l. 23. Gallo-belgicus. See Epigrams.
Page 173, l. 56. Which casts at Portescues. Grosart offers the only intelligible explanation of this phrase. He identifies the 'Portescue' with the 'Portaque' or 'Portegue', the great crusado of Portugal, worth £3 12s., and quotes from Harrington, On Playe: 'Where lords and great men have been disposed to play deep play, and not having money about them, have cut cards instead of counters, with asseverance (on their honours) to pay for every piece of card so lost a portegue.' Donne's reference to the use which is to be made of Coryat's books shows clearly that he is speaking of some such custom as this. Chambers asks pertinently, would the phrase not be 'for Portescues'? but 'to cast at Portescues' may have been a term, perhaps translated. A greater difficulty is that 'Portescue' is not given as a form of 'Portague' by the O.E.D., but a false etymology connecting it with 'escus', crowns, may have produced it.
The following poem is also found among the poems prefixed to Coryat's Crudities. It may be by Donne, but was not printed in any edition of his poems:
Incipit Ioannes Dones.
LOE her's a Man, worthy indeede to trauell;
Fat Libian plaines, strangest Chinas grauell.
For Europe well hath scene him stirre his stumpes:
Turning his double shoes to simple pumpes.
And for relation, looke he doth afford
Almost for euery step he tooke a word;