* Diogenes, when he trod with his dirty cobbled shoes on the beautiful carpets of Plato, exclaimed triumphantly, “I tread upon the pride of Plato!”--“Yes,” replied Plato, “but with a greater pride!” ** “A material fool,” as Jacques describes Touchstone. Such was Dr. Andrew Borde, the well-known progenitor of Merry Andrews; and the presumed author of the “Merry Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham,” composed in the early part of the sixteenth century. “In the time of Henry VIII. and after,” (says Anthony à Wood,) “it was accounted a book full of wit and mirth by the scholars and gentlemen.” It is thus referred to in an old play of 1560:-- “Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! I must needs laughe in my slefe. The wise men of Gotum are risen againe.” If merriment sometimes ran riot, it never exhibited itself in those deep-laid villanies so rife among the pretenders to sanctity and mortification. An appeal to “clubs” among the London apprentices; the pulling down of certain mansions of iniquity, of which _Mrs. Cole_, * in after days, was the devout proprietress; a few broken heads at the Bear Garden; the somewhat opposite sounds of the “belles tolling for the lectorer, and the trumpets sounding to the stages,” ** and sundry minor enormities, were the only terrible results of this national licence. Mark what followed, when masking, morris-dancing, *** * Foote's “Minor.” Act i. scene 1. ** Harleian MSS. No. 286. *** The morris-dance was one of the most applauded merriments of Old England. Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marian, the Queen or Lady of the May, the fool, the piper, to which were afterwards added a dragon, and a hobbyhorse, were the characters that figured away in that truly ancient and grotesque movement. Will Kempe, “the comical and conceited jest-monger, and vicegerent to the ghost of Dicke Tarleton,” who “raised many a roar by making faces and mouths of all sorts,” danced the morris with his men of Gotham, in his “Nine daies' wonder from London to Norwich.” Kempe's “new jigg,” rivalled in popularity his Peter in Romeo and Juliet; Dogberry, in “Much ado about nothing;” and Justice Shallow, of which he was the original performer. In “Jacke Drum's Entertainment,” 4to. 1601, is the following song: ON THE INTRODUCTION OF A WHITSUN MORRIS-DANCE. “Skip it and trip it nimbly, nimbly, Tickle it, tickle it lustily, Strike up the tabour for the wenches' favour, Tickle it, tickle it, lustily. Let us be seene on Hygate Greene, To dance for the honour of Holloway. Sing we are come hither, let us spare for no leather, To dance for the honour of Holloway.”