_C’est magnifique! mais ce n’est pas—L’amour._ At least, and we imply no more, Lovelace and those who act on such high principles, find their _Lux Casta_ marrying some neighbouring rival. But we may be sure that the singer of our _Merry Drollery_ ditty won _his_ Lass, literally in a canter. Part I., p. 2 [our p. 195.] _A Puritan of late._ Compare John Cleveland’s “Zealous Discourse between the Independent-Parson and Tabitha,” “Hail Sister,” &c. (_J. C. Revived_, 1662, p. 108); and also the superior piece of humour, beginning, “I came unto a Puritan to wooe,” _M. D., C._, p. 77. The following description of the earlier sort of Precisian, ridiculous but not yet dangerous, is by Richard Brathwaite, and was printed in 1615:— _To the Precisian._ _For the Precisian that dares hardly looke,_ _(Because th’ art pure, forsooth) on any booke,_ _Save Homilies, and such as tend to th’ good_ _Of thee and of thy zealous brother-hood:_ _Know my Time-noting lines ayme not at thee,_ _For thou art too too curious for mee._ _I will not taxe that man that’s wont to slay_ “His Cat for killing mise on th’ Sabbath day:[”] _No; know my resolution it is thus,_ _I’de rather be thy foe then be thy pus:_ _And more should I gaine by’t: for I see,_ _The daily fruits of thy fraternity:_ _Yea, I perceiue why thou my booke should shun,_ _“Because there’s many faultes th’ art guiltie on:”_ _Therefore with-drawe, by me thou art not call’d,_ _Yet do not winch (good iade) when thou art gall’d,_ _I to the better sort my lines display,_ _I pray thee then keep thou thy selfe away._ (_A Strappado for the Diuell_, 1615.) The sixth line offers another illustration of what has been ably demonstrated by J. O. Halliwell, commenting on the “_too-too_ solid flesh” of _Hamlet_, Act i. sc. 2, in Shakespeare Soc. Papers, i. 39-43, 1844. By it being printed within double quotational commas, we see that the reference to a Puritan hanging his cat on a Monday, for having profanely caught a mouse on the Sabbath-Sunday, was already an old and familiar joke in 1615. James Hogg garbled a ballad in his _Jacobite Relics_, 1819, i. 37, as “_There was a ~Cameronian~ Cat, Was hunting for a prey_,” &c., but we have a printed copy of it, dated 1749, beginning “_A ~Presbyterian~ Cat sat watching of her prey_.” Also, in a poem “On Lute-strings, Cat-eaten,” we read:— _Puss, I will curse thee, maist thou dwell_ _With some dry Hermit in a Cel,_ _Where Rat ne’re peep’d, where Mouse ne’er fed,_ _And Flies go supperlesse to bed:_ _Or with some close par’d Brother, where_ _Thou’lt fast each Sabbath in the yeare,_ _Or else, profane, be hang’d on Monday,_ _For butchering a Mouse on Sunday_, &c. (_Musarum Deliciæ_, 1656, _p._ 53.) John Taylor, the Water-Poet, so early as 1620, writes of a Brownist:—