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This passage supports my conjecture on a very corrupted passage in Peele's Edward I. ed. Dyce, vol. i. p. 128.

"

"Farewell and be hang'd' half Sinon's sapon's brood." The reading I proposed instead of these unmeaning words, was, false Sinon's spawn and brood;" and I see no reason for rejecting or altering it. That half is a corruption of false, no doubt can be entertained, false being an epitheton perpetuum of Sinon. So p. 352 of our present play :

"Others report 'twas Sinon's perjury."

and in Cymbeline, act iii. sc. 2.

P. 359. Read,

P. 364.

Read,

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-like false Æneas,

Were in his time thought false, and Synon's weeping
Did scandal many a holy tear."

"And stricken with sweet smelling violets,
Blushing roses, purple hyacinth."

"With blushing roses, purple hyacinth."

"The masts whereon thy swelling sails shall hang
Hollow pyramids of silver plate."

"Hollow pyramides of silver plate."

See Ant. and Cleopatra, act v. sc. 8.

P. 366.
Omit" the."

My country's high pyramides my gibbet."

"The heir of Fury, the favourite of the Fates."'

P. 372. Jarbas, who is jealous of Dido's love for Æneas, says, "Aye, this it is which wounds me to the death,

To see a Phrygian far set to the sea,

Performed before a man of majesty."

Perhaps we should read,

"To see a Phrygian o' the farthest sea."

unless "set" is for "seated;" and then the line would require another kind of correction.

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P. 397.

"For being entangld by a stranger's looks."

"But I cried out, Æneas, false Æneas, stay!".

The word [stay] should be omitted.

P. 399.

"Dido. Jarbas, talk not of Æneas, let him go."

I should omit [Jarbas] and read,

P. 399.

"Oh! talk not of Æneas, let him go."

"Not far from hence there is a woman famouséd for arts." This unmetrical line might be reformed, by omitting the four first words, and reading,

"There is a woman famouséd for arts."

Superfluous words arising sometimes from stage directions, sometimes from altered readings, sometimes from marginal notes, and sometimes from actor's interpolations, form one of the most common causes of error in the text of old plays. Another instance occurs.

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"Dido is dead! Jarbas slain. Jarbas (my dear love.)" These last words might probably be the tender effusion of some sentimental

and amorous actress, or rather female actor; they are evidently not of the author's dictation. Again,

P. 348.

I should read,

"Methinks that town there should be Troy; yon, Ida's hill."
"Methinks that should be Troy; yon, Ida's hill."

P. 372. Dido says,

"Eneas, leave these dumps, and let's away,
Some to the mountains, some unto the soil,
You to the vallies, thou unto the house."

Perhaps "soil" is used here for the flat fertile land, as in Cymbeline, act

ii. sc. 2.

"Now for our mountain sport, up to yond hills;
Your legs are young; I 'll tread these flats," &c.

Vol. III. p. 209." Smile on me, and these two wanton boys."
"Smile on me, and [on] these two wanton boys."

Read,

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The probable reading is,

3. P. 228. Read,

P. 296.

"And proudest [Lord] in Spain," &c.

"That damn'd Moor, that devil, that Lucifer."
"That damned Moor."

"Eleazar. I love you; yes, faith! I said this-I love you-
I do leave him.

Isabella. 'Damnation,' vanish from me."

Surely this unfeminine word should be taken from the lips of Isabella, and transferred to Eleazar, to whose character and temper it would be more appropriate.

P. 314.

Read,

P. 346.

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consumed with loathed lust,

Which thy venerous mind hath lowly ruin'd." "Venereous."

Hero and Leander.

"For as a hot proud horse highly disdains

To have his head controll'd, but breaks the reins,
Spits forth his ringled bit, and with his hoofs
Checks the submissive ground; so he that loves,
The more he is restrained, the worst he fares."

Read "hoves" for "hoofs," a form in which the plural of hoof often occurs, and is here required by the rhyme.

P. 432. Elegies.

"Grecinus (well I wot), thou tolds't me once
I could not be in love with two at once."

I take this to be a careless oversight of the author.

P. 433.

In this distich,

"Let merchants seek wealth with perjured lips,

And being wrecked, carouse the sea tired by their ships." both lines are wanting in metre and sense; but I think a slight

alteration will go near to put them in their proper form :

"Merchants seek wealth,-the sea tired by their ships;
And being wrecked,-
,-carouse with perjured lips."

The meaning of which is, they carouse, being perjured, on account of a false insurance on their ships.

P. 552.

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My mistress dieting also drew me from it,
And love triumpheth o'er his busking poet."

My mistress' dieting also drew me fro it,

And love triumpheth o'er his buskin poet."
"Then he who rules the world's star-spangled towers,

A little boy drunk tea-distilling showers."

Read, "teat-distilling." He is speaking of the infant Jupiter, nursed in

Crete.

B-ll, Dec. 1, 1840.

