And in Massinger’s “City Madam,” act ii. sc. 1—­

    “You brach,
    Are you turn’d mankind?”

[463] [Old copy, strumpets.]

[464] Whether I will or not.  This mode of expression is often found in contemporary writers.  So in Dekker’s “Bel-man of London,” sig.  F 3:  “Can by no meanes bee brought to remember this new friend, yet will hee, nill he, to the taverne he sweares to have him.”

It may be worth remark that it is also found in “Damon and Pithias,” from which the character of Grim is taken.

[465] [Old copy, reake.]

[466] Sometimes called Pucke, alias Hobgoblin.  In the creed of ancient superstition he was a kind of merry sprite, whose character and achievements are recorded in a ballad printed in Dr Percy’s “Reliques of Ancient Poetry.” [See “Popular Antiquities of Great Britain,” iii. 39, et seq.]

[467] Pretty or clever.  So in Warner’s “Albion’s England,” b. vi. c. 31, edit. 1601—­

    “There was a tricksie girl, I wot, albeit clad in gray.”

The word is also used in Shakespeare’s “Tempest,” act v. sc. 1.  See Mr Steevens’s note thereon.

[468] This is one of the most common, and one of the oldest, proverbs in English.  Ulpian Fulwell[’s play upon it has been printed in our third volume.] It is often met with in our old writers, and among others, in a translation from the French, printed in 1595, called, “A pleasant Satyre or Poesie, wherein is discovered the Catholicon of Spain,” &c., the running title being “A Satyre Menippized.”  It is to be found on pp. 54 and 185.  Having mentioned this tract, we may quote, as a curiosity, the following lines, which probably are the original of a passage for which “Hudibras” is usually cited as the authority—­

    “Oft he that doth abide
    Is cause of his own paine;
    But he that flieth in good tide
    Perhaps may fight againe.”

—­Collier.

[469] [A word unnoticed by Nares and Halliwell.  The latter cites haust, high, doubtless from the French haut.  So hauster may be the comparative, and signify higher.]

[470] Till now printed Puzzles as if because it had puzzled Dodsley and Reed to make out the true word.  In the old copy it stands Puriles; and although it may seem a little out of character for Grim to quote Latin, yet he does so in common with the farmer in Peele’s “Edward I.,” and from the very same great authority. “’Tis an old saying, I remember I read it in Cato’s ‘Pueriles’ that Cantabit vacuus coram latrone viator,” &c.—­Collier. [The work referred to in the text was called “Pueriles Confabulatiunculae; or, Children’s Talke,” of which no early edition is at present known.  But it is mentioned in “Pappe with an Hatchet” (1589), and in the inventory of the stock of John Foster, the York bookseller (1616).]