is not, and is indeed what hee
seemes not. And if hee lose one of his fellow stroules, in the summer he
turnes king of the gipsies: if not, some great man's protection is a
sufficient warrant for his peregrination, and a meanes to procure him the
town-hall, where hee may long exercise his qualities, with clown-claps of
great admiration, in a tone sutable to the large eares of his illiterate
auditorie. Hee is one seldome takes care for old age, because ill diet and
disorder, together with a consumption, or some worse disease, taken vp in
his full careere, haue onely chalked out his catastrophe but to a colon:
and he scarsely suruiues to his naturall period of dayes."

xi. _Whimzies: Or, A new Cast of Characters. Nova, non nota delectant.
London, Printed by F. K. and are to be sold by Ambrose Rithirdon, at the
signe of the Bull's-head, in Paul's Church-yard. 1631._

[12mo. containing in all, pp. 280.]

The dedication to this volume, which is inscribed to sir _Alexander
Radcliffe_, is signed "_Clitus--Alexandrinus_;" the author's real name I
am unable to discover. It contains twenty-four characters[DH], besides "_A
cater-character, throwne out of a boxe by an experienced gamester_[DI];"
and some lines "vpon the birth-day of his sonne Iohn," of which the
first-will be sufficient to satisfy all curiosity.

"God blesse thee, Iohn,
And make thee such an one
That I may ioy
in calling thee my son.

Thou art my ninth,
and by it I divine
That thou shalt live
to love the Muses nine."--&c. &c.

"A CORRANTO-COINER--(p. 15.)

Is a state newes-monger; and his owne genius is his intelligencer. His
mint goes weekely, and he coines monie by it. Howsoeuer, the more
intelligent merchants doe jeere him, the vulgar doe admire him, holding
his novels oracular: and these are usually sent for tokens or intermissiue
curtsies betwixt city and countrey. Hee holds most constantly one forme or
method of discourse. He retaines some militarie words of art, which hee
shootes at randome; no matter where they hitt, they cannot wound any. He
ever leaves some passages doubtfull, as if they were some more intimate
secrecies of state, clozing his sentence abruptly with--_heereafter you
shall heare more_. Which words, I conceive, he onely useth as baites, to
make the appetite of the reader more eager in his next week's pursuit for
a more satisfying labour. Some generall-erring relations he pickes up, a