he included pieces are the younger Alexander Gill's lampoon on
Ben Jonson for his _Magnetic Lady_ and Ben Jonson's reply to the
same (ante Vol. I. pp. 528-529); there are also several pieces of
Suckling; but, for the rest, as the title-page bears, the volume
consists chiefly of specimens of _"Sir J. M."_ (Sir John
Mennes), _"Jas. S."_ (James Smith), _"Sir W. D"_ (Sir
William Davenant), and _"J. D."_ (Dr. Donne), professing not to
have been before in print. Whether this was so, and whether the
pieces were all authentically by these poets, need not here concern
us. It is enough to say that many of the pieces are decidedly, and
some very grossly, of the improper kind. The reader will not expect
to have this proved by extract; but of the more innocent "drollery"
the following stanzas from a poem entitled _"Nonsense"_ may be a
sample:--

O that my lungs could bleat like buttered pease!
But bleating of my lungs hath caught the itch,
And are as mangy as the Irish seas,
That doth engender windmills in a bitch.

I grant that rainbows, being lulled asleep,
Snort like a woodknife in a lady's eyes;
Which makes her grieve to see a pudding creep;
For creeping puddings only please the wise.

Note that a hard-roed herring should presume
To swing a tithe-pig in a catskin purse,
For fear the hailstones which did fall at Rome
By lessening of the fault should make it worse.

For 'tis most certain winter woolsacks grow,
Till that the sheepshorn planets give the hint,
From geese to swans, if men could keep them so,
And pickle pancakes in Geneva print.

At worst, the volume was but a catchpenny collection of pieces of a
kind of which there was plenty already dispersed in print under the
names of the same authors, or of others as classical; and, if this
was the same book as the _Sportive Wit,_ or at all like that
book, it may have been some mere accident of the moment that brought
Government censure upon Phillips's volume, while others, as had,
escaped. But how annoying the whole occurrence to Milton![1]

[Footnote 1: Thomason copy of _Wit and Drollery_ in the British
Museum, dated Jan. 18, 1655-6.--I failed to find a book with the
title _The Sportive Wit_ in the Thomason Collection, and hence
my hypothesis that there was but one book, with alternative titles. I
am rather inclined to believe, however, that there were two, and have
a vague recollection of having seen two books, one with one of the
tit