"If thou be slow to speake, as one I knew, Thou wouldst assure thy selfe my counsels true; Hee (too late) finding her upon her knees In Church, where yet her husbands coorse she sees, Hearing the Sermon at his funerall, Longing to behold his buriall, This sutor being toucht with inward love, Approached neare his lovely sute to move, Then stooping downe he whispered in her eare Saying he bore her love, as might appeare, In that so soone he shewed his love unto her, Before any else did app[r]och to woo her, Alass (said she) your labour is in vaine, Last night a husband I did entertaine." --_Uncasing of Machivils Instructions to his Sonne_, 1612, Sign. C 3. Stories of this kind are of very common occurrence in the modern collections of facetiae. P. 23. "When Davie Diker diggs, and dallies not, When smithes shoo horses, as they would be shod, _When millers toll not with a golden thumbe_." --_The Steel Glas, a Satyre_, by George Gascoigne, Esquire (1576), Sign. H 3 verso. A writer in the _Retrospective Review_, New Series, ii. 326, states that this story of the "Miller with the golden thumb" "is still (1854) a favourite in Yorkshire." P. 30. _Stumble at a Straw, &c._--This proverb is quoted in _Machivils Instructions to his Sonne_, 1613, p. 16. P. 35. _Of the good man that sayd to his wyfe. &c._ "Dr. _South_, visiting a gentleman one morning, was ask'd to stay Dinner, which he accepted of; the Gentleman stept into the next Room and told his Wife, and desired she'd provide something extraordinary. Hereupon she began to murmer and scold, and make a thousand Words; till at length, Her husband, provok'd at her Behaviour, protested, that if it was not for the Stranger in the next Room, he would kick her out of Doors. Upon which the Doctor, who heard all that passed, immediately stept out, crying, _I beg, Sir, you'll make no Stranger of me_." --_Complete London Jester_, ed. 1771, p. 73. P. 44. _Draughthole._--See Dekker's _Guls' Horn Book_, 1609, ed. Nott, p. 121-2-3. P. 47. _Saynte Thomas of Acres._ "A the Austen fryers They count us for lyers: And at Saynt Thomas of Akers They carpe us lyke crakers." --Skelton's _Colin Clout_ (Works, ed. Dyce, i. 357). This tale is imitated in _Hobson's Conceits_. P. 60. _Of the gentylman, that promysed the scoler of Oxforde a sarcenet typet_--Sarcenet, at the period to which this story refers, was a material which only certain persons were allowed to wear. See Nicolas' note to a passage in the _Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York_, p. 220. This jest is transplanted by Johnson, with very little alteration, into the _Pleasant Conceits of Old Hobson_, 1607. P. 78. _Therefore I pray thee, teche me my Pater noster, and by my truthe, I shall therfore teche thee a songe of Robyn Hode that shall be worth xx of it!_ The following passage from a poem, which has been sometimes ascribed to Skelton, is a curious illustration of this paragraph:--