Note 543 — Chapter XI · THE HOUSE AND THE TABLE.
Reading edition
London Gazette, August 28 to Sept. 1, 1679.
[544] “Itinerarium Curiosum,” 1776, p. 14.
[545] Letter of John Paston to Sir John Paston, Sept. 21, 1472.
[546] Marston’s Antonio and Mellida, 1633.
[547] Tom Brown’s Works, vol. iii, p. 243.
[548] Tom Brown’s Amusements for the Meridian of London, 1706.
[549] “It represented a burning lamp, such as some pastry-cooks have to amuse the children, on which geese, monkeys, elephants, dogs, cats, hares, foxes, and many strange animals are to be seen running after each other.”
[550]
“My lamp is kept burning by the produce of the East. Oil, figs, and currants sold here.”
[551] There is a drawing of this very curious relic in a number of the Illustrated London News, published shortly after the sale.
[552] Also demolished to make room for the streets leading to London Bridge.
[553] Lansdowne MSS. No. 889, art. 73.
[554] Harleian MSS No. 256.
[555] Bagford Bills, Harleian MSS.
[556] This loses much by translation:—
“I contain A curious kind of condiment— There are not many people in this town Which I have not had by the nose.”
This is a pun in Dutch, on the sensation produced in the nose by mustard, the expression meaning, at the same time, “to take in.”
[557] Decker’s English Villanies Seven Times Pressed to Death.
[558] Cocoa-nuts. The word is still pronounced in that manner by the lower classes.
[559] A face or dial-plate, sometimes also called pendulum dial.
[560] Book iii., p. 294.
[561] What would old Randle Holme have said, had he seen the elegant (!) breast-pins displayed in the shop-windows of one of the principal West End jewellers, forming the tasteful device of a tobacco-pipe on a quart pot; another with a rebus for: “You are an art[a heart]ful card;” and a third with: “O my eye!” and similar distingué ornaments.
[562]
“When you see this Rummer you may praise or blame it, But come in, and taste its liquor, you will like that better.”
[563]
“This Rummer which you see here cannot give you much pleasure. Come in, and taste its liquor, you will like that better, But first, see what is written on the other side.”
On the other side:—
“Pay before you go away, Otherwise you will have to leave your hat or your cloak.”
[564] Liber Albus, Book iii., Part ii.
[565] Even after the art got to be known, it continued to be still called writing. Thus, Gaspar Hedion (Paral. ad Chron. Conradi) calls it “novo scribendi genere reperto,” and Fulgosus (Lib. viii., Dict. & Fact. Memor.) says that Guttenberg could “uno die imprimendo plura scribere quam uno anno calamis.”
[566] See the whole of the documents of this law-suit in Count Leon de Laborde’s Débuts de l’Imprimerie à Strasbourg.
[567] This De Cesaris family seemed to have a predilection for puzzling signboards. When Peter de Cesaris, a bookseller and printer in the Rue St Jacques, circa 1480, had for a sign the Swan and Soldier, (le cygne et soldat,) in the absence of his colophon, we can only suppose that it was a representation of the legend of the Knight of the Swan, i.e., a knight in a boat drawn by a swan. The steel armour of the knight might easily have bestowed upon him the title of “the soldier.”
[568] London Gazette, Nov. 10-13, 1679.
[569] Loyd’s Evening Post, Jan 9-12, 1767.
[570]
“It happened at the Pewter Platter, Near Saint Pierre des Arsis.”
[571] Whether it would be just to conclude from this that sailors in that time went by the generic name of Tom instead of Jack, we leave to the reader to judge. That Tom was in former times a more common name than now, (owing, it is said, to the respect at one time paid to the great saint Thomas a-Becket,) appears from the many words to which it is an affix, and from many imaginary names, as:—Tomtit, Tomcat, Tomfoolery, Tomboy, Tommyshop, Tommy, (slang for bread,) double Tom, (a sort of plough,) Tom the Piper, (in the morris dance,) Tom Tiddler, Tom of Bedlam, Tom of Westminster, (a bell,) Tom and Jerry, Tom Telltruth, Tom Hickathrift, Tom, (the knave of Trumps,) Whipping Tom, an itinerant flogger of wandering maids, Tom Tapster, “Tib’s rush for Tom’s forefingers,” (all’s well that ends well.)
“Then every wanton may dance at her will, Both Tomkin with Tomlin and Jenkin with Gill.”
Tusser’s Plowman’s Fasting Day
[572] Additional MSS., 5079.