Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/233

 BEN JONSON 217 Night. Nay, Ursia, thou'lt gall between the tongue and the teeth, with fretting now. Urs. How can I hope that ever he'll discharge his place of trust, tapster, a man of reckoning under me, that remembers nothing I say to him? [A>?V Night] but look to't, sirrah, you were best. Threepence a pipe-full, I will have made, of all my whole half-pound of tobacco, and a quarter of a pound of colts- foot mixt with it too, to eke it out ? * I that have dealt so long in the fire, will not be to seek in smoke now. Then six and twenty shillings a barrel I will advance on my beer, and fifty shillings a hundred on my bottle-ale ; I have told you the ways how to raise it. Froth your cans well in the filling, at length, rogue, and jog your bottles o' the buttock, sirrah, then skink out the first glass ever, and drink with all companies, though you be sure to be drunk ; you'll misreckon the better, and be less ashamed on't. But your true trick, rascal, must be, to be ever busy, and mistake away the bottles and cans, in haste, before they be half drunk off, and never hear anybody call (if they should chance to mark you), till you have brought fresh, and be able to forswear them. Give me a drink of ale." Another drink of ale she surely deserved, after this pregnant exposition of the esoteric principles of (Bartholomew) fair dealing. Now enters Dan Jordan Knockem, a horse-courser and ranger of TurnbuU Street, between whom and Ursla some delicate banter is exchanged : — "Knock. What! my little lean Ursla! my she-bear! art thou alive yet, with thy litter of pigs to grunt out another Bartholomew Fair ? ha ! then was equal to at least a shilling now, and that the ordinary pipe-bowls were very small. See "Tobacco: Its History and Associations," by F. W. Fairholt, F.S.A., for records and illus- trative diagrams. Tobacco, indeed, was three shillings an ounce to the father of Sir Philip Sidney (p. 70, ed. 1859) ; but there were twenty-five pipefuls in the ounce temp. James I. (p. 161).
 * To learn how moderate this price was, mark that threepence