Being asked if he did anything in the dramatic line, he answered, "I do more or less in it in every way: I do what I can in the first syllable, _dram_, and in the first two syllables, _drama_; in the last two syllables, _attic_, I am to be seen every night; and in the last, _tick_--m' eye! I wish you knew my exertions." It was not to be expected that the Harlequin could last long without a change; for not only was the sign contrariwise thereto, but the place itself was a change-house. Our landlord therefore let it; and crying "Damned be he that lets me!" bought a caravan, engaged a company from among his customers, and opened his first booth at Bartholomew Fair. But the name of this famed annual assemblage--now, alas! in a deep decline--is enough to tempt a scribbler for hire to branch off into an episode. And here it is. Proclaimed on the 3rd of September, to last during three lawful days, exclusive of the day of proclamation, "Bartholomew Faire," as appears from a pamphlet under that title, printed for Richard Harper, at the Bible and Harpe, in Smithfield, A. D. 1641, began on the 24th of August, old style. About the year 1102, in the reign of Henry the First, Rahere, a minstrel of the king, founded the priory, hospital, and church of St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, as requested by the saint himself in a dream, and, it is presumed, upon a bed where the dreamer could guess what it was to be flea'd alive. Rahere was the first prior, and in his time there was a grand row with Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, on a visitation, when sundry skulls of canons, monks, and friars were cracked, which probably suggested that the site would be very eligible for an annual fair. Henry the Second accordingly granted that privilege to the clothiers of England and the drapers of _London_; and his charter to the mayor and aldermen is extant to this day. Theretofore called "The Elms," from the noble trees which adorned it, Smithfield became in turn a place for splendid jousts, tournaments, pageants, and feats of chivalry; a market for cattle and hay; a scene of cruel executions; and one where, as old Stow acquaints us, loose serving-men and quarrelsome persons resorted and made uproars, thus becoming the rendezvous of bullies and bravoes, till it earned the appropriate name of "Ruffians' Hall." King Solomon, _alias_ Jacobus Primus, caused it to be paved two hundred and twenty years agone, which we have on the authority of Master Arthur Strange-ways, whose statement leads us to infer that the Lord Mayor of 1614 had never opened a railroad, like Lord Mayor Kelly in 1886. Then and there our ancient civic magnates were wont to disport themselves with witnessing "wrastlings," shooting the broad arrow and flights for games, and hunting real wild rabbits by the city boys, with great noise and laughter.