_ Are not your
Frenchmen
neat?
John Donne
75.
_the man that keepes the Abbey tombes.
_ See Davies' epigram,
_On Dacus_, quoted in the general note on the _Satyres_.
l. 80. _Kingstreet. _ From Charing Cross to the King's Palace at
Westminster. It was for long the only way to Westminster from the
north. 'The last part of it has now been covered by the new Government
offices in Parliament Street'. Stow's _Survey of London_, ed. Charles
Lethbridge Kingsford (1908), ii. 102 and notes.
ll. 83-7. I divide the dialogue thus:
_Companion.
_ Are not your Frenchmen neat?
_Donne. _ Mine? As you see I have but one Frenchman, look he
follows me.
_Companion (ignoring this impertinence). _ Certes they (i. e.
Frenchmen) are neatly cloth'd. I of this mind am, Your only
wearing is your grogaram.
_Donne. _ Not so Sir, I have more.
The joke turns on Donne's pretending to misunderstand the bore's
colloquial, but rather affected, indefinite use of 'your'. Donne
applies it to himself: 'You are mistaken in thinking that I have only
one suit. ' Chambers gives the whole speech, from 'He's base' to 'he
follows me', to the bore. This gives 'Certes . .
_On Dacus_, quoted in the general note on the _Satyres_.
l. 80. _Kingstreet. _ From Charing Cross to the King's Palace at
Westminster. It was for long the only way to Westminster from the
north. 'The last part of it has now been covered by the new Government
offices in Parliament Street'. Stow's _Survey of London_, ed. Charles
Lethbridge Kingsford (1908), ii. 102 and notes.
ll. 83-7. I divide the dialogue thus:
_Companion.
_ Are not your Frenchmen neat?
_Donne. _ Mine? As you see I have but one Frenchman, look he
follows me.
_Companion (ignoring this impertinence). _ Certes they (i. e.
Frenchmen) are neatly cloth'd. I of this mind am, Your only
wearing is your grogaram.
_Donne. _ Not so Sir, I have more.
The joke turns on Donne's pretending to misunderstand the bore's
colloquial, but rather affected, indefinite use of 'your'. Donne
applies it to himself: 'You are mistaken in thinking that I have only
one suit. ' Chambers gives the whole speech, from 'He's base' to 'he
follows me', to the bore. This gives 'Certes . .
