hateth and destroyeth man, is believed; God, which hath made him and loves him, is always deferred. "I have considered,” saith Solomon, "all the works that are under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit:" but who believes it, till death tells it us? It was death, which opening the conscience of Charles the fifth, made him enjoin his son Philip to restore Navarre; and king Francis the first of France, to command that justice should be done upon the murderers of the protestants in Merindol and Cabrières, which till then he neglected. It is therefore death alone, that can suddenly make man to know himself. He tells the proud and insolent, that they are but abjects, and humbles them at the instant ; makes them cry, complain, and repent; yea, even to hate their fore-passed happiness. He takes the account of the rich, and proves him a beggar; a naked beggar, which hath interest in nothing, but in the gravel that fills his mouth. He holds a glass before the eyes of the most beautiful, and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness; and they acknowledge it.

O eloquent, just and mighty death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the far stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet. The History of the World.

P. 13, L. 15. Discourse. This word at the date usually meant "argument,” but here is taken in the least special and exact sense - “being talked about.”

P. 15, 1. 9. Merindol and Cabrières. Villages of the Vaudois, which were sacked and their inhabitants subjected to all possible outrages during the campaign of the President d'Oppède in 1545.

IT

EDMUND SPENSER.

Edmund Spenser was born about 1552, and died at Westminster in 1599. The View of the State of Ireland, his only prose work of any magnitude, was posthumously published. It has interest not merely as his work and as a piece of prose of merit, but as one of the earliest political tractates of a finished and important kind in English.

THE IRISH MANTLE.

́T is a fit house for an outlaw, a meet bed for a rebel, and an apt cloke for a thief. First the outlaw being for his many crimes and villanies banished from the towns and houses of honest men, and wandering in waste places, far from danger of law, maketh his mantle his house, and under it covereth himself from the wrath of heaven, from the offence of the earth, and from the sight of men. When it raineth it is his pent-house; when it bloweth it is his tent; when it freezeth it is his tabernacle. In summer he can wear it loose; at all times he can use it ; never heavy, never cumbersome. Likewise for a rebel it is as serviceable. For in his war that he maketh, if at least it deserve the name of war, when he still flyeth from his foe, and lurketh in the thick woods and strait passages, waiting for advantages, it is his bed, yea and almost his household stuff. For the wood is his house against all weathers and his mantle is his couch to sleep in. Therein he wrappeth himself round, and coucheth himself strongly against the gnats, which in that country do more annoy the naked rebels, whilst they keep the wood, and do more sharply wound them than all their enemies swords, or spears,

which can seldom come nigh them: yea and oftentimes their mantle serveth them, when they are near driven, being wrapped about their left arm, for it is hard to cut through with a sword. Besides it is light to bear, light to throw away, and, being, as they commonly are, naked, it is to them all in all. Lastly for a thief it is so handsome, as it may seem it was first invented for him, for under it he may cleanly convey any fit pillage that cometh handsomely in his way, and when he goeth abroad in the night in freebooting, it is his best and surest friend; for lying, as they often do, two or three nights together abroad to watch for their booty, with that they can prettily shroud themselves under a bush or a bank side, till they may conveniently do their errand : and, when all is over, he can in his mantle pass through any town or company, being close hooded over his head as he useth, from knowledge of any to whom he is endangered. Besides this, he, or any man else that is disposed to mischief or villany, may under his mantle go privily armed without suspicion of any, carry his head-piece, his skean, or pistol if he please to be always in readi

ness.

A View of the State of Ireland.

P. 17, 1. 6. Handsome, it must be remembered, is here used in its original sense, implying "handy."

P. 17, 1. 18. Skean, knife.

с

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

Sir Philip Sidney was born at Penshurst in 1554, and died of his wounds at the battle of Zutphen in 1586. All his work was posthumously published, but all is of a very high order as literature, the Arcadia being the chief example of its peculiar style in English, and the Defence of Poetry the earliest noteworthy piece of English criticism.

TO HIS SISTER.

To my dear Lady and Sister the Countess of Pembroke.

Here have you now, most dear, and most worthy to be most dear lady! this idle work of mine; which I fear, like the spider's web, will be thought fitter to be swept away, than worn to any other purpose. For my part, in very truth, as the cruel fathers among the Greeks were wont to do to the babes they would not foster, I could well find in my heart to cast out, in some desert of forgetfulness, this child, which I am loth to father. But you desired me to do it, and your desire, to my heart is an absolute commandment. Now, it is done only for you, only to you: if you keep it to yourself, or commend it to such friends, who will weigh errors in the balance of good will, I hope, for the father's sake, it will be pardoned, perchance made much of, though in itself it have deformities. For indeed, for severer eyes it is not, being but a trifle, and that triflingly handled. Your dear self can best witness the manner, being done in loose sheets of paper, most of it in your presence; the rest by sheets sent unto you as fast as they were done. In sum, a young head, not so well stayed as I would it were, and shall be

when God will, having many fancies begotten in it, if it had not been in some way delivered, would have grown a monster and more sorry might I be that they came in, than that they gat out. But his chief safety shall be the not walking abroad; and his chief protection, the bearing the livery of your name, which, if much good will do not deceive me, is worthy to be a sanctuary for a greater offender. This say I, because I know thy virtue so, and this say I, because it may be for ever so, or to say better, because it will be ever so.

Read it then at your idle times, and the follies your good judgment will find in it, blame not, but laugh at. And so, looking for no better stuff than as in a haberdasher's shop, glasses or feathers, you will continue to love the writer, who doth exceedingly love you, and most heartily prays you may long live, to be a principal ornament to the family of the Sidneys.

Dedication to the Arcadia.

P. 19, 11. 8, 9. And this say I-ever so. This phrase, which is one of the rather indefensible jingles in which Elizabethan writers delighted, comes to little more than "and because I have no doubt of its continuance.”