If he wrote anything besides "The Flea," it is not known, and we are without any other information regarding him. WOOD-STREET COUNTER. - Wonderfull Strange Newes from Woodstreet Counter. Yet not so strange as true. Being proved by lamentable Experience. The Relation of which Will make you laugh, 'twill make you cry, many more wonderfull effects, as Tom-Tell-troth can witnesse. It will convert a Whore, enrich the Poore, And make a Sergeant kind, Then buy it now, for I doe know, That it will please your mind. -London, Printed by T. Fawcet. 1642. 4to. 4 leaves. The most curious part of this tract, written for the obvious purpose of being sold for two-pence, is the enumeration of those parts of London remarkable for unlicensed living. It is a dialogue between Plain-dealing and Tom Tell-truth. The latter has been confined for debt in Wood-street Counter, and maintains that it is worse than "Pickhatch, Covent Garden, Groaping Lane, Tower Hill, St. Giles in the fields, Bloomesbury, Drewry Lane, Westminster, or the Bankside." White-friars is not included. There is some spirit in the composition, and when Plain-dealing asks what associates Tom Tell-truth had had in the Counter, the latter answers: Many of all sorts, from the gentile gallant with his perriwig and Spanish block, to the lowzy rascall without a shirt, or a shoe to his foot, the long haire gallant which sweares Damy, and the zealous Brother with never a hayre amisse. Indeed, there are all sorts; Lords without lands, Ladies without lackeys, Gentlemen without money, Captains without command, Citizens without credit, pittifull Poets which write their owne Tragedyes, undone Heyres, Pick-pockets with hanging lookes, taffaty Whores falling to decay, Prentizes with pennilesse pockets, Journeymen that are at their journey's end." It concludes with twelve lines, in couplets, to prove that the Counter is far worse than a Bawdy-house. We never met with any other copy of the tract than that we have used, but there may be several. Its local character is its chief merit. WORCESTER. Worcester's Elegie and Eulogie. By J. T. Mr. of Arts. London, Printed by Tho. Cotes for . Humphry Blunden, at his shop, at the Castle in Cornehill. 1638. 4to. 26 leaves. We notice this work as a singular provincial poetical production, called forth by the prevalence of the plague and famine in Worcester, in 1637. The author's name is given at length to a preliminary address, and is punned upon by one of his eulogists: "How'd the Muses joy Were every child o' th' braine no worse a Toy!" Nevertheless, there is very little in the tract to have gratified the Muses, or even worse judges of verse. No doubt the piece was very satisfactory to the Wigornian readers of that day, who were grateful for the disappearance of the fatal fever, and for the assistance the suffering city had received from her neighbors. Besides thankful poems addressed to the Bishop and Clergy, as well as to private individuals, there are tributes to Bristol, Tewksbury, Droitwich, &c.; but we are not disposed to extract more than a testimonial to Sir Walter Devereux, and that chiefly for his name's sake: "To Sr. Walter Devereaux, Knight and Baronet. In sacred vowes and prayers: heaven againe, Full showers of better gifts: the trunk shall grow; Thy branches with felicity shall blow. Like fish thy flocks shall yield, thy corne-fields sing, Who this event contemplates well may say Thy graine was lent to heaven, not given away; We do not suppose that our readers will feel themselves aggrieved by the non-insertion of any further specimen. WORLD'S FOLLY. This World's Folly. Or a Warning Piece discharged vpon the Wickednesse thereof. Hor. Sat. 3. lib. I. By I. H. London, Printed by William Jaggard for Nicholas Bourne, &c. 1615. 4to. 19 leaves. "Tu This is a prose attack upon prevailing vices, and parts of it are especially directed against the Stage, Plays, Actors, and Poets, with a direct reference to the comedy called “Green's Tu Quoque," (which had been printed in 1614,) and to a jig, or clown's merriment, known by the name of "Garlick." Quoque" was written by John Cooke, but it was subsequently called "Green's Tu Quoque," from the laughable acting of a performer of the name of Green in the part of Bubble. "Garlick" has not found its way into any of our earlier or later theatrical records; 1 but that it and "Green's Tu Quoque" were very popular, about the same date, we know from H. Parrot's Laquei Ridiculosi, 1613, where "Greene's Tu Quoque and those Garlick Jigs " are celebrated in the same line. In his "Cast over the Water," Taylor gives it a second title, which serves to show its character— "The Jig of Garlick, or the Punks Delight." Of both I. H. in "The World's Folly " speaks in these terms: 1 Haddit, a supposed dramatic author, mentions the extreme popularity of "Garlick" in the introductory scene to "the Hog hath lost his Pearl," 1614. 