The princely sagar, and the sagaret,
Which bastard-hawks, faulconers can hardly get,
The thrice renowmed noble marlion,

Which ladies vse for recreation,

The long-wing'd hobbie for the mounting larke,
Fit for young eyes the tow'ring game to marke.
The Irish spar hawke to follow slender game,
Deserues with hawkes to register her name:
In winter time the musket at a bush,

Will serve shepheards to maze a simple thrush;
The kistrell, if he be well managed,

For swiftnesse will not be disparaged;

The coward kite* fittest to ceaze the mouse,

To gurmandize young chickens from thy house;

She

• [Extract from “Gascoigne's councell to Douglasse Diue written vpon this ccasion. She bad a booke wherein she bad collected sundry good ditties of divers men's doings, in which booke she would needes entreate bim to write some verses.”]

66 A puttocke set on pearche, fast by a falcon's side,

Will quickly shew it selfe a kight, as time hath often tride.

And in my musing minde, I feare to finde like fall,
As iust reward to recompence my rash attempts withall.
Thou bidst, and must bowe, thou wilt that I shall write,
Thou canst command my wery muse some verses to endite.
And yet perdie, thy booke is fraughte with learned verse,
Such skill as in my musing minde I can none like reherse.
What followes then for me? but if I must needes write,
To set downe by the falcon's side, my selfe a sillie kight.
And yet the sillie kight, well weyed in each degree,
May serue sometimes (as in his kinde) for man's commoditie.
The kight can weede the worme, from corne and costly seedes,
The kight ca kill the mowldiwarpe, in pleasant mead; yt. breeds:
Out of the stately streetes, the kight can clense the filth,

As men can cle'se the worthlesse weedes fro fruteful fallowed tilth.

And onely set aside the henne's poore progenie,

I cannot see who can accuse the kight for fellonie.

The falcon, she must feede on partrich, and on quaile,

A pigeon, plouer, ducke and drake, hearne, lapwing, teal, & rajle;

TOL. IX.

T

Hie

She serues to take the garbage from the field,
Least putrifaction might infection yeeld.
The buzzard most hurtfull to thy warren,
With spoyle of rabbets making it barren;
Deserueth not so much to be hated,
If he were to gaming animated.

The ring-taile eke will truely kill her game,
If cunning hand and wit her nature tame.
The rauen (some say) if she be cicurated,
Deserues in some sort to be nominated:
But take thou heed of all the birds that flyne,
The eagle and rauen will strike out thine eyne:
Preuent it therefore least it come to passe,
And arm thy face with spectacles of glasse.
The siluer stringed sweet sounding virginall,
Without the rauens quills is rusticall.

Hir hungrie throte deuours both foode and deintie fare,
Whereby I take occasion, thus boldly to compare.
And as a sillie kight, (not falcon like that flie

Nor yet presume to houer by mount Hellycon on hye)

I frendly yet presume, vppon my frend's request,

In barreine vers to shew my skill, then take it for the best;

And Douty Douglasse thou, that art of faulcon kinde,

Giue willing eare yet to the kight, and beare his words in mind.

[A simile by Turbervile.]

"A fawcon is full harde

amongst you men to finde

For all your maners more agree

vnto the kytish kinde:

For gentle is the one

and loues his keeper's hande,
But th' other busserd like doth scorne
on fawckner's fist to stande.
For one goode turne the one

a thousand will requite;
But vse the other nere so well

he shewth himself a kite."

า

To write the Roman hand, and secretarie,
The rauen's pen is found most necessarie.
Thus for supposed inconuenience,

Her feathers yeeld young ladies recompence:
And some commoditie doth seeme to grow,
By the noysome deuouring carion crow."

A work of considerable variety and popularity might be formed by collecting the scattered poems upon the several subjects of Hunting, Hawking, Angling, and Archery; attaching extracts from other writers that

Terms in falconry. These are described in the early romances to be first invented by the gallant Sir Tristram de Liones, as the following passage from L'morte d'Arthur explains, where musick, hunting and hawking, are considered courtly amusements, and only attached to those posessing gentle blood.

