TRIST. 1.

ART. IX. Sonnets to the fairest Cal. Parve, nec invideo, sine me liber ibis ad illam, Hei mihi quod domino non licet irė tuo. London. Printed by Adam Islip for W. P. 1594. 4to.

W. P. for whom these sonnets are said to have been printed, was W. Percy, according to his preface, but whether any relative to the Percies of Northumberland, and to the venerable editor of our Poetical Reliques, it may not be very practicable to ascertain. The following is his apologetical address

"To the Reader.

"Courteous reader, whereas I was fullie determined to have concealed my Sonnets, as things privie to my selfe; yet, of courtesie, having lent them to some, they were secretlie committed to the presse, and almost finished, before it came to my knowledge. Wherefore, making (as they say) a vertue of necessitie, I did deeme it most convenient to præpose mine epistle, onely to beseech you to account of them as of toyes and amorous devises, and ere long I will impart unto the world another poeme, which shall be more fruitfull and ponderous. In the meane while, I commit these as a pledge unto your indifferent censures. London, 1594. W. PERCY."

Henry 9th Earl of Northumberland, who was imprisoned on account of the Gunpowder Plot, had a brother William Percy, whom Anth. Wood records to have been a man of learning and genius, and to have died single at Oxford, 1648. Coll. Peer. II. 407. G. Garrard, in a letter to Lord Strafford, 1638, speaks of him as "living obscurely in Ox.ord, and drinking nothing but ale." Strafford Letters, II. 168. EDITOR.

His promised poem never seems to have been produced, nor will the mere poetical reader regret its nonappearance, from the specimen here given, which derives its almost only value from being considered as an unique copy. The sonnets are twenty in number, and the-e are terminated by a madrigal "to Parthenophil upon his Laya and Parthenophe," which Parthenophil may possibly be Barnabe Barnes, whose equally rare collection of sonnets shall be noticed on a future occasion.

The following are not the most contemptible samples of Percy's Sonnettings.

SON. XVIII.

"I cannot conquer and be conquered;
Then whole my selfe I yeeld unto thy favor;
Behold my thoughts flote in an ocean battered,
To be cast off, or wafted to thine harbor:
If of the same thou wilt then take acceptance,
Stretch out thy fairest hand as flag of peace;
If not, no longer keepe us in attendance,
But all at once thy firie shafts release.

If thus I die, an honest cause of love

Will of my fates the rigor mittigate;
Those gratious eyne, which will a Tartar move,
Will prove my case the lesse unfortunate:
Altho' my friends may rue my chaunce for ay,
It will be said-he dyde for Cælia."

* Barnes signs Parthenophil and Parthenope to a couple of sonnets in dispraise of Nash, nted with Pierce's Supererogation by Gab. Harvey, 1593 Oldys, in his MS. notes on Langbaine, says that Barnes published Parthenophil and Parthenope after 1591.

SON.

SON. XX.

"Receave these writs, my sweet and dearest frend,
The livelie patterns of my livelesse bodie,
Where thou shalt find, in hebon pictures pen'd,
How I was meeke, but thou extr amlie blodie.
I'le walke forlorne along the willow shades

Alone, complaining of a ruthlesse dame;
Where ere I passe, the rocks, the hilles, the glades,
In pittious yelles, shall sound her cruell name.
There I will waile the lot which fortune sent me,
And make my mones unto the savage eares;
The remnant of the daies which Nature lent me,

Ile spend them all, conceal'd, in ceaselesse teares.
Since unkind fates permit me not t' enjoy her,
No more (burst eyes!) I mean for to annoy her."

T. P.

ART. X, Foure Paradoxes: of Arte, of Lawe, of Warre, of Service. By T. S.

Cupias quodcunque necesse est.

At London Printed for Thomas Bushell. 1602. Small 840. 24 leaves.

These paradoxes are poetical, and the only copy I have seen was formerly Major Pearson's. The name of the author is revealed by the following dedication,

"To the most honorable and more vertuous Lady, the Ladie Helena, Marquesse of Northampton.

"MADAM,

"Your friends send you jewelles; your tenants, the fruit of their store; and your servants, many good wishes; all of them, in their kinde, being testimonies of their loves and dueties. I, that am too poore to present you with the two former; and too ambitious, to supply my wants with the latter, have presumed in another manner to expresse my humilitie; sending you, not the riches of my exterior fortunes, but the fruite and issue of my braine, in the begetting whereof I wasted much pretious time. Your Honor, in accepting it, shall expresse more true bounty, than I in writing can expresse duety, though it be all the scope I levell at. The Lord have you in his protection, and send you many happy new-yeeres!

"Your duetifull and devoted servant,

"THOMAS SCOTT."

This little volume exhibits an elegant specimen of minute typography: but its merits are not referable to the printer alone. There is much manly observation, forcible truth, apt simile, and moral pith in the poem itself; and it leaves a lingering desire upon the mind, to obtain some knowledge of a writer, whose meritorious production was unheralded by any contemporary verse-man, and whose name remains unrecorded by any poetical biographer. The following is his spirited introduction, divested of its obsolete orthography,

"Nor base intrusion, nor the hope of gain,

Nor adulation, nor vain-glorious pride,

Nor th' idle fancy of a fuming brain,

Nor any ill affected cause beside,

Begat

Begat these lines; but true respective * love,
Which all good meanings to one end doth move.

Nor think these rhymes scum'd from the froth of wit,
Nor loosely bound; but written with advise, †
When my sad soul did in true judgment sit

About th' invention of some rare devise;
When contemplation fill'd my flowing brain,
And serious study did my sense restrain.

Even then I wrote these lines, which shall bewray
The faithful meaning of my constant soul,
Which time nor obvious chance shall wear away,
Nor fate convert, nor sovereignty controul;

For this is all the certainty I find

No power can alter a resolved mind."

The entire poem is constructed in the same stanza, and divided into four portions, which bear these appropriate mottos.

"Artes irritamenta malorum.

Juris injuria.

Bellum perniciosissimum.

Omnis est misera servitus."

Each portion contains 18 stanzas, and three additional ones close the whole, which the poet styles his "Resolution." The following selections will indicate the divisions of subject whence they are taken.

"Farewell, uncertain ART! whose deepest skill

Begets dissentions and ambiguous strite,

When, like a windy bladder, thou dost fill

The brain with groundless hopes and shades of life;

* i. e. respectful, considerate, cautionary.

With deliberation.

Betray, disclose, discover.

When