J. M.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

The History and Antiquities of Syon Monastery, the Parish of Isleworth, and the Chapelry of Hounslow: compiled from Public Records, Ancient Manuscripts, Ecclesiastical and other Authentic Documents. By George James Aungier. London, 1840, 8vo. pp. 567.

SYON Monastery, the principal subject of Mr. Aungier's volume, was a foundation of great interest in its origin, in its character, and in the fortunes of its inmates and their successors. It was one of two Monasteries founded by Henry V. at the commencement of his reign, before he became a warrior and a hero; and it is singular to mark the terms in which the foundation-charter speaks of the character of the monarch from whom it proceeded, and the blessings anticipated from the contemplated establishment. Stimulated, we are told, by a consideration of the glories of the Church triumphant, and the example of his predecessors, the King, who, as the charter declares, was a true son of the God of Peace, who gave peace, taught peace, and finally left it to his well-beloved disciples as a thing in the highest degree to be desired," dedicated this foundation to the Trinity, the Virgin, the Apostles, the Disciples, and All Saints, and especially to the most holy Saint Bridget, who established a religious order, "and obtained from heaven, that, in whatsoever kingdom a monastery of the same religious order should be founded, there peace and tranquillity by the mediation of the same should be perpetually established." (Aungier, 26.) Urged by these ardent longings for the blessings of peace, the monarch, who was just upon the eve of embarking upon one of the most unjust wars that ever originated in human ambition, settled

It is improperly termed Syon Nunnery in the Monasticon, vi. 540. GENT. MAG. VOL. XV.

this foundation for sixty nuns or sisters, and twenty-five brethren, and directed it to be entitled, The Monastery of St. Saviour and St. Bridget of Syon.

In the choice of a patron the conqueror of Agincourt was guided by Henry Lord FitzHugh, who also procured as inmates for the new establishment certain religious persons who had been members of the Chief House of the Order of Bridgetines, situate at Wastein, or Vatzen, in Sweden. (Aungier, 25.) The Bridgetines followed the rule of St. Augustine, with certain modifications, which are said to have been dictated to Saint Bridget by our Saviour in a vision, from which circumstance the order received its united designation of St. Saviour and St. Bridget. Of these modifications, one related to the number of persons in every monastery, which was fixed at eighty-five. Thirteen of these, who were priests, represented the Apostles (St. Paul included), and the remaining seventy-two are said by several writers (Dug. Mon. vi. 540; Aungier, 21,) to have answered to the number of our Lord's disciples. We presume that this is a mistake; vide Luke x. 1, 17. Probably the intention was to present a complete model, or pattern, of the Church, but how it was made out does not appear. The nuns fixed at sixty; the men at twenty-five; of whom thirteen, as we have said, were priests; four were Deacons, who represented Saints Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory, and Jerome, the four great Doctors of the Church; and the remaining eight were lay

men.

were

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Upon the caps of the sisters were sewn five pieces of red cloth, like five drops of blood, allusive to the five wounds of our Saviour; the thirteen priests wore, on the left side of their mantles, a red cross of cloth, edged round with white, and emblematic of the mystery of the Incarnation; the four deacons wore upon their mantles a white circle, upon which were sewn four red pieces fashioned like tongues, emblematic of the incomprehensible wisdom and spiritual illumination of the doctors whom they represented; the lay brethren wore a white cross with five red pieces, emblematic of the wounds. (Aungier, 23, 24; Bowles's Hist. of Lacock Abbey, 194.)

Another peculiarity of this order was, that all the monasteries belonging to it were designed to be double, that is, they were to contain both men and women, living in the same establishment, although separated by what Alban Butler terms "an inviolable inclosure," and worshipping in the same church, where "the nuns keep choir above in a doxal [i. e. behind a dorsale, a curtain or screen,] the men underneath in the Church. (Lives of Saints, Oct. 8, St. Bridget.) Butler adds, that the men and women can never see each other, i. e. we presume in the church; but it would seem that the ladies formerly might occasionally catch a glimpse of their male companions, for in the Bridgetine regulation it is very properly reckoned amongst lyght defautes," if any sus ter loke, or besyly caste her eyen in to the brethres quyer, gasynge up on them, excepte the tyme of comenynge and levacions of the sacrament of the auter, and other tymes permyttyd by the rewle." (Aungier, p. 254.)

These double monasteries originated in an anxiety, and it may well be believed to have been a sincere, and pious anxiety, to remedy in the best possible manner two difficulties which beset the monastic life of women. They were intended, first, to enable the nuns to partake with the greatest ease and security in those religious rites which could be performed only by men ; and secondly, to relieve them from the troubles and impositions to which secluded women must necessarily be exposed in the management of

property. But the monastic life, except in some peculiar instances, was a forced and unnatural state; and all contrivances to remedy known and felt inconveniences in it, did but let in new evils. The approximation of persons of different sexes, even under the greatest possible restrictions, could not but tend to excite feelings which it should have been the object of every part of the monastic economy to deaden-feelings which experience pronounces to be unconquerable, and which embue those of whom they take possession with a determination which despises obstacles, and a subtilty which defies contrivances. It is without surprise, then, that we learn from Alban Butler, that, although some few double monasteries yet remain, the greatest part of the existing establishments of Bridgetines have deviated from this part of their patron's rule, and are now single. In these double monasteries the Abbess was chief; the men were subject to her in temporal matters, but in all spiritual affairs the women were subject to the men.

