a Dolorous Lover." The block then came into the hands of W. Copland, and, having been used by him in his reprint of the Mort Arthur, it subsequently was in the possession of East, who applied it to the same purpose in the volume before us: it precedes the 15th book, “Of Syr Launcelot du lake," the chapter being thus headed: "Howe Sir Launcelot came into a Chappelle, where he founde dead in a whyte sherte a man of religion of an hundred wynter olde." Thus Wynkyn de Worde's" dolorous lover" served the turn, in the hands of Copland and East, to represent a dead man in a white shirt, an hundred winters old. At the time the block was employed by East it had been considerably worn and battered.

The "Prologus" is inserted on the next leaf after the title, and it is followed by "the Table" of the contents of each chapter of the twenty-one books into which the whole work is divided: it fills eleven leaves. These have distinct signatures, and the first chapter of the first book begins on A. j., with a woodcut half-length of Arthur in armour, holding his sword and shield.

Somewhat less than a century after East's edition appeared, Martin Parker, the notorious ballad-poet, published an abridgment of the Mort Arthur, with the title of "The most admirable Historie of that most renowned Christian Worthy Arthur, King of Great Britaines." (See "Parker, Martin," post), and on the fore-front of his life of this "Christian Worthy," he is represented as a Turkish hero, in a wood cut that had been intended, and used, for the Soldan of Babylon, mounted on a plumed charger. It had also been pressed into the service of another publisher, and then it represented "the Scythian Tamerlane."

ARTHUR.-The most ancient and famous History of the renowned Prince Arthur, King of Britaine, wherein is declared his Life and Death &c. As also all the noble Acts &c. of his valiant Knights of the Round Table. Newly refined and published for the delight and profit of the Reader.-London, Printed by William Stansby for Jacob Bloome, 1634. B. L. 4to. 467 leaves.

This is a reprint of the Mort Arthur with certain modernizations, or, as it is worded in the title-page, "newly-refined." In an address to the reader, he is informed that the original history was written in

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French and Italian, and that in the ninth year of Edward IV. Sir Thomas Maleore, [Malory] translated it into English. In many places, (adds the writer) this volume is corrected (not in language, but in phrase), for here and there King Arthur or some of his knights were declared in their communication to sweare prophane, and use superstitious speeches, all (or the most part) of which is either amended or quite left out by the paines and industry of the compositor and corrector of the presse; so that, as it is now, it may passe for a famous piece of antiquity, revived almost from the gulph of oblivion, and renued for the pleasure and profit of present and future times." To this succeed Caxton's "Prologue" and his "Preface," and "The contents of the first part," in one hundred and fifty-three chapters. Facing the title-page is a coarse wood-cut of Arthur and his Knights at the Round Table, the king making his appearance out of a large hole in the centre of it.

The second and third parts have each fresh title-pages, with a repetition of the wood-cut to the first part. The second part consists of one hundred and seventy-four chapters, and the third part of one hundred and seventy-six chapters. A table of contents is prefixed to each division.

Ass.-The Noblenesse of the Asse. A worke rare, learned and excellent. By A. B.-London, Printed by Thomas Creede, and are to be sold by William Barley, at his shop in Gratious streete, 1595. 4to. B. L: 60 leaves.

A tract of which only three or four copies are known to be in existence. It is from beginning to end a prose burlesque in praise of the Ass, and it displays a great variety of learning and some drollery: the fault is that the joke is a little too long drawn out; for the writer seems to have been oppressed by the abundance of his materials. If it had been of an earlier date, A. B. might have been taken for the initials of Andrew Borde, the humourist and physician of the reign of Henry VIII, who called himself Andreas Perforatus, lest (as he said) any one else should call him Andreas Assis.

A wood-cut of an Ass, with a wreath of laurel about his neck, ornaments the title-page, and is repeated in the body of the pamphlet: it is followed by an address from " Atabaliba of Peru to the Asse-favouring Readers," the reason for which is not very obvious, seeing that the

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Incas knew nothing of any beasts of burden but Lamas, until the arrival of the Spaniards, who, riding upon horses, were thought centaurs. Atabaliba speaks in his own person throughout, as if he were the author, and A. B. only the translator.

The production is divided into three parts, without any apparent necessity, unless to give the reader an opportunity of pausing. Several scraps of verse also lighten the page, but it is to be observed that more than one of them is derived from Berni's Italian burlesque capitolo, In lode del Asino: the subsequent is a specimen :

"One other gift this beast hath of his owne,
Wherewith the rest could not be furnished;
On man himselfe the same was not bestowne:
To wit, on him is ne're engendered

The hatefull vermine that doth teare the skin,
And to the body make his passage in."

We have here amended a misprint in the last line, which runs "And to the bode doth make his passage in."

According to A. B. there is nothing about an Ass that is not superexcellent even his voice comes in for an extravagant amount of praise, in the course of which the author makes use of an adjective that we have never met with elsewhere. The employment by Shakespeare and others of "modern," to indicate what is common or ordinary, is well known; but A. B. gives us immodern in the opposite sense. After noticing "the goodly sweete and continual brayings" of Asses, he adds-" Nor thinke I that any of our immoderne musitians can deny, but that their song is full of exceeding pleasure to be heard; because therein is to be discerned both concord, discord, singing in the meane," &c. Certainly, it would require a very "immodern," or extraordinary, musician indeed to find harmony of the braying of an Ass. The allusion, at the close of the whole, to the choice by our Saviour of an ass, when he entered Jerusalem in triumph, rather smacks of the profane, and need not be quoted.

