Page:Tixall Poetry.djvu/454

 So toade to tulip &c. I do not understand the meaning of this allusion.

P. 303. These stanzas on happy love are very beautiful. The least propriety in any sense.

Propriety, is to be understood here, for property, in the same sense as in that exquisite passage in Paradise Lost:

Hail, wedded love! mysterious law, true source Of human offspring, sole propriety In Paradise, of all things common else.

P. 305. I am much amused with the ingenious theory of the gout, and tooth-ach, with which this song concludes. But I do not know, that it would afford much alleviation, under the torture of those painful complaints, to think that they were occasioned by Queen Mab, or Oberon; or by a dance of the fairies.

P. 309. I suppose this was addressed to the second Lord Aston, who was married in the year 1629; which fixes the date of this poem to the year 1653. The hope of the poet, to see (His) joyes growne up into a jubilye, Was very nearly fulfilled; for Lord Aston lived to the year 1678, having been married 49 years. His lady survived him.

P. 311. This poem may be found towards the end of Howell's Letters: "A work, containing numberless anecdotes, and historical narratives, and forming one of the most amusing and instructive volumes of the 17th century."— vol. vii. 232.)

What a dismal picture, and how forcibly expressed!