coram Mag'ris Nathanaele Stephens Rectore Eccl. de Drayton, et Edwardo Farmer, Clericis, vigore commissionis, &c. The only work our author executed was that now reprinted, which probably was the principal employment of his life. Dr. Ferriar says, it was originally published in the year 1617; but this is evidently a mistake; [5]the first edition was that printed in 4to, 1621, a copy of which is at present in the collection of John Nichols, Esq., the indefatigable illustrator of the History of Leicestershire; to whom, and to Isaac Reed, Esq., of Staple Inn, this account is greatly indebted for its accuracy. The other impressions of it were in 1624, 1628, 1632, 1638, 1651-2, 1660, and 1676, which last, in the titlepage, is called the eighth edition. The copy from which the present is reprinted, is that of 1651-2; at the conclusion of which is the following address: "TO THE READER. Be pleased to know (Courteous Reader) that since the last Impression of this Book, the ingenuous Author of it is deceased, leaving a Copy of it exactly corrected, with several considerable Additions by his own hand; this Copy he committed to my care and custody, with directions to have those Additions inserted in the next Edition; which in order to his command, and the Publicke Good, is faithfully performed in this last Impression. H. C. (_i.e. HEN. CRIPPS._) The following testimonies of various authors will serve to show the estimation in which this work has been held:— The ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, wherein the author hath piled up variety of much excellent learning. Scarce any book of philology in our land hath, in so short a time, passed so many editions.—Fuller's Worthies, fol. 16. 'Tis a book so full of variety of reading, that gentlemen who have lost their time, and are put to a push for invention, may furnish themselves with matter for common or scholastical discourse and writing.—_Wood's Athenae Oxoniensis_, vol. i. p. 628. 2d edit. If you never saw BURTON UPON MELANCHOLY, printed 1676, I pray look into it, and read the ninth page of his Preface, 'Democritus to the Reader.' There is something there which touches the point we are upon; but I mention the author to you, as the pleasantest, the most learned, and the most full of sterling sense. The wits of Queen Anne's reign, and the beginning of George the First, were not a little beholden to him.—_Archbishop Herring's Letters_, 12mo. 1777. p. 149. BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, he (Dr. Johnson) said, was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.—_Boswell's Life of Johnson_, vol. i. p. 580. 8vo. edit. BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY is a valuable book, said Dr. Johnson. It is, perhaps, overloaded with quotation. But there is great spirit and great power in what Burton says when he writes from his own mind.—_Ibid_, vol. ii. p. 325. It will be no detraction from the powers of Milton's original genius and invention, to remark, that he seems to have borrowed the subject of