amazing memory. He had been versed in business from his youth; so that he had a very rich fund of conversation; and he was good-natured and very friendly.

"The King's speech has a warlike tone; but still we flatter ourselves that the French King's aversion to war may prevent our being again engaged in one. It is reported that Mr. De Grey* is to be Lord Keeper. Lord Chatham was to have spoken in the House of Lords to day, if poor Mr. Grenville's death, which happened at seven this morning, had not hindered his appearing in public. I do not find that any change of ministry is expected.

town.

"My father and brother are very well. My sister has got the head-ach to day. She was so good as to come to me, and will stay till Mr. Montagu arrives in He did not leave Denton, till almost a week. after I came away; and he was stopped at Durham by waters being out; but I had the pleasure of hearing yesterday that he got safe to Darlington, where he was to pass a few days with a famous mathematician. I But I expect him in town the end of this week.

"My nephew Morris § has got great credit at Eton already. My sister || has in general her health extremely well. I have got much better than I was in the summer. My doctors order me to forbear writing;

Afterwards Lord Walsingham.

Matthew Robinson of West-Layton, in Yorkshire, Esq. who died 1778, aged 84. He married the heiress of the Morris's of Horton, whose mother remarried Dr. Conyers Middleton.

This was William Emerson, whose mathematical works are well known; and whose eccentricities were very prominent. He was born 1701, and died 26 May 1782. See Biogr. Dict. V. 341.

New Lord Rokeby.

L 2

Mrs. Scott:

but

but this letter does not shew my obedience to them. I wish I could enliven it with more news.

"The celebrated Coterie will go on in spite of all remonstrances; and there is to be an assembly thrice a week for the subscribers to the opera into the subscription; so little impression do rumours of wars, and apprehensions of the plague, make on the fine world."

I cannot resist adding the following extract from another letter, 1778.

***. “I am sure you will be desirous to hear a true account of Lord Chatham's accident in the House of Lords; and of his present condition of health. The newspapers are in but little credit in general; but their account of that affair has been very exact. His Lordship had been long confined by a fit of the gout; so was debilitated by illness, and want of exercise. The house was crowded by numbers, who went to hear him on so critical a state of affairs. The thunder of his eloquence was abated; and the lightning of his eye was dimmed to a certain degree, when he rose to speak; but the glory of his former administration threw a mellow lustre around him; and his experience of public affairs gave the force of an oracle to what he said; and a reverential silence reigned through the senate. He spoke in answer to the Duke of Richmond: the Duke of Richmond replied. Then his Lordship rose up to speak again. The Genius and spirit of Britain seemed to heave in his bosom: and he sunk down speechless! He continued half an hour in a fit. His eldest and second sons, and Lord Mahon, were in great agony, waiting the doubtful event. At

last

last he happily recovered; and though he is very weak, still I am assured by his family, that he looks better than he did before this accident." *

ART. III. ADDITIONAL NOTICES of the MIRROUR FOR MAGISTRATES. See pp. 1-24.

A Memorial of suche Princes, as since the tyme of King Richard the seconde, have been unfortunate in the realme of England. Londini, in ædibus Johannis Waylandi, cum privilegio per septennium. Folio.

The above title appears to have been appended to some copies of Lydgate's translation of the Tragedies of Boccace, printed by Wayland, in 1558, folio; but the title was all that appeared in such a shape. Herbert + seems to think it was inserted in order to fill up a spare leaf, or perhaps to try the pulse of the public; since the first edition of the Mirror for Magistrates was printed in the following year, and thus entitled: A Myrroure for Magistrates; wherein may be seen by. example of other, with howe grevous plages vices are punished, and howe frayle and unstable worldly. prosperitie is founde, even of those whom Fortune seemeth most highly to favour.

⚫ It scarce need be added that he died May 11.

Typogr. Antiq. I. 565. A MS. note by Ritson (penes T. Hill, Esq.) conjectures that "this must have been the edition, which, as we are expressly told by Baldwin, was begun, and part of it printed, in Q. Mary's time, but hindered by the Lord Chancellor that then was," bishop Gardiner. See CINS. LIT. iii. p. 7.

This first edition appears to agree with the second, in title, epistle dedicatory, and preliminary address to the reader; but in the table of contents there is an entry, following K. James I. of "Good Duke Humfrey murdered, and Elianor Cobham his wife banished."

Yet the tragical tale itself does not appear in the body of the book, nor was it printed prior to Baldwin's part of the edition in 1578.

The prefatory address of Higgins to the first edition of his part in 1575, seems worthy of being added to those of Baldwin already given in the CENSURA, iii. pp. 5-12.

"To the Reader.

"Amongst divers and sondry chronicles of many nations, I thinke there are none (gentle reader) so uncertaine and brief in the beginning as ours: at which I cannot but marvayle, sith at all tymes our Ilande had as learned wryters (some singuler men excepted) as any nation under the sunne. Againe, those which nowe are our best chroniclers as they report, have great antiquities; but what they publish of late yeares may be enlarged in many places by chronicles of other nations: whereby it is manifest they are either ignoraunt of the tongues, or cls not given to the studie of that, which they most professe. For if they were, me-thinkes it were easie for them, with such antiquities as they brag they have, to fetche our histories from the beginning; and make them as ample, as the chronicles of any other country or nation. But they are faine, in steede of other stuffe, to talke of the Ro

mains, Greekes, Persians, &c. and to fill our histories with their facts and fables. This I speake not to the end I wold have ours quite seperate from other, without any mention of them; but I would have them there only named, where th' affayres of both countries, by warre, peace, truce, marriage, traffique, or some necessary cause or other, is intermixed. I have seen no auncient antiquities in written hand but two: one was Galfridus of Monmouth, which I lost by misfortune; the other, an old chronicle in a kind of Englishe verse, beginning at Brute and ending at the death of Humfrey Duke of Gloucester; in the which, and divers other good chronicles, I finde many thinges not mentioned in that great tome engroced of late by Maister Grafton; and that, where he is most barraine and wantes matter. But as the greatest heades, the grayest hayres, and best clarkes, have not most wytte; so the greatest bookes, titles, and tomes, contayne not most matter. And this I have spoken, because in-wryting the Tragedies of the first infortunate princes of this Isle, I was often fayne to use mine owne simple invention, yet not swarving from the matter: because the chronicles (although they went out under divers men's names) in some suche places as I moste needed theyr ayde, wrate one thing, and that so brieflye, that a whole prince's reigne, life, and death, was composed in three lines; yea, and sometimes mine olde booke, above mentioned, holpe mee out when the rest forsoke mee. As for Lanquet, Stowe, and Grafton, [they] were alwayes nighe of one opinion: but the Floure of Histories somewhat larger: some helpe had I of an olde chronicle imprinted the year 1515. But surely methinkes, and so do most which delite in histories,