"Unsheath me, mine host, thy Toledo so bright.
Delicious Sir Loin! I do dub thee a knight.
Be thine at our banquets of honour the post;
While the Queen rules the realm, let _Sir Loin_ rule the
And'tis, my Lord Keeper, our royal belief,
The Spaniard had beat, had it not been for _beef_!
Let him come if he dare! he shall sink! he shall quake!
With a duck-ing, Sir Francis shall give him a Drake.
Thus, Don Whiskerandos, I throw thee my glove!
And now, merry minstrel, strike up 'highly Love,'
Come, pursey Sir Nicholas, caper thy best--
Dick Tarlton shall finish our sports with a jest."
The virginals sounded, Sir Nicholas puff'd,
And led forth her Highness, high-heel'd and be-ruff'd--
O the days of Queen Bess, they were merry old times!
"And now, leaving Nestor Nightingale to propitiate Uncle Timothy for this interpolation to his Merrie Mysteries, let us return and pay our respects, not to the dignified Count Haynes, the learned Doctor Haynes, but to plain Joe Haynes, the practical-joking Droll-Player of Bartholomew Fair:
** Antony, vulgo Tony Aston, a famous player, and one of Joe's contemporaries. The only portrait (a sorry one) of Tony extant, is a small oval in the frontispiece to the Fool's Opera, to which his comical harum-scarum autobiography is prefixed.
In the first year of King James the Second, * our hero set up a booth in Smithfield Rounds, where he acted a new droll, called the Whore of Babylon, or the _Devil and the Pope_. Joe being sent for by Judge Pollixfen, and soundly rated for presuming to put the pontiff into such bad company, replied, that he did it out of respect to his Holiness; for whereas many ignorant people believed the Pope to be a blatant beast, with seven heads, ten horns, and a long tail, like the Dragon of Wantley's, according to the description of the Scotch Parsons! he proved him to be a comely old gentleman, in snow-white canonicals, and a cork-screw wig. The next morning two bailiffs arrested him for twenty pounds, just as the _Bishop of Ely_ was riding by in his coach. Quoth Joe to the bailiffs, "Gentlemen, here is my cousin, the Bishop of Ely; let me but speak a word to him, and he will pay the debt and charges."
* Catholicism, though it enjoined penance and mortification, was no enemy, at appointed seasons, to mirth. Hers were merry saints, for they always brought with them a holiday. A right jovial prelate was the Pope who first invented the Carnival! On that joyful festival racks and thumbscrews, fire and faggots, were put by; whips and hair-shirts exchanged for lutes and dominos; and music inspired equally their diversions and devotions.