OF THE MIBBLE AGES. 29 



the friend of my younger days, Mr. Punch, and his dramatical troop," 

 yet he says that " his fortune was not -without a parallel, for it is 

 recorded how Alphonso, a Portuguese, being wrecked on the Coast of 

 Guinney, and being presented by the king thereof with his weight in 

 gold for a cat to kill their mice, and an oyntment to kill their flies, 

 which he improved within five years to £6000. on the place, and re- 

 turning to Portugal after fifteen years traffic becoming the third man 

 in the kingdom." But the author who has carried his objections to 

 the tale to the greatest lengtli is Mr. Thomas Keightley, in his ingeni- 

 ous little work on Tales and Popular Fictions "" and he says, " In the 

 whole of this legendary history there is, as we may see, not a single 

 word of truth further than this, — that the maiden name of Lady 

 Whittington was Fitzwarren I" Surely Mr. Keightley, as an historian, 

 must have known something of the histories of Stow, and Stiype, and 

 Eapin, and the History of the Mercer s Company, and should have known 

 that Whittiugton was Lord Mayor of London three times, at least, if 

 not more. Yet he quotes the first scene in Beaumont and Pletchcr's 

 Knight of the Burning Pestle, written about A.D. 1613, in which the 

 citizen says to the prologue, " "Why could not you be contented as 

 well as others with the legend of ^Whittiugton ? or the life and death 

 of Sir Thomas Gresham, with the building of the Eoyal Exchange ? 

 or the story of Queen Eleanor with the rearing of London Bridge 

 upon woolsacks?" " The word legend," says Mr. Keightley, "in this 

 place would seem to indicate the stoiy of a cat, and we cannot there- 

 fore weU assign it a later date than the sixteenth century." Sui'ely 

 Mr. Keightley did not mean that the word legend ' necessarily meant 

 a fable. Beaumont and Fletcher coupled the tale of "VMiittington, 

 in this instance, with well known historical facts or traditions, such as 

 the life of Sir T. Gresham and Queen Eleanor ; even that of London 

 Bridge '■' being built upon woolsacks may have had a fertile meaning, 

 w Tales (Did Popular Fictions, their Eescmblance and Transmission from Country 

 to Country, by Thomas Keightley, author of Outlines of Sistory. London, 1834. 

 8vo. chap. vii. 



X Johnson's Dictionary gives foxir meanings to the word legend. 1. A chronicle 

 or register of the lives of saints. 2. Any memorial or relation. 3. Any inscrip- 

 tion, particularly on coins and medals. 4. An incredible, unauthentic narrative. 

 y London bridge, then built of timber, was burnt down 1136, and was rebuilt 

 of stone, 1176. The building occupied 33 years. The architect, Peter, died four 



