with Rings even to the cracking of her Fingers, and she will rather want Meate then a Cart-rope of Silver about her hung with keyes. Their Gownes are fitt to hide great Bellies, but withall they make them shew soe unhandsome, that Men doe not care to gett them. Marry, this you shall finde to their commendacon, their Smocks are ever whiter then their Skinnes, & cleaner. They raile at Us for of various change of habitt; but pleade for their owne, more earnestly then Lay Catholiques for their Faith, wch they

farr sweeter

Ancestors

are resolved to keepe because their Fathers lived & died in it.

For their Diett, they eate much, & spend little: When they sett out a Fleete to the EAST INDIES, they live three Moneths after on the Offall, which Wee feare would surfeit o' Swine. In their howses, Roots and Stockfish are Staple Commodities. When to their Feasts they add Flesh, they have the Art to keepe it hott as long as of Fleetlane Cooks keepe their ineasled Porke. Being invited to a Feast they come readily; But being once sate, you must have Patience: for they are longer eating Meate then wee are dressing it: If it bee at Supper, you conclude timely if you gett away by day breake. It is a point of good manners (it there bee any) to carry away a peece of Apple-Pye or Pastie crust in yo' Pockett. The time they spend, is, in eatinge well; in drinking much; in prating most; for the truth is, yo' compleatest Drunkard is yo' English Gallant, His healths turne liquor into a consumption: Marry, the time was the Duch had the upper hand; but they have now lost it, by prating too much over their Potts. They drinke as if they were short winded, and (as it were) eate their drinke by Morsells, the English swallow it whole, as if their Livers were afire, & they strove to quench them. The one is drunke sooner, the other longer, as if, striving to recover the Wager, the Duch still would bee the noblest Soker.

In this progresse you have heard somewhat of their Ills: Now of their good parts; Observe them. SALOMON tells us of 4 things very small, but full of Wisedome: The PISTMIRE, The CUNNY, The SPIDER, and The GRASSHOPPER: They are all these: for Providence they

are the Pistmires of the World; Who having noething of themselves, but what the grasse

affords

yeilds them, are yet for all provision become the Store-house of all Christendome. They are frugall to the Saving of Egg-shells, and maintaine it for a Maxime, that many an olld thing Their mended will last longer then a new. Cities are their Molehills: Their Shippes & Fly-boates creepe & returne loaden with store for Winter. For dwelling in Rocks, they are Cunnies. Where have you under heaven such impregnable Fortifications? Where Art beautifies Nature, & Nature makes Art invincible. Indeed, heerein they differ, The Cunnies finde Rocks, & they make them, And (as if they would invert MOSES his Miracle) they raise them in the bosome of the Waves. BENISTER-LAND,* where within these 13 years shipps furrowed the pathlesse Ocean, the peacefull plough unbowells the fertile Earth, wch at night is carryed home to the fairest manc'ons in Holland. For Warr

they are Grasshoppers, and goe out (without kings) in bands to conquer kings. There is not upon Earth such a Schoole for Martiall discipline. It is the Christian World's Academie for Armes; unto wch all Nations resort to bee instructed, Where you may observe, how unresistable a blow many small granes of Powder heaped together will give; wch if you separate, can doe noething but sparkle and die. For Industrie they are Spiders, and live in the Pallaces of Kings. There are none have the like Intelligence. Their Merchants at this day are the greatest of the Universe. What Nation is it into wch they have not insinuated themselves, Nay, wch they have not almost Anatomized, and even discovered the intricated veynes of it? All they doe is wth such labo', as it seemes extracted out of their owne bowells, And by them wee may learne, That Noe Raine fructifies like the Dewe of Sweat.

You would thinke, being with them, that

Here is a clue to the date of this document. When was this Benister-land recovered from the Sea?

Bemster-land, for which this seems to be intended, was the result of the draining and diking of the Bemster Lake, which lay between Amsterdam and Horn, due north of the former place. This work was com menced in 1607, and finished in 1612; the date of the document is, therefore, fixed as about the year 1625. See Davis's History of Holland, vol. ii. 422,

you were in olld ISRAELL: for you finde not a Begger amongst them: If hee will depart, hee shall have Money for his Convoy; if hee staies, hee hath worke; if hee bee unable, hee findes an hospitall: Their care extends even from the Prince to the catching of Flies, and least you loose an afternoone in fruitles mourning for the dead, by two a clock all Burialls must end: Even their Bedlam is a place soe curious, that a Lord might live in it, Their Hospitall might lodge a Lady, Their Bridewell a Gentlewoman, And their Prison a Rich Citizen: But for a Poore Man, it is his onely Refuge; for

best

hee that casts him in must maintaine him.

