ointment on her palm to taint it. She doth not by lying long in bed spoil both her complexion and conditions; she rises with chanticler, her dame's cock, and, at night, makes the lamb her curfew. Her breath is her own, which scents all the year long of June, like a new-made hay-cock: When winter-evenings fall early, sitting at her wheel she sings defiance to the giddy wheel of fortune. She bestows her year's wages, at the next fair, and in choosing her garments, counts no bravery in the world like decency. The garden and the bee hive are all her physic and surgery, and she lives the longer for it. She dares go alone, and unfold the sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none; yet to say the truth she is never alone, but is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones; yet they have their efficacy, in that they are not palled with ensuing idle cogitations. Her dreams are so chaste that she dare tell them; only a Friday's dream is all her superstition. Thus lives she, and all her care is, that she may die in the spring, to have store of flowers stuck upon her winding-sheet.

EXTRACT FROM THE "CHARACTER OF A SAILOR." He sees God's wonders in the deep, but so as they rather appear his playfellows than stirrers of his zeal. In a storm 'tis disputable, whether the noise be most his, or the elements, and which will first leave scolding. Upon any but a wooden horse he cannot ride, he swarms up to his seat as to a sailyard, and cannot sit unless he bear a flag-staff. If ever he be broken to the saddle, 'tis but a voyage still, for he mistakes the bridle for a bowling, and is ever turning his horse tail. He can pray, but tis by rote, not faith, and when he would, he dares not, for his brackish belief hath made that ominous. A rock or quicksand pluck him before he be ripe, or else he is gathered to his friends at Wapping.

These extracts, brief as they are, will probably increase the interest of the reader in the fate of Sir T. Overbury. They will, perhaps, afford an idea of his works, sufficient to indicate that he was capable of elevated sentiments, had studied mankind in the original, and yet had a love of simplicity and inartificial nature. The lively and humorous vein which pervades some of his characters, though it be occasionally alloyed by the taste of the age for punning and conceit, manifestly belonged to a social and mercurial spirit.

The melancholy fate of Sir T. Overbury, his enemies, the favourite of a King, a Countess, whose vices and sorceries, according as lust or vengeance prompted, confirmed the experience of history, that the very few very bad women whom the world has seen, have been the worst of God's creatures, a fitting Confidante for such a mistress, a Mantuan Apothecary of real life, a Lieutenant and Gaoler of those Towers of Julius,

"With many a foul and midnight murder fed"

may be supposed capable of affording a suitable theme for the Tragic Muse. Savage wrote a tragedy called "Overbury," founded upon this history. He composed it in the streets and fields, when he had no lodging, but occasionally stept into a shop to borrow ink and paper in order to transcribe his ideas. He gained 2007. by the piece, a larger sum of money than he

was ever before or after possessed of.

The tragedy was found to create a deep interest in the public more than a century after the tomb had imposed its equal law on the murderers and their victim, the King, the Judges, the Peers, and the dense crowds who, to satisfy curiosity in all that related to these proceedings, flocked to Westminster Hall or peopled the fields of Tyburn.

CHAPTER II.

REPORTS OF THE TRIAL OF THE EARL OF SOMERSET.

SECTION I.

THE REPORT IN HOWELL'S STATE TRIALS.

It is to be regretted that in Hargrave's and in Howell's State Trials, the reader is seldom furnished with any references to the authorities from which the reports of the different trials are taken. The reports of the more ancient trials in these collections were most probably copied from publications prepared under the inspection of the chief Officers of State and of the Law, and sometimes revised by the Sovereign himself. We should not attach much credit to a report published by the Austrian Government of a trial of William Tell, or, by the French Republic, of the trials of Louis XVI. and of Queen Marie Antoinette; but, in our domestic history, we are too apt to surrender our belief to the only extant details of our ancient State Trials, without duly considering by whom and with what motives they were published.

The course of proceeding, in ancient times, for crushing an individual who had excited fears or

kindled hatred in the breast of a Sovereign, was somewhat after the following manner :-Written examinations were taken in secret, and often wrung from prisoners by the agonies of the rack. Such parts of these documents, and such parts only, as were criminative, were read before a Judge removeable at the will of the Crown, and a jury packed for the occasion, who gave their verdict under the terror of fine and imprisonment. Speedily the Government published whatever account of the trials suited their purposes. Subservient Divines were next appointed to " press the consciences," as it was called, of the condemned, in their cells and on the scaffold; and the transaction terminated with another Government brochure, full of dying contrition, and eulogy by the criminal on all who had been instrumental in bringing him to the gallows. In the meanwhile the Star Chamber, with its pillories, its S. L.'s branded on the cheeks with a hot iron, its mutilations of ears, and ruinous fines, prohibited the unauthorized publication of trials, and all free discussion upon them, as amounting to an arraignment of the King's justice.

The right of publishing State Trials, till a comparatively late period, appears to have been restricted to persons appointed for the purpose. Thus, in regard to the trial of Plunket, the titular Primate of Ireland, for high treason, in the 33rd year of Charles II., we have the following imprimatur:-"I do appoint Francis Tyton and Thomas Basset to