words, from "The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom," shew that no other popular production could there be intended :

:

"For the honour of Artre Bradle,

This age wold make me swere madly."

These are words often repeated in the Ballad, as we find it in the "Antidote against Melancholy," p. 16, where it fills more than three pages. We wish that we had space for it.

If N. D., whose initials are at the end of the rhyming address "to the Reader," were the person who made the selection, we are without any other clue to his name. There is no ground for imputing it to Thomas Jordan, excepting that he was accustomed to deal in productions of this class; but the songs and ballads he printed were usually of his own composition, and not the works of anterior versifyers.

APE, THE ENGLISH.-The English Ape, the Italian imitation, the Foote-steppes of Fraunce. Wherein is explaned the wilfull blindnesse of subtill mischiefe, the striuing for Starres, the catching of Mooneshine, and the secrete sounde of many hollowe heartes. By W. R. Nulla pietas prauis.-At London, Imprinted by Robert Robinson dwelling in Feter Lane neere Holborne, 1588. 4to. B. L. 16 leaves.

This extraordinarily scarce tract has been attributed to W. Rankin; but a copy (the only perfect one we ever saw) now before us, has the initials W. R., at the end of the dedication to Sir Christopher Hatton, filled up in old MS. with "W. Rowly." Now, the earliest known work by Rowley bears date in 1609, whereas Rankin or Rankins (See post under RANKIN) was an author in 1587, and his first extant production is not, in style, very dissimilar to "The English Ape." In the dedication of it he mentions a still earlier performance, viz., "my roughcast Conceit of Hell," which he had also inscribed to Hatton, and of which we have no trace unless, as is possible, he means his "Mirrour of Monsters" under that singular title. Whether "The English Ape" be really by Rankin, or by any other writer with the same initials, we are therefore unable to decide. In the first page of it he refers to some work by him which had already failed to rouse "the generall sort" from their " dull silence," which could hardly have been

the case with his "Mirrour of Monsters." Though Rankin was subsequently a writer of many verses, there is not a scrap of poetry from the beginning to the end of his "English Ape."

It is entirely directed against the proneness of the people of this country to imitate and adopt the peculiarities and fashions of continental nations, especially of the Italians :-" There is not (he says) a vice particularly noted in any country, but the Englishman will be therein as exquisite, as if he had Nature at command for every enormity. If he be in Creete he can lye, if in Italy flatter, if in Fraunce boast, if in Scotland cloke the treachery of pretended treason; which having gathered, and fraught him selfe full of this wealthy treasure, he lovingly bringeth his merchandize into his native Country, and there storeth with instruction the false affectors of this tedious trash."

The invective is not so violent and vehement as it is affected, overwrought, and disjointed; from one end of the tract to the other we look in vain for anything but the most general abuse, illustrated by very common-place examples drawn entirely from ancient history. In one paragraph, however, he breaks out against Englishwomen in these terms:

"It is a woonder more than ordinary to beholde theyr periwigs of sundry collours, theyr paynting potts of perlesse perfumes, theyr boxes of slibber sauce, the sleaking of theyr faces, theyr strayned modesty and theyr counterfayte coynesse. In so much that they rather seeme Curtyzans of Venyce, then matrones of Englande, monsters of Egypt then modest maydens of Europe, inchaunting Syrens of Syrtes then diligent searchers of vertue: these inchauntments charme away theyr modesty, and entrap fooles in folly; bewitcheth them selves wyth wanton wyles, and besotteth other with these bitter smyles."

We conclude that "these bitter smiles," ought to be "their bitter smiles," but it is not always easy to see at what the author is driving in his accumulation of accusations, and he does not pretend to offer any cure for the evils he points out. It may deserve remark, as a matter of language, that while he delights much in new-fangled words, he is oldfashioned enough to use the Saxon plural for houses, viz., housen, in several places. Before his conclusion, he cautiously admits that, notwithstanding all he has advanced, "there are in England many modest wise, godly virgines, wyves and widowes," and he especially directs admiration to Queen Elizabeth, "endelesse in glory, and matchlesse in mortall majesty." He winds up with an exhortation precisely in the same style as all the rest of the pamphlet, excepting that he intermixes a considerable spice of religious enthusiasm. There may have been two W. Rankins, one who wrote in 1587, and the other who wrote in 1598.

ARMIN, ROBERT.-A true Discourse of the practises of Elizabeth Caldwell, Ma. Ieffrey Bownd, Isabell Hall, widdow, and George Fernely, on the parson of Ma. Thomas Caldwell, in the County of Chester, to haue murdered and poysoned him with diuers others, &c. Written by one then. present as witnes, their owne Country-man, Gilbert Dugdale. At London, Printed by Iames Roberts for Iohn Busbie, and are to be sold at his shop vnder Saint Peters Church in Cornewell. 1604. 4to. B. L. 16 leaves.

There is no doubt that Armin, the actor, was really the author of this tract, and he prefixed an epistle stating as much, though he found it convenient to put the name of "his kinsman," Gilbert Dugdale, to it: Dugdale had been a witness on the remarkable trial to which it refers, in which a wife, Elizabeth Caldwell, was accused of attempting to murder her husband at the instigation of Jeffrey Bownd, her paramour, and with the aid of George Fernely.

