Bellona storming with a fatall rage, Out of th' Infernall Cells calls forth a Page, Fell Discord hight, with whom shee thus doth treat : Doe not thy trembling vaines, dear Discord, sweat Whole stormes of wrath? for that neglected warre Crest-fallen mournes in peace; and that, that barre Of milk-sop Treaties stoppes our raging Armes, Stain'd with the blood of Belgiaes former harmes. Behold that swelling State; observe and looke, How proudly shee hauing the chaines off shooke Of Castiles thraldome, liues in pleasing rest, And roaues from Holland to the farthest West, Spreading her tayle vnto* that Indian Maine, vered by Columbus. Found by Columbus for Gold thirsting Spaine. The West Indies were first disco I long to drinke her blood, and to intombe Her goared carkeise in my gaping wombe: Rather let heapes of men, let millions die, These three places Think'st thou that Turnholts field, where thousands fell in the Netherlands Sir Horace and Sir colneshire came Of slaughtered bodies could my longing quell? My Lord of Oxford, An object for my lust : — - there are the* Veares, from the Ogles of Northumberland. With Romes old Minions; - let their whetted Armes Vpon thy summons take on fresh Alarmes. And since for richer streames of Princes blood, My soule doth long to drinke a crimson flood, Hirduo like, faine would I sucke the vaines Of great Nassaw, which with their mouing straines Who with their power the Spanish pride doe mate. Among the list of those who volunteered their services to join the wars, besides the Earls of Essex and Holland, he thus pleasingly eulogizes one of his own personal friends : Besides this list there were of Voluntiers, Braue numbers, and of brauer martiall Peeres, The author draws some strong pictures of the evils of famine which at times prevailed among the troops, and of the difficulty of procuring supplies of food; and also of the dreadful effects of the severity of the season in the Netherlands, of which the following passages may be taken as examples: Nor is this all wee suffer, famine raignes, The Riders Colon, whose vnsatiate maw Feeds on that flesh, whose liuing backe did beare Himselfe through horrors mouth, through dangers feare. Those high-fed palats, which not long since far'd On Friselands fattest Fowle, Westphalias Lard, Zealandish Salmon, and the wilde Boares haunch, So also in the second book he again alludes near the close to the same cause of suffering among the troops: Moreouer 'twas not the Castilians bent, But where the sworde one pettie squadron slew, Thy bloodie fluxe, thy madding Callenture? Which vow'd itselfe for Belgiaes publicke good. Was't not inough to powre thy malice forth, To plague the warrelike Danes, the sturdie Swecians, Must Wriothsley, Windham, Chester, Halswell dye, But deade they are, whether that angrie nature Or being malignant both to Armes, and Arts, For Pompeyes repulse Fame-eternized, Liues and suruiues, new Honours to attaine At the end of the poem on a separate leaf are twelve lines of verse of no merit, addressed "To my industrious friend Master W. C.," and subscribed "Iohn Dowle Bristol." This leaf appears to have been wanting in the copy described by Mr. Collier, who states the number of leaves in the volume to be thirty-nine, instead of, as they really are, forty. Of William Crosse, the author of the work, we know nothing more than that he was a Somersetshire man, born about 1590, and educated at St. Mary Hall in the University of Oxford, where in 1610 he took the degree of B.A., and in 1613 that of M.A. He shortly after left Oxford, and repaired to the Metropolis, where, according to Wood, "he exercised his talents in history and translation, as he had before done in logic and poetry." He was one of the contributors to the Justa Oxoniensium in 1612, and to the verses published in 1613 on the marriage of the Count Palatine with the eldest daughter of James I. He wrote also A Continuation of the Historie of the Netherlands from 1608 to 1627, Lond. 1627, folio, which had been begun by Grimeston, and a translation of Sallust, published in 1629, 8vo. He appears to have joined the army in the Netherlands as chaplain, and in his poem to have related events of which he was himself a personal eye witness; but how long he remained there, or when he died, we have no further information. Wood was ignorant of the poem now before us, neither is it mentioned in either of the editions of Lowndes, or in Watt. See Wood's Ath. Oxon., vol. ii. p. 481, and Collier's Bibliogr. Catal., vol. i. p. 165. Collation: Sig A two leaves; B to L 2, in fours. Bound in Calf extra, gilt leaves. CROWLEY, (ROBERT.) - The voyce of the laste trumpet, blowen by the seuenth Angel (as is mentioned in the eleuenth of the Apocalips) callyng al estats of men to the ryght path of theyr vocation, wherin are conteyned xii. Lessons to twelue seueral estats of me, which if thei learne and folowe, al shall be wel, and nothing amis. The voyce of one criynge in the deserte. - Luke iii. Imprinted at London by Robert Crowley dwellynge in ¶ Cum priuilegio ad imprimendum solum. blk.lett., sm. 8vo. Among others who contributed to the metrical theology so prevalent in the early days of the Reformation, and who was equally well known as a printer, a puritan and a preacher, was Robert Crowley, a native of Gloucestershire, who became a student at Oxford in 1534, and took his degree of B.A. in 1540 as a demy of Magdalen College, of which he was made a 4 A VOL. II. PART. II. |