Stafford was distinguished as a man of letters, and wrote various other works, most of them with quaint titles, according to the taste of that day; as,
Niobe dissolved into a Nilus: or his Age drowned in her own tears. 1611.
Heavenly Dogge: a Life and Death of that Great Cynick Diogenes; whom Laertius styled Canis Caelestis, the Heavenly Dogge. 1615.
The attacks of Burton and others brought out A Short Apology, or Vindication of a book entitled Femall Glory, etc., which is republished in the fourth edition of 1869.
The Femall Glory is a book of genuine English growth, entirely free from imitation or adaptation of foreign words, and, beyond mere sketches of the most meagre character, the only full life of the Blessed Virgin. It is valuable, in a controversial point of view, as contrasting, the clear and distinct acknowledgment of the dignity and sanctity of the mother of God, as recognized by English Protestants of that, with the Episcopal Low Church views of the present day. Citations might be made from such men as Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Bull, Bishop Pearson, Archdeacon Frank, and Archbishop Bramhall, to show this conclusively. Not the smallest charm about the book is the odor of its quaint seventeenth century tone of thought and expression. Thus, in the preface "To the Feminine Reader" she is told, "You are here presented, by an extreme honourer of your Sexe, with a Mirrour of Femall Perfection. … By this, you cannot curle your haires, fill up your wrinckles, and so alter your Looks, that Nature, who made you, knowes you no more, but utterly forgets her owne Workmanship. By this, you cannot lay spots on your faces; but take them out of your Soules, you may." Then there is "The Ghyrlond of the Blessed Virgin Marie."
"There are five letters in this blessed Name,
Which, chang'd, a five-fold Mysterie designe;
The M, the Myrtle, A, the Almonds clame,
R, Rose, I, Ivy, E, sweet Eglantine."
That such a book should not find favor in the eyes of the London Athenaeum, is not surprising. The author of Spiritual Wives and the recognizer of the Pope Joan fable as veritable history could scarcely be expected to recognize merit in such a work as the Femall Glory.
A Slavonian Version of the Bible is now in preparation at Rome. The original Slavonian text was the work of St. Cyril and St. Methodus, apostles to the Slavonians in the ninth century. In the lapse of years, the original text has been seriously tampered with by so-called emendators and incompetent copyists, so that it is now very difficult to determine several important questions concerning it. Was the translation made from the Latin, the Greek, or the Hebrew? What class of manuscripts were used by these apostles? Which of the Slavonian dialects was the vehicle of the translation? And, finally, was the original version written in glagolitic or cyrillic characters?
The Staple of Biographical Notices of Pope Sixtus V., is usually made up of a series of stories, to the effect that he was the son of ignorant parents and himself a swineherd; that he rose by his talents to the dignity of cardinal, and that, feigning extreme illness to the point of appearing to be on the verge of the grave from debility and disease, was no sooner elected to the papacy than he threw away his crutches and declared himself perfectly restored to health.