“A mad wag! His diminished nose was a peg upon which hung many an odd jest. His 'whereabouts' were hereabouts at the Bear Garden; but the Bull in Bishopsgate Street; the Bel-Savage, without Ludgate; and his own tavern, the Tabor, in Gracious (Gracechurch) Street, came in for a share of his drolleries. Marvellous must have been the humour of this 'allowed fool, when it could 'undumpish' his royal mistress in her frequent paroxysms of concupiscence and ferocity! He was no poll-parrot retailer of other people's jokes. He had a wit's treasury of his own, upon which he drew liberally, and at sight. His nose was flat; not so his jests; and, in exchanging extemporal gibes with his audience, * he generally returned a good repartee for a bad one.” * Tarlton having to speak a prologue, and finding no cessation to the hissing, suddenly addressed the audience in this tetrastie:-- I lived not in the golden age, When Jason won the fleece; But now I am on Gotham's stage, Where fools do hiss like geese. On the authority of an old play, “The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London,” published two years after his death, he was originally “a, water-bearer.” Among England's merry crew in the olden time were Will Summers, jester to King Henry the Eighth; Patch, Cardinal Wolsey's fool; Jack Oates, fool to Sir Richard Hollis; and Archibald Armstrong, jester to King Charles the First. There was a famous jester, one Jemy Camber, “a fat foole,” who enlivened the dull Court of James the Sixth of Scotland. The manner of his death, as recorded in “A Nest of Ninnies,” by Robert Armin, 4to. 1608, is singular. “The Chamber-laine was sent to see him there,” (at the house of a laundress in Edinburgh, whose daughter he was soliciting, and who had provided a bed of nettles for his solace,) “who when he came found him fast asleep under the bed starke naked, bathing in nettles, whose skinne when hee wakened him, was all blistered grievously. The King's Chamberlaine bid him arise and come to the King. 'I will not,' quoth he, 'I will go make my grave.' See how things chanced, he spake truer than he was awar. For the Chamberlaine going home without him, tolde the King his answere. Jemy rose, made him ready, takes his horse, and rides to the church-yard in the high towne, where he found the sexton (as the custom is there) making nine graves--three for men, three for women, and three for children; and who so dyes next, first comes, first served, * 'Lend mee thy spade,' says Jemy, and with that, digs a hole, which hole hee bids him make for his grave; and doth give him a French crowne; the man, willing to please him (more for his gold than his pleasure) did so: and the foole gets upon his horse, rides to a gentleman of the towne, and on the so-daine, within two houres after, dyed: of whom the sexton telling, hee was buried there indeed. Thus, you see, fooles have a gesse at wit sometime,