Come up the broad river, the Thames, my Dane, My Dane, with the beautiful eyes. * * * * * And they said, ‘He is young, the lad we love, The heir of the Isles is young; How we deem of his mother, and one gone above, Can neither be said nor sung. He brings us a pledge--he will do his part With the best of his race and name;’ And I will, for I look to live, sweetheart, As may suit with Thy mother’s fame. But, taking leave of the court, let us proceed to discover the manners of the people, from contemporary authors and dramatists. Much is to be gleaned from the voluminous writings of Thomas Decker, whose pamphlets and plays, the _Quarterly Review_ once said, would furnish a more complete view of the habits and customs of his contemporaries in vulgar and middle life than could easily be collected from all the grave annals of the times. His _Seven Deadly Sins of London_, published in 1606, is a mighty invective against the iniquity of the day. It has been well remarked in the introduction to Arber’s reprint of the work, how much the mind of the writer was imbued with the style of the old Hebrew prophets, and how sure he was that that style would find a response in the hearts of his readers. For instance, how like the ‘burden of the Word of the Lord’ is his apostrophe to London--‘_O London_, thou art great in glory, and envied for thy greatness. Thou art the goodliest of thy neighbours, but the proudest, the wealthiest, the most wanton.... Thou sit’st in thy gates heated with wines.’ In his account of the third deadly sin, he speaks of wines, Spanish and French, meeting in the cellar, conspiring together to lay the _Englishman_ under the board. Perhaps his finest effort of prosopopæia is his impersonation of sloth, whom he represents as giving licences to all the vintners to ‘keepe open house, and to emptye their hogsheades to all commers, who did so, dyeing their grates into a drunkard’s blush (to make them knowe from gates of a prison) lest customers should reele away from them, and hanging out new bushes, that if men at their going out could not see the signe, yet they might not lose themselves in the bush.... And as _drunkennesse_ when it least can stand, does best hold up ale-houses, so _sloth_ is a founder of the alms-houses, ... and is a good benefactor to these last.’ To call attention to this author’s notices of such _rules of drunkenness_ as Vpsy-Freeze, Crambo, Parmizant, &c., would be beside the present object; but the book will amply repay study, and serve as a commentary on Defoe’s _Plague of London_. Several other of his works bear upon the present theme, _e.g._ _The Batchelor’s Banquet_, _Lanthorne and Candle Light_, and _English Villanies prest to Death_.