A description of a Lunar fair follows, which, like a terrestrial, is the resort of the busy, the idle, the knavish, and the gay: some in pursuit of pleasure; others again, without any settled purpose, carried along by the vague desire of meeting with something to relieve them from the pain of idleness.

That I cannot do, but I can do some sort of a Lord, as some Lords are wiser than other-some; there is your witty Lord,him I defie; your wise Lord, that is to say, your knavish Lord, him I renounce; then there's your Politick Lord, him I wou'd have hang'd; then there's your Foolish Lord, let him follow the Politician; then there's your brisk, pert, noisy Lord, and such a small insignificant

But yest're'en, when I might have slain yon knavish Gurth, I suffered him to goand wherefore?

Politicians will dislike that man, because they think that not God, but they, govern the world, by those very politics and knavish tricks, which we pray God to confound, whenever we sing "God save the Queen."

Thieves! holla, you knavish Jack, Cannot the good Queen turn her back, But you must be so nimble hasty To come and steal away her pastry You think you're safe, there's one fees all, And understands, though he's but small

All these were exposed, and the Germans in a particular manner, on account of their ignorance of our language, to the extortions of a knavish class, called runners, and of the keepers of boarding-houses, who often defrauded them of all that they possessed, and left them to charity.

But, master, I know from him, and he got it from the Sheriff's man Ralph o' the Scar, that this same knavish Sheriff hath but laid a trap for thee in this shooting match and wishes nothing so much as to see thee there.

At last the Bishop of Hereford spoke, in a low, sorrowful voice: "It is a sad thing, Your Majesty, that this knavish outlaw should be let to escape in this wise; for, let him but get back to Sherwood Forest safe and sound, and he may snap his fingers at king and king's men.

no, he is my friend; Thou, but a poor anatomy of bones, Cas'd in a knavish tawny withered skin.

In the London Magazine the following passage came here: "D. commenced life, after a course of hard study in the 'House of pure Emanuel,' as usher to a knavish fanatic schoolmaster at ***, at a salary of eight pounds per annum, with board and lodging.

Jesus who asked his followers to love their enemies even as themselves, could not have sung of his enemies, 'confound his enemies frustrate their knavish tricks.'

30 If you to serve a paltry end, To knavish jobs can condescend, We pay you the contempt that's due; In that you have precedence too.

I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleepes in a foolish eare.

dishonest, dishonorable; unconscientious, unscrupulous; fraudulent &c 545; knavish; disgraceful &c (disreputable) 974; wicked &c 945. false-hearted, disingenuous; unfair, one-sided; double, double- hearted, double-tongued, double-faced; timeserving^, crooked, tortuous, insidious, Machiavelian, dark, slippery; fishy; perfidious, treacherous, perjured. infamous, arrant, foul, base, vile, ignominious, blackguard.

Pig-headed merchants; apprentices, knavish or honest as the case may be; young girls with a touch of poetry in their natures, who sober down into kindly housewives; tyrannical serf-owners and weak-willed sons of noble families

The most sly, dangerous, and cunning bawds, are your knavish physicians, empirics, mass-priests, monks, Jesuits, and friars.

But the knavish varlets are hardly bold enough for such a climax of villany.

TRICKS, either knavish or childish, iii. 396. TRIFLES, life composed of them, i. 433, n. 4; ii. 359, n. 2; contentment with them, iii. 241-2; their importance, i. 317; iii. 355.

'All tricks are either knavish or childish,' iii. 396.

Religious societies, though begun with excellent intention, and by persons of true piety, have dwindled into factious clubs, and grown a trade to enrich little knavish informers of the meanest rank, such as common constables, and broken shopkeepers.

The same reason holds good in all corporations whatsoever, who cannot follow a more pernicious practice than that of granting perpetuities, for which many of them smart to this day; although the leaders among them are often so stupid as not to perceive it, or sometimes so knavish as to find their private account in cheating the community.

A great many of the absurd, perverse, unkind, unpleasant things which people do are not knavish at allthey are silly, selfish little diplomacies, guileless obedience to conventions, unreasonable deference to imaginary authority.

Now one saw the reign of the caliphates of commerce, the despotism of the rue du Sentier, the tyranny of trade, bringing in its train venal narrow ideas, knavish and vain instincts.

" This sally met with a favourable reception from the crowd, and a voice exclaimed"Ay, hang all knavish Puritans.

A groan for the knavish extortioner, my mastersa deep groan for Sir Giles Mompesson!"