OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 37 



But this, by the bye — The sapient knight is made to continue his dis- 

 course as follows: — "From whence, then, does this error proceed ? 

 Bo that my care to point out. The commerce this worthy mer- 

 chant carried on was confined to our coasts ; for this purpose he con- 

 structed a vessel which, from its agility and lightness, he christened a 

 cat. Now to this our day, gentlemen, all our coals from Newcastle are 

 imported in nothing but cats ; from hence it appears that it was not 

 the whiskered, four-footed, mouse-killing cat that was the source of the 

 magistrate's wealth, but the coasting, sailing, coal- carrying cat — that, 

 gentlemen, was Whittington's cat." One cannot help being surprised 

 that any one should gravely attempt to overturn a tradition so old as 

 that of "Richard "Whittington, upon the authority of a writer of farces, 

 who flourished in 1752 to 1777, and who undoubtedly, as such, ex- 

 ercised talents so great as to have obtained tlie name of the English 

 Aristophanes.' But then Hkc him whose name he acquired, it was 

 his business to turn everything to ridicule, and he succeeded. Surely 

 no one would quote Aristophanes to settle a disputed point in history. 

 One would as soon look to Punch's Comic Grammar to settle a point in 

 grammar, or his Comic History of England for an historical fact, as 

 select a writer of farces as evidence on a subject of this sort. 



But I must introduce you to one more play writer who has touched 

 upon this subject, and that is Thomas Hey wood, who published 

 a play, in 1606, on the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth, in- 

 tituled, '^ If you know not ms, you know nobody,^'' Act 1, scene 1. — 

 Dr. Nowell Dean of St. Pauls, after entertaining at his house his friends 



the circunistauce of the vast number of these animals which were destroyed in 

 cleansing the sewers at Paris, and gives this cixrious calculation: — That " one pair of 

 rats, with their progeny, will produce in three years no less than 646,808 rats, 

 which will consume as much food as 64,680 men." No wonder that the King of 

 Barhary, or Guinea, whichever it might have been, to whose coimtry Dick "Whit- 

 tington's puss was sent, should have hailed it as the most valuable acquisition 

 ever introduced to his dominions. That the foundation of a fortune may be laid 

 by such simple means, the author would observe that it is within the sphere of his 

 own knowledge that a poor man made a fair living by catching moles, which were 

 tanned and made into ladies' mufi's. Had he been a younger and more adventur- 

 ous man, who would venture to say that he might not have become a second 

 Whittington ! 



« JjomT^rieic's Bwtjiraphical Dktionar I/, (Foote, Samuel). 



