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VII.

YOU MEANER BEAUTIES.

This little sonnet was written by Sir Henry Wotton, knight, on that amiable princess, Elizabeth daughter of James I. and wife of the Elector Palatine, who was chosen King of Bohemia, Sept. 5, 1619. The consequences of this fatal election are well known: Sir Henry Wotton, who in that and the following year was employed in several embassies in Germany on behalf of this unfortunate lady, seems to have had an uncommon attachment to her merit and fortunes, for he gave away a jewel worth a thousand pounds, that was presented to him by the emperor, "because it came from an enemy to his royal mistress the Queen of Bohemia." See Biog. Britan.

This song is printed from the Reliquia Wottonianæ, 1651, with some corrections from an old MS. copy.

You meaner beauties of the night,

That poorly satisfie our eies

More by your number, than your light;

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Like a flourishing young gallant, newly come to his land, [mand, Who keeps a brace of painted madams at his comAnd takes up a thousand pound upon his father's land, [stand; And gets drunk in a tavern, till he can neither go nor Like a young courtier, &c.

With a new-fangled lady, that is dainty, nice, and spare,

Who never knew what belonged to good housekeeping, or care,

[air, Who buyes gaudy-color'd fans to play with wanton And seven or eight different dressings of other women's hair;

Like a young courtier, &c.

With a new-fashion'd hall, built where the old one stood,

[good, Hung round with new pictures, that do the poor no With a fine marble chimney, wherein burns neither coal nor wood, [ne'er stood; And a new smooth shovelboard, whereon no victuals Like a young courtier, &c.

With a new study, stuft full of pamphlets, and plays, And a new chaplain, that swears faster than he prays,

With a new buttery hatch, that opens once in four or five days, [and toys;

And a new French cook, to devise fine kickshaws, Like a young courtier, &c.

With a new fashion, when Christmas is drawing on, On a new journey to London straight we all must begone, [John, And leave none to keep house, but our new porter Who relieves the poor with a thump on the back with a stone;

Like a young courtier, &c.

With a new gentleman-usher, whose carriage is compleat, [up the meat. With a new coachman, footmen, and pages to carry With a waiting-gentlewoman, whose dressing is [eat;

very neat,

Who when her lady has din'd, lets the servants not Like a young courtier, &c.

With new titles of honour bought with his father's old gold, [sold;

For which sundry of his ancestors old manors are
And this is the course most of our new gallants hold,
Which makes that good house-keeping is now grown
so cold,

Among the young courtiers of the king,
Or the king's young courtiers.

IX.

SIR JOHN SUCKLING'S CAMPAIGNE.

When the Scottish covenanters rose up in arms, and advanced to the English borders in 1639, many of the courtiers complimented the king by raising forces at their own expence. Among these none were more distinguished than the gallant Sir John Suckling, who raised a troop of horse, so richly accoutred, that it cost him 12,000l. The like expensive equipment of other parts of the army, made the king remark, that" the Scots would fight stoutly, if it were but for the Englishmen's fine cloaths." [Lloyd's Memoirs.] When they came to action, the rugged Scots proved more than a match for the fine shewy English: many of whom behaved remarkably ill, and among the rest this splendid troop of Sir John Suckling's.

This humorous pasquil has been generally supposed to have been written by Sir John, as a banter upon himself. Some of his contemporaries however attributed it to Sir John Mennis, a wit of those times, among whose poems it is printed in a small poetical miscellany, intitled," Musarum delicia: or the Muses recreation, containing several pieces of poetique wit, 2d edition.-By Sir J. M. [Sir John Mennis] and Ja. S. [James Smith.] London 1656, 12mo.". [See Woods Athenæ, II. 397, 418.] In that copy is subjoined an additional stanza, which probably was written by this Sir John Mennis, viz. "But now there is peace, he's return'd to increase, His money, which lately he spent-a, But his lost honour must lye still in the dust; At Barwick away it went-a."

SIR John he got him an ambling nag,

To Scotland for to ride-a,

With a hundred horse more, all his own he swore, To guard him on every side-a.

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This excellent sonnet, which possessed a high degree of fame among the old cavaliers, was written by Colonel Richard Lovelace during his confinement in the gate-house Westminster: to which he was committed by the House of Commons, in April 1642, for presenting a petition from the county of Kent, requesting them to restore the king to his rights, and to settle the government. See Wood's Athenæ, Vol. II. p. 228, and Lysons's Environs of London, Vol. I. p. 109; where may be seen at large the affecting story of this elegant writer, who after having been distinguished for every gallant and polite accomplishment, the pattern of his own sex, and the darling of the ladies, died in the lowest wretchedness, obscurity, and want, in 1658.

This song is printed from a scarce volume o is poems intitled, "Lucasta, 1649, 12mo." collated with a copy in the Editor's folio MS.

WHEN love with unconfined wings

Hovers within my gates,

And my divine Althea brings

To whisper at my grates;

When I lye tangled in her haire,
And fetter'd with her eye,

The birds that wanton in the aire,
Know no such libertye.

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XI.

THE DOWNFALL OF CHARING-CROSS.

