Yt serves to prove that no man synges so sweete,
As can eschewe withe bytter deathe to meete.

Some spende muche tyme in learning sweete consents
On lute, on harpe, cythren and virginalls,

And some take paynes with wyndy instruments,
As fyfes, and flutes, cornetts, and such like calles;
Of whom the last to follye more be thralles,
The first but wringe theire fyngers owt of frame,
But thes make mowthes, and shew a seemely shame.

At every spoute that stands about a towre
Men may beholde suche gorgons in theire grace,
When paynters please to make a thing seeme sowre,
They portraye then the forme of some suche face,
And yet owre owne blynde judgments be so base,
Wee thinke joye to lende us some reliefe,
Which we beholde exprest and done with griefe.

I dwell to longe in musickes copye holde,

For nowe the DAWNCERS come and call for rome, &c. &c..

The Poet proceeds to explain the vanities of extreme fondness for dancing, leaping, and what he writes roonyng, vaultyng, &c. He next proceeds to wrestlyng, where the Poem abruptly terminates, as he observes, "for feare of horsmen."

The object throughout, seems to be to impress the idea so beautifully expressed by the elegant author of the celebrated Ode to Indifference.

Bliss

Bliss goes but to a certain bound;
Beyond is agony.

The manuscript exhibits a beautiful specimen of penmanship; and wherever the Queen is immediately addressed, the letters are of gold.

ANTONY

ANTONY WOOD.

THE following letter reveals what is not generally known, that a great part of the additions and corrections in the second edition of Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses were supplied by Dr. Tanner, the learned author of the Notitia Monastica.

It is copied from Archbishop Wake's manuscripts in the library of Christ Church, Oxford. See the Cracherode Copy in the library of the British Museum.

Norwich,

May it please your Grace,

Febr. 22, 1719.

To accept of my most humble thanks for the hopes you are pleased to give me of helping my brother, when consistent with your former engagements. I must leave the manner to your Grace's pleasure; what I represented in my last, I thought the better of, because I would not press for greater, and if it could be brought about, would settle him in a competency to mine and his liking, with no mighty expense of preferment.

I verily believe your Grace is misinformed that the new edition of Mr. Wood's Athenæ Oxon. will have all the ill natured reflections which

which Mr. Harrington and other friends persuaded him to leave out in the first. For those truths (as he used to call some secret histories) were, I dare say, long since destroyed. I assure your Grace, that I never saw them among the papers which pass'd thro' my hands after his death. Mr. Bennet having only the benefit of the first impression, the right of the copy came to Mr. Wood's neices and executrix's, who sold their interest in the same to Mr. Tonson some years since.

He has talk'd a great while of reprinting this work; and sent several messages and letters to me, about the MSS. additions which were bequeathed to me under some sort of confidence of having them publish'd one time or other. I have been backward enough in that affair, but Mr. Archd. Eachard being here last year prevailed upon me to comply with Mr. Tonson, and to improve his intended new edition with the papers which were design'd by A. Wood for a third volume. I would not suffer the bookseller to make use of my name as Editor, for some, I thought, good reasons; and obliged him to consent to the omitting or softning any hard expression or character I should think fit; so that, tho' I shan't care for answering for all things which will in haste pass; yet your Grace may depend upon it, that what goes out of my hands for the press, will not be worse than what was publish'd in his life time. I don't know

VOL. II.

X

that

that there is any thing to be inserted from other people. For my own part, I have all along declared, that I would not be so far a partaker in any other mans's guilt, as to send abroad into the world and hand down to posterity any thing contrary to good manners and religion; and which the Author in a good mind and upon better information would have himself altered.

On the other hand, there will be now publish'd many corrections and improvements to the old lives and writings; many additional accounts of writers before 1690, which Mr. W. found out since to have been of our University; the Lives of all Oxford writers from 1690, where the 2 printed volume ends, to 1695, when the old gent died; and memoirs of all those persons who were then alive and had publish'd any thing, ranged under their several colleges and halls.

As for a continuation, it can be expected from nobody that has been so long absent and lives at that distance from Oxford that I do. I did do a little, while I staid there, with this view, but not worth owning; so there will be nothing (except the title of a book now & then) but what is in Mr. W.'s own (but to your Grace I may confess there will not be quite all.) For as I would not have the world deprived of the usefull parts of my old friends pains, so I would not be instrumental in aspersing the memories

of