I cite the above illustration of a court jest from the L’Estrange manuscripts, edited by Mr. Thoms. My esteemed and modest friend has supplied a word in brackets, for which, I fear, there is no warrant. I have no doubt that the MS. as it stands is correct, and Knollys was not the last courtier who thought it an excellent court jest to appear in the condition described. One of the greatest wits at the court of Vienna, the Prince de Ligne, is thus described by the Countess de Bohm in ‘Les Prisons de 1793:’--“Je l’ai trouvé le matin _entièrement nu_, recevant des visites, parlant à des fournisseurs. Il me présenta même à sa belle-fille logée près de lui.” If the court wit of Vienna could do this, and a lady not be startled thereby, in the last century, what may not a courtier have dared a century earlier? However this may be, we have seen that Elizabeth would not tolerate forwardness even in Richard Tarleton, who was, perhaps, the most celebrated of the court jesters to that Queen, and one of the most perfect low comedians that ever trod the stage. To the Leicester above-named he is said to have owed his introduction to Elizabeth. Tarleton was a Shropshire boy, and was keeping his father’s swine, near Condover, when an officer of the Earl’s household, on his way to the Earl’s estates in Denbigh, entered into conversation with the young swineherd, and was so struck by his “happy unhappy answers,” that he took the merry lout, nothing loath, with him,” and Tarleton seems to have passed thence to a higher court.