like the planets which govern the revolutions of the natural, exercise a most powerful control over the literary world.

A Miscellany, formed of a few articles from the pens of many of the eminent individuals alluded to, as well as of those whose claims upon our admiration, though less strong, are not wholly without foundation, cannot, it is presumed, fail of becoming to some extent popular; for at the same time that it preserves many pieces of well-known poets, which are not inserted in the usual editions of their works, the effusions of several will be found, whose productions do not elsewhere exist.

The POETICAL RHAPSODY first appeared in 1602; it was much enlarged and reprinted in 1608; again, with many additions, in 1611; and, after undergoing a new arrangement, a fourth edition was published in 1621. It consisted of Sonnets, Odes, Elegies, Madrigals, and other Poems, by some of the most distinguished writers of the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First; and was edited by Francis Davison, the eldest son of that victim of Queen Elizabeth's cowardice and treachery, William Davison, one of her secretaries of state.

In 1814, this Collection was reprinted at the Lee Priory press by Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges; but the impression, like that of the other reprints of the Elizabethan poetry by that accomplished antiquary,

was limited to one hundred copies: an arrangement which tended in a very slight degree to make the public acquainted with our early poets; for the price and rarity of a copy of the new, was very little less than that of one of the original editions.

The contributors to the RHAPSODY, which has been pronounced by a highly competent judge, to be the most valuable miscellany of the day, were Sir Philip Sydney, Edmund Spenser, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir John Davies, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, Sir Henry Wotton, Henry Constable, John Donne, Robert Greene, Thomas Campion, Thomas Watson, Joshua Sylvester, Charles Best, Thomas Spelman, Francis Davison, and his brother Walter; and a very extensive proportion, extending to nearly one hundred pages, was by a poet whose initials are said to have been A. W, but whose name has never transpired-a circumstance which his merit renders equally an object of surprise and regret.

Of the value of the pieces contained in the collection, it seems almost superfluous to say any thing. If the illustrious names of Spenser, Raleigh, and Sydney, do not attract attention, the editor cannot flatter himself that any recommendation of his, will produce it ; and those who peruse the poems will of course be alone influenced by their own judgment. It has also been usual to prefix to a new edition of works of this nature, some observations on the Poetry of the time; but in the present instance they appear to be uncalled for,