Page:The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland to the time of Dean Swift - Volume 2.djvu/19

 If this comedy, is no better than these wretched commendatory lines, it is miserable indeed.

5. Old Couple, a Comedy, printed in 4to; this play is intended to expose the vice of covetousness.

John Taylour, Water-Poet,

WAS born in Gloucestershire, where he went to school with one Green, and having got into his accidence, was bound apprentice to a Waterman in London, which, though a laborious employment, did not so much depress his mind, but that he sometimes indulged himself in poetry. Taylour retates a whimsical story of his schoolmaster Mr. Green, which we shall here insert upon the authority of Winstanley. "Green loved new milk so well, that in order to have it new, he went to the market to buy a cow, but his eyes being dim, he cheapened a bull, and asking the price of the beast, the owner and he agreed, and driving it home, would have his maid to milk it, which she attempting to do, could find no teats; and whilst the maid and her master were arguing the matter, the bull very fairly pissed into the pail;" whereupon his scholar John Taylour wrote these verses,


 * Our mafter Green was overseen
 * In buying of a bull,
 * For when the maid did mean to milk,
 * He piss'd the pail half full.