To peak, however, in the sense in which it is used by Skelton, and in the Merie Tales, &c. is of rather frequent occurrence in Scoggin's Jests, 1626 (but first printed before 1565); and Gascoigne employs the word in the same manner in the Steel Glas, n. d. (1576) 4o. The passage in Gascoigne, which I perused long ago, was brought back to my recollection by a note by the Rev. A. Dyce to Skelton's Colin Clout.
P. [38].—See Diogenes Laertius, transl. by Yonge, p. 226. Diogenes the Cynic evidently had Thales in his mind when he said "that mathematicians kept their eyes fixed on the sun and moon, and overlooked what was under their feet."
P. [40]. Of him that dreamed he fonde golde.
In Pasquil's Jests, we are told "how drunken Mullins of Stratford dreamed he found golde." It is the same story.
P. [52]. Gelidus facet anguis in herba.—Whoever edited this collection of stories seems to have had a great fancy for quotations. Throughout the C. Mery Talys, on the contrary, there is not a single instance of this passion for extracts. Sir Thomas Overbury, in his Characters (if at least they were written by him), ed. 1632, sign. K4, describes "An Innes of Court man" as taking "ends of Latine, though it be false, with as great confidence as ever Cicero could pronounce an oration." I suspect that the Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres were collected by some person more or less versed in the classics and in foreign authors, which was probably not the case with the C. Mery Talys, which do not smell so much of the inkhorn, as Gascoigne would have said.
P. [54]. Breble-brable.
In Twelfth Night, act iv. sc. 2, Shakespeare makes the Clown use bibble-babble in a similar sense; but afterwards in the same drama, act v. sc.1, brabble is put for "a brawl."
This word is no doubt the same as the "pribbles and prabbles" which Sir Hugh uses more than once in the Merry Wives of Windsor. See act v. sc. 5.
P. [60]. Of hym that payde his dette with crienge bea.—Compare the story of "the subtility of Kindlewall the lawyer repayed with the like craft," printed in Pasquil's Jests, ed. Gilbertson, n. d. 4o.
P. [65]. All to.—I fear that I too hastily adopted the self-suggested notion that the former words might be read more properly as one word, and in the sense which I indicated. Perhaps as all to or al to is not uncommonly used by early writers in this way, though the meaning in the present case is not particularly clear, it may be better to restore the original reading.