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Shakespeare Jest-Books

Note 256 — The Table. (continued 2)

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Uncouth. "If thou shuldest refuse to do any of these thynges, and woldest assaye to do some thing of more sadnes and prudence, they wyll esteme and count the vnmanerly, cloubbysshe, frowarde, and clene contrarye to all mennes myndes."—Erasmus De Contemptu Mundi, transl. by Thomas Paynel, 1533, fol. 42. "Rusticitie may seem to be an ignorance of honesty and comelinesse. A Clowne or rude fellow is he, who will goe into a crowd or presse, when he hath taken a purge: and hee that sayth, that Garlicke is as sweet as a gillifiower: that weares shooes much larger then his foot: that speakes alwaies very loud:" &c.,—Theophrastus His Characters, translated by John Healey, 1616, pp. 15, 16. It is a generally received opinion that this work has come down to us in a corrupt shape.

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