Face. Rogue, rogue !-out of all your sleights. Dol. Nay, look ye, sovereign, general, are you

madmen?

Sub. O, let the wild sheep loose. I'll gum your silks

With good strong water, an you come.
Dol. Will you have

The neighbours hear you? will you betray all ?
Hark! I hear somebody.

Face. Sirrah

Sub. I shall mar

All that the tailor has made, if you approach. Face. You most notorious whelp, you insolent

slave,

Dare you do this?

Sub. Yes, faith; yes, faith.
Face. Why, who

Am I, my mungrel? who am I?

Sub. I'll tell you,

Since you know not yourself.

Face. Speak lower, rogue.

Sub. Yes, you were once (time's not long past) the good,

Honest, plain, livery-three-pound-thrum,' that kept

Your master's worship's house here in the Friers, For the vacations-

Face. Will you be so loud?

mist es membres honteuses de l'animal une figue, presents et voyants les citadins captifs: puis cria de par l'empereur à son de trompe, que quiconques d'iceulx couldroit la mort évader, arrachast publicquement la figue avec les dents, puis la remist en propre lieu sans aide des mains." Lib. iv. c. 45.

8 Three-pound-thrum,] One whose livery was made of the ends of a weaver's warp, (thrums,) or coarse yarn, of which three pounds were sufficient to make him a suit. WHAL.

O. does it mean that his livery, which, in those days, was usu ally laced and badged, cost but three pounds?

Sub. Since, by my means, translated suburb

captain.

Face. By your means, doctor dog!
Sub. Within man's memory,

All this I speak of.

Face. Why, I pray you, have I

Been countenanced by you, or you by me?
Do but collect, sir, where I met you first.
Sub. I do not hear well.'

Face. Not of this, I think it.

But I shall put you in mind, sir;-at Pie-corner,
Taking your meal of steam in, from cooks' stalls,
Where, like the father of hunger, you did walk
Piteously costive, with your pinch'd-horn-nose,
And your complexion of the Roman wash,
Stuck full of black and melancholic worms,
Like powder-corns shot at the artillery-yard.
Sub. I wish you could advance your voice a
little.1

Face. When you went pinn'd up in the several

rags

You had raked and pick'd from dunghills, before

day;

Your feet in mouldy slippers, for your kibes;
A felt of rug, and a thin threaden cloke,
That scarce would cover your no buttocks--
Sub. So, sir!

Sub. I do not hear well.

Face. Not of this, I think it.] A pleasant pun on the Latin sense of hear well, to be well reputed. Just below, there is an allusion, equally facetious, to the Aureli, pater esuritionum of Catullus.

I wish you could advance your voice a little. i. c. speak louder. Face, who is the servant of the house, is afraid of being overheard by the neighbours, and therefore persists in speaking low, till he is completely roused by the sarcasms of Subtle. There is not a scene in any comedy in the English language, which, for genuine spirit and humour, and a close observance of nature, can pretend to vie with this.

Face. When all your alchemy, and your algebra, Your minerals, vegetals, and animals,

Your conjuring, cozening, and yourdozen of trades, Could not relieve your corps with so much linen Would make you tinder, but to see a fire;

I

gave you countenance, credit for your coals, Your stills, your glasses, your materials; Built you a furnace, drew you customers, Advanced all your black arts; lent you, beside, A house to practise in-

Sub. Your master's house!

Face. Where you have studied the more thriving 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 chippings,

Sell the dole beer to aqua-vitæ men,'

The which, together with your Christmas vails At post-and-pair, your letting out of counters,

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 fly away,"

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.

4

your Christmas vails

At post-and-pair,]" Post-and-pair," the author of the Compleat Gamester says, 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
How to beware to tempt a Fury again,
That carries tempest in his hand and voice.
Face. The place has made you valiant.
Sub. No, your clothes.—

Thou vermin, have I ta en thee out of dung,
So poor, so wretched, when no living thing
Would keep thee company, but a spider, or worse?
Rais'd thee from brooms, and dust, and watering-

pots,

Sublimed thee, and exalted thee, and fix'd thee
In the third region, call'd our state of grace?
Wrought thee to spirit, to quintessence, with pains
Would twice have won me the philosopher's work?
Put thee in words and fashion, made thee fit
For more than ordinary fellowships?

Giv'n thee thy oaths, thy quarrelling dimensions,
Thy rules to cheat at horse-race, cock-pit, cards,
Dice, or whatever gallant tincture else?
Made thee a second in mine own great art?
And have I this for thanks! Do you rebel,
Do you fly out in the projection?
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,
Had not I been.

Dol. Do you know who hears you, sovereign?
Face. Sirrah-

Dol. Nay, general, I thought you were civil. Face. I shall turn desperate, if you grow thus

loud.

Sub. And hang thyself, I care not.

Face. Hang thee, collier,

And all thy pots, and pans, in picture, I will,
Since thou hast moved me-

Dol. O, this will o'erthrow all.

Face. Write thee up bawd in Paul's, have all thy tricks

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,
In which ful subtelly was made an hole,
And therein was put of sylver lymayle,
An unce, und stopped was without fayle,

The hole with waxe to kepe the lymayle in," &c.

Lymayle is the dust and scrapings" of gold and silver.

6

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 meant delineating schemes of the different positions of the