[32] Taking the Ducat at 9s. 4½d., it would come to £37,000, but if this were multiplied by three, the lowest computation of the value of money then, and now, it would be worth considerably over £100,000.
[33] Another name for short—vide Cutty pipe—Cutty sark.
[34] “An unlicked cub” is a proverb which has sprung from this fable. Aristotle was right when he said that bears when newly born were without hair, and blind, but wrong in continuing “its legs, and almost all its parts, are without joints.” Still, the popular idea that bears licked their young into shape, lasted till very modern times, and still survives in the proverb quoted. Shakespeare mentions it in 3 Henry VI. iii. 2:—
“Like to Chaos, or an unlick’d bear whelp,
That carries no impression like the dam.”
And Chester, in his Love’s Martyr, speaking of the Bear, says—
“Brings forth at first a thing that’s indigest,
A lump of flesh without all fashion,
Which she, by often licking brings to rest,
Making a formal body, good and sound.