Charing-cross, as it stood before the civil wars, was one of those beautiful Gothic obelisks erected to conjugal affection by Edward I. who built such a one wherever the herse of his beloved Eleanor rested in its way from Lincolnshire to Westminster. But neither its ornamental situation, the beauty of its structure, nor the noble design of its erection (which did honour to humanity), could preserve it from the merciless zeal of the times: For, in 1647, it was demolished by order of the House of Commons, as popish and superstitious. This occasioned the following not unhumourous sarcasm which has been often printed among the popular sonnets of those times.

The plot referred to in ver. 17, was that entered into by Mr. Waller the poet, and others, with a view to reduce the city and tower to the service of the king; for which two of them, Nathaniel Tomkins and Richard Chaloner suffered death July 5, 1643. Vid, Athen. Ox. II. 24.

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But neither man, woman, nor child,
Will say, I'm confident,
They ever heard it speak one word
Against the parliament.

An informer swore, it letters bore,
Or else it had been freed;
I'll take, in troth, my Bible oath,
It could neither write, nor read.

The committee said, that verily

To popery it was bent;

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For ought I know it might be so,

For to church it never went.

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'Cause, good old cross, it always stood So firmly to the city.

Since crosses you so much disdain,
Faith, if I were as you,

For feare the king should rule again,
I'd pull down Tyburn too.

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Whitelocke says, "May 3, 1643, Cheapside cross and other crosses were voted down," &c.-But this Vote was not put in execution with regard to Charing Cross" till four years after, as appears from Lilly's Observations on the Life, &c. of King Charles, viz. "Charing-Cross, we know, was pulled down, 1647, in June, July, and August. Part of the stones were converted to pave before Whitehall. I have seen Knife-hafts made of some of the stones, which, being well polished, looked like marble." Ed. 1715, p. 18, 12mo.

See an Account of the pulling down Cheapside Cross, in the Supplement to Gent. Mag. 1764.

XII.

LOYALTY CONFINED.

This excellent old song is preserved in David Lloyd's "Memoires of those that suffered in the cause of Charles I." London 1668, fol. p. 96. He speaks of it as the composition of a worthy personage, who suffered deeply in those times, and was still living with no other reward than the conscience of having suffered. The author's name he has not mentioned, but, if tradition may be credited, this song was written by Sir Roger L'Estrange.-Some mistakes in Lloyd's copy are corrected by two others, one in MS. the other in the "Westminster Drollery, or a choice Collection of Songs and Poems, 1671." 12mo.

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I have some iron shackles there : These walls are but my garrison; this cell, Which men call jail, doth prove my citadel

I'm in the cabinet lockt up,

Like some high-prized margarite,
Or, like the great mogul or pope,

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Am cloyster'd up from publick sight: Retiredness is a piece of majesty, And thus proud sultan, I'm as great as thee.

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Locks, bars, and solitude, together met, Make me no prisoner, but an anchoret.

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"This prince, like his father, did not confine himself to prose: Bishop Burnet has given us a pathetic elegy, said to be written by Charles in Carisbrook castle [in 1648.] The poetry is most uncouth and unharmonious, but there are strong thoughts in it, some good sense, and a strain of majestic piety." Mr. Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, vol. I.

It is in his "Memoirs of the Duke of Hamilton," p. 379, that Burnet hath preserved this elegy, which he tells us he had from a gentleman, who waited on the king at the time when it was written, and copied it out from the original. It is there intitled, "MAJESTY IN MISERY: OR AN IMPLORATION TO the King OF KINGS."

Hume hath remarked of these stanzas, "that the truth of the sentiment, rather than the elegance of the expression, renders them very pathetic." See his History, 1763, 4to. Vol. V. pp. 437. 442. which is no bad comment upon them.-These are almost the only verses known of Charles's composition. Indeed a little Poem "On a Quite Conscience," printed in the Poetical Calendar, 1763, vol. VIII. is attributed to King Charles I; being reprinted from a thin 8vo. published by Nahum Tate, called "Miscellanea Sacra, or Poems on Divine and Moral Subjects."

GREAT monarch of the world, from whose power
The potency and power of kings,
Record the royal woe my suffering sings;

And teach my tongue, that ever did confine
Its faculties in truth's seraphick line,
To track the treasons of thy foes and mine.

Nature and law, by thy divine decree, (The only root of righteous royaltie) With this dim diadem invested me:

With it, the sacred scepter, purple robe, The holy unction, and the royal globe: Yet am I levell'd with the life of Job.

[springs

The fiercest furies, that do daily tread
Upon my grief, my grey discrowned head,
Are those that owe my bounty for their bread.
They raise a war, and christen it the cause,
While sacrilegious hands have best applause,
Plunder and murder are the kingdom's laws;
Tyranny bears the title of taxation,
Revenge and robbery are reformation,
Oppression gains the name of sequestration.
My loyal subjects, who in this bad season
Attend me (by the law of God and reason),
They dare impeach, and punish for high treason.

Next at the clergy do their furies frown,
Pious episcopacy must go down,
They will destroy the crosier and the crown.

Churchmen are chain'd, and schismaticks are freed,
Mechanicks preach, and holy fathers bleed,
The crown is crucified with the creed.

The church of England doth all factions foster, The pulpit is usurpt by each impostor, Extempore excludes the Paternoster.

The Presbyter, and Independent seed

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Springs with broad blades. To make religion bleed Herod and Pontius Pilate are agreed.

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