of the old TAMING OF A SHREW, drew that diverting apologue'. If I recollect right, the circumstances almost exactly tallied with an incident which Heuterus relates, from an Epistle of Ludovicus Vives, to have actually happened at the marriage of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, about the year 1440. I will give it in the words, either of Vives, or of that perspicuous annalist, who flourished about the year 1580. "Nocte quadam a cæna cum aliquot præcipuis amicorum per urbem deambulans, jacentem conspicatus est medio foro hominem de plebe ebrium, altum stertentem. In eo visum est experiri quale esset vitæ nostræ ludicrum, de quo illi interdum essent collocuti. Jussit hominem deferri ad Palatium, et lecto Ducali collocari, nocturnum Ducis pileum capiti ejus imponi, exutaque sordida veste linea, aliam e tenuissimo ei lino indui. De mane ubi evigilavit, præsto fuere pueri nobiles ei cubicularii Ducis, qui non aliter quam ex Duce ipso quærerent an luberet surgere, et quemadmodum vellet eo die vestiri. Prolata sunt Ducis vestimenta. Mirari homo ubi se eo loci vidit. Indutus est, prodiit e cubiculo, adfuere proceres qui illum ad sacellum deducerent. Interfuit sacro, datus est illi osculandus liber, et reliqua penitus ut Duci. A sacro ad prandium instructissimum. A prandio cubicularius attulit chartas lusorias, pecuniæ acervum. Lusit cum magnatibus, sub serum deambulavit in hortulis, venatus est in leporario, et cepit aves aliquot aucupio. Cæna peracta est pari celebritate qua prandium. Accensis luminibus inducta sunt musica instrumenta, puellæ átque nobiles adolescentes saltarunt, exhibitæ sunt fabulæ, dehinc comessatio quæ hilaritate atque invitationibus ad potandum producta est in multam noctem. Ille vero largiter se vino obruit præstantissimo; et postquam collapsus in somnum altissimum, jussit eum Dux vestimentis prioribus indui, atque in eum locum re puted excellence in compositions of this nature, and of the celebrity with which he filled that department. [Leland in his Encomia, 1589, has a Latin laud Ad Georgium Ferrarium.PARK.] I also take this opportunity, the earliest which has occurred, of retracting another slight mistake. See supr. p. 95. There was a second edition of Niccols's MIRROUR OF MAGISTRATES, printed for W. Aspley, Lond. 1621. 4to. See SIX OLD PLAYS, Lond. 1779. 12mo. portari, quo prius fuerat repertus: ibi transegit noctem totam dormiens. Postridie experrectus cæpit secum de vita illa Ducali cogitare, incertum habens fuissetne res vera, an visum quod animo esset per quietem observatum. Tandem collatis conjecturis omnibus atque argumentis, statuit somnium fuisse, et ut tale uxori liberis ac viris narravit. Quid interest inter diem illius et nostros aliquot annos? Nihil penitus, nisi quod hoc est paulo diuturnius somnium, ac si quis unam duntaxat horam, alter vero decem somniasset." g To an irresistible digression, into which the magic of Shakespeare's name has insensibly seduced us, I hope to be pardoned for adding another narrative of this frolic, from the ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY by Democritus junior, or Robert Burton, a very learned and ingenious writer of the reign of king James the First. "When as by reason of unseasonable weather, he could neither hawke nor hunt, and was now tired with cards and dice, and such other domesticall sports, or to see ladies dance with some of his courtiers, he would in the evening walke disguised all about the towne. It so fortuned, as he was walking late one night, he found a country fellow dead drunke, snorting on a bulke: hee caused his followers to bring him to his palace, and then stripping him of his old clothes, and attyring him in the court-fashion, when he wakened, he and they were all ready to attend upon his Excellency, and persuaded him he was some great Duke. The poore fellow admiring how he came there, was served in state all day long: after supper he saw them dance, heard musicke, and all the rest of those court-like pleasures. But late at night, when he was well tipled, and againe faste asleepe, they put on his old robes, and so conveyed him to the place where they first found him. Now the fellowe had not made there so good sport the day before, as he did now when he returned to himselfe ; all the jest was, to see how he looked upon it. In conclusion, after some little admiration, the poore man told his friends he Heuterus, RER. BURGUND. Lib. iv. p. 150, edit. Plantin. 