Notices to Correspondents. 423

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NOTES

NICHOLAS BRETON.

Like Mr. COLLIER (No. 23. p. 364.), I have for many years felt "a
peculiar interest about Nicholas Breton," and an anxious desire to learn
something more of him, not only from being a sincere lover of many of
his beautiful lyrical and pastoral poems, as exhibited in _England's
Helicon_, _Davison's Poetical Rhapsodie_, and other numerous works of
his own, and from possessing several pieces of his which are not
generally known, but also from my intimate connection with the parish in
which he is supposed to have lived and died. From this latter
circumstance, especially, I had been most anxious to connect his name
with Norton, and have frequently cast a reverential and thoughtful eye
on the simple monument which has been supposed to record his name;
hoping, yet not without doubts, that some evidence would still be found
which would prove it to be really that of the poet. It was therefore
with the utmost pleasure that I read Mr. Collier's concluding paragraph,
that he is "in possession of undoubted proof that he was the Nicholas
Breton whose epitaph is on the chancel-wall of the church of Norton in
Northamptonshire."

It seems strange that, notwithstanding the number and variety of his
writings, the length of time he was before the public, and the
estimation in which he was held by his contemporaries, so little should