28 Hen. VIII. its revenue amounted to 1551. 5s. 10 d. After the Dissolution it appears that the house of Merkyate was first possessed by Humphrey Bourchier, a son of Lord Berners. So says Leland in his Itinerary: "Mergate was a nunnery of late tyme. It stondith on an hil in a faire woode hard by Watheling streate; on the est side of it Humfray Boucher, base sunne to the late lorde Berners, did much coste in translating of the priorie into a maner-place; but he left it nothing endid." This must have been before 1536 (28 Hen. VIII.) on the 7th Sept. in which year, "The scite and demeanes of the late priory of Markeyate in the countie of Bedford," were purchased of the king by George Ferrers gentleman, by a negociation of which the particulars are given in the Monasticon. It continued in that family until the middle of the seventeenth century, when it became the property of Thomas Coppin esquire, who, by his will in 1662, founded a school in Market Street. His grandson John, in 1734, erected a chapel near the cell, which was repaired and enlarged by Joseph Howell, esq. then owner of the cell, early in the present century. This gentleman, who purchased from the Coppins, is described by Mr. Clutterbuck in 1815 as "the present owner. The mansion-house (he adds) disencumbered from large gloomy yews and a blockading terrace, now forms an interesting object from the public road. Under the terrace were discovered some remains of the original cell, which have been preserved by the drawings of Mr. Fisher." and other architectural fragments, together with a ground-plan, which is given in the preceding page. The foundations which were opened disclosed several bases of pilasters, some of them flanking windows, and decidedly of the early-English period. The sculptured fragments found were also of the same style. The ground-floor of the house had windows of Perpendicular pointed acchitecture, and probably of Humphrey Bourchier's building immediately after the Dissolution, as mentioned by Leland. The three upper stories were more probably of the age of Charles I. They presented five gables towards the rear of the building, and from an old drawing in the house it appears there were formerly gables on all sides, and a turret crowned with a cupola at each corner of the building. Towards the high-road, on the west, the mansion had received a still more recent front of only two stories, having long sash windows, probably of the time of the Coppins. J. G. N. MR. URBAN, London, Oct. 8. ISEND you herewith an account of George the Third's first visit to Eton, in 1762, copied from an original letter in my possession.* It was addressed to Richard Neville Neville, Esq., of Billingbear, in Berkshire, at that time secretary to the embassy at Paris, by his kinsman Dr. Thomas Dampier, then lower master of the school, and afterwards dean of Durham, and father to the bishop and the judge of the same name. Many of our older Etonians still alive must recollect with sentiments of pride On referring to the volume of our Magazine for the year 1762, we find an account of this Royal Visit to Eton, comprising most of the circumstances mentioned in the present document.-Edit. and gratitude the unceasing acts of kindness and condescension by which the venerable Monarch endeared himself, during a long series of years, to every person connected with the college, and the interest which he took in the welfare and prosperity of the school. Fortunately for the rising generation, the same attachment towards Alma Mater Etona has become hereditary in the August Successors of George III. I will only add, "Esto Perpetua." Yours, &c. ETONENSIS. Eton, Oct. 3d, 1762. mother Eton, who, on y 25th of last I pray you to rejoice with your old month, was honoured, more than ever any foundation was before, by crowned heads. The King and Queen condescended to make the school and college a visit for three hours. They first came into ye upper school, where they were addressed by the captain, in an English speech, about 5 minutes long, y boys, assistants, and thence they went into ye long chamber, masters ranged on each side. From and during that time the boys were conveyed expeditiously and silently into their seats in chapel, where their Majesties went next. Upon their entrance ye organ, with a band of musick (borrowed of the Coll. of the Guard) entertained them; but nothing the boys, which ye King told us was delighted them so much as the sight of the finest sight he had ever seen, and with so great decency and order as could be owing only to the care and management of ye two masters. The pædagogues, you may be sure, bowed probation. From the chapel they went most thankfully for this gracious apgreat while. The King talked much to see ye drawings, where they staid a upon various subjects, which yo drawings, as they were presented to him, suggested; and, indeed, he talked amazing well upon all, in my opinion ante annos. hour he came across ye room, and About the last half discoursed with Doctor Barnard and me upon our school and education in general. He often repeated his preference of a public education, and that at Eton particularly. It would take up too much of your time to recount the many very sensible observations he made. Upon ye whole, it was impossible for any one (even of an inferior