ANNE, COUNTESS OF OXFORD,

died 1588,

Was the eldest daughter of Lord Burleigh. At the age of fifteen, she married Edward Vere, earl of Oxford. In Soothern's Diana, are "Foure Epytaphes made by the countes of Oxenford, after the death of her young sonne, the lord Bulbecke, &c." The following is one of them; and Mr. Park (who has reprinted it in his edition of the R. and N. authors,) justly observes, that "it so much resembles the style of Soothern, that it may almost be suspected of being tricked out by his incomprehensible pen."

HAD with moorning the gods left their willes undon,

They had not so soone herited such a soule: Or if the mouth Tyme did not glotten up all, Nor I, nor the world, were depriv'd of my sonne, Whose brest Venus, with a face dolefull and milde,

Dooth wash with golden teares, inveying the

skies;

And when the water of the goddesses eyes

Makes almost alive the marble of my childe;

One byds her leave styll her dollor so extreme, Telling her it is not her young sonne Papheme!

To which she makes aunswer, with a voice inflamed,

(Feeling therewith her venime to be more bitter)

As I was of Cupid, even so of it, mother; And a woman's last chylde is the most beloved."

QUEEN ELIZABETH,

Born 1533, died 1603.

The desire of shining as a poetess was one of the weaknesses of this illustrious queen; and her vanity, no doubt, made her regard as tributes justly paid, the extravagant praises, which the courtiers, and writers of her age, lavished on her royal ditties. With the exception of her translation of the speech of the

Chorus in the second act of the Hercules Etous of Seneca, (a long and tedious piece of fustian in blank verse, which is printed in Park's edition of Walpole's R. and N. authors,) the reader is here presented with the entire poetical remains of the "Flower of Troynovant;" they have never, I believe, been collected till

now..

Verses written with Charcoal on a Shutter, at Woodstock.

[Preserved by Hentzner.]

OH Fortune! how thy restless wavering state
Hath fraught with cares my troubled wit! ·
Witness this present prison, whither fate
*Could bear me, and the joys I quit :

*Could bear is an ancient idiom, equivalent to did bear, or hath borne.PERCY.

Thou causedest the guilty to be loos'd
From bands, wherein are innocents inclos'd:
Causing the guiltless to be strait reserv'd,
And freeing those that death had well deserv'd.
But by her envy can be nothing wrought,
So God send to my foes all they have thought.

A. D. MDLV.

ELIZABETH, Prisoner.

SONNET.

none ex

The following verses are preserved by Puttenham in his Art of English Poesy. "I find,” ," says he, " ample in English metre, so well maintaining this figure [Exargasia, or the Gorgeous] as that ditty of her Majesty's own making, passing sweet and harmonical; which figure being, as his very original name purporteth, the most beautiful and gorgeous of all others, it asketh in reason to be reserved for a last compliment, and decyphered by a lady's pen, herself being the most beautiful, or rather beauty of queens. And this was the occasion: our sovereign lady perceiving how the Scottish queen's residence within this realm, at so great liberty and ease (as were scarce meet for so great and dangerous a prisoner,) bred secret factions among her people, and made many of the nobility incline to favour her party; some of them desirous of innovation in the state; others aspiring to greater fortunes by her liberty and life. The queen, our sovereign lady, to

declare that she was nothing ignorant of those secret practices, though she had long, with great wisdom and patience, dissembled it, writeth this ditty, most sweet and sententious, not hiding from all such aspiring minds the danger of their ambition and disloyalty; which afterward fell out most truly by the exemplary chastisement of sundry persons, who, in favour of the said Scottish queen, declining from her majesty, sought to interrupt the quiet of the realm by many evil and undutiful practices."

THE doubt of future foes

Exiles my present joy,

And wit me warns to shun such snares

As threaten mine annoy.

For falsehood now doth flow,

And subject faith doth ebb;

Which would not be if reason rul'd,

Or wisdom weav'd the web.

But clouds of toys untried

Do cloak aspiring minds; Which turn to rain of late repent, By course of changed winds.

The top of hope suppos'd

The root of ruth will be;

And fruitless all their graffed guiles,

As shortly ye shall see.

Then dazzled eyes with pride,

Which great ambition blinds,

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