Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/221

 BEN JONSON 205 creatures gone rabid, as Carlyle glosses with his immense chuckle ! The angry boys are called the terrible boys in the "Silent Woman," Act i., Sc. i. Upton quotes from Wilson's " Life of King James " : "The king minding his sports, many riotous de- meanours crept into the kingdom; divers sects of vicious persons, going under the title of roaring-boys, bravadoes, roysters, &c., commit many insolencies; the streets swarm, night and day, with bloody quar- rels, private duels fomented," &c. Gifford adds : " These pestilent miscreants continued under various names to disturb the peace of the capital down to the accession of the present royal family;" but methinks we have read of beating the watchmen or Charlies, and other such gentlemanlike rowdyisms, as occurring long after the royal Germans, with their kin and followers, kindly came for our goot and our goots. All quiet smokers, who have the leisure and take the trouble to read beyond their Bible and the precious leaves of their Tobacco Plant, must remem- ber how fiercely Milton denounced those sons of Belial, and how Swift tomahawked the Mohawks. How bumptious is Kastril, because he, too, can take tobacco ! In our age he would have smoked when ten years younger. Gifford says : " It has been already mentioned [see preceding Section] that Abel's shop was frequented by the adept as well as the tyro in the mystery of 'taking tobacco.' Here the latter was duly qualified for his appearance at ordinaries, taverns, and other places of fashionable resort. Here he practised the 'Cuban ebolitio, the euripus, the whiffe,' and many other modes of sup- pressing or emitting smoke with the requisite grace,