Note 345 — The Drawing Room. (continued 2)

I suppose Lysander to allude to a memorandum of Hearne, in his Benedictus Abbas, p. iv., respecting Robert Burton being a collector of "ancient popular little pieces." From this authority we find that he gave "a great variety" of these pieces, with a multitude of books, of the best kind, to the "Bodleian Library."—One of these was that "opus incomparabile," the "History of Tom Thumb," and the other, the "Pleasant and Merry History of the Mylner of Abingdon." The expression "sacred secret soul soliloquies" belongs to Braithwait: and is thus beautifully interwoven in the following harmonious couplets: