard Penck in Pall Mall, and also of a public-house in Piccadilly, on the site of the present Hamilton Place, both which spots were at that period the end of the inhabited world of London. The sign generally represented the demi-god standing between the pillars, or pulling the pillars down—a strange cross between the biblical and the pagan Hercules.

The Pillars of Hercules in Piccadilly is mentioned by Wycherley in the “Plain Dealer,” 1676:—“I should soon be picking up all our own mortgaged apostle spoons, bowls, and beakers out of most of the alehouses betwixt the Hercules Pillars and the Boatswain in Wapping.” The Marquis of Granby often visited the former house, and here Fielding, in “Tom Jones,” makes Squire Western put up:—“The Squire sat down to regale himself over a bottle of wine with his parson and the landlord of the Hercules Pillars, who, as the Squire said, would make an excellent third man, and would inform them of the news of the town; for, to be sure, says he, he knows a great deal, since the horses of many of the quality stand at his house.”[86] In Pepys’ time there was a Hercules Pillars tavern in Fleet Street. Here the merry clerk of the Admiralty supped with his wife and some friends on Feb. 6, 1667-8; his return home gives a good idea of London after the fire:—

“Coming from the Duke of York’s playhouse I got a coach, and a humour took us and I carried them to the Hercules Pillars, and there did give them a kind of supper of about 7s. and very merry, and home round the town, not through the ruins. And it was pretty how the coachman by mistake drives us into the ruins from London Wall unto Coleman Street, and would persuade me that I lived there. And the truth is, I did think that he and the linkman had contrived some roguery, but it proved only a mistake of the coachman; but it was a cunning place to have done us a mischief in, as any I know, to drive us out of the road into the ruins, and there stop, while nobody could be called to help us. But we came home safe.”