INTRODUCTION. HE works of Sir Thomas Overbury are now, for the first time, collected into one volume. They consist of his celebrated poem of "The Wife;" "Characters, or Wittie Descriptions of the Properties of Sundry Persons;" a paraphrase of the first and second parts of Ovid's "Remedy of Love;""Observations in his Travailes upon the State of the XVII Provinces, as they stood, A.D. 1609;" and "Crumms fal'n from King James's Table.” Independently of their particular merit, the works of Overbury possess a certain charm from our recollection of the fate of their unhappy author. As a poet, he was perhaps not remarkable for any particular graces of expression, or smoothness of versification; yet his poem of "The Wife"-no small favourite in its day-contains some pretty passages, and a host of precepts which even the most fastidious |