Nor does the proof, against him in particular, end even there; he further shows that his attention must have been especially drawn to this garden scene by his assertion that Pluto and Proserpine were the prototypes of Oberon and Titania; and yet he failed to notice a circumstance that would have added some degree of plausibility to the comparison, namely, that Chaucer's, as well as Shakspeare's, was a _Midsummer Dream_.
It is, perhaps, only justice to Urry to state that _he_ appears to have been aware of the error that would arise from attributing such a situation of the sun to the month of July. The manner in which the lines are printed in _his_ edition is this:--
"ere the dayis eight Were passid, er' the month July befill."
It is just possible to twist the meaning of this into _the eighth of the Kalends of July_, by which the blunder would be in some degree lessened; but such a reading would be as foreign to Chaucer's astronomy as the lines themselves are to his poetry.
THE ACADEMIES OF SIR FRANCIS KYNASTON AND SIR BALTHAZAR GERBIER.
Among the many interesting associations connected with old Covent Garden and its neighbourhood, we ought not to overlook Sir Francis Kynaston's "Museum Minervæ."
In the year 1635, King Charles the First granted his letters patent to Sir Francis Kynaston, "Esquire of the body to his Majesty," whereby a house in Covent Garden, which Sir Francis had purchased, and furnished with books, manuscripts, musical and mathematical instruments, paintings, statues, antiques, &c., was appropriated for ever as a college for the education of the young, nobility, and others, under the name of the "Museum Minervæ." Sir Francis Kynaston was made the governor with the title of "regent;" Edward May, Thomas Hunt, Nicholas Phiske, John Spidell, Walter Salter, Michael Mason, fellows and professors of philosophy and medicine, music, astronomy, geometry, languages, &c. They had power to elect professors also of horsemanship, dancing, painting, engraving, &c.; were made a body corporate, were permitted to use a common seal, and to possess goods and lands in mortmain. (Pat. 11 Car. pt. 8. No. 14.) In the following year, 1636, was published, dedicated to the "Regent and Professors," _The Constitutions of the Museum Minervæ; giving an Account of an Academy for teaching chiefly Navigation, Riding, Fortification, Architecture, Painting, and other useful Accomplishments_.