ANCIENT POEMS.

The armes, the which that Cupide bare,
Were pearced hartes with teares befprent,
In filver and fable to declare

The ftedfaft love, he alwayes ment.

There might you fe his band all dreft
In colours like to white and blacke,
With powder and with pelletes prest
To bring the fort to spoile and facke.

Good-wyll, the maifter of the fhot,

Stode in the rampire brave and proude, For fpence of pouder he fpared not

Affault! affault! to crye aloude.

There might you heare the cannons rore ;
Eche pece discharged a lovers loke;
Which had the power to rent, and tore
In any place whereas they toke.

And even with the trumpettes fowne

The scaling ladders were up fet,

And Beautie walked up and downe,

With bow in hand, and arrowes whet.

ANCIENT POEMS.

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SINCE the foregoing Song was firft printed off, rea

fons have occurred, which incline me to believe that Lord VAUX the poet, was not the Lord NICHOLAS VAUX, who died in 1523, but rather a fucceffor of his in the title. For in the first place it is remarkable that all the old writers mention Lord Vaux the poet, as contemporary or rather pofterior to Sir THOMAS WYAT, and the E. of SURREY, neither of which made any figure till long after the death of the firft Lord Nicholas Vaux. Thus Puttenham in bis Art of English Poefie, 1589." in p. 48. having named SKELTON, adds, "In the latter end of the fame kings raigne [Henry VIII.] Sprong up a new company of courtly Makers, [poets] of whom Sir THOMAS WYAT "th' elder, and Henry Earl of SURREY were the two chieftaines, who having travailed into Italie, and there tafted the fweet and flately measures and ftile of the "Italian poefie greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poefie . .

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In the SAME TIME, or NOT LONG AFTER was the Lord NICHOLAS VAUX, a man of much facilitie in vulgar makings ↑."-Webbe in his Difcourfe of English Poetrie, 1586. ranges them in the following order, "The E. of Surrey, the Lord VAUX, Norton, Briftow." And Gascoigne in the place quoted in the ift vol. of this work, [B. II. No. II.] mentions Lord Vaux after Surrey.--Again, the file and measure of Lord VAUX's pieces feem too refined and polished for the age of Henry VII. and rather rejemble the fmoothness and harmony of Surrey and Wyat, than the rude metre of Skelton and Hawes : -But what puts the matter out of all doubt, in the British Mufeum is a copy of his poem, I lothe that I did love, [vid. vol. 1. ubi fupra] with this title," A dyttye or fonet made by the Lord VAUS, in the time of the noble "Queene Marye, reprefenting the image of Death." Harl.. MSS. No. 1703. §. 25.

It is evident then that Lord VAUX the poet was not he that flourished in the reign of Henry vij. but either his fon, or grandfon: and yet according to Dugdale's Baronage, the former was named THOMAS, and the latter WILLIAM: but this VOL. II. difficulty

E

ti. Compofitions in English.