HENRY WILLOBY Appears to have been a scholar at Oxford, but is only known as author of a collection of love-poems, published during his departure, in her Majesty's service, to see the fashions of other countries, by his "friend and chamber-fellow" Hadrian Dorrell, under the title of "Willobie his Avisa; or the true picture of a modest maid and of a chast and constant wife: in Hexamiter verse," 1594, 4to. printed again in 1596, and a fourth time, corrected and augmented, in 1609, to which is added" the victorie of English chastitie, under the fained name of Avisa,” signed "Thomas Willoby, frater Henrici," &c. "the resolution of a chast and constant wife," and "the praise of a contented mind." The metre of these poems is harmonious and pleasing, but it would seem that the term hexameter was applied to stanzas containing six lines, and not to lines containing six feet. Willoby died not long before the republication of his work in 1596, as appears from Dorrell's "Apologie." Vide also Ritson's Bibliographia. The second letter of D. B. to hard-hearted Avisa. I [From Canto xxxIII.] FIND it true, that some have said, For Wit is oft by Love betray'd, And brought asleep by fond devise. Sith faith no favour can procure, As faithful friendship mov'd my tongue This last request so let me have: That will I say, this is the worst ; [From Canto XLIIII.] WHAT sudden chance or change is this What surly cloud eclips'd my bliss ? What sprite doth rage within my breast? Such fainty qualms I never found, Till first I saw this western ground. Can change of air complexions change, And strike the senses out of frame? Though this be true, yet this is strange, Sith I so lately hither came; And yet in body cannot find So great a change as in my mind. My lustless limbs do pine away, And deadly cold his room doth win: I know the time, I know the place, I love the seat where she did sit, I kiss the grass where she did tread; Methinks I see that face as yet, I And eye, that all these turmoils bred. envy that this seat, this ground, Such friendly grace and favour found. I dreamt of late (God grant that dream But yonder comes my faithful friend On his advice I will depend, Whe'er I shall win or be denied: And look, what counsel he shall give, That will I do, whe'er die or live! WILLIAM FOWLER, A writer of amatory verses at the court of James VI. has been lately noticed by Mr.Leyden in his curious collection of "Scotish descriptive poems." (Edin.and Lond.1808,12mo.). Scarcely any anecdotes of his life are preserved, and even the time of his birth is doubtful, though it may be placed with some probability about the year 1569. He seems to have possessed the esteem of Drummond of Hawthornden, by whom two MS. volumes of his poems, the one entitled "The Tarantula of Love," and the other a translation of Petrarch's Triumphs, were in 1627 presented to the library of Edinburgh college; and he was a great favourite with king James, whose unkindly genius he had the singular good fortune of inspiring with a very tolerable commendatory sonnet prefixed to the triumphs of Petrarch. Fowler's style, as his editor justly observes, " is often quaint, "affected, and full of antithesis;" though he " possesses a facility of versification, and a harmony of numbers, "which the best poets of that period were not always able "to attain." The following single specimen will be a sufficient comment on the truth of this character. It is selected from a transcript of part of the Tarantula of Love, politely communicated to the editor by lord Woodhouselee. SONNET. PERHAPS you think, with your disdainful words, With rude repulse, with "nays," rehears'd in ire, |