view to publication, and that he did not live to print the work he had translated. We know that such was the case with the Vitas Patrum, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1495. This supposition will solve the whole difficulty, if we believe that Wynkyn de Worde kept Caxton's manuscript by him some years before he put it to press. ALABASTER, WILLIAM.-A Booke of the Seuen Planets, or Seuen wandring Motiues of William Alablaster's wit, Retrograded or remoued by John Racster.-Melius est claudicare in via quam currere extra viam. August. -At London, Printed by Peter Short for Andrew Wise, dwelling in Paules Church-yard at the signe of the Angell. 1598. 4to. B. L. 47 leaves. At the back of the title-page are the arms of Robert Earl of Essex, to whom the book is dedicated; and the writer informs us that he and Alabaster were at the same school, Westminster, and at the same university, Trin. Coll. Cambridge, under the tuition of Dr. Still (Bishop of Bath and Wells in 1598) the author of the famous early comedy, "Gammer Gurton's Needle." The work before us is an answer to what had been published by Alabaster (or Alablaster, as the name was often spelt) on his seven motives for abandoning the Church of England, and becoming a Roman Catholic. He is the man whom Spenser has so highly lauded by name in his "Colin Clouts come home again," which was not published 'till 1595, although the dedication is dated 1591. Besides his "Eliseis," which Spenser mentions, and which was a Latin poem upon Queen Elizabeth, Alabaster wrote in English some "Divine Meditations," (existing only in manuscript of the time) consisting of seventeen Sonnets, one of which may be fitly quoted here, because it is entitled "Of his Conversion. "Away, Feare, with thy spirits! No falce fire Which thou dost make can ought my corage quale, And purblind pittie doth my state bewayle, Life-feeding death, ever life devouringe, Now bidd me into flame, from smoke to runn." It may well be supposed that Alabaster's Latin verse was better than his English, but his intention is pretty obvious, and some corruption may be suspected. As the sonnet never found its way into print, and as no other MS. of it is known to exist, we are not in a condition either to correct the halting measure, or to elucidate the obscure meaning. Besides Racster, of whom nothing is known beyond what he has himself told us, Dr. Roger Fenton, in 1599, published another reply to Alabaster's "Seven Motives;" and his perversion to Popery, considering his eminence and known attainments as a scholar, excited a sensation among clergy and laity. He had followed the Earl of Essex to Cadiz in the capacity of chaplain, and it was after his return that he went over to Rome. Racster's answer is entirely prose, with the exception of the following: "AD LECTOREM EPIGRAMMA AUTHORIS. Racster deals very fairly with Alabaster, for he first quotes the "Motive," and then replies to it in detail; but the argument is dull and dry, the most lively passage in the book being the following, which doubtless refers to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, then Sir Thomas Egerton, Keeper of the Great Seal : "It is a rule in philosophy that nihil agit extra sphæram activitatis suæ, nothing by nature can worke without the circuit of his own shop or workehouse. The fishes cannot flie as birdes in the ayre; neither can the birds swim as the fishes within the water. And therefore it was pretily said of a learned lawyer of this land unto a noble warrier, when he was as loude and lusty in the Starchamber as he used to be in the field, Sir, remember your selfe: we are not now in your element.'" The date of Alabaster's birth has not been ascertained, but Racster, in 1598, calls him "a young master of artes," and we know that he was incorporated at Oxford in 1592. While he was at Cambridge, under Dr. Still, he wrote a Latin tragedy called "Roxana," which was acted in the hall of Trinity College, but not printed until 1632. After remaining some years in the church of Rome, Alabaster reverted to C his old faith, and died a Protestant, probably not long after he had printed his Lexicon Pentaglotton in 1637. As Racster says that Alabaster and he were of the same College at Cambridge, we ought to meet with a notice of him in Cooper's Athena Cantabrigienses: Racster is there, 11. 271, and Alabaster may have been postponed until the next volume. ALMANACKS.-Foure great Lyers, striuing who shall win the siluer Whetstone. Also a Resolution to the countri-man, prouing it vtterly vnlawfull to buye, or vse our yeerly Prognostications. Written by W. P., &c.-At London, Printed by Robert Walde-graue, n. d. B. L. 8vo. 54 leaves. (See post are indi Under a humorous title this is a serious attack upon the makers of Almanacks, then most frequently called Prognostications, whom Dekker and others subsequently turned into ridicule. Dekker's Raven's Almanac). The "four great liars cated by W. P., under the initials B. F. T. and .D; and he first shows their discordances by the juxtaposition of their predictions, and afterwards, under the title of "a Resolution to the countreyman,” argues against the folly and impiety of such a pretended insight into the mysterious ways of Providence. Perhaps the most remarkable production of this kind is a tract published by William Paynter, (editor of the collection of novels called The Palace of Pleasure) under the title of Antiprognosticon. It is partly a translation from the Latin, and partly an original invective against the professors of the art of foretelling the events and prospects of the coming year. It was printed by Henry Sutton in 1560, 8vo., and is preceded by some verses by Paynter, and by " Henry Bennet Calesian." Paynter's lines are curious from the mention they make of Archbishop Grindall, as a fellow-labourer in this undertaking, although he fell under Queen Elizabeth's displeasure in 1576 for favouring such supposed prophecies. It is not at all improbable that the initials W. P., in the title-page at the head of the present article, are those of William Paynter, and that it was a renewed attack upon astrologers; but we observe that in Messrs. Cooper's Ath. Cantab. 