[194] "Whist is a game not much differing from this" [English Ruff and Honours].—Compleat Gamester, p. 86. Edit. 1709. "Triomphe, the card-game called Ruffe, or Trump."—Cotgrave's French and English Dictionary. Edit. 1611.
[195] Taylor's Motto: Et habeo, et careo, et curo.
[196] The writer of an article on Whist, in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 48, discussing the etymology of the name, says: "The Irish injunction, Whisht—'be quiet,' may be thought to require consideration. It is the exact form of the word, barring only the pure s; but this is not the Sibboleth, or touchstone, here. At the utmost, the difficulty is but a dialectical variety, elegantiæ causa, for the sake of elegance; just as shoup, for soup."—Nares, in his Glossary, under the word Whist, an exclamation enjoining silence, says of the game, "That the name of Whist is derived from this, is known, I presume, to all who play, or do not play."
[197] A Whisk, a small kind of besom: a swab or swabber, a kind of mop.
[198] "Whist; by an Amateur: its History and Practice," p. 28, 1843.—A beautiful little book, with appropriate illustrations, designed by Kenny Meadows, and engraved on wood by Orrin Smith and W. J. Linton.
[199] "Oldsworth upbraided the late Earl of Godolphin with having a race-horse, and the Earl of Sunderland with having a library, very honestly insinuating that the former made an ill use of the one, and the latter no use at all of the other."—The Censor censured; or Cato turned Cataline, a pamphlet, published in 1722.
[200] "Mr. Pope's beautiful description of the manner of playing this game."—Seymour's Court Gamester, 1722.—"It is Belinda's game in the Rape of the Lock, where every incident in the whole deal is so described, that when Ombre is forgotten (and it is almost so already) it may be revived with posterity from that admirable poem."—Barrington on the Antiquity of Card-playing. Pope's Grotto, and Hampton Court, excite in the mind of Miss Mitford "vivid images of the fair Belinda and of the inimitable game at Ombre."—Our Village, fourth series.
[201] Serious Reflections on the dangerous tendency of the common practice of Card-playing; especially the game of All-Fours, as it hath been publickly played at Oxford in this present year of our Lord, 1754.
[202] The Princesses were the daughters of George Prince of Wales, afterwards George II. One of them, Amelia, in her old maidenhood, was a regular visitor at Bath, seeking health at the pump, and amusement at the card-table.
[203] About 1721, a pack of cards was published, ridiculing the principal bubble schemes of the day, but more especially the South Sea project. About the same time, a set of caricature cards, ridiculing the Mississippi scheme, was published in Holland.