the death of Fair Rosamond, p. 79; History of Jane Shore, p. 83; a Song of the supposed Ghost of Shore's wife, to the tune of Live with me. It is illustrated with cuts, and a frontispiece containing two, with copies of verses. The song on Rosamond is quite different from Deloney's ballad printed by Percy. It

commences

In Woodstock bower once grew a flower
Beloved of England's king ;

The like for scent and sweet content

Did never in England spring.

The song of Jane Shore's Ghost thus commences:—

Dame Nature's darling let me be,

The map of sad calamity;

For never none, like Shore's fair wife,
Had badder end, nor better life.

"The gentler breasts of the virginities of London," says Gayton, 1654, "are compassionately mov'd, if a ballad of Jane Shore be reviv'd, or any figment new raised."

38. THE MOST PLEASING AND DELIGHTFUL HISTORY OF REYNARD THE FOX, AND REYNARDINE HIS SON, in two parts; to which is added the History of Cawood the Rook, or the Assembly of Birds, with the several speeches they made to the Eagle in hopes to have the government in his absence. 12mo. London, 1735.

With frontispiece and cuts, pp. 154. It is common as a penny history, abridged into twenty-four pages.

39. THE NEW HISTORY OF THE TROJAN WARS, AND TROY'S DESTRUCTION, in four books; containing

an account of the Birth, Life, Death, and glorious Actions of the mighty Hercules of Greece; the renowned and valiant Deeds of the most famous Hector of Troy; the Rape of fair Helen of Greece, together with the last destruction of Troy by the stratagem of the Wooden Horse; the Arrival of Brute in Britain, and how he conquered Albion and his giants, and built Troynovant, now London. 12mo. London, Printed for C. Bates at the Sun and Bible in Pye-Corner, 1728.

At the end is a tragi-comedy called the Siege of Troy, a drama by Settle, which was acted in Mrs. Mynn's booth in Bartholomew Fair. The frontispiece is a picture of Hercules, under which are the following verses:

Behold the mighty Hercules, whose name

And glorious actions fill the trump of Fame :
He hydras, tyrants, lions does destroy,

And saves the daughter of the king of Troy.

The original of this, many times removed, will be found in the works of Dares Phrygius, Dictys Cretensis, and Guido de Colonna's Historia de Bello Trojano, the last of which was written about 1260. The two

first are well known to be early forgeries.

40. THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE MOST RENOWNED Q. ELIZABETH AND THE E, OF ESSEX. By a person of quality. 12mo. Cologne, Printed for Will with the Wisp at the Sign of the Moon in the Ecliptick, n. d.

It is unnecessary to say that this imprint is merely farcical, and we find from the reverse of the frontispiece that it was "printed for James Hodges at the Looking-glass on London-bridge."

41. THE RIGHT PLEASANT, AND VARIABLE TRACHICAL HISTORY OF FORTUNATUS, whereby a young man may learn how to behave himself in all worldly affairs and casual chances. First penned in the Dutch tongue, there-hence abstracted, and now first of all published in English by T. C. 12mo. London, printed by T. B. for Hanna Sawbridge, at the sign of the Bible on Ludgate-hill, near Fleet-bridge, 1682.

In black letter, with wood-cuts. Verses at the back of title, entitled, "the moral documents and considerations which are to be noted in this book." Then follows a preface, and next, "the sum and argument of this book," in verse. At the end is the following memorandum :- "This book, having found very good acceptance for many impressions, some ill-minded persons, and particularly one Thomas Haley, has printed a counterfeit impression in quarto, therein falsifying the original, and endeavouring to deprive the true proprietor of the copy; therefore let the buyer take heed of cheating himself, and encouraging such base practices, the true copy being in octavo, and so sold by H. Sawbridge at the Bible on Ludgate-hill." T. C. is for Thomas Churchyard. The fourth edition appeared in 1702. A German edition was published at Vienna in 1509, 4to.

No English edition earlier than the present, is, I believe, known to exist, but it was certainly printed before 1600, and most of the cuts in the present copy are old, some of them exhibiting the worm-holes of the original blocks. The tale is mentioned by Henry Crope in Vertues Commonwealth, or the Highway to

Honour, 4to. 1602; and many years before, Meredith Hanmer, in the epistle dedicatory to his translation of Eusebius, 1577, speaks of "the stories of King Arthur, the monstrous fables of Garagantua, the Hundred Merry Tales, Skoggan, Fortunatus, with many other infortunate treatises." The History of Fortunatus was entered on June 22nd, 1615, with other copies, to Mr. Field. Taylor, the water-poet, in his Workes, 1630, iii, 99, says of a traveller in Germany, "he must have Fortunatus or a prince his purse, that must be, like a drunkard's dagger, ever drawne, to pay bountifully for such wash and graines as his valiant stomacke hath overcome, conquered, and devoured."

The above cut is taken from p. 155, and represents Andolocia in prison, seated in a pair of stocks, and the Earl Theodorus strangling him. Mr. Fairholt has kindly furnished me with the following remarks on

the cuts in this volume:- "The cuts in the History of Fortunatus, 1682, are certainly not the work of English artists, and are very much older than that date. It was not at all unusual for English publishers of popular stories to obtain their illustrations abroad; and as this work is stated in the title-page to be 'first penned in the Dutch tongue,' it is by no means improbable that the cuts were obtained in Holland or Germany, where the art of book illustration principally flourished. The cuts, however, are not uniformly good, nor are they all by the same hand. I should be inclined to think that the publisher obtained as many as he could, and then had the others copied by an inferior hand at home. Wood-engravers from the Low Countries resided in England and pursued their avocations here in the time of James to Charles I; and Evelyn in his Sculptura, 1662, says: 6 we have likewise Switzer for cutting in wood, the son of a father who sufficiently discovered his dexterity in the herbals set forth by Mr. Parkinson, Lobel, and others.' He also engraved the cuts in Speed's History of Britaine, fol., 1611. He was a very tame and poor engraver; but wood engraving at the close of the sixteenth century had greatly declined. The better cuts in Fortunatus are certainly executed earlier the costume of the women in particular is peculiarly German. From the peculiarities of their style and drawing they appear to be the work of Jost Amman, who was born at Zurich in 1539, removed to Nuremberg in 1560, and died there in 1591. During the thirty years in which he resided in that city, he