[His box and counters prove him to be a man of reckoning, yet] he is stricter in his accounts than a usurer, and delivers not afarthing without writing. He doubles the pains of Gallobelgicus, for his books go out once a quarter, and they are much in the same nature, brief notes and sums of affairs, and are out of request as soon. His comings in are like a taylor's, from the shreds of bread, [the] chippings and remnants of a broken crust; excepting his vails from the barrel, which poor folks buy for their hogs but drink themselves. He divides an halfpenny loaf with more subtlety than Keckerman, and sub-divides the à prima ortum so nicely, that a stomach of great capacity can hardly apprehend it. He is a very sober man, considering his manifold temptations of drink and strangers; and if he be overseen, 'tis within his own liberties, and no man ought to take exception. He is never so well pleased with his place as when a gentleman is beholden to him for showing him the buttery, whom he greets with a cup of single beer and sliced manchet, and tells him it is

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3

1 Gallo-Belgicus was erroneously supposed, by the ingenious Mr. Reed, to be the 'first newspaper published in England;" we are, however, assured by the author of the Life of Ruddiman, that it has no title to so honourable a distinction. Gallo-Belgicus appears to have been rather an Annual Register, or History of its own Times, than a newspaper. It was written in Latin, and entituled, "MERCURIJ GALLO-BELGICI: sive, rerum in Gallia, et Belgio potissimum: Hispania quoque, Italia, Anglia, Germania, Polonia, Vicinisque locis ab anno 1588, ad Martium anni 1594, gestarum, NUNCIJ." The first volume was printed in 8vo, at Cologne, 1598; from which year, to about 1605, it was published annually; and from thence to the time of its conclusion, which is uncertain, it appeared in half-yearly volumes. Chalmers' Life of Ruddiman, 1794. The great request in which newspapers were held at the publication of the present work may be gathered from Burton, who, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, complains that "if any read now-a-days, it is a play-book, or a pamphlet of newes.'

2 Bartholomew Keckerman was born at Dantzick, in Prussia, 1571, and educated under Fabricius. Being eminently distinguished for his abilities and application, he was, in 1597, requested, by the senate of Dantzick, to take upon him the management of their academy; an honour he then declined, but accepted, on a second application, in 1601. Here he proposed to instruct his pupils in the complete science of philosophy in the short space of three years, and, for that purpose, drew up a great number of books upon logic, rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics, metaphysics, geography, astronomy, &c. &c., till, as it is said, literally worn out with scholastic drudgery, he died at the early age of 38.

3 "Of bread made of wheat we have sundrie sorts dailie brought to the table, whereof the first and most excellent is the mainchet, which we commonlie call white bread."-Harrison, Description of England prefixed to Holinshed, chap. 6.

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the fashion of the college. He domineers over freshmen when they first come to the hatch, and puzzles them with strange language of cues and cees, and some broken Latin which he has learned at his bin. His faculties extraordinary are the warming of a pair of cards, and telling out a dozen of counters for post and pair, and no man is more methodical in these businesses. Thus he spends his age till the tap of it is run out, and then a fresh one is set abroach.

AN UPSTART COUNTRY KNIGHT

[Is a holiday clown, and differs only in the stuff of his clothes, not the stuff of himself,1] for he bare the king's sword before he had arms to wield it; yet being once laid o'er the shoulder with a knighthood, he finds the herald his friend. His father was

a man of good stock, though but a tanner or usurer; he purchased the land, and his son the title. He has doffed off the name of a [country fellow,2] but the look not so easy, and his face still bears a relish of churn-milk. He is guarded with more gold lace than all the gentlemen of the country, yet his body makes his clothes still out of fashion. His house-keeping is seen much in the distinct families of dogs, and serving-men attendant on their kennels, and the deepness of their throats is the depth of his discourse. A hawk he esteems the true burden of nobility,3

1 His honour was somewhat preposterous, for he bare, &c., first edit. 2 Clown, first edit.

3 The art of hawking has been so frequently and so fully explained, that it would be superfluous, if not arrogant, to trace its progress, or delineate its history, in this place. In the earliest periods it appears to have been exclusively practised by the nobility; and, indeed, the great expense at which the amusement was supported, seems to have been a sufficient reason for deterring persons of more moderate income, and of inferior rank, from indulging in the pursuit. In the Sports and Pastimes of Mr. Strutt, a variety of instances are given of the importance attached to the office of falconer, and of the immense value of, and high estimation the birds themselves were held in from the commencement of the Norman government, down to the reign of James I., in which Sir Thomas Monson gave £1000 for a cast of hawks, which consisted of only two.

The great increase of wealth, and the consequent equalization of property in this country, about the reign of Elizabeth, induced many of inferior birth to practise the amusements of their superiors, which they did without regard to expense, or indeed propriety. Sir Thomas Elyot, in his Governour (1580), complains that the

and is exceeding ambitious to seem delighted in the sport, and have his fist gloved with his jesses.1 A justice of peace he is to domineer in his parish, and do his neighbour wrong with more right.2 He will be drunk with his hunters for company, and stain his gentility with droppings of ale. He is fearful of being sheriff of the shire by instinct, and dreads the assize-week as much as the prisoner. In sum, he's but a clod of his own earth, or his land is the dunghill and he the cock that crows over it: and commonly his race is quickly run, and his children's children, though they scape hanging, return to the place from whence they

came.

