Scene 2. Page 339.
Biron. Three pil'd hyperboles.
So in Fennor's Compter's commonwealth, 1617, 4to, p. 14, we have "three pil'd, huge Basilisco oaths, that would have torne a roring-boyes eares in a thousand shatters."
Scene 2. Page 345.
Cost. You cannot beg us, sir.
It has been already stated that it was not the next relation only who begged the wardship of idiots in order to obtain possession of their property, but any person who could make interest with the sovereign to whom the legal guardianship belongs. Frequent allusions to this practice occur in the old comedies. In illustration of it, Mr. Ritson has given a curious story, which, as it is mutilated in the authority which he has used, is here subjoined from a more original source, a collection of tales, &c., compiled about the time of Charles the First, preserved among the Harleian MSS. in the British Museum, No. 6395. "The Lord North begg'd old Bladwell for a foole (though he could never prove him so), and having him in his custodie as a lunaticke, he carried him to a gentleman's house, one day, that was his neighbour. The L. North and the gentleman retir'd awhile to private discourse, and left Bladwell in the dining roome, which was hung with a faire hanging; Bladwell walking up and downe, and viewing the imagerie, spyed a foole at last in the hanging, and without delay drawes his knife, flyes at the foole, cutts him cleane out, and layes him on the floore; my L. and the gentl. coming in againe, and finding the tapestrie thus defac'd, he ask'd Bladwell what he meant by such a rude uncivill act; he answered Sr. be content, I have rather done you a courtesie than a wrong, for if ever my L. N. had seene the foole there, he would have begg'd him, and so you might have lost your whole suite." The same story, but without the parties' names, is related in Fuller's Holy state, p. 182. Powel, in his Attourney's academy, 1630, 4to, says, "I shall neede to give you this monitorie instruction touching an ideot; that you be assured that yourselfe is somewhat the wiser man before you goe about to beg him, or else never meddle with him at all, lest you chance to play at handy-dandy, which is the guardian or which is the foole? and the case alter, è converso, ad conversum." In A treatise of taxes, 1667, 4to, p. 43, there is the following passage: "Now because the world abounds with this kind of fools, (Lottery fools,) it is not fit that every man that will may cheat every man that would be cheated; but it is rather ordained that the sovereign should have the guardianship of these fools, or that some favourite should beg the sovereign's right of taking advantage of such men's folly, even as in the case of lunatics and ideots." To this practice too, Butler alludes, in Hudibras, part iii. canto I, l. 590.
"Beg one another idiot
To guardians, ere they are begot."
Mr. Justice Blackstone, in treating of idiots, has spoken of it; and adds in a note, that the king's power of delegating the custody of them to some subject who has interest enough on the occasion, has of late been very rarely exerted.
Scene 2. Page 350.
Biron. The Pedant, the Braggart, the Hedge-priest, the Fool And the boy:—
Abate a throw at novum; and the whole world again,
Cannot prick out five such, take each one in his vein.