Bishop Hatto.

But the third thing that is reported of this towne [Bing, i.e. Bingen] is a thing passing memorable and very worthy the observation; such a wondrous and rare accident as I never read or heard of the like before. Therefore I will relate it in this place out of Munster, for one of the most notable examples of Gods justice that ever was extant in the whole world since the first creation thereof. It hapned in the yeare 914 that there was an exceeding famine in Germany, at what time Otho, surnamed the Great, was emperor, and one Hatto, once Abbot of Fulda, was Archbishop of Mentz, of the bishops after Crescens or Crescentius the two and thirtieth, of the archbishops after St Bonifacius the thirteenth. This Hatto, in the time of this great famine before mentioned, when he saw the poore people of the country exceedingly oppressed with famine, assembled a great company of them together into a barne, and like a most accursed & mercilesse caitiffe urnt up those poore innocent soules, that were so farre from doubting any such matter, that they rather hoped to have received some comfort and relief at his hands. The reason that moved the prelate to commit that execrable impiety was because he thought that the famine would the sooner cease, if those unprofitable beggars that consumed more bread then they were worthy to eate were dispatched out of the world. For he said that these poore folkes were like to mice, that were good for nothing but to devour corne. But Almighty God, the just revenger of the poore folks quarrel, did not long suffer this hainous tyranny, this most detestable fact unpunished. For he mustered up an army of mice against the archbishop, and sent them to persecute him as his furious Alastors, so that they afflicted him both day and night, and would not suffer him to take his rest in any place. Whereupon the prelate thinking that he should be secure from the injury of mice if he were in a certaine tower that standeth in the Rhene neere to the towne, betooke himself unto the said tower as to a safe refuge and sanctuary from his enemies, and locked himselfe in. But the innumerable troupes of mice continually chaced him very eagerly, and swumme unto him upon the top of the water to execute the just judgement of God, and so at last he was most miserably devoured by those silly creatures; who pursued him with such bitter hostility, that it is recorded they scraped and gnawed off his very name from the walls and tapestry wherein it was written, after they had so cruelly devoured his bodie. Wherefore the tower in which he was eaten up by the mice is shewed to this lay for a perpetuall monument to al succeeding ages of the barbarous and inhuman tyranny of that impious prelate, being situate in a little greene iland in the middest of the Rheene, neere to this towne of Bing, and is commonly called in the Germane tongue the Mowse turn [Ger. Mause-thurm, 'mouse-tower;' probably a corruption of Mauth-thurm, 'tax-tower'].

Pronunciation of Latin.

I observed another thing also in the Italians pronouncing of the Latin tongue, which though I might have mentioned before in the description of some of the other Italian cities; yet seing I have hitherto omitted it, I will here make mention thereof rather then not at al, because this is the last city [Bergamo] of Italy that I shall describe in this journey. The Italian

when he uttereth any Latin word wherein this letter i is to be pronounced long, doth alwaies pronounce it as a double e, viz. as ee. As for example: he pronounceth fecdes for fides: veeta for vita: ameecus for amicus, &c. ; but where the i is not to be pronounced long he uttereth it as we doe in England, as in these wordes, impius, aquila, patria, Ecclesia: not aqueela, patreea, Eccleseca. And this pronunciation is so generall in all Italy that every man which speaketh Latin soundeth a double e for an i Neither is it proper to Italy only, but to all other nations whatsoever in Christendome saving to England. For whereas in my travels I discoursed in Latin with Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, Danes, Polonians, Suecians, and divers others, I observed that every one with whom I had any conference, pronounced the after the same manner that the Italians use. Neither would some of them (amongst whom I was not a little inquisitive for the reason of this their pronunciation) sticke to affirme that Plautus, Terence, Cicero, Hortensius, Cæsar, and those other selected flowers of eloquence amongst the auncient Romans, pronounced the i in that sort as they themselves doe. Whereupon having observed such a generall consent amongst them in the pronunciation of this letter, I have thought good to imitate these nations herein, and to abandon my old English pronunciation of vita, fides, and amicus, as being utterly dissonant from the sound of all other nations; and have determined (God willing) to retayne the same till my dying day.

