Swift himself; and the
old baronet congratulates himself on escaping from the clutches of "the
emperor and his black men," who had followed him half-way down Fleet
Street. He, however, boasts that he threw them out at the end of Norfolk
Street, where he doubled the corner, and scuttled safely into his quiet
lodgings.

From Elizabethan times downwards, Fleet Street was a favourite haunt of
showmen. Concerning these popular exhibitions Mr. Noble has, with great
industry, collected the following curious enumeration:--

"Ben Jonson," says our trusty authority, "in _Every Man in his Humour_,
speaks of 'a new motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the
whale, at Fleet Bridge.' In 1611 'the Fleet Street mandrakes' were to
be seen for a penny; and years later the giants of St. Dunstan's clock
caused the street to be blocked up, and people to lose their time, their
temper, and their money. During Queen Anne's reign, however, the wonders
of Fleet Street were at their height. In 1702 a model of Amsterdam,
thirty feet long by twenty feet wide, which had taken twelve years in
making, was exhibited in Bell Yard; a child, fourteen years old, without
thighs or legs, and eighteen inches high, was to be seen 'at the "Eagle
and Child," a grocer's shop, near Shoe Lane;' a great Lincolnshire ox,
nineteen hands high, four yards long, as lately shown at Cambridge, was
on view 'at the "White Horse," where the great elephant was seen;' and
'between the "Queen's Head" and "Crooked Billet," near Fleet Bridge,'
were exhibited daily 'two strange, wonderful, and remarkable monstrous
creatures--an old she-dromedary, seven feet high and ten feet long,
lately arrived from Tartary, and her young one; being the greatest
rarity and novelty that ever was seen in the three kingdomes before.' In
1710, at the 'Duke of Marlborough's Head,' in Fleet Street (by Shoe
Lane), was exhibited the 'moving picture' mentioned in the _Tatler_; and
here, in 1711, 'the great posture-master of Europe,' eclipsing the
deceased Clarke and Higgins, greatly startled sight-seeing London. 'He
extends his body into all deformed shapes; makes his hip and
shoulder-bones meet together; lays his head upon the ground, and turns
his body round twice or thrice, without stirring his face from the spot;
stands upon one leg, and extends the other in a perpendicular line half
a yard above his head; and extends his body from a table with his head a
foot below his heels, having nothing t