href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@41609@[email protected]#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">15 There are other passages which deal with the fashions of the day. It was a time in which ladies' dressing-rooms were nearly allied to apothecaries' shops, and the art of manufacturing female beauty seems to have fallen into the hands of probably a lower and irregular class of medical practitioners. The poets are full of allusions to this subject. Massinger sums it up in a passage which we may be excused for quoting:—

The anecdotes jotted down by the young Templar speak for themselves. They of course derive their principal value from the names to which they are attached. Notices of personal peculiarities are so singularly evanescent, they live so entirely in the observation and memory of contemporaries, that it is a biographical gain to have them recorded in any shape. Apparent trifles, such as the waddling gait of Sir John Davies, the stately silence of Lord Montjoy at the dinner table, the description of the popular preacher Clapham—"a black fellow with a sour look but a good spirit, bold and sometimes bluntly witty," the fussy particularity of Fleetwood the recorder, the vanity of old Stowe,—these, and memoranda such as these, impart a life and reality to our conceptions of the men to whom they relate, which cannot be derived from volumes of mere dates and facts.

Of the recorded witticisms, the peculiarity which will strike the reader in this case, as in all others of the same description, is their singular want of originality. Good things which were current in the classical period are here re-invented, or warmed up, for the amusement of the contemporaries of King James. And the same thing occurs over and over again, from generation to generation. Mots which descended to the times of Manningham reappeared in the pages of Joe Miller, are recorded among the clever sayings of Archbishop Whateley, and in one instance at least may be found among the pulpit witticisms of Rowland Hill.

The book is one which would bear a large amount of illustrative annotation. We have endeavoured in most cases to keep down what we had to say to mere citation of the ordinary standard books of reference—the tools with which all literary men work. It is well for them that our literature can boast of instruments so well suited to their purpose as Dr. Bliss's edition of Wood's Athenæ, Mr. Hardy's edition of Le Neve's Fasti, and Mr. Foss's Lives of the Judges—the books to which we have principally referred. May the number of such works be increased!

Finally, we have the grateful task of returning thanks to two gentlemen who have specially assisted us in issuing this book. To Mr. John Forster, the author of the Life of Eliot and of many other valuable historical works, we are indebted for the use of a transcript of part of the Diary here printed; and to Mr. John Gough Nichols, like the Editors of most of the volumes printed for the Camden Society, we owe the great advantage of many most useful suggestions during the progress of the work. The results of their kindness and of the liberality of Mr. Tite will we hope be acceptable to the Society.

J. B.

MANNINGHAM'S DIARY.

A puritan is a curious corrector of thinges indifferent.16

Song to the Queene at the Maske at Court, Nov. 2.17

In Motleyum.