John Taylor (1580-1653), a London waterman, who styled himself 'The King's Majesty's Water Poet,' was one of the most voluminous of city rhymesters. A native of Gloucester, he became a waterman in London, but was impressed into the navy and served at the siege of Cadiz. He resumed plying on the Thames, then kept a public-house at Oxford, and latterly an inn in London. The most memorable incident in his career was travelling in 1618 on foot from London to Edinburgh, 'not carrying any money to or fro, neither begging, borrowing, or asking meat, drink, or lodging.' He took with him, however, a servant on horseback, and contrived to get an extraordinary amount of hospitality, good-will, and good cheer. From Ben Jonson, whom he met at Leith, he received a present of 'a piece of gold of two and twenty shillings to drink his health in England.' He made also a considerable excursion into the north of Scotland, as the Earl of Mar's guest in Braemar. Of this journey Taylor wrote an account, entitled The Penniless Pilgrimage, or the Moneyless Perambulation of John Taylor, alias the King's Majesty's Water Poet, &c. 1618. This tract is partly in prose and partly in verse. Of the latter, the following is a favourable specimen :

In the Borders.

Eight miles from Carlisle runs a little river,
Which England's bounds from Scotland's grounds doth

sever.

Without horse, bridge, or boat I o'er did get; On foot I went, yet scarce my shoes did wet.

I being come to this long-looked-for land,

Did mark, re-mark, note, re-note, viewed and scanned;
And I saw nothing that could change my will,
But that I thought myself in England still.
The kingdoms are so nearly joined and fixed,
There scarcely went a pair of shears betwixt ;
There I saw sky above, and earth below,
And as in England there the sun did shew;
The hills with sheep replete, with corn the dale,
And many a cottage yielded good Scottish ale.
This county, Annandale, in former times,
Was the cursed climate of rebellious crimes:
For Cumberland and it, both kingdoms' borders,
Were ever ordered by their own disorders,

Some sharking, shifting, cutting throats, and thieving,
Each taking pleasure in the other's grieving ;
And many times he that had wealth to-night,
Was by the morrow morning beggared quite.
Too many years this pell-mell fury lasted,

That all these Borders were quite spoiled and wasted;
Confusion, hurly-burly, reigned and revelled ;

The churches with the lowly ground were levelled;
All memorable monuments defaced,

All places of defence o'erthrown and razed;
That whoso then did in the Borders dwell,

Lived little happier than those in hell.

But since the all-disposing God of heaven

Hath these two kingdoms to one monarch given,
Blest peace and plenty on them both have showered;
Exile and hanging hath the thieves devoured,
That now each subject may securely sleep,
His sheep and neat, the black, the white, doth keep.
For now these crowns are both in one combined,
Those former Borders that each one confined,
Appears to me, as I do understand,

To be almost the centre of the land;
This was a blessed Heaven-expounded riddle,
To thrust great kingdoms' skirts into the middle.
Long may the instrumental cause survive!
From him and his succession still derive
True heirs unto his virtues and his throne,
That these two kingdoms ever may be one!

Of Taylor's prose narrative, perhaps the most interesting portion now is an account of a great deer-hunt which he witnessed at the 'Brae of Mar,' at which were present the Earls of Mar, Moray, Buchan, Enzie, with their countesses; Lord Erskine, Sir William Murray of Abercairney, and hundreds of others, knights, esquires, and their followers':

A Deer-hunt in Braemar.

Once in the year, which is the whole month of August, and sometimes part of September, many of the nobility and gentry of the kingdom, for their pleasure, do come into these Highland countries to hunt, when they do conform themselves to the habit of the Highlandmen, who for the most part speak nothing but Irish, and in former times were those people which were called the Red-shanks. Their habit is shoes with but one sole apiece, stockings (which they call short hose) made of a warm stuff of divers colours, which they call tartan. As for breeches, many of them, nor their forefathers, never wore any, but a jerkin of the same stuff that their hose is of, their garters being bands or wreaths of hay or

straw, with a plaid about their shoulders, which is a mantle of divers colours, of much finer and lighter stuff than their hose, with blue flat caps on their head, a handkerchief knit with two knots about their neck, and thus are they attired. Now, their weapons are long bows and forked arrows, swords and targets, harquebusses, muskets, dirks, and Lochaber axes.

