Edward IV. D.... No. 1. A small copper coin. Obverse, a shield, bearing three crowns, two above and one below; mint-mark, a rose; legend, EDWARDUS Reverse, a cross, having a small rose in its centre, and in each quarter of the cross three rays, which, with the four arms of the cross, present the appearance of a sun of sixteen rays, as on the coins of 1465; legend, CIVITAS DUBLINIE. It weighs nine grains. No. 2. Groat. On the obverse, a shield, bearing the arms of England and France, quartered by a cross, the extremities of which are terminated each by three pellets; the shield is within a circle of pellets. Reverse, three crowns in pale, on a similar cross. Obv. EDWARDU ANGL Rev. DEMINUS HYBERNIE. No. 3. Obverse, a shield, quartered by a cross, whose arms are terminated each by three annulets; at each side of the shield is a smaller one, bearing a saltire, the arms of Fitz-Gerald Earl of Kildare, and Lord Justice of Ireland in 1479, all within a plain circle. The crowns on the reverse are closer, and of a more regular form than those of the first variety, and are within a double tressure of eight or more generally nine arches. They invariably have a fleur-de-lis on one or both sides, in some part of the legend, which is rarely found in pieces of the first variety. Obv. REX ANLIE FRA No. 4. This groat has the King's initial, E, under the three crowns, and was coined at Waterford. The obverse differs from the preceding groats, in having the shield within what was probably intended as a quatrefoil, outside which, in the lower angles, are two small crosses. Obv. EDW Rev. CIVITAS WAT Richard III. No. 5. Obverse, the arms of France and England, quarterly, in a shield on a cross pommée. Reverse, the three crowns in pale on a similar cross. Obv. RICAR REX ANGLI FRANC Rev. DOMINUS HYBE-IE. Henry VII. No. 6. This groat has the legends HENRIC DI GRACIA, and CIVITAS DUBLINIE. The lions on the shield have their tails doubled back in a manner which distinguishes this coin from the three-crown money of Edward IV. and Richard III. The upper crown on the reverse has a double arch, surmounted by a ball and cross. No. 7. Groats are the only coins known of this type from the mint of Waterford. The shield on the obverse is within a tressure of four single arches. The crowns on the reverse are within a tressure of nine double arches; in the legend are stars of five rays; a similar star is also on each side the lower crown; and on each side the quatrefoil, below the shield, the legends are HENRICUS DI GRACIA and CIVITAS WATERFOR, with the letter H below the three crowns. No. 8. This groat has the FitzGerald arms on each side of the shield; the legends are REX ANLIE FRA and DOMINOS VRERNIE. The letter H under the crowns distinguishes it from similar coins minted in the reign of Edward IV. RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW. The Modern Latin Poets.-Johannes Secundus. WE are thinking, when the winter evenings shall afford a longer leisure, to go through the Collections of the Modern Latin Poets, in the small cubic volumes in which they have been printed, for the purpose of extracting, sometimes the poems, sometimes the titles, of those that relate to English men, or English literature, and give them in a few articles in your Magazine. A great number are no doubt concealed there which might be advantageously brought to light. The volumes are very numerous, very rare, and not very attractive. Nor did we ever meet with any one, except the late Mr. Southey, who had the courage to go through them. At present, you receive a brief account of what relates to our country in the poetical works of Johannes Secundus, better known by his "Basia" than any other of his poems. See some account of him in Tob. Magiri Eponolog. Critic. p. 742; in Carmina Quinque Illust. Poet. p. 206; and in Encyclopæd. Brit. vol. xvii. p. 240, ed. 3d; and in the larger work of Gyraldus, De Poetis. Of "Hacquin,” a churchman and ambassador to Spain, we do not know whether any other notice exists: it appears that he was in favour with Henry, and his successful labour was to be rewarded on his return with a bishoprick. Epitaphium Hacquini, Jurisconsulti Henrici VIII. Anglorum Regis ad Carolum "Missus ad occiduos regis legatus Iberos Manibus, et longam optabit cinerique quietem." In the same volume is an elegy (Nænia) on the death of Sir Thomas More, which was wrongly attributed to Erasmus, and two epitaphs on him, of which we give the first; Thomæ Mori Epitaphium. (Inter Hospitem et Civem Dialogus.) H. Quis jacet hic truncus, cujus caput ense recisum est? Quæ natat in tetro sanguine canities? C. Diva