Among the 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]