Of Bishop Corbet, of Oxford and Norwich, who wrote that somewhere shall we say about the year 1612--at about the time that William Shakespeare, having finished his own dealings with the fairies, settled down as a gentleman of leisure at New Place, Stratford-on-Avon,--Aubrey has much to tell. A bishop who will go to the trouble of lamenting the loss of fairies at all is something of a _rara avis_, especially when he admits their Romish tendencies; but to be the only begetter of such a story as "Dymchurch Flit" (even at an interval of three hundred years), that is the true road to gratitude. Witty bishops are always good company--just as a joke in a serious paper gives one more pleasure than a joke in a comic paper. In fact, so much is this the case that a bishop to gain a reputation for wit need not, as one too often blushingly discovers, really be witty at all: a very thin imitation of the real thing will suffice. It is the same with Judges: laughter holding both its sides (in parenthesis) will pursue their mildest _faceticæ_. Richard Norwich, however, was a true wit, although, as he lived at a time before biography was much practised, we have few enough of his good sayings. Whatever happened we should have the Bishop's verses; but had it not been for John Aubrey we should know little of his spoken jests, some of which are very modern in spirit. Here is Aubrey: "After he was doctor of divinity, he sang ballads at the Crosse at Abingdon. On a market-day he and some of his comrades were at the taverne by the Crosse (which, by the way, was then the finest in England: I remember it when I was a freshman: it was admirable curious Gothicque architecture, and fine figures in the nitches, 'twas one of those built by king ... for his queen). The ballad-singer complayned he had no custome--he could not put off his ballads. The jolly Doctor puts off his gowne, and puts on the ballad-singer's leathern jacket, and being a handsome man, and a rare full voice, he presently vended a great many. "His conversation was extreme pleasant. Dr. Stubbins was one of his cronies; he was jolly fat doctor, and a very good housekeeper. As Dr. Corbet and he were riding in Lob Lane in wet weather ('tis an extraordinary deepe dirty lane), the coache fell, and Corbet said that Dr. S. was up to the elbows in mud, and he was up to the elbows in Stubbins." Sydney Smith might have said that. I know of no better fat-man joke, industrious as the humorists have always been on that promising topic. Aubrey continues: "A.D. 1628, he was made Bishop of Oxford; and I have heard that he had an admirable grave and venerable aspect. One time as he was confirming, the country people, pressing in to see the ceremonie; said he, 'Beare off there, or I'll confirm ye with my staffe!' Another time, being to lay his hand on the head of a man very bald, he turns to his chaplaine, and said, 'Some dust, Lushington,' to keepe his hand from slipping.