ASTROPHEL AND STELLA.-Syr P. S. His Astrophel and Stella. Wherein the excellence of sweete Poesie is concluded. To the end of which are added sundry other rare Sonnets of diuers Noblemen and Gentlemen.-At London, Printed for Thomas Newman. Anno Domini 1591. 4to: 44 leaves. Newman published two impressions of Sir Philip Sidney's "Astrophel and Stella" in the same year, viz., 1591: the above is the title

page of the first, and the stationer mentions in the preliminary matter that the manuscript had come into his hands "much corrupted by ill writers." The fact is, that the corruptions are innumerable, and on this account Newman put forth his later impression. Where he obtained the corrected copy is not stated, but it seems not unlikely that the family would interpose, to rescue the memory of Sir Philip Sidney from the imputation of having produced so much nonsense as the blunders of transcribers had occasioned. Newman, however, was evidently delighted in the first instance to procure the work of so popular and famous a poet for his use, and dedicating it to "Ma. Frauncis Flower Esquire," (who perhaps had been instrumental in obtaining the MS. for him) he employed the celebrated Thomas Nash, then, as usual, in poverty, to write an introductory epistle, and thus put forth the volume. This epistle, caustic and critical, is found no where else, and it will always render this edition remarkable. The later copy of the same year does not contain it, and why so readable and lively a production was excluded we can only conjecture: perhaps the Countess of Pembroke herself might object to the extravagant laudation heaped upon her in it: Nash is speaking of the Sidneys, and thus breaks out :

"Amongst the which, fayre sister of Phoebus and eloquent secretary to the Muses, most rare Countess of Pembroke, thou art not to be omitted; whome Artes doe adore as a second Minerva, and our Poets extoll as the patronesse of their invention; for in thee the Lesbian Sappho with her lirick Harpe is disgraced, and the Laurel Garlande, which thy Brother so bravely advaunst on his Launce, is still kept greene in the Temple of Pallas. Thou only sacrificest thy soule to contemplation; thou only entertainest emptie handed Homer, and keepest the springs of Castalia from being dryed up. Learning, wisedom, beautie, and all other ornaments of Nobilitie, whatsoever, seek to approve themselves in thy sight, and get a further seale of felicity from the smiles of thy favour."

This might be rather too strong a dose of flattery even for those times of adulation, in spite of the known and admitted claims of "Sidney's sister." Various attacks upon his contemporaries were also inserted by Nash, and the Epistle opens with some severe ridicule even of his friend Robert Greene, who on his title-pages always added to his name the statement of the two Universities at which he had taken his degrees. The whole is headed,

"Somewhat to reade for them that list.

"Tempus adest plausus aurea pompa venit: so endes the Sceane of Idiots, and enter Astrophel in pompe. Gentlemen that have seene a thousand lines of folly drawn forth ex uno puncto impudentiæ, and two famous Mountains to goe to the conception of one Mouse; that have had your eares deafned with the eccho of Fame's brazen towres, when only they have been toucht with a leaden pen; that have seene Pan sitting in his bower of delights, and a number of

Midasses to admire his miserable hornepipes, let not your surfeted sight, new come from such puppet play, think scorne to turn aside into this Theater of pleasure," &c.

Nash admits, however, that "his witless youth may be taxt with a margent note of presumption ;" and as he was three years younger than Shakespeare, and therefore only twenty-four when he wrote the preceding epistle, we may perhaps allow his claim: still, it is to be recollected that four years earlier he had furnished the poet whom he here particularly assails, with an epistle introductory to "Menaphon," which epistle is written in a similar strain, and has given rise to as much literary speculation as some works of higher pretensions. At the close of his Epistle Nash leaves his readers to " the pleasures of Paphos" contained in the body of the work; but those pleasures are greatly diminished by the miserable condition of the text, with the preparation and correction of which, we may be confident, Nash had nothing to do, having left it entirely to Newman and his printer. Several sonnets by Sidney are omitted, and other poems, of a lyrical kind, are sadly mutilated and abridged. Still, much improved as was the re-impression of 1591, and the subsequent editions in folio of 1593, 1598, &c., there are defective passages in them, which even the garbled text of Newman's first edition of 1591 enables us to set right. Thus in Sonnet 64 we read in the authentic copy,

"Nor hope, nor with another course to frame,"

where "with" ought to be wish, as it stands in what we may call Nash's edition. Again, in Sonnet 68, we are always told to read,—

"Seeking to quench in me the noble fire,

Fed by thy worth, and blinded by thy sight."

Here the "noble fire was not "blinded" by the sight of Stella, but kindled; and it stands "kindled by thy sight" in Nash's edition. A third and more important instance occurs in Sonnet 91, where the usual text has been,

"Milke hands, rose cheeks, or lips more sweet, more red,

Or seeing gets blacke, but in blacknesse bright."

Here "seeing gets" has been misprinted for seeming jet, the reference of the poet being to the brightness of polished jet.

However, these are rare instances; and if Sidney's poems had come down to us in no better condition than in Newman's earliest 4to. of 1591, the loss would have been lamentable. We may partly judge from thence of the woful blunders transmitted to us in many of the productions of poets who did not enjoy, or neglected to avail them