In Wm. Hickes his _Oxford Drollery_, 1671, in Part 3rd, (“Poems made at Oxford, long since”), p. 157, this Epigram appears, with variations. The second verse reads: _But being there a little while,_ || _He met with one so right_ || _That upon the ~French~ Disease_ || _It was his chance to light._ The final couplet is:—_The ~French-man’s~ Arms are the sign without,_ || _But the ~French-man’s~ harms are within._ Throughout the first half of the Seventeenth century the abundance of Epigrams produced is enormous; whole volumes of them, divided into Books, like J. Heywood’s, being issued by poets of whom nothing else is known, except the name, unless Anthony à Wood has fortunately preserved some record. These have not been systematically examined, as they deserve to be. Amid much rubbish good things lie hid. Perhaps the Editor may have more to say on them hereafter. Meanwhile, take this, by Robert Hayman, as alike a specimen and a summary:— To the Reader: Sermons and Epigrams have a like end, To improve, to reprove, and to amend: Some passe without this vse, ’cause they are witty; And so doe many Sermons, more’s the pitty. (_Quodlibets_, 1628, Book IV., p. 59.) Page 20. _List, your Nobles, and attend._ This was (perhaps, by JOHN ELIOT,) certainly written in anticipatory celebration of the event described, the Reception of Queen Henrietta Maria by the citizens of London, 1625. The full title is this:—“The Author intending to write upon the Duke of _Buckingham_, when he went to fetch the Queen, prepared a new Ballad for the Fidlers, as might hold them to sing between _Dover_ and _Callice_.” It is thus the poem reappears, with some variations (beginning “_Now list, you Lordlings, and attend_, || _Unto a Ballad newly penned_,” &c.,) among the “_Choyce Poems, being Songs, Sonnets, Satyrs, and Elegies_. By the Wits of both Universities, London,” &c., 1661, p. 83. This was merely the earlier edition (of June, 1658), reissued with an irregular extra sheet at beginning. The original title-page (two issued in 1658) was “_Poems or Epigrams, Satyrs, Elegies, Songs and Sonnets, upon several persons and occasions_. By no body must know whom, to be had every body knows where, and for any body knows what. [MS. The Author John Eliot.] London, Printed for Henry Brome, at the _Gun_ in Ivie Lane, 1658.” It is mentioned that “These poems were given me neer sixteen years since [therefore about 1642] by a Friend of the Authors, with a desire they might be printed, but I conceived the Age then too squeemish to endure the freedom which the Author useth, and therefore I have hitherto smothered them, but being desirous they should not perish, and the world be deprived of so much clean Wit and Fancy, I have adventured to expose them to thy view; ... The Author writes not pedantically, but like a gentleman; and if thou art a gentleman of thy own making thou wilt not mislike it.”