2''dS.VII. JuNEll. '59.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



471 



of the founder of the fair at the end of the six- 

 teenth century ; " or else it might have appeared 

 as a note under the afiairs of the twelfth century 

 concerning what was said in the sixteenth. But 

 the multiplicity and variety of detail necessary to 

 the direct narrative, which compelled rigid ad- 

 herence to the order of the years throughout the 

 story, forced me to decide also upon a complete 

 suppression of the detached facts usually admitted 

 into notes. If I was not content to let the spirit 

 of the book be altogether lost in the confusion of 

 its substance, it was necessary to pass over, how- 

 ever unwillingly, many citations of this character, 

 Dk. Rimbault could have denied himself such 

 matter more easily than I did; for, after touching 

 in this way upon the founder of Bartholomew Fair, 

 he says : — 



" I shall not dwell upon notices of this kind which are 

 abundant, but proceed to matter more intimately con- 

 nected with the subject. The pranks of Mat Coppin- 

 ger," &c. 



Of this person, so important in the eyes of Dr. 

 RiMBAULT, I am informed that he , 



" Wrote a volume of poems calculated for the meridian 

 of the times in which he lived, and published it in 1682, 

 with a dedication to the Duchess of Portsmouth. Many 

 are the cheats and rogueries of this ' Bartholomew hero,' 

 who ignobly finished his days upon ' Tyburn Tree ' for 

 stealing a gold watch and seven sovereigns ! Mk. Mor- 

 LEY ought to have seen " 



an account of the life of this eminent- person, 

 " once a Player in Bartholomew Fair, and since 

 turned a bully of the town." I hardly feel that I 

 have lost much by not making Mr. Coppinger's 

 acquaintance. As to the rascaldom of the fair, 

 the Memoirs contain evidence enough. The neg- 

 lected ghost of Joe Hayns, Mr. Coppinger's con^ 

 temporary, is next raised up in judgment against 

 me by Db. Rimbault. — Hayns, I was really good 

 to you ; be pacified ! I told the world about your 

 good speaking of prologues composed by yourself. 

 It was all the good I knew about you. The title 

 of the book about you cited by Dr. Rimbault 

 did once form a portion of my narrative. Per- 

 haps it is there still ; I cannot tell, for your name 

 happens to be omitted from the index. If absent, 

 it was omitted when the sheets were in the press, 

 and you may thank me, pitiable ghost, for the 

 omission ! — I read while working at Bartholomew 

 Fair many of those books of " Comical Exploits," 

 and found little enough in them that was service- 

 able knowledge. Dr. Rimbault adds that there 

 is an engraving of Joe which would have been 

 worth reproducing. Possibly it would ; but then 

 I have note of a score of other engravings that 

 will be a great deal more worth reproducing 

 whenever more pictures are wanted. 



Dr. Rimbault from Mat and Joe turns to a 

 Tom, Thomas Dogget, who is better worth atten- 

 tion. I thought I had allowed Dogget bis full 



share of space (there are six references to him in 

 my index) ; and from many of his playbills I 

 have quoted one. Dr. Rimbault cites another 

 which I had not chosen, although it does happen 

 that of his acting in the droll of Friar Bacon, ad- 

 vertised in the announcement Dr. Rimbault cites, 

 there is even a short description to be found in the 

 Memoirs. It is taken from the report of — must 

 I say Ned — Ward, the London Spy. But, alas 

 for me ! I do not especially mention Dogget's 

 dancing of the Cheshire Round. Let me be pitied 

 for that. And I have not said that Dogget made 

 his first bow at Bartholomew Fair — "a fact ap- 

 parently unknown to Mr. Mobley." Perhaps 

 that is because Dogget made his " first bow " at 

 the Dublin Theatre. He joined travelling players 

 when he came to England ; and if Dr. Rimbault 

 can show any sufiicient evidence that he appeared 

 at Bartholomew Fair before joining a London 

 theatre, I will thank him for it, and will not fail 

 to include the fact in any reprint of my book. 



I will again pass over, as Dr. Rimbault says I 

 have already passed over, Richard Leveredge the 

 singer, and the namesake of Ben Jonson, who was 

 an actor of small note. Having told fully, and 

 with reasonable detail as to chiefs of the stage or 

 of the booth, how, at a certain period of the Fair's 

 history, actors would close their theatres at Fair- 

 time, and migrate Into the booths, I think I may 

 be excused from giving up my space to all that is 

 known of each performer, or to anything whatever 

 that is known about nine-tenths of them. "Ben 

 Jonson's booth" at Bartholomew Fair, "frequently 

 spoken of by contemporaries," is mentioned at p. 

 390. of my Memoirs. It was Mrs. Mynn's booth, 

 and was named by her, no doubt, after the great 

 dramatist whose comedy upon the Fair made him 

 its literary hero. 



Db. Rimbault next raises against me the ghost 

 of Tom Walker, whom I do not mention, and who 

 was found acting Paris in Mrs. Mynn's booth. It 

 was not In Mrs. Mynn's booth that Tom Walker 

 was found acting Paris, but in the company of a 

 certain Mr. Shepherd. I have mentioned the 

 full titles of his two Bartholomew operas (cited 

 against me by Dr. Rimbault), referring to them 

 as signs of the times, in two successive sentences, 

 and there is not a little prominence given In my 

 book to the Beggars Opera, But I was attend- 

 ing chiefly to a discussion of its influence upon 

 the public, and omitted the whole list of actors, as 

 a kind of knowledge very easily accessible to those 

 who wish for it. I agree, however, that Tom 

 Walker is entitled to be named in this part of my 

 narrative, and make a note on his behalf accord- 

 ingly- 



Dr. Rimbault next cites from the Anti-Thea- 

 tre what he regards as evidence that Mrs. Mynn's 

 booth was " no despicable school for young ac- 

 tors." I suspect, however, that upon that point 