tenax veri, sancta Fides, Nemesis. Quarum prima fuit causa, et fuit altera, mortis; This epitaph had been given to S. Sapidus, but Gyraldus, in Hist. Poetarum, showed that Secundus was the author. In the same volume is Epitaphium Catherinæ Reginæ Angliæ; an Epistle from Queen Cacharine to Henry, after her repudiation, by F. M. Molsa, the well known Italian poet, in elegiac verse; and an answer from Henry to Catharine by Secundus. It may also be remarked that part of the elegy (book ii. elegy 6), "Missa peregrinis sparguntur vulnera nervis, Et manus ignoto sævit utrinque malo," &c. on the change of arrows between Love and Death, has been copied by Massinger in his Virgin Martyr. (See Gifford's edit. vol. i. p. 91.) We may add, that in the public library at Leyden we have seen the portrait of Johannes Secundus, who was born at the Hague. His countenance strongly marked and striking. with dark hair. It was picked up by accident at a broker's sho REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. SOUTH WILTSHIRE.-The History of Modern Wiltshire. Hundred of Alderbury. By Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart., and John Gough Nichols, F.S.A. 1837. [1845.] Hundred of Frustfield. By George Matcham, Esq. LL.D. 1844. THESE two parts complete the work which was designed by the taste of the late Sir Richard Colt Hoare, and has been executed in a style of magnificence almost unparalleled in county histories, and scarcely equalled when a topographical work has been prepared for the sole purpose of exhibiting what of history or picturesque or other beauty falls to the share of some favoured precinct which one of the great families of England has chosen for its residence. Ashridge and Cassiobury occur to us; but for such an extent of country as was contemplated in the original conception of this work we have hitherto had nothing which has equalled the South Wiltshire of Sir Richard Hoare, except some of the later works of Dr. Whitaker. We do not say this meaning to express an opinion favourable to the bringing out books of topography in this ultra-expensive manner. Very splendid printing and very costly decoration should be reserved for works which are in themselves composed of the most choice materials. A splendid work of human genius, a beautiful poem, or a story of great excellence, may deserve to be enshrined in the richest paper, and to be decorated with ornaments of the choicest workmanship. But books of topography must of necessity contain very much matter which is of a very ordinary kind, and it becomes almost ludicrous when we see extracts from parish registers and fragments of records impressed on paper of the choicest texture, in typography the most excellent of its kind, and with a vast expanse of margin; but still more when we see the inscriptions of the humblest tombstones of some of the humblest of the people, with verses like the following transversion of what GENT. MAG. VOL. XXIII. is really, as he wrote it, a noble stanz of one of Dr. Watts's Divine Hymns "Kind angels guard his sleeping dust Till Christ doth come to call the just; Then may he wake with sweet surprise, And in our Saviour's image rise,' appearing in the sumptuous page. This is indeed cloth of freize united with cloth of gold, not to the advantage of either. We doubt indeed exceedingly the necessity of preserving rhymes like these at all. They are found in profusion in all our burial-grounds, useful and sometimes affecting in their places, but of little value anywhere else, and serving only in books of topography to enhance the bulk, which will necessarily be great, and, when printed in the costly manner of the book before us, greatly increasing the expense. Indeed, we are convinced that the more modest style of the History of Cheshire by Dr. Ormerod is far more befitting works of this nature, and we would propose that style as forming a most excellent model for future publications of the class to which it belongs. As respects the feeling and intention of the projector and principal author of this work in having thus presented it to the country, and especially to the people of Wiltshire, in this style of magnificence, nothing can be said but in praise. Sir Richard Hoare had a patrician fortune and a patrician mind, and he had a right, depending as he did on his own pecuniary resources only (for the support given by purchasers has been from the beginning small enough), to lay before the public the results of his labours in whatever form he pleased; and certainly the people of his own county ought to be the last to complain that he has done for their county