I earnestly recommend the whole of Phineas Fletcher's productions to the attentive perufal of your poetical readers.-To Fletcher, perhaps, rather than to Pafferat (vide Johnfon's Life of L. Rochefter) Rochefter is indebted for the idea of his excellent poem on Nothing. In Fletcher's Mifcellanics there is a poem on that fubject.

Doctor Johnfon has obferved that "Cowley has given one example of reprefentative verfification, which perhaps wo other English line can equal" This famous line is a tranflation of Horace's "Labitur & labetur in omne volubilis ævum."

"Which runs, and, as it runs, for ever COWLEY.

fhall run on!"

Dr. Hurd has likewife made his obfervations on this celebrated line; and he forfooth tells us, that, " confidering it as a tranflation, it is indeed no unfaith ful vehicle of the fenfe of Horace, but is deficient in elegance." Therefore he propofes what he esteems a better in its tead. Take it, "Flows the full ftream, and fhall for ever flow!" I quote from memory. Is it not ftrange that thefe two learned Doctors fhould differ fo very widely in their opinion of one poor line? What must the unlearned think of the infallibility of criticism! "Who fhall decide when Doctors difagree!" I have often thought that it would be very useful to young students, if the difcordant affertions, as pofitive as gratuitous, of first-rate critics should be gathered together, and prefented to their difciples in one view, that they might perceive how neceffary it is, amidst the conflict of jarring opinions, to acquire the art of judging for themfelves. See in Warton's Effay on Pope the praife lavished on Akenfide's Odes, and fee Mafon's and Johnfon's very different judgement of them. If, how ever, we agree with Dr. Johnson, that the line above quoted from Cowley is fuper-excellent, fhall we not give the fame praife of happy conftruction to the following from Fletcher?

Elfe had that endless pit too quickly caught

me,

That endless pit, where it is easier never
To fall, than being fallen, to ccase from failing

ever.

Compare this line with Cowley's, and you must allow that his reprefentative harmony can be equalled, because it Kas been equalled.

An ingenuous critic, Mr. Jackfon,

author of Thirty Letters, has treated us with fome beautiful extracts from that once admired, then derided, then forgotten author, Quarles. The twofold pleafure that I received from their perufal, the pleasure of fecing justice done to the manes of an honeft man, and the pleasure of reading fome beautiful verfes, new as it were from their antiquity, will induce me, with your permiffion, to attempt, from time to time, the entertainment of your readers, by extracts from authors in the poetical line, who have scarcely been honoured with other notice than that of the an.. tiquary. It will be feen that many a precious pearl has been involved in obfcurity by furrounding duft. M. C. S.

Under the bloffom that hangs on the bangb.
Fairies.

Ranged in flowrie dales, and mountains hore,
And under everie trembling leafe they fit.

Fairefax's Taffe. Book IV. Stanza XVIII In medio ramos annofaque brachia pandit Ulmus opaca, ingens: quam fedem Somnis vulgò [bærene Vana tenere ferunt, foliifque fub omnibus Virg. Æn. 6. v. 282. Piftol fays in the Merry Wives of Windfor, A&t I. Scene III.

Then did the fun on dung-hill thine. "The funne fhineth upon the dunghill." Lylie's Euphues.

Much ado about nothing. A& I. Scene I.

Bene. And fo I commit you. Claud. From my house, if I had it, Pedro. The fixth of July; your loving friend Benedick.

Bene. Ere you flout old ends any further, examine your confcience; and fo I leave

you.

eth: though the camomile, the more it iş trodden, and preffed downe, the more it fpreadeth, yet the violet, the oftner it is handled and touched, the fooner it withereth and decayeth."

Lylie's Eupbues.

An Oxbow, not the plant Ononis. Eafily crook'd that will a Camacke bee. Drayton. Eglogue 7. Timely crooketh the tree, that will a good

camok bee.

Heiwnd's Dialogue, 2d part. ch. 9. Shakspeare, undoubtedly, in this highly comic fcene, intended to ridicule the quaint antithefes of Lylie in his Euphues, a book much in vogue in Shakespeare's time.

Falftaff afterwards fays in the fame fpeech,

There is a thing, Harry, which thou hast often heard of, and it is known to many in our land by the name of pitch: this pitch, as ancient writers do report, doth defile, fo doth the company thou keep'st.

"He that toucheth pitch fhall be defiled." Lylie's Euphues, Antony and Cleopatra. Act III.

Scene II.

MR. URBAN,

T

Nov. 7. HE pig of lead a was found on the THE Stockbridge, Hants, on the Houghton verge of Broughton-brook, near side of the water, Aug. 11, 1783. it weighs near 156lb. and is now in the Bollington in the faid county, who poffeffion of Thomas South, Efq. of having very obligingly favoured me with a copy of the infcription thereon, of which the letters are as perfect as when they first came out of the mould, I fend it you for your mifcellany, and hope the learned antiquaries may be induced to give the public an explanation thereof.

