Note 204 — THE CITY GALLANT.

Again, in "Cynthia's Revels," act v. sc. 3: "From stabbing of arms, flapdragons, healths, whiffs, and all such swaggering humours, good Mercury defend us," [edit. 1816, ii. 380.]

This custom continued long after the writing of this play. The writer of "The Character of England" [Evelyn], 1659, p. 37, speaking of the excessive drinking then in use, adds, "Several encounters confirmed me that they were but too frequent, and that there was a sort of perfect debauchees, who style themselves Hectors; that, in their mad and unheard-of revels, pierce their own veins, to quaff their own blood, which some of them have drunk to that excess that they have died of the intemperance."—Reed.