My good lord of Mar having put me into that shape [costume], I rode with him from his house, where I saw the ruins of an old castle, called the castle of Kindroghit [Castleton]. It was built by king Malcolm Canmore for a hunting-house: it was the last house I saw in those parts; for I was the space of twelve days after before I saw either house, corn-field, or habitation for any creature but deer, wild horses, wolves, and such-like creatures, which made me doubt that I should ever have seen a house again.

Thus the first day we travelled eight miles, where there were small cottages built on purpose to lodge in, which they call lonchards. I thank my good Lord Erskine, he commanded that I should always be lodged in his lodging, the kitchen being always on the side of a bank, many kettles and pots boiling, and many spits turning and winding, with a great variety of cheer - as venison; baked, sodden, roast, and stewed beef; mutton, goats, kid, hares, fresh salmon, pigeons, hens, capons, chickens, partridge, moor-coots, heath-cocks, capercailzies, and termagants [ptarmigans]; good ale, sack, white and claret, tent [Alicante], with most potent Aquavita.

All these and more than these we had continually in superfluous abundance, caught by Falconers, Fowlers, Fishers, and brought by my Lord's tenants and purveyors to victual our Camp, which consisted of fourteen or fifteen hundred men and horses. The manner of the hunting is this: five or six hundred men do rise early in the morning, and do disperse themselves divers ways, and seven or eight miles' compass; they do bring or chase in the deer in many herds (two, three, or four hundred in a herd) to such or such a place as the Nobleman shall appoint them; then when day is come, the Lords and gentlemen of their companies do ride or go to the said places, sometimes wading up to their middles through bournes and rivers; and then, they being come to the place, do lie down on the ground, till those foresaid scouts, which are called the Tinchel, do bring down the deer.... Then, after we had stayed three hours or thereabouts, we might perceive the deer appear on the hills round about us (their heads making a show like a wood), which, being followed close by the Tinchel, are chased down into the valley where we lay. Then all the valley on each side being waylaid with a hundred couple of strong Irish greyhounds, they are let loose as the occasion serves upon the herd of deer, so that, with dogs, guns, arrows, dirks, and daggers, in the space of two hours, fourscore fat deer were slain, which after are disposed of some one way and some another, twenty and thirty miles, and more than enough left for us to make merry withal at our rendezvous.

Various journeys and voyages were made by Taylor, and duly described by him in short occasional tracts such as Travell in Germanie (1617), Travels to Prague in Bohemia (1620), and The Praise of Hempseed (1620), the story of a ridiculous voyage from London to Queenborough,

in Kent, by a Mr Roger Bird and himself in a preposterous boat made of brown paper. In 1630 he made a collection of these pieces: All the Workes of John Taylor, the Water Poet; being Sixty and Three in Number. He continued, however, to write during more than twenty years after this period, and ultimately his works consisted of not less than one hundred and thirty-eight separate publications. Taylor was a staunch royalist and orthodox Churchman, abjuring all sectaries and schismatics. There is nothing in his works, as Southey remarks, which deserves preservation for its intrinsic merit alone, but there is some natural humour, much small jingling wit, and a great deal to illustrate the manners of his age. A complete reprint of his works was issued by the Spenser Society in 1868-78.

Ben

Richard Corbet (1582–1635) was the son of a Ewell gardener who is commended in Ben Jonson's Underwoods. Educated at Westminster School and Broadgates Hall (Pembroke College), Oxford, he took orders, and became Dean of Christ Church (1620), Bishop of Oxford (1624), and Bishop of Norwich (1632). The social qualities of witty Bishop Corbet and his never-failing vivacity, joined to a moderate share of dislike to the Puritans, recommended him to the patronage of King James, to whom he owed his mitre. Jonson loved him well, as also his father, my dear Vincent Corbet,' whom he commemorated. The Bishop's habits were rather too convivial for the dignity of his office, if we may credit some of the anecdotes which have been told of him. One market-day at Abingdon, meeting a ballad-singer who complained he could get no custom, the jolly Doctor put off his gown and arrayed himself in the leathern jacket of the itinerant vocalist, and being a handsome man, with a clear, full voice, he presently vended the whole stock of ballads. Once at a confirmation, the country people pressing in to see the ceremony, Corbet exclaimed, 'Bear off there, or I'll confirm ye with my staff.' And sometimes, by Aubrey's telling, he would take the key of the wine-cellar, and he and his chaplain, Dr Lushington, would go and lock themselves in and be merry. Then first he layes down his episcopal hat—“There lyes the Dr." Then he putts off his gowne-"There lyes the bishop." Then 'twas "Here's to thee, Corbet," and "Here's to thee, Lushington." Jovialities such as these seem more like the feats of the jolly Friar of Copmanhurst than the acts of a Protestant bishop; but Corbet had higher qualities; his toleration, solid sense, and lively talents procured him esteem. His poems, many of which are little better than rollicking doggerel, were first collected and published in 1647 (4th ed. by Octavius Gilchrist, 1807). They are of a miscellaneous character, the best known being a Journey to France, the Iter Boreale (the tour of four students in the Midlands to the north of Oxford), and the Farewell to the Fairies.

