Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/238

 222 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Over. I will conclude briefly Wsape. Hold your peace, you roaring rascal, I'll run my head in your chaps else." Thus the enraptured auditor of poor Overdo's oration had his pocket picked of one purse; and before he got out of the Fair the other (for gold, the former being for silver) went too : divine punishment from Diva Nicotina ! As for Overdo himself, "the wise justice is in a maze of dupery from the first scene to the last ; " naturally enough, with intellects uncleared by tobacco. As Quarlous says when next he sees our magistrate : " Look, here's the poor fool again, that was stung by the Waspe erewhile." Passing over two or three casual notices of pipes, which merely show that they were among the estab- lished favourites of the fair, we come in this same remarkable and busy scene (being the whole of Act iii.), to that most popular character, on the old stage, the " Banbury man," that is to say Puritan, Zeal-of- the-land Busy. This worthy is suitor to Dame Pure- craft, a widow, and what may be termed her Stiggins or spiritual director. Her son-in-law, John Littlewit, a proctor, thus speaks of him : — "... an old elder come from Banbury, a suitor that puts in here at meal tide, to praise the painful brethren, or pray that the sweet singers may be restored ; says a grace as long as his breath lasts him ! Sometime the spirit is so strong with him, it gets quite out of him, and then my mother, or Win [his wife] are fain to fetch it again with malmsey or aqua coelestis." Master Littlewit wanted to go to the Fair because it was the fashion, and yet more because there was to be performed a puppet-play of his own making.