Her veines pure azure, or what color's best;
Her skin sleek sattin, or the cygnett's brest;
A Venus, in whom all good parts doe hitt;
More than a second Pallas in her witt.
In stately pace and dazeling majestie
Another Juno; in pure chastety

Spotlesse Diana :-thus is all her feature

Beyond the fashion of a human creature.

Then what, ay mees! what crossing of his armes,

What sighs, what teares, what love-compelling charmes He useth, would enforce a sicke man's smile,

Yet all the paines he takes-is to beguile.

A selfish voluptuary is thus forcibly charactered.

Philautus with his very soule doth love

A wench, as faire as Venus' milck-white dove;
He loves his hunting-horse, his hauke, his hound,
His meat and drink, his morning sleep profound;
He loves to follow each new-fangled fashion;
He loves to hear men speake his commendation;
He loves his lands that bring him store of pelfe,
But above all things he doth love himselfe.
In all this love, noe love of God I finde,
Noe love of goodnesse, but a love confinde
To sensuall delights, to sinne and ease,
A love to others soe himselfe to please,

The Mirror of Martyrs: or the Life and Death of that thrice valiant Capitaine and most godly Martyre, Sir John Old-castle, Knight, Lord Cobham: by John Weever.

London, printed by V. S.* for William Wood. 1601.

12mo,

THE author of this rare publication was probably the same person who appended some English and Latin lines (under the title of Epicrasis and Palinodia) to Buttes's Dyet's Dry Dinner, in 1599; and who in the same year put forth a volume of "Epigrammes, in the oldest cut and newest Fashion;" inscribed to Sir Richard Houghton, Knt. and extracted from by Mr. Beloe in his Anecdotes of Literature, vol. vi. Mr. B. conceives him to be the laborious antiquary who published a folio collection of Ancient Funeral Monuments, or rather of lapidary inscriptions upon the same.t

The present work is dedicated to William Covell, B. D. and spoken of as having been written "some two yeares" before its publication. Lines are prefixed to the author's most honoured friend, Richard Dalton

Valentine Sims may be conjectured.

+ The modern Editor of Phillips's Theatrum Poetarum queries, with much reason, whether this could be the same person? The works of John Weever, he adds, have escaped the notice of Tanner: but in England's Parnassus' are extracts from him.

མ【

of Pelling. Many words of uncommon usage or driginal coinage are scattered throughout the poem. A few stanzas that are most free from this blemish have been extracted. The following two are marked by strong antithesis.

Riches in thraldome no contentment bring;

All lordship's lost, when libertie is gone :

What vaileth it a lion be a king,

Closely shut up within a tower of stone?

Man was made free, and lord o'er every creature,
To be in bondage then, is 'gainst his nature.

Even as the head the bodie should commaund,
And all his thoughts to peace or warfare lead;
So with a mightie monarch doth it stand,
His subjects parts, and he himselfe the head:
But if those parts do grudge and disobay,
Head, bodie, monarch, subjects, all decay.

Valour and courtship, wit and all good parts,
Make, without manners, but a glittering show;
Nature is onely beautified with Arts,

Wit oftentimes is her owne overthrow:

This courtship, valour, wit, and all disgraced,,
Within the minde when virtue is not placed.

The following stanzas are marked by much natural pathos.

Looke, how some tender bleeding-harted father,

When's son hath vow'd a vertue-gaining voyage,

Flint-rock relenting arguments will gather,
All to diswade him from this pilgrimage;

And prayes, intreates-intreates and prayers vaine,
At length considers 'tis for Virtue's gaine.

Yet 'bout his necke he useth kissing charmes,

And downe his bosome raines a shower of teares;
Hugges, culles, and clippes him in his aged armes ;
This thing he doubts, another thing he feares;

Takes leave, turnes back, returnes, intreates anew,
Gives over, weepes,-and last-bids him adew!

Good sense and prudential observation mark the lines which follow.

For treasure lost, to waile or make great sorrow,

J

When whosoever grieves in that degree,

Counting his losse, and afterward his paine,
He of one sorrow maketh sorrowes twaine.

Greefe kept in, oftentimes doth grow more fell; 1 For rivers damm'd, above the bank doe swell,

That seemeth good which present pleasure brings,

Tho't be the roote from whence all evil springs.

Limits there be for every thing beside,

No banks can limit in, the sea of pride.

A circumstantial Life of Sir John Oldcastle was published by Gilpin. See also biographical and other notices of him in Lord Orford's Noble Authors, vol. i. p. 192, last edition.

Memoria Sacra: or Offertures unto the fragrant memory of the right honourable Henry Ireton, (late) Lord Deputy of Ireland. Intended to have been humbly presented at his Funerall. By a Nurschild of Maro. Anagr. (On a pedestal or cenotaph.) Fui Ireton.

MS. 4to.

66

NICHOLAS MURFORD was the author of this (I believe) unprinted production, which consists of fifteen pages in heroic couplets. He also published, in 1650, Fragmenta Poetica: or Miscelanies of poetical musings, moral and divine:" a very scarce little volume. A copy of verses addressed "to the author, M. Nicholas Murford, merchant, Nurs-Child of Maro," unveils the above anagram.

From his printed poems Murford appears to have been a merchant at Lynn, and from his MS. a debtor in the Fleet Prison, (25 Feb. 1651-2) whence he petitions Cromwell for the recovery of 13,000l. expended by his father "for the good of the Commonwealth, Ano 1632, and by the late King's command, who promised and engaged to secure him." The poem is inscribed "To his excellency (my noble patron) the Lord Generall Cromwell," in ten lines two more are appended "to the Reader."

Murford, in his "Fragmenta Poetica," has verses "to his yoak-fellow, from beyond the seas," and an Elegie upon the death of his daughter Amy." These might be cited to prove, if need were, that the author