Besides our statutes and our iron lawes,
Which they have swallowed down into their maws.
Till now I thought the proverbe did but jest,
Which said a blacke sheepe was a biting beast."
Here the allusion is of course to the miseries entailed by the system of sheep-farming; a system which had been introduced and carried to excess by the monastic bodies. Some years ago I met with an old satirical song on this subject, of which the above "proverbe" formed a kind of burden, but where, or in what collection I met with it, I cannot for the life of me remember. Now, seeing that your periodical exemplifies very accurately the definition once given by a Surrey peasant of a highly accomplished man—"Sir! he knows everything, and what he don't know he axes,"—perhaps you will allow me to ask whether some one of your many able correspondents may not have the power and the will to give me this information. A worthless memory seems to suggest that the song was a Cambridge production, and interspersed with Latin phrases.
Now, one word about the author of the epigram above quoted. It is not, I hope, an abuse of the freedom of speech which ought to prevail in the republic of letters, if I express a strong opinion that your learned contributor, MR. PAYNE COLLIER, has rendered very scant justice to the memory of Bastard. The epigrams selected by that gentleman as favourable samples, are among the very worst of the author's efforts.
Probably not twenty copies of the Chrestoleros are in existence; but as, by the kindness of my esteemed friend E. V. Utterson, I possess one of the sixteen struck off at his own private press, I beg to supply a specimen or two, that will not only gratify your readers in general, but elicit an approving verdict from MR. COLLIER himself.
For example, is not the finished cadence, as well as the nervous force, of the following lines to Sir Ph. Sidney, greatly to be admired?
"When Nature wrought upon her mould so well,
That Nature wondred her own work to see,