To Vincent Corbet, his Son.
What I shall leave thee, none can tell,
But all shall say I wish thee well:

I wish thee, Vin, before all wealth,
Both bodily and ghostly health;
Nor too much wealth nor wit come to thee,
So much of either may undo thee.
I wish thee learning, not for show,
Enough for to instruct and know;
Not such as gentlemen require
To prate at table or at fire.

I wish thee all thy mother's graces,
Thy father's fortunes and his places.
I wish thee friends, and one at court,
Not to build on, but support;
To keep thee not in doing many
Oppressions, but from suffering any.
I wish thee peace in all thy ways,
Nor lazy nor contentious days;
And, when thy soul and body part,
As innocent as now thou art.

From the 'Journey to France.'
I went from England into France,
Nor yet to learn to cringe nor dance,
Nor yet to ride or fence :
Nor did I go like one of those
That do return with half a nose

They carried from hence.
But I to Paris rode along,
Much like John Dory in the song,

Upon a holy tide.

I on an ambling nag did get-
I trust he is not paid for yet-

And spurred him on each side.
And to Saint Dennis fast we came,
To see the sights of Nostre Dame-

The man that shews them snufflesWhere who is apt for to beleeve, May see our Lady's right-arm sleeve,

And eke her old pantofles;

Her breast, her milk, her very gown That she did wear in Bethlehem town,

When in the inn she lay :
Yet all the world knows that 's a fable,
For so good clothes ne'er lay in stable,
Upon a lock of hay. . . .

There is one of the cross's nails,
Which whoso sees his bonnet vails,

And, if he will, may kneel.
Some say 'twas false, 'twas never so;
Yet, feeling it, thus much I know,

It is as true as steel.

There is a lanthorn which the Jews, When Judas led them forth, did use;

It weighs my weight downright: But, to believe it, you must think The Jews did put a candle in 't,

And then 'twas very light.

There's one saint there hath lost his nose: Another 's head, but not his toes,

His elbow and his thumb.

But when that we had seen the rags, We went to th' inn and took our nags, And so away did come.

We came to Paris on the Seine ; 'Tis wondrous fair, 'tis nothing clean, 'Tis Europe's greatest town. How strong it is, I need not tell it, For all the world may easily smell it,

That walk it up and down.

There many strange things are to see, The Palace and great Gallery,

The Place Royal doth excel :
The New Bridge, and the statues there,
At Nostre Dame, Saint Q. Pater,
The steeple bears the bell.

For learning, th' Universitie;
And, for old clothes, the Frippery,

The House the Queen did build.
Saint Innocents, whose earth devours
Dead corpse in four-and-twenty hours,

And there the King was killed. . .

'John Dory' was the hero of a rather pointless ballad, still popular in Dryden's days, beginning:

'As it fell upon a holy-day,

And upon a holy-tide-a,

John Dory bought him an ambling nag,

To Paris for to ride-a.'

Corbet's visit to Paris was in 1618: the curiosities he describes, including, for example, the milk and the lanthorn at St Denis, the unfinished palace of the queen-dowager, and the sights of Paris generally, are described at more length by Peter Heylin in France painted to the Life, the outcome of a visit to France in 1625. The king slain (in 1610) at the Church of the Holy Innocents was Henry IV.; the extraordinarily absorptive virtue of the earth in that churchyard was an article of faith, and is referred to by Sir Thomas Browne in Urn-burial (see below). The mysterious 'Saint Q. Pater' of Notre Dame, unexplained in the editions (all subsequent to the Bishop's death), must be a misreading for 'St Christopher,' the colossal figure which for hundreds of years was a chief curiosity of Notre Dame, and as such was duly described by Heylin, Coryate, and other English travellers. The bell, the 'great bourdon of Notre Dame,' was, and still is, another.

