ART. CLVIII., The Description of a Good Wife: or a rare one amongst Women. London. Printed for Richard Redmer, &c. 1619. Small 8vo.

THIS is understood, from Mr. Malone, to be the performance of Richard Brathwaite; a noted wit, poet and justice of peace, says Wood.* It is superior, as a composition, to the preceding poems: has more perspicuity of design, more skill of method, and more harmony of metre. The argument may serve to explain the author's intention.

"In pursuit of Love's inquest,
Heavy-eyed Musophilus,
Restless, takes himselfe to rest,

And displays his fortunes thus:-
In his sleepe (death's shade) appears
Age, the honour of man's life,
Old in hours as well as years,
Who instructs him in a Wife:
And in brief assayes to show

Who is good, who is not so.

Next, his choice he shews his son,

(Lest he should his choice neglect)

What by him ought to be done

To his Wife, in each respect;
Who, though she should ever fear
To give cause of just offence,
Yet he ought not domineer,

'Cause he has preeminence :
For that conquest's worthy no man,

Where the triumph's o'er a woman."

The following passages are extracted from many pages of Direction for the Choice of a Wife.

*Athen. Oxon. II. 516...

"Chuse one that's wise, yet to herself not so,
Loving to all, familiar to few,

Inwardly fair, though mean to outward show,
Seldom conversing in a publique view;
Nor young, nor old, but has of years enow

To know what huswife means, and such an one
As may supplie the place when thou'rt from home.
Chuse one who makes it greatest of her feare

T' incur suspicion, that esteems her name
Before a world of treasure; that can beare

Affliction with indifference, and thinks shame
A matron's comeliest habit; one, that's deare
In her Creator's sight, and feares to do
Ought that thy selfe will not assent unto.

Chuse one whom thou canst love, not for constraint
Of fortune or of friends; for what are these,
That thou by them shouldst measure thy content?-
No, no; in marriage thou thy selfe must please;
Or every day will be an argument

Of thy succeeding sorrow;-then, be wise,
Carve for thy selfe, yet hear thy friends advise.

Chuse one whose pre election can admit

None save thy selfe, that she can dearly love;

Yet so discreet, as she can silence it

Till th' time her parents shall her choice approve :

For that implies her modestie and wit;

While rash assents, whens'ever they do come,

Are ever seen to bring repentance home."

T. P.

ART. CLIX. A Happy Husband: or Directions for a Maid to chuse her Mate. Together with a Wive's behaviour after Marriage. By Patrick

Hannay, Gent. London: Printed by John Haviland for Nathaniel Butter, &c. 1619. Small 800.

THIS was reprinted with the poems of Hannay, in 1622, of whom a brief notice is given in Vol. III. of Mr. Ellis's Specimens. His present production is not without moral merit or wholesome advice; and may admit of a short extract from the rules laid down for a Wife's behaviour.

"If anger once begin 'twixt man and wife,
If soon not reconcil'd, it turns to strife,
Which still will stir, on every light occasion,

What might have ceas'd in silence; then, persuasion
Of friends will hardly end for every jarre

Is ominous, presaging life-long warre:

And where two join'd do jar, their state decays;
They go not forward who draw divers ways.
Being yoakt together, your first care must be,
That with your Husband you in love agree:
As far from fondness be, as from neglect,
Mixing affection with a staid respect.
Thy own desert must him unto thee bind;
Desert doth make a savage to be kind:

It is an adamantine chaine to knit

Two souls so fast, nought can them disunite."

T. P.

ART. CLX. A Wife not ready made, but bespoken: By Dicus the batchelor; and made up for him by his fellow shepheard Tityrus. In four pastorall eglogues. The Second Edition. London: Printed for A. R. 1653. 800.

THIS is a poetical pleading for and against marriage, in which the opposite advocates display equal ingenuity. The tract has a dedication in verse by R. A. "to his honoured good friend Sir Robert Stapleton," the translator of Juvenal and Musæus. R. A. is Robert Aylet, LLD. who wrote several pieces of a graver cast on spiritual subjects, which were collected into a thick octavo volume, of unfrequent occurrence. The present little work exhibits a few lyric stanzas which invite transcription. They appear under the quaint title of "A Mandee to Grammar-Scholars."

"In time of seed, no cost or labour spare;
Who soweth cheap,

Shall never reap

Things admirable, excellent, and rare.

One hour in youth, well-spent, may go for two:
When we grow old

Our studie's cold;

The things we learn in youth, in age we do.

Look but before, you plainly shall descry

Their youth in sacred Muses' company :

When they that follow worldly vain delights,
In folly spend

What heav'ns do send,

And sit in mists of sad obscured night.

Hence, younger brothers by their studies raise

Which th' elder finding ready built to hand,
Their genius please

In sloth and ease,

Or waste, in pride and riot, goods and land."

Two elegies are added on the deaths of Edmund Alleyn, Esq. of Hatfield in Essex, (son and heir to Sir Edward Alleyn, Bart.) and Mary his wife.

T. P.

ART. CLXI. Eccho, or the Infortunate Lovers, a poem, by James Sherley, Cant. in Art. Bacc. Lond. 1618. 8vo.

Primum hunc Arethusa, nihi concede laborem.

FROM a MS. note to Astle's copy of Wood's Athenæ. The first date to any of Shirley's works, in Wood, is 1629. Wood says, he went from Oxford to Cambridge, where he presumes he took the degrees in Arts. He died 1666.

ART. CLXII. Poems, &c. by James Shirley. Sine aliquâ dementia nullus Phoebus..

London: Printed for Humphrey Mosely, and are to be sold at his shop at the signe of the Princes' Armes in St. Paul's Church yard. 1646. 12mo. pp. 80.

Narcissus, or the Self-Lover. By James Shirley. Hæc Olim. London (as before) 1646. 12mo. pp. 54.

THE history of JAMES SHIRLEY, a fertile dramatic writer, is well known.