In one of the many humorous sallies which lighten up this old-fashioned antidote to the pestilence, Barclay again appears, dressed in the metaphorical colour of the poet or minstrel--green, which has probably here a double significance, referring no doubt to his popularity as the English eclogue writer as well as to his fame as a poet and satirist. In introducing "Bartlet, grene breche" as the antithesis to "Boner wepyng," allusion was also probably intended to the honourable position occupied by Barclay amongst the promoters of the Reformation, compared with the reapostacy, the career of brutal cruelty, and the deserved fate of the Jefferies of the Episcopal bench. Thus discourse _Civis et Uxor_.-- "_Uxor._ What are all these two and two in a table. Oh it is trim. _Civis._ These are old frendes, it is well handled and workemanly. Willyam Boswell in Pater noster rowe, painted them. Here is Christ, and Sathan, Sainct Peter, and Symon Magus, Paule, and Alexader the Coppersmith, Trace, and Becket, Martin Luther, and the Pope ... bishop Cramer, and bishop Gardiner. Boner wepyng, Bartlet, grene breche ... Salomon, and Will Sommer. The cocke and the lyon, the wolfe and the lambe." This passage also necessarily implies that Barclay's fame at that time was second to none in England. Alas! for fame: "What is the end of fame? 'Tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper." In the seventeenth century Barclay still held a place in the first rank of satirists, if we accept the evidence of the learned Catholic poet of that time, Sir Aston Cokaine. He thus alludes to him in an address "To my learned friend, Mr Thomas Bancroft, upon his Book of Satires. By Sir Aston Cokayne." "After a many works of divers kinds Your muse to tread th' Aruncan path designs: 'Tis hard to write but Satires in these days, And yet to write good Satires merits praise: . . . . . . So old Petronius Arbiter appli'd Corsives unto the age he did deride: So Horace, Persius, Juvenal, (among Those ancient Romans) scourg'd the impious throng; So Ariosto (in these later times) Reprov'd his Italy for many crimes; So learned Barclay let his lashes fall Heavy on some to bring a cure to all." In concluding this imperfect notice of one of the most remarkable of our early writers, we cannot but echo the regret expressed by one of his biographers, that "What ought most to be lamented is, that we are able to say so very little of one in his own time so famous, and whose works ought to have transmitted him to posterity with much greater honour." * * * * * THE WILL OF ALEXANDER BARCLAY. EXTRACTED FROM THE PRINCIPAL REGISTRY OF HER MAJESTY'S COURT OF PROBATE. _In the Prerogative Court of Canterbury._