one Thomas Bancroft, as this poet tells us in his Epigrams, 4to. 1639: which Bancroft was of Swarston in Derbyshire, where his father and mother were buried, on whom he has an epitaph also, and an enigma on his birth-place. Shirley died in the parish of St. Giles's in the Fields, having been burnt out of his habitation in Fleet-street, in the great fire 1666." "In his Dramatic Interlude, The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses for the armour of Achilles, is the fine song, which old Bowman used to sing to K. Charles, and which he has often sung to me. "The glories of our birth and state," &c. and therein also the fine lines, "Your heads must come To the cold tomb! Only the actions of the just Smell sweet, and blossom in their dust."* ART. CLXIII. Pleasure's Vision; with Desert's Complaint: and a Short Dialogue of a Woman's properties, betweene an old man and a young. By Arthur Newman, of the Middle Temple, Gent. London, printed by G. E. for Thomas Bayly, and are to be sold at his shop in the middle-row in Holbourne, neere Staple Inne. 1619. 12mo. An epistle dedicatory is inscribed to the right worshipfull and truly worthy Sir George Newman, Knight, and five copies of commendatory verses are * See it in Percy's Reliques; and in Ellis's Specimens, III. 106 signatured, Marchadine Hunnis, Jo. Cookes, T. More, Pe. Lower, and G. Parre. Of ARTHUR NEWMAN no particulars appear to be known; but he is a writer who, from the brevity rather than the inferiority of his productions, may be deemed a minor poet. His verses are moral, harmonious, and pleasing; as will be shewn by the opening of Desert's Complaint. "Late, wand'ring by a valley side Where weeping streames did sadly glide, A man whose griefes my griefe did breed; Upon his brow ingraven was; And coldly on cold earth he lay, To breath forth helples sighes, and then True worth of what it had by merit. "Where shall I runne? where shall I fly? The world doth give what's due to me; There dull and earthly minds require Can I, whom Fate hath seem'd t' ordaine And all fraile outwards but to slight, "Tis in a simple rusticke's cell.” The "dialogue of a Woman's properties," is conducted much after the plan of Sir John Davis's Contention between a Wife, a Widow, and a Maid; printed in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, 1611.* T. P. ART. CLXIV.—The Curtaine Drawer of the World, or the Chamberlaine of that great Inne of Iniquity, where Vice in a rich embroidered gowne of veluet, rides a horse-backe like a Judge, and Vertue, in a thrid-bare cloake, full of patches goes a foote like a drudge. Where he that hath most money may best merry, and he that hath none at all wants a friend he shal daily have cause to remember to grieue for. By W. Parks, Gentleman, and sometimes Student in Barnard's Inne. Trahit sua quemq; voluptas, Attamen nocet empta dolore. be London, printed for Leonard Becket, and are to be sold at the Temple, neere to the Church, 1612. 4to. pp. 62. * See Censura, Vol. I. p. 164, This volume has an address" to the reader," of 158 lines; then head-title "to this waxing, waning world, that sometimes hath bene better. To the riotous distempered, prodigious generation of her children, that never were worse. The world to her children." The work is interspersed with several pieces of poetry, and at the end "a meditation of the vanity of all vanity, shewing they are least wise that most use it," in heroic verse, of near seven pages. ART. CLXV.-Justa Funcbria Ptolemæi Oxoniensis, Thomæ Bodleii Equitis aurati, celebrata in Academia Oxoniensi. Mensis Martii 29, 1613. 4to. Oxon. 1613. From this copious collection of funereal verses the five following copies are transcribed. The first, from the pen of Laud, who was afterwards archbishop of Canterbury; the second, third, and fourth, from that of Robert Burton, who wrote the Anatomy of Melancholy; and the fifth, in Greek, from the pen of Isaac Casaubon. "Si sint vivaces hominum monumenta libelli, Nomine si dignos Musa perire vetet: Quàm famæ, (BODLEIE) tuæ, monumenta supersunt Ergo mortalis quod vitæ fata negârunt, Quam dignus fueris non potuisse mori. GUIL. LAUD, Sac. Theol. Doct.& Coll. Johan Præses." |