In _Pasquil's Jests_, we are told "how drunken Mullins of Stratford
dreamed he found golde." It is the same story.
P. 52. _Gelidus facet anguis in herba._--Whoever edited this collection
of stories seems to have had a great fancy for quotations. Throughout
the _C. Mery Talys_, on the contrary, there is not a single instance of
this passion for extracts. Sir Thomas Overbury, in his _Characters_ (if
at least they were written by him), ed. 1632, sign. K4, describes "An
Innes of Court man" as taking "_ends of Latine_, though it be false,
with as great confidence as ever _Cicero_ could pronounce an oration." I
suspect that the _Mery Tales and Quicke Answeres_ were collected by some
person more or less versed in the classics and in foreign authors, which
was probably not the case with the _C. Mery Talys_, which do not smell
so much of the inkhorn, as Gascoigne would have said.