The lesser sights of a fair in the first quarter of the eighteenth century are graphically delineated by Gay, in his character of the ballad singer, in "The Shepherd's Week," bringing before the mind's eye the stalls, the lotteries, the mountebanks, the tumblers, the rope-dancers, the raree-shows, the puppets, and "all the fun of the fair." "How pedlers' stalls with glittering toys are laid, The various fairings of the country maid. Long silken laces hang upon the twine, And rows of pins and amber bracelets shine; How the tight lass knives, combs, and scissors spies, And looks on thimbles with desiring eyes. Of lotteries next with tuneful note he told, Where silver spoons are won, and rings of gold. The lads and lasses trudge the street along, And all the fair is crowded in his song. The mountebank now treads the stage, and sells His pills, his balsams, and his ague-spells; Now o'er and o'er the nimble tumbler springs, And on the rope the venturous maiden swings; Jack Pudding, in his party-coloured jacket, Tosses the glove, and jokes at every packet. Of raree-shows he sung, and Punch's feats, Of pockets picked in crowds, and various cheats." The theatrical booths, of which we have only casual notices or records during the seventeenth century and the first dozen years of the eighteenth, became an important feature of the London fairs about 1714, from which time those of Bartholomew and Southwark were regularly attended by many of the leading actors and actresses of Drury Lane, Covent Garden, the Haymarket, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and Goodman's Fields theatres, down to the middle of the century, excepting those years in which no theatrical booths were allowed to be put up in Smithfield. The theatrical companies which attended the fairs were not, however, drawn entirely from the London theatres. Three or four actors associated in the proprietorship and management, or were engaged by a popular favourite, and the rest of the company was recruited from provincial theatres, or from the strolling comedians of the country fairs. The London fairs were not, therefore, neglected by metropolitan managers in quest of talent, who, by witnessing the performances in booths on Smithfield or Southwark Green, sometimes found and transferred to their own boards, actors and actresses who proved stars of the first magnitude. It was in Bartholomew Fair that Booth found Walker, the original representative of Captain Macheath, playing in the _Siege of Troy_; and in Southwark Fair, in 1714, that the same manager saw Mrs. Horton acting in _Cupid and Psyche_, and was so pleased with her impersonation that he immediately offered her an engagement at Drury Lane, where she appeared the following season as Melinda, in the _Recruiting Officer_. She made her first appearance in 1713, as Marcia in _Cato_, with a strolling company then performing at Windsor; and is said to have been one of the most beautiful women that ever trod the stage.