Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 10.djvu/108

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NOTES AND QUERIES. no s. x. AUG. i, MOB.

missioners under the Act of 1803. An Appendix to the Sixth Report (1814) sup plies a ' Statement of the Origin, Extent and Repair of Roads in the Highlands including the Military Roads.'

P. J. ANDEBSON. University Library, Aberdeen.

ENGLANDS PARNASSUS,' 1600. (See 10 S. ix. 341, 401 ; x. 4.)

I HAVE said that c Englands Parnassus, so far as authors' names are concerned, i self-contained ; and that outside these authors one will search in vain for any o Allot' s quotations. This statement, how ever, needs an explanation, which, at firs sight, seems like a contradiction, but ii really not so. When Allot read a boot which contained contributions from severa authors, he did not always stop to ascertain exactly whom he was quoting, but very often assigned his extracts to the author ir the book whose name was most familiar to him. This habit of Allot's is responsible for a great number of errors of assignment that are to be met with in ' Englands Parnassus ' ; and the editor was so careless that one finds him sometimes giving quota- tions from the same poem to more than one author. Cases such as these are to be found in works like ' Tottel's Miscellany,

collection of elegies, entitled ' Astrophel,' on the death of Sir Philip Sidney. The quotations from the elegies, except those from Matthew Roydon's poem, are set down by Allot as being written by Spenser, although one elegy is the work of Sidney's own sister. When passages are cited from
 * The Mirror for Magistrates,' and the

gives no authors' names, but simply the title of the work, or else he fathers them on Lord Sackville and John Higgins, mention- ing Dolman only once, and crossing the names of Higgins and Sackville. And as regards ' Tottel's Miscellany ' the utmost confusion prevails, Allot sometimes agreeing to stand by Tottel, and sometimes being against him, although he never once mentions Tottel. His sole authority for names in these cases was Tottel's book, as is proved by the passages themselves, which always follow the ' Miscellany,' and there- fore differ from other versions of the same poems to be found in other collections. Hence errors of this kind do not affect the statement I have made ; they only indicate Allot's carelessness, and warn us to expect
 * The Mirror for Magistrates,' Allot either

to find other men's work, whose names are absent from ' Englands Parnassus,' given to writers, in the same collections of poems, whom Allot has favoured with mention.

Allot quotes two passages from Lodowick Brysket's elegy on Sidney, both of which he puts above the signature of Spenser :

No humble speech, nor mone, may move the fixed
 * Destinie,' p. 72.

stint

Of Destinie or death : such is the will that paints The earth with colours fresh, the darkish skies

with store Of starry light.

4 Of Tempests,' p. 421.

On Neptune war was made by Aeolus arid his traine, Who, letting loose the winds, tost and tormented

the ayre,

So that, on every coast, men shipwracke did abide, Or els were swallowed up in open sea with waves ; And such as came to shore, were beaten with

dispayre.

Brysket's poem is entitled * The Mourning Muse of Thestylis ' ; and this title, as well as the declaration in the concluding stanzas of the preceding elegy, should have been sufficient to warn Allot that Spenser was not its author. The same remarks apply to The Doleful Lay of Clorinda,' by Sidney's sister, from which two lines are adduced under ' Heaven.' These were traced to the buntess of Pembroke by Collier, and therefore I shall leave them unquoted, it Deing my purpose to deal only with pas- sages which have not previously been traced, or about which remark is necessary.

Matthew Roydon seems to have been a particular friend of Allot s, who corroborates }he statement of Thomas Nashe, in his Preface to Robert Greene's * Menaphon,' that .he ' Friends Passion for his Astrophill ' passages are put above Roydon's signature n ' Englands Parnassus,' nine of these, raced by Collier, being from the elegy, and he other two being found by me in the >de which Roydon wrote in praise of Thomas Vatson's ' Ekatompathia ': 'Labour,' p. 190.
 * vas written by Roydon. Altogether eleven

Industry, well cherisht to his face,

n sun-shine walkes, in spight of sower disgrace.

'Vertue,'p. 343. ""hat growes apace, that Vertue helps t' aspire.

I infer that Roydon and Allot were riends, not only because Allot was ac- uainted with the fact that Roydon wrote elegy on Sidney, but also because toy don's is one of the very rare cases of an uthor's work being rightly assigned to him