titled "A Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language." In this work he claims the authorship of "The Lie," "otherwise called 'The Soul's Errand,'" for Sir Walter Raleigh, and rests his authority on a manuscript copy "of the time," headed, "Sir Walter Wrawly his Lye.” He quotes the poem at length, beginning,

"Hence, soule, the bodies guest."

All other copies that I have seen read, "Go, soul," which I think will be deemed the more fitting word.

Collier does not allude to Sylvester in connection with this poem, but introduces him in another article, and treats him somewhat cavalierly, as "a mere literary adventurer and translating drudge." "When he died," Collier says, "is not precisely known." He might have known, since there were records all round him to show that Sylvester died in Holland, in September, 1618. His great contemporary, Sir Walter Raleigh, was beheaded in October, one month after.

(By the way, Payne Collier holds out marvellously. Here is his new work, dated 1866, and I have near me his "Poetical Decameron," published in 1820, forty-six years ago.)

Ritson, a noted reaper in the "old fields," supposes, that "The Lie" was written by Francis Davison; and in Kerl's "Comprehensive Grammar," among many poetical extracts, I find two stanzas of the poem quoted as written by Barnfield, - probably Richard. These two writers were of Raleigh's time, but I think their claims may be readily dismissed. Supposing that "The Lie" was written by either Joshua Sylvester or Sir Walter Raleigh, I shall try to show that it was not written by Sylvester, and that he has wrongfully enjoyed the credit of its authorship.

Critics and collators have for years been doubting about the authorship of this little poem, written over two centuries and a half ago; and, so far as I can ascertain, not one of them has ever

discovered, what is the simple fact, that there were two poems instead of one, similar in scope and spirit, but still two poems, "The Lie" and "The Soul's Errand."

I have said that Sir Egerton Brydges alludes to a "parody" of "The Lie," in Sylvester's volume, there called "The Soul's Errand." In that volume I find what Sir Egerton calls a "parody." It is, in reality, another poem, bearing the title of "The Soul's Errand," consisting of twenty stanzas, all of four lines each, excepting the first stanza, which has six. "The Lie" consists of but thirteen stanzas, of six lines each, the fifth and sixth of which may be termed the refrain or burden of the piece. I annex copies of the two poems; Sir Walter's (so called) is taken from Percy's "Reliques," and Sylvester's is copied from his own folio.

On comparing the two pieces, it will be seen that they begin alike, and go on nearly alike for a few stanzas, when they diverge, and are then entirely different from each other to the end. I do not find that this difference has ever been pointed out, and am therefore left to suppose that it never was discovered. At this late day conjectures are not worth much, but it would appear that, the opening stanzas of the two poems being similar, their identity was at some time carelessly taken for granted by some collector, who read only the initial stanzas, and thus ignorantly deprived Sir Walter of "The Lie," and gave it to Sylvester, with the title of "The Soul's Errand."

This, however, is certain: "The Soul's Errand," so called, of thirteen stanzas, given to us by Ellis and by Chambers as Sylvester's, is not the poem that Sylvester wrote under that title, and we have his own authority for saying so. His poem of twenty stanzas, bearing that title, does not appear to have ever been reprinted, and it is believed cannot now be found anywhere out of his own book. Ellis, it is plain, is not to be trusted. Profess

ing to be exact, he refers for his authority to page 652 of Sylvester's works, and then proceeds to print a poem as his which is not there. Had he read the page he quotes so carefully, he would have seen that "The Lie" and "The Soul's Errand" were two separate productions, alike only in the six stanzas taken from the former and included in the latter.

We learn that Sir Walter Raleigh's poems were never all collected into a volume, and, further, we learn that "The Lie," as a separate piece, was attributed to him at an early period. Payne Collier, as I have said, prints it as his, from a manuscript "of the time"; and in an elaborate article on Raleigh, in the North British Review, copied into Littell's Living Age, of June 9, 1855, the able reviewer refers particularly to "The Lie," "saddest of poems," as Sir Walter's, and adds in a note that "it is to be found in a manuscript of 1596." This would make the piece two hundred and seventy years old. When and by whom it was first taken from Sir Walter and given to Sylvester, with the altered title, and why Sylvester incorporated into his poem of "The Soul's Errand" six stanzas belonging to "The Lie," can now, of course, never be known.

