s a justice of peace, and his sister a
captain of horse." I find that Goldsmith's allusion is to this last
passage, with some variation. Tony Lumpkin tells Marlow that Hardcastle
will endeavour to persuade him that "his mother was an alderman and his
aunt a justice of peace." (_She Stoops to Conquer_, A. i. _sub fine_.) I
have not been able to find the allusion in Swift; nor can I see how it
could have been a _political_ satire. It seems rather to be a mere tissue
of incongruities and contradictions--of Irish bulls, in short, woven into a
narrative to make folks laugh; and it is much of the same character as many
other pieces of ingenious nonsense with which Swift and Sheridan used to
amuse each other.

C.

_Sir Gammer Vans._--This worthy is mentioned in that curious little
chap-book, _A Strange and Wonderful Relation of the Old Woman that was
drowned at Ratcliff Highway_, in two parts. I now quote the passage from a
copy of the genuine Aldermary churchyard edition:--

"At last I arrived at Sir John Vang's house. 'Tis a little house
entirely alone, encompassed about with forty or fifty houses, having a
brick wall made of flint stone round about it. So knocking at the door,
Gammer Vangs, said I, is Sir John Vangs within? Walk in, said she, and
you shall see him in the little, great, round, three square parlour.
This Gammer Vangs had a little old woman her son. Her mother was a
churchwarden of a large troop of horse, and her grandmother was a
Justice of the Peace; but when I came into the said great, little,
square, round, three corner'd parlour, I could not see Sir John Vangs,
for he was a giant. But I espied abundance of nice wicker bottles. And
just as I was going out he called to me and asked me what I would have?
So looking back I espied him just creeping out of a wicker bottle. It
seems by his profession he was a wicker bottle maker. And after he had
made them, he crept out at the stopper holes."

There are two notes worth recording with respect to this curious medley,
which is obviously a modern version of a much older composition. Query, is
any older edition known?

1. That the wood-cut on the title page, which has been re-engraved for Mr.
Halliwell's _Notices of Fugitive Tracts and Chap-books_, printed for the
Percy Society, is one of the few representations we have of the old
_Ducking Stool_.

2. That it is said that the Rev. Thomas Kerrich, the well-