sumed Elliot), and without having my interest further excited, I will candidly say that few things would give me more pleasure than to have my ignorance removed upon these subjects: a new mine will thus be opened to me.

That you will find much dross mixed with the native ore you will be prepared to expect (rejoined Bourne), but as I said before, the gratification of these researches is not confined to poetry only-antiquities, manners, language, modes of thinking, the condition and progress of the human mind under particular circumstances, will be included, and we shall find in almost every old book something to illustrate one or other of these points. The biography of literary men will also frequently be introduced, and trifling particulars rise into importance in proportion to the eminence of the individual to whom they relate. You will not therefore expect that our inquiries will be confined only to poetry, though that will be the leading subject.

Certainly not (replied Elliot), I should be sorry if they were at the same time I cannot help expressing the contempt I feel, in common with many others, for absolute relics; I mean those bookrarities, the value of which consists only in their extreme scarcity: into these I hope you do not intend to deviate-I have no patience when I see men of taste and knowledge wasting their time upon that

écrivaillerie, which Montaigne says is always quelque symptome d'un siècle débordé; which, perhaps, had some little interest at the time it was published, but now has entirely lost it.

On that score you will have little to complain of (answered Bourne), though I give you fair warning that you must take your chance.

Besides (said Morton), we ought to recollect that some rare tracts that have no immediate interest are often not unimportant as illustrating the state of feeling, opinion, or society at the time they were written. I agree with you thus far, that mere rarity, unconnected with all other claims to notice, ought never to attract the attention of any but an unredeemable book-worm-such a man as Fuller talks of in his Worthies, when he says, that he "lives like a moth in a library, not being better for the books, but the books the worse for him, which he constantly only soils with his fingers."

The party was now approaching the landingplace, for they had reached Mortlake before they were aware; yet the latter part of their voyage would have been shorter had not the stream been against them. The three friends immediately proceeded to Bourne's house, and it is only necessary to add that in the course of the evening it was agreed, as the weather was intolerably hot at this season, that they should spend the middle of the day in the

library (if so small but choice a collection of books might be so termed), while the mornings and even→ ings were devoted to other occupations and amusements among the last was that most picturesque of all enjoyments, sailing, to which Bourne, Elliot, and Morton, had all a very strong partiality.

NOTES AND CORRECTIONS.

VOL. I.

P. viii. 1. 9. THE mention of the name of Robert Greene gives me an opportunity of correcting a mistake which has crept into all the lists of his productions, and particularly into that of Mr. Haslewood, in his Cens. Lit. (VIII. 387, 1st Edit.). He is not the author of "The ground work of Cony-catching, 1591," there introduced, for that is nothing more than a reprint of Harman's "Caveat for Common Cursetors," with two preliminary pages, and an address by the printer, John Danter, to the reader. In the introductory matter it is expressly acknowledged to be the work of "Maister Harman:" the title is this, "The Groundworke of Conny-catching; the manner of their Pedlers French and the meanes to vnderstand the same, with the cunning slights of the Counterfeit Cranke," &c. From hence we learn also that Harman was "a Justice of Peace." In the same way Greene's "Ghost haunting Conny-catchers" is not by Robt. Greene, but by S. R., who expressly refers to Greene's "notable discovery," and his "last part of Conny-catching," stating in a sonnet prefixed,

"I tell not I, what forraine men haue done,

But follow that which others have begun."

P. 5, 1. 18. It is necessary to state, that the whole of this conversation was written very long before the late reprint at the Lee Priory Press of Fitzgeffrey's poem on Sir F. Drake.

P. 13, 1. 25. Some extracts from Barnabe Barnes's "Parthenophil and Parthenophe," may be found in Beloe's " Anecdotes of Literature and scarce Books."

P. 15, 1. 16. The following may be taken as a short specimen of the most interesting portion of B. Barnes's "Four Books of Offices," 1606. The author has been alluding to the gradual growth and improvement of the English language under Chaucer, Gower, and Lidgate, and the writers of old rhymes and romances: he afterwards proceeds thus: "But since the dayes of blessed Queene Eliza

beth (whose happie reigne is as the dayes of heauen) what seas of paper haue been alwayes furthering polishing and encreasing this honourable enterprise-First by that holy Bibles more exquisite and polite translation than before: after by the bookes of Monuments, Chronicles, Treatises, and Translations, Theological and humane, by most ingenious Poets, and other Poeticall pamphlets, alwayes with studious addition and curious composition, words phrases and sentences." From thence he goes on to particularise the merits of Sir P. Sidney, "that divine starre of sweete wit and inuention," and to prove the obligations of the language to his pen, as producing a " rich vintage of English knowledge.'

P. 19, 1. 13. In following the authority of Mr. T. Park in the Brit. Bibl. (II. 120), an error has been committed in assigning some lines before T. Storer's "Cardinal Wolsey" to Fitzgeffrey, which belong, in fact, to a person signing himself Johannes Sprint.

P. 66, 1. 7. It was omitted to be stated, when speaking of Whetstone's very rare tract on the death of Sir P. Sidney, where Spenser's "Shepherd's Calendar" is unaccountably attributed to Sidney, that the author, in an address prefixed, excuses the delay that had taken place, and mentions one advantage arising from it, that he had been able to avoid the errors "some hasty writers commit for lacke of true instruction."

P. 77, 1. 16. Mrs. Anna Hume's translation of Petrarch's Triumphs was printed at Edinburgh in 1644. P. 97, l. 14. For 66

lost."

Twelfth Night," read "Loves Labour

P. 113, 1. 28. Dele " immediately."

P. 118, 1. 11. Among the writers of undramatic blank verse, T. Campion might have been included; but I did not extract the specimen he has given in his "Observations in the Art of English Poesie," 1602, because that tract has been recently and faithfully reprinted.

P. 128, 1. 26. Restituta ought to have been mentioned as containing the specimens of Marlow's translation of Lucan.

P. 134, 1. 23. The name of Auberon given to the Fairy King, confirms, in some degree, the pleasing etymology from the French word Aube, day-break.

P. 155, 1. 18. Even down to 1640 Dr. Donne, in some verses before John Tatham's "Fancies Theatre," is called Dun.

P. 161. 1. 21. When Mr. Fry printed, in 1814, his "Pieces of Ancient Poetry" from MS., he was not aware that his first song was that of Lord Essex in Douland's " Musical Banquet," 1610, with certain corruptions, to which MS. transcripts are so liable. His two last specimens in Sect. I. are literally copied from Lodge's "Rosalynd," with variations almost ad lib.

P. 166, 1. 26 For " Portugal" read "Rome."

P. 189, 1. 7. Every body knows what a contest took place about