"How like an everlasting Morris dance it looks;
Nothing but hobby-horse and Maid Marian."
The hobby-horse was also introduced into the Christmas diversions, as well as the May-games. In "A True Relation of the Faction begun at Wisbich, by Fa. Edmonds, alias Weston, a Jesuite," 1595, &c., 4o, 1601, p. 7, is the following passage: "He lifted up his countenance, as if a new spirit had bin put into him, and tooke upon him to controll and finde fault with this and that (as the comming into the hall of a hobby-horse in Christmas), affirming that he would no longer tolerate these and those so grosse abuses, but would have them reformed."
Whatever the allusion in the text be, the same is also probably made in Drue's "Dutchess of Suffolk," 1631—
"Clunie. Answer me, hobbihorse;
Which way cross'd he you saw now?
Jenkin. Who do you speake to, sir?
We have forgot the hobbihorse."
—Sig. C 4.—Gilchrist.
[215] See Dyce's Middleton, ii. 169.
[216] This line very strongly resembles another in "The Merchant of Venice:"
"You spend but time,
To wind about my love with circumstance."
—Steevens.