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his old-fashioned phrase and obsolete words, one of the first refiners of the English language."—Ibid.1

"DRYDEN (Preface to his Fables) says, 'I have often heard the late Earl of Leicester say that Mr. Cowley himself was of opinion that Chaucer was a dry old-fashioned wit, not worth reviving; and that having read him over at my lord's request, he declared he had no taste of him.'

"This fact, says SIR J. HAWKINS, is as difficult to account for as another of the same kind. Mr. Handel made no secret of declaring himself totally insensible to the excellences of Purcell's compositions."Hist. Mus. vol. ii. p. 105.

Lord Buckhurst.

Ar the close of Ferrex and Porrex is some plain advice to Elizabeth that she

should settle the succession. The author's

intention cannot be mistaken, but I believe

it has not been before observed.

GEORGE PEEle.

P. 78. "Fame-that

Proclaiming conquests, spoils, and victories, Rings glorious echoes through the farthest world."

82.

"Dub on your drums,

My lusty western lads!"

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P. 72. "not by the course of heaven, By frail conjectures of inferior signs, By monstrous floods, by flights and flocks of birds,

By bowels of a sacrificed beast,

Or by the figures of some hidden art; But by a true and natural presage, Laying the ground and perfect architect Of all our actions now before thine eyes, From Adam to the end of Adam's seed." 73. "OHeaven, protect my weakness with thy strength."

"ravish my earthly sprits, That for the time a more than human skill May feed the organons of all my sense; That when I think, thy thoughts may be my guide,

103. "But if kind Cambria deign me good And when I speak, I may be made by choice

aspect,

To make me chiefest Brute of western

Wales."

Llwellen says this.

"Since Chaucer liv'd, who yet lives, and yet shall.

Unto the sacred relics of whose rhyme
We yet are bound in zeal to offer praise."
DANIEL'S Musophilus.-J W. W.

The perfect echo of thy heavenly voice."

This is in a speech of David's to Solomon. 74. The eagle.

"With eyes intentive to bedare the sun." 101. "The twenty-coloured rainbow."

2 See NARES' Gloss, in v. dare. I may add to the quotations there, "fall down as dared larks," from the Third Part of the Homily against Peril of Idolatry, p. 235.-J. W. W.

124. "And thrive it so with thee, as thou dost mean:

And mean thou so as thou dost wish to thrive."

142. "From thence to Rome rides Stukely all aflaunt."

158. "Our fair Eliza, or Zabata fair."

He gives as a reason for annexing the Tale of Troy to his farewell to Norris and Drake on their Portugal voyage, "that good minds, inflamed with honourable reports of their ancestry, may imitate their glory in highest adventures; and my countrymen, famed through the world for resolution and fortitude, may march in equipage of honour and arms with their glorious and renowned predecessors the Troyans."

172. "You follow Drake by sea, the scourge of Spain, The dreadful dragon, terror to your foes, Victorious in his return from Inde, In all his high attempts unvanquish'd."

193-210-11. Elizabeth's champion, Sir Henry Lea, resigning the championship to the Earl of Cumberland. 1590.

204. Sir Fulk Grevile.

205." And haste they make to meet, and meet they do,

And do the thing for which they meet in haste."

210. Elizabeth's birth-day.

"The day, the birth-day of our happiness, The blooming time, the spring of England's peace."

221. "Harington, well letter'd and discreet,

That bath so purely naturalized Strange words, and made them all free denizens."

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225. "I laid me down, laden with many cares,

(My bedfellows almost these twenty years.)"

226. "Fast by the stream where Thames and Isis meet,

And day by day roll to salute the sea,
For more than common service it perform'd
To Albion's Queen, when foemen, shipt for
fight,

To forage England plough'd the ocean up,
And slonk into the channel that divides
The Frenchman's strond from Britain's fishy

towns."

226. "Sleeping or waking as alone I lay, Mine eyes and ears and senses all were served

With every object perfect in his kind." 266. A character of the watermen.1

Daniel.

Ben

BEN JONSON disliked him, merely, Gifford thinks, from a difference in taste. Jonson, vol. i. p. 155, N.

Ben Jonson, vol. viii. p. 278, N. Vol. v. p. 250-1, N. and proof in the text.

In his volume of "Certain Small Works" heretofore divulged, and now again corrected and augmented, is a prefatory poem to the reader, which is not in the edition of his poetical works,-nor in Anderson. It falls a little into Wither's pedestrian strain, but has value for its feeling, as well as for contributing to the poet's own history. It shows that he bestowed much aftercorrection upon his poems, so that the editions ought to be carefully compared.

The third volume of PEELE'S works was published by Mr. Dyce in 1839. It contains Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, An Eclogue Gratulatory, Speeches to Queen Elizabeth at Theobalds, and the Anglorum Feriæ.

2 See SOUTHEY's remarks on "well-languaged Daniel," in his British Poets, p. 572.-J. W. W.

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Dances and antic marring the drama at that time.

S. EVREMOND, vol. 3, p. 207-8, praises Sejanus and Catiline, and condemns all other English tragedies. See the passage.

"It appears that he read Greek invariably, not by quantity, but accent.” Vol. 5, p. 339, N. In the text that occasions this note, the line is,

"Old Master Gross surnam'd Ayéλaoros," |—which yet would read by quantity, if the true reading of the preceding word should be surnamed. But Gifford says it was his invariable rule.

His contempt of romances, with which he oddly classes Pantagruel. Vol. 5, p. 346; 8, p. 416-7.

