Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/240

 224 BIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES bottle-ale is a drink of Satan's, a diet-drink of Satan's, devised to puff us up and make us swell in this latter age of vanity ; as the smoke of tobacco to keep us in mist and error : but the fleshly woman, which you call Ursla, is above all to be avoided, having the marks upon her of the three enemies of man : the world, as being in the Fair ; the devil, as being in the fire ; and the flesh, as being herself. . . . [Goes forward. Knock. An excellent right hypocrite ! Now his belly is full, he falls a railing and kicking, the jade. A very good vapour ! I'll in, and joy Ursla, with telling her how her pig works ; two and a half he eat to his share [Let tts mercifully hope, portions, not pigs I ] ; and he has drunk a pail-full. He eats with his eyes, as well as his teeth." No comment is needed on this ; and certainly none on Busy, of whom it may be simply further reported that when Lan thorn Leatherhead, the hobby-horse seller or toyman, seeks to tempt the party with a drum, among other things, his pious zeal flameth out full fiercely : — " It is the broken belly of the beast, and thy bellows there are his lungs, and these pipes are his throat, those feathers are of his tail, and thy rattles the gnashing of his teeth." Pipes must have been pretty popular with the low as with the high, when a Bartholomew Fair toyman, as a matter of course, kept them in stock. There is one more passage worth quoting anent the customs of the stage, already dwelt on in Section ix. Cokes the volatile of course visits the puppet- show, whereof Master Littlewit is the dramatist, and asks : — " Have you none of your pretty impudent boys now, to bring stools, fill tobacco, fetch ale, and beg money, as they have at other houses?"