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the river. In 1805, by new arrangements of
the magistrates, Daniel's occupation in the
prison went, and Daniel, though a young man,
received a compensating pension of fifty
pounds a year for life. He retired upon his
other occupations in the breeding of game-
cocks, terriers, and such matters as suited
his hereditary taste; his bulk, however, had
increased so much that he decided in 1806
to remove to London, where he took rooms
in Piccadilly, and made a show of his body at
the small charge of one shilling from each
visitor. His rooms were well filled, many
coming more than once to stare; a banker in
the city boasted that he had indulged himself
in a pound's worth of the edifying spectacle.
When it was not the London season, Lambert
made provincial tours, or rested at home
among game-chickens and dogs, studying his
one volume of literature, the Racing Calendar.
He kept at one time thirty terriers,
and his setters and pointers fetched prices at
Tattersall's varying from twelve to forty-one
guineas. Nine of his dogs were sold for two
hundred and eighteen guineas.

Lambert was a cheerful and temperate
man, a strict water-drinker. He was an
exhibition only for three years. In 1809 he
was found dead in his room one morning at
Stamford, at which town he had arrived in
apparent health the day before. On his
arrival he had sent for the printer, and
entrusted to him a handbill announcing his
appearance the next day before an enlightened
public. He was buried in St. Martin's burial-
ground, and his virtues were carefully
mustered on a monumental tablet in the following
inscription:—

"In remembrance of that prodigy in nature
Daniel Lambert, a native of Leicester, who
was possessed of an excellent and convivial
mind, and in personal greatness he had no
competitor. He measured three feet one
inch round the leg, nine feet four inches
round the body and weighed fifty-two stone
eleven pounds (fourteen pounds to the stone).
He departed this life on the 21st of June 1809,
aged thirty-nine years. As a testimony of
respect this stone was erected by his friends
in Leicester."

Daniel Lambert was not a monster in
tallnessfive feet eleven only; but I will say
nothing of giants and dwarfs. Only a well-
known friend of Lambert's may be mentioned,
Count Borulawski, who, it is said, expressed
no grief at his wife's death, because when
they had a domestic difference she used to
put him on the mantel-piece. I mention
this circumstance, because it may suggest a
little comic business for my projected
entertainment.

For the real low comedy business, however,
I should like to find such a man to depend upon
as Old Boots, who was a celebrated character
at Ripon in the middle of the last century.
He died, aged 70, in 1762. He was boots at
an inn, and when he brought gentlemen their
slippers they were in the habit of paying him
with shillings on condition that he held them
between his nose and his chin; those features
both projected greatly, and their tips very
nearly touched one another. A man with
such a nose and chin would be the cause of
great mirth to the public.

In the beginning of the last centuryhe was
born in 1710there was a strong man named
Thomas Topham, who attained great
popularity. He was bred as a carpenter, but his
taste led him to turn publican, and he became
host of the Red Lion, near the ring in
Moorfields, a situation chosen for the sake of the
gymnastic exercises of which the ring in
Moorfields was the theatre. Topham failed in his
public-house business, but succeeded as a
sporting character, attended races, and
exhibited his strength in towns. He heaved his
horse over a turnpike gate; he stretched his
arm out and squeezed a pewter quart pot in
his fingers as though it had been made of
egg-shell. Being annoyed by the ostler at an
inn in Derby, he seized the kitchen spit and
wrapped it round his neck after the fashion
of a comforter. Still in Derby, he took up
a watchman asleep in his box, and put him,
box and all, over the wall into Tindall's burying
ground. On board a West Indiaman he
alarmed a sailor by crumpling a cocoa-nut at
his ear, breaking the shell with his fingers as
he was in the habit of breaking pewter pots.
At a race in the Hackney Road, being
annoyed by a man in a cart, he went behind
and dragged the cart backwards out of the
crowd, in spite of the struggles of the horse
to drag it on. Topham limped, for he once
laid a wager that if his legs were clasped
about a tree, three horses could not drag him
from it. The experiment was tried, and the
horses being whipped, swerved suddenly aside,
so that Tom's leg was broken. But what a
fine fellow he was. He was the man to draw.
I am quite sure that three such men would
draw a house if I could get them into Drury
Lane. The success of the whole combined
entertainment would be something altogether
monstrous.

I need not say, that if my plan should
prosper I shall be happy to offer good terms
to the whiskered lady now in London, though
I suspect, that the manufacturers of hair
balms, oils, and greases will outbid me.
Instead of bearsif I am clairvoyantwe
shall have whiskered ladies kept by
hairdressers in testimony to the value of their
grease. Another great idea!

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