“Mistress Dorcas,
If you’ll be usher to that holy, learned woman,
That can heal broken shins, scald heads, and th’ itch,
Your schoolmistress: that can expound, and teaches
To knit in Chaldee, and work Hebrew samplers,
I’ll help you back again.”
The Puritan was ever nicknamed after some Old Testament worthy. I could quote many instances, but let two from the author of the “London Diurnall” suffice. Addressing Prince Rupert, he says—
“Let the zeal-twanging nose, that wants a ridge,
Snuffling devoutly, drop his silver bridge:
Yes, and the gossip’s spoon augment the summe,
Altho’ poor Caleb lose his christendome.”
More racy is his attack on Pembroke, as a member of the Mixed Assembly:
“Forbeare, good Pembroke, be not over-daring:
Such company may chance to spoil thy swearing;
And these drum-major oaths of bulk unruly
May dwindle to a feeble ‘by my truly.’
He that the noble Percy’s blood inherits,
Will he strike up a Hotspur of the spirits?
He’ll fright the Obediahs out of tune,
With his uncircumcis-ed Algernoon:
A name so stubborne, ’tis not to be scanned
By him in Gath with the six fingered hand.”
If a Bible quotation was put into the zealot’s mouth, his cynical foe took care that it should come from the older Scriptures. In George Chapman’s “An Humorous Day’s Work,” after Lemot has suggested a “full test of experiment” to prove her virtue, Florilla the Puritan cries—
“O husband, this is perfect trial indeed.”
To which the gruff Labervele replies—
“And you will try all this now, will you not?
Florilla. Yes, my good head: for it is written, we must pass to perfection through all temptation: Abacuk the fourth.