"

Another observable peculiarity of the Bridgetine sisterhood was the extreme strictness with which they enforced silence, managing their intercourse in the places in which speaking was not allowed by means of signs. "In the churche," says the rule, "quyer, freytour [i. e. the refectory], cloyster, dortour [i. e. the dormitory], and in the * silence is ever to be kepte; and so, also, in the library, in the chapter, "in the waschyng howse in tyme of waschyng, in all place nyghe the chirche," and "in the belfray in tyme of ryngyng." Mr. Aungier has printed the list of the signs used in these places to express the most common wants, and many of them are not unamusing; for instance, a sister who desired a book, was directed to wag and move her right hand as if she were turning the leaves (p. 405); one who wished for mustard, was to hold her nose in the upper part of her right fist, and rub it (p. 408); one who would have fish, was to wag

*First printed in the Excerpta Historica, (p. 414,) with an account of the MS. from which it is extracted, and other particulars relating to Syon.

her hand displayed sidelynges, in manner of a fish tail; if she preferred flesh, she was to raise up with her right fingers the flesh of her left hand (p. 407).

For about one hundred and twenty years the Monastery of Syon proceeded prosperously; the inmates removed from the original buildings, which were found incommodious, to others more spacious and healthful, which were erected at great cost (Aungier, 53), and partly with stone from Caen (ibid. 70). During the reign of Henry VI. many royal grants were made to them, in addition to his father's endowments, and early in Henry VII. their clear income, derived from properties of various kinds situate in many parts of the kingdom Sussex, Lancashire, Cornwall, Kent, Somersetshire, &c. &c.-amounted to the large sum of 16167, 18s. 5d. (ibid. 78.) In 1539 it had increased to 17311. 88. 4d. (ibid. 89.)

But now came the day of trouble. Syon drew down upon itself the royal indignation by giving shelter and countenance to Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent. It was in a little chapel there, that Sir Thomas More had a private interview with her; and several of the professed of Syon, both men and women, are said to have been led away by her impositions, if they did not assist her in them. This matter, which tended to render Syon unpopular at Court, had scarcely blown over, when the clergy were called upon to adopt and teach the doctrine of the King's supremacy. One of the brethren of Syon, Father Reynolds, having denied the king's title, was tried for treason, found guilty, and hanged. (Strype's Mem. i. 315.) Others of them appear at first to have exhibited an almost equal dislike towards the doctrine; the preachers obeyed the command to set it forth, but marred the effect of their sermons by introductions which rendered it apparent that they preached against their consciences; and, upon one occasion, as soon as the preacher began to touch upon the distasteful subject, nine of the brethren rose and departed from the church, "contrarie to the rule of their religion, and to the great sclaunder of al the audience." (p. 436.) But further inquiry seems to have effected

a great change in their sentiments, and the book before us contains evidence that not only were they converted to the reformed faith upon this point, but that they did what they could to induce others to conform. The monks of the Charter House were, it is wellknown, amongst the most constant in their adherence to the papal supremacy, and many of them suffered death in its defence. We have here a letter, penned with no little earnest. ness and some eloquence, which was addressed to the recusant brethren of the Charter House by three of the monks of Syon; one of whom but a short time before had been one of " the vaunt-parlers and heads" of the contrary side. The whole letter is worthy of attention, but we have not space for the insertion of more than a few extracts. After stating their own change of opinion they defend it thus.

"Judge not youe, that either fere of bodely payn, penurye, or bodely deathe, dyd cause us to suche resolucion of consciens; nor that feare of wordllye shame, or dyspleasure, dyd cause it; nor yete that worldly fryndshyp, fauor, honor, laude, or preferment dyd cause it. For yf ye so iuge, trewley the Juge of our and your harttes knowithe that ye then iudge vniustely. But iudge that veray dewtie, informed and ordred charitie, dyd alone worke suche resolucion in vs."

They entreat the persons whom they address to mark what description of man he is who sets himself against the Royal supremacy; to cause him to shew his learning in defence of his opinions; to point out to him the limits of conscientious obligations, and to learn that "obedience to his Prince and Prelate doo bynde him to doo theyr commaundement yf it be not expresly againste the lawe of God;;-as doctors and canons doo teche."

"And nowe," they continue," what the lawe of God wille in the cause, for both parties, for the autoryte of our prince upon the Church of England, and for thautorytie of the busshope of Rome upon the same, we have moche labored, and founde by the word and will of God, both in the olde and new testament, great trewthes for our Prince, and for the busshope of Rome nothing at all."

They then refer to certain papers containing "matier of Scripture, coun

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