sorrel soups; they are mangy
And breed the scratches only: Give me sack!

The devil now becomes a constant resource for humour. In "The Chances"
Antonio has lost his jewels. His servant suggests that the thieves have
"taken towards the ports."

_Ant._ Get me a conjurer,
One that can raise a water-devil. I'll port 'em.
Play at duck and drake with my money? Take heed, fiddler,
I'll dance ye by this hand: your fiddlestick
I'll grease of a new fashion, for presuming
To meddle with my de-gambos! get me a conjurer,
Inquire me out a man that lets out devils.

Beaumont and Fletcher were great conversationalists, their racy raillery
is said to have been as good as their plays. They were members of the
celebrated Mermaid Club in Fleet Street, a centre where the wits of the
day sharpened their humour in friendly conflict. In his epistle to Ben
Jonson, Beaumont writes--

"What things have we seen
Done at the 'Mermaid!' heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that every one from whom they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life."

Here it was that Shakespeare and Jonson often contended, the former like
"a light English man-of-war" the latter like "a high-built Spanish
galleon."

To some portion of the seventeenth century, we must attribute those
curious stories called "The Merry tales of the Wise Men of Gotham"
although by some they have been attributed to Andrew Gotham, a physician
of Henry VIII. They are said to have been suggested by a circumstance
which occurred in the time of King John. He intended to pass through
Gotham, a village in Northamptonshire, but the inhabitants placed some
difficulties in his way. On his expressing his determination to carry
out his project, and sending officers to make inquiries about the
opposition offered, the inhabitants were seized with a panic and
pretended to have lost their senses. This was the tradition upon which,
in after-times, these tales were founded, and being unobjectionable they
are well adapted for the nursery, but being mere exercises of ingenuity
they afford but very slight pleasure to older minds. Although aimless,
there is something clever in them. The Wise Men determine to hedge round
a cuckoo to keep it in so that it should sing all the year. The bird
seeing the hedge flies away. "A vengeance on her," say the Wise Men, "we
made not