William Oldys, Edq., gives the following abftract on the poem: 1

This is a Poem composed in our Epic verse, and, as may be gather’d from the seventeenth page, by the author of the additional Legends in that edition of the Myrror for Magistrates, which was printed in 4to, 1610, whose name was Richard Niccols.

It is perhaps with some impropriety entitled Sir Thomas Overburie’s Vision, for it is indeed the vision or dream of the author, upon whose imagination the Trial of Sir Thomas’ Murderers in Guild-Hail, where he had heard it, made such impression that Sir Thomas appeared to him at night in his sleep, and led him to the Tower, and there relates how barbarously he was treated for his faithful services to his Master, (Robert Carr, Earl of Somerset.)

There is a wooden print of Sir Thomas, his Ghost, and he concludes his tale with a request that our Author should transmit to posterity his true tragedy.

The late Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., had in his library a rare tract, entitled The Just Downfall of Ambition, Adultery, and Murder, printed at London, small 4to. On the title-page there is a rude cut of Mrs. Turner, of which a copy was etched by that gentleman, and prefixed, with other similar cuts, to the reprint of an unpublished work, entitled The Whore’s Rhetoric, 2 originally printed, London, 12mo 1683. There is no resemblance whatever between the two wood engravings.

It is evident neither Anthony ά Wood, nor, at a more recent period, Haslewood, ever saw a copy of the original edition of Sir Thomas Overburie’s Vision, which is of extreme rarity, and of which there is no copy in the library of the British Museum, or in that of the Faculty of Advocates. Neither did Mr. Amos, who, in his elaborate work, entitled The Great Oyer of Poisoning, 3 has quoted several portions of the poem, from the Harleian Miscellany, vol. vii.

This learned gentleman, albeit a lawyer and a member of the Supreme Council of India, duly appreciated the poetical merits of Niccols, for he ventures to say, “The student of English poetry will read with much interest several of the lines; which, if he had not been apprized of their date, he would probably have supposed to have been written after the period of Waller and Denham.”

“Richard Niccols,” says Anthony ά Wood, “esteemed eminent for his poetry in his time, was born [about the year 1584] of genteel parents in London, and at eighteen years of age, 1602, was entered a student in Mag. coll in Michaelmas term; but making little stay there he retired to Mag. hall, and took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1606, being then numbered among the ingenious persons of the University.

After he had remained there for some time he retired to the great City, obtained an employment suitable to his faculty, and at length honoured the devotees to poetry with these things following,” &c. 4

Haslewood, in his reprint of the Mirror for Magistrates says that Niccols, who had published an edition of that popular Miscellany in 1610, with the text of which he had ventured to take liberties, had, when about twelve years stage, embarked in a vessel called the Ark, which failed with the expedition against Cadiz in June, 1596, and was present at the great and complete victory obtained by sea and land on that occasion. Whether this voyage was the result of boyish ardour, or that he was originally intended to be actually employed for his country in either marine or military service, is not known.