11. 529, it is stated that William Parys was the author of it. They, however, spell the title differently, and only say that they "suppose" him to have written it; whereas we know that in 1560 Paynter had published another tract in entire accordance with that the title of which forms the heading of the present article. We are therefore strongly inclined to give the " Foure great Lyers" also to Paynter. AMYOT, JAMES.-The Lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes, compared together by that graue learned Philosopher and Historiographer Plutarke of Charonea. Translated out of Greeke into French by Iames Amyot, Abbot of Bellozane, Bishop of Auxerre, one of the Kings priuy counsel, and great Amner of Fraunce, and out of French into Englishe by Thomas North.-Imprinted at London. by Thomas Vautroullier, dwelling in the Blacke Friers by Ludgate. 1579: folio, 595 leaves. The first edition of the earliest English Plutarch is rare, and this copy of it is especially valuable, because it has upon the fly-leaf the only known autograph of John Offley, the friend of Izaac Walton, to whom the old fisherman dedicated his "Complete Angler" in 1653. It is supposed that Walton lived in Chancery Lane in 1632: he certainly was there in 1638, as appears by a record, not hitherto consulted, preserved in Lambeth Library: it is entitled, "The Valuation of the Rents and Tythes of the Parish of Saint Dunstants in the West, London, 70 May, 1638." We there find a return made by the clergyman of the parish with this heading, followed by the names of the occupiers of each dwelling: 66 'Chauncery Lane within the Liberties of London. Isaac Walton The present Tithes. The Annual Rent. With the exception of one George Tomlins, Walton lived in a house which paid the highest rent in that part of Chancery Lane. The clergyman states that in his valuation he had deducted a fourth part of the present rent, so that Izaac Walton's house really cost him £31. 5s. per annum. It seems that his immediate neighbours, as might be expected, were persons of no note, and the particular trades carried on are not specified. [See "Life of Spenser," 1862, I. cxxxvi.] "North's Plutarch," as it is commonly called (a handsome folio, published, as appears in M.S. figures of the time, at 26s.), was several times reprinted in the same form, with some additions, and with the same woodcuts of the heads of emperors, heroes, &c. It was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, and North (afterwards knighted) does not profess to have gone farther than his French original: the date of the dedication is the 16th January, and of an address to the Reader the 24th January, 1579 (i. e. 1580), and in it North is again careful not to claim the merit of having made any part of his version from the Greek. His excellences as a translator are great, and his English pure and vigorous. The value of the volume, in relation to Shakespeare, cannot be overstated. is It is a fine specimen of the press of Vautroullier, and he was no doubt assisted in it by Richard Field (son to a tanner at Stratfordupon-Avon, and afterwards the printer of Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis," 1593, and "Lucrece," 1594), who, having been bound his apprentice in 1579, married his daughter in 1588, succeeded to his business in 1590, and used his device of the Anchor suspended by a hand from the clouds. [See Shakesp. Soc. Papers, iv. p. 36.] Ritson omits the name of Sir Thomas North in his " Bibliographia Poetica," though well entitled to a place there for the many pieces of not ill translated poetry in his Plutarch. He had produced a version of "The Morall Philosophie of Doni" in 1570: the last edition we have seen bears date in 1601, but it probably went through the press several times in the interval. (See post under North.) His earliest performance was "The Dial of Princes," from Antony Guevara, first printed in 1568, and again in 1582. Messrs. Cooper (Ath. Cantab. 11. 350) by oversight state that the date of North's dedication of his "Plutarch" is 17 Jan. 1591, instead of 16 Jan. 1579. ANAGRAMS.-Anagrammata Regia. In Honorem Maximi et Mansuetissimi Regis Caroli conscripta. Quibus Heroica quædam subnectuntur. Opusculum Regiis Nuptiis destinatum. Nunc verò Auctoris opera auctum et emandatum. 1626. 4to. 60 leaves. This work is in Latin and English, and by an anagram upon the name of the author at the end, "I pen hony," we are led to suppose that it was John Peny, or perhaps Penny. By a chronogram at the foot of the title, it appears that it was printed in 1626, and by another on Sign. E. 3, that it was published by William Stansble: Extant ista in ædibus Gulielmi Stansble. [Forsan Stansbie.] The words auctum |