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Had it no essential sacredness, no noli-me-tangere quality of shining away the gambler's covetous glance, of withering his rude and venturous hand, or of poisoning, like some Nessus' shirt, the lewd ruffian who might soon thereafter wear it? Not in the least.
The clerks have round crowns, and the lewd men have crowns all square. And they hold Christian law, as do they of Greece; of whom I have spoken of before. Other there be that men clepe Christian men of Girding, for they be all girt above. And there be other that men clept Nestorians. And some Arians, some Nubians, some of Greece, some of Ind, and some of Prester John's Land.
But in poetry he would have classed Dryden the royalist far above Milton the republican apologist of regicide; and might, aping the fashions of the palace, have preferred to either the author of Hudibras together with the lewd playwrights who were the delight of a shameless court hailing the last as the most promising candidates for posthumous celebrity.
He imagined that every woman he met was in love with him indecently and physically; without whisky he saw women in veils and shrouds; whisky made him see them with their clothes off, their eyes full of lewd suggestion. Even to the elderly suburban ladies who visited his mother he was tipsily improper.
And on the other side, I cannot but see the lewd and sinful and worldly lives of the most part, and hear the lies whereby they amass wealth and turn men from the spirit of truth and holiness to delude them into believing that wilful sin can be committed without harm, and that purchase of a parchment is as good as repentance. That do I see and hear.
And there he had herded all day long with the sick and cripples and a lewd rabble, till evening brought the elders and his doom a point-blank refusal to allow him to enter the city and study medicine. Why? Why? What had they against him? He asked himself the question between his paroxysms.
Chaucer relates that the "pardoner, and the miller, and other lewd sots," whiled away the time with staring at the painted windows which then adorned the nave, and wondering what they were supposed to represent: "'He beareth a ball-staff, quoth the one, 'and also a rake's end; 'Thou failest, quoth the miller, 'thou hast not well thy mind; It is a spear, if thou canst see, with a prick set before, To push adown his enemy, and through the shoulder bore."
The old minor poet was frenzied and unbought; the new is calm and "collected." At this rate the greatest poets would be those of whose works only one copy is extant in MS. Bend, bend the knee, and bow the head To reverence the great unread, The great unread and much-reviewed, Whose lines are treasured like the lewd, His first editions prizes reckoned Because there never was a second.
Idleness, lewd women and bad company are the sum total of those excuses urged by criminals when they come to be punished, even for the most flagrant offences. With just reason Richard Hughs exclaimed on them all, for from youth upwards he had ever addicted himself to laziness and a dislike to that business to which he was bred, viz., that of a bricklayer.
'This is Merrie England come again, said I. 'Did not an unburnt Lollard upbraid the bagpipe din or other music of pilgrims long ago? Wasn't that "lewd losel" told by the Kentish Archbishop how useful such music might be say if a pilgrim struck his toe on a stone? 'There are many pilgrims at this Shrine, said Greenwood smiling. 'I am glad about it. I think she would be glad if she knew.
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