1584, fol. Heu terus says, this story was told to Vives by an old officer of the duke's court, had seene a vision, constantly believed it, would not otherwise be persuaded, and so the joke ended "." If this is a true story, it is a curious specimen of the winter-diversions of a very po-. lite court of France in the middle of the fifteenth century. The. merit of the contrivance, however, and comic effect of this practical joke, will atone in some measure for many indelicate circumstances with which it must have necessarily been attended. I presume it first appeared in Vives's Epistle. I have seen the story of a tinker disguised like a lord in recent collections of humorous tales, probably transmitted from Edwards's storybook, which I wish I had examined more carefully. I have assigned Edwards to queen Mary's reign, as his reputation in the character of general poetry seems to have been then at its height. I have mentioned his sonnets addressed to the court-beauties of that reign, and of the beginning of the reign of queen Elisabeth. h Burton's ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY. Part ii. §. 2. pag. 232. fol. Oxon. 1624. There is an older edition in quarto. [Printed in 1621, but dated from the Author's study at Christ Church, Oxon, Dec. 5, 1620.-PARK.] i Viz. Tit. A. xxiv. MSS. COTT. (See supr. p. 108.) I will here cite a few lines. HAWARDE is not haugte, but of such smy lynge cheare, That wolde alure eche gentill harte, hir Hir noble stature may compare with At the end, "Finis R. E." I have a In going to my naked bed, as one that would have slept, I heard a wife sing to her child, that long before had wept: She sighed sore, and sang full sweete, to She was full wearie of her watch, and Then did she say, now have I found this The close of the second stanza is prettily Then kissed she her little babe, and sware by God aboue, The falling out of faithfull frendes, renuyng is of loue. [Sir Egerton Brydges, in his republication of Edwards's Miscellany, considers this poem, even without reference to the age which produced it, among the most beautiful morceaux of our language. The happiness of the illustra If I should be thought to have been disproportionately prolix in speaking of Edwards, I would be understood to have partly intended a tribute of respect to the memory of a poet, who is one of the earliest of our dramatic writers after the reformation of the British stage. tion of Terence's Apophthegm, the facility, elegance and tenderness of the diction, and the exquisite turn of the whole, he deems above commendation; while they show to what occasional polish and refinement our literature even then had arrived. Pref. p. vi.-PARK.] SECTION LIII. ABOUT the same time flourished Thomas Tusser, one of our earliest didactic poets, in a science of the highest utility, and which produced one of the most beautiful poems of antiquity. The vicissitudes of this man's life have uncommon variety and novelty for the life of an author, and his history conveys some curious traces of the times as well as of himself. He seems to have been alike the sport of fortune, and a dupe to his own discontented disposition and his perpetual propensity to change of situation. He was born of an antient family, about the year 1523, at Rivenhall in Essex; and was placed as a chorister, or singingboy, in the collegiate chapel of the castle of Wallingford in Berkshire. Having a fine voice, he was impressed from Wallingford college into the king's chapel. Soon afterwards he was admitted into the choir of saint Paul's cathedral in London; where he made great improvements under the instruction of John Redford the organist, a famous musician. He was next sent to Eton-school, where, at one chastisement, he received fifty-three stripes of the rod, from the severe but celebrated master Nicholas Udall'. His academical education was at Trinity-hall in Cambridge: but Hatcher affirms, that he was from Eton admitted a scholar of King's College in that university, under the year 1543. From the university he was called up to court by his singular and generous patron William a This chapel had a dean, six prebendaries, six clerks, and four choristers. It was dissolved in 1549. Udall's English interludes, mentioned above, were perhaps written for his scholars. Thirty-five lines of one of them are quoted in Wilson's ARTE OF MSS. Catal. Præpos. Soc. Schol. |