Farewell to the Fairies.

Farewell rewards and fairies,

Good housewives now may say,

For now foul sluts in dairies

Do fare as well as they.

And though they sweep their hearths no less
Than maids were wont to do,
Yet who of late for cleanliness

Finds sixpence in her shoe?

Lament, lament, old abbeys,

The fairies lost command;

They did but change priests' babies,

But some have changed your land; And all your children sprung from thence Are now grown Puritans ;

Who live as changelings ever since,

For love of your domains.

At morning and at evening both,
You merry were and glad,
So little care of sleep or sloth
These pretty ladies had;
When Tom came home from labour,
Or Cis to milking rose,
Then merrily went their tabour,
And nimbly went their toes.

Witness those rings and roundelays

Of theirs, which yet remain, Were footed in Queen Mary's days On many a grassy plain; But since of late Elizabeth, And later, James came in, They never danced on any heath As when the time hath been.

By which we note the fairies
Were of the old profession,
Their songs were Ave-Maries,

Their dances were procession:
But now, alas! they all are dead,
Or gone beyond the seas;
Or farther for religion fled,

Or else they take their ease.
A tell-tale in their company
They never could endure,
And whoso kept not secretly

Their mirth was punished sure; It was a just and Christian deed, To pinch such black and blue : Oh, how the commonwealth doth need Such justices as you! . . .

Sir Robert Naunton (1563-1635), born at Alderton, Woodbridge, became public orator at Cambridge in 1594, travelled four or more years on the Continent, went with an embassy to Denmark in 1603, entered Parliament in 1606, and was Secretary of State 1618-23. He died at his Suffolk seat, Letheringham Priory. His Fragmenta Regalia (1641) is sketches of Elizabeth's courtiers. See his Memoirs (1814).

:

Queen Elizabeth.

Under Edward [VI.] she was his, and one of the darlings of fortune: for besides the consideration of bloud, there was between these two princes a concurrency and sympathy in their natures and affections, together with the celestiall (conformity in religion) which made them one, and friends; for the king ever called her his sweetest and dearest sister, and was scarce his own man, she being absent, which was not so between him and the Lady Mary. Under his sister she found her condition much altered for it was resolved, and her destiny had decreed to set her an apprentice in the school of affliction, and to draw her through the ordeall fire of tryall, the better to mould and fashion her to rule and sovereignty; which finished, and fortune calling to mind that the time of her servitude was expired, gave up her indentures, and therewith delivered up into her custody a scepter as a reward for her patience, which was about the twenty sixth year of her age; a time in which (as for externals) she was full blown, so was she for her internals grown ripe, and seasoned with adversity, and in the exercise of her vertue; for it seems fortune meant no more than to shew her a piece of her variety and changeablenesse of her nature, and so to conduct her to her destined felicity. She was of personage tall, of hair and complexion fair, and therewith well favoured, but high nosed, of limbs and feature neat, and which added to the lustre of those exteriour graces, of stately and majestick comportment; participating in this more of her father than mother, who was of inferiour allay, plausible, or as the French hath

it, more debonaire and affable, vertues which might well suit with majesty; and which descending as hereditary to the daughter, did render of a more sweeter temper, and endeared her more to the love and liking of the people; who gave her the name and fame of a most gracious and popular prince; the atrocity of her fathers nature being rebated in hers by the mothers sweeter inclinations. For to take, and that no more than, the character out of his own mouth; he never spared man in his anger, nor woman in his lust.

Sir Walter Raleigh.

