Specimens of English literature from the 'Ploughmans crede' to the ...

—::—NOTES.752, ' Chief root or cause of his making or success.'753. 'This proverbial saying occurs in a poem attributed toLydgate" An hardy mowse that is bold to breedeIn cattis eeris."The Order of Foles—MS. Harl. 2251, fol. 304.And so Heywood" I haue heard tell, it had need to beeA wylie mouse that should breed in the cats eare."Dialogue, &c., sig. G 4 ; Workes, ed. 1598.'—D.Sec also the Demaundes Joyous, 151 1; and Lyly's Euphues, 1580,rcpr. 1S68, p. 233.(B) From 'Phyllyp Sparonve:'Phyllyp Sparowe must have been written before the end of 1508 ; forit is mentioned with contempt in the concluding lines of Barclay's " Shipof Fooles," which was finished in that year. The "Luctus in mortePasseris " of Catullus no doubt suggested the present production toSkelton, who, when he calls on " all maner of byrdes " to join in lamentingPhilip Sparrow, seems also to have had an eye to 0\'id's elegy " Inmortem Psittaci," Amor. ii. 6. Another piece of the kind is extant.imong the compositions of antiquity,—the " Psittacus Atedii Melioris "of Statius, Silv. ii. 4. In the " Amphitheatrum Sapi^ntiie SocraticaeJoco-serioe," &c., of Uornavius, i. 460 sqq. may be found various Latinl)Ocms on the deaths, &c., of sparrows by writers posterior to the timeof Skelton. See too Herrick's lines "Upon the death of his Sparrow,"Hcsper 1648, p. 117; and the verses entitled "Phyllis on the death of'.cr Sparrow," attributed to Drummond, Works, 1711, p. 50.*—D.Coleridge (Remains, iii. 163) speaks of 'Old Skelton's Philip Sparrow,.inexquisite and original poem.'In my larger edition of Piers the Plowman (B-text), I have noted that1:1 Pass. XV. 119, where other MSS. have a totally different line, the