Curiosities of Literature Volume Ii Part 53

[Footnote 139: Foote's amusing farce has immortalised this popular piece of folly; but those who desire to know more of the peculiarities and eccentricities of the election, will find an excellent account in Hone's "Every-Day Book," vol. ii., with some engravings ill.u.s.trative of the same, drawn by an artist who attended the great mock election of 1781.]

[Footnote 140: Their "brevets," &c., are collected in a little volume, "Recueil des Pieces du Regiment de la Calotte; a Paris, chez Jaques Colombat, Imprimeur privilegie du Regiment. L'an de l'Ere Calotine 7726." From the date, we infer that the true _calotine_ is as old as the creation.]

[Footnote 141: The lady is buried at Hollingbourne, near Maidstone, Kent. The monument in Westminster Abbey is merely "in memoriam." She died 1697.]

[Footnote 142: Was this thought, that strikes with a sudden effect, in the mind of Hawkesworth, when he so pathetically concluded his last paper?]

[Footnote 143: The first edition was "printed for W. Taylor, at the s.h.i.+p, in Paternoster Row," as an octavo volume, in the early part of the year 1719. The t.i.tle runs thus:--"The Life, and strange surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner," and has a full-length picture of Crusoe, as a frontispiece, "Clarke and Pine, _sc._"; which is the type of all future representations of the hero, who is depicted in his skin-dress upon the desolate island. It is a very wretched work of art; the hook was brought out in a common manner, like all De Foe's works.]

[Footnote 144: Eccl. Hist., book vii. p. 399.]

[Footnote 145: Collier's "Annals of the Stage," i. 144.]

[Footnote 146: Bale's play, _G.o.d's Promises_, and that called _New Custome_, reprinted in the first volume of Dodsley's collection, are examples of the great license these dramatists allowed themselves.]

[Footnote 147: It has been preserved by Hawkins in his "Origin of the English Drama," vol. i.]

[Footnote 148: Macrobius, Saturn., lib. iii. 1, 14.]

[Footnote 149: Several of them have been reprinted by the Shakespeare Society since the above was written. Particularly the work of Gosson here alluded to.]

[Footnote 150: The "Historica Histrionica" notes Stephen Hammerton as "a most noted and beautiful woman-actor," in the early part of the seventeenth century. Alexander Goffe, "the woman-actor at Blackfriars,"

is also mentioned as acting privately "in Oliver's time."]

[Footnote 151: One actor, William Kynaston, continued to perform female characters in the reign of Charles II., and his performances were praised by Dryden, and preferred by many to that of the ladies themselves. He was so great a favourite with the fair s.e.x, that the court ladies used to take him in their coaches for an airing in Hyde Park.]

[Footnote 152: Ben Jonson was one of their hardest enemies; and his _Zeal-of-the-Land-busy, Justice Over-doo,_ and _Dame Pure-craft_, have never been surpa.s.sed in masterly delineation of puritanic cant. The dramatists of that era certainly did their best to curb Puritanism by exposure.]

[Footnote 153: The t.i.tle of this collection is "THE WITS, or Sport upon Sport, in select pieces of Drollery, digested into scenes by way of Dialogue. Together with variety of Humours of several nations, fitted for the pleasure and content of all persons, either in Court, City, Country, or Camp. The like never before published. Printed for H. Marsh, 1662:" again printed for F. Kirkman, 1672. To Kirkman's edition is prefixed a curious print representing the inside of a Bartholomew-fair theatre (by some supposed to be the Red Bull Theatre in Clerkenwell).

Several characters are introduced. In the middle of the stage, a figure peeps out of the curtain; on a label from his mouth is written "Tu quoque," it represents Bubble, a silly person in a comedy, played so excellently by an actor named Green, that it was called "Green's Tu-quoque." Then a changeling and a simpleton, from plays by c.o.x; a French dancing-master, from the Duke of Newcastle's "Variety;" Clause, from Beaumont and Fletcher's "Beggar's Bush;" and Sir John Falstaff and hostess. Our notion of Falstaff by this print seems very different from that of our ancestors: their Falstaff is in extravaganza of obesity, not requiring so much "stuffing" as ours does.]

[Footnote 154: PYM was then at the head of the Commons, and was usually deputed to address personally the motley pet.i.tioners. We have a curious speech he made to the _tradesmen's wives_ in Echard's "History of England," vol. ii. 290.]

[Footnote 155: Prynne's tract ent.i.tled "Health's Sicknesse" is full of curious allusions to the drinking-customs of the era of Charles the First. His paradoxical t.i.tle alludes to the sickness that results from too freely drinking "healths."]

