C.

[Footnote 1: It is as follows.]

[Footnote 2: In the 'Spectator's' time numbering of houses was so rare

that in Hatton's 'New View of London', published in 1708, special

mention is made of the fact that

'in Prescott Street, Goodman's Fields, instead of signs the houses are

distinguished by numbers, as the staircases in the Inns of Court and

Chancery.']

[Footnote 3: sheep]

[Footnote 4: The sign before her Waxwork Exhibition, in Fleet Street,

near Temple Bar, was 'the Golden Salmon.' She had very recently removed

to this house from her old establishment in St. Martin's le Grand.]

[Footnote 5: Ben Jonson's Alchemist having taken gold from Abel Drugger,

the Tobacco Man, for the device of a sign--'a good lucky one, a thriving

sign'--will give him nothing so commonplace as a sign copied from the

constellation he was born under, but says:

'Subtle'. He shall have 'a bel', that's 'Abel';

And by it standing one whose name is 'Dee'

In a 'rug' grown, there's 'D' and 'rug', that's 'Drug':

And right anenst him a dog snarling 'er',

There's 'Drugger', Abel Drugger. That's his sign.

And here's now mystery and hieroglyphic.

'Face'. Abel, thou art made.

'Drugger'. Sir, I do thank his worship.]

[Footnote 6: Bel, in the apocryphal addition to the Book of Daniel,

called 'the 'History of the Destruction of Bel and the Dragon.']

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The Spectator, Volume 1 Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays · 第 96 / 351 题