90 AUBEEY'S NATURAL HISTOKY OF WILTSHIRE. 



also translated "A Discourse of Life and Death, written in French, by Phil. Mornay," 1600, 

 12mo. J. B.] 



" Underneath this sable herse 

 Lies the subject of all verse, 

 Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother, 

 Death ! ere thou kill'st such another, 

 Fair, and wise, and learn 'd as SHE, 

 Time will throw a dart at thee." 



These verses were made by Mr. (William*) Browne, who wrote the " Pastoralls," and they are 

 inserted there. 



[In the Memoir of Aubrey, published by the Wiltshire Topographical Society in 1845, I drew 

 attention to this passage, which shews that although the above famous epitaph on the Countess of 

 Pembroke is almost always attributed to Ben Jonson, it was, in fact, written by William Browne. 

 That such is really the case does not rest only on the authority of Aubrey and Evelyn ; for we find 

 this very epitaph in a volume of Poems written by Browne, and preserved amongst the Lansdowne 

 MSS in the British Museum (No. 777), together with the following additional lines : 



" Marble pyles let no man raise 

 To her name for after-dayes ; 

 Some kind woman, borne as she, 

 Reading this, like Niobe, 

 Shall turne marble, and become 

 Both her mourner and her tombe." 



To the epitaph is subjoined an " Elegie " on the Countess, of considerable length. When or by 

 whom the epitaph was first ascribed to Jonson it is not easy to ascertain ; but certainly no literary 

 error has been more frequently repeated. Aubrey is wrong in stating that the lines were printed in 

 Browne's Pastorals. J. B. ] 



Mr. Adrian Gilbert, uterine brother to Sir Walter Raleigh, was a great chymist, and a man of 

 excellent parts, but very sarcastick, and the greatest buffoon in the nation. He was housekeeper at 



Wilton, and made that delicate orchard where the stately garden now is He had a 



pension, and died about the beginning of the reign of King Charles the First. Elias Ashmole, Esq. 

 finds, by Dr. John Dee's papers, that there was a great friendship and correspondency between him 

 and Adrian Gilbert, and he often mentions him in his manuscripts. Now there can be no doubt 

 made but that his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh, which was tarn Marti quam Mercurio, had a 

 great acquaintance with the Earle Henry and his ingenious Countesse. 



There lived in Wilton, in those dayes, one Mr. Boston, a Salisbury man (his father was a brewer 

 there), who was a great chymist, and did great cures by his art. The Lady Mary, Countesse of 

 Pembroke, did much esteeme him for his skill, and would have had him to have been her operator, 

 and live with her, but he would not accept of her Ladyship's kind offer. But after long search after 

 the philosopher's stone, he died at Wilton, having spent his estate. After his death they found in 

 his laboratory two or three baskets of egge shelles, which I remember Geber saieth is a principall 

 ingredient of that stone. 



J. Donne, Deane of St. Paule's, was well known both to Sir Philip Sydney and his sister Mary, 

 as appeares by those excellent verses in his poems, " Upon the Translation of the Psalmes by Sir 

 Philip Sydney and the Countesse of Pembroke his sister." 



