“There is nothing like sound literature and good sense to be met with in those objects, that are everywhere thrusting themselves out to the eye and endeavouring to become visible. Our streets are filled with _blue boars_, _black swans_, and _red lions_, not to mention _flying-pigs_ and _hogs in armour_, with many creatures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa. Strange that one, who has all the birds and beasts in nature to choose out of, should live at the sign of an _ens rationis_. “My first task, therefore, should be like that of Hercules, to clear the city from monsters. In the second place, I should forbid that creatures of jarring and incongruous natures should be joined together in the same sign; such as the _Bell and the Neat’s Tongue_, the _Dog and the Gridiron_. The _Fox and the Goose_ may be supposed to have met, but what has the _Fox and the Seven Stars_ to do together? And when did the _Lamb and Dolphin_ ever meet except upon a signpost? As for the _Cat and Fiddle_, there is a conceit in it, and therefore I do not intend that anything I have here said should affect it. I must, however, observe to you upon this subject, that it is usual for a young tradesman, at his first setting up, to add to his own sign that of the master whom he served, as the husband, after marriage, gives a place to his mistress’s arms in his own coat. This I take to have given rise to many of those absurdities which are committed over our heads; and, as I am informed, first occasioned the _Three Nuns and a Hare_, which we see so frequently joined together. I would therefore establish certain rules for the determining how far one tradesman may give the sign of another, and in what case he may be allowed to quarter it with his own. “In the third place, I would enjoin every shop to make use of a sign which bears some affinity to the wares in which it deals. What can be more inconsistent than to see a bawd at the sign of the _Angel_, or a tailor at the _Lion_? A cook should not live at the _Boot_, nor a shoemaker at the _Roasted Pig_; and yet, for want of this regulation, I have seen a _Goat_ set up before the door of a perfumer, and the _French King’s Head_ at a sword-cutler’s. “An ingenious foreigner observes that several of those gentlemen who value themselves upon their families, and overlook such as are bred to trades, bear the tools of their forefathers in their coats of arms. I will not examine how true this is in fact; but though it may not be necessary for posterity thus to set up the sign of their forefathers, I think it highly proper that those who actually profess the trade should shew some such mark of it before their doors.