Or Humber loud that keeps the Scythian's name,
Or Medway smooth, or royal towred Thame.

[The reft was profe. ]

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An EPITAPH on the admirable dramaticke Poet
W. SHAKESPEARE *.

WHA

HAT needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd
bones

The labour of an age in piled ftones,

With bloud wert christen'd, bloud-thirsty, till now

The Oufe and Done.

100. Or Medway Smooth, or royal towred Thame.] The fmoothness of the Medway is characterifed in Spenfer's MOURNING MUSE OF THESTYLIS.

The Medwaies filuer ftreames,

That wont fo STILL TO GLIDE,
Were troubled now and wroth.

The royal towers of Thames imply Windfor caftle, familiar to Milton's view, and to which I have already remarked his allufions.

Birch, and from him doctor Newton, affert, that this copy of verfes was written in the twenty fecond year of Milton's age, and printed with the Poems of Shakespeare at London in 1640. It first appeared among other recommendatory verfes, prefixed to the folio edition of Shakespeare's plays in 1632. But without Milton's name or initials. This therefore is the first of Milton's pieces that was published.

It was with great difficulty and reluctance, that Milton first appeared as an author. He could not be prevailed upon to put his name to Comus, his first performance of any length that was printed, notwithstanding the fingular approbation with which it had been previously received in a long and extenfive courfe of private circulation. LYCIDAS in the Cambridge collection is only fubfcribed with his initials. Moft of the other contributors have left their names at full length. We have here restored the title from the fecond folio of Shakespeare. 1.- My Shakespear.-] Of all the many encomiums passed on our great dramatic poet, the moft truly poetical one, feems to be con

Sf

tained

Γ

Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a star-ypointing pyramid ?

Dear fon of memory, great heir of fame,

5

What need'st thou fuch weak witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Haft built thyself a live-long monument.

For whilft to th' fhame of flow endevoring art
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart 10
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalued book
Those Delphic lines with deep impreffion took,
Then thou our fancy of itself bereaving,
Doft make us marble with too much conceiving;
And fo fepulcher'd in fuch pomp doft lie,

That kings for fuch a tomb would wish to die.

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tained in the third ftrophe of Mr. Gray's admirable Ode on the PROGRESS OF POETRY." Far from the Sun, &c." Particularly in the fine Prosopopeia and Speech of NATURE to him.

This pencil take, fhe faid, whofe colours clear
Richly paint the vernal year;

Thine too thefe golden keys, immortal boy!

This can unlock the gates of joy ;

Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears,

Or ope the facred fource of fympathetic tears.

Dr. J. WARTON.

8.

A live-long monument.] It is lafting in the folio Shakespeare, and the edition of thefe Poems, 1645. So in Tonfon, 1695, and 1705. And in Tickell, and Fenton.

On.

On the UNIVERSITY CARRIER, who fickened in the time of his vacancy, being forbid to go to London, by reafon of the plague.

H'

ERE lies old Hobfon; Death hath broke

his girt,

And here alas, hath laid him in the dirt,
Or else the ways being foul, twenty to one,
He's here stuck in a flough, and overthrown.
'Twas such a shifter, that if truth were known, 5
Death was half glad when he had got him down;
For he had any time this ten years full,

Dodg'd with him, betwixt Cambridge and the Bull.
And furely Death could never have prevail'd,
Had not his weekly course of carriage fail'd; 10
But lately finding him so long at home,
And thinking now his journey's end was come,
And that he had ta'en up his latest inn,

In the kind office of a chamberlin

14

14. In the kind office of a Chamberlin, &c.] I believe the Chamberlain is an officer not yet difcontinued in fome of the old inns in the city. But Chytraeus a German, above quoted, who visited England about 1580, and put his travels into Latin verfe, mentions it as an extraordinary circumftance, that it was the custom of our inns to be waited upon by women. In Peele's OLD WIVES TALE, of which before, Fantastique fays, "I had euen as liue the chamberlaine of "the White Horse had called me vp to bed." A. i. S. i. Hobfon's inn at London was the Bull in Bishopsgate-street where his figure in frefco

Sfa

Show'd him his room where he must lodge that night,
Pull'd off his boots, and took away the light:
If any ask for him, it shall be fed,
Hobfon has fupt, and's newly gone to bed.

H

ANOTHER on the fame *.

ERE lieth one, who did most truly prove

That he could never die while he could move;

So hung his destiny, never to rot

While he might still jog on and keep his trot,
Made of sphere-metal, never to decay

Until his revolution was at stay.

Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) motion number'd out his time:
And like an engin mov'd with wheel and weight,
His principles being ceas'd, he ended strait.

5

10

fresco with an infcription, was lately to be feen. Peck, at the end of his MEMOIRS of CROMWELL, has printed Hobfon's Will, which is dated at the clofe of the year 1630. He died Jan. 1, 1630, while the plague was in London. This piece was written that year. The proverb, to which Hobfon's caprice, founded perhaps on good fenfe, gave rife, needs not to be repeated.

*Among archbishop Sancroft's tranfcripts of poetry made by him at Cambridge, now in the Bodleian library, is an anomymous poem on the death of Hobfon. It was perhaps a common fubject for the wits of Cambridge. I take this opportunity of obferving, that in the fame bundle is a poem on Milton's LYCIDAS, Mr. King, by Mr. Booth, of Corpus Chrifti, not in the published collection. Coll. MSS, TANN. 465. See pp. 235.237.

Reft

Reft that gives all men life, gave him his death, And too much breathing put him out of breath; Nor were it contradiction to affirm

Too long vacation hasten'd on his term.

Merely to drive the time away he ficken'd,

15

20

Fainted, and died, nor would with ale be quicken'd;
Nay, quoth he, on his fwooning bed out-ftretch'd,
If I mayn't carry, fure I'll ne'er be fetch'd,
But vow, though the cross doctors all stood hearers,
For one carrier put down to make fix bearers.
Ease was his chief disease, and to judge right,
He dy'd for heaviness that his cart went light:
His leifure told him that his time was come,
And lack of load made his life burdenfome,
That even to his last breath (there be that say't) 25
As he were prefs'd to death, he cry'd more weight;
But had his doings lafted as they were,

He had been an immortal carrier.
Obedient to the moon he spent his date
In course reciprocal, and had his fate
Link'd to the mutual flowing of the feas,

Yet (strange to think) his wain was his increase:
His letters are deliver'd all and gone,

Only remains this superscription.

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On