rank), to show more affability, benevolence, and chearfulness. His chaise was ordered to ye cloister-gate, but when he saw ye boys ranged in ye school-yard to receive him, he bid his chaise go under ye school, being desirous, as he said, to see all he could of the boys, and walked all along amongst them. The boys (who had hitherto kept their fire) on a sudden burst out into a loud "Vivant Rex et Regina." The King laughed much at their eagerness, and the waving of ye hats. Their Majesties left an handsome present for the foundation-boys, and we hear from London that they were highly pleased, and talk without end of ye satisfaction they had in ye visit, far beyond (they say) all the pomp and show of ye installation,* tho' very magnificent. Thus have I detained your precious moments with a long Eton Gazette Extraordinary; but how could I help it? I am, dear Mr. Neville, Yours most affectionately, NOTICES OF ITALIAN POETS, BY H. F. CARY, TRANSLATOR OF DANTE. T. DAMPIER. MR. URBAN, Worcester College, Oxford, Sept. 22. Among the papers of my father, the translator of Dante, I have met with notices of and brief translations from several Italian poets, from the earliest times to the present. He had it in contemplation to write an account of the chief authors in that language, whether in prose or verse; of several he had completed his intended version, so far as he thought it necessary to give a specimen of his author, but in most instances has left his notice either unwritten or unfinished. This I can in some measure supply, and as I think his translations and criticisms are worthy to be preserved, I venture to offer them for insertion in your Magazine. It was probably hardly necessary to distinguish my own additions, by inclosing them in brackets. Yours, &c. HENRY CARY. GIACOPO DA LENTINO. IN the earliest poets of Italy we find something of that dryness which there is in their earliest painters. As there is little ease and variety in the attitudes, and no richness and fertility of colouring in the one, so there is much poverty of invention and language in the others. Yet, in both poets and painters may be discovered the rudiments of that excellence to which each of them afterwards attained. In both may be seen a gravity and purity of manner, and a rejection of whatever was false and vicious. They were in the right way, though they had not made much advance. Here it may be worth remarking how much the two arts seem in that country to have acted upon one another; that as Giotto and Cimabue were in some sort the teachers of Dante, so Dante in his turn may be looked upon almost as the master of Michel Angelo. It is evident that much cannot be effected by means of another language in the representation of that which has scarcely any thing but mere simplicity and severity of manner to recommend it in its own. A copier of a picture or an engraver may trace with tolerable accuracy the exact form which is before him; but a translator having other terms to make use of than those which are employed by his original, and those terms besides to be reduced to other measures, must necessarily differ much from that original. His difficulty therefore will be rather increased by that which makes the task of the engraver so much the easier; that is, the strictness and meagreness of his model. Perhaps it was scarcely requisite to *The Installation of Knights of the Garter which took place on the 22d of September preceding at Windsor. say this much in order to bespeak the indulgence of my reader for the followChi non avesse mai veduto foco, Non crederia, che cocere potesse ; Anzi li sembreria sollazzo, e gioco Lo suo splendore, quando lo vedesse. Ma s' ello lo toccasse in alcun loco, Ben sembreriali, che forte cocesse: Quello d' Amore m'ha toccato un poco, Molto mi coce: Deo che s'apprendesse, Che s'apprendesse in voi, O donna mia, Che mi mostraste dar sollazzo amando; E voi mi date pur pena, e tormento. Certo l'Amor face gran villania, Che non distrugge te, che vai gabbando; A me, che servo, non da sbaldimento. Io m'aggio posto in core a Dio servire, Quella ch' ha bionda testa e chiaro viso: Per ch' io peccato ci volesse fare; Chè 'l mi terrìa in gran consolamento, [So little is known of Giacopo da Lentino, called the Notary, that it has been made matter of doubt to what country he belonged. The appellation of Lentino would argue him a Sicilian, and accordingly he has by some been ranked among the poets of Sicily. P. Negri, without any pretence of reason, places him among the Florentine writers. Dante, who must be deemed a better authority, twice alludes to him, but in neither instance mentions his name. In his Purgatory† he speaks of him simply as il Nottajo "the notary," and again, in his Treatise de Vulgari Eloquentia, quoting a verse which belongs to a Canzone of his, published by the Giunti, he terms him one of "the illustrious Apulians," * See Tiraboschi, vol. I. p. 137. Mathias's edit. + Canto xxiv. v. 56. Lib. I. cap. 12. A sport to me, yet givest me torment For certes Love works grievous villany, Who sees thee mocking and doth leave thee so, And lets me fearless to my ruin go. My heart is set on service of my God, So I might enter paradise, and share The joys they tell of in that blest abode, Where peace and mirth and endless comfort are. Yet