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-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
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