se ages, have
been transmitted by writers who have given too great pomp and
magnificence to the exploits of the ancient Bear Garden, and made their
gladiators, by fabulous tradition, greater than Gorman[316] and others
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
o