Shall make my lady mayoress and her sisters Every week tired. We still strive to breed, And it is fear'd they have a stud o' their own Or fashion now, they take none from us. Carmen Are got into the yellow starch, and chimneysweepers To their tobacco, and strong waters, Hum, Carmen Are got into the yellow starch, and chimney-sweepers Meath and Obarni.] The ridiculous fashion, affected both by the great and small vulgar, of having their ruffs and linen stiffened with a kind of yellow starch was an object of satire to the wits of Jonson's age. It was first brought into vogue by Mrs. Turner, one of the persons employed by the countess of Essex in the poisoning of sir Thomas Overbury: and as she was soon after executed for her dealings in that affair, with a yellow starched ruff about her neck, the mode became for a time disreputable. WHAL. Enough, and more than enough has been produced on this tritest of all subjects, yellow starch. On the strong waters mentioned in the quotation, Whalley has nothing; and I have very little to the purpose. Meath is familiar to every reader under the name of metheglin. Hum, I have always understood to be an infusion of spirits in ale or beer. It is mentioned by At extraordinary subtle ones now, When we do send to keep us up in credit: As the best men and women. Tissue gowns, More certain marks of letchery now and pride, You go to earth, and visit men a day. man, Or let our tribe of brokers furnish you. 66 several of our old dramatists, and appears to have been considered as a kind of cordial. Thus Fletcher : Lord, what should I ail! what a cold I have over my stomach; would I had some hum!" Wild Goose Chace. Obarni is probably a preparation of usquebaugh; but this is merely conjecture. The word is an ana λeyoμevov, (as far as my knowledge reaches,) and I have endeavoured in vain to ascertain the meaning of it. And look how far your subtilty can work But as you make your soon at night's relation, ment. Pug. Most gracious chief! Sat. Only thus more I bind you, To serve the first man that you meet; and him I'll shew you now: observe him. Yon' is he, [Shews him Fitzdottrel coming out of his house at a distance. You shall see first after your clothing. Follow him: But once engaged, there you must stay and fix; Not shift, until the midnight's cock do crow. Pug. Any conditions to be gone. Sat. Away then, SCENE II. [Exeunt severally. The Street before Fitzdottrel's House. Enter FITZDOTTREL. Fitz. Ay, they do now name Bretnor, as before They talk'd of Gresham, and of doctor Foreman, Franklin, and Fiske, and Savory, he was in too; Ay, they do now name Bretnor, as before They talk'd of Gresham, and of doctor Foreman, Franklin, and Fiske, and Savory, he was in too;] These were pretenders to soothsaying, in other words, receivers of stolen goods, pimps, and poisoners. They were all, with the exception VOL. V. C 1 But there's not one of these that ever could Their ravens' wings, their lights, and pentacles, 66 of Bretnor, who came later into notice, connected with the infamous countess of Essex and Mrs. Turner, in the murder of sir Thomas Overbury. Of Foreman the reader will find some account, vol. iii. p. 428. Gresham succeeded him in the service of Mrs. Turner, and being, as Arthur Wilson says, a rotten engine," was preserved, like his predecessor, from the gallows by an early death. Franklin was hanged at the same time with Mrs. Turner, "a swarthy, sallow, crook-backed fellow, (Wilson says,) as sordid in his death as pernicious in his life, and deserving not even so much as memory, p. 82. He was the purveyor of the poison. Fiske is often mentioned by Lilly; and appears to have been just such another ignorant and impudent impostor as himself and Dr. Foreman. "He was a licentiate in physick, exquisitely skilful in the art of directions upon nativities, and had a good genius in performing judgment thereupon-Oh learned esquire!" this pathetic apostrophe is to the dupe of these miscreants, the worthy Ashmole, "he died about the seventy-eighth year of his age, poor." Lilly's History, p. 44. Fiske is introduced as a cheating rogue, in Fletcher's Rollo Duke of Normandy. if they be not, &c.] It is not a little amusing to Why are there laws against them? The best artists Of Cambridge, Oxford, Middlesex and London, Essex and Kent, I have had in pay to raise him, These fifty weeks, and yet he appears not. 'Sdeath, I shall suspect they can make circles only Shortly, and know but his hard names. They do say, He will meet a man, of himself, that has a mind to him. If he would so, I have a mind and a half for him: him, Get him in bonds, and send him post on errands A thousand miles; it is preposterous, that; And, I believe, is the true cause he comes not: And he has reason. Who would be engaged, That might live freely, as he may do? I swear, They are wrong all. The burnt child dreads the fire. They do not know to entertain the devil: I would so welcome him, observe his diet, Get him his chamber hung with arras, two of 'em, In my own house, lend him my wife's wrought piilows; find Fitzdottrel deep in the Dialectics of Chrysippus. This is the very syllogism by which that acute philosopher triumphantly proved the reality of augury. De Divinatione, Lib. 1. § 71. |