Walter Devoreux, who was slaine before Roan in Fraunce. First written in French by the most excellent and learned gentlewoman, Madam Genuivefere, Peter Maulette: and paraphrastically translated into English by Jervis Markham. At London. Print ed by J. Roberts, for Tho. Millington, and are to be sold at his shop in Cornhill, under saint Peters church. 1597. 4to.

THIS poem has many creditable passages, and is inscribed by Markham to Dorothy, Countess of Northumberland, and Lady Penelope Rich, the sisters of Walter Devoreux.

Two Sonnets are prefixed by R. Allot, the reputed editor of England's Parnassus, and two others by E. Guilpin, a writer whose name appears in that work.*

ART. XCIII.

The Silkwormes and their Flies: lively described in verse by T. M. a Countrie Farmer, and an apprentice in physicke. For the great benefit and enriching of England. Printed at London by V. S. for Nicholas Ling, and are to be sold at his shop at the west ende of Paules, 1599. 4to. pp. 75.

A wood cut on the title-page represents the silkworm in its threefold state, as a worm or caterpillar, a chrysalis in its cone, and a butterfly or moth. This early endeavour to introduce the cultivation of silk as an object of national importance, was thus metrically inscribed:

See Restituta, Vol. II.

"To the most renowned patronesse and noble nurse of learning, Marie Countesse of Pembrooke.

"Great envie's object, worth and wisedom's pride,
Nature's delight, Arcadia's heire most fitte:
Vouchsafe a while to lay thy taske aside,

Let Petrarke sleepe, give rest to sacred writte; †
Or bowe or string will breake if ever tied ;
Some little pawse aideth the quickest witte:
Nay, heavens themselves (though keeping still their way)
Retrogradate, and make a kind of stay.

I neither sing Achilles' baneful ire,

Nor man nor armes, nor belly-brothers' warres;
Nor Britaine-broiles, nor cities drown'd in fire,
Nor Hector's warres, nor Diomede's skarres:
Cease, country Muse, so highly to aspire!
Our plaine beholds, but cannot hold such starres.
Jove-loved wittes may write of what they will;
But meaner theams beseeme a farmer's quill.
I sing of little wormes and tender flies,
Creeping along, or basking on the ground;
Grac't once with those thy heav'nly human eyes,
Which never yet on meanest scholler frown'd;
And able are this worke to eternise

From east to west, about this lower round:

Deigne thou but breathe a sparke or little flame
Of likening, to enlife for aye the same.

Your H[onour's] ever most bounden,

T. M."

* Sidney's "Arcadia" was inscribed to this Countess of Pembroke, his sister.

+From this line it would seem that Lady Pembroke had employed her pen on the poet of Vaucluse. The latter part of it seems to allude to her Version of the Psalms undertaken in conjunction with Sir Philip Sidney.

This address is followed by a table of contents, that points to various details in the economy and management of silkworms contained in the poem, which is of a didactic and moralizing cast. In the course of it the author describes himself to have been in Italy during the year 1579; so that he was probably a gentleman-farmer as well as a medical student. His production bespeaks him to have been a man of liberal education. The opening stanza of his first book may suffice as a specimen of its poetic structure.

"Sydneian Muse! if so thou yet remaine
In brother's bowels, or in daughter's breast,
Or art bequeath'd the 'Lady of the plaine;'
Because for her thou art the fittest guest:
Whose worth to shew no mortal can attaine,
Which with like worth is not himselfe possest:
Come, help me sing these flocks as white as milke,
That make and spinne and dye and windle silke."
T. P.

ART. XCIV. The Fountaine of Ancient Fiction. Wherein is liuely depictured the Images and Statues of the gods of the Ancients; with their proper and perticular expositions. Done out of Italian into English, by Richard Linche, Gent. Tempo è figliuola di verità. London: Printed by Adam Islip. 1599. 4to. 104 leaves.

WARTON, (Vol. III. p. 486,) says, "this book, or one of the same sort, is censured in a puritanical pamphlet written the same year, by one H. G. a

painfull minister of God's word, in Kent, as the spawne of Italian gallimawfry, as tending to corrupt the pure and unidolatrous worship of the one God, and as one of the deadly snares of popish deception."

By a dedication "to the right vertuous and welldisposed gentleman, M. Peter Davison, Esquiere, Richard Linche wisheth all affluence of worldly prosperities, and the fruition of all celestiall graces hereafter:" concluding "yours in all loiall fidelitie most assured."

The address "to the reader" says, "this matter now handled was undertaken suddainly, and dispatched hastily; for which he craveth milder constructions; and in very deed had it not by an extraordinary accident happened into the hands of a stranger, it had not now (poore father-forsaken child) endured the insupportable tyrannie of lawlesse censure. Such as it is, either culpable in words too much affected, or in disproportion being not methodically composed, or in shallownesse in the not proper understanding of the first author's meaning, it must nowe passe, as for me it is too late to recall it, and too needlesse to repent it; for how soever it is, it once never imagined to have been now subject to the error-searching sight of a generall eye, being only pend and translated for mine owne exercises and private recreations. But herein I am something too tedious; for as it is an absurd 'part in an architector to frame a long and vast entry for a little house and of small receit, so for me to use many words in this place, whose substance (you will say) challengeth no worthines, they should be frivolously bestowed, and time purpose-lesse entertained. For

the indifferent readers I cannot but promise equal allowance; for any venom-lipt rough-censuring satires, I keepe sorrow for their woodborne incivility and rustike imperfections; and do arm myselfe with steele-mettald patience to abide the shocke of their injurious toung-oppressions. And so in hast I leave you. RICH. Linche." LINCHE."

Then follows "the images, statues, and pictures of the gods of the auncients, with their severall expositions;" giving an account of the various estimation of images in different countries, extracted from Cornelius Tacitus, Pliny, &c. &c. and the work has occasionally a new head, as Saturn, Janus, Apollo, &c. with whose stories are many of those of the inferior deities intermixed, and several pieces of poetry from Ovid, Claudian, and others.

The first is a description of eternity, "not much unlike that reported by Claudianus, which wee will endeavour (though not in his right colours) thus to compose." Eight octave stanzas.

The four seasons from Ovid in eight lines. Seven lines of Neptune's speech from Homer. The story of Apollo and his sisters, “which Claudianus reporteth to bee so curiously wrought in an upper garment which belonged to Proserpina.. And although in the Italian it carrieth a farre more pleas. ing grace than in the English, yet finding it there set downe in verse, I thought it not irrequisite so to discover it." Three ten-line stanzas.

Diana's Nymphs are described in eight six-line stanzas, a portion of which follows:

"A carelesse crue of young-year'd Nimphs, despising The joyous pleasures and delights of love,