What game are they playing in Elizabeth Moody’s ‘The Temptation’?

Question

Here’s an extract from ‘The Temptation; or, Satan in the Country’ by Elizabeth Moody:

The verdant table Satan spy’d,
And took his seat by Lydia’s side;
Soon as he hovers o’er her hand,
Lydia finds aces at command;
From one known shuffle amply pours
Sans prendre games and matadores.
Then perching next on Cosmo’s sword,
Two fish were pilfer’d from the board.

_{Elizabeth Moody (1798). Poetic Trifles, p. 152–3. London: Baldwin.}

What game are they playing? What are “sans prendre games”, “matadores”, and “fish”? Why is the shuffle “known”? What is the significance, if any, of Cosmo’s sword?

Answer 1

Quadrille, as named in the last line of the poem, is the game. (This web page has lots of details and further references.) I don't know exactly what "known shuffle" means here. "Sword" seems to mean "spadille", the ace of spades. I assume Cosmo is the name of one of the players.

Check out, eg, A Brief and Necessary Supplement to All Former Treatises on Quadrille: Consisting of Hints, Questions, Explanations, References, Suppositions, &c. for the Benefit of the Unlearned by "No Adept", of 1764. (See this online copy.) An excerpt (with modernized capitalization) from page 3:

Wherefore, without further introduction, as the difference between a Sans prendre and a Vole, seems not sufficiently attended to by young players, I shall begin with the following illustration of it.

Suppose, for instance, two fish on the board, and eight remaining in the pool, a Sans prendre without matadores is one fish better than a vole without matadores : and with matadores, it is two fish better than a vole with matadores. Without matadores it is a matadore better than a vole with matadores and with matadores two fish and a half better than a vole without matadores.

I can almost imagine Moody writing with "No Adept's" handbook open in front of her.