livers you
common matters with great conjuration of silence, and whispers you in the
ear acts of parliament. You may as soon wrest a tooth from him as a paper,
and whatsoever he reads is letters. He dares not talk of great men for
fear of bad comments, and _he knows not how his words may be misapplied_.
Ask his opinion, and he tells you his doubt; and he never hears any thing
more astonishedly than what he knows before. His words are like the cards
at primivist,[23] where 6 is 18, and 7, 21; for they never signify what
they sound; but if he tell you he will do a thing, it is as much as if he
swore he would not. He is one, indeed, that takes all men to be craftier
than they are, and puts himself to a great deal of affliction to hinder
their plots and designs, where they mean freely. He has been long a riddle
himself, but at last finds OEdipuses; for his over-acted dissimulation
discovers him, and men do with him as they would with Hebrew letters,
spell him backwards and read him.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] _Primivist_ and primero were, in all probability, the same game,
although Minshew, in his Dictionary, calls them "two games at cardes." The
latter he explains "primum et primum visum, that is, first and first
seene, because hee that can shew such an order of cardes, first winnes the
game." The coincidence between Mr. Strutt's description of the former and
the passage in the text, shews that there could be little or no difference
between the value of the cards in these games, or in the manner of playing
them. "Each player has four cards dealt to him, one by one, the _seven_
was the highest card, in point of number, that he could avail himself of,
_which counted for twenty-one_, the six _counted for sixteen_, the five
for fifteen, and the ace for the same," &c. (_Sports and Pastimes_, 247.)
The honourable Daines Barrington conceived that Primero was introduced by
Philip the Second, or some of his suite, whilst in England. Shakspeare
proves that it was played in the royal circle.

----"I left him (Henry VIII.) at _Primero_
With the duke of Suffolk."----

_Henry VIII._

So Decker: "Talke of none but lords and such ladies with whom you have
plaid at _Primero_."--_Gul's Hornebooke_, 1609. 37.

Among the marquis of Worcester's celebrated "_Century of Inventions_,"
12mo. 1663, is one "so contrived without suspicion, that playing at
Primero at cards, one may, without clogging his memory, keep reckoning of
all sixes, s