haunts of
the pleasure-seeking Sir John Howard, whose trusty steward records, anno
1464: "Paid for wyn at the Mermayd in Bred Street, for my mastyr and Syr
Nicholas Latimer, xd. ob." In 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh established a
Literary Club in this house, among its members being Shakespeare, Ben
Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Selden, Carew, Martin, Donne, etc. It is
often alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher.

[934] "History of Sign-boards," 1866, p. 226.

_Minnow._ This little fish, from its insignificant character, is used by
"Coriolanus" (iii. 1) as a term of contempt: "Hear you this Triton of
the minnows?" and, again, in "Love's Labour's Lost" (i. 1), it occurs:
"'that base minnow of thy mirth.'"

_Pike._ An old name for this fish was _luce_. In the "Merry Wives of
Windsor" (i. 1) we are told that "The luce is the fresh fish." There can
be no doubt, too, that there is in this passage an allusion to the
armorial bearings of Shakespeare's old enemy, Sir Thomas Lucy. Among the
various instances of the use of this term we may quote Isaac Walton, who
says: "The mighty luce or pike is taken to be the tyrant, as the salmon
is the king, of the fresh waters." Stow, in his "Survey of London,"
describes a procession of the Fishmongers' Company in 1298, as having
horses painted like _sea-luce_: "Then four salmons of silver on foure
horses, and after them sixe and fortie armed knightes riding on horses
made like _luces of the sea_."

_Porpoise._ According to sailors, the playing of porpoises round a ship
is a certain prognostic of a violent gale of wind; hence the allusion in
"Pericles" (ii. 1), where one of the fishermen says, speaking of the
storm: "Nay, master, said not I as much, when I saw the porpus, how he
bounced and tumbled?" Thus, too, in the "Canterbury Guests, or a Bargain
Broken," by Ravenscroft, we read: "My heart begins to leap and play,
like a porpice before a storm." And a further reference occurs in
Wilsford's "Nature's Secrets:" "Porpoises, or sea-hogs, when observed to
sport and chase one another about ships, expect then some stormy
weather."

_Sea-monster._ The reference in "King Lear" (i. 4), to the
"sea-monster"--

"Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous, when thou show'st thee in a child,
Than the sea-monster!"--

is generally supposed to be the hippopotamus, which, according to Upton,
was the hieroglyphical symbol of impiety and ingratitude.[935]
Sandys[936] gives a p