I had leiver keep as many flese,
Or wyld hares in an opyn lese,
As
undertake
that.
Ben Jonson - The Devil's Association
??. In
the _New Inn_, _Wks._ 5. 394, Lovel says: 'I will go catch the wind
first in a sieve.' Whalley says that the occupation of 'keeping
fleas within a circle' is taken from Socrates' employment in the
_Clouds_ of Aristophanes (ll. 144-5). Gifford, however, ridicules
the notion. Jonson refers to the passage in the _Clouds_ in _Timber_
(ed. Schelling, 82. 33), where he thinks it would have made the
Greeks merry to see Socrates 'measure how many foot a flea could
skip geometrically.' But here again we seem to have a proverbial
expression. It occurs in the morality-play of _Nature_, 642. II
(quoted by Cushman, p.
116):
I had leiver keep as many flese,
Or wyld hares in an opyn lese,
As
undertake
that.
