the concluding couplet of it as an instance of " Ploche, or the Doubler," "a speedie iteration of one word, but with some little intermission by inserting one or two words betweene, as in a most excellent dittie written by Sir Walter Raleigh these two closing verses: 'Yet when I sawe my selfe to you was true, I loued my selfe, bycause my selfe loued you.'”* This evidence was mentioned by Oldys, who printed a much better text than that in the Oxford edition, from a transcript which was traced originally to Lady Isabella Thynne, with the title, "The Excuse. Written by Sir Walter Ralegh in his younger years." This completes our examination of the poems ascribed to Raleigh in the largest Collection of his Works. Had it not been for the discovery, that most of the anonymous poems in Davison were written by A. W., the list would have been much longer; for their "internal evidence" led Brydges to announce a design of reprinting them as Raleigh's, in the form of a second volume of his Poems.† Of the eight pieces which he did assign to Raleigh, with considerable hesitation, in his reprint of Davison, one only need be added to our enumeration, viz.:— portant references); and why even that little was forgotten when he collected Raleigh's Poems in 1813. • Arte of English Poesie, p. 168, repr.—A Madrigal in Davison (p. 205, ed. 1621) closes with a couplet of somewhat similar construction : "And if my life I loue, then must I too Loue your sweete selfe, for my life liues in you." + There is no intimation of such an intention in the Lee Priory Collection of Raleigh's Poems; but it was announced a few months afterwards.-The Catalogue of A. W.'s Poems was printed in the second volume of the Lee Priory Davison: when the first vol. of that work was published, Brydges still intended to give Raleigh the anonymous poems. In one case especially, that of the poem beginning "It chanced of late a shepherd's swain," he mentioned his suspicion that Raleigh wrote it (p. 40); but it was afterwards found to be by A. W. (ii. 70. Cf. Exc. Tudor, ii. 123. The poem is in Percy, i. 316, ed. 1767, and Ellis, iii. 18, ed. 1811.) XL. A Poesie to prove Affection is not Love.-W. R.* There are several other poems by Sir Walter Raleigh which have never been collected. The two following were mentioned by Malone :-† XLI. "An Epitaph vpon the right Honourable Sir Phillip Sidney knight: Lord gouernor of Flushing," among those appended to Spenser's Astrophel (Sign. K. 2). XLII. "To the Translator:" Fourteen lines prefixed to Sir A. Gorges' Translation of Lucan's Pharsalia, folio, 1614, with the signature "W. R." The Epitaph on Sidney, which consists of sixty lines in fifteen stanzas, has no signature; but the last stanza supplies evidence that Raleigh wrote it : "That day their Hanniball died, our Scipio fell, Sir John Harington is supposed to be alluding to these lines, when he speaks of "our English Petrarke, Sir Philip Sidney, or (as Sir Walter Raulegh in his Epitaph worthely calleth him) the Scipio and the Petrarke of our time."‡ It is in this volume, III. vi. p. 117. Two of the others, which had no signature, answer to Nos x and xxviii in our list. The rest were all marked Ignoto in one or other of the four editions of Davison. They are, two short pieces entitled "A Dialogue betwixt the Louer and his Lady;"-" An Inuectiue against Women;"-"The True Loues knot;"-and an Eclogue, beginning "Come, gentle heardman, sit by me"-(pp. 57, 145, 216, 187, ed. 1621). + Shakespeare by Boswell, ii. 580.- Malone also referred to the "Poesie to prove Affection is not Love," and "The Lie;" but he thought the latter doubtful, because it has no signature in Davison. Of Raleigh's Cynthia, too, which is mentioned by Spenser, he adds another notice; viz. that Gabriel Harvey, in some MS. notes on Chaucer, called it "a fine and sweet invention." Translation of Ariosto, 1591, p. 126. (In the notes on Book xvi.)- So also Drummond, in his Character of several Authors, says, " S. W. R., in an This quotation (which supplies a different reading) seems sufficiently close to establish the fact of Raleigh's authorship; and if so, the following stanza (which is the third) deserves the notice of his Biographers: "And I, that in thy time and liuing state, Did onely praise thy vertues in my thought, As one that seeld the rising sun hath sought, With words and teares now waile thy timelesse fate." The lines prefixed to Gorges' Translation of Lucan are too remarkable to be omitted :*— "Had Lucan hid the truth to please the time, He had beene too vnworthy of thy Penne, Who neuer sought, nor euer car'd to clime By flattery, or seeking worthlesse men. For this thou hast been bruis'd; but yet those scarres Receiu'd in iust and in religious warres; Though thou hast bled by both, and bearst them too. Such was thy Lucan, whom, so to translate, W. R." Epitaph on Sidney, calleth him our English Petrarch." (Appendix to Conversations of Jonson and Drummond, p. 49, Shakesp. Soc. ed. The editor, who seems to have overlooked the Epitaph quoted above, says, "An Epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney, attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh, is included in the Roxburghe volume,' Sidneiana,' published by Dr. Butler, Bishop of Lichfield, in 1837. This, however, is not the epitaph that Drummond refers to." Zouch says, that "Sir Walter Raleigh, in an epigram written on Sidney, calls him our English Petrarch." Life of Sidney, p. 304, ed. 1809.)