[97] Elkannah Settle was born in the year 1648. In 1680, he was so violent a Whig, that the ceremony of Pope-burning, on the 17th of November, was entrusted to his management. He wrote much in defence of the party, and with the leaders was in high estimation. Politicians and patriots were formed of much the same materials then as they are now. Settle, being disappointed in some of his views, became as violent a Tory as he had been a Whig, and actually entered himself a trooper in King James's army at Hounslow Heath. The Revolution destroyed all his prospects; and in the latter part of his life he was so reduced as to attend a booth, which was kept by Mrs. Minns and her daughter Mrs. Leigh, in Bartholomew Fair. From these people he received a salary for writing drolls, which were generally approved. In his old age he was obliged to appear in these wretched exhibitions; and in the farce of _St. George for England_, performed the part of a dragon, being enclosed in a case of green leather of his own invention. To this circumstance Doctor Young refers in his Epistle to Pope: "Poor Elkannah, all other changes past, For bread, in Smithfield-dragons hiss'd at last; Spit streams of fire, to make the butchers gape; And found his manners suited to his shape." [98] The Honourable Edward Howard, brother to the Earl of Berkshire and to Sir Henry Howard, was much more illustrious from his birth than distinguished by his talents. Poetry was his passion rather than his power. He mistook inclination for ability, and wrote a number of very dull plays, in which want of genius and invention was atoned for by that turgid, inflated language so acceptable to an audience whose admiration is most excited by that which they least understand. [99] The fairs at Chester, and some few other places, still keep up the spirit of the original institution. [100] They were at last carried to such a height of licentiousness, as to demand the interposition of the Legislature; and no reformation being wrought by lenient measures, Southwark Fair, and many others, were suppressed. [101] A booth was built in Smithfield the year this print was published, for the use of T. Cibber, Bullock, and H. Hallam, at which the tragedy of _Tamerlane_, with the _Fall of Bajazet_, intermixed with the comedy of the _Miser_, was actually represented. The bill of fare with which these gentlemen tempted their customers may properly enough be called an _olio_; and the royal elephant sheet on which the titles of their plays are printed, throws the comparatively diminutive bills of a theatre-royal into the background.