every person, in the least acquainted with the English history, that it would be needless to offer any farther illustration.
P. 57. Here is a series of epigrams, as they may be called, or short "meditations" on different broken utensils of glass; from each of which, the poet has endeavoured to extract an appropriate and striking moral. The number of these little pieces in the original MS. is considerable: I have selected those which appeared the most ingenious, and poetical.
Weed formerly meant, and in the plural, weeds, still means a garment, or covering, and in that sense was used for the skin, which is the natural covering of the body. So Carew:
Thy skin's a heavenly and immortal weed.
All's a wrinkeling hill of sand.
An expressive epithet: you seem to see the sand crumbling away.
Constellations in your cheeke,
And miscall your eyes above
Double christallins of love.
See the "Duell" between the lips and eyes, p. 29. and the note, p. 338.
Earth put in a christaU cover!
Which though yet it shine in you,
First was made of ashes too.
2 y