For all his mates zwore just the zame,
That ich was fain to do.
Ich humble pardon of him sought,
And gave him money for my fault,
And glad I could scape so too.
(Wits Interpreter, 250, 1671 ed.)
This is, veritably, a “document in madness” of such civil wars and military licence. It reads like the genuine narratives of Prussian brutality and outrage during the occupation of Alsace and Lorraine: which is hereafter to be bitterly avenged.
[Page 60.] I keep my horse, I keep, &c.
This lively ditty is sung by Latrocinio in the comedy of “The Widow,” Act iii. sc. 1, produced about 1616, and written by John Fletcher, Ben Jonson, and Thomas Middleton. The song bears trace of Fletcher’s hand (more, we believe, than of Jonson’s). It has a rollicking freedom that made it a favourite. We meet it in Wit’s Interpreter, 1655, p. 69; 1671, p. 175; and elsewhere. See Dyce’s Middleton, iii. 383, and Dodsley’s Old Plays, 1744, vi. 34.