At last, when I perceiv'd both eyes and heart
Excuse themselves, as guiltless of my ill;

I found myfelf the caufe of all my fmart.
And told myself, that I myself would kill:
Yet when I faw myself to you was true;
I lov'd myself, becaufe myfelf lov'd you,

This Poem, I have been told, is printed under Sir Walter Raleigh's name, in a modern collection,* not much to be suspected of having had it from any ancient manufcript, therefore probably from fome old copy in print, which I have not yet met with. There is one old collection I never faw, printed about the time we are now upon, with feveral of Sir Philip Sidney's Sonnets in it, and therefore I think under his name; which poffibly may contain fome alfo of Sir Walter Raleigh's. But in that modern collection there is alfo printed, not over correctly it seems, another Poem of his: this I have likewise seen in manufcript, where it is called the Silent Lover; and heard feveral lines in it applauded, especially the beginning. But the part, which would be moft agreeable in this place to an historical reader, is that from which he might fancy he could make fome further gueffes at the object of Raleigh's addrefs; tho'

* Entitled, Wit's Interpreter, 8vo. printed one edition of it, about 1671. England's Helicon, 4to. without date, in which are feveral of the Sonnets, Ditties, Madrigals, pastoral Airs, and fuch like compofitions, which were fo much the mode among the noble and illustrious wits of those times,

after

after all, it may be no other than the common object of all poets: however, the lines are thefe.

But feeing that I fue to ferve
A Saint of such perfection,
As all defire, and none deserve
A place in her affection;
I rather chufe to want relief

Than venture the revealing;
Where glory recommends the grief,
Defpair difdains the healing.

And a little further, very perfuafively:

Silence in love betrays more woe

Than words, tho' never fo witty;
A beggar that is dumb you know,
May challenge double pity.*

In fhort, he has faid fuch handsome things of Silence, that it were a pity any words, even in its commendation, but his own, fhould break it. But it will, perhaps, hereafter be thought, he could break it himself with as much fuccefs, as now he feems to have commanded the keeping it. All that I have seen of his juvenile compofitions in this kind, is a Paftoral Sonnet, which old Mr. Ifaac Walton reciting, tells us, was written by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger years,† in answer to another, fa

By a moft extraordinary Anachronism, these lines in the fashionable world have been attributed to the late Lord Chesterfield, and it is even fufpected, he himself was willing to take the credit of them.→→→ Editor.

+"See Ifaac Walton's compleat Angler, 4th edition, 8vo. 1668, p. 76, &c. This Walton was twenty-five years of age at Raleigh's death, and lived ninety years. Befides that book, for which he has

been

mous alfo in thofe days, composed by Chrif topher Marlow; but as both thefe Sonnets are involved in a collection, which the booksellers or publishers have called Shakespear's Poems, printed between twenty and thirty years after his death, in which I think several pieces are known to have been written by other Poets; the reader is left at liberty to judge, whether the authority of a writer, who subscribes his name thereto, one of Walton's noted fincerity, and advantages for intelligences by his acquaintance among the men of literature in thofe times, or that of any anonymous publication in the circumstances aforefaid, is to be preferred; without urging the improbability, that Shakefpear fhould quote a ftanza from that afcribed to Marlow, afterwards in one of his own plays, if he had been the author of that Sonnett himfelf.t

been called the Father of Anglers, he wrote five lives of learned and religious men, excellently well, being either from a perfonal knowledge of them, or their intimate friends; for which he deserves a more liberal acknowledgement than this place will admit.”

Poems by William Shakespear, &c. 8vo. 1640. † See Shakefpear's Merry Wives of Windfor, A& III. From Oldys's Life of Raleigh L1-LVI.

JOHN

"John Lane, a fine old Queen Elizabeth's "gentleman, who was living within my re"membrance, and whose several Poems, had "they had not had the ill fate to remain unpub"lifht, when much better meriting than many, "that are in print, might poffibly have gained "him a name not much inferior, if not equal "to Drayton, and others of the next rank to "Spencer; but they are all to be produc't in "manufcript, namely his Poetical Vifion, his "Alarm to the Poets, his twelve months, his "Guy of Warwick, a Heroic Poem (at least "as much as many others that are fo entitled) "and laftly his fupplement to Chaucer's Squire's "Tale."

In the Afhmolean Museum at Oxford, there is a completion of Chaucer's Squire's Tale, by John Lane, in manufcript. The title is as follows, "Chaucer's Piller; beinge his master

piece, called the Squire's Tale; which hath "been given for loft for almeft theefe, three "hundred yeares, but now found out, and

"brought.

"brought to light by John Lane, 1630."* I conceived great expectations of him on reading Phillips's account. But I was greatly dif appointed, for Lane's performance, upon perufal, proved to be not only an inartificial imitation of Chaucer's manner, but a weak effort of invention. There is a more ancient manufcript copy of Lane's Addition to the Squire's Tale, in the Library of New College, at Oxford. It is however, no rare manuscript.†

NICOLAS BRETON.

"Nicolas Breton, a writer of pastoral, fon"nets, canzons and madrigals, in which kind "of writing he keeps company with feveral "other contemporary æmulators of Spencer "and Sir Philip Sidny, in a publift collection "of felected odes of the chief paftoral fonnet(6 teers, &c. of that age.'

Of this poet very little is known. It is probable that he was of a Staffordshire family; and I am not without hopes that I have identified

It is numbered in the Catalogue, and in the first leaf, 6937. On the back, 53 Quarto. Codd. Afhmol. † Warton's Obfervations on Spenfer, vol. i, p. 155, 56.