-pence, though they are given oft
for three shillings, but for the pretty title that allures the country
gentleman; for which the printer maintains him in ale a fortnight. His
verses are like his clothes miserable centoes[48] and patches, yet their
pace is not altogether so hobbling as an almanack's. The death of a great
man or the _burning_[49] of a house furnish him with an argument, and the
nine muses are out strait in mourning gowns, and Melpomene cries fire!
fire! [His other poems are but briefs in rhime, and like the poor Greeks
collections to redeem from captivity.] He is a man now much employed in
commendations of our navy, and a bitter inveigher against the Spaniard.
His frequentest works go out in single sheets, and are chanted from
market to market to a vile tune and a worse throat; whilst the poor
country wench melts like her butter to hear them. And these are the
stories of some men of Tyburn, or a strange monster out of Germany;[50]
or, sitting in a bawdy-house, he writes God's judgments. He drops away at
last in some obscure painted cloth, to which himself made the verses,[51]
and his life, like a cann too full, spills upon the bench. He leaves
twenty shillings on the score, which my hostess loses.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] _Cento_, a composition formed by joining scraps from other authors.
_Johnson._ Camden, in his _Remains_, uses it in the same sense. "It is
quilted, as it were, out of shreds of divers poets, such as scholars call
a _cento_."

[49] _Firing_, first edit.

[50] In the hope of discovering some account of the _strange monster_
alluded to, I have looked through one of the largest and most curious
collections of tracts, relating to the marvellous, perhaps in existence.
That bequeathed to the Bodleian, by Robert Burton, the author of the
_Anatomy of Melancholy_. Hitherto my researches have been unattended with
success, as I have found only two tracts of this description relating to
Germany, both of which are in prose, and neither giving any account of a
monster.

1. _A most true Relation of a very dreadfull Earthquake, with the
lamentable Effectes thereof, which began upon the 8. of December 1612. and
yet continueth most fearefull in Munster in Germanie. Reade and Tremble.
Translated out of Dutch, by Charles Demetrius, Publike Notarie in London,
and printed at Rotterdame, in Holland, at the Signe of the White
Gray-hound._ (Date cut off. Twenty-six pages, 4to. with a woodcut.)

2. _Miraculous Ne