of Great Britain.  He informed the company, that he had searched authorities for what he said, and that a learned antiquary, Humphrey Scarecrow, Esq., of Hockley-in-the-Hole, recorder to the Bear Garden, was then writing a discourse on the subject.  It appears by the best accounts, says this gentleman, that the high names which are used among us with so great veneration, were no other than stage-fighters, and worthies of the ancient Bear Garden.  The renowned Hercules always carried a quarterstaff, and was from thence called Claviger.  A learned chronologist is about proving what wood this staff was made of, whether oak, ash, or crab-tree.  The first trial of skill he ever performed, was with one Cacus, a deer-stealer; the next was with Typhonus, a giant of forty feet four inches.  Indeed it was unhappily recorded, that meeting at last with a sailor’s wife, she made his staff of prowess serve her own use, and dwindle away to a distaff:  she clapped him on an old tar jacket of her husband’s; so that this great hero drooped like a scabbed sheep.  Him his contemporary Theseus succeeded in the Bear Garden, which honour he held for many years:  this grand duellist went to hell, and was the only one of that sort that ever came back again.  As for Achilles and Hector (as the ballads of those times mention), they were pretty smart fellows; they fought at sword and buckler; but the former had much the better of it; his mother, who was an oyster-woman, having got a blacksmith of Lemnos to make her son’s weapons.  There is a pair of trusty Trojans in a song of Virgil’s, that were famous for handling their gauntlets, Dares, and Entellus;[317] and indeed it does appear, they fought [for] no sham prize.  What arms the great Alexander used, is uncertain; however, the historian mentions, when he attacked Thalestris, it was only at single rapier; but the weapon soon failed; for it was always observed, that the Amazons had a sort of enchantment about them, which made the blade of the weapon, though of never so good metal, at every home push, lose its edge and grow feeble.  The Roman Bear Garden was abundantly more magnificent than anything Greece could boast of; it flourished most under those delights of mankind, Nero and Domitian:  at one time it is recorded, four hundred senators entered the list, and thought it an honour to be cudgelled and quarterstaffed.[318] I observe, the Lanistae were the people chiefly employed, which makes me imagine our Bear Garden copied much after this, the butchers being the greatest men in it.  Thus far the glory and honour of the Bear Garden stood secure, till fate, that irresistible ruler of sublunary things, in that universal ruin of arts and politer learning, by those savage people the Goths and Vandals, destroyed and levelled it to the ground.  Thus fell the grandeur and bravery of the Roman state, till at last the warlike genius (but accompanied with more courtesy) revived in the Christian world under those puissant champions,