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phenomena for the market-place, of buffoons for the palace (a species of
augmentative of the courtier), and eunuchs for sultans and popes. It
abounded in varieties. One of its triumphs was the manufacture of cocks
for the king of England.
It was the custom, in the palace of the kings of England, to have a sort
of watchman, who crowed like a cock. This watcher, awake while all
others slept, ranged the palace, and raised from hour to hour the cry of
the farmyard, repeating it as often as was necessary, and thus supplying
a clock. This man, promoted to be cock, had in childhood undergone the
operation of the pharynx, which was part of the art described by Dr.
Conquest. Under Charles II. the salivation inseparable to the operation
having disgusted the Duchess of Portsmouth, the appointment was indeed
preserved, so that the splendour of the crown should not be tarnished,
but they got an unmutilated man to represent the cock. A retired officer
was generally selected for this honourable employment. Under James II.
the functionary was named William Sampson, Cock, and received for his
crow £9, 2s. 6d. annually.
The memoirs of Catherine II. inform us that at St. Petersburg, scarcely
a hundred years since, whenever the czar or czarina was displeased with
a Russian prince, he was forced to squat down in the great antechamber
of the palace, and to remain in that posture a certain number of days,
mewing like a cat, or clucking like a sitting hen, and pecking his food
from the floor.
These fashions have passed away; but not so much, perhaps, as one might
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