AN IDLE GALLANT

Is one that was born and shaped for his cloaths; and, if Adam had not fallen, had lived to no purpose. He gratulates therefore the first sin, and fig-leaves that were an occasion of [his] bravery. His first care is his dress, the next his body, and in the uniting of these two lies his soul and its faculties. He observes London trulier then the terms, and his business is the street, the stage, the court, and those places where a proper man is best shown. If he be qualified in gaming extraordinary, he is so much the more genteel and compleat, and he learns the best oaths for the purpose. These are a great part of his discourse, and he is as curious in their newness as the fashion. His other talk is ladies and such pretty things, or some jest at a play. His pick-tooth bears a great part in his discourse, so does his body, the upper falcons of his day consumed so much poultry, that, in a few years, he feared there would be a great scarcity of it. "I speake not this," says he, "in disprayse of the faukons, but of them which keepeth them lyke cockneyes." A reproof, there can be no doubt, applicable to the character in the text.

1 A term in hawking, signifying the short straps of leather which are fastened to the hawk's legs, by which she is held on the fist, or joined to the leash. They were sometimes made of silk, as appears from ¶ The Boke of hawkynge, huntynge, and fysshynge, with all the propertyes and medecynes that are necessarye to be kepte: "Hawkes haue aboute theyr legges gesses made of lether most comonly, some of sylke, which shuld be no lenger but that the knottes of them shulde appere in the myddes of the lefte hande," &c. Juliana Barnes, edit. 4to, "Imprynted at London in Pouls chyrchyarde by me Hery Tab." Sig. C. ii.

2 This authority of his is that club which keeps them under as his dogs hereafter, first edit.

parts whereof are as starched as his linen, and perchance use the same laundress. He has learned to ruffle his face from his boot, and takes great delight in his walk to hear his spurs gingle. Though his life pass somewhat slidingly, yet he seems very careful of the time, for he is still drawing his watch out of his pocket, and spends part of his hours in numbering them. He is one never serious but with his tailor, when he is in conspiracy for the next device. He is furnished with his jests, as some wanderer with sermons, some three for all congregations, one especially against the scholar, a man to him much ridiculous, whom he knows by no other definition but a silly fellow in black. He is a kind of walking mercer's shop, and shews you one stuff to-day and another to-morrow; an ornament to the room he comes in as the fair bed and hangings be; and is merely ratable accordingly, fifty or an hundred pounds as his suit is. His main ambition is to get a knighthood, and then an old lady, which if he be happy in, he fills the stage and a coach so much longer: Otherwise, himself and his clothes grow stale together, and he is buried commonly ere he dies, in the gaol or the country.

A CONSTABLE

Is a viceroy in the street, and no man stands more upon't that he is the king's officer. His jurisdiction extends to the next stocks, where he has commission for the heels only, and sets the rest of the body at liberty. He is a scarecrow to that ale-house, where he drinks not his morning draught, and apprehends a drunkard for not standing in the king's name. Beggars fear him more than the justice, and as much as the whip-stock, whom he delivers over to his subordinate magistrates, the bridewell-man and the beadle. He is a great stickler in the tumults of double jugs, and ventures his head by his place, which is broke many times to keep whole the peace. He is never so much in his majesty as in his night-watch, where he sits in his chair of state, a shop-stall, and environed with a guard of halberts, examines all passengers. He is a very careful man in his office, but if he stay up after midnight you shall take him napping.

A DOWN-RIGHT SCHOLAR

Is one that has much learning in the ore, unwrought and untried, which time and experience fashions and refines. He is good metal in the inside, though rough and unscoured without, and therefore hated of the courtier, that is quite contrary. The time has got a vein of making him ridiculous, and men laugh at him by tradition, and no unlucky absurdity but is put upon his profession, and done like a scholar. But his fault is only this, that his mind is [somewhat] too much taken up with his mind, and his thoughts not loaden with any carriage besides. He has not put on the quaint garb of the age, which is now a man's [Imprimis and all the Item.1] He has not humbled his meditations to the industry of compliment, nor afflicted his brain in an elaborate leg. His body is not set upon nice pins, to be turning and flexible for every motion, but his scrape is homely and his nod worse. He cannot kiss his hand and cry, madam, nor talk idle enough to bear her company. His smacking of a gentlewoman is somewhat too savoury, and he mistakes her nose for her lips. A very woodcock would puzzle him in carving, and he wants the logick of a capon. He has not the glib faculty of sliding over a tale, but his words come squeamishly out of his mouth, and the laughter commonly before the jest. He names this word college too often, and his discourse beats too much on the university. The perplexity of mannerliness will not let him feed, and he is sharp set at an argument when he should cut his meat. He is discarded for a gamester at all games but one and thirty, and at tables he reaches not beyond doublets. His fingers are not long and drawn out to handle a fiddle, but his fist clunched with the habit of disputing. He ascends a horse somewhat sinisterly, though not on the left side, and they both go jogging in grief together. He is exceedingly censured by the inns-of-court men,

1 Now become a man's total, first edit.

2 Of the game called one and thirty, I am unable to find any mention in Mr. Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, nor is it alluded to in any of the old plays or tracts I have yet met with. A very satisfactory account of tables may be read in the interesting and valuable publication just noticed.