We need not here enter into the circumstances of the case, but it was thought that if Armin (who had been "a common pamphleteer," as Gabriel Harvey called him, in 1593) wrote an epistolary preface to the statement of them, it would materially increase the sale. So much read and thumbed was it, that only a few copies of the tract have reached our day. Armin had been at one time (see his "Nest of Ninnies," 1608) a player in the company of Lord Chandos (or Shandoys, as he spells it), and it was to his widow, "Lady Mary Chandos," that he addressed his prefatory letter, regarding the crime and execution of Elizabeth Caldwell and others, in June, 1603. After briefly adverting to the facts he proceeds thus, and it is the only passage that, for our purpose, is worth quoting :

"We have many giddie pated Poets that coulde have published this Report with more eloquence, but truth in plaine attire is easier knowne: let fixion maske in Kendall greene. It is my qualitie to adde truth to truth, and not leasing to lyes. Your good Honour knowes Pinck's poore hart, who in all my services to your late deceased kind Lord never savoured of flatterie or fixion; and therefore am now the bolder to present to your vertues the view of this late truth, desiring you to thinke of it, that you may be an honourable mourner at these obsequies, and you shall no more doe then manie more have doone. So, with my tendered dutie, my true ensuing storie, and my euer wishing well, I do humbly commit your Ladiship to the prison of heauen, wherein is perfect freedome.

Your Ladiships ever in duty and service,

ROBERT ARMIN."

Here we see that he terms the narrative "my true ensuing storie,"

so that we are entitled to look upon the pamphlet as the production of one of Shakespeare's fellow-performers, who succeeded to Dogberry and to several of Kempe's other characters, after the latter, on the accession of James I., had gone over to the company calling itself the Prince's Players." In the patent granted to Fletcher, Shakespeare, and others in May, 1603, we find the name of Robert Armin substituted, as it were, for that of William Kempe.

66

ARNOLD'S CHRONICLE.-In this boke is conteined ye names of the baylyfs Custose mayers and sherefs of ye cyte of london from the tyme of kynge Richard the fyrst, & also the artycles of ye Chartour and lybartyes of the same Cyte, And of the chartour and lybartyes of England, with other dyuers maters good and necessary for euery cytezen to vnderstond and knowe. n. d. B. L. fol. 133 leaves.

This is the edition of Arnold's Chronicle, which, though without his name, came from the press of Peter Treveris, who is supposed to have been the first printer who carried on business in Southwark. Dr. Dibdin does not seem to have made up his mind whether this edition by Treveris was the earliest, or whether it had been previously printed by John Doesborowe at Antwerp; for, on p. 34, of Vol. iii. of his "Typographical Antiquities," he speaks of Doesborowe's edition as "the second," and inserts, in a note on p. 35, the statement of the late Mr. Douce, that Treveris printed the second edition. There is little doubt that the latter is the correct conclusion.

It is only from similarity of type that it has been decided to be the work of Treveris, and not of Pynson, as Ames supposed. The date has been fixed in 1521, from the following paragraph at the end of the list of the mayors and sheriffs of London :

"This yere Galy halfpens was banysshed out of england, & whete was worthe xviij. s. a quarter. And this yere one Luther was accowntyd an eretyck and on sonday that was the xii day of Maij, in the presence of the lorde legate and many other bysshops and lordys of england, the sayd Luther was openly declared an heretyck at powlys crosse, and all his bokes burnyd."

On Sign. O. vi., commences the celebrated ballad of "The Notbrowne Mayde," which Prior modernized, and which, with some inaccuracies, was inserted by Capel in his Prolusions, p. 3. Mr. Douce superintended a reprint of the whole chronicle from the edition of

Doesborowe, but, even he, with all his exactness, made trifling mistakes when giving the ballad. In the edition by Treveris, it frequently varies typographically from the impression by Doesborowe. Capel divided the lines differently, but, in the original, and in the second edition before us, they stand precisely in this manner :

"Be it right or wrog, these me amōg. on womā do complayne
Affyrmynge this, how that it is. A labour spent in vayne
To loue the well, for neuer a dele. They loue a mã agayne.
For late a man, do what he can. theyr fauour to attayne
Yet yf a newe, to them pursue. theyr fyrst true louer than

Laboureth for nought, for from her tought he is a banysshed man."

This form of stanza is peculiar to this ballad, and no other poem which exactly adopts it is known. It seems agreed that "The Nutbrown Maid" is not older than the beginning of the sixteenth century, though Hearne, in one of his letters, printed in Restituta, i. p. 70, would carry it back to the time of Henry V., and Dr. Percy (Reliques, ii. p. 26, Edit. 1765) to the early part of the reign of Henry VII.

ARTHUR.-The storye of the most noble and worthy Kynge Arthur, the which was the fyrst of the worthyes Chrysten, and also of hys noble and valyaunt knyghtes of the rounde Table. Newly imprynted and corrected.-Imprynted at London by Thomas East. n. d. B. L. fol. 307 leaves.

A rare edition of the Mort Arthur, which work came originally from the press of Caxton in 1485. East's impression is without date, the Colophon running thus: "Imprinted at London, by Thomas East dwelling betweene Paules wharfe and Baynardes Castell," and it differs, as far as the text is concerned, in no material respect from the reprint previously made by William Copland from the text of Caxton: some of the wood cuts, which are placed at the head of every book, are also identical, and must have devolved into the hands of East; but others vary rather in design than in subject. On the title-page is a wood cut representing the conflict between St. George and the Dragon, but here the Knight of Cappadocia is made to pass for King Arthur. A reduced copy of it is inserted on the title-page of Southey's edition of the Mort Arthur, 4to. 1817.

A few of the wood cuts of East's edition are considerably older than the date when he printed: one of them was used by Wynkyn de Worde in 1520, before Christopher Goodwyn's poem, "The Chaunce of