Screen.—A bank-note.
Screw.—A turnkey.
Screw Loose.—Something wrong.
Seven Dials Bard.—
There is a pleasure in poetic pains,
Which only Poets know.
“Yonder, sir, is Mr. Goosequill, one of the ‘Seven Bards of the Seven Dials,’ a clever man, who came to town with half-a-crown in his pocket, and his tragedy, called the ‘Mines of Peru,’ by which he of course expected to make his fortune. For five years he danced attendance on the manager, in order to hear tidings of its being ‘cast,’ and put into rehearsal, and four years more in trying to get it back again. During the process he was groaned, laughed, whistled, guyed, and nearly kicked out of the secretary’s room, who swore—which well he might do, considering the exhausted treasury of the concern—that he knew nothing about, or ever heard of the ‘Mines of Peru.’ At last Mr. Goosequill, being shown into the manager’s kitchen, to wait till he was at leisure, had the singular pleasure of seeing two acts of the ‘Mines of Peru’ daintily fastened round a savory capon on the spit, to preserve it from the scorching influence of the fire.
“‘This was foul treatment,’ I observed, and I ventured to ask how he had subsisted during the meanwhile? ‘Why he first made an agreement with a printer of Ballads, Last Dying Speeches and Confessions, &c., living in the Seven Dials, who finding his inclinations led to poetry, expressed his satisfaction, telling him that one of his poets had lost his senses, and was confined in Bedlam, and another was dazed with drinking drams. An agreement was made, and he earned five shillings and two-pence-three-farthings per week as his share of this speculation with the muses. But his profits were not always certain. He had often the pleasure of dining with Duke Humphrey, and for this reason he turned his thoughts to prose; and in this walk he was eminently successful, for during a week of gloomy weather he published an apparition, on the substance of which he subsisted very comfortably for a month. He often makes a good meal upon a monster. A rape has often afforded him great satisfaction, but a murder—an out-and-out murder—if well timed, is board, lodging, and washing, with a feast of nectared sweets for many a day.’”
Shaking the Shallow.—Tossing in a hat. Three or more coins are shaken together in the hat, then cast out on the table, most heads or most tails being the winner or loser, according to the calling of the players.
Sharps.—Persons ready to take you in on all occasions.
Shell Out.—Subscribe, or club their pence together.