“And then my poets, The same that writ so subtly of the fart.” (“The Alchemist,” Ben Jonson, act ii. scene 1.) “Who the author alluded to should be I cannot say. In the collection of poems called ‘Musarum Deliciæ; or, The Muse’s Recreation,’ by Sir John Ennis and Dr. Smith, there is a poem called ‘The Fart censured in the Parliament House.’ It was occasioned by an escape of that kind in the House of Commons. I have seen part of this poem ascribed to an author in the time of Elizabeth, and possibly it may be the thing referred to by Jonson.” (Whalley.) But Gifford, from whose later editions I have drawn my material, comments to the effect that “this escape, as Whalley calls it, took place in 1607, long after the time of Elizabeth. The ballad is among the Harleian Manuscripts, and is also printed in the State Poems; it contains about forty stanzas of the most wretched doggerel.”—(Gifford’s edition of Jonson, London, 1816.) “The Fool of Cornwalle.” “I was told of a humorous knight dwelling in the same countrey (that is, Cornwall), who upon a time, having gathered together in one open market-place a great assemblie of knights, squires, gentlemen, and yeomen, and whilst they stood expecting to heare some discourse or speech to proceed from him, he, in a foolish manner (not without laughter), began to use a thousand jestures, turning his eyes this way and then that way, seeming always as though presently he would have begun to speake, and at last, fetching a deepe sigh, with a grunt like a hogge, he let a beastly loud fart, and tould them that the occasion of this calling them together was to no other end but that so noble a fart might be honoured with so noble a company as there was.”—(“Jack of Dover’s Quest of Inquiry,” in Percy Society, vol. vii. p. 30, London, 1852. “Jack of Dover,” A.D. 1604.) “The Foole of Lincoln.” “There dwelleth of late a certaine poore labouring man in Lincoln, who, upon a time, after his wife had so reviled him with tongue nettle as the whole streete rung again for weariness thereof, at last he went out of the house, and sate him downe quietly upon a blocke before his owne doore; his wife, being more out of patience by his quietness and gentle sufferaunce, went up into the chamber, and out at the window powred downe a pisse-pot upon his head; which when the poor man sawe, in a merry moode he spake these words: ‘Now, surely,’ quoth he, ‘I thought at last that after so great a thunder we should have some raine.’”—(Idem, vol. vii. p. 15.) The preceding filthy pleasantry comes down from a very distinguished origin. Harington recalls the adventure of the “good Socrates, who, when Xantippe had crowned him with a chamber-pot, he bore it off single with his head and shoulders, and said to such as laughed at it,— “It never yet was deemed a wonder To see that rain should follow thunder.” (“Ajax,” p. 94.)