A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 11
Part II.," 1600, sig. M 3--
"But it was not you At whom the fatal _enginer_ did aim."
Ben Jonson uses it in his "Cataline," act iii. sc. 4--
"The _enginers_ I told you of are working."
[51] A well-known instrument of torture.
[52] Dekker, in his "Bellman of London," sig. H 2, explains _foist_ to be a pickpocket; and instances of the use of it in this sense, and as a rogue and cheater, may be found in many of our old writers.
[53] It will be recollected that Brainworm, in "Every Man in his Humour," is represented upon a wooden leg, begging in Moorfields, like an old soldier. [See further in Hazlitt's "Popular Poetry," iv. 38-40.]
[54] This passage, among others, is quoted by Steevens in a note to "Twelfth Night," to show that _cut_, which also means a _horse_, was employed as a term of abuse. In "Henry IV., Part I.," Falstaff, for the same purpose, uses _horse_ as synonymous with _cut:_ "Spit in my face, and call me _horse_."
[55] [_i.e._, Furtively.]
[56] [An allusion to the romance entitled "The Mirror of Knighthood."]
[57] She has just referred to the well-known work "The Mirror of Knighthood," and by _Bevis_ she means Bevis of Hampton. _Arundel_ was the name of his horse, and _Morglay_ of his sword. Morglay is often used for a sword in general.
[58] In the old copy it is printed _pinkanies_, and from what follows it seems that the expression has reference to the redness of Sir Abraham's eyes from soreness. The following passage is to the same effect: "'Twould make a horse break his bridle to hear how the youth of the village will commend me: 'O the pretty little _pinking nyes_ of Mopsa!' says one: 'O the fine fat lips of Mopsa!' says another."--Day's "Isle of Gulls," 1606, sig. D 4.
Shakespeare ("Antony and Cleopatra," act ii. sc. 7), speaks of "plumpy Bacchus with _pink eyne;_" and Lodge, in "The Wounds of Civil War," has _pinky neyne_, [vii. 167.] In both these instances drinking is supposed to have occasioned the redness.