age from being overrun with frothy rhymes, as it has been fince, for ordi nary heads never attempted to imitate what they had not a capacity to comprehend; but fuch greater numbers have been fince driven to write for profit, and make a trade of poetry, that it is no wonder fo many of them have been for running down fuch knotty and tedious ways of writing and changing them for what comes uppermoft, or that which may be written as faft as fpoken. Among the faid poems are thefe "Upon the Death of Mr. Hopper the Mafter Huntfman, and a renowned Elegiac Poet of Warwickshire; with an Epitaph upon the fame;" and, "Upon the Death of his dear Friend Mr. George Francklin." Among the Latin ones, "Domini Carei Falklandi Vice-Comitis Epitaphium;" and, " Baronis Capell Epitaphium." (His Elegy on Lord Capell's fon, his fchoolfellow at Winchefter, printed in the Collection pub. lifhed on that occafion, 4to. 1656, which I gave my lord.) There is, of his writing alfo, another ingenious piece of above 220 lines, which has been much admired; it bears this title, "Seffionis mul et Fori Wintonicnfis imperfecta quædam Defcriptio fecundum Ordinem quem audivi et obfervavi poftremo illic verfatus.". This affize at Winton was held at Winton in June 1651, when he was a Winchester fcholar; but it feems this defcription of the trials therein was afterwards turned, by him into verfe. Of his Latin orations compofed at New College, I have feen written alfo in his fine fair Italian hand five or fix, among which two or three were in praife of Wyckham the founder, therefore perhaps anniversaries. Thefe, and many others of this kind, were the products of his juvenile years; but as he grew up he fell into the moft ufeful parts of the mathematics, which made him mafter of numbers, measures, distances of times, places, and computations of all kinds. Sufficient teftimony we have of this in that little learned tract he wrote, called, "Calendarium," explaining all the æras and divifions of time, from a great variety of learned authors; the original MS. whereof is now before us, written in a very fmall but fair and beautiful hand, with tables or diagrams of all the celestial fyftems brought into our view, and calenders in the fame manner; ending with his "Calendarium Juliano Dyonyfiano, Gregorianum," and "Menologium Lydiati five Calenda

rium Reformatum." He wrote other things upon these fubjects, which I fear are now destroyed; but I have not heard of any thing he published before the latter end of Charles II's reign, and then a company of learned gentlemen, among which were Sir Paul Rycaut, Sir Tho. Middleton, Dr. Nalfon, Dr. Blomer, Dr. Brown, Dr. Garth, Mr. Evelyn, Mr. Creech, Mr. Somers, afterwards Lord Chancellor, and many other eminent fcholars, undertook to give the world a tranflation of all Plutarch's Lives*, in the fpace of one year, from the original Greek, which had not been yet done; for Sir Tho. North's tranflation was from the French of Bp. Amiot. Dr. Oldys was one of this fo ciety, and the life he tranflated was Pompey the Great: when the work was finished, Mr. Dryden was chosen to write the Life of the Author, and prefix a Dedication to the Duke of Ormond; which was beautifully pub lifhed by Tonfon, with cuts, and afterwards had feveral editions. There is another little piece of his in print, though he did not publish it himself; for the learned Dr. Tho. Barlow, bp. of Lincoln, dying in 1691, Sir Peter Pett publifhed the next year fome of the papers found in his library, among which was the remarkable cafe of Mr. Cottington and the Lady Kenneday, with the opinions of the civilians upon it, and among others of Dr. Oldys, in about 15 or 20 pages, with the approbation of his fentiments by Sir Rich. Lloyd and Dr. Newton. The fame year was pub lifhed, "The Duke of Norfolk's Charge against Mary his Duchefs, for Adultery with Sir John Germain ; with her Grace's Anfwert." But this and o ther pieces were published in favour of the Duchefs as I remember, and partially fupprefs many of the material arguments and evidences; therefore Dr. Oldys wrote a difcourfe, which he called "The Sum and Subftance of the Arguments which were made at the Bar of the Houfe of Lords, in the Cafe of Divorce between his Grace the Duke and Duchefs of Norfolk;" which I have feen in his own MS. but whether ever printed I know not. This was a most notorious cafe, and depending, or was off and on, about 15 years before it was brought to an abfolute conclufion.

