VER goes in, and fetcheth out the hobby-horse and the morris-dance, who dance about. SUM.

His father and sisters daily conversed with him from below, for a considerable time; and the morris-dancers often raised his laughter by their grotesque movements.

Now Universal England getteth drunk For joy that Charles, her monarch, is restored: And she, that sometime wore a saintly mask, The stale-grown vizor from her face doth pluck, And weareth now a suit of morris bells, With which she jingling goes through all her towns and villages.

Now of the fancy and fashion of this we should not complainquite the contraryin a professed novel: there is a theatre in which it would be exquisitely appropriate and attractive; but the Temple of History is not the floor for a morris-dancethe Muse Clio is not to be worshipped in the halls of Terpsichore.

Rep., (etc.), xxxiii, Pt. ii (1897), 373-4 (Device of procuring an excommunicate to enter church and interrupt service so certain youths could continue their morris-dancing, 1617).