lnedited Tracts. Printed for the Roxburgh° Library.—Mr. Hazlitt edits in
this volume three tracts, all of which afford interesting illustra- tions of English life during the fifty years which concluded the sixteenth century and began the seventeenth. The longest of them is a dialogue, "Of Cyuile and Uncynile Life," held between a courtier and a country gentleman, who respectively advocate the claims of the city and the country, the former being allowed to have very much the best of the argument. The reader will find some very curious allusions, significant
of modes of life very different from our own. One of the chief dis- advantages of the country life is the rude and indiscriminate hospitality which it was necessary to exercise. The country gentleman allows that his house is invaded by tribes of guests, many of whom are strangers to him, so numerous that sometimes he is obliged to seek shelter in an inn. In speaking of field sports, there is no mention of the fowling-piece, guns being probably too cumbrous for that purpose ; the countryman says, "When the corn is downe, our Sparhankes be ready to kill the Partridge, the Quayle, and Rayle." Their fishing they seem to have done very much in what we consider fence-months. We find some curious names of games of cards. What are " Colehes- ter Trumps," "Mack and Maw," and "Trey-Trip "2 The other two tracts are "The Serningman's Comfort," full of complaints which curiously resemble those made now-a-days, only made from the servants' point of view ; and "the Courtier and the Countryman," dealing with the same topic as the first. We observe that the Latin quotations are curiously incorrect Surely the editor should at least have noted these errors, and have appended some more satisfactory note to "Perturiunt montes paritur ridiculus mus," than this,—" The author misquoted paritur for nascitur."
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