I find that I have been indulging in quite a flow of words about a few old verses; but then they are verses, and such as one should not be robbed of. They have lived through centuries of time, and outlived generations of ambitious penmen, and the true name of the author ought to live with them. Long ago, when a school-boy, I used to read and repeat "The Lie," and it was then the undoubted work of Sir Walter Raleigh. In after years, on looking into various volumes of old English poetry, I was told that The Lie" was not "The Lie," and was not written by Sir Walter Raleigh; that the true title of the piece was "The Soul's Errand," and that the real author of it was a certain Joshua Sylvester. Unwilling to displace the brave knight from the niche he had graced so long,

I hunted up Sylvester's old folio, and the result of my search may be found in these imperfect remarks.

Frankly, I would fain believe that "The Lie" was written by Sir Walter. It is true I am not able to prove it, but I think I prove that it was not written by Sylvester. He wrote another poem, "The Soul's Errand," and he is welcome to it; that is, he is welcome to fourteen of its twenty stanzas, - the other six do not belong to him. Give him also, painstaking man! due laudation for his version of the "Divine Du Bartas," of which formidable work any one who has the courage to grapple with its six hundred and fifty-odd folio pages may know where to find

Tell men of high condition,
That rule affairs of state,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practise only hate;
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lye.

Tell them that brave it most,

They beg for more by spending, Who in their greatest cost

Seek nothing but commending:
And if they make reply,
Spare not to give the lye.

Tell zeale, it lacks devotion;
Tell love, it is but lust;
Tell time, it is but motion;
Tell flesh, it is but dust;

And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lye.

Tell age, it daily wasteth;

Tell honour, how it alters; Tell beauty, how she blasteth; Tell favour, how she falters; And as they shall reply, Give each of them the lye.

Tell wit, how much it wrangles

In tickle points of nicenesse ; Tell wisedome, she entangles Herselfe in over-wisenesse : And if they do reply, Straight give them both the lye.

Tell physicke of her boldnesse;

Tell skill, it is pretension;

Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law, it is contention;

And as they yield reply,
So give them still the lye.

Tell fortune of her blindnesse; Tell nature of decay;

Tell friendship of unkindnesse;
Tell justice of delay:

And if they dare reply,
Then give them all the lye.

Tell arts, they have no soundnesse, But vary by esteeming ;

་་་,་་

Tell schooles they want profoundnesse,
And stand too much on seeming :

If arts and schooles reply,
Give arts and schooles the lye.

Tell faith, it's fled the citie;

Tell how the countrey erreth; Tell, manhood shakes off pitie; Tell, vertue least preferreth;

And, if they doe reply,

Spare not to give the lye.

So, when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing,
Athough to give the lye
Deserves no less than stabbing,

Yet stab at thee who will, No stab the soule can kill.

THE SOULES ERRAND.

BY JOSUAH SYLVESTER.
Goe Soule, the bodies guest,
Upon a thanklesse Errand,
Feare not to touch the best,
The Truth shall be thy warrant:
Goe thou, since I must die,
And give the world the lye.

Goe tell the Court it glowes,
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the Church it showes
What 's good, but doth not good.

Tell Potentates they live,
Acting by others Action,
Not lov'd unlesse they give,.
Not strong, but by a faction.

Tell men of high condition,
That in Affaires of State
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate.

Goe tell the young Nobility,

They doe degenerate,

Wasting their large ability, In things effeminate.

Tell those that brave it most, They beg for more by spending, And, in their greatest cost, Seeke but a self-commending.

Tell Zeale it wants Devotion,
Tell Love it is but Lust,

Tell Priests they hunt Promotion,
Tell Flesh it is but Dust.

Say Souldiers are the Sink
Of Sinne to all the Realme;
Given all to whores and drink,
To quarrell and blaspheme.

Tell Townesmen, that because that They pranck their Brides so proud, Too many times it drawes that Which makes them beetle-brow'd.

