Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/155

. iv. AUG. 12,1905.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 123 Florio translates as under :— To lie is a horrible filthy vice ; and which an ancient writer setteth forth very shamefully, when he saith that whosoever lieth witnesseth that he contemneth God and therewithall men. It is impossible more richly to represent the horrour, the vilenesse and the disorder of it: for what can be imagined so vile and base as to be a coward towards men and a boaster towards God ?— Book ii. c. xviii. p. 341, col. 2. Thus in Marston :— Gonzago. Yet to forswear and vow against one's heart. In full of base, ignoble cowardice, Since 'tis most plain, such speeches do contemn Heaven and fear men (that's sententious now). ' The Fawn,' III. i. 420-3- See also Ben Jonson :— Afacilente. I like such tempers well, as stand before their mistresses with fear and trembling ; and before their Maker, like impudent mountains ! —' Every Man out of his Humour,' III. iii. CHARLES CRAWFORD. (To be continued.) A NAMELESS BOOK. SOME months ago I bought a small volume, which is exactly six inches in length by four in breadth. It is bound in brown leather, and contains three distinct works. The first is "The Gentile Sinner ; or, England's Brave Gentleman : Characterized In a Letter to a Friend, Both As he is, and as he should be. By Clem. Ellis, M.A. Fellow of Qu. Coll. Oxon." It is the second edition, and was printed at Oxford in the year 1661. The next is entitled "A Discourse of Artificial Beauty, in point of Conscience, Between Two Ladies.—With some Satyrical Censures on the Vulgar Errors of these Times. London, Printed for R. Royston at the Angel in Ivy- Lane. MDCLXII." This volume, first pub- lished in 1656 under a slightly different title, is ascribed by Anthony Wood to Dr. John Gauden. but Lowndes thinks it was written by Obadiah Walker, in which opinion I cannot concur. I now come to the third and by far the most interesting of the booklets, which is divided into seven chapters and covers 112 pages; but as it has unfortunately been bound up with the others without the title- page, I can give neither author nor place of publication. But as the type is exactly the same as that used in the second volume, and quite different in size from what is used in the first, I infer that the last was probably "printed for R. Royston" in London about the year 1660. On a first perusal I was reminded of the style of Sir Thomas Browne, and of certain subjects he has handled in his 'Religio Medici' and other works. But the manner is altogether different. Sir Thomas, though he knew six languages, does not stud his writings with quotations from other tongues, but, so to speak, fuses them into his own. The author of this book would seem to have followed the method of Robert Burton, to whose ' Melancholy] he refers four or five times. There are few of his pages without Greek or Latin extracts from pagan and Christian writers. He was no mean linguist, for he shows that he was also acquainted with Hebrew, Spanish, and French. His reading was of a wide range, if we may judge by the number and variety of his marginal references. Among English writers he quotes Chaucer twice (in black letter), Father Parsons (" not- withstanding he wanted nothing but a glasse at any Time to view the Effigies of a Railer "), Speed, Camden, Joseph Hall, George Her- bert, and, to mention one more name, " D. Brown in Epist. Ded. ante Hydriot." (p. 18 in margin), which means "Dr. Browne in his Epistle Dedicatory, prefixed to his ' Hydrio- taphia, or Urn-Burial,'" published in 1658. His second chapter is entitled 'A Censure of the generall Scandall of some Professions, especially that of Physick," in the seventh section of which (p. 28) the author says :— "This Profession is so farre from prompting Atheism, that it is signally advantagious to an holy life. The study of J'hysitiaiui is Life and Death i they of all men least need artificial! memento's, or Coffins by their Bed-sides, to mind them of their Graves." Sir Thomas Browne's words are these ia his address to his friend Thomas Le Gros :— " Beside, to preserve the living, and make the dead to live, to keep men out 01 their urns, and discourse of human fragments in them, is not im- pertinent to our profession, whose study is life and death, who daily behold examples of mortality, and of all men least need artihcial mementoes, or coffins by our bedside, to mind us of our graves."— Dent's ed., p. 125. Again, on p. 25 I find what follows :— Religio Medici' is not the product of the Penne- alone, but also of the practice of Physitian*." It will be observed that the pronoun has been changed from the first person to the third in the extract from ' Urn - Burial.' From this I conclude that the author did not belong to the medical profession, though he more than once discourses very learnedly on matters that are within its province. Though I am convinced that Sir Thomas Browne had nothing to do with the com- position of these essays, it is evident that his works were well known to the writer, wh»-