Note. "How great a mercy is it, to live eight and thirty years under God's wholesome discipline? How inexcusable was this man, if he had been proud, or worldly, or careless of his everlasting state? O my God! I thank thee for the like discipline of eight and fifty years. How safe a life is this, in comparison of full prosperity and pleasure."
His ministerial duties were of an arduous nature, and yet he found time to write largely on theological subjects, and to plunge perpetually into theological controversy. The Saint's Rest, by which his fame will ever be perpetuated, was published in 1619, 4to. It is in four parts, and dedicated respectively to the inhabitants of Kidderminster, Bridgenorth, Coventry, and Shrewsbury. It was the first book he wrote, and the second he published (The Aphorisms of Justification being the first published): it was written under the daily expectation of dying. The names of Brook, Hampden, and Pym, which have a place in the first edition, are, singularly enough, omitted in the later ones. Fifty years after the appearance of the Saint's Rest, and a few months only before his death, he published the strangest of all his productions; it is—
"The Certainty of the World of Spirits, fully evinced by unquestionable Histories of Apparitions and Witchcrafts, Operations, Voices, &c. Proving the Immortality of Souls, the Malice and Misery of Devils and the Damned, and the Blessedness of the Justified. Written for the Conviction of Sadducees and Infidels."
12mo. 1691.
His Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, folio, 1686, is the text-book for the actual every-day life of this eminent divine.
H. M. BEALBY.
North Brixton.
LATIN SONG BY ANDREW BOORDE.
The life of this "progenitor of Merry Andrew," as he is termed, would, if minutely examined, doubtless prove a curious piece of biography. Wood furnishes many particulars, but some of his statements want confirmation. He tells us that Boorde was borne at Pevensey in Sussex; but Hearne corrects him, and says it was at Bounds Hill in the same county. It then becomes a question whether he was educated at Winchester school. Certain it is that he was of Oxford, although he left without taking a degree, and became a brother of the Carthusian order in London. We next find him studying physic in his old university, and subsequently travelling through most parts of Europe, and even of Africa. On his return to England, he settled at Winchester, and practised as a physician. Afterwards we find him in London occupying a tenement in the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. This appears to have been the period when, in his professional capacity, King Henry VIII. is said to have consulted him. How long he remained in London is uncertain, but in 1541 he was living at Montpelier in France, where he is supposed to have taken the degree of doctor in physic, in which he was afterwards incorporated at Oxford. He subsequently lived at Pevensey, and again at Winchester. At last we find him a prisoner in the Fleet—the cause has yet to be learned,—at which place he died in April, 1549. The following curious relic is transcribed from the flyleaf of a copy of The Breviary of Health, 4to., London, 1547. It is signed "Andrew Boord," and if not the handwriting of the facetious author himself, is certainly that of some one of his cotemporaries:
"Nos vagabunduli,