Authorjhip. 9 



But what is known of the lady who is admitted to have com- 

 piled the twenty-four pages on Hunting? Who was Dame Julians 

 Barnes ? Here, unlefs a fentimental and inventive fympathy be 

 employed to throw an artificial light upon the darknefs, we are in 

 total ignorance. A biography of her has certainly been written, 

 and all our Dictionaries and Encyclopaedias devote a page or two 

 to her hiftory, which, in 1810, under Haflewood's nurture, attained 

 its full development. Even fo far back as 1549, or nearly a 

 century after her fuppofed death, the learned Bale, who wrote 

 an account of all our Englifh celebrities, allows his gallantry to 

 bedeck her memory with garments fine. " Fcemina illuftris ! " he 

 exclaims, " corporis et animi dotibus abundans ac forma elegantia 

 fpectabilis " (An illuftrious lady ! abundantly gifted, both in body 

 and mind, and charming in the elegance of her mien). Confidering 

 that the name of the lady is the whole of the text upon which 

 Bale had to build, this is by no means a bad fpecimen of imagina- 

 tive biography, and became a good foundation for future commen- 

 tators. The ftory, however, fared rather badly at firft; for Holinfhed, 

 in 1577, while echoing Bale very exactly, is made, by a curious 

 error of the printer, who miftook the letters rn for m, to call the 

 authorefs Julyan Bemes ; while Baker in his Chronicles, too carelefs 

 even to refer to the original text, adds another blunder to the 

 ftory, and, thinking that Julyan muft be a man's name, dubs the 

 authorefs " a gentleman of excellent gifts, who wrote certain treatifes 

 of Hawking and Hunting." 



Chauncy, in 170x3 (Hiftory of Hertfordfhire), reftored her fex 

 to the lady, and then fet to work upon making a family hiftory 

 for her. His firft difcovery was that, being a " Dame," (he was of 

 noble blood. Finding alfo that the family name of Lord Berners 

 was, in olden time, fpelt occafionally Barnes, he foon fupplied a 

 father for our authorefs, in the perfon of Sir James Berners. And 

 fo the game of making hiftory went on merrily up to the time of 

 Jofeph Haflewood, who. in 1810, reprinted Wynken de Worde's 



