Volume Ii Part 61 (1/2)
385.
Northbroke, in his Treatise against Dicing, 1579, p. 86, says: ”Cato giveth counsell to all youth, saying, '_Trocho_ lude, aleas fuge, _playe with the toppe_, and flee dice-playing.'”
In the English translation of Levinus Lemnius, 1658, p. 369: ”Young youth do merrily exercise themselves in whipping-top, and to make it run swiftly about, that it cannot be seen, and will deceive the sight.”
Cornelius Scriblerus, in his Instructions concerning the Plays and Playthings to be used by his son Martin, says: ”I would not have Martin as yet to scourge a top, till I am better informed whether the trochus which was recommended by Cato be really our present top, or rather the hoop which the boys drive with a stick.”-_Pope's Works_, vi. 115.
Among well-known cla.s.sical allusions may be noted the following mention of whipping the top, in Persius's third Satire:
”Neu quis callidior buxum torquere flagello.”
Thus translated by Dryden:
”The whirling top they whip, And drive her giddy till she fall asleep.”
Thus also in Virgil's _aeneid_, vii. 378:
”Ceu quondam torto volitans sub verbere turbo, Quem pueri magno in gyro vacua atria circ.u.m Intenti ludo exercent. Ille actus habena Curvatis fertur spatiis: stupet inscia supra, Imp.u.b.esque ma.n.u.s, mirata volubile buxum: Dant animos plagae.”
Thus translated by Dryden:
”As young striplings whip the top for sport, On the smooth pavement of an empty court; The wooden engine whirls and flies about, Admired with clamours of the beardless rout, They lash aloud, each other they provoke, And lend their little souls at ev'ry stroke.”
And so Ovid, Trist. 1. iii. Eleg. 12:
”Otia nunc istic: junctisque ex ordine ludis Cedunt verbosi garrula bella fori.
Usus equi nunc est, levibus nunc luditur armis: Nunc pila, _nunc celeri volvitur orbe trochus_.”
Pa.s.sing from these general allusions to the top as a form of amus.e.m.e.nt, we enter on more significant ground when we take into consideration the various pa.s.sages in the early dramatists and other writers (collected together in Nares' _Glossary_), which show that tops were at one time owned by the parish or village.
”He's a coward and a coystril that will not drink to my niece, till his brains turn like a parish-top.”-Shakespeare, _Twelfth Night_, i. 3.
”A merry Greek, and cants in Latin comely, Spins like the parish-top.”
-Ben Jonson, _New Inn_, ii. 5.
”I'll hazard My life upon it, that a boy of twelve Should scourge him hither like a parish-top, And make him dance before you.”
-Beaumont and Fletcher, _Thierry and Theod._, ii. 1.
”And dances like a town top, and reels and hobbles.”
-Ibid., _Night Walker_, i. 1.
Every night I dream I am a town-top, and that I am whipt up and down with the scourge stick of love.-”Grim, the Collier of Croydon,” ap.
_Dodsley_, xi. 206.
In the Fifteen Comforts of Marriage, p. 143, we read: ”Another tells 'em of a project he has to make town tops spin without an eel-skin, as if he bore malice to the school-boys.”
Poor Robin, in his Almanack for 1677, tells us, in the Fanatick's Chronology, it was then ”1804 years since the first invention of town-tops.”