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is among the Harleian MSS. N°. 428; much more large and correct than any of the printed copies, which abound with gross errors, and many omissions. It is my intention, if nobody anticipates me, to examine the above MS. the first opportunity, and produce a more accurate edition of this valuable memorial by an ancestor of whom I am proud.

ART. VIII. Fragmenta Regalia. Written by Sir Robert Naunton, Master of the Court of Wards. Printed Anno Dom. 1641. 4to. pp. 49.

There have been subsequent editions of this little tract, of which one was in 1694, Svo. and one within these very few years.

Sir Robert Naunton was educated at Cambridge, where he was Proctor and Public Orator; and attracting the notice of King James, was brought to court. By the influence of Villiers he was promoted to be Secretary of State, 8 Jan. 1617; and afterwards Master of the Court of Wards. He died 163-*.

These sketches of the characters of Queen Elizabeth's times and favourites by one, who had himself been in some degree admitted into the penetralia of courts, are very interesting t

See Fuller's Worthies, Suff p. 64.

Several of these Memoirs are reprinted in the Harleian Miscellany; and in the late Selection from it in one vol. 4to.

ART.

TRIST. 1.

ART. IX. Sonnets to the fairest Calia. Parve, nec invideo, sine me liber ibis ad illam, Hei mihi quod domino non licet ire tuo. London. Printed by Adam Islip for W. P. 1594. 4to.

W. P. for whom these sonnets are said to have been printed, was W. Percy, according to his preface, but whether any relative to the Percies of Northumberland, and to the venerable editor of our Poetical Reliques, it may not be very practicable to ascertain. The following is his apologetical address

"To the Reader.

"Courteous reader, whereas I was fullie determined to have concealed my Sonnets, as things privie to my selfe; yet, of courtesie, having lent them to some, they were secretlie committed to the presse, and almost finished, before it came to my knowledge. Wherefore, making (as they say) a vertue of necessitie, I did decme it most convenient to præpose mine epistle, onely to beseech you to account of them as of toyes and amorous devises, and ere long I will impart unto the wo. ld another poeme, which shall be more fruitfull and ponderous. In the meane while, I commit these as a pledge unto your indifferent censures. LonW. PERCY." don, 194.

Henry 9th Earl of Northumberland, who was imprisoned on account of the Gunpowder Plot, had a brother William Percy, whom Anth. Wood records to have been a man of learning and genius, and to have died single at Oxford, 1648. Coll. Peer. II. 407. G. Garrard, in a letter to Lord Strafford, 1638, speaks of him as "living obscurely in Oxford, and drinking nothing but ale," Strafford Letters, 1 168. EDITOR.

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His

His promised poem never seems to have been produced, nor will the mere poetical reader regret its nonappearance, from the specimen here given, which derives its almost only value from being considered as an unique copy. The sonnets are twenty in number, and these are terminated by a madrigal "to Parthenophil upon his Laya and Parthenophe," which Parthenophil may possibly be Barnabe Barnes, whose equally rare collection of sonnets shall be noticed on a future occasion.

The following are not the most contemptible samples of Percy's Sonnettings.

SON. XVIII.

"I cannot conquer and be conquered;
Then whole my selfe I yeeld unto thy favor;
Behold my thoughts flote in an ocean battered,
To be cast off, or wafted to thine harbor:
If of the same thou wilt then take acceptance,
Stretch out thy fairest hand as flag of peace;
If not, no longer keepe us in attendance,
But all at once thy firie shafts release.
If thus I die, an honest cause of love

Will of my fates the rigor mittigate;
Those gratious eyne, which will a Tartar move,
Will prove my case the lesse unfortunate:
Altho' my friends may rue my chaunce for ay,
It will be said-he dyde for Cælia."

Barnes signs Parthenophil and Parthenope to a couple of sonnets in dispraise of Nash, printed with Pierce's Supererogation by Gab, Harvey, 1593. Oldys, in his MS. notes on Langbaine, says that Barnes published Parthenophil and Parthenope after 1591.

SON,

SON, XX.

"Receave these writs, my sweet and dearest frend,
The livelie patterns of my livelesse bodie,
Where thou shalt find, in hebon pictures pen'd,
How I was meeke, but thou extreamlie blodie.
I'le walke forlorne along the willow shades

Alone, complaining of a ruthlesse dame;
Where ere I passe, the rocks, the hilles, the glades,
In pittious yelles, shall sound her cruell name.
There I will waile the lot which fortune sent me,
And make my mones unto the savage eares;
The remnant of the daies which Nature lent me,

Ile spend them all, conceal'd, in ceaselesse teares.
Since unkind fates permit me not t' enjoy her,
No more (burst eyes!) I mean for to annoy her."

T. P.

ART. X.

Foure Paradoxes: of Arte, of Lawe, of

Warre, of Service. By T. S.

Cupias quodcunque necesse est.

At London Printed for Thomas Bushell. 1602. Small 8vo. 24 leaves.

These paradoxes are poetical, and the only copy I have seen was formerly Major Pearson's. The name of the author is revealed by the following dedication.

"To the most honorable and more vertuous Lady, the Ladie Helena, Marquesse of Northampton.

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"MADAM,

"Your friends send you jewelles; your tenants, the fruit of their store; and your servants, many good wishes; all of them, in their kinde, being testimonies of their loves and dueties. I, that am too poore to present you with the two former; and too ambitious, to supply my wants with the latter, have presumed in another manner to expresse my humilitie; sending you, not the riches of my exterior fortunes, but the fruite and issue of my braine, in the begetting whereof I wasted much pretious time. Your Honor, in accepting it, shall expresse more true bounty, than I in writing can expresse duety, though it be all the scope levell at. The Lord have you in his protection, and send you many happy new-yeeres!

"Your duetifull and devoted servant,

"THOMAS SCOTT."

This little volume exhibits an elegant specimen of minute typography: but its merits are not referable to the printer alone. There is much manly observation, forcible truth, apt simile, and moral pith in the poem itself; and it leaves a lingering desire upon the mind, to obtain some knowledge of a writer, whose meritorious production was unheralded by any contemporary verse-man, and whose name remains unrecorded by any poetical biographer. The following is his spirited introduction, divested of its obsolete or thography,

"Nor base intrusion, nor the hope of gain,

Nor adulation, nor vain-glorious pride,

Nor th' idle fancy of a fuming brain,

Nor any ill affected cause beside,

Begat

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