[133] A letter found among the papers of the late Mr. Windham, which
Mr. Malone has preserved.
[134] There is an affecting _remonstrance_ of Dryden to Hyde, Earl of
Rochester, on the state of his poverty and neglect--in which
is this remarkable passage:--"It is enough for one age to have
_neglected_ Mr. Cowley and _starved_ Mr. Butler."
[135] The author explains the nature of his book in his title-page
when he calls it "A Chorographicall Description of tracts,
rivers, mountaines, forests, and other parts of this renowned
Isle of Great Britaine, with intermixture of the most
remarquable stories, antiquities, wonders, rarityes,
pleasures, and commodities of the same; digested in a Poem."
The maps with which it is illustrated are curious for the
impersonations of the nymphs of wood and water, the sylvan
gods, and other characters of the poem; to which the learned
Selden supplied notes. Ellis calls it "a wonderful work,
exhibiting at once the learning of an historian, an antiquary,
a naturalist, and a geographer, and embellished by the
imagination of a poet."--ED.
[136] In the dedication of the first part to Prince Henry, the author
says of his work, "it cannot want envie: for even in the birth
it alreadie finds that."--ED.