A recent inquiry, instituted by the House of Commons into the professors of mendicity in the metropolis, may render the mention of this tract acceptable to some readers of RESTITUTA. The following, relating to the hardships of the poor, is noticed by Sir Frederick Eden.

Greevous Grones for the Poore, done by a well-wisher, &c. By M. S. Lond. 1622.*

S. BRANDON's Epistle of OCTAVIA to ANTONY, 1598.

ဘ

THE following lines from this production combine metrical grace with moral merit.

The more a man excels in wit,

And ill imployes the same;
The more do all men him detest,
That love a vertuous name.

The rose and lyllie cannot long
Content and please the sight;
No golden day could ever scape
The darke ensuing night.

When this so much desired sunne
Shall but displease thy sight,
And all things else shall seem to want
The taste of sweete delight:

• Vide Eden's Hist. ut supr. i. 154.

When all the creatures of the earth

Cannot procure thine ease;

And friends, with showers of vaine-shed teares,
Cannot thy greefe appease :

When tyrannizing paine shall stop
The passage of thy breath,
And thee compel to sweare thyselfe
True servant unto death:

Then shall one vertuous deed impart
More pleasure to thy minde,
Then all the treasures that on earth
Ambitious thoughts can finde.

The well spent time of one short day,
One hour, one moment, then

Shall be more sweet, than all the joyes
Amongst us mortal men.

The following is taken from Antony to Octavia.

A fault doth never with remorse
Our mindes so deeply move,
As when another's guiltlesse life
Our error doth reprove.

O how can he be ever brought

To thinke another true,

Who through the guilt of his owne minde
The other's life doth view?

From ARMIN's Nest of Ninnies, 1608, 4to.

DESCRIPTION OF WILL SOMMERS.

WILL SOMMERS, borne in Shropshire, as some say,
Was brought to Greenwitch on a holy day,
Presented to the King; which Foole disdayn'd
To shake him by the hand, or else asham'd;
How er'e it was, as ancient people say,
With much adoe was won to it that day.
Leane he was, hollow-eyde, as all report,
And stoop he did too; yet in all the Court
Few men were more belov'd then was this Foole,
Whose merry prate kept with the king much rule.
When he was sad, the King and he would rime:
Thus Will exiled sadnesse many a time.

I could describe him as I did the rest,

But in my mind I do not think it best :

My reason this, how er'e I doe descry him,
So many knew him, that I may belye him;
Therefore to please all people, one by one,
I hold it best to let that paines alone.

Onely thus much, he was a poore man's friend,
And helpt the widdow often in the end.
The King would ever graunt what he did crave,
For well he knew Will no exacting knave:

But wisht the King to doe good deeds great store,
Which caus'd the Court to love him more and more.

Description of Jemy Camber, a Scotish fool.

FROM THE SAME.

THIS fat Foole was a Scot borne, and brought up
In Sterlin, twenty miles from Edinborough,
Who being but young, was for the King caught up,

Serv'd this King's father all his life time thorough. A yard high and a nayle, no more his stature, Smooth fac't, fayre spoken, yet unkinde by nature.

Two yards in compasse and a nayle, I reade,

Was he at forty yeeres, since when I heard not
Nor of his life or death, and further heede

Since I ne'er read, I looke not, nor regard not:
But what at that time Jemmy Camber was,
As I have heard I write, and so let passe.

His head was smalle, his hayre long on the same,
One eare was bigger than the other farre ;
His forehead full, his eyes shin'd like a flame;

His nose flat, and his beard small, yet grew square;

His lips but little, and his wit was lesse,

But wide of mouth, few teeth I must confesse.

His middle thicke, as I have said before,

Indifferent thighes and knees, but very short; His legs be square, a foote long and no more; Whose very presence made the King much sport: And a pearle spoone he still wore in his cap, To eate his meate he lov'd, and got by hap.

A pretty little foote, but a big hand

On which he ever wore rings rich and good :

Backward well made as any in that land,

Though thicke, and he did come of gentle bloud:
But of his wisedome ye shall quickly heare,
How this fat Foole was made on every where.

Then follow some anecdotes of him, in prose.

In Ulysses upon Ajax, a tract, written soon after Harington's Metamorphoses of Ajax, 1596, one Rumsey is mentioned as my lord of Pembroke's jester.

T

From Nashe's Life of Jacke Wilton, 1594.

THE following extract from a very scarce publication may supply an additional note to Mr. Dibdin's highly enriched edition of Sir Thomas More's Utopia.

"Quick-witted Sir Thomas Moore travel'd in a cleane contrarie province to grave father Erasmus, who did write a booke in commendation of Folly; for hee, seeing most commonwealths corrupted by ill custome, and that principalities were nothing but great piracies, which, gotten by violence and murther, were maintained by private undermining and bloodshed; that in the chiefest flourishing kingdomes there was no equal or wel divided weale one with another, but a manifest conspiracie of rich men against poore men, procuring their owne unlawfull commodities under the name and interest of the commonwealth; he concluded with himselfe to lay downe a perfect plot of a Commonwealth or Government, which he would intitle his UTOPIA."