e a quarter, and they are much in the same
nature, brief notes and sums of affairs, and are out of request as soon.
His comings in are like a taylor's, from the shreds of bread, [the]
chippings and remnants of a broken crust; excepting his vails from the
barrel, which poor folks buy for their hogs but drink themselves. He
divides an halfpenny loaf with more subtlety than Keckerman,[33] and
sub-divides the _a primo ortum_ so nicely, that a stomach of great
capacity can hardly apprehend it. He is a very sober man, considering his
manifold temptations of drink and strangers; and if he be overseen, 'tis
within his own liberties, and no man ought to take exception. He is never
so well pleased with his place as when a gentleman is beholden to him for
shewing him the buttery, whom he greets with a cup of single beer and
sliced manchet,[34] and tells him it is the fashion of the college. He
domineers over freshmen when they first come to the hatch, and puzzles
them with strange language of cues and cees, and some broken Latin which
he has learnt at his bin. His faculties extraordinary is the warming of a
pair of cards, and telling out a dozen of counters for post and pair, and
no man is more methodical in these businesses. Thus he spends his age till
the tap of it is run out, and then a fresh one is set abroach.

FOOTNOTES:

[32] Gallo-Belgicus was erroneously supposed, by the ingenious Mr. Reed,
to be the "first news-paper published in England;" we are, however,
assured by the author of the "Life of Ruddiman," that it has no title to
so honourable a distinction. Gallo-Belgicus appears to have been rather an
_Annual Register_, or _History of its own Times_, than a news-paper. It
was written in Latin, and entitled. "MERCURIJ GALLO-BELGICI: _sive, rerum
in Gallia, et Belgio potissimum: Hispania quoque, Italia, Anglia,
Germania, Polonia. Vicinisque locis ab anno 1588, ad Martium anni 1594,
gestarum_, NUNCIJ." The first volume was printed in 8vo. at Cologne, 1598;
from which year, to about 1605, it was published annually; and from thence
to the time of its conclusion, which is uncertain, it appeared in
_half-yearly_ volumes. Chalmers' _Life of Ruddiman_, 1794. The great
request in which newspapers were held at the publication of the present
work, may be gathered from Burton, who, in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_,
complains that "if any read now-a-days, it is a play-book, or a pamphlet
of newes."

[33] Bartholomew Keckerman was born