They are in some sort Gods: for they sett bounds to the Seas, and when they list, lett them passe. Even their dwelling is a Miracle, for they live lower then the Fishes, in the very lappe of the Flouds, and encircled in their watry Armes, they seeme like the Israelites passing the Redd Sea; Their Waves wall them in, and, if they sett open their Sluces, drowne their Enemies. They are Gedeons Army upon the march againe. They are the Indian Ratt, gnawing the bowells of the Spanish Crocodile, to which they gott when he gap'd to swallow them. They are the Serpents wreathed about the

leggs

loynes of that Elephant wch groanes under the power of his allmost innumerable kinglie Titles. They are the Sword-fish under the Whale, They are the Wane of that Empire wch increased in Isabella, and in Charles the Fift was at full. They are a Glasse, wherein Kings and Princes may see, that an extreame Taxac'on is to steale away the Honey while the Bees keepe the hive, That their owne Tyrany is the greatest Enemie to their Estates, That a desire of beeing too absolute, is to presse a Thorne that will prick you. That nothing makes a more desperate Rebell then a Prerogative too farr urged. That oppression is to heate an Iron till you burne yo' hand. That to debarr a State of auntient Privileges, is to make a Streame more violent by stopping it. That unjust Pollicie, is to shoote (as they did at Ostend) into the mouth of a charged Cannon and soe have two Bullets returned for one. That Admonitions from a dying Man, are too serious to bee neglected. That there is noe thing certaine, that is not impossible. That That

a Cobler of Vlushing was one of the greatest Enemies that ever the King of Spain had.

To conclude, The Countrie itselfe is a Moated Castle, keeping two of the richest Jewells in the world in it, The Queene of Bohemia, and the Prince of Orenge. The People in it, are all Jewes of the New Testament, and have exchanged noething but the Lawe for the Gospell. And being gathered together are like a Man of warr riding at Anchor in the Downes of Germany for forreyne Princes to helpe them, And it is wise (yea selfe-wise) them able to defend themselves against Pollicie to doe soe, But when they have made Spaine, they are at the Pale, If they ayde them to offend others, they are beyond it.

goe

If any Man wonder at these Contrarieties, lett him looke into his owne bodie, for as many severall humors; into his owne heart, for as many various Passions; And from both these hee may learne that there is not in all the world such another Beast as Man.

Dulwich College Manuscripts.+

F posthumous fame is of any value, Edward Alleyn may be considered fortunate. His munificent gifts have kept his name alive, and it is well to remember that they were gifts during life as well as bequests. He made part of his money out of the Fortune Theatre, which was situated in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, and in this parish he founded the almshouses in Bath Street, St. Luke's. He was born in St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, and in his will he directed his executors to build ten almshouses in that parish. He lived for several years in Southwark, and made a fortune out of certain of the places of entertainment on the Bankside, so he left his executors the

*Elizabeth, daughter of James I., known as the "Queen of Hearts."

+ Catalogue of the Manuscripts and Monuments of Alleyn's College of God's Gift, at Dulwich, by George F. Warner, M.A., of the Department of Manuscripts, British Museum. (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1881.) Svo. pp. liv., 388.

same directions for St. Saviour's parish. When also he made arrangements for his greatest endowment-the "College of God's Gift," he did not forget the places in London in which he was interested, for the pensioners and scholars were to be chosen exclusively out of the four parishes of Cripplegate, St. Botolph, St. Saviour, Southwark, and Camberwell, in which Dulwich was situated. Had Dulwich College never existed it is highly probable that Alleyn's valuable MSS. would long ago have been lost sight of, as so many other important documents have been. As it is, the recognition of the importance of the Alleyn Papers is a thing of late date. Aubrey does not mention them in his Natural History and Antiquities of Surrey, (1719), athough he does mention the Library and Pictures, and the first notice of them is in the Biographia Britannica, (1747). The discovery of Henslowe's Diary was made by Malone, and the manuscripts were lent to him without reserve. He kept them during the remainder of his life, and they were only returned to the College after his death, by his literary executor, James Boswell, the younger. Mr. Payne Collier subsequently used the MSS. in the compilation of his History of Dramatic Poetry, (1831). In 1841 he published his Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, his Alleyn Papers in 1843, and Henslowe's Diary in 1845. Since the public manifestation of the value of the Dulwich MSS. they have been frequently referred to, but the want of a register of them was keenly felt. In some cases there are duplicates of certain documents, and it was not possible for students to be sure when they consulted one that it was the identical with that which had been described. At last the making of a Catalogue was decided upon, and Mr. G. P. Warner, of the British Museum, has made a thoroughly satisfactory one. Mr. Warner gives the following description of the state in which he found the manuscripts"But although now jealously preserved, the collection up to the present time has never been catalogued. The letters and papers also still remained in the utmost possible confusion; and it was necessary, therefore, in the first place to reduce them to order. Their mutilated and fragmentary condition, and in many cases the absence of dates, made this a task of some difficulty; but all have now

