the imprint London.  Printed for Nath.  Brook, at the Angel in Cornhill, 1656.  It contains moreover a Dedication “To the truly noble Edward Pepes, Esq.,” and an Epistle “To the Courteous Reader,” both signed with the initials J.P.  Either, therefore, this is the same book as the Sportive Wit or the Muses’ Merriment which, figures in the Orders of the Council, or John Phillips had edited simultaneously for Nathaniel Brooke (who had been the publisher of his Satyr against Hypocrites in the preceding August) two books of the same general character.  Even on the latter supposition, Wit and Drollery, in the absence of Sportive Wit, may serve as a representative of that production of the same editor and the same publisher.  The substance of Phillips’s Epistle to the Reader in Wit and Drollery is as follows:—­

“Reader,—­To give thee a broadside of plain dealing, this Wit I present thee with is such as can only be in fashion, invented purposely to keep off the violent assaults of melancholy, assisted by the additional engines and weapons of sack and good company...  What hath not been extant of Sir J. M., of Ja.  S., of Sir W. D., of J. D., and other miraculous muses of the times, are here at thy service; and, as Webster, at the end of his play called The White Devil, subscribes that the action of Perkins crowned the whole play, so, when thou viewest the title, and readest the sign of ’Ben Jonson’s Head, in the backside of the Exchange, and the Angel in Cornhill,’ where they are sold, enquire who could better furnish thee with such sparkling copies of wit.”

Among the included pieces are the younger Alexander Gill’s lampoon on Ben Jonson for his Magnetic Lady and Ben Jonson’s reply to the same (ante Vol.  I. pp. 528-529); there are also several pieces of Suckling; but, for the rest, as the title-page bears, the volume consists chiefly of specimens of "Sir J. M." (Sir John Mennes), "Jas. S." (James Smith), "Sir W. D" (Sir William Davenant), and "J.  D." (Dr. Donne), professing not to have been before in print.  Whether this was so, and whether the pieces were all authentically by these poets, need not here concern us.  It is enough to say that many of the pieces are decidedly, and some very grossly, of the improper kind.  The reader will not expect to have this proved by extract; but of the more innocent “drollery” the following stanzas from a poem entitled "Nonsense" may be a sample:—­

  O that my lungs could bleat like buttered pease! 
  But bleating of my lungs hath caught the itch,
  And are as mangy as the Irish seas,
  That doth engender windmills in a bitch.

  I grant that rainbows, being lulled asleep,
  Snort like a woodknife in a lady’s eyes;
  Which makes her grieve to see a pudding creep;
  For creeping puddings only please the wise.

  Note that a hard-roed herring should presume
  To swing a tithe-pig in a catskin purse,
  For fear the hailstones which did fall at Rome
  By lessening of the fault should make it worse.