Crossword-Solution: TOSSPOT 7 letters, 23 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 9

Dear Jack, this white mug that with Guinness I fill, And drink to the health of sweet Nan of the Hill, Was once Tommy Tosspot's, as jovial a sot As e'er drew a spigot, or drain'd a full pot-- In drinking all round 'twas his joy to surpass, And with all merry tipplers he swigg'd off his glass.

Accordingly he acts as arbiter between Ralph Roister and Tom Tosspot in a dispute as to which of the two is the greater knave, and, deciding that both are equal, promises them equal shares in certain property he has at disposal.

Let me remind you of a few of them; ‘smellfeast’, if not a better, is yet a more graphic, word than our foreign parasite; as graphic indeed for us as τρεχέδειπνος to Greek ears; ‘clawback’ (Hackett) is a stronger, if not a more graceful, word than flatterer or sycophant; ‘tosspot’ (Fuller), or less frequently ‘reel-pot’ (Middleton), tells its own tale as well as drunkard; and ‘pinchpenny’ (Holland), or ‘nipfarthing’ (Drant), as well as or better than miser.

But a certain ne’er-do-well Mountain, a noted striker and tosspot of the district, had mysteriously disappeared about that date, and had never since come within scope of Castle Barfield knowledge.

Here is a snatch from the wise conversation of two of these worthies in _Death's Jest-Book_: "_Isbrand._ Good-morrow, Brother Vanity! How? soul of a pickle-herring, body of a spagirical tosspot, doublet of motley, and mantle of pilgrim, how art thou transmuted! Wilt thou desert our brotherhood, fool sublimate? Shall the motley chapter no longer boast thee? Wilt thou forswear the order of the bell, and break thy vows to Momus? Have mercy on Wisdom and relent.