Zet wold I set all one seven
Ffor Myldor the swet!'
Degrevant, 1279.
"'Old Odcombs odnesse makes not thee uneven,
Nor carelesly set all at six and seven.'
Taylor's Workes, 1630, ii. 71."
J. K. R. W.
[Six and seven make the proverbially unlucky number thirteen, and we are inclined to believe that the allusion in this popular phrase is to this combination.]
Swobbers.—There is a known story of a clergyman who was recommended for a preferment by some great men at court to an archbishop. His Grace said, "He had heard that the clergyman used to play at whist and swobbers; that as to playing now and then a sober game at whist for pastime, it might be pardoned; but he could not digest those wicked swobbers;" and it was with some pains that my Lord Somers could undeceive him. So says Swift, in his Essay on the Fates of Clergymen; and a note in Sir W. Scott's edition (1824, vol. viii. p 231.) informs us that the primate was "Tenison, who, by all contemporary accounts, was a very dull man." At the risk of being thought as dull as the archbishop, I venture to ask for an explanation of the joke.
J. C. R.