There 'tis exprest: first, by a purse of gold,
A heavy purse, and then two turtles, makes,"
A heart with a light stuck in it, a Light Heart
Old abbot Islip could not invent better,
Or prior Bolton with his bolt and ton.s
I am an inn-keeper, and know my grounds,
And study them; brain o' man! I study them.
I must have jovial guests to drive my ploughs,
And whistling boys to bring my harvest home,
Or I shall hear no flails thwack. Here, your master
And you have been this fortnight, drawing fleas
Out of my mats, and pounding them in cages
Cut out of cards, and those roped round with pack
thread

Drawn thorough birdlime, a fine subtility!

Or poring through a multiplying-glass,
Upon a captived crab-louse, or a cheese-mite
To be dissected, as the sports of nature,
With a neat Spanish needle! speculations
That do become the age, I do confess!

As measuring an ant's eggs with the silk-worm's,

7 Two turtles, makes.] The old term for mates. "The turtledoves have such love one to another, being makes, that when one of them is dead, the other will never after have any other make.” Book of notable Things. 1627.

8 Old abbot Islip could not invent better,

Or prior Bolton with his bolt and ton.] The reader may find in Camden's Remains, the rebus made use of by these ecclesiastics to express their names on the several buildings erected by them, or belonging to them. The bolt and ton, is a ton pierced through with an arrow, for which bolt was anciently used. WHAL.

One of "old abbot Islip's" conundrums was an eye with a slip of a tree! There is not much to be said for the ingenuity of either; but such was the wisdom of the times. Both these men, however, had other and better claims to the notice of posterity than those puerile devices, and Islip in particular (who was abbot of Westminster) is entitled to our commendation for the stand which he made against Wolsey in the height of his power, and the generous firmness with which he protected the proscribed Skelton, from his resentment.

By a phantastic instrument of thread,

Shall give you their just difference to a hair!
Or else recovering of dead flies with crumbs,
Another quaint conclusion in the physics,

Which I have seen you busy at, through the key hole

But never had the fate to see a fly

Enter LovEl.

Alive in your cups, or once heard, Drink, mine host! Or such a cheerful chirping charm come from you. Lov. What's that, what's that?

Fer. A buzzing of mine host

About a fly; a murmur that he has.

Host. Sir, I am telling your Stote here, monsieur
Ferret,

For that I hear's his name, and dare tell you, sir,
If you have a mind to be melancholy, and musty,
There's Footman's inn at the town's end, the stocks,
Or Carrier's place, at sign of the Broken Wain,
Mansions of state! take up your harbour there,
There are both flies and fleas, and all variety
Of vermin, for inspection or dissection.

Lov. We have set our rest up here, sir, in your
Heart.

Host. Sir, set your heart at rest, you shall not do it, Unless you can be jovial. Brain of man!

Be jovial first, and drink, and dance, and drink.
Your lodging here, and with your daily dumps,
Is a mere libel 'gain my house and me;

And, then, your scandalous commons

Lov. How, mine host!

Host. Sir, they do scandal me upon the road here.

A poor quotidian rack of mutton, roasted

Dry to be grated! and that driven down

With beer and butter-milk, mingled together,
Or clarified whey instead of claret !

It is against my freehold, my inheritance,
My Magna Charta, cor lætificat,

To drink such balderdash, or bonny-clabber!'
Give me good wine, or catholic, or christian,
Wine is the word that glads the heart of man:
And mine's the house of wine: Sack, says my bush,
Be merry, and drink sherry; that's my posie!
For I shall never joy in my light heart,

So long as I conceive a sullen guest,

Or any thing that's earthy.

Lov. Humorous host!

Host. I care not if I be.
Lov. But airy also!

Not to defraud you of your rights, or trench
Upon your privileges, or great charter,

For those are every hostler's language now,
Say, you were born beneath those smiling stars,
Have made you lord, and owner of the Heart,
Of the Light Heart in Barnet; suffer us,
Who are more saturnine, to enjoy the shade

9

bonny-clabber!] "We scorn," says Swift"We scorn, for want of talk, to jabber

Of parties, o'er our bonny-clabber."

The word also occurs in Ford, (as, indeed, it does in a hundred other writers,)

"The feasts, the manly stomachs,

The healths in usquebaugh, and bonny-clabber."

Upon which Mr. Weber remarks—“I have not been able to discover what particular kind of liquor was thus denominated, never having met with the phrase before." Vol. ii. 53. Phrase call you it! He. had not far to go for it, as the reader sees; but as it was not pointed out to him in the index to Shakspeare, or Reed's Old Plays, the discovery of the word in any other place never came within his scope of possibility. Let it not however be forgotten, that this wretched reviler of Jonson, who has devoted several pages to a stale repetition of abuse on the New Inn, could not discover a particular term in it, which must have stared him in the face if he had ever turned the first leaf of it!

Bonny-clabber, to which it is time to return, is sour buttermilk.

yet.

Of your round roof

Host. Sir, I keep no shades

Nor shelters, I, for either owls or rere-mice.

Enter FRANK.

Fer. He'll make you a bird of night, sir.

Host. Bless you child !—

You'll make your selves such.

[Aside to FRANK.

Lov. That your son, mine host?
Host. He's all the sons I have, sir.
Lov. Pretty boy!

Goes he to school?

Fer. O lord, sir, he prates Latin, An it were a parrot, or a play-boy. Lov. Thou

Commend'st him fitly!

Fer. To the pitch he flies, sir.

He'll tell you what is Latin for a looking-glass,
A beard-brush, rubber, or quick-warming pan.
Lov. What's that?

Fer. A wench, in the inn-phrase, is all these ;
A looking glass in her eye,

A beard-brush with her lips,

A rubber with her hand,

And a warming pan with her hips.

Host. This, in your scurril dialect: but my inn Knows no such language.

Fer. That's because, mine host,

You do profess the teaching him your self.

Host. Sir, I do teach him somewhat by degrees,

And with a funnel, I make shift to fill

The narrow vessel; he is but yet a bottle.

Lov. O let him lose no time though.

Host. Sir, he does not.

Lov. And less his manners.

Host. I provide for those, too.

Come hither, Frank, speak to the gentleman

In Latin; he is melancholy say,

I long to see him merry, and so would treat him. Fra. Subtristis visu' es esse aliquantulùm patri, qui te lautè excipere, etiam ac tractare gestit.

Lov. Pulchrè.

Host. Tell him, I fear it bodes us some ill luck, His too reservedness.

Fra. Veretur pater, ne quid nobis mali ominis apportet iste nimis præclusus vultus.

Lov. Belle. A fine child!

You will not part with him, mine host?

Host. Who told you

I would not?

Lov. I but ask you.

Host. And I answer To whom? for what?

Lov. To me, to be my page.

Host. I know no mischief yet the child hath done, To deserve such a destiny.

Lov. Why?

Host. Go down, boy,

And get your breakfast. [Exeunt FRANK and FERRET.]-Trust me, I had rather

Take a fair halter, wash my hands, and hang him My self, make a clean riddance of him, than

Lov. What?

Host. Than damn him to that desperate course of life.

Lov. Call you that desperate, which by a line

Of institution, from our ancestors,

Hath been derived down to us, and received

In a succession, for the noblest way

Of breeding up our youth,' in letters, arms,

Of breeding up our youth, &c.] It is unnecessary to repeat what is advanced upon this subject in the Introduction to Massinger, (p. xxxviii.) but the following passage, which has a direct bear