Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,

Dost make us marble with too much conceiving;
And, so sepulcher'd, in such pomp dost lie,

That kings, for such a tomb, would wish to die*.

15

Ver. 13. our fancy of itself bereaving,] As in Comus, ver. 261.

"Yet they in pleasing slumber lull'd the sense,

“And in sweet madness robb'd it of itself." TODD. Ver. 15. And, so sepúlcher'd,] Accented on the second syllable, as in Shakspeare, Rape of Lucrece ;

"May likewise be sepulcher'd in thy shade." MALONE.

Mr. F. Townsend has observed, that Milton appears to have been no stranger to an epitaph on the tomb of Sir Thomas Stanley, knt. second son of Edward Earl of Derby; which was remaining on the north-side of the chancel of the church of Tong, in the county of Salop, in 1663, when Sir William Dugdale made the last visitation of that county: and which Sir William, in a marginal note, says, was written by Shakspeare. This epitaph, which Mr. Townsend has inserted, from C. 35. fol. 20. in the College of Arms, as a note to Rowe's Life of Shakspeare, is here subjoined in consequence of his ingenious remark:

"Ask who lies here, but do not weepe;
"He is not dead, he doth but sleepe:

"This stony register is for his bones,

"His fame is more perpetuall than these stones;
"And his own goodnesse, with himself being gone,
"Shall live when earthly monument is none.
"Not monumentall stone preserves our fame,

"Nor skye-aspiring piramids our name;

"The memory of him for whom this stands,

"Shall out-live marble and defacers' hands:

"When all to time's consumption shall be given,

"Stanley, for whom this stands, shall stand in Heaven."

TODD.

ON THE

UNIVERSITY CARRIER,

Who sickened in the time of his vacancy, being forbid to go to London, by reason of the plague*.

5

HERE lies old Hobson; Death hath broke his girt,
And here, alas! hath laid him in the dirt;
Or else the ways being foul, twenty to one,
He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown.
'Twas such a shifter, that, if truth were known,
Death was half glad when he had got him down ;
For he had, any time this ten years full,
Dodg'd with him betwixt Cambridge and The Bull.
And surely Death could never have prevail❜d,
Had not his weekly course of carriage fail'd;
But lately finding him so long at home,
And thinking now his journey's end was come,
And that he had ta'en up his latest inn,

In the kind office of a chamberlin

"

10

* I wonder Milton should suffer these two things on Hobson to appear in his edition of 1645. He, who at the age of nineteen, had so just a contempt for,

"Those new-fangled toys, and trimming slight,
"Which take our new fantasticks with delight."

HURD.

Ver. 14. In the kind office of a chamberlin &c.] I believe the Chamberlain is an officer not yet discontinued in some of the old inns in the city. But Chytraeus a German, who visited England about 1580, and put his travels into Latin verse, mentions it as an extraordinary circumstance, that it was the custom of our inns to be waited upon by women. In Peele's Old Wives

Show'd him his room where he must lodge that night, Pull'd off his boots, and took away the light:

"Hobson has supt, and's newly gone to bed."

16

ANOTHER on the same*.

HERE lieth one, who did most truly prove
That he could never die while he could move;

Tale, Fantastique says, "I had euen as liue the chamberlaine of the White Horse had called me vp to bed.” A. i. S. 1.

T. WARTON.

At this time these officers appear to have been pretty numerous; for, in a letter, dated 1635, it is said, " Another scrutiny was made of the number of chamberlains, tapsters, and hostlers, which came to above 40,000." See Lord Strafford's Letters, fol. vol. i. p. 437. TODD.

* Hobson's inn at London was the Bull in Bishops-gate-street, where his figure in fresco, with an inscription, was lately to be seen. Peck, at the end of his Memoirs of Cromwell, has printed Hobson's Will, which is dated at the close of the year 1630. He died Jan. 1, 1630, while the plague was in London. This piece was written that year. The proverb, to which Hobson's caprice, founded perhaps on good sense, gave rise, needs not to be repeated. Milton was now a student at Cambridge. Among archbishop Sancroft's transcripts of poetry made by him at Cambridge, now in the Bodleian library, is an anonymous poem on the death of Hobson. It was perhaps a common subject for the wits of Cambridge. I take this opportunity of observing, that in the same bundle is a poem on Milton's friend Lycidas, Mr. King, by Mr. Booth, of Corpus Christi, not in the published collection. Coll. MSS. Tann. 465. T. WARTON.

The reader may find the proverb, Hobson's choice, explained in the Spectator, vol. vii. No. 509. See also Granger's Biogr.

So hung his destiny, never to rot

While he might still jog on and keep his trot,
Made of sphere-metal, never to decay

Until his revolution was at stay.

Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) motion number'd out his time:
And, like an engine, mov'd with wheel and weight,
His principles being ceas'd, he ended straight.
Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm,

Too long vacation hasten'd on his term.

Merely to drive the time away he sicken❜d,

5

10

15

Fainted, and died, nor would with ale be quicken'd;

66

Nay," quoth he, on his swooning bed outstretch'd, "If I mayn't carry, sure I'll ne'er be fetch'd,

Hist. 8vo. edit. vol. ii. p. 400. Under his print are written these lines:

66

'Laugh not to see so plaine a man in print,

"The shadow's homely, yet ther's something in't:

"Witness the bagg he wears, (though seeming poore) "The fertile mother of a thousand more."

The last of which lines, with a trifling alteration, is inscribed upon the bag under his arm at the Bull. The MS. verses, mentioned by Mr. Warton, of which I have a transcript, present a similar quaintness with a passage in Milton's first epitaph on this distinguished carrier :

"His teame was of the best: nor would he have
"Been mir'd in any way, but in the grave:

"And here he sticks: still like to stand,

"Until some Angell lend his helping hand.

"Thus rest in peace, thou ever-toyling swaine,

"And supreme waggoner, next to Charles waine." TODD.

20

"But vow, though the cross doctors all stood hearers,
"For one carrier put down to make six bearers."
Ease was his chief disease; and, to judge right,
He died for heaviness that his cart went light:
His leisure told him that his time was come,
And lack of load made his life burdensome,

That even to his last breath, (there be that say't,) 25
As he were press'd to death, he cried, More weight;
But, had his doings lasted as they were,
He had been an immortal carrier.
Obedient to the moon he spent his date
In course reciprocal, and had his fate
Link'd to the mutual flowing of the seas,
Yet (strange to think) his wain was his encrease:
His letters are deliver'd all and gone,
Only remains this superscription*.

30

* Milton's two copies of Verses on Hobson are in Wit Restored in severall Select Poems not formerly publish't, 12mo. Lond. 1658, p. 84, 85. They are preceded by a copy, from some other pen, on the same person. Milton's second copy appears also in A Banquet of Jests, 12mo. Lond. 1640, p. 129.

"Here Hobson lyes, who did most truly prove
"That he could never," &c.

TODD.