The word 'may' is printed in the text instead of the word 'sumus': but, as Lamb has remarked, no doubt we should read, instead of may, sumus, to rhime with fumus.' 'Certainly,' assents the corroborative Nott.

'I'll not give a cue so soon,' says Wither, to see an apeplay his forc'd tricks, as I would give a tester' to see the apish tricks of vain gallants in their drunken or amorous frolics. Qu. cue. What?' asks Nott: and Lamb replies, Portecue; small coin of Portugal.'

In the following satire, Of Inconstancy,' Wither arraigns 'the vulgar' on the charge of envy as well as fickleness, and preference of rashness to mildness.

He that doth trust unto their love shall find
'Tis more inconstant than the wavering wind;
Which since my time a man, that many knew,
Relying on it, at his death found true.

Essex?' suggests Lamb; whose chronology seems here again somewhat at fault. In a passage of this satire which I do not remember to have seen quoted by any commentator on Shakespeare, we come upon a rare Shakespearean word. An old chuff,' whose speech has some salt in it of homely dramatic humour, is represented as ridiculing the studious habits of the author's youth, and thanking God that his son is not zuch an asse,' but was always glad to keep the swine' rather than go to school;

:

and what tricks the mome

Would have invented then to stay at home,

You would have wondered.

In a note on the fourth satire, 'Of Presumption,' Lamb has again shown his skill in conjectural emendation: suggesting 'lection or lesson' as the right reading, where the context affords no meaning to the phrase, God's sacred legion.' It is here that the poet avows himself a moderate Puritan and a textualist of the old Protestant school he divides the offenders of his day into four classes, those that seek after new inventions in worship, those that over boldly take upon them to alter the text of scripture by addition and excision, those that will force others to allow of their own groundless opinions, and those that pry into secrets which God meant should be hiddenif his omnipotence could have managed it; students in astrology, for instance, though they, as the candid satirist allows, can make a fair apology; fortune-tellers by palmistry, who are indeed presumptuous, though less than those who would fix the date of the day of judgment; or those that ask, or venture even to relate, what God was doing before he created heaven and earth; where he was living in that rather dim stage of his existence; and-certainly a somewhat knotty question-how and by whom he then was glorified.' But, as Wither not irrationally observes, those that wind into such deep secrets find

slender profit of their labour; for, 'to make known how highly they offend,' a merciful Providence often drives them raving mad. Some, again, hope to win God's favour by honesty, almsdeeds, and works of charity; but it is superfluous to add that their outlook is of the darkest. Theirs, however, is no better, who trust in faith without works; a religion that wants honesty' will please as little as honest shews without religion too.' How then, if these comfortable certainties be true, will those presumptuous fellows speed, who think to please their mighty God with such vain things as Christmas wassailbowls, Hocktide custom, a Whitsun-ale, or some such goodly motion? Certainly, as Lamb observes in the margin, 'the Puritan pokes out his tender horns here.'

There is better stuff of a more secular kind in the latter part of this long rambling poem. Although professing his respect for some so-called Puritans, Wither expresses a contempt for

the busy-headed sect,

The hollow crew, the counterfeit elect,

as keen as his abhorrence of popery and simony: and having at length got clear (for the time) of theology, reverts to his complaint of the presumption shown in neglect of national defences;

it appears,

Through the great blessing of these quiet years,
We are so fearless, careless, and secure

In this our happy peace, and so cock-sure,
As if we did suppose, or heard it said,

Old Mars were strangled, or the devil dead.

Lamb has set a pencil-mark against this passage; and not long after his pencil has made a happy correction by substituting 'through' for thought,' as it stands misprinted in the text of the following couplet.

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For, if wars ever make this land complain,

It will be through some truce we had with Spain.

The satirist then proceeds to enlarge in homely and earnest fashion on sundry crying abuses in army and navy; forts unrepaired and fraudulent captains, who pocket their men's wages, and one poor soldier serves alone for ten' (a trick noted more than once or twice by the dramatists of the day); the lack of hands in the navy royal,' and the roguery of the pursers who study only how to make their own profit by them: then, after warning of danger from the south, with a sudden and striking change of tone, he rises into the following note of patriotic and manful confidence, not unworthy a future fellowsoldier of Cromwell and of Blake :

But fear not, little isle: thy cause is right,
And if thou hast not cast thy care off quite,

Nor art secure, why, by that token then

Thou shalt drive back that threatening storm again,
G

VOL. XVII.-No. 95.

Through God's assistance; even to ruin those

By and amongst whom first of all it rose.

6

After this he slips back into theology, and laments the presumption which leaves our better parts open for the advantage of the greater foe than Rome or Spain.' A vehement attempt at a realistic description of hell, with garish forms' of devils, and ugly bugs (bugbears), provokes from the sarcastic Nott a cry of bugs! enough to make a man quake. This is but a bug-bear sort of hell: a tale for the nursery.' Whereat Lamb, moved now beyond all patience, informs him that bugs (fool) do not here mean fleas' relations': adding, in a colossal scrawl across a sheet and a half, by way of comment on upwards of three pages following, all this is great Poetry, tho' thou knowest it Nott!' And indeed the whole passage thus marked has real energy and reality of imagination and feeling, as well as a pure and forcible simplicity of style.

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The Epilogus following this satire, and the poem of 'The Scourge' which succeeds it, have not been honoured by Lamb with any original notes: but the commentary on 'Wither's Motto' will be remembered by all students of the most exquisite critical essays in any language. They will not be surprised to learn that neither the style nor the matter of it found any favour in the judicial eye of Nott. There is some tautology in this, and some of the sentences are harsh-These repetitions are very awkward; but the whole sentence is obscure and far-fetched in sentiment'; such is the fashion in which this unlucky particle of a pedant has bescribbled the margin of Lamb's beautiful manuscript. But those for whom alone I write will share my pleasure in reading the original paragraph as it came fresh from the spontaneous hand of the writer, not as yet adapted or accommodated by any process of revision to the eye of the general reader.