Another great cafe there was, which

alfo had been fome years depending, in the beginning of K. William's reign, and coft fome thousands of pounds, in which Dr. Oldys 'was concerned, and his own brother Thomas's account I have read, but forget the particulars; but it was the famous cafe of Simony against Dr. John Cawley and Dr. Wm. Howell, concerning the archdeaconry of Lincoln; the former of which fet the cafe in fuch a light, as to make it a queftion in the pamphlet he published of it, whether letting an ecclefiaftical jurifdiction to a lay furrogate, under a yearly penfion referved out of the profits, be fimoniacal but in the learned tracts written upon this head both by Dr. William and his brother Dr. Tho'mas Oldys, who had alfo the grant of that archdeaconry, there are other circumitances, as I remember, that appear against the faid perfons charged, but whether they were ever printed I know not, having only feen them long fince in the MSS. which are now loft. W. O.

MR. URBAN,

THE following remarks on Atter. bury's Correfpondence, &c. are communicated by

A CONSTANT READER. Vol. I. In fome of the first Letters fome words are very unclaffically placed and difpofed. His Letters on the Quakers' bill about oaths difplay much more acal than candour, and great illiberality both of fentiment and expreffion. And laftly, if the Letters afcribed to him, and vice versa, be genuine, with what propriety does the Editor intimate that the Bishop had been either mifreprefented or ill-ufed?

Of the famous Obadiah Walker, D. D. (p.....) I remember to have heard this anecdote above 50 years ago. My grandmother, I believe, ufed to fing it instead of Lullabellero. It was faid to have been occafioned (and in erath I do not think it very unlikely) by fomebody who fufpected his religion Jooking through the key hole of his ftudy-door, and fecing him on his knees betore an image of the Virgin Mary. "O rare Obadiah!

Sing Ave Maria!

Sing on till the Virgin replies:

But if ever the hear you,"

Then I am not near you,

Nor your faith a farrage of lies."

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Plutarch is to extremely dull," &c. When great wits jump, I think ittle

ones may join. It feems as if Mr. Boyle and M. de Voltaire had the fame fentiments with refpect to Plutarch. And yet, if I do not mistake, the prefent eminent Mr. Knox of Tunbridge highly recommends him.

P. 25. "I lofe no conversation by being deaf in this place [Lichfield]. which is just as well stocked with good manners and polite converfation, as your friend Dr. Wake is with deep learning, folid fenfe, and the knack of writing intelligible English !"

Is this remark a fneer, or what is it? I thought Abp. Wake had always been efteemed a man of learning and good fenfe, only mixed with a little of the Baotian vivacity. Indeed, towards his latter end he feems to have grown a litthe comatofe, or he would never have given the great living of W—— to an old prefbyterian apothecary, who at fourfcore, by his own confession, was a glutton.

P. 30. "I am of opinion, that, should that wife man your Abp. of Canterbury fee one rife from the dead, he would,

in a day or two afterwards, impute it to nothing but a dream, or, it may be, to the indigested fumes that arose from his eating too many black puddings over-night."

Did Abp. Tenifon merit this very coarse infinuation from any one, and efpecially from a nobleman [Lord Stanhope], who feems to have inftilled into his fon fo much of the tincture of the Graces?

P. 44. (note) After the Queen's deceafe, Atterbury vehemently urged his friends to proclaim the Pretender; and on their refufal, upbraided them for their timidity with many oaths; for he was accuftomed to fwear on any strong provocation. Dr. WARTON.

If this note be well founded, Atterbury was as bad a moralift as he was a fubject, only with this difference, that his oaths were the infirmity of paffion, his politics the refult of his principles. In either cafe, if he had not been banifhed from his country, he should have hid himself in it.