"Tristram learned to be an harper, passing all other, that there was none such called in no countrey, and so in harping and on instruments of musike hee applied him in his youth for to learne, and after as he growed in his might and strength, he laboured euer in hunting and hawking, so that we neuer read of no gentleman more that so vsed himselfe therin. And, as the booke saith, hee began good measures of blowing of blasts of venery and of chase, and of all manner of vermeins, and all these termes hane we yet of hawking and hunting. And therefore the booke of venery, of hawking and hunting, is called the booke of Sir Tristram; wherefore, a me seemeth, all gentlemen that beare old armes, of right they ought so honour Sir Tristram, for the goodly termes that gentlemen haue and vie and shall vnto the world's end; that thereby in a manner all men of worship may disstuer a gentleman from a yeoman, and a yeoman from a villaine. For he that is of gentle blood will draw him vnto gentle tatches, and to follow the custom of noble gentlemen." The most ancient and famous bistory of the renowned Prince Arthur King of Britaine, &c. 1634. B. ii.

C. 3.

In the same book Arthur welcomes Sir Tristram for one of the best Knights and gentilest of the world, and knight of the most worship. For all maner of hunting thou beares the prise. And of all measures of blowing chou art the beginner. And of all the termes of hunting and hawking yea te the beginner." C. XCI.

eould either illustrate or entertain. The affairs of love encroach upon every press, but the poet depicting the amusements of society seems forgotten. To these might be added the poems upon fairies and a selection from the goblin tales or relations of superstition. There is another subject of a melancholy, though not an uninteresting nature, wherein the ballads are numerous. Dryden formed upon it a short dramatic dialogue; but there are more animated lines by Penrose, others by T. Warton, and some of considerable merit by Mrs. Robinson-I scarcely need add, "Moody Madness, laughing wild." The idea that such a volume would be considered of utility is the origin of the present imperfect attempt upon hawking.

Conduit street.

J. H.

ART. IX. Ane godlie Dreame, compylit in Scottish meter be M. [Mistress] M. [Melvill] Gentelwoman in Culros, at the requeist of her Freindes.

Introite per angustam portam, nam lata est via qua ducit ad interitum.

Edinburgh: Printed be Robert Charteris. 1603.

A subsequent edition of this rare book bears the following title:

A godly Dream, by Elizabeth Melvill, Lady Culrcs, younger: at the request of a speciall friend. Aberdene, Imprinted by E. Raban, Laird of letters. 1644. 8vo.

Mr. Pinkerton, in his second Dissertation prefixe to Scottish Tragic Ballads, 1781, has cited several pas sage

ages from an edition printed at Edinburgh, in 1737. A marginal note in his reprint of the same work, 1783, adds the following information.

"The Lady Culross here meant, was Elizabeth daughter of Sir James Melvil of Halhill, and wife of John Colvil, commendator of Culross. She is believed to have been the mother of Samuel Colvil the satirical poet, author of the Scots Hudibras,* &c."

In his preliminaries to Scotish poems, 1792, the same writer says" it seems very doubtful that this lady could be the mother of Colvil the poet, who wrote it is believed about the year 1690; nor could her name be Elizabeth Melvil.”

This doubt of Mr. Pinkerton, was strongly opposed by Ritson, who declared "it was absolutely certain Lady Culros was the mother of Colvil the poet, and that her name was Elizabeth Melvill." The positivity of this declaration he grounded on Douglas's Peerage, p. 146. But it has since been questioned by Mr. Irving, whether this female author (who by courtesy was styled Lady Culros) is likely to have been the mother of Colvil, as he flourished at the distance of nearly eighty years. + "To the faithfull and vertuous Ladie Elizabeth Melvill," Alexander Hume inscribed his Hymnes or Sacred Songs in 1599, and eulogized her compositions as copious, pregnant, and spiritual. Lady Culros's Dream, "one of these compositions, (says Dr. Leyden) was long popular among the Scotish presbyterians; and Armstrong relates in his Essays, that

A poor piece of Nonsense;" says Mr. P. in his list of the Scotish prefixed to Maitland poems, p. cxxvi.

+ See Lives of the Scotish Poets, ii. 299.

↑ See Scotish Descriptive Poems, p. 198.