CANTO III.]
HUDIBRAS.
421
Or letting out to hire their ears
To affidavit customers, 730
At inconsiderable values,
To serve for jurymen or tales.[1]
Altho' retain'd in th' hardest matters
Of trustees and administrators.
For that, quoth he, let me alone; 735
We've store of such, and all our own,
Bred up and tutor'd by our teachers,
Th' ablest of all conscience-stretchers.[2]
That's well, quoth he, but I should guess,
By weighing all advantages, 740
Your surest way is first to pitch
On Bongey for a water-witch;[3]
And when y' have hang'd the conjurer,
Y' have time enough to deal with her.
In th' int'rim spare for no trepans, 745
To draw her neck into the banns;
Ply her with love-letters and billets,
And bait 'em well for quirks and quillets,[4]
With trains t' inveigle, and surprise
Her heedless answers and replies; 750
And if she miss the mouse-trap lines,
They'll serve for other by designs;
And make an artist understand,
To copy out her seal or hand;
Or find void places in the paper, 755
To steal in something to entrap her;
To affidavit customers, 730
At inconsiderable values,
To serve for jurymen or tales.[1]
Altho' retain'd in th' hardest matters
Of trustees and administrators.
For that, quoth he, let me alone; 735
We've store of such, and all our own,
Bred up and tutor'd by our teachers,
Th' ablest of all conscience-stretchers.[2]
That's well, quoth he, but I should guess,
By weighing all advantages, 740
Your surest way is first to pitch
On Bongey for a water-witch;[3]
And when y' have hang'd the conjurer,
Y' have time enough to deal with her.
In th' int'rim spare for no trepans, 745
To draw her neck into the banns;
Ply her with love-letters and billets,
And bait 'em well for quirks and quillets,[4]
With trains t' inveigle, and surprise
Her heedless answers and replies; 750
And if she miss the mouse-trap lines,
They'll serve for other by designs;
And make an artist understand,
To copy out her seal or hand;
Or find void places in the paper, 755
To steal in something to entrap her;
- ↑ Tales, or Tales de circumstantibus, are persons of like rank and quality with such of the principal pannel as are challenged, but do not appear; and who, happening to be in court, are taken to supply their places as jurymen.
- ↑ Downing and Stephen Marshall, who absolved from their oaths the prisoners released at Brentford. See note at pages 82 and 177, 178.
- ↑ On Sidrophel the reputed conjurer. The poet nicknames him Bongey, from a Franciscan friar of that name, who lived in Oxford about the end of the thirteenth century, and was by some classed with Roger Bacon, and therefore deemed a conjurer by the common people. "A water-witch" means probably one to be tried by the water-ordeal.
- ↑ Subtleties. Shakspeare frequently used the word quillet, which is probably a contraction from quibblet. See Wright's Glossary.