P. 46. Dr. Younger, K. George I's little dean, was removed out of the way, and faid to be dead, by the minifters.

From this one would think that prime 'ministers, like our domestic servants, only changed names; fo that Walpole, Pelham, North, &c. were the fame identics, only under different appellations. But if the nation did not suffer,

the

the prince would very feldom merit compaffion.

P.59. "Mr. Chambers of Dartford" I remember at the vifitation of Bp. Wilcocks in 1745. He was then old, fullen, and fuperb. And I alfo remember a melancholy reflection on the memory of Mr. Clough of Afhford” (Prior's godfon), by a man who has Tome reafon to fay of every one, rebus alienis verfatus.

P. 63. Gay's profe narrative is affecting, and his epitaph on the two lovers is both fimple and majestic. Pope's on the fame fubject feems rather too fabricated and ftudied. Lady Wortley's letter is ludicrous and affected, and her compofition in the poetry as void of English delicacy as it is of Mahometan gravity. As to the Bishop's criticifm on the former, it is trite, laboured, and fantaftic. If any one elfe had written

this critique, it would require no great fagacity to know in what clafs Pope would have placed him.

P. 79. Abp. Herring's remark on Atterbury is a very good one, and reflects no fmall degree of honour on his Grace's judgement and penetration. Such fpirits as Atterbury's will always afford matter for criticifm; and had he lived Curia Auguftina, Horace, I am perfuaded, would have ranked him with his Soci Ambubaiarum.

P. 83. I believe he was more than "a dabbler in that kind of politics." I look upon him to have been, in the moft poignant fenfe, a ducker and a diver. Its being hard to trace him to his hole was owing to that in him of a fox, who, though taken, conccals his

haunt.

P. 87. "The Effay on the Character of läpis in Virgil" may be very inge nious, polite, and claffical, but at the fame time it has all the prevailing marks of conjectural fancy and vanity, and the very hiftory itself is ill-fuited to the epifcopal character, though it feemed to fuit the bishop's.

P 91. Among our credenda, did they believe that the abdicated Pretender was heir to the British crown? What a tale of the fairies is here! The teft-act is an opprobrium to this day; and even the toleration-act is only a bandage to fhew where the limb has been dislocated. P. 93. l. 15. • Venners' fhould be Venning.'

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P. 404. 1. 5. "With thee would live, with thee would die." This very thought on a much more

deferving fubject is finely expreffed by one, who (I believe) never fo much as heard of Horace, an old Welch bard, whofe literal tranflation from his native guttural runs thus:

"Let the world to them be given, "Who the world prefer to heaven;

"But though all fhould me forfake,

1

"Friends, and health, and comfort take; Yet would I contented be, 誓 "With no other friend than THEE," So we fee, that while Nature and

Paffion are eternal," ¡Common Senfe and its fenfations are univerfal.

The infcription alluded to in Gent. Mag. p. 190, was for Eliz. Moore (wife to Thomas Moore, gent. Libra-, rian of this church [Westminster abbey])," who died in 1720.

(To be continued.)

MR. URBAN,

M Magazine and in fome other pubMUCH having been faid, in your

lications, about the MSS. of the late Mr. Cole, I fend, for the amusement of your readers, a fpecimen of his panegy'rical, and another of his fatirical remarks on' authors; the former tranfcribed from the blank leaves of❝A fhort and true Account of the Inquifition and its Proceedings, as it is practifed in Italy, fet forth in fome particular Cafes. Whereunto is added, An Extract out of an authentick Book of Legends of the Roman Church. By Hierom "Bartholomew Piazza, an Italian born; formerly a Lector of Philofophy and Divinity, and one of the Delegate Judges of that Court, and now by the Grace of God, a Convert to the Church of England. London: printed by Wm. Bowyer, 1722;" the latter from the Life of the famous Roger de Wefeham, by your worthy correfpondent Mr. Pegge.

ACCOUNT OF THE INQUISITION.