The metre in his Ode to himself (vol. 5, p. 442), a ten-lined stanza, is sufficiently varied by the different length of the lines, though the rhymes are in couplets.

P. 417. Gifford assents to O. Feltham's criticism,

"When was there ever laid

Before a chambermaid

Discourse so weighed, as might have served of old

For schools when they of love and valour told?"

Now though the discourse is very ill laid considering some of the company, the ob

The commentators have not looked for jection certainly does not hold good with that grammar and its rules.

391. Bride-ale, a note showing that Gifford did not know what the word means. 454. Going away in snuff (in anger) Gifford thinks alludes to the offensive manner in which a candle goes out. I rather think it refers to a sudden emotion of anger, seizing a man as snuff takes him by the nose.'

See the extract from SOMERS' Tracts, in Second Series, p. 654.-J. W. W.

regard to the Chambermaid, who is what Ben Jonson remembered female domestics to be, upon the same footing as pages in the family. The one in this play is the friend and companion of her mistress, and thought a fit wife for a nobleman at the end of the drama.

Vol. 6.

P. 2. THE actors, when the Magnetic Lady was first represented, introduced so

many oaths, that they were called before the High Commission Court, and severely censured. As the author was sick in bed, they boldly laid the fault on him. Jonson however completely justified himself from this atrocious charge, as did the Master of the Revels, on whom they had next the audacity to lay it and the players then humbly confessed that they had themselves interpolated the offensive passages.

11. "I have heard the poet say that to be the most unlucky scene in a play which needs an interpreter.” — Induction to the Magnetic Lady.

250. Gifford says he was a careful reader of the Polyolbion, and in the Sad Shepherd an occasional imitator.

222. Inigo Jones satirized.

Vol. 7.

P. 19. GIFFORD thinks Milton's Arcades

a very humble imitation of Ben Jonson's masques."

36-7. Dances described in the Masques. 39. 65. 108. 157. 324-5.

16. A double echo finely managed in a

song.

79. Masque scenery. 302. Splendour. 328.

"Sit now, propitious aids,
To rites so duly prized,
And view two noble maids
Of different sex, to Union sacrificed."
Masque of Hymen, 53.

77. Gifford calls "the attention of the reader to the richness, elegance, and matchless vigour of Jonson's prose," upon occasion of a very beautiful passage, which he does not perceive to be an imitation of Sydney's

manner.

94. It only cost the masquers about £300 a man for that on Lord Haddington's marriage.

114. Dedication of a Masque to P. Henry. 151. Bel-Anna, James's Queen, a name in which he plainly remembered Belphœbe. Gifford it is evident that Jonson had

says

164. Allusions to Morte d'Arthur. 165. And to Meliadus, which Gifford, by his note, seems not to understand.

265. In the Golden Age Restored he calls up Gower and Lidgate with Chaucer' and Spenser.

269. The first folio which Ben Jonson superintended himself has " come down to us one of the correctest works that ever issued from the English press.”

274. Excellent personifications in the Masque of Christmas.

298. Dr. Aikin has called Ben Jonson "this once celebrated author!" and speaks of the prevalent coarseness of tedious effusions!

305. "The tail of a Kentish man." Thus this was still a current jest.

311. G. Chalmers' glorious confounding of Titan with Tithonus.

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The reader should see how HAWES speaks of "moral Gower," and Chaucer, and "Master made some progress in a work intended to Lydgate, the monk of Bury," in The Pastime of

celebrate the ladies of Great Britain.

Pleasure, Capitulo xiv.-J. W. W.

cows." This odd inversion is in some very

sweet verses.

144. The description of the two loves, Eros and Anteros, is that they were both armed and winged; with bows and quivers, cassocks, breeches, buskins, gloves, and perukes alike.-Love's Welcome at Bolsover. 151. In the dedication to his Epigrams he calls them the ripest of his studies. 154. To my bookseller. He requests that his book may

"thus much favour have To lie upon thy stall till it be sought: Not offered, as it made suit to be bought, Nor have my title-leaf on posts or walls, Or in cleft sticks advanced to make calls, For termers, or some clerklike serving man Who scarce can spell the hard names; whose knight less can."

169. On Sir John Roe. His own anticipation of death. A fine manly strain. 170. 186. Repentance for some ill deserved eulogy.

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Of worded balladry

And think it poesy?"

418-19. What the fire destroyed. 442. To the Painter. His own person described.

446. Wager upon his weight.

448. Gifford does not see that this piece relates to the former.

452. To the Lord Keeper Williams. 459. Charles sent him £100 in his sickness, 1629.

Vol. 9.

P. 4. BEN JONSON and the Earl of Newcastle.

6. Lord Falkland.

78. Gifford's praise of his Pindaries. But N. B. that word was not prefixed to it by Jonson. 9.

17. It appears by this note that the edition is not so complete as Gifford might and ought to have made it.

27. An Epistle Mendicant.

35. In this Epithalamion he seems to have had Spenser in mind.

37. Porting for carrying.1

43. Laureate's petition to King Charles. 47. Sir Ken. Digby-a sad conceit. 95. A divided rhyme:

"when or Diana's grove, or altar, with the bor-Dring circles of swift waters," &c. 161. Envious criticism in his age, and success of worthless works. 162.

169-70. His own memory.

172. A vicious tinsel style in vogue. 173. 174. "Dabbling in verse had helped to advance men both in the law and gospel; but poetry in this latter age hath proved but a mean mistress to such as have wholly addicted themselves to her, or given their names up to her family."

176. His opinion of precocious talents.

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