What pedlars were may be judged from the following
description of them in "The Pedlar's Prophecy," a comedy printed in
1595, but obviously written either very early in the reign of Elizabeth,
or perhaps even in that of her sister--
"I never knew honest man of this occupation.
But either he was a dycer, a drunkard, a maker of shift,
A picker, or cut-purse, a raiser of simulation,
Or such a one as run away with another man's wife."
[112] [Old copy, _by_.]
[113] _Ink-horn_ is a very common epithet of contempt for pedantic and
affected expressions. The following, from Churchyard's "Choice," sig.
E e 1., sets it in its true light--
"As _Ynkehorne_ termes smell of the schoole sometyme."
It went out of use with the disuse of ink-horns. It would be very easy
to multiply instances where the word is employed in our old writers. It
most frequently occurs in Wilson's "Rhetoric," where is inserted an
epistle composed of _ink-horn terms_; "suche a letter as Wylliam Sommer
himself could not make a better for that purpose. Some will thinke, and
swere it too, that there never was any suche thing written: well, I will
not force any man to beleve it, but I will saie thus much, and abyde by
it too, the like have been made heretofore, and praised above the
moone.
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