"An arch Barber at a certain Borough in the West, where there are but few Electors, had Art enough to suspend his Promise till the Voters, by means of _Bribery_, the _old Balsam_, were so divided, that the casting vote lay in himself. One of the Candidates, who was sensible of it, cameinto his little dirty Shop to be shaved, and when the operation was finish'd, threw into the Bason _Twenty Guineas_. The next Day came the other Candidate, who was shaved also, and left _Thirty_. Some Days after this, the first return'd to solicit the Barber's Vote, who told him very coldly, _That he could not promise. Not promise!_ says the Gentleman; why I thought I had been shaved here! 'Tis true, says the Barber, _you was, but another Gentleman has been trimm'd_ since that; however, if you please, I'll trim you again, and then tell you my mind."--_Complete London Jester_, ed. 1771, p. 99. P. 35. _Conon peaked into the court._--So in Skelton's _Colin Clout_ (Works by Dyce, I. 312), we have:-- "He cryeth and he creketh, He pryeth and he peketh, He chides and he chatters," &c. In the _Posthums Poems of Richard Lovelace, Esq._ 1659, 80, p. 60, the word is employed in a different sense:-- "Have you not marked their C[oe]lestial play, And no more peek'd the gayties of day?" _To peak_, however, in the sense in which it is used by Skelton, and in the _Merie Tales_, &c. is of rather frequent occurrence in _Scoggin's Jests_, 1626 (but first printed before 1565); and Gascoigne employs the word in the same manner in the _Steel Glas_, n. d. (1576) 40. The passage in Gascoigne, which I perused long ago, was brought back to my recollection by a note by the Rev. A. Dyce to Skelton's _Colin Clout_. P. 38.--See Diogenes Laertius, transl. by Yonge, p. 226. Diogenes the Cynic evidently had Thales in his mind when he said "that mathematicians kept their eyes fixed on the sun and moon, and overlooked what was under their feet." P. 40. _Of him that dreamed he fonde golde._ In _Pasquil's Jests_, we are told "how drunken Mullins of Stratford dreamed he found golde." It is the same story. P. 52. _Gelidus facet anguis in herba._--Whoever edited this collection of stories seems to have had a great fancy for quotations. Throughout the _C. Mery Talys_, on the contrary, there is not a single instance of this passion for extracts. Sir Thomas Overbury, in his _Characters_ (if at least they were written by him), ed. 1632, sign. K4, describes "An Innes of Court man" as taking "_ends of Latine_, though it be false, with as great confidence as ever _Cicero_ could pronounce an oration." I suspect that the _Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres_ were collected by some person more or less versed in the classics and in foreign authors, which was probably not the case with the _C. Mery Talys_, which do not smell so much of the inkhorn, as Gascoigne would have said. P. 54. _Breble-brable._