[Footnote 156: Camden's "History of Queen Elizabeth," Book III. Many statutes against drunkenness, by way of prevention, pa.s.sed in the reign of James the First. Our law looks on this vice as an aggravation of any offence committed, not as an excuse for criminal misbehaviour. See "Blackstone," book iv. c. 2, sec. 3. In Mr. Gifford's "Ma.s.singer," vol.

ii. 458, is a note to show that when we were young scholars, we soon equalled, if we did not surpa.s.s, our masters. Mr. Gilchrist there furnishes an extract from Sir Richard Baker's Chronicle, which traces the origin of this exotic custom to the source mentioned; but the whole pa.s.sage from Baker is literally transcribed from Camden.]

[Footnote 157: Nash's "Pierce Pennilesse," 1595, sig. F 2.]

[Footnote 158: These barbarous phrases are Dutch, Danish, or German. The term _skinker_, a filler of wine, a butler or cup-bearer, according to Phillips; and in taverns, as appears by our dramatic poets, a _drawer_, is Dutch, or, according to Dr. Nott, purely Danish, from _skenker_.

_Half-seas over_, or nearly drunk, is likely to have been a proverbial phrase from the Dutch, applied to that state of ebriety by an idea familiar with those water-rats. Thus _op-zee_, Dutch, means literally _over-sea_. Mr. Gifford has recently told us in his "Jonson," that it was a name given to a stupifying beer introduced into England from the Low Countries; hence _op-zee_, or over-sea; and _freezen_ in German, signifies to _swallow greedily_: from this vile alliance they compounded a harsh term, often used in our old plays. Thus Jonson:

I do not like the dulness of your eye, It hath a heavy cast, 'tis _upsee Dutch_.

_Alchemist_, A. iv. S. 2.

And Fletcher has "upse-freeze;" which Dr. Nott explains in his edition of Decker's "Gull's Hornbook," as "a tipsy draught, or swallowing liquor till drunk." Mr. Gifford says it was the name of Friesland beer; the meaning, however, was "to drink swinishly like a Dutchman."

We are indebted to the Danes for many of our terms of jollity, such as a _rouse_ and a _carouse_. Mr. Gifford has given not only a new but very distinct explanation of these cla.s.sical terms in his "Ma.s.singer." "A _rouse_ was a large gla.s.s, in which a health was given, the drinking of which by the rest of the company formed a _carouse_. Barnaby Rich notices the _carouse_ as an invention for which the first founder merited hanging. It is necessary to add, that there could be no _rouse_ or _carouse_, unless the gla.s.ses were emptied." Although we have lost the terms, we have not lost the practice, as those who have the honour of dining in public parties are still gratified by the animating cry of "Gentlemen, charge your gla.s.ses."

According to Blount's "Glossographia," _carouse_ is a corruption of two old German words, _gar_ signifying _all_, and _ausz, out_; so that to drink _garauz_ is to drink _all out_: hence _carouse_.]

[Footnote 159: "Pierce Pennilesse," sig. F 2, 1595.]

[Footnote 160: When Christian IV. of Denmark was at the court of our James I. on a visit, drinking appears to have been carried to an excess; there is extant an account of a court masque, in which the actors were too tipsy to continue their parts; luckily, their majesties were not sufficiently sober to find fault.]

[Footnote 161: These inventions for keeping every thirsty soul within bounds are alluded to by Tom Nash; I do not know that his authority will be great as an antiquary, but the things themselves he describes he had seen. He tells us, that "King Edgar, because his subjects should not offend in swilling and bibbing as they did, caused certain _iron cups_ to be chained to every fountain and well-side, and at every vintner's door, with _iron pins in them_, to stint every man how much he should drink; and he who went _beyond one of those pins_ forfeited a penny for every draught."

Pegge, in his "Anonymiana," has minutely described these _peg-tankards_, which confirms this account of Nash, and nearly the antiquity of the custom. "They have in the inside a row of eight pins one above another, from top to bottom; the tankard holds two quarts, so that there is a gill of ale, _i.e._, half a pint of Winchester measure between each pin.

The first person that drank was to empty the tankard to the first peg or pin; the second was to empty to the next pin, &c.; by which means the pins were so many measures to the compotators, _making them all drink alike_, or the same quant.i.ty: and as the distance of the pins was such as to contain a large draught of liquor, _the company would be very liable by this method to get drunk_, especially when, if they drank short of the pin or beyond it, they were obliged to drink again. In Archbishop Anselm's Canons, made in the council at London in 1102, priests are enjoined not to go to drinking-bouts, nor _to drink to pegs_. The words are--"_Ut Presbyteri non, eant ad potationes_, nec AD PINNAS bibant." (Wilkins, vol. i. p. 388.) This shows the antiquity of this invention, which at least was as old as the Conquest.]