"The author of this book was a poor harmleis and inoffenfive man, who taught the Italian and French languages for many years at Cambridge, where he died about 1745, and was buried in the chancel of St. Andrew's church there, myfelf (having been his fcholar), with feveral others of his univerfity pupils, attending his funeral, and fupporting his pall. He had been a Dominican Friar, and I remember his once thewing me his letters of priests orders: but on his coming to England, to fhew himfelf a true convert, he forgot his vows and took a wife, a French Huguenot

woman,

woman, by whom he had a fon and two daughters, of men and women's eftate at their father's death; which was very fudden, he having been with me not above two days before I was defired by his widow. to attend his funeral from his house close to the garden-wall of Emanuel College, formerly the garden-wall of the Cambridge Dominicans, and the laft houfe but one as you go out of Cambridge to Gogmagog Hills. He was always very poor and neceffitous, and had been often publicly relieved by the univerfity, and oftener by the private colleges and his fcholars, who were the more generous to him as he always be haved himself decently and foberly, and was conftantly clean and neat, though in indigent circumstances. He wanted to get his fon taken into our college as a poor fcholar; and I once applied to our provolt, Dr. Snape, for him, but Mr. Piazza had not, upon examination, fufficiently grounded his fon in the Latin language for his admiffion; and before he was better qualified his father died, and the family went away from Cambridge. I remember the widow applied to me to write to a brother of her hufband, who was a canon of a church, I think, in Aleffandria della Eaglia, where I know this author was born; though Mr. Piazza never told me of him, notwithstanding he used to frequent me very much. The letter was to tell him of his brother's death, and miferable circumftances of his family, in order to get fome remittances for their fupport. What was the effect I never heard. Though Mr. Piazza was looked upon as an honest man, yet he was never efteemed as one of abilities, even in the two modern languages he taught."

LIFE OF WESEHAM.

"It is ominous to stumble at the threshold; and thus attempting an over great precision may poffibly lead us into as great mistakes. In the firft place, Mr. Willis, at the page cited, vol. 1. p. 387, does not fay that Bp. Weicham was archdeacon of Oxford; though in a MS. note by him he has added it: in the next place, in a MS. Lift of the Archdeacons of Rochefter by the fame Gensleman, and by me tranfcribed into my 28th Volume of MS, Collections, p. 53, he puts down Roger de Weteham as Archdeacon of Rochefter in 1238, and religning the fame in 1245 when he was made Bishop, when Wm. de Thriplow fucceeded; and below he makes Roger Weteshat Archdeacon in 1304: fo

that it is evident. he met with two perfons of that name in that dignity.

·P. 23. 1. 16., Whatever the MS. here quoted may fay, Mr. Willis in a MS, note has put down Rob. de Marifco as first prebendary 1245; for which he quotes Prynne's Collect. vol. II. p. 625. So that Mr. Willis's want of precifion ought in juftice to be afcribed to the multiplicity of his fubjects; which yet we fee he was able to reduce to a greater exactnefs as occafion offered; as appears from numberlefs corrections and additions entered by himself on the margins of his own copies of fuch books as he had published; all which I have enter ed into the margins of my copies from the MSS. themfelves. Therefore triumphing over fuch mistakes, especially when the fubject was fo confined as a fingle Life, and a few that depended on it, is neither candid nor liberal, and, in this cafe, is triumphing before the victory: for Mr. Willis had corrected his WM. COLE."

own error.

4143

I

For the PICTURE GALLERY. MR. URBAN, Stamford, Mar. 20. Have juft feen an old painting of Elizabeth the Queen of Henry VII. the last of the Houfe of York, and as fuch the bears a white rofe in one hand. Family tradition fays, that this picture was faved from the fire that burned Whitehall. It is painted on oak, and thews 22 inches by 17, in a broad black worm-eaten frame; perhaps the original. The painting fhews half her waift, and both hands; the colours are pretty fresh, though I do not think the picture has ever been cleaned: the has a crimfon drapery from her neck downward, the back part of her head-drefs is black, the fore part is faced with a border of a triangular form, ftudded with pearls, juft fuch as I have feen the copperplates of Anna Bullen.

