gold down the back of the
cover and seventeen lines in his autograph on the fly-leaf.

Among our dramatists, Ben Jonson is conspicuous by the number of
copies of his own performances which he presented to royal and noble
personages or to private friends. Of three gift-copies of his
_Volpone_, 1607, one has an inscription to John Florio, the other to
Henry Lambton of Lambton. The almost unique large-paper one of
_Sejanus_, 1605, in the Huth Collection, was given to the poet's
"perfect friend," Francis Crane. In the Museum are the _Masque of
Queens_ and the _Masque of Blackness and Beauty_ offered to the queen
of James I. But of Shakespeare, Beaumont and Fletcher, and many
others, we have not a single memorial of this kind. Of Massinger there
is one: the copy of his _Duke of Milan_, 1623, received from him by
Sir F. Foljambe. In the case of Taylor the water-poet, the nearest
approach to anything of the sort is the MS. note of the recipient of a
copy of his Works, 1630.

Of two equally prominent poets of the same epoch, Daniel and Drayton,
the latter seems to have had a partiality for inscribing his autograph
in presentation copies of his books, while of Daniel in this way we do
not recollect to have met with a single example.

Very engaging, on account of its manly and cordial tone, is the
autograph epistle by Sir Richard Fanshawe accompanying an extant copy
of his translation of Guarini's _Faithful Shepherd_, 1648. The whole
production may be seen in the Huth Catalogue (p. 633), where we
inserted it as a favourable sample of this kind of poetry or verse.
The lines are headed: "To my deare friend Mr. Tho. Brooke with Pastor
Fido before an entended voyage," and commence:--

"This to the man I most affect I send,
The faithfull Shepherd to as true a friend.
There on each page thou'lt tenderest passion see,
But none more tender than my own for thee."

The volume belongs to the series of memorials, which we possess in not
too ample abundance, of the regard entertained by men of letters of
former days for each other, or for their intimates, and ranks with the
priceless copies of his own books presented by Jonson to some of his
distinguished contemporaries. If he, or any one else, made gifts of
such things to the greatest of them all, every trace of such an
incident has apparently disappeared.

Rarity of occurrence is not by any means an imperative feature in
influencing or determining the value of in