A favourite ballad of our ancestors originated the sign of the LONDON APPRENTICE, of which there are still numerous examples. How they were represented appears from the _Spectator_, No. 428, viz., “with a lion’s heart in each hand.” The ballad informs us that the apprentice came off with flying colours, after endless adventures, one of which was that like Richard Cœur-de-Lion--he “robbed the lion of his heart.” The ballad is entitled “The Honour of an Apprentice of London, wherein he declared his matchless manhood and brave adventures done by him in Turkey, and by what means he married the king’s daughter of that same country.” The ESSEX SERPENT is a sign in King Street, Covent Garden, and in Charles Street, Westminster, perhaps in allusion to a fabulous monster recorded in a catalogue of wonders and awful prognostications contained in a broadside of 1704,[100] from which we learn that, “Before Henry the Second died, a dragon of marvellous bigness was discovered at St Osyph, in Essex.” Had we any evidence that it is an old sign, we might almost be inclined to consider it as dating from the civil war, and hung up with reference to Essex, the Parliamentary general; for though we have searched the chroniclers fondest of relating wonders and monstrous apparitions, we have not succeeded in finding any authority for the St Osyph Dragon, other than the above-mentioned broadside. Literature of a somewhat higher class than street ballads, has likewise contributed material to the signboards. One of the oldest instances is the LUCRECE, the chaste _felo-de-se_ of Roman history, who, in the sixteenth century, was much in fashion among the poets, and was even sung by Shakespeare. We find that “Thomas Berthelet, prynter unto the kynges mooste noble grace, dwellynge at the sygne of the Lucrece, in Fletestrete, in the year of our Lorde 1536.” In 1557, it was the sign of Leonard Axtell, in St Paul’s Churchyard; and in the reign of Charles I., of Thomas Purfoot, in New Rents, Newgate Market, both booksellers and printers. The COMPLETE ANGLER was _the_ usual sign of fish-tackle sellers in the last century, and the essays of the _Spectator_ made the character of SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY very popular with tobacconists. DOCTOR SYNTAX hangs at the door of many public-houses, as at Preston, Oldham, Newcastle, Gateshead, &c.; the LADY OF THE LAKE at Lowestoft; DANDIE DINMONT at West Linton, Carlisle; PICKWICK in Newcastle; the RED ROVER, Barton Street, Gloucester;[101] TAM O’ SHANTER, Laurence Street, York, and various other towns; ROBIN ADAIR, Benwell, Newcastle. Popular songs also belong to this class, as the LASS O’ GOWRIE, Sunderland and Durham; AULD LANG SYNE, Preston Street, Liverpool; TULLOCH-GORUM and LOCH-NA-GAR, both in Manchester; ROB ROY, Titheburn Street, Liverpool; FLOWERS OF THE FOREST, Blackfriars Road. On the whole, however, this class of names is much more prevalent in the northerly than in the southerly districts of England.