Grocott & Ward, comps. Grocott’s Familiar Quotations, 6th ed. 189-?.
Kitten
I’m glad of’t, with all my heart;
I had rather be a kitten and cry mew,
Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers;
I had rather hear a brazen candlestick turn’d,
Or a dry wheel grate on the axle-tree;
And that would set my teeth nothing on edge,
Nothing so much as mincing poetry;
’Tis like the forced gait of a shuffling nag.
Shakespeare.—King Henry IV., Part I. Act III. Scene 1. (Hotspur to Glendower.)