[Footnote 162: And yet a _drawer-on too_; i.e. an incitement to appet.i.te: the phrase is yet in use. This drawer-on was also technically termed a _puller-on_ and a _shoeing-horn_ in drink.

On "the Italian delicate oil'd mushrooms," still a favourite dish with the Italians, I have to communicate some curious knowledge. In an original ma.n.u.script letter dated Hereford, _15th November 1659_, the name of the writer wanting, but evidently the composition of a physician who had travelled, I find that the dressing of MUSHROOMS was then a novelty. The learned writer laments his error that he "disdained to learn the cookery that occurred in my travels, by a sullen principle of mistaken devotion, and thus declined the great helps I had to enlarge and improve human diet." This was an age of medicine, when it was imagined that the health of mankind essentially depended on diet; and Moffet had written his curious book on this principle. Our writer, in noticing the pa.s.sion of the Romans for mushrooms, which was called "an Imperial dish," says, "he had eaten it often at Sir Henry Wotton's table (our resident amba.s.sador at Venice), always dressed by the inspection of his Dutch-Venetian Johanna, or of Nic. Oudart, and truly it did deserve the old applause as I found it at his table; it was far beyond our English food. Neither did any of us find it of hard digestion, for we did not eat like Adamites, but as modest men would eat of musk-melons.

If it were now lawful to hold any kind of intelligence with Nic. Oudart, I would only ask him _Sir Henry Wotton's art of dressing mushrooms_, and I hope that is not high treason,"--_Sloane MSS._ 4292.]

[Footnote 163: See Mr. Douce's curious "Ill.u.s.trations of Shakspeare,"

vol. i. 457; a gentleman more intimately conversant with our ancient and domestic manners than, perhaps, any single individual in the country.]

[Footnote 164: This term is used in Bancroft's "Two Books of Epigrams and Epitaphs," 1639. I take it to have been an accepted one of that day.]

[Footnote 165: "A delicate Diet for daintie mouthed Dronkardes, wherin the fowle Abuse of common carowsing and quaffing with hartie Draughtes is honestlie admonished." By George Gascoigne, Esquier. 1576.]

[Footnote 166: I shall preserve the story in the words of Whitelocke; it was something ludicrous, as well as terrific.

"From Berks.h.i.+re (in May, 1650) that five drunkards agreed to drink the king's health in their blood, and that each of them should cut off a piece of his b.u.t.tock, and fry it upon the gridiron, which was done by four of them, of whom one did bleed so exceedingly, that they were fain to send for a chirurgeon, and so were discovered. The wife of one of them hearing that her husband was amongst them, came to the room, and taking up a pair of tongs laid about her, and so saved the cutting of her husband's flesh."--_Whitelocke's Memorials_, p. 453, second edition.]

[Footnote 167: Burnet's Life of Sir Matthew Hale.]

[Footnote 168: Calamities of Authors, vol. ii. p. 313.]

[Footnote 169: It first appeared in a review of his "Memoirs."]

[Footnote 170: The words are, "Une derriere la scene." I am not sure of the-meaning, but an _Act behind the scenes_ would be perfectly in character with this dramatic bard.]

[Footnote 171: The exact reasoning of Sir Fretful, in the _Critic_, when Mrs. Dangle thought his piece "rather too long," while he proves his play was "a remarkably short play."--"The first evening you can spare me three hours and a half, I'll undertake to read you the whole, from beginning to end, with the prologue and epilogue, and allow time for the music between the acts. The watch here, you know, is the critic."]

[Footnote 172: Again, Sir Fretful; when Dangle "ventures to suggest that the interest rather falls off in the fifth act;"--"Rises, I believe you mean, sir."--No, I don't, upon my word."--"Yes, yes, you do, upon my soul; it certainly don't fall off; no, no, it don't fall off."]

[Footnote 173: See _ante_. vol. i. p. 71.]

[Footnote 174: The plates of the original edition are in the quarto form; they have been poorly reduced in the common editions in twelves.]

[Footnote 175: The establishment could originally accommodate no more than six lunatics. In 1644, the number had only increased to forty-four; and the building had nearly perished for want of funds, when the city raised a subscription and repaired it. After the great fire, it was re-established on a much larger scale in Moorfields.]

[Footnote 176: Stowe's "Survey of London," Book i.]