VOL. V.

been carefully repaired and bound, and the contents of the several volumes into which they are divided have been chronologically arranged. One result is that some papers, thought to be lost, as MS. 1 and 106, prove to be safe, while, on the contrary, others which survived to so comparatively recent a date as to be printed by Mr. Collier, have been reported as now missing." The necessity of such a guide was the more apparent in that several of the manuscripts have been tampered with, and allusions to Shakespeare inserted by a forger. Mr. Warner has made this very clear in his excellent introduction, and he has distinctly stated which documents are untrustworthy, by which means the genuine ones gain in interest as being unchallenged. Previously there was an uneasy feeling that others might also have been manipulated. All the supposed references to Shakespeare are found in documents that have been tampered with. Mr. Warner writes :

Besides the letter of Joan Alleyn, the treatment of which is peculiar, there are in the collection no less than twenty-two actual forgeries, which, however, by counting under one head those which relate to the same subject may be reduced to eighteen. The general motive which underlies them all is identicalnamely, a desire on the part of the forger to palm off upon the world supposititious facts in connection with Shakespeare and other early dramatists.

There is only one reference to Shakespeare among the genuine MSS., and that has not been noticed before Mr. Warner brought it forward. It is to the effect that Alleyn bought in 1609 "a book, Shaksper Sonetts" for 5d.

Alleyn was born in 1566, and he early established a high reputation as an actor. Thomas Nash wrote, "Not Roscius or Æsope, those tragedians admyred before Christ was borne, could ever performe more in action than famous Ned Allen." Ben Jonson also likened him to the same ancients, and added :—

"Who both their graces in thyselfe hath more

Outstript than they did all that went before." Fuller held "that he made any part, especially a majestic one, to become him;" Dekker alluded specially to his "well-tunde audible voice;" and Thomas Heywood called him "Proteus for shapes and Roscius for a tongue."

Although Alleyn made part of his fortune

с

by acting, yet a still larger portion of it was obtained from his partnership with his fatherin-law, Philip Henslow, in the mastership of the Royal Bear Garden. Paris Garden Theatre formed a part of the endowment of Dulwich College, and the funds of that institution suffered considerably in consequence during the Civil Wars. In 1649 the inside was destroyed by a company of soldiers, and in 1661 the whole place was advertised to be sold.

In estimating the value of the manuscripts collected by Alleyn as contributions to the history of the stage (and their value is very great), we cannot but be struck with the strange fact that no reference to Shakespeare himself should be found among them, although the two men must certainly have come in contact with each other. As before stated, the only mention of the great name is in that entry from which we learn that Alleyn bought a copy of the Sonnets.

Besides the regular series of manuscripts, the important collection of muniments preserved at Dulwich College is also fully catalogued. Many of these have a considerable topographical value, and throw much light upon the origin of names which otherwise could not be explained conclusively. A trustworthy catalogue of these treasures has long been desired by literary men, and it is a gratifying fact that now that the trustees have satisfied the demand, they have been able, with Mr. Warner's help, to do so in such a satisfactory manner.

The Legend of St. Sunnefa.

HE countless little rocky skerries and mountainous islands, some of them many miles long, which lie, like forts and outworks, along nearly the whole coast of Bergenstift, present a picture of little but monotonous barrenness to the modern traveller as he hurries past them in the steamer. Few and far between are the signs of cultivation; a few miserable huts, each on its little green plot near the water's edge, are often all that is to be seen of human habitation. He hears,

with surprise, that this rude, iron-bound coast is yet the home of as well-marked a parish system as England; that there are missionary societies, parish libraries, even book clubs on a small scale, and good elementary and middle-class schools. Should he, as the writer has often done, attend the service at one of the large wooden churches which he passes every now and then, such as Askevold, or Stavang, or Bremanger, he will wonder whence the congregation can come which can fill so large a building, as he sees from many a little bay and sound and fjord, perhaps a hundred boats converging, all filled with church-goers. Besides these conspicuous churches, there are a few others of a very different character. These are of stone, small, massive and ancient. Such are the churches of Kin and Thingnces in Söndfjord, or Edö in Nordmöre-churches which bear witness to the establishment of Christianity from very early times indeed.

But, on the whole, the most interesting relic of ecclesiastical antiquity on this coast is St. Synnove's Kloster, on the little island of Solö, or Selje, which lies a few miles to starboard, as the north-going steamer, leaving the shelter of Ulvesund, between Vaagsö and the Fastland, crosses Sildegabet, on her way to round the dreaded Stadt.

