which furnished the induction to the old Taming of a Shrew, Fenton's Tragical Discourses, 1567, and several volumes of the same sort. Sir Geoffrey Fenton was a Privy Councillor in Ireland about the year 1580; and the Duke of Devonshire is in possession of a MS. of various public papers drawn up by Fenton, including, in a different part of the volume, a number of poems, most of them signed by the same individual. I have also an autograph by Fenton of a moral poem in three stanzas, of which the following is a copy. I insert it as a specimen of the talents of an author, who is not mentioned as a verse-maker by Ritson, or by any of our bibliographers.

My silly bark that many years hath run

In sundry seas a weather-beaten course,

' And seldom yet could find the way to shun

'Those froward gales which blow from ill to worse,
''Tween rocks and sands of late did harbour take,
' And there, God knows, a hard escape did make.
'Her broken sails, worn out with many flaws,

'Could scarcely hold the wind that gave her way,
And both her sides, made weak with many blows,
'By subtle streams suck'd in her last decay.

The stem, and all that to her strength did tend,

Were brought by force unto the storm to bend.

Oh, subtle state that mortal man lives in ;

Oh, time, so short makes vain that present hope,
'Which feeds our mind a settled life to win,

• Wherein like men we do in darkness grope!
Then, silly bark, that hast these perils past,
Retire thyself, and strike thy sails at last.

'GEFF. FENTON.'

Fenton, even without this fresh claim, was entitled to a place in Ritson's Bibl. Poet., on account of some poetical

translations in his Tragical Discourses, mentioned vol. i. p. 248. He seems to have been an enemy to theatrical amusements, and in 1574 translated from the French, A Form of Christian Policy, the seventh chapter of which, among other things, insists that players were cast out of the church, and that all dissolute plays ought to be forbidden.'

p. 422.

To the same point we may quote the authority of Sir Philip Sidney.'] Among the numerous tributes by contemporary poets to the memory of Sir Philip Sydney, one, by an author of very considerable celebrity, has hitherto escaped notice :-it is by Thomas Churchyard, and it was published in the form of a pamphlet of only four leaves, under the title of "The Epitaph of Sir Phillip Sidney, Knight, lately Lord Governour of Floshing. Imprinted at London, by George Robinson,' &c., 4to., n. d. At the back of the title are 'Churchyard's arms,' and it is followed by a prose address to Lady Sidney, the widow of Sir Philip, in which the author speaks of the great encouragement at that period given to arts and letters, and mentions that he had been preceded by some other writer, who had treated the subject 'learnedly and sententiously.' As this is a production of the utmost rarity, I will make a short quotation from it.

* Brought home both language lawde and lore,
• And might the lawrell weare,
'And crownd with garland be therefore,

' And style of honour beare.

"In conscience cause and countries care,
To bloody warres he went,

'Where lo! on murthering shot unware,
'Alas! his life he spent.

To farre he ventred for renowne,

To short he made his skope,

'To soone that stately stalke fell downe,

• In whom was such great hope.'

p. 428.

Note †, for Alarum of London, read Looking Glass for London.

Vol. III. p. 52.

Note*, for plagiaries read plagiarisms.

p. 69.

'Amends for Ladies could not have been written before 1611.'] It has been elsewhere shown, that Amends for Ladies is alluded to by Anthony Stafford, in his Niobe dissolved into a Nilus, 1611, as already in existence, so that it could hardly have been produced before 1610: it was preceded by A Woman is a Weathercock, by the same author, who perhaps was not so young as has been supposed, although he continued one of the Children of the Queen's Revels in 1609.

p. 93.

The play of William Longsword by Drayton.'] The only other notice of this play I ever met with is in a MS.,

belonging to Mr. Haslewood, a copy of the brief (or 'breviat' as it is there called) on behalf of the Plaintiffs in the case of Sir H. Herbert and Thelwall v. Betterton, on the dispute regarding the authority of the Master of the Revels. The date of the first part of the following quotation from it, accords with the entry by Drayton himself in Henslowe's Account-book.

'Several plays allowed by Mr. Tylney is 1598, which is 62 ' years since.

As

{

Sir William Longsword

The Fair Maid of London

Richard Cordelyon

}se

See the Books.

'King and no King to be acted in 1611, and the same to be 'printed.

'Hog hath lost his Pearle, and hundreds more.'

It is said, in the same MS., that the two last were ' allowed by Sir George Buck.'

P. 147.

'Greene's Funerals is certainly unworthy of Barnefield's pen.'] Since this was written, the sight of a copy of Richard Barnefield's Cynthia with certaine Sonnets, 1595, has enabled me directly to contradict the position, that Greene's Funerals, 1594, was by the same author. Barnefield tells the readers of his Cynthia, that that poem was his 'second fruit,' and that his Affectionate Shepherd had been his 'first;' although he had been 'thought of some to have been the author of two books heretofore.' One of those 'two books' was no doubt Greene's Funerals, printed with the initials R. B. on the title-page. From Barnefield's Poems in divers Humours, 1598, I quote the following, because it relates to Shakespeare, and because it has been misquoted by Malone (Shakespeare by Boswell, i. 482).

The writer, after praising Spenser, Daniel, and Drayton,

thus proceeds:

⚫ And Shakespeare thou, whose hony flowing vaine

(Pleasing the world) thy praises doth obtaine;

'Whose Venus, and whose Lucrece (sweete and chaste)

• Thy name in fames immortall booke hath plac't,
'Live ever you, at least in fame live ever:
'Well may the bodye dye, but fame dies never!''

p. 159.

For sequunter read sequuntur.

p. 263.

The Theatre and Curtain are mentioned together in A Mirour of Monsters, a tract against the vices caused by the infectious sight of Plays,' by Wil. Rankin, 4to., 1587. It contains no information regarding the condition of the stage and drama at that date. It has been supposed that the author was the same William Rankins who is mentioned as the writer of Hannibal and Scipio, and several other plays in Henslowe's Diary, under the date of 1600, but this is questionable. In his Palladis Tamia, fol. 277, Meres mentions a person of the name of Rankins, with Hall and Marston, as a satirist. In some blank leaves at the end of a MS. volume of Sermons, by Dr. Donne and others, in my hands, are inserted a number of pious and moral poems, and one page is headed 'W. Rankins of Ingratitude to God,' but the poem itself has not been transcribed. The writer of A Mirour of Monsters, of the Satires noticed by Meres, and of this poem, was probably

the same man.

p. 268.

The Curtain Theatre.] It is termed The Curtain at