arrives, Avaro discovers the fraud. At the hour ap-. pointed Pholiche (the lover's assumed name) knocking loudly to awaken the porter awakens the abbess, who had been dreaming that her ward was destroying by a lion, and she is on the instant persuaded by the noise which alarmed her, that her vision is realized. In her fright she discharges a pistol which awakens the porter. The bell is immediately rung and the whole convent is roused: the attempt to bribe Avaro being disclosed, Pholiche is confined closely and dieted sparely for three days. Unable at length to effect his escape, Albino (alias Pholiche) turns his regard to his sister nuns, and in a few weeks the influence of his intimacy becomes visible. After many fruitless searches the cause of this change in the appearances of the devotees is traced to its source, and the "Abbatesse" contrives to get Albino into a cell utterly excluded from the light. The lynx at mid-day there would wish for day, Here she invents means to torment him by stoves "under-vaulted" in summer, and in winter by pouring water through holes drilled in the roof of his confine ment. Bellama hearing nothing of Albino dispatches a messenger to the grate of the convent, but obtains no other answer than that he had left the priory long since, and it was supposed he was dead. Albino in the interim manages to gain the favour of Conrado by promising him marriage, if the monk will extricate him from his present confinement. The purpose is effected, and by a stratagem Albino leaves Conrado in the prison. Immediately upon his escape Albino secretes himself in a cavern in a neighbouring thicket, where he rescues from the embrace of a rude rustic his flame Bellama, who, in company with her maid in disguise, had fled her father's house with the hope of discovering Albino. At night they take up their abode in a peasant's hut, but are surprized early in the morning by the noise of the monkish crew in pursuit of their runaway. The fugitives, after assuming various disguises, at length arrive at the house of the brother of Albino, a Carthusian friar, by whom they are united." Such are the adventures of this "Harlequin and Columbine," of which I have drawn an abstract, because the volume, at least as far as I have discovered, is of uncommon occurrence. From the nature of the fable it will be readily imagined the language is not free from licentiousness. The "Vindication of Poesie" is written in the form of a vision, which has since become a favourite mode of composition. JOSEPH RITSON. Since my return into the country I have looked into Ritson's Bibliographia, and am confident that in spite of all his grubbing he has left his book very imperfect. This might be excused by the nature of the undertaking, did he not call others "fool and rascal" in every page. HENRY WOTTON. I have in my possession an uncommonly scarce volume with the following quaint title: "A Courtlie controversie of Cupid's Cautels, containing five tragi call call Historyes by three Gentlemen and two Gentlewomen, translated out of French by Henry Wotton, B. L. Impr. by John Caldock and Henry Bynneman, 1578:" in which are many "songes," some of them by no means inelegant for the time when they werę written I will transcribe part of one as a specimen. What hard mishap doth hamper youth, And yet he will not credite truth Till hard mishap doth throw him down ; Must hoarie hairs needs make us wise Doth make them blind that thereon looke, Believe that reason is their guide. Pa. 127. Of this book, by the bye, I think Herbert had but an imperfect knowledge, and perhaps adopted the title from Bagfield's MS. Bibl. Sloan. In a translation of Cranmer's "Confutation of unwritten verities, &c." B. L. by E. P. without date or printer's name, is a metrical address of "the boke to the reader," of equal value with many similar compositions which mister Ritson has fortunately "retrieved from latent obscurity." LORD BACON. Sir Henry Wotton has, in "Reliquiæ Wottonianæ," assigned one of the poems to Francis Lord Bacon, upon what authority I know not. I could point out many M 4 many other inaccuracies that have come within the confined compass of my observation, and from which I am persuaded that those who possess extensive collections would discover many more. JOHN CHALKHILL. John Chalkhill, the author of Thealma and Clearchus, has two songs in Walton's Complete Angler, part of one of which Dr. Johnson translated into Latin. His translation is printed in Murphy's edition of his works, Vol. I. p. 190. O. G. G. ART. IX. JOHN LILLY. Oldys says, that " John Lilly was born, according to A. Wood's computation (I. 295), about the year 1553; but I think he was born sooner. According to him he went in 1569, aged about 16, to Magd. Coll. Oxon. In 1566 he went to court; in 1576 he wrote his first letter to the queen; in 1597 his second, shewing he had been thirteen years led in expectation of being Master of the Revels. William Webbe, in his "Discourse of English Poetrie," 4to. 1586, speaks of the good grace and sweet vein, which eloquence hath attained in our speech through the help of some rare and singular wits, and adds, "among whom I think there is none that will gainsay but Master John Lilly hath deserved most high commendations, as he who hath stepped one step farther therein than any since he first began the witty discourse of his EUPHUES, whose works surely surely in respect of his singular eloquence and brave composition of apt words and sentences, let the learned examine, and make a tryal thereof through all parts of rhetoric in fit phrases, in pithy sentences, in gallant tropes, in flowing speech, in plain sense; and surely in my judgment I think he will yield him that verdict, which Quintilian giveth of both the best orators, Demosthenes and Tully; that from the one nothing may be taken away, and to the other nothing may be added *. Yet for all this praise and merit we may see, after a dangling and tedious dependence upon the court for thirteen years, he was forced to write to the queen herself for some little grant to support him in his old age. Of his two letters, or petitions, to her, many copies are preserved in MS. Lilly was a man (adds Oldys) of great reading, good memory, ready faculty of application, and uncommon eloquence; but he ran into a vast excess of allusion: in sentence and conformity of style he seldom speaks directly to the purpose, but is continually carried away by one odd allusion or simile or other (out of natural history, that is yet fabulous and not true in nature), and that still overborne by more, thick upon the back of one another; and through an eternal affectation of sententiousness keeps to such a formal measure of his periods as soon grows tiresome; and so, by confining himself to shape his sense so frequently into one artificial cadence, however ingenious or harmonious, abridges that variety which the style should be admired for. See Dodsley's censure of him agreeably to Drayton's This passage is also quoted from Webbe's Discourse in The British Librarian, p. 90. before |