Ben Jonson alludes to this particular locality in ‘The Staple of News.’ Fashioner waiting past the appointed time upon Pennyboy, Jun., compensates for his dilatoriness by perpetrating a witticism, and the young gentleman remarks thereupon:—
“That jest
Has gain’d thy pardon; thou hadst lived condemn’d
To thine own hell else.”
Fashioner was like Mr. Joy, the Cambridge tailor of an olden time. If that hilarious craftsman had promised a suit to be ready for a ball, and did not bring it home till the next morning at breakfast, his stereotyped phrase ever took the form of—“Sorrow endureth for a night, but ‘Joy’ cometh with the morning!” But, to return to the hades of tailors. The reader will doubtless remember that Ralph, the doughty squire of Hudibras, had been originally of the following of the needle, and—
“An equal stock of wit and valour
He had laid in, by birth a tailor.”
Ralph dated his ancestry from the immediate heir of Dido, from whom
“descended cross-legg’d knights,
Famed for their faith.”