By J. D. With a continued just Inquisition of the same subject for this season: against PaperPersecutors. By A. H. Printed at London for H. H. and G. G. and are to be sold at the Golden Flower Deluce in Pope's-head Alley, 1625. 4to. 18 leaves. WOOD makes a quære (in Ath. Oxon. I. 556) whether this was not written by John Donne? and Mr. Warton (in Hist. E. P. IV. 85) seems disposed to consider Wood's conjecture as well founded. But the fact is, that this lively pasquinade on the literature of the times, was printed in the Scourge of Folly (about 1611) a Collection of Epigrams penned by John Davies of Hereford, to whom the present piece must therefore be assigned. Both publications have in their title-page a neat cut of Wit scourging Folly, who is horsed upon the back of Time. Mr. Warton, whose consummate taste and discriminative judgment may on all occasions be implicitly trusted, has described this piece to be written with some humour, and has given a specimen of the ridicule bestowed on our early chroniclers for their minute details of unimportant events. The following sarcasm seems levelled at Churchyard's Chips and Worthiness of Wales. It must be remembered that this is PAPER'S Complaint. “One raies me with coarse rimes and chips them call, And then to make the mischiefe more compleate, Yet not so satisfied, but on he goes, And where one Berrie's meane house stands, he shewes." Shakspeare's poem of Venus and Adonis is probably here stigmatized, with Davies's own amatory sonnets entitled Wittes Pilgrimage. "Another (ah, harde happe) mee vilifies And thou, O poet! that dost pen my plaint, Stubbes, Jonson, and Decker, claim the following gibe. "Some burden me, sith I oppresse the stage, And presse me after, that the world may see In the "Inquisition," or imitative continuation of Paper's Complaint, by A. H. the following censure may have been applied to Clapham's Briefe of the Bible's History, or Wastell's Microbiblion, and the commendation, to Sylvester, and other translators of Du Bartas. "Others dare venture a diviner straine, Aud rime the BIBLE, whose foule feete profane Didst maske thy sacred furie, whose rare wit Who, be it spoken to thy lasting praise, Gav'st Sunday-rayment to the Working-dayes." Other satiric shafts are directed against some of the poetasters of that time, and against the folly which gave encouragement to fraudulence, whence the author declares, England is all turn'd Yorkshire, and the age T. P. ART. CXXV. A Select Second Husband for Sir Thomas Overburie's Wife; now a matchlesse Widow. London: Printed by T. Creede and B. Allsopp for John Marriott, &c. 1616. Small 8vo. A SONNET-DEDICATION to William Earl of Pembroke is signed John Davies. This was not Sir John, the philosophical poet and the judge: but his namesake of Hereford, the verbose rhymer and writingmaster.* In a prose address to the reader, he affirms that "they make harsh musicke, who to please * Vide Athen. Oxon. I. 445. the judgment with the ditty, offend the ear with the accent; and he who sings much out of tune, though he sings well out of cry, may haply sing to please himself and few: but shall be sure to displease many. In well-doing, it is well to follow; but in ill, the imitation is worse than the example." Davies has here followed Overbury with no illaudable endeavour; but, like most servile imitators, appears to copy without discrimination the blemishes of his original. At the end of his Choice Husband are announced "Divers Elegies touching the death of the never toomuch-praised and pitied Sir Tho. Overbury:" but one elegy and one epitaph are all that appear in print. To these succeed "Mirum in Modum," a poem first published in 1602; and "Speculum Proditor," which has a conclusion to Sir T. O. that reaches the very acme of metrical bombast and word-catching absurdity. For the credit of the author, and in consonance with the present plan of concentrating these homogeneous productions in one point of view, a short extract is here in preference supplied from his principal poem. "Marriage, that is most noble, should have nought To scorne that frailty, and despise that thought Are ills, if good they be not made by these, In paradise it was ordain'd; and so For place its noble: and if innocence May make that noble which from thence doth flow, Nobilitie therein hath residence. The Lord of Love who hatred most doth hate, Then time, place, person, that did it effect, Woman was made for man, and for his aide Made of that holpe; that holpe, then, must be staid." T. P. Est ART. CXXVI. The Unmasking of a feminine Machiavell. By Thomas Andrewe, Gent. nobis voluisse satis. Seene and allowed by authority. London: Printed by Simon Stafford, and are to be sold by George Loftis, at the Golden Ball in Pope's Head Alley. 1604. 4to. 22 leaves. DEDICATED "to his worthy and reverend uncle M. D. Langworth, Archdeacon of Wells." "To the vertuous Mistris Judith Hawkins." A Sonnet" to the Reader." A short prose address, wherein the author says, "some may imagin I have written of malice to some particular person, by reason of my title's strangenes, wherein whosoever is opinionate, is far wide: yet if any guilty conscience (that perhaps I know not) will wrest my writings, and interpret my meaning in other than the right sence, I am not to bee blamed, if that creature's corruption accuse it selfe.” "To detraction," 22 lines, by the author. "In laudem authoris, &c." 10 lines Latin, sig. "Rob. Hunt, Heath-fieldensis." VOL. II. |