LAURA:

OR

SONNETS

AND

ELEGIAC QUATUORZAINS.

Prais'd be the Poet who the SONNET's claim
Shall venerate.

E prese un Colle, dve le Schiere tutte
Si come ne venian, d'ordine lungo possa
Haver d'incontro, & le scorger nel Volto.

ANNIB. CARO,

VOL. I.

O Bella ITALIA, O Bella ROMA ! Or se veggio, Anime chiare

E di Virtute amiche,

Or si vegg' io quanto circonda il Mare
Aureo tutto, & pien' d' Opre antiche !

ANNIE, CARO.

OR

AN ANTHOLOGY of SONNETS, (ON THE PETRARCAN MODEL)

AND

ELEGIAC QUATUORZAINS:

English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,
French, and German;
Original and translated;

Great part never before publisht.

WITH

A PREFACE,
Critical and Biographic ;

NOTES, AND INDE X.

IN FIVE VOLUMES:

VOL. I.

BY CAPEL LOFFT.

LONDON:

Printed by R. & A. Taylor, Shoe-lane,

FOR B. AND R. CROSBY AND CO., STATIONERS' COURT,

LUDGATE STREFT.

ΤΟ

LAURA:

OR

A COLLECTION OF SONNETS.

-CARMEN sequere, ut sibi quivis

Speret idem, sudet multum, frustraque laboret Ausus idem: tantum SERIES JUNCTURAque pollet.

HOR.

TH HE COLLECTION here offer'd to the Public has been slowly form'd. It is twelve Years since it has commenc'd and during that Period it has been no slight part of the Gratification of many happy and of the Solace of many anxious hours. If it produces any proportion of similar effects to any of my Readers, I shall have sufficient cause to be well content in having publisht it.

That it may, I have reason to expect: when I consider not only the influence of POETRY in general, but that the shortness and the variety of these Compositions adapts them

VOL. 1.

394990