When off the Cap we chance to take,
Both head and feet obeysance make;
For any Cap, &c.
In our 3rd verse, it reads:—ever brought, The quilted, Furr’d; crewel; 4th verse, line 6, of (some say) a horn. 5th verse, crooked cause aright; Which, being round and endless, knows || To make as endless any cause [A better version]. 6th, findes a mouth; 7th, The Motley Man a Cap; [for lines 3, 4, compare Shakespeare, as to it taking a wise man to play the fool,] like the Gyant’s Crown. 8th, Sick-mans; When hats in Church drop off apace, This Cap ne’er leaves the head uncas’d, Though he be ill; [two next verses are expanded into three, in Sp. Wit.] 11th, none but Graduats [N.B.]; none covered are; But those that to; go bare. This Cap, of all the Caps that be, Is now; high degree.
[Page 139 (orig. 37).] Once I a curious eye did fix.
This is in Thomas Weaver’s Songs and Poems of Love and Drollery, p. 16, 1654. Elsewhere attributed to John Cleveland (who died in 1658), and printed among his Poems “J. Cleavland Revived” (p. 106, 3rd edit. 1662), as “The Schismatick,” with a trashy fifth verse (not found elsewhere):—
I heard of one did touch,
He did tell as much,
Of one that would not crouch