DRUDGEIT (Peter), clerk to Lord Bladderskate.—­Sir W. Scott, Redgauntlet (time, George III.).

DRUGGER (Abel), a seller of tobacco; artless and gullible in the extreme.  He was building a new house, and came to Subtle “the alchemist” to know on which side to set the shop door, how to dispose the shelves so as to ensure most luck, on what days he might trust his customers, and when it would be unlucky for him so to do.—­Ben Jonson, The Alchemist (1610).

Thomas Weston was “Abel Drugger” himself [1727-1776], but David Garrick was fond of the part also [1716-1779].—­C.  Dibdin, History of the Stage.

DRUGGET, a rich London haberdasher, who has married one of his daughters to Sir Charles Racket.  Drugget is “very fond of his garden,” but his taste goes no further than a suburban tea-garden with leaden images, cockney fountains, trees cut into the shapes of animals, and other similar abominations.  He is very headstrong, very passionate, and very fond of flattery.

Mrs. Druggett, wife of the above.  She knows her husband’s foibles, and, like a wise woman, never rubs the hair the wrong way.—­A.  Murphy, Three Weeks after Marriage.

DRUID (The), the nom de plume of Henry

Dixon, sportsman and sporting-writer; One of his books, called Steeple-chasing, appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine.  His last work was called The Saddle and Sirloin.

[Illustration] Collins calls James Thomson (author of The Seasons) a druid, meaning a pastoral British poet or “Nature’s High Priest.”

  In yonder grave a Druid lies. 
  Collins (1746).

Druid (Dr.), a man of North Wales, 65 years of age, the travelling tutor of Lord Abberville, who was only 23.  The doctor is a pedant and antiquary, choleric in temper, and immensely bigoted, wholly without any knowledge of the human heart, or indeed any practical knowledge at all.

“Money and trade, I scorn ’em both; ...I have traced the Oxus and the Po, traversed the Riphaean Mountains, and pierced into the inmost deserts of Kilmuc Tartary ...I have followed the ravages of Kuli Chan with rapturous delight.  There is a land of wonders; finely depopulated; gloriously laid waste; fields without a hoof to tread ’em; fruits without a hand to gather ’em:  with such a catologue of pats, peetles, serpents, scorpions, caterpillars, toads, and putterflies!  Oh, ’tis a recreating contemplation indeed to a philosophic mind!”—­Cumberland, The Fashionable Lover (1780).

DRUID MONEY, a promise to pay on the Greek Kalends.  Patricius says:  “Druidae pecuniam mutuo accipiebant in posteriore vita reddituri.”

  Like money by the Druids borrowed,
  In th’ other world to be restored. 
  Butler, Hudibras, iii. 1 (1678).

[Illustration] Purchase tells us of certain priests of Pekin, “who barter with the people upon bills of exchange, to be paid in heaven a hundredfold.”—­Pilgrims, iii. 2.