—The Elegy which immediately follows Raleigh's in Astrophel is entitled "Another of the same;" and as this expression is more likely to mean the same writer than the same subject, we should suspect that Raleigh wrote it also. Malone (who remarks that there is another copy in the Phoenix Nest) thought, from the metre, that it was Sir Edward Dyer's; but Raleigh sometimes used that metre, as in his second poem on the Faery Queen. It begins thus: "Silence augmenteth grief; writing encreaseth rage; Staid are my thoughts, which lou'd, & lost, the wonder of our age;" &c. * They have been previously reprinted in Brit, Bibl. i. 455, in an account A piece of the same length, and signed by the same initials, but of immeasurably inferior value, was prefixed to Lithgow's "Pilgrimes Farewell," (Edinburgh, 1618,) with the heading, "To his singular Friend, William Lithgow." We are told, that "from the initials, this piece is usually attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh;"* but it is impossible to suspect him of it. Raleigh's name has been so often misapplied in old MS. Collections, that we are unwilling to ascribe any pieces to him on that kind of evidence, except where several accounts are found to coincide. It is moreover so exceedingly difficult to bear in mind the countless little pieces which were written and printed in the seventeenth century, that we are in constant danger of producing as a novelty some perfectly familiar fragment, whenever we trust to the table-books of old transcribers. It is therefore with great diffidence that I venture to add two other articles to the list, on the evidence of single MSS.† One of them is printed in this volume; the other is only a set of sprightly nonsense-verses (sprightly, of Sir A. Gorges' Lucan. Compare some very manly verses, addressed by Sir Arthur to King James, and printed in Restituta, iv. 509 :— "Of many now that sounde with hopes consort Your wisdome, bountie, and peace-blessed raygne, My skyll is least; but of the most import, Because not school'd by favours, gyfts, or gaine: To sweete my tunes I straine not Flattrye's stringe; That longe I did before you weare my Kinge, As one that vertue for itselfe regards, And loves his Kinge more then his King's rewards. Brit. Bibl. ii. 142, where there is an account of Lithgow's Book, of which Malone had a copy (Bodl. Mal. 717). It was also mentioned in Ritson, p. 307, note. + There are several others which I might have mentioned; but I am not sufficiently acquainted with the great mass of old poetical MSS. preserved in our various Libraries to give anything like a complete list; and nothing though "the hangman" plays a prominent part in them) written to amuse a child. XLIII. "What is our Life? the play of passion;" &c.→ SW: R-See this vol. p. 81. XLIV. "Sir Walter Rauleigh to his Sonne."-MS. Malone 19, p. 130. On looking back over this list of poems, it is mortifying to observe, that scarcely half of them can be attributed to Raleigh without fear of contradiction. That he wrote more poems than we now possess, is beyond dispute. We may well wonder, with Malone, that his "Cynthia" has been allowed to perish; but many others of his compositions must have shared its fate; for there is little left to account for the quaint commendations of Puttenham, Meres, and Bolton, still less to justify the glorious praise of Spenser. It is some consolation, however, to remember, that the stores of Elizabethan poetry are not yet exhausted; and that those who are not debarred, by the confinement of a country residence, from free access to our Public Libraries, may yet find many relics of his poetry which I have neither seen nor heard of. Few discoveries of the kind would be more pleasing than one which should authorize us to conclude, that Raleigh himself was the anonymous friend of Francis Davison, who is now known only by the unexplained initials A. W.; but this is more than we can venture to anticipate. Yet Brydges was not merely guessing in the dark, when he thought that those short of that would be permanently useful. I may refer to one piece, however, which is mentioned in the Catalogue of Mr. B. H. Bright's MSS., for the oddity of its title: "The despairinge complainte of wretched Rawleighe for his treacheries wrought against the worthie Essex." (No. 190. In the same number was "Rawleigh's Caveat to secure Courtiers." See too the accounts of Nos. 189, 207.)-The poem ascribed to Raleigh in the Topographer (see this vol. p. 45) is only one instance out of many