The legend of St. Synnove, Sunnefa, or Sunniva-for I fear that it is pure legendsurvives in the Codex Flateyensis, which is printed in Langebek's Scriptores rerum Danicarum. Langebek gives the original Icelandic, with a Latin translation by Torfous, a native of Iceland, who became Historiographus Regius at Copenhagen. The legend is also repeated in the Officium et Lectiones de Sanctis in Selio ex breviario Nidrosiensi, which follows. The slightest possible smattering of Icelandic makes it easy to see that Torfous' translation is not too literal, as indeed may be, perhaps, said of most or all translations from Icelandic into Latin; and this from the necessity of the case, for there can be no two more incongruous languages—at least the associations are of a very different sort. It is amusing to see "Lendermana" represented by "Satrap," "Harald Haarfager" by "Haraldus Pulcricomus"-expressions quite literal, indeed, but which seem more proper to Cyrus the Younger and to Apollo, than to

The legend runs as follows:

In the days of Otho I. (936-973), and of Haakon Jarl (962-995), the then king of Ireland, dying, left, as heiress to his kingdom, a daughter Sunnefa, a maiden beautiful and wise beyond her years. She had been brought up in the Christian faith, and herself lived, and encouraged her subjects to live, a Christian life. Her kingdom and her beauty attracted many-and those Pagan-suitors; she had, however, devoted herself to a life of chastity, and yielded neither to persuasion nor threats. One of her suitors making war upon her in order to obtain her kingdom and herself, she, finding no other hope, trusted herself to God, and with a number of followers-men, women, and childrenembarked on board three ships, disdaining the use of oars, rudders, or other tackling, and committed herself and her followers to the God whom the wind and sea obey. Thus they were borne, safe and sound, to that part of Norway known as Firdafylke, now Nordfjord and Söndtjord, and landed, some of them on the island of Kin-and of these we hear no more-Sunnefa herself, with the remainder, on Selje, thirty or forty miles further north. There, on the western side of the island, they found certain caves in the mountain side, in the which they lived for some time, serving Christ in abstinence, chastity, and poverty, and supporting life by fishing. These outside islands were in those early times uninhabited, but were used by the dwellers on the mainland as pasture for their kine. Some of these kine having been lost, their owners, believing them to have been stolen by Sunnefa's followers, desired Haakon Jarl, who then ruled Norway, to come with an armed force to destroy them. This wicked Jarl-the son of sin and a limb of the devil's body-landed on the island to slay the servants of God. But Sunnefa and

her companions fled to their caves, and prayed to God that, whatsoever might be the manner of their death, their bodies might not fall into the hands of the heathens. Their prayer was heard, and a mass of stones, falling from the rocks above, closed the entrance of the caves, while the souls of the martyrs ascended to heaven. Their enemies,

Some time after this, Haakon having perished miserably in Guldal, at the hand of his thrall, Kark, Olaf Tryggvesson became the Christian King of Norway. He zealously, with the help of Sigurd, Bishop of Throndhjem, promoted the Christian faith among his subjects. He had not long been made king, when two men from Firdafylke, of great riches and worth, though still heathensThord Egileifson and Thord Jorunason-sailing out from Ulvesund, and past Selje, on their voyage to Throndhjem, beheld a pillar of light, which shone over the whole island and the adjacent mainland. Wondering what this might be, they steered to the island, and landing, went up to the place where they beheld the fire-pillar. Then they found a shining human head, fair to look upon, and emitting an odour more delicious than that of any ointment. Being still heathens they knew not what this might be, but they took away this head, this priceless treasure, more precious than all their merchandise, feeling sure that Haakon, a man of so great wisdom, would be able to explain it. Soon afterwards they rounded Stadt, and then heard that Haakon was dead, and that Olaf was king. They nevertheless pursued their voyage.

Olaf received them with great kindness, and easily persuaded them to become Christians and to be baptized; and then, asking them about the southern part of his kingdom, heard from them the account of the wonderful head. There was present Sigurd, the King's bishop, who had followed Olaf from England-a man of great goodness and learning. He at once pronounced the head to be the head of a saint, and pressed the necessity of baptism more urgently than ever on the two Thords. "Although," said he, "neither the eye nor ear nor mind of man can conceive of the divine mercy and foresight, yet what we have seen makes it manifest how great is the reward of earthly labours. This sight calls on you at once to renounce the worship of idols, and to turn to the true religion by the washing of regeneration."

The two, moved by these words and by the miracle, at once desired to be baptized with all their followers. They were entertained by the king at a splendid banquet,