CHAP. V. ] THE FO UR TH DAY. 113 



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 as high a 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 undoing 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 unript it if she let 

 it alone? and she confest herself mistakeri. These and twenty 

 suchlike questions were proposed and answered, with as much 

 beggarly logic and earnestness as was ever heard to proceed from 

 the mouth of the most pertinacious schismatic ; and sometimes 

 all the beggars, whose number was neither more nor less than the 

 poets' nine muses, talked all together 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,* created 

 King of their corporation, was to lodge at an alehouse, called 

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

 highroad towards London ; and he therefore desired them to 

 spend no more tifne about that and suchlike questions, but refer 

 all to father Clause at night, for he was an upright judge, and in 

 the meantime draw cuts what song should be next sung, and who 

 should sing it. They all agreed to the motion ; and the lot fell 

 to her that was the youngest, and veriest virgin of the company. 

 And she sung Frank Davison's fj song, which he made forty years 



Variation'.] ^ talked all togetheu, and none heard what the other said. — :td edit. 



to a Work which had appeared three years before ; The English Gusmatt : or, the 

 History of that unparalleled Thief, James Hind, written Ijy G. F. (George Fidge), 410, 

 Lond. 1652. Hind appears to have been " the grandest thief"" of his age. He was the 

 son of a saddler at Chipping Norton, in Oxfordshire : andw^s apprenticed to a butcher. 

 From some of the single sheets which were printed during' the great Rebellion, he 

 appears to have attached himself to the Royal Cause; and was actively engaged in the 

 battles both of Worcester and Warrington. In 1651 he was arrested by order of the 

 Parliament, having taken shelter, under the name of Brown, at "one Denzy's, a barber, 

 over against Saint Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street" This latter circumstance might 

 probably introduce him to Walton's notice, who lived in the neighbourhood. Our late 

 English Gusman seems to intimate that Hind was dead in 1655 ; though from none of 

 the pubHcations of the time does the date of his death appear. — E. 



* The Comedy of The Royal Merchant^ or Beg^a^^s Bush, was written by Fletcher, 

 and not by Ben Jonson. It was licensed in 1622, and first printed in the folio of 1647 ; 

 with the title of The Beggar's Bush only. — Collier's Hist, of Dramatic Poetry, vol. i. 

 P- 436. 



t Francis Davison was the eldest son of Secretary Davison, the victim of the mean 

 and cowardly device of Queen Elizabeth to remove from herself the odium of the murder 

 of Mary Queen of Scots. He was born about the year 1575, and was intended for the 

 bar, but abandoned that pursuit for Poesy. In 1602, he published the Poetical 

 Rhapsody, which went through four editions, 1602, a6o8, 1611, and 1621, and has been 

 twice reprinted, in which miscellany he inserted the " Beggar's £ong ; " but there ajo 



H 