"Wither's Motto.

The poem which Wither calls his Motto is a continued selfeulogy' (originally written self-eulogium ') of two thousand lines: yet one reads it to the end without feeling any distaste, or being hardly conscious of having listen'd so long to a man praising himself. There are none of the cold particles of vanity in it; no hardness or self-ends' (altered to 'no want of feeling, no selfishness'; but restored in the published text), which are the qualities that make Egotism hateful The writer's mind was continually glowing with images of virtue, and a noble scorn of vice: what it felt, it honestly believed it possessed, and as honestly avowed it; yet so little is this consciousness mixed up with any alloy of selfishness, that the writer seems to be praising qualities in another person rather than in himself; or, to speak more properly, we feel that it was indifferent to him, where he found the virtues; but that being best acquainted with himself, he chose to celebrate himself as their best known receptacle.

We feel that he would give to goodness its praise, wherever found; that it is not a quality which he loves for his own low self which possesses it; but himself that he respects for the qualities which he imagines he finds in himself. With these feelings, and without them it is impossible to read it, it is as beautiful a piece of self-confession as the Religio Medici of Browne.

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'It will lose nothing also if we contrast it' (or, as previously written, 'It may be worth while also to contrast it') with the Conessions of Rousseau.' ('How is Rousseau analogous?' queries the interrogatory Nott: on whom Lamb retorts-analogous?!! why, this note was written to show the difference not the analogy between them. C.L.) In every page of the latter we are disgusted with the vanity, which brings forth faults, and begs us to take them (or at least the acknowledgment of them) for virtue-But in Wither we listen to a downright confession of unambiguous virtues; and love the heart which has the confidence to pour itself out.' Here, at a later period, Lamb has written― C. L. thus far.' On the phrase 'confession of unambiguous virtues' Dr. Nott has obliged us with the remark-- this seems an odd association': and has received this answer :- -'It was meant to be an odd one, to puzzle a certain sort of people. C. L.'-whose words should be borne in mind by every reader of his essays or letters who may chance to take exception to some passing turn of speech intended, or at least not wholly undesigned, to give occasion for that same 'certain sort of people' to stumble or to trip.

6

The succeeding paragraph of manuscript, as Lamb apparently thought it worth transcription, must indisputably be worth preservation. Taylor, the Water Poet, in contrast to this, came out with his Motto "Et habeo, et careo, et curo; I have, I want, I care' in 1621.

"This Motto in my head at first I took,

In imitation of a better book;

And to good minds I no offence can give
To follow good examples whilst I live."

This is complimentary to his opponent, and so are other passages: nor does much personality appear in the production. Wood therefore had no strong authority for pitting them, as he did, against each other-In 1625 was printed at Oxford "An Answer to Wither's Motto, without a frontispiece: wherein Nec habeo, nec careo, nec curo are neither approved nor confuted, but modestly controuled or qualified." T. G. Esq., the author, addresses himself to Wither, and says

"If the worst come, we shall do no worse than lawyers, who fall out with one another at the Bar, and are friends when they meet at the Temple Hall at dinner." The purport of this tract is to point out some contradictory passages in Wither's Motto: but the writer seems afraid of his antagonist, and his performance is the product (sic) of insipidity. Shipman, in his Carolina (1682), reviled Wither as a

rhyming Presbyterian and trumpeter to rebellion in his Nec habeo, nec careo, пес curo.'

And certainly Wither has approved himself in this poem a Commonwealth's man of so thoroughly republican a spirit as thoroughly to deserve the scorn of all sycophants and the reprobation of all royalists. This is as much as to say that he no less deserves the honour done him by Lamb in the citation of a famous passage from the prose of Milton to illustrate his less exalted verse: for indeed this poem is at least a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of some rhyming parasite '—such as Wither in homelier and humbler style has branded with no less. righteous if with far less eloquent contempt.

I cannot, for my life, my pen compel
Upon the praise of any man to dwell,

Unless I know, or think at least, his worth
To be the same which I had blazèd forth.

(This declaration of his integrity as a poet,' observes Lamb, 'is not less honourable to himself than spiritedly sarcastic on many hireling rhymers. This is very true,' rejoins Nott, naso adunco, as if with the satirical smirk of a petulant pedagogue, but something in the style of Capel Lofft.' Whereon Lamb, whom wrath has here impelled to the perpetration--in one breath-of probably the two most abominable puns extant :-'In whose style are thy remarks, in the name of modesty? what bit of discovery hast thou made, to entitle thee to sit judge upon Common Place? Why, Capel Lofft may keep aloft from such as thee.')

Had I some honest suit, the gain of which
Would make me noble, eminent and rich,
And that to compass it no means there were,
Unless I basely flattered some great peer,
Would with that suit my ruin I might get,
If on those terms I would endeavour it !

'I'll be damn'd if you would! C. L.'-whose oath, let us believe, the recording angel did not obliterate-like Uncle Toby's--with a tear, but inscribed to his credit in characters of living light.

6

I cannot give a plaudit, I protest,

When, as his lordship thinks, he breaks a jest,
Unless it moves me; neither can I grin,
When he a causeless laughter doth begin.
I cannot swear him truly honourable,
Because he once receiv'd me to his table,
And talk'd as if the Muses glad might be
That he vouchsafèd such a grace to me.

True old Holcroft!' exclaims Lamb in the margin of the passage just transcribed. He has marked as for approval three or four others