'A Traveller is a fraud, if he travaile to novellize himself and not to benefit his country.
'A Launderer is also one if she wash her skinne, but staine her soule, and so soile her inward beauty.'
In 'A Spiritual Spicerie' he begins a poem:
'Morall mixtures or Divine
Aptly culled, and Couch'd in order,
Are like Colours in a Shrine,
Or choice flowers set in a border.'
In 'Holy Memorials' he bemoans his past waywardness and looseness, and speaks of being sore perplexed when his own wanton verses were repeated in his hearing, and 'though I did neither own them nor praise them, yet must I in another place answer for them, if Hee, on whom I depend, shall not in these teares which I shed drowne the memory of them.' Like many of his pious contemporaries, he tried his hand at turning the Psalms of David into English verse. If they fall short in his translations of the beauty and strength of our prose versions—and they have in no degree gripped the churches—these sacred hymns helped to ripen his own character and faith, and he is very sincere in concluding his efforts with:
'Praise to the God of Heaven,
Be given by Mee a Worme,
That David's numbers in this forme,
To Mee a Worme hath given.'
Adding on the last leaf, 'Other errours favourably excuse, and amend at pleasure.'
The quaintness of his spelling, of his metres, of his expressions, commend his works to lovers of old literature. Some are reprinted, others are scarce. The first edition of 'Barnaby' is almost unobtainable, and that of 'A Survey of History,' a quarto volume with portrait, has just been offered me for £2.