4to. "I will not particularize those blitea dramata (as Liberius tearmes another sort) those Fortune-fatted fooles and Times idiots, whose garbe is the tooth-ache of witte, the plague-sore of judgement, the common-sewer of obscenities, and the very traine-powder that dischargeth the roaring Meg (not Mol) of all scurrile villanies upon the Cities face: who are faine to produce blinde Impudence to personate himselfe upon their Stage, behung with chaynes of Garlicke, as an antidote against their owne infectious breaths, lest it should kill their oyster-crying Audience. Vos quoque, and you also who with Scylla-barking Stentor-throated bellowings, flash choaking squibbes of absurd vanities into the nostrils of your spectators, barbarously diverting nature, and defacing God's owne image by metamorphising humane shape into their bestiall forme." The author, as if afraid of not being understood, adds marginal notes to make his readers quite sure that by "Fortune-fatted fooles," he alludes to the actors at the Fortune Theatre; that "roaring Meg" means "Long Meg of Westminister," a play then in course of daily performance; that by Impudence "behung with chaynes of Garlicke," he refers to the jig of "Garlick or the Punk's Delight," and by Vos Quoque, to the Comedy of “Tu Quoque." Of poets he speaks as follows: "The primum mobile, which gives motion to the under-turning wheeles of wickednesse are those mercenary squitter-wits miscalled Poets, whose illiterate and pick-pocket inventions can emungere plebes argento, slily nip the bunges of the baser troopes, and cut the reputations throat of the more eminent rank of cittizens with corroding scandals: these are they who, by dipping their goose-quills in the puddle of mischiefe with wilde and uncollected spirites, make them desperately drunke to strike at the head of Nobility, Authority and high-seated Greatness. And all this they doe but onely to purchase the fee-simple of a Long-lane suite, to entaile a Punke in some new-stript peticoate, and to cancell the tavern-bill for two bacchanalian suppers." Of course, we are not to take such representations by puritanical assailants without many deductions; but there is no doubt, on this and better authority, that the lives of players and poets about this date were liable to much strong censure; and we are not to forget that the period, when they appear to have allowed themselves most license, was shortly after the retirement of Shakspeare to his native town. WORTLEY, SIR FRANCIS. Characters and Elegies. By Francis Wortley, Knight and Baronet. Printed in the Yeere 1646. 4to. 38 leaves. It has been supposed, from the absence of any printer's or bookseller's name, that this work was not published, but intended for private distribution: the remark would, however, apply to much prose and poetry issued about the disturbed period of the Civil Wars. The dedication is generally "to the Lovers of Honour and Poesie," followed by fourteen very loyal and gallant characters of the King, Queen, and various courtiers, male and female, in prose. These are succeeded by nineteen Elegies, (the last of them upon Francis Quarles the poet,) by some translated Epigrams, &c., and "a paraphrase upon the verses which Famianus Strada made upon the Lutanist and Philomel in contestation," the whole being wound up by the following pleasant and ingenious parallel : "Coblers are call'd Translators; so are we (And may be well call'd so) we so agree. They rip the soale first from the upper leather, Then steepe, then stretch, then patch up all together: Give me the Coblers wealth, Ile aske no more.' The lines on page 55, " upon a true contented Prisoner," were, doubtless, written when Sir F. Wortley was imprisoned in the Tower for his loyalty, and they contain the following happy illustration of the effects of confinement in directing the eyes of the mind toward heaven: |