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Page 113. A Litany.

A poem so called, written by Donne, who, in a letter to his friend, Sir Henry Goodyere, gives this account of it. "Since my imprisonment in my bed I have made a meditation in verse, which I call a Litany. The word, you know, imports no other than supplication; but all churches have one form of supplication by that name. Amongst ancient annals, I mean some 800 years, I have met two Letanies in Latin verse, which gave me not the reason of my meditations; for in good faith I thought not upon them, but they give me a defence, if any man to a layman and a private impute it as a fault to take such divine and publique names to his own little thoughts." (Letters, &c. p. 32.)

Page 123. Nicholas Wotton.

What Sir Henry Wotton said of Sir Philip Sidney, has been applied to Nicholas Wotton. "That he was the very measure of congruity." Henry VIII. thus addressed him on his appointment to a foreign embassy; "I have sent a head by Cromwell, a purse by Wolsey, a sword by Brandon, and must now send the law by you." He was considered as possessing the qualifications of a statesman in a very eminent degree. "Every younker speaks as politic as Bishop Gardner or Dr. Wotton." (Spenser's Letters to his friend Immerito.)

Page 135. Albericus Gentilis. A very celebrated Italian lawyer, in 1550, and educated at Perugia.

born at Ancona About 1572, he

left his own country with his father and brother, they being of the reformed religion, and whilst the two former settled in Germany, he came into England, and was admitted at New Inn Hall, Oxford, in 1580, through the patronage of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, then Chancellor of that University. In 1587, Queen Elizabeth made him Professor of Civil Law, and it is supposed that he died at Oxford, about April, 1611. His works are principally on Jurisprudence, written in Latin.

Page 147. Passing-bell.

The soul-bell was tolled before the departure of a person out of life, as a signal for good men to offer up their prayers for the dying. Hence the abuse commenced of praying for the dead. "Aliquo moriente campanæ debent pulsari, ut populus hoc audiens oret pro illo." (Durandi Rationale.)

Page 160. The queen of Bohemia.

The following verses were written by Sir Henry Wotton " on his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia: "

"You meaner beauties of the night,

That poorly satisfy our eyes

More by your number than your light,

You common people of the skies,

What are you when the sun shall rise?

"You curious chanters of the wood,
That warble forth dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your voices understood

By your weak accents; what's your praise,
When Philomel her voice shall raise?

"You violets that first appear,
By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year,
As if the spring were all your own,

What are you when the rose is blown?
"So, when my mistress shall be seen,
In form and beauty of her mind,
By virtue first, then choice a Queen,
Tell me, if she were not designed

Page 161.

The eclipse and glory of her kind."

The Bishop of Spalatro.

Marcus Antonius de Dominis, Archbishop of Spalatro, in Dalmatia, and the territory of Venice, was born at Arba, about 1561. He came to England with Mr. Bedell, in 1617, and, on confessing himself a convert to the Protestant faith, was made Dean of Windsor. He was, however, persuaded by the Ambassador Gondamar, to return to Rome, and his former religion: but though the promise of a Cardinal's hat was held out to him, he was seized by the Inquisition, and died in prison, in 1625.

Page 162. The inscription under his arms.

A painted shield, with the titles of the Ambassador written below it, called a Lodging Scutcheon, was commonly hung of the door of the house in which the Envoy resided; a custom derived probably from the ancient times of Chivalry, when the knights who were to appear in a tournament suspended their arms at the windows of their dwellings. It was also done to procure respect to the Ambassador's establishment, and the escutcheon was frequently left as a memorial of his Embassy.

Page 163. Charitable Sir Julius Cæsar.

Sir Julius Cæsar, alias Adelmare, the eldest son of Cæsar Dalmarius, an Italian physician to Queen Mary and to Queen Elizabeth. His bounty was so

extensive, that he might be called "The Almoner General of the Nation." "It was not," says Lloyd in his State Worthies, "without a prosperous omen that his chief house in Hertfordshire was called Benington, that is "villa benigna," as one author will have it, or as another, "villa beneficii," the Town of Good Turns, from the river so named running by it." This venerable lawyer died April 28, 1639, in the 79th year of his age. He lies buried in great St. Helen's church, London, under a monument, having an inscription in the form of a deed with a seal to it, importing "That he was willing to pay his debt to nature whenever God pleased."

Page 191. The summer before his death, &c.

In this year he wrote his letter to Milton, who then lived near Eton, thanking him for his present of "Comus," which he calls "A dainty piece of entertainment; wherein," he adds, "I should much commend the tragical part, if the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes, whereunto I must plainly confess to have seen yet nothing parallel in our language: ipsa mollities." (Reliq. Wotton. p. 343.)

Milton has commended this letter in his "Defensio Secunda Populi Anglicani." "Abeuntem viriclarissimus Henricus Wootonus, qui ad Venetos Orator Jacobi Regis diu fuerat, et votis et præceptis eunti peregre sane utilissimis eleganti epistolâ perscriptis amicissime prosequutus est."

Page 193. He felt into a fever, &c.

The following beautiful hymn was written by him in his sickness:

"O thou great Power, in whom I move,
For whom I live, to whom I die!
Behold me through thy beams of love,
Whilst on this couch of tears I lie,
And cleanse my sordid soul within
By thy Christ's blood, the bath of sin.
"No hallowed oils, no grains I need,

No rags of saints, no purging fire;
One rosy drop from David's seed

Was worlds of seas to quench thine ire.
O, precious ransom! which, once paid,
That" Consummatum est was said;

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"And said by him that said no more,

But sealed it with his dying breath.
Thou then that hast dispunged my score,
And dying wast the death of death,
Be to me now, on thee I call,

My life, my strength, my joy, my all."

END OF VOL. I.

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