loth were I to set forth on that road Unless I thought to find my lady there. Nor should be happy were I not allow'd To see her beaming head and golden hair. And yet I say it not to such intent That I were willing to transgress therein, No more than to behold those looks of love, The radiant visage and the gentle mien. But O, it were the fulness of content To see my lady in her joy above. præfulgentes Apuli. Crescimbeni, § as Mr. Cary has observed in a note on the passage of the Purgatory above alluded to, gives an extract from one of his poems printed in Allacci's collection, to show that the whimsical compositions called Ariette, were not of modern invention. Our author flourished towards the close of the thirteenth century, just before Dante was in his full vigour. Of the two sonnets above translated, the first is among the Rime Antiche appended to the Bella Mano of Giusto de' Conti; the second is in Allacci's collection. The largest collection of his remains is to be found in the first volume of the "Poeti del primo secolo della lingua Italiana," 2 vols. 8vo. Firenze, 1816.] § Lib. I. Della Volg. Poesia, p. 72, 4°. ed. 1698. ORIGINAL LETTERS.-No. III. Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches; with elucidations by THOMAS CARLYLE. 3 vols. 8vo. THE course of these papers upon original letters has now brought us to the consideration of one of the most remarkable books of our time. It is an endeavour to set before us the words written and uttered by "the man Oliver," and by means of those words to lead the world to an understanding of his character, and an appreciation of "the grand puritan business" of which he was, properly speaking, the life and soul. This is Mr. Carlyle's object, and an object of greater importance, of more direct practical bearing upon solemn questions of infinite moment to all men, or more worthy of the earnest labour of a literary man, can scarcely be conceived. And earnestly, laboriously, with full devotion of heart, and strong determined purpose, has Mr. Carlyle girded himself to the task, and executed it. He has first looked round upon what has been done in reference to this subject by other men, and in his own peculiar vein, respecting which we shall make a remark or two hereafter, has levelled many hard words and deadly blows at Heath and Noble, and other biographers of Cromwell, with little praise of any of them. "Of Cromwell's actual biography," Mr. Carlyle concludes, "from these, and from all books and sources, there is extremely little to be known. It is from his own words, as I have ventured to believe, from his own letters and speeches well read, that the world may first obtain some dim glimpse of the actual Cromwell, and see him darkly face to face." (i. 27.) Mr. Carlyle takes some pains to establish the fact of kindred between the family of the Protector and that of Cromwell Earl of Essex, and does so satisfactorily. Richard, afterwards Sir Richard Cromwell, great-grandfather of the Protector, was an agent of Cromwell the Earl of Essex, in the suppression of the monasteries; and, whilst occupied in that business, addressed to him two letters, in both which he claims kindred with his distinguished patron. One of these letters may be seen in Wright's Suppression of the Monasteries, p. 146, more accurately printed than by Carlyle, i. 40. GENT. MAG. VOL. XXVI. London. The other letter is printed by Noble in his Cromwell Memoirs, i. 242. Sir Richard Cromwell immigrated from Glamorganshire, but was fixed in England, by his employment under the malleus monachorum, and still more certainly by its reward, a grant of the nunnery of Hinchinbrook, in Hunts. There, his son, the Protector's grandfather, Sir Henry Cromwell, maintained a hospitality so distinguished, as to procure for him the title of "The Golden Knight," and there Sir Ri chard's grandson, the Protector's uncle and god-father, Sir Oliver Cromwell, had the honour of ruining himself, by giving three nights' entertainment to King James I.-two nights on his progress to take possession of the English throne, and another night on his visit to Scotland in 1617. The Protector's father, Robert Cromwell, was a younger son of "The Golden Knight." His mother was Elizabeth Steward, daughter of William Steward, of Ely, farmer of the tithes of the cathedral, and widow of William Lynne, a gentleman of Bassingbourne in Cambridgeshire. She was, also, according to the statements of genealogists,* "the ninth, or the tenth, or some other fractional part of half a cousin to Charles Stuart King of England." (i. 30.) Robert Cromwell and his wife dwelt at Huntingdon, and tradition reports him to have carried on the business of a brewer. The house where he dwelt, and where his son Oliver and all his family were born, "is still familiar to every inhabitant of Huntingdon : but it has been twice rebuilt since that date, and now bears no memorial whatever which even tradition can connect with him. It stands at the upper or northern extremity of the town, beyond the market place.... on the left or riverward side of the street. It is at present a solid yellow brick house, with a walled courtyard..... The little brook of Hin *The suspicions on this subject suggested by our correspondent in our last number, p. 372, will be found worthy of attention. 3 P |