they left this honeysuckle hedge; and went to tell fortunes and cheat, and get more money and lodging in the next village.

When these were gone, we heard as high a contention amongst the beggars, whether it was easiest to rip a cloak, or to unrip a cloak? One beggar affirmed it was all one: but that was denied, by asking her, if doing and undoing were all one? Then another said, 'twas easiest to unrip a cloak; for that was to let it alone: but she was answered, by asking her, how she unript it if she let it alone? and she confest herself mistaken. These and twenty suchlike questions were proposed and answered, with as much beggarly logic and earnestness as was ever heard to proceed from the mouth of the most pertinacious schismatic; and sometimes all the beggars, whose number was neither more nor less than the poets' nine muses, talked all together about this ripping and unripping; and so loud, that not one heard what the other said:" but, at last, one beggar craved audience; and told them that old father Clause, whom Ben Jonson, in his Beggar's Bush,* created King of their corporation, was to lodge at an alehouse, called "Catch-her-by-the-way," not far from Waltham Cross, and in the highroad towards London; and he therefore desired them to spend no more time about that and suchlike questions, but refer all to father Clause at night, for he was an upright judge, and in the meantime draw cuts what song should be next sung, and who should sing it. They all agreed to the motion; and the lot fell to her that was the youngest, and veriest virgin of the company. And she sung Frank Davison'st song, which he made forty years

VARIATION.] 9 talked all together, and none heard what the other said.-2d edit.

to a Work which had appeared three years before; The English Gusman; or, the History of that unparalleled Thief, James Hind, written by G. F. (George Fidge), 4to, Lond. 1652. Hind appears to have been "the grandest thief" of his age. He was the son of a saddler at Chipping Norton, in Oxfordshire; and was apprenticed to a butcher. From some of the single sheets which were printed during the great Rebellion, he appears to have attached himself to the Royal Cause; and was actively engaged in the battles both of Worcester and Warrington. In 1651 he was arrested by order of the Parliament, having taken shelter, under the name of Brown, at "one Denzy's, a barber, over against Saint Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street." This latter circumstance might probably introduce him to Walton's notice, who lived in the neighbourhood. Our late English Gusman seems to intimate that Hind was dead in 1655; though from none of the publications of the time does the date of his death appear.-E.

The Comedy of The Royal Merchant, or Beggar's Bush, was written by Fletcher, and not by Ben Jonson. It was licensed in 1622, and first printed in the folio of 1647; with the title of The Beggar's Bush only.-Collier's Hist. of Dramatic Poetry, vol. i. p. 436.

t Francis Davison was the eldest son of Secretary Davison, the victim of the mean and cowardly device of Queen Elizabeth to remove from herself the odium of the murder of Mary Queen of Scots. He was born about the year 1575, and was intended for the bar, but abandoned that pursuit for Poesy. In 1602, he published the Poetical Rhapsody, which went through four editions, 1602, 1608, 1611, and 1621, and has been twice reprinted, in which miscellany he inserted the Beggar's Song;" but there are

ago;1 and burthen with her.

all the others of the company joined to sing the The ditty was this; but first the burthen :

4 VENATOR.

Bright shines the sun; play, Beggars, play;
Here's scraps enough to serve to-day.

What noise of viols is so sweet,

As when our merry clappers ring?

What mirth doth want where Beggars meet?
A Beggar's life is for a King.

Eat, drink, and play; sleep when we list;
Go where we will, so stocks be mist.

Bright shines the sun; play, Beggars, play;
Here's scraps enough to serve to-day.

The world is ours, and ours alone;

For we alone have world at will;

We purchase not; all is our own;

Both fields and streets we Beggars fill.

Nor care to get, nor fear to keep,"

Did ever break a Beggar's sleep.

Play, Beggars, play; play, Beggars, play;
Here's scraps enough to serve to-day.

A hundred head of black and white

I thank you, good master, for this piece of merriment, and this song, which was well humoured by the maker, and well remembered by you.

PISCATOR. But, I pray, forget not the catch which you promised

VARIATIONS.

passage,

1 In the first edition the song is thus introduced after the "No life, my honest scholar, no life so happy and so pleasant as the angler's, unless it be the beggar's life in summer, for then only they take no care, but are as happy as we anglers.

Viator. Indeed, master, and so they be, as is witnessed by the beggar's song, made long since by Frank Davison, a good poet, who was not a beggar, though he were a good poet.

Piscator. Can you sing it, scholar?

Viator. Sit down a little, good master, and I will try."

In the second edition, however, it occurs as in the text.

2 These two lines have been supplied from the Rhapsody, because it is evident from the song itself, that they were accidentally omitted, and because it is accurately given in every other instance, with the exception of one line.

3 Walton has printed this line.

"And yet if any dare us bite."

These two variations occur in every edition of the Angler.

Piscator. I thank you, good scholar, this song was well humoured by the maker, and well remembered and sung by you; and I pray forget not the catch, &c.—ist edit.

reasons for believing that it was not written by him, but by a poet whose initials were "A. W." One or two facts tend, however, to identify Davison with A. W., and the question is investigated in the reprint of the Rhapsody in 1825, vol. i. p. cxxv. Between 1655, when the second edition of the Angler appeared, and 1602, when the Rhapsody was first published, fifty-three years had elapsed, so that Walton probably referred to the edition of 1611. The song is there entitled, "A Song in praise of a Beggar's Life.”