have described himself so insultingly as we find in the following lines, and elsewhere :—

"he did protest

That Wither was a cruell Satyrist;
And guilty of the same offence and crime,
Whereof he was accused at this time:
Therefore for him hee thought it fitter farre,
To stand as a Delinquent at the barre,
Then to bee now empanell'd in a Fury.
George Withers then, with a Poetick fury,
Began to bluster, but Apollo's frowne

Made him forbeare, and lay his choler downe.") (Ibid, p. II. Two much more sparkling and interesting "Sessions of Poets" afterwards appeared, to the tune of Ben Jonson's "Cook Laurel." The first of these begins :

Apollo, concern'd to see the Transgressions
Our paltry Poets do daily commit,

Gave orders once more to summon a Sessions,

Severely to punish th' Abuses of Wit.

Will d'Avenant would fain have been Steward o' the

Court,

To have fin'd and amerc'd each man at his will ;

But Apollo, it seems, had heard a Report,

That his choice of new Plays did show h' had no skill.

Besides, some Criticks had ow'd him a spite,
And a little before had made the God fret,
By letting him know the Laureat did write
That damnable Farce, 'The House to be Let.'
Intelligence was brought, the Court being set

That a Play Tripartite was very near made;
Where malicious Matt. Clifford, and spirituall Spratt,

Were join'd with their Duke, a Peer of the Trade," &c. The author did not avow himself. It must have been written, we hold, in 1664-5. The second is variously attributed to John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, and to George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, being printed in the works of both. It begins :

"Since the Sons of the Muses grew num'rous aud loud, For th' appeasing so factious and clam'rous a crowd, Apollo thought fit in so weighty a cause,

Testablish a government, leader, and laws,” &c. Assembled near Parnassus, Dryden, Etherege, Wycherley, Shadwell, Nat Lee, Settle, Otway, Crowne, Mrs. Aphra Behn, Rawlins, Tom D'Urfey, and Betterton, are in the other verses sketched with point and vivacity; but in malicious satire. It was probably written in 1677. Clever as are these two later "Sessions," they do not equal Suckling's, in genial spirit and unforced cheerful

ness.

We need not here linger over the whimsical Trial of Tom D'Urfey and Tom Brown (who squabbled between themselves, by the bye), in a still later "Sessions of the Poets Holden at the foot of Parnassus Hill, July the 9th, 1696: London, printed for E. Whitlock, near Stationers' Hall, 1696":—a mirthful squib, which does not lay claim to be called poetry. Nor need we do more than mention "A Trip to Parnassus; or, the Judgment of Apollo on Dramatic Authors and Performers. A Poem. London, 1788"-which deals with the two George Colmans, Macklin, Macnally, Lewis, &c. Coming to our own century, it is enough to particularize Leigh Hunt's "Feast of the Poets;" printed in his Reflector," December, 1811, and afterwards much altered, generally with improvement (especially in the exclusion of the spiteful attack on Walter Scott). It begins-""Tother day as Apollo sat pitching his darts," &c. In 1837 Leigh Hunt wrote another such versical review, viz., "BlueStocking Revels; or, The Feast of the Violets." This was on the numerous "poetesses," but it cannot be deemed successful. Far superior to it is the clever and interesting "Fable for Critics," since written by James Russell Lowell in America.

66

Both as regards its own merit, and as being the parent of many others (none of which has surpassed, or even equalled it), Sir John Suckling's "Sessions of Poets" must always remain famous. We have not space remaining at command to annotate it with the fulness it deserves.

ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.

The type-ornaments in Choyce Drollery reprint are merely substitutes for the ruder originals, and are not in fac-simile, as were the Initial Letters on pages 5 and 7 of our Merry Drollery, Compleat reprint.

Page 42, line 6, "a Lockeram Band: "Lockram, a cheap sort of linen, see J. O. Halliwell's valuable Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, p. 525, edit. 1874. To this, and to the same author's 1876 edition of Archdeacon Nares Glossary, we refer readers for other words.

Page 73-77, 297, Marchpine, or Marchpane, biscuits often made in fantastic figures of birds or flowers, of sweetened almonds, &c. Scettuall, or Setiwall, the Garden Valerian. Bausons, i.e. badgers. Cockers: boots. Verse fifth omitted from Choyce Drollery, runs :"Her features all as fresh above,

As is the grass that grows by Dove,
And lythe as lass of Kent;

Her skin as soft as Lemster wool,

As white as snow on Peakish Hull,
Or Swan that swims in Trent,"

A few typographical errors crept into sheet G (owing to an accident in the Editor's final collation with original). P. 81, line 2, read Blacke; line, 20, Shaft ; p. 85, line 3. Unlesse: p. 86, line 5, Physitian; line 17, that Lawyer's;

87, line 9, That wil stick to the Laws; p. 88, line 8, O that's a companion; p. 90, first line, basenesse; line 23, nature; p. 91, line 13, add a comma after the word blot; p. 94, line 13, Scepter; p. 96, line 10, Of this; 97, line 15, For feare; p. 99 line 6, add a comma; p. 100, line 13, finde. These are all single-letter misprints. Page 269, line 14, for encreasing, read encreaseth; and end line 28 with a comma.

I. H. in line 35, are the initials of the author, "Iohn Higins."

Page 270, line 9, add the words-"It is by Sir Wm. Davenant, and entitled 'The Dying Lover.'

Page 275, penultimate line, read Poet-Beadle. P. 277, 1. 17, for 1698 read 1598.

Page 281, line 20, for liveth, read lives; claime.

Page 289, after line 35, add-" Page 45, As I went to Totnam.' This is given with the music, in Tom D'Urfey's Pills to purge Melancholy, p. 180, of 1700 and 1719 (vol. iv.) editions; beginning "As I came from Tottingham.' The tune is named 'Abroad as I was walking. Page 52, He that a Tinker; Music by Dr. Jn. Wilson.

Page 330, after line 10, add-" Fly, boy, Ay: Music by Simon Ives, in Playford's Select Ayres, 1659, p. 90."

The date of "The Zealous Puritan," M.D.C., p. 95, was 1639. "He that intends," &c., Ibid, p. 342, is the Vituperium Uxoris, by John Cleveland, written before 1658 (Poems, 1661, p. 169).

"Love should take no wrong," in WestminsterDrollery, 1671, i. 90, dates back seventy years, to 1601: with music by Robert Jones, in his Second Book of Songs, Song 5.

Introduction to Merry Drollery (our second volume) p. xxii. lines 20, 21. Since writing the above, we have had the pleasure of reading the excellent "Memoir of Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland," and the " Althorp Memoirs," by G. Steinman Steinman, Esq., F. S. A., (printed for Private Circulation, 1871, 1869); by the former work, p. 22, we are led to discredit Mrs. Jameson's assertion that the night of May 29, 1660, was spent by Charles II. in the house of Sir Samuel Morland at Vauxhall. "This knight and friend of the King's may have had a residence in the parish of Lambeth before the Restoration, but as he was an Under Secretary of State at the time, it is more probable that he lived in London; and as he did not obtain from the Crown a lease of Vauxhall mansion and grounds until April 19, 1675, the foundations of a very improbable story, whoever originated it, are considerably shaken." Mr. Steinman inclines to believe the real place of meeting was Whitehall. He has given a list of Charles II.'s male companions in the Court at Bruges, with short biographies, in the Archeologia, xxxv. pp. 335-349. We knew not of this list when writing our Introduction to Choyce Drollery.