He had in the outward man a good presence, in a handsome and well compacted person, a strong naturall wit, and a better judgement, with a bold and plausible tongue, whereby he could set out his parts to the best advantage; and to these he had the adjuncts of some generall learning, which by diligence he enforced to a great augmentation and perfection; for he was an indefatigable reader, whether by sea or land, and none of the least observers both of men and the times; and I am confident, that among the second causes of his growth, that variance between him and my Lord Grey in his descent into Ireland was a principall; for it drew them both over the councell table, there to plead their cause, where (what advantage he had in the cause, I know not) but he had much better in the telling of his tale; and so much, that the Queen and the lords took no slight mark of the man, and his parts; for from thence he came to be known, and to have accesse to the Queen and the lords; and then we are not to doubt how such a man would comply and learn the way of progression. And whether Leicester had then cast in a good word for him to the Queen, which would have done no harm, I doe not determine: but true it is, he had gotten the Queens eare at a trice, and she began to be taken with his elocution, and loved to hear his reasons to her demands: and the truth is, she took him for a kind of oracle, which netled them all; yea, those that he relyed on began to take his suddain favour as an allarum, and to be sensible of their own supplantation, and to project his, which made him shortly after sing, Fortune my foe, &c. So that finding his favour declining, and falling into a recesse, he undertook a new peregrination, to leave that terra infirma of the court for that of the warres, and by declining himself and by absence to expell his and the passion of his enemies, which in court was a strange device of recovery, but that he knew there was some ill office done him, that he durst not attempt to mind any other wayes than by going aside; thereby to teach envy a new way of forgetfulnesse, and not so much as to think of him; howsoever, he had it alwayes in mind never to forget himself; and his device took so well that at his return he came in (as rammes doe, by going backward) with the greater strength, and so continued to her last, great in her grace, and Captain of the Guard, where I must leave him; but with this observation, that though he gained much at the court, yet he took it not out of the Exchequer or meerly out of the Queens purse, but by his wit and the help of the prerogative; for the Queen was never profuse in the delivering out of her treasure, but payed many, and most of her servants, part in money and the rest with grace, which as the case stood was taken for good payment, leaving the arrear of recompence due to their merit to her great successor, who payed them all with advantage.

Thomas Middleton (1570?-1627), a prolific but extraordinarily unequal dramatist, was a Londoner; as city chronologer (from 1620) wrote a chronicle of the city, now lost, and some civic pageants; and left over twenty plays, a score of pageants and masques, a paraphrase of the Wisdom of Solomon, six satires, and a number of prose pieces. Blurt, Master Constable (1602), is a light comedy. Father Hubbard's Tale and The Black Book are tracts exposing London rogues. The Honest Whore was mainly written by Dekker. The Phonix and Michaelmas Term (1607) are lively comedies; A Trick to catch the Old One (1608) and A Mad World, my Masters (from which Aphra Behn pilfered), are perhaps more amusing. The Roaring Girl (1611; with Dekker) describes the exploits of a noted cut-purse and virago. A Chaste Maid in Cheapside was probably produced in 1613, as was No Wit, No Help like a Woman's. A Fair Quarrel (1617) and The World Tost at Tennis (1620) were written in conjunction with Rowley, as were probably More Dissemblers besides Women (1622?) and The Mayor of Quinborough. The Old Law is mainly the work of Rowley, supplemented by Middleton, and revised by Massinger. The fact that The Witch (published by Reed in 1778 from the author's MS.) contains in full two songs of which only the first lines are given in Macbeth (see below at page 461) has been explained by the theory that they were originally by Middleton and were introduced into later acting editions of Macbeth. (They are given in full in D'Avenant's altered version of Macbeth.) Mr Bullen and Professor Herford hold it almost certain that Middleton here imitated and expanded Shakespeare, or the song Shakespeare referred to in his stage directions. The date of the Witch is unknown, and it may have preceded Macbeth; but it is vastly more probable that the lesser author was the imitator. In The Changeling, The Spanish Gipsy, and Women beware Women (in the first two of which at least Rowley had a share) Middleton's genius is seen at its best. The Widow was mainly by Middleton. Anything for a Quiet Life (c. 1619) may have been revised by Shirley. Middleton contributed to some of the plays included in the works of Beaumont and Fletcher.

The Game at Chess (1624) provoked enormous interest, but gave great offence at court by bringing on the stage the king of Spain and his ambassador, Gondomar, as well as James himself and English politicians. Gondomar's successor complained to King James of the insult, and Middleton-who at first 'shifted out of the way' -and the players were brought before the Privy Council and sharply reprimanded for their audacity in bringing modern Christian kings upon the stage.' The Induction was spoken by Loyola and his intimate acquaintance Error. James was the White King, the Black King was Philip IV., Gondomar the Black Knight, the White Queen's Pawn is the Church of England, and so forth.