aimed perhaps at the character of a poetess, because her mother (the learned daughter of sir Anthony Cooke) had been attached to literature, and because poetry was the favourite amusement of her husband. She died in queen Elizabeth's court at Greenwich, June 6, 1588, and was pompously interred in Westminster-abbey.

The Cotton MS. Julius F. X. contains several elegiacal verses in commemoration of her good qualities. They are thus superscribed: "Anna Vera uxor Eduardi Veri, comitis Oxoniæ, filia Guil. Burghlei, summi Angliæ quæstoris, mulier pietate, prudentia, patientia, pudicitia, et in conjugem amore singulari, tres 4 filias superstites reliquit, principi, parentibus, fratribus, et universæ aulæ regiæ admodum chara. Obiit, in aula regia Greenwici."

This lady's only remaining poetical attempts are extant among the odes and sonnetteering conceits of one John Southern, alias Soothern (or, as Mr. Steevens surmised, Sudaine, alias Le Sud), a pragmatical poetaster who plagiarised in piebald English some of Ronsard's odellets in French, and published his fantastical collection under the title of "Diana," the name of his supposititious mistress 5. Queen Eliza

This serves to establish Mr. Brydges's correction of Arthur Wilson, that lord Oxford had three daughters by Anne Cecil his first wife, not two by Elizabeth Trentham, his second, who only bore him one son, Henry, his successor. See Memoirs of the Peers of England, vol. i. p. 494.

• Puttenham has aptly characterised Soothern's motley performance by the term "Soraismus, or mingle-mangle.” Arte of English Poesie, p. 211.

beth, as well as lady Oxford, appears as a contributor to this collection, the extreme rareness of which induced Mr. Steevens to think it had been suppressed immediately on its first appearance; either because it exhibited verses which the countess never meant for the public, or through fear that her majesty might have been displeased at the circulation of her poetry.

From "Foure Epytaphes made by the countes of Oxenford, after the death of her young sonne 5 the lord Bulbecke, &c." one is here given on account of its singularity; though it so much resembles the style of Soothern, that it may almost be suspected of being tricked out by his incomprehensible pen.

"Had with moorning the gods left their willes undon,
They had not so soone herited such a soule:

Or if the mouth Tyme did not glotten up all,
Nor I, nor the world, were depriv'd of my sonne,
Whose brest Venus, with a face dolefull and milde,
Dooth wash with golden teares, inveying the skies;
And when the water of the goddesses eyes
Makes almost alive the marble of my childe;

One byds her leave styll her dollor so extreme,
Telling her-it is not her young sonne Papheme!
To which she makes aunswer with a voice inflamed
(Feeling therewith her venime to be more bitter)
"As I was of Cupid, even so of it, mother;
And a woman's last chylde is the most beloved."]

This seems to disconcert another of Wilson's assertions, that lord Oxford was "hopeless of heirs" by his first wife. Life and Reign of King James, p. 161.

LORD CHANCELLOR HATTON.

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WOOD says he wrote, as it is said, several things pertaining to the law, but none of them are extant; only this, if I may say it is his, and not his name set to it for sale-sake:

"A Treatise concerning Statutes or Acts of Parliament, and the Exposition thereof." Lond. 1677, 8vo. 3

"Speeches spoken during the Time of his Chancellorship." MS.

Christopher lord Hatton4, his kinsman and successor, published—“ The Psalms of David, with Titles and Collects according to the Matter of each Psalm." Printed at Oxford, 1644, 8vo. afterwards enlarged and published several times. Wood says, that they were compiled by Dr. Jer. Taylor, though they go under the name of the lord Hatton.

[Whether ever printed before, says Wood, I know not.] * [This lord, says Dr. Lort, left his wife and family to starve, and amused himself in the decline of life with a company of players. See Dr. John North's Life. Such a report does not seem to concur with the received belief that this lord was the editor of king David's Psalmody.]

• Athenæ, vol.i. p. 254. [Wood speaks of the book as having lord Hatton's arms in the title-page.]

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