No More Learning

12;
'You were once . . . the good, Honest, plain, livery-three-pound-thrum,
that kept Your master's worship's house,' in which he takes the
expression 'three-pound' to be the equivalent of 'badly-paid'.

=1. 4. 1 I'll goe lift him. = Jonson is never tired of punning on
the names of his characters.

=1. 4. 5 halfe a piece. = 'It may be necessary to observe,
once for all, that the _piece_ (the double sovereign) went for
two and twenty shillings. '--G. Compare 3. 3.
83, where a
hundred pieces is evidently somewhat above a hundred pounds.
By a proclamation, Nov. 23, 1611, the piece of gold called the
Unitie, formerly current at twenty shillings was raised to the
value of twenty two shillings (S. M. Leake, _Eng. Money_ 2.
276). Taylor, the water-poet, tells us that Jonson gave him 'a
piece of gold of two and twenty shillings to drink his health
in England' (_Conversations_, quoted in Schelling's _Timber_,
p. 105). In the _Busie Body_ Mrs. Centlivre uses _piece_ as
synonymous with _guinea_ (2d ed. , pp. 7 and 14).

=1. 4. 31 Iust what it list.