Sith that he hath your names blasphemd, "Revenge my cause, sith none but you My whole estate do knowe; That you be goddes and wyll revenge "And you that heere of mee, That be of judgement pure, "Beware, be wyse; example take By Ariadnes payne, Whiche helpyng hym who helples was, She helples doth remayne." In the last stanza of the poem we are informed that the Gods did take pity upon Ariadne, and translated her to the stars, "where shee shall never die." On the whole, it is a highly creditable performance, and it is remarkable, among pieces of that date, that it is without dedication. Underdowne puts the abridgment of his name, "Finis. Th. Un.," at the end. Of course the foundation of the story is in Ovid, but the writer did not merely translate or imitate his original. UNDERDOWNE, THOMAS. An Ethiopian Historie: Fyrst written in Greeke by Heliodorus and translated into English by T. U. No lesse witty then pleasant: being newly corrected and augmented, with divers new additions by the same Author &c. Printed at London for William Cotton &c. 1605. B. L. 4to. 155 leaves. The oldest known edition of this work is dated 1587, 4to; but it is evident from the preliminary matter that it had been printed earlier. In his address "to the Reader," preceding his version of "Heliodorus," Underdowne places the original, in point of ex ample at least, before "Mort Darthure, Arthur of little Britaine, yea, and Amadis of Gaule." Some scraps of verse are inserted, particularly “the song that the Thessalian Virgins sung in honor of Thetis, Peleus, Achilles, and Pyrrhus.” The beginning of Heliodorus's History appears to have been translated into English hexameters by Abraham Fraunce, and printed in 1591. (Vide Warton, Hist. Engl. Poet. IV. 230, edit. 8vo, and Ritson's Bibl. Poet. 212.) In 1622 a new translation of the whole of the Æthiopian History by W. Barret was published. Nahum Tate completed a version of the last four books in 1686, the first six having been attempted by another hand. URCHARD, SIR THOMAS.- Epigrams Divine and Moral. By Sir Thomas Urchard, Knight. London, Printed by Bernard Alsop and Thomas Fawcet in the yeare 1641. 4to. 34 leaves. Sir Thomas Urchard, or Urquhart, was by no means an original thinker, but he was a tolerable writer of verses upon the commonplaces of life and manners. In the dedication of the work in our hands to "the Marquis of Hamilton, Earle of Arren and Cambridge," he states that his epigrams were "flashes of wit," but they by no means deserve that character: they are rather solid than flashy, and, in the ordinary sense of the word, they have little or no pretension to be called witty. They show some knowledge of character and shrewdness of observation, but nobody, reading them in our day, would consider them worthy of much admiration on any score. This is the earliest, and indeed the only, impression of them; for, when they appeared again in 1646, they had only a new title-page "for William Leake,” into whose hands some remainder copies had devolved. The epigrams are divided into three books, and after the last we read "Here end the first three Bookes of Sir Thomas Urchard's Epigrams," as if it were, at one time, intended to follow on with a fourth book, but that the stationer thought the public would not care for more. He was, like most publishers, a better judge upon such a point than the author. The pieces are much more like aphorisms, and reflections in verse, than epigrams, and they now and then approach to too near a resemblance to truisms, sedate observations, which no one would think of disputing, if of uttering. The following is one of the happiest, and it is the first "epigram" of Book III. : "No kind of trouble to your selfe procure, And shun as many crosses as you can: Whose spirit is affliction-proofe, possesse The concluding poor line diminishes the effect of all the rest ; and of course in every epigram care should be taken to make the last line sustain and support all that precede it: it ought to be better than the rest, and should finish off the writer's full meaning. One of Sir Thomas Urchard's best is headed "Of negative and positive Good": "Not onely are they good, who vertuously Employ their time, now vertue being so rare, But likewise those whom no necessity, Nor force can in the meanest vice insnare; For sin's so mainly further'd by the Devill We may doubt whether the last line in what succeeds is as it came from the author's pen: if it did, he allowed himself great license in the rhyme. "External comelinesse few have obtain'd Without their hurt: it never made one chast, But many adulterers; and is sustain'd By qualities which age and sicknesse waste: Surpasseth farre the beautie of the bodie; For that we make our selves: to this wee're borne: Deservedly the stile of beautifull, Which neither time nor fortune can destroy; And the deformed body a faire soule While vicious soules in handsome bodies perish." According to the full-length engraving of Sir Thomas Urchard, which sometimes accompanies the reissue of his Epigrams in 1646, he was a fine personable man, and apparently not a little vain of the "handsome body" in which his soul was lodged.1 Whatever he may have thought of his figure, he certainly over-estimated the powers of his mind. Each of the three books contains forty-four epigrams, and the work is very carelessly printed. VALENTINE AND ORSON. Valentine and Orson, the two Sons of the Emperour of Greece. Newly corrected and amended, with new Pictures lively expressing the History. London Printed by J. R. for T. Passenger, &c. 1688. 4to. B. L. 112 leaves. The "new pictures," mentioned above, are merely very old woodcuts, as is evident from wear and tear, as well as from wormholes. On the title-page is one of them, representing Valentine leading Orson prisoner; and on a fly-leaf, preceding it, is another of the exposure of the two infants. At the end is a table of the fifty-two chapters into which the romance is divided. This is a version different from that printed by Wynkyn de Worde, as far as can be judged from the only fragment remaining, and different also from that printed by W. Copland. The present translation seems to have first appeared in 1637, but by whom it was made we have no information. 1 The portrait was drawn and engraved by Glover," G. Glover ad vivum delineavit et sculp. 1645,"—and underneath is this couplet subscribed W. S.: "Of him whose shape this Picture hath design'd Vertue and learning represent the Mind." Sir Thomas Urchard is dressed in the extreme of the fashion, and a little angel is holding out to him a laurel crown, to receive which Sir Thomas, rather condescendingly, extends his right hand. VALLANS, WILLIAM. The Honorable Prentice or This Taylor is a man. Shewed in the life and death of Sir John Hawkewood, sometime Prentice of London: interlaced with the famous History of the noble Fitzwalter, Lord of Woodham in Essex, and of the poisoning of his faire Daughter: Also the merry customes of Dunmow, where any one may freely have a Gammon of Bacon, that repents not marriage in a yeere and a day. Whereunto is annexed the most lamentable murther of Robert Hall at the High Altar in Westminster Abbey. - Printed at London for Henry Gosson, and are to be sold in Pannier alley. 1615. 4to. B. L. 20 leaves. The only reason for assigning this very rare tract to William Vallans, the author of "A Tale of two Swannes," 4to, 1590, is, that it bears the initials W. V. at the end of the dedication. There was, however, an interval of twenty-five years between the publications. W. V. may mean anybody else, and there is not the least connection or similarity of style. William Vallans was one of our early blank-verse poets, merited high appreciation, and could never have condescended to the putting together of such a patchwork production as this narrative regarding a renowned tailor, the poisoning of the daughter of Lord Fitzwater, the flitch of Bacon. at Dunmow, and the assassination of Hall in Westminster Abbey in the reign of Richard II. The tract under consideration is nearly all prose, and was clearly meant to be popular with the lower orders, while the poem of the "Two Swannes" could never have been intended for perusal by any but more refined understandings. Take, for instance, only such musical lines as these: "Then looke how Cynthia with her silver rayes So doe these princes farre excell in state The Swannes that breede within Europas boundes." There is nothing very novel in the simile, but there is some |