[88] Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. We quote no edition, because where we could we have modernised the spelling; which is a justice to this fine old author in a quotation, in order that nobody may pass it over. With regard to Chaucer being of the Temple, and to his beating the Franciscan in Fleet Street, all which is reported, depends upon the testimony of a Mr. Buckley, who, according to Speght, had seen a Temple record to that effect.
[90] "Shove-groat, named also Slyp-groat, and Slide-thrift, are sports occasionally mentioned by the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and probably were analogous to the modern pastime called Justice Jervis, or Jarvis, which is confined to common pot-houses, and only practised by such as frequent the tap-rooms."--_Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the People of England_, 1828, chap, i., sect. xix. It is played with halfpence, which are jerked with the palm of the hand from the edge of a table, towards certain numbers described upon it.
[91] Londinium Redivivum, vol. ii., p. 290.
[92] Sir John Davies, who was afterwards Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and wrote a poem on the Art of Dancing (so lively was the gravity of those days!) "bastinadoed" a man at dinner in the Temple Hall, for which he was expelled. The man probably deserved it, for Davies had a fine nature; and he went back again by favour of the excellent Lord Ellesmere.
[94] Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit., 8vo. 1816, vol. iv., p. 27.
[95] Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit. 1816, vol. i., p. 398.
[96] Boswell's Life of Johnson, eighth edit. 1816, vol. i., p. 378.
[99] Spence's Anecdotes, Singer's edit. p. 355.
[100] Swift's Works, _ut supra_, vol. iv., p. 41.
[101] _Tatler_, No. 142. According to the author of a lively rattling book, conversant with the furniture of old times, Arbuthnot was a great amateur in sticks. "My uncle," says he, "was universally allowed to be as deeply skilled in caneology as any one, Dr. Arbuthnot not excepted, whose science on important questions was quoted even after his death; for his collection of the various headed sticks and canes, from the time of the first Charles, taken together, was unrivalled."--_Wine and Walnuts_, vol. i., p. 242.