[Illustration: _T. Bewick.--Sculpt._] [Illustration: [_R. Johnson, del. Charlton Nesbit, sculpt._] Cut to the memory of ROBERT JOHNSON. _Bewick's favourite Pupil._] On the South side of Ovingham Church there is this tablet-- In Memory of ROBERT JOHNSON, PAINTER AND ENGRAVER. A NATIVE OF THIS PARISH. Who died at Kenmore in Perthshire, _The 29th, of October, 1796_. IN THE 26th, YEAR OF HIS AGE. [Illustration: THOMAS BEWICK.] Thomas Bewick died at his house on the Windmill-Hills, Gateshead, November the 8th, 1828, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, and on the 13th he was buried in the family burial-place at Ovingham, where his parents, wife, and brother were interred. [Illustration] [Illustration] [Illustration: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"] A HISTORY OF THE CRIES OF LONDON. A HISTORY OF THE CRIES OF LONDON (Ancient & Modern) SECOND EDITION Greatly Enlarged and Carefully Revised. HISTORY OF THE CRIES OF LONDON. "Let none despise the merry, merry cries Of famous London Town":--_Rex. Ballad._ The cries of London have ever been very popular, whether as broadsides, books, ballads, or engravings. Artists of all countries and times have delighted to represent those peculiarities of costume and character which belong to the history of street-cries, and the criers thereof. Annibale Carracci--1560-1609--has immortalized the cries of Bologna; and from the time of Elizabeth to that of Queen Victoria, authors, artists and printers combined, have presented the Cries and Itinerant Trades of London, in almost numberless forms, and in various degrees of quality, from the roughest and rudest wood-cut-blocks to the finest of copper and steel plate engravings, or skilfully wrought etchings. While many of the early English dramatists often introduced the subject, eminent composers were wont to "set to music" as catch, glee, or roundelaye, all the London Cries then most in vogue,--"They were, I ween, ryght merrye songs, and the musick well engraved." The earliest mention of London trade-cries is by Dan John Lydgate (1370-1450), a Monk of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St. Edmund's, the friend and immediate follower of Geoffrey Chaucer, and one of the most prolific writers of his age this country has produced. To enumerate Lydgate's pieces would be to write out the catalogue of a small library. No poet seems to have possessed a greater versatility of talents. He moves with equal ease in every mode of composition; and among his minor pieces he has left us a very curious poem entitled "London Lyckpeny," _i.e._, _London Lackpenny_: this has been frequently printed; by Strutt, Pugh, Nicolas, and partly by John Stow in "A Survey of London," 1598. There are two copies in the British Museum, Harl. MSS., 367 and 542. We somewhat modernize the text of the former and best of these copies, which differ considerably from each other.