COMIN

OMING up from one of the Brooklyn ferries, after dark, on a sultry summer evening, I take my way through the close-built district of New York City still known as "The Swamp." The narrow streets of the place are deserted by this time, but they have been lively enough during the day with the busy leather-dealers and their teams; for this is the great hide and leather mart of the city, as any one might guess even now in the gloom by the pungent odors that arise on every side. The heavy iron doors and window-shutters of the buildings have been locked and barred for the night; and the thick atmosphere of the place appears to affect the gaslights, which burn sickly and dim in the street lanterns. Nobody lives here at night. The footfalls of the solitary

policeman give out a hollow sound as he paces the narrow trottoir of Ferry Street, in the heart of "The Swamp." Over two hundred years ago, when Governor Peter Stuyvesant pastured his flocks and herds hereabouts, the wayfarer would have been more likely to mark a solitary heron than a solitary policeman; for it was really a swamp then, and much earthwork must have been expended in making the solid ground whereon the buildings now stand. Neither is it probable that, even on the most sultry of summer nights, the nose of old Mynheer Stuyvesant would have been saluted with odors of morocco leather, such as fill the air of The Swamp" to-night. The wild swamp-flowers, though, gave out some faint perfumes to the night

air in those olden times; but the place could hardly have been so still of a summer night as it is now, for the booming of the bullfrog and the piping of his lesser kin must have made night resonant here, and it is reasonable to surmise that owls hooted in the cedar-trees that hung over the tawny sedges of the swamp. "Jack-o'-Lantern" was the only inhabitant who burned gas hereabouts in those times, and he manufactured his own. The nocturnal raccoon edged his way through the alders here, in the old summer nights, and the muskrat built his house among the reeds. Not a raccoon nor a muskrat is the wayfarer likely to meet with here to-night; but the gray rat of civilization is to be dimly discerned, as he lopes along the gutters in his nightly prowl.

There is something very bewildering to the untutored mind in the announcements on the dim, stony door-posts of the stores. Here it is set forth that "Kids and Gorings" are the staple of the concern. Puzzling though the inscription is to me, yet I recognize in it something that is pastoral and significant; for there were kids that skipped, probably, and bulls that gored, when the grass was green here. "Oak and Hemlock Leather," on the next doorpost, reads well, for it is redolent of glades that were old before the masonry that now prevails here had been dreamed of. Here we have an announcement of "Russet Roans"; and the next merchant, who is apparently a cannibal or a ghoul, deliberately notifies the public that he deals in "Hatters' Skins." Many of the door-posts announce Findings" and "Skivers"; and upon one of them I note the somewhat remarkable intimation of "Pulled Wool." Gold Street, also, is redolent of all these things, as I turn into it, nor is there any remission of the pungent trade-stenches of the district until I have gained a good distance up Spruce Street, toward the City Hall Park. Here the Bowery proper, viewed as a great artery of New York trade and travel, may be said to begin. The first

66

reach of it is called Chatham Street; and, having plunged into this, I have nothing before me now but Bowery for a distance of nearly two miles.

Leaving behind me, then, the twinkling lights of the newspaper buildings and those of the City Hall Park, northward along Chatham Street I bend my loitering steps. Israel predominates here, Israel, with its traditional stock in trade of cheap clothing, and bawbles that are made to wear, but not to wear long. The shops, here are mostly small, and quite open to the street in front, which gives the place a bazaar-like appearance in summer. Economy in space is practised to the utmost. It is curious to observe how closely crowded the goods (bads might be a more appropriate term for most of them) are outside the shops, as well as inside. The fronts of the houses are festooned with raiment of all kinds, until they look like tents made of variegated dry-goods. Here is a stall so confined that the occupant, rocking in his chair near the farther end of it, stretches his slippered feet well out upon the threshold. It is near closing time now, and many of the dealers, with their wives and children, are sitting out in front of their shops, and, if not under their own vines and fig-trees, at least under their own gaudy flannels and "loud - patterned cotton goods, which are waving overhead in the sluggish evening breeze. Nothing can be more suggestive of lazily industrious Jewry than this short, thick-set clothier, with the curved nose, and spiral, oily hair, who sits out on the sidewalk and blows clouds from his meerschaum pipe. The women who lounge here are generally stoutish and slatternly, with few clothes on, but plenty of frowzy hair. Here and there one may see a pretty face among the younger girls; and it is sad to reflect that these little Hebrew maids will become stout and slatternly by and by, and have hooked noses like their mothers, and double chins. The labels on the ready-made clothing are curious in their way. Here a pair of trousers in glaring brown and yellow