To “lie in lavender” was a cant term for being in pawn.
Tricks performed with tobacco smoke were fashionable amongst the gallants of the period, and are recommended in Decker’s “Gull’s Horn-Book,” and commended in many old plays. Making rings of smoke was a favourite amusement in those days.
See prints in “Archæologia,” xix. p. 383.
Vide Decker’s “Belman of London: Bringing to Light the most notorious Villanies that are now practised in the Kingdome.” London, 1608.
CHAPTER V. NEWSPAPER ADVERTISING FORESHADOWED—ITS EARLIEST USE—HOUGHTON’S LESSONS.
Broer Jansz styles himself “Couranteer in the Army of his Princely Excellence,” i.e., Prince Frederic Henry, the Stadtholder. Subsequently, in 1630, Jansz commenced a new series, which he entitled “Tidings from Various Quarters.”
John Nicholl, in his “Literary Anecdotes,” vol. iv. p. 71, calls the editor of this paper Benjamin Harris, a well-known publisher of pamphlets in the reign of Charles II., and says that J. Knighton was the editor in 1692. This last name may be a clerical error for Houghton.