English Travellers of the Renaissance by Clare Howard
page 44 of 231 (19%)
page 44 of 231 (19%)
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certain sort.
Hall, apparently, was one of those gallants who ruffled about Elizabethan London and used "To loove to play at Dice To sware his blood and hart To face it with a Ruffins look And set his Hat athwart."[123] The humorists throw a good deal of light on such "yong Jyntelmen." So does Fleetwood, the Recorder of London, to whom they used to run when they were arrested for debt, or for killing a carman, making as their only apology, "I am a Jyntelman, and being a Jyntelman, I am not thus to be used at a slave and a colion's hands."[124] Hall, writing in the third person, in the assumed character of a friend, describes himself as "a man not wholly unlearned, with a smacke of the knowledge of diverse tongues ... furious when he is contraried ... as yourselfe is witnesse of his dealings at Rome, at Florence, in the way between that and Bollonia ... so implacable if he conceyve an injurie, as Sylla will rather be pleased with Marius, than he with his equals, in a maner for offences grown of tryffles.... Also spending more tyme in sportes, and following the same, than is any way commendable, and the lesse, bycause, I warrant you, the summes be great are dealte for." [125] This terrible person, on the 16th of December 1573, at Lothbury, in London, at a table of twelve pence a meal, supped with some merchants and a certain Melchisedech Mallerie. Dice were thrown on the board, and in the course of play Mallerie "gave the lye with harde wordes in heate to one of the players." "Hall sware (as he will not sticke to lende you |
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