Face. When all your alchemy, and your algebra, Your minerals, vegetals, and animals, Your conjuring, cozening, and yourdozen of trades, I gave you countenance, credit for your coals, Sub. Your master's house! Face. Where you have studied the more thriv ing skill Of bawdry since. Sub. Yes, in your master's house. You and the rats here kept possession. Make it not strange. I know you were one could keep The buttery-hatch still lock'd, and save the chip pings, 3 Sell the dole beer to aqua-vitæ men, 2 I gave you countenance,] i. e. credit, &c. See vol. ii. p. 111. 3 Sell the dole beer to aqua-vite men,] i. e. defraud the poor of the beer which was meant for them. It was usual, at that time, "And pity 'tis, so good a time had wings to distribute, at the buttery-hatch of great houses, a daily or weekly dole of broken bread and beer to the indigent families of the neighbourhood. your Christmas vails At post-and-pair,] "Post-and-pair," the author of the Com pleat Gamester says, 66 is a game on the cards very much played in the west of England." If we may trust our old dramatists, it was very much played" every where. The author's account of it, I do not very clearly understand; it seems, however, to have somewhat resembled Brag. Like most of our old games of 66 Made you a pretty stock, some twenty marks, And gave you credit to converse with cobwebs, Here, since your mistress' death hath broke up house. Face. You might talk softlier, racal. Sub. No, you scarab, I'll thunder you in pieces: I will teach you Thou vermin, have I ta'en thee out of dung, pots, Sublimed thee, and exalted thee, and fix'd thee Giv'n thee thy oaths, thy quarrelling dimensions, Would you be gone now? Dol. Gentlemen, what mean you? Will you mar all ? Sub. Slave, thou hadst had no name―― chance, it was of a complicated nature, and highly favourable to gambling. It appears from this passage that card-money is of venerable antiquity. Letting out of counters, which occurs in the same line, means supplying the gamesters with pieces of ivory, or base metal, to count with at play; for which the servants received a small gratuity. Dol. Will you undo yourselves with civil war? Sub. Never been known, past equi clibanum, The heat of horse-dung, under ground, in cellars, Or an ale-house darker than deaf John's; been lost To all mankind, but laundresses and tapsters, Dol. Do you know who hears you, sovereign? Dol. Nay, general, I thought you were civil. Face. I shall turn desperate, if loud. you grow thus Sub. And hang thyself, I care not. Face. Hang thee, collier, And all thy pots, and pans, in picture, I will, Dol. O, this will o'erthrow all. Face. Write thee up bawd in Paul's, have all thy tricks 5 Of cozening with a hollow cole, dust, scrapings, Searching for things lost," with a sieve and sheers, 5 Of cozening with a hollow cole, &c.] This is a well known artifice; but the particular allusion is to an anecdote in "the Chanons Yeomans Tale," where a priest is imposed upon by it. -Under pretence of converting quicksilver into metal, "this cursed Chanon, as Chaucer calls him, while the honest priest was busied elsewhere, "Out of his bosome toke a bechen cole, The hole with waxe to kepe the lymayle in," &c. Lymayle is the "dust and scrapings" of gold and silver. Searching for things lost, &c.] This species of divination, which is of the remotest antiquity, yet retains its credit among the vulgar. By" erecting figures," &c. in the next line, is mcant delineating schemes of the different positions of the Erecting figures in your rows of houses, planets, with respect to the several constellations. House, in astrology, is the twelfth part of the zodiac. 7 And taking in of shadows with a glass,] This mode of divi nation was very common in Jonson's time, and indeed long before and after it. What he calls the glass, was a globular crystal or berryl, into which the angels Uriel, Gabriel, &c. entered, and gave responses, as Lilly says, 66 in a voice, like the Irish, much in the throat." This, if it proves nothing else, will serve to shew that the Irish was the primitive language! Of all the various modes of imposture, this was at once, the most artful and the most impudent. It was usually conducted by confederacy, for the possessor of the glass seldom pretended to see the angels, or hear their answers. His part was to mumble over some incomprehensible prayers: after which a speculatrix, a virgin of a pure life, (for the angels were very delicate on this point,) was called in to inspect the crystal. "I was very familiar," Lilly says, "with one Sarah Skelhorn, who had been speculatrix to Arthur Gauntlet. This Sarah had a perfect sight, and indeed the best eyes for that purpose I ever yet did see. Sir Robert Holborn," he continues," brought me one Gladwell, of Suffolk, who had formerly had conference with Uriel and Raphael, but lost them both by carelessness. He would have given me two hundred pounds to have assisted him for their recovery, but I am no such man!"—Gladwell's berryl was of the largeness of a good big orange, set in silver, with a cross on the top, and another on the handle, and round about engraved the names of these angels, Raphael, Gabriel, Uriel," &c. Lilly's Life, p. 150. 8 66 Told in red letters,] i. e. says Upton, letters written in blood, -but he mistakes the whole sense of the passage. Instead of turning to Aristophanes, as he does upon the present occasion, he should have looked at some of our old song books, where he would have seen that those red letters were, as Whalley truly observes, the material parts of them tricked out in this manner to catch the eye of passengers. Rubric titles to ballads, stories, &c. were then to be seen upon every post. It is the knavery of Subtle,which Face threatens to put into red letters, with his figure (as the manner was), printed at the top of the ballad, to put the subject of it out of all doubt. and a face cut for thee Worse than Gamaliel Ratsey's.] Gamaliel Ratsey was a Dol. Are you sound? Have you your senses, masters? Face. I will have A book, but barely reckoning thy impostures, Shall prove a true philosopher's stone to prin ters. Sub. Away, you trencher-rascal! Face. Out, you dog-leach! The vomit of all prisons notorious highwayman, who always robbed in a mask, which was undoubtedly made as hideous as possible, in order to strike terror. In the title page of an old pamphlet, (which I have not seen,) containing the history of his exploits, he is said to be represented with this frightful visor. In allusion to which, I suppose, he is called by Gab. Hervey, "Gamaliel Hobgoblin." On the books of the Stationers Company, (May 1605,) is entered a work called " the lyfe and death of Gamaliel Ratsey, a famous theefe of England,executed at Bedford." There are also several "Ballats," on the subject, entered about the same time. But the achievements of Gamaliel have been sung in more than one language, a proof, at least, of their celebrity. In a small volume, belonging to Mr. Bindley, of the Stamp Office, intitled "Schediasmata Poetica, sive Epigrammatum Libellus, authore J. Johnson, in artibus Magistro Cantab. &c. Londini, 1615," are the following testimonials to the notoriety of this hero. The first has some of the quaint humour of the times: the second is a complete failure: the author should have parodied Horace instead of Virgil: In Ratseum, furem famosissimum. Cereus in vitium flecti, tu cerite cerâ, Tu brevibus Gyaris, Ratsee, dignus eras. Ejusdem Sermo ad Socios, O Socii, (neque enim nos hi latuere dolores) |