Y. Z.

HAVING communicated this to one of our antiquarian correfpondents, we had the pleasure to find he had received a copy of it, fomewhat different, from the Rev. Mr. Price of Oxford, with the fame view of obtaining an explanation. -Our correfpondent has accordingly favoured us with the following: Neronis Augufli ex Keangis 1111 Confulis Britannici.

I read the infcription on this eighth pig of lead caft by the Romans in Britain, and difcovered in the course of two centuries, thus:

The

The fourth Confulfhip of Nero falls A. U. C. 813, A. D. 60, when he had for his colleague Cornelius Coffus, as Tacitus calls him; or as the Fafti Confulares, published by Almeloveen Coffus Cornelius Lentulus; and in an Infc. Grut. CXVII. GOSSO LENTVLO COSSI FILIO cos alfo viii. 5.

Thus far our way is clear: the former infcriptions of this kind exhibiting the Emperor's names, titles, and confulfhip. But here Nero feems to have affumed the title of BRITANNICVS, which no other of his monuments or coins give him. He certainly was enti tled to it, for in his reign the Romans continued to gain fresh conquefts in this ifland, though the Britons, who were very uneasy in this ftate of fervi tude, made feveral efforts to regain their liberty, and particularly under the conduct of Queen Boadiceae.

The letters HVLPMCOS have the appearance of a confulfhip, but to whom to afcribe it is the difficulty.

There is but one Conful of the name of Ulpianus, in the whole series of Fafti Confulares, and that was 178 years after the date here given, viz. Á. U. C. 228. See Gruter, civ. 3, (a reference which I cannot find;) and Cenforinus de die nat. c. 21.

On the other fide are the words EX ARGENT and CAPASCAS; and the gles like xxx may be the numerals expreffing thirty.

"The intent of making the blocks of lead with the Emperor's name might be to authorise the fale of them by virtue of his permiffion. The year likewife, and the name of the people where the mines lay, were neceffary to be added for the fake of the proprietors, in order to adjust their accounts with the officers, and prevent frauds in the execution of their truft. And it is obfervable, that the method now made ufe of in the lead mines is not much different from this. For the pigs are upon an average nearly the fame weight with that preferved in the draught of that found in Yorkshire, viz 19. 19. 161. and they are likewife commonly marked with the initial letters of the name of the fmelter, or factor, and fometimes both, before they are fent from the mines f.»

No ancient people of Britain have given our antiquaries fo much trouble to fettle as the Cangi. Mr. Horsley 8, after a good deal of argumentation, inclines to place them in and about Derbyfhire, with the addition of the coun ties of Stafford, Warwick, and Worcester. If we admit with him and Profeffor Ward, that it is by no means neceffary that the pieces of lead should have been caft in the county where they were found, this new difcovery will not help us at all to afcertain the fituation of the Cangi. As the Profeffor fuppofes Camden's twenty pieces found at the mouth of the Merfev, in Cheshire, may have been the remains of the cargo of fome veffel laden with them, and wrecked on that fhore, fo we may fuppofe the prefent pig was loft or dropped in its paffage from the mines, perhaps thofe of Mendip in Somerfet fhirre, which are the neareft I recollect to the fpot where it was found. It may have been on its way down the Rumfey river to the port of Southampton, whofe ancient name of Claufentum is by Baxter and Salmon derived from Clauz the British word ufed for a fort, and Auton, the name of the river, perhaps fynonymous with Aufona, or Avon.

Dr. Gale i places about the river Itchen a people of the Iciani distinct from thofe commonly known by that name, and takes them for Cæfar's Icenimagni or Cenimagni, whose name the Dr. fancied he faw preferved in Meanfoke, Meanborough, Mean, places hereabouts. But not to mention that he errs in faying that Ptolemy places Portus Magnus [Portfmouth] among the Icenimagni, which is not true (for Ptolemy never mentions them.) Mr. Horley propofes to read Iceni, Cangi, or Iceni, Regni, making thèm two distinct people.

To return to the Cangi. If I am right in my conjecture that they are meant on the prefent piece of lead, it may be objected that there is a difference in the orthography; to which I answer, that on the Hants pig the N is omitted, but a space left for it. On the lead mentioned by Mr. Camden the name is fpelt Ceangi. It will be therefore no material variation in orthography, especially confidering who the workmen were that

c Ann. xiv. zo. f Ward, Ib. 696.

d P. 75.

& P. 34, 35, 36.

Comment on Autoninus' Itin. p. 109. made