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To force our confciences that Chrift fet free,
And ride us with a claffic hierarchy

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Taught ye by mere A. S. and Rotherford? Men whofe life, learning, faith and pure intent Would have been held in high esteem with Paul, Must now be nam'd and printed Heretics By fhallow Edwards and Scotch what d'ye call But we do hope to find out all your tricks, Your plots and packing worse than thofe of Trent, That fo the Parlament

May with their wholesome and preventive fhears 16

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Gangrana, a book in which the errors, herefies, blafphemies, and lewd practice, which broke out in the laft four years (1642, 1643, 1644, 1645,) are recited: See Collier's Ecclefiaftical History, Vol. 2. p. 855. Mr. Thyer gives this account of it, that it was publish'd in 1646, and dedicated to the Parlament by Thomas Edwards minifter of the Gofpel, and was intitled Gangrana, or a Catalogue and Discovery of many of the errors, herefies, blafphemies, and pernicious practices of the Sectaries of this time, vented and acted in England in thefe four laft years. Scotch what d'ye call might be perhaps the famous Alexander Henderfon, or as that expreffion implies fome hard name, George Gillespie, a Scotch

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minister

Clip your phylacteries, though bauk your ears,

And fuccour our just fears,

When they shall read this clearly in your charge,
New Prefbyter is but Old Prieft writ large.

minifter and commiffioner at Weft-
minster, called Galaffe in Whit
lock, and Galafp in one of our
author's Sonnets and nothing
could be exprefs'd with greater
contempt.

your

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prefs'd in his treatife of the likelieft
Means to remove hirelings out of the
church. "And yet a late hot Que
rift for tithes, whom ye may
"know by his
"fide him in it's lying ever be
the margin, to be
66 ever befide his wits in the text;
a fierce reformer once,
"rankled with a contrary heat,
&c." Vol. 1. p. 569. Edit.

17. Clip your phylateries, though bauk ears,] So we read as it is corrected in the table of Er-" rata in the edition of 1673: in all the editions it is falfly printed bank This line in the Manuyour ears. fcript was thus at first,

Crop ye as close as marginal

P-s ears.

He means Prynne who had been fentenc'd to lote his ears, and afterwards was sentenc'd to lofe the remainder of them, fo that he was cropt clofe indeed: and the reafon of his calling him marginal is ex

1738.

now

20. New Prefbyter is but Old

Prieft] He expreffes the fame works. Bishops and Prefbyters art fentiment in other parts of his the fame to us both name and things &c. See his Speech for the liberty of unlicenc'd printing, Vol. p. 153. and the conclufion of his treatife intitled The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates.

SONNET S.

سطح

SON NET S.

I.

To the NIGHTINGALE.

Nightingale, that on yon bloomy spray Warbleft at eve, when all the woods are still, Thou with fresh hope the lover's heart doft fill, While the jolly hours lead on propitious May. Thy liquid notes that close the

The Sonnet is a fpecies of poetry of Italian extraction, and the famous Petrarch hath gained the reputation of being the first author and inventor of it. He wrote a great number in commendation of his miftrefs Laura, with whom he was in love for twenty years together, and whofe death he lamented with the fame zeal for ten years afterwards and for the tendernefs and delicacy of his paffion, as well as for the beauty and elegance of his fentiments and language, he is efteemed the great mafter of love-poetry among the Moderns, and his Sonnets are univerfally allow'd to be the ftandard and perfection of that kind of writing. The Sonnet, I think, confifts generally of one thought, and that always turn'd in fourteen verses of the length of our heroics,

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two ftanza's or measures of four verfes each, and two of three, the firft eight verses having no more than two rimes: and herein it dif fers from the Canzone, which is not confin'd to any number of stanza's or verses. It is certainly one of the moft difficult of all the leffer kinds of poetry, fuch fimplicity and fuch correctness being requir'd in the compofition: And I have often wonder'd that the quaintnefs and exactness of the rimes alone did not deter Milton from attempting it, but he was carried on by his love of the Italians and Italian poetry: and other celebrated writers have been equally fond of copying Petrarch, as Bellay, Ronfard, Malherb &c. among the French; Sidney, Spenfer, Shakespear &c. among the English; but none of them have

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First heard before the shallow cuccoo's bill, Portend fuccefs in love; O if Jove's will Have link'd that amorous pow'r to thy soft lay, Now timely fing, ere the rude bird of hate

Foretel my hopeless doom in fome grove nigh; 10 As thou from year to year haft fung too late For my relief, yet hadft no reason why:

Whether the Mufe, or Love call thee his mate, Both them I serve, and of their train am I.

II.

Donna leggiadra il cui bel nome honora
L'herbofa val di Rheno, e il nobil varco,

Bene è colui d'ogni valore scarco
Qual tuo fpirto gentil non innamora,
Che dolcemente moftra fi di fuora

De fui atti foavi giamai parco,

Ei don', che fon d'amor faette ed arco,
La onde l'alta tua virtu s'infiora.

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Quando tu vaga parli, o lieta canti

Che mover poffa duro alpeftre legno

Guardi ciascun a gli occhi, ed a gli orecchi L'entrata, chi di te fi truova indegno;

Gratia fola di fu gli vaglia, inanti

Che'l difio amorofo al cuor s'invecchi.

III.

Qual in colle afpro, al imbrunir di fera
L'avezza giovinetta paftorella

Va bagnando l'herbetta ftrana e bella
Che mal fi fpande a difufata fpera
Fuor di sua natia alma primavera,

Cofi Amor meco insù la lingua fnella Defta il fior novo di strania favella, Mentre io di te, vezzofamente altera, Canto, dal mio buon popol non intefo E'l bel Tamigi cangio col bel Arno. Amor lo volfe, ed io a l'altrui pefo

But as I lay this othir night wak-
ing,

I thought howe lovirs had a to-
kining,

And amonge 'hem it was a
commune tale,

That it were gode to here the
nightingale,

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