Over her head in one line, in yellow capitals, are the words, "Elizabeth Regina, Mater Henrici Octavi." She feems to have great mildness in her countenance, which is blemished in two places about the fize of a large pin's head. Yours, &c. J. SEYMOUR.

the country people were doing juftice in that fummary way for which an English mob is fo famous, though I was at the fame time furprised to hear them finging, as I thought, a pfalm, fince I never knew that to be a part of the form of fuch judicial proceedings. I foon, however, was informed of my error, and learned that it being the 2d Monday after Eafter, the people of the parish were affembled, according to an annual cuftom (the origin of which no one could tell me), to keep a revel. One of the parish is, it feems, on the above-men tioned day, elected mayor, and carried with great ftate, colours flying, drums beating, men, women, and children fhouting, to a particular horfepond, in which his worship is placed, feated in an arm-chair; a fong is then given out line by line by the clerk, and fung with great gravity by the furrounding crowd. The Lord Mayor of Randwic's Song.

1.

WHEN Archelus began to fpin,
And Pollo wrought upon a loom;
Our trade to flourish did begin,
Tho' Confcience went to felling broom.

2.

Had Helen then fat carding wool,
Whose beauteous face did caufe much Arife,
She had not fure broke through that rule
Which caus'd fo many to lose their lives.
3.

Had too Helen's wanton love
Earen his food with fweet content,
He had not then difturb'd the peace,
When he to Greece a wooing went.

When princes fons kept sheep in field,
And queens made cakes with oaten flour,
And men to lucre did not yield,
Which brought good cheer to every bower.
5.

But when the giants huge and high,
Did fight with fpears like weaver's beams ;
And men in iron beds did lie,

Which brought the poor to hard extremes & 6.

When cedar trees were grown fo rife,
And pretty birds did fing on high;
Then weavers liv'd more void of ftrife,
Than princes of great dignity.

7.

Then David with a fling and ftone,
Not fearing great Goliah's ftrength,
He pierc'd his brains, and broke his bones,
Tho' he was nine feet and a fpan in length.

CHORUS.

Let love and friendship still agree
To hold the bonds of amity.

The inftant it is finished the mayor breaks the peace by throwing water in the face of his attendants. Upon this

much confufion enfues; his worship's perfon is however confidered as facred, and he is generally the only man who efcapes being thoroughly fouced. The reft of that day, and often of the week, is devoted to riot and drunkenness. The county magiftrates have endeavoured, but in vain, to put a stop to this prac tice. Can any of your correfpondents inform me of the origin of this cuftom, and whether there exifts the like in any other place in England ?

The fong was given me by the clerk of the parish, who faid it had never been written before. It wants, you obferve, fome explanation; more indeed than I imagine any one will think it worth their while to bestow upon it.

Yours, &c.

H.

Gent. Mag. July 1783, p. 551. ↑ have little doubt but that the paffage in the fabulous Life of Hercules, which perplexes T. Row, owes its origin to a fimilar fact occurring in the Hiftory of Mofes, who opened the rock, and the waters flowed out." The voice probably refers to the bubbling noise of the water iffuing from the fiffure. T. Row knows on how flight foundation the Ancients raised their most extrava gant fables. Annius, in his Commentary on Berofus de regibus Affyriorum, has these words, " Rogatus Hercules a Principibus Thufcis ut vires fuas oftenderet, clavâ ferreâ jactâ, illis Lacum Cyminium effodit:" and we find from Virgil, that there was a mountain, as well as lake, of that name: "Cimini cum monte lacum." En. VII. 697. See Servius in loc. One quotation more, and I have done. "Pyræchmes Eubenfium Rex bellum in Bæotos geffit. Hunc Hercules etiamnum adolefcens vicit, pullifque equi alligatum in duas partes difcerpfit, infepultumque abjecit. Locus pulli Pyrachmæ dicitur. Situs eft ad flumen Herculeum, et binnitum equis bibentibus edit Plutarch, in parall. ex interpret. Xulandri. See too the fame author in Libello difput. effe cum princip.

P. 552. Tui favoris, &c. will give me leave to remind him that the Verfes, p. 462 of your Magazine for June, were quoted merely as defcriptive of God.

Row