all at least that could be done by the sister arts of engraving and typography, and happy should they account themselves that they have found in his successors those who are willing to carry out his design in the same manner in which he had himself 4 I proceeded; so that not only is the name of Sir Richard Colt Hoare connected with Wiltshire topography, but now also the name of Henry Merrik Hoare, to whom Dr. Matcham has inscribed the part he had undertaken to prepare. The hundred committed to Dr. Matcham is the last that will appear, and with it come Addenda to the whole work and General Indexes. Whether the time will ever arrive when some other wealthy resident of this shire will devote a part of his fortune and his talents to the illustration of the remainder we can neither affirm nor deny; but we have no faith in the rapid production of minds like Sir Richard Hoare's, which found in the researches out of which the work arose a pleasure and excitement far greater than a fox-chace could give, or even political contention supply. He has more than once been heard to compare the three, and to declare from his own experience that the pursuits of the antiquary were, as matter of enjoyment only, to say nothing of utility, far preferable to the ordinary amusements or the voluntary businesses of the country gentleman. A general title is now given to the work; that which was MODERN WILTSHIRE is now SOUTH WILTSHIRE, and the tract of country which is described is as nearly as may be one-half of the whole county. To form a just idea of the district described, let the reader suppose himself at the ruins of Farley Castle in Somersetshire, an ancient seat of the Hungerfords, and then, travelling eastward, after passing close to East Lavington, turning a little to the north, so as to skirt Savernake Forest, which is crossed by the Bath road, and ending his tour in the neighbourhood of Ludgershall. The line thus traversed separates the northern or undescribed portion from the southern, which has now been submitted to the topographical plough. In superficial area it is the somewhat larger moiety. It comprises within its limits both Old and New Sarum (we wish the relations of the two to each other, and the circumstances of the rise of one on the fall of the other, had been exhibited with greater clearness in the large volume of the History of Salisbury, instead of notices of Na poleon's campaign in Russia, and that care had been taken to show us what the site of the present Salisbury was before the present city was built, and to point out distinctly when the author or authors-for in this there is a disputed claim-mean the old city, and when the new, and the greater part (except Abury) of the Wiltshire Celtic remains. It comprises also the seats of the noble families of Thynne at Long Leat, of Herbert at Wilton, of Arundell at Wardour, of Bouverie at Longford, and Ashe A'Court at Heytesbury, together with Fonthill, and Stourhead, itself one of the choicest ornaments of Wiltshire, and the description of which is, as might be expected, one of the best laboured parts of the whole book. In the portions of the county not yet described there still, however, remain the richest monasteries of Wiltshire, particularly Malmesbury, one of the earliest centres of Christian light in Britain; some of the most ancient of the borough towns, especially Devizes and Marlborough, both rich in topographical interest, with Abury and the forest of Savernake. This portion of the country also comprises the splendid seats of the Lansdowne, Aylesbury, and Suffolk families. There is enough left to tempt and satisfy an ambition of literary distinction. Sir Richard Hoare has not only done all that could be done by the splendour of his work for the honour of the county, but he has collected and preserved a vast multitude of facts illustrative of the early state and history of the county, which would have remained, without him, unknown to the present generation, and would have been absolutely lost to those which are to come. There is great difference between living in a described and an undescribed district. Generally speaking, where there has been no topographer the ideas of the inhabitants respecting the objects around them are of the most vague description. They see a church, but they know not how it came there. They see the fragment of some ancient edifice, but the utmost they can tell is that here lived some great baron of former times. They see the effigy of some warrior in their church, and the utmost they can tell is that he was a crusader, which in nine cases out of ten will be an error. |