THE COMPLETE ANGLER 117 



to so high a contest about it, as none that knows the 

 faithfulness of one gipsy to another will easily believe ; 

 only we that have lived these last twenty years, are 

 certain that money has been able to do much mischief. 

 However, the gipsies were too wise to go to law, and did 

 therefore choose their choice friends Rook and Shark, and 

 our late English Gusman,* to be their arbitrators and 

 umpires ; and so they left this honeysuckle hedge, and 

 went to tell fortunes, and cheat, and get more money 

 and lodging in the next village. 



When these were gone, we heard a high contention 

 amongst the beggars, whether it was easiest to rip a 

 cloak, or to unrip a cloak. One beggar affirmed it was 

 all one. But that was denied by asking her if doing and un- 

 doing were all one. Then another said 'twas easiest to unrip 

 a cloak, for that was to let it alone. But she was answered, 

 by asking her, how she unripped it, if she let it alone : and 

 she confessed herself mistaken. These and twenty such 

 like questions were proposed, and answered with as much 

 beggarly logic and earnestness, as was ever heard to pro- 

 ceed from the mouth of the most pertinacious schismatic : 

 and sometimes all the beggars, whose number was neither 

 more nor less than the poet's nine muses, talked altogether 

 about this ripping and unripping, and so loud that not 

 one heard what the other said : but at last one beggar 

 craved audience, and told them, that old father Clause, 

 whom Ben Jonson in his Beggar's Bush,-f created king 

 of their corporation, was to lodge at an alehouse called 

 " Catch-her-by-the-way," not far from Waltham Cross, 



* Alluding to a work that appeared a few years before, entitled 

 The English Gusman, or, The History of that Unparalleled Thief, 

 James Hind, written by George Fidge, 4to, London, 1652. Hind 

 made a considerable figure at the time of the great rebellion, and 

 fought, both at Worcester and Warrington, on the king's side. 

 He was arrested by order of the Parliament in 1651. Rook and 

 Shark, imaginary associates of the " English Gusman." H. 



t This comedy was not written by Jonson, but by Beaumont and 

 Fletcher. 



