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 rose and lyllie cannot long When this so much desired sunne • 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, When tyrannizing paine shall stop Then shall one vertuous deed impart The well spent time of one short day, Shall be more sweet, than all the joyes The following is taken from Antony to Octavia. A fault doth never with remorse O how can he be ever brought To thinke another true, Who through the guilt of his owne minde From ARMIN's Nest of Ninnies, 1608, 4to. DESCRIPTION OF WILL SOMMERS. WILL SOMMERS, borne in Shropshire, as some say, 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, Onely thus much, he was a poore man's friend, But wisht the King to doe good deeds great store, Description of Jemy Camber, a Scotish fool. FROM THE SAME. THIS fat Foole was a Scot borne, and brought 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 Since I ne'er read, I looke not, nor regard not: His head was smalle, his hayre long on the same, 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: 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." |