36
THE ALCHEMIST.
Thrice, and then buz[1] as often; and then come.Exit.
Face.Can you remember this?
Dap.I warrant you.
Face.Well then, away. It is but your bestowing
Some twenty nobles 'mong her grace's servants,
And put on a clean shirt: you do not know
What grace her grace may do you[2] in clean linen.Exeunt Face and Dapper.
Sub [within.]Come in! Good wives, I pray you forbear me now;
Troth I can do you no good till afternoon—
- ↑ And then cry buz, &c.] From a singular passage in Selden relating to the punishment of witchcraft, it would seem that buz was a kind of cabalistical word, used by the impostors of those days in their invocations. "If one should profess, that by turning his hat thrice, and crying buz! he could take away a man's life, (though in truth he could do no such thing,) yet this were a just law made by the state, that whosoever should turn his hat thrice and cry buz! with an intention to take away a man's life, shall be put to death." Vol. iii. p. 2077. Mr. Scott has misapprehended this passage (if it be this to which he alludes.) He says (Dryden's Works, vol. xv. p. 297,) that "it was the absurd and cruel doctrine of one of the English lawyers, that if a man firmly believes that, by whirling his hat round his head, and crying bo, he could occasion the death of an enemy, he becomes, by performing that ceremony, guilty of murder."—Here all the characteristics of the original are lost: not to observe, that Selden speaks of a law to be passed in consequence of a practice which might have very serious effects, and which must then be a direct and wilful violation of this supposed law.
- ↑ You do not know
What grace her grace may do you in clean linen] It seems almost superfluous to observe, that the fairies are constantly represented as great enemies to uncleanliness. Thus, in Drayton's Nymphidia:
"These make our girls their sluttery rue,
By pinching them both black and blue;
And put a penny in their shoe,
The house for cleanly sweeping."
