Here is a jester’s definition of
WIT, WILL, AND WISDOM.
Where will is good, and wit is ill,
There wisdom can no manner skill.
Where wit is good, and will is ill,
There wisdom sitteth silent still.
Where wit and will are both too ill,
There wisdom no way meddle will.
Where wit and will well-ordered be,
There wisdom maketh a trinity.
And the following is not a bad specimen of the ordinary fool’s mock sermon put into rhyme, with the title of
CERTAIN FOLLIES.
To cast fair white salt into wise man’s meat,
To make them count salt, sugar, when they eat,—
A folly.
To bear a man in hand he itcheth in each part,
When the man feeleth an universal smart,—
A folly.
To speak always well and do always ill,
And tell men those deeds are done of good will,—
A folly.
Thy lusty-limbed horse to lead in thy hand,
When on thy lame limbs thou canst scanty stand,—
A folly.
Of sticks for cage-work to build thy house high,
And cover it with lead, to keep thy house dry,—
A folly!
From a sermon, to those who needed the instruction that ought to be afforded by one, is not going wide apart. Such a person Heywood seems to have met, and to have reproved by a Latin pun which was unintelligible to this
MERRY WOMAN.
There came by chance to a good company,
A lady, a wanton, and eke a merry.
And though ev’ry word of her own show’d her light,
Yet no man’s words that to her might recite.
She had all the words, which she babbled so fast,
That they being weary, one said, at last,
“Madam, you make my heart light as a ‘kix,’
To see you thus full of your meretrix.”
This trick thus well trick’d out in good Latin phrase,
Brought to this tricker neither muse nor mase.
She nought perceiving was no whit offended,
Nor her light behaviour no whit amended;
But still her tongue was clapping like a patten.
“Well,” said the said man, in language of Latin,
“I never told woman any fault before,
Nor never, in Latin, will tell them fault more.”
It would be hard to say whether Queen Mary laughed or not, when “John, the King’s Jester,” either read to her the following epigram, or recounted the story, by way of joke; but it is worth quoting here, though not so much as a specimen of the royal favourite’s wit, as another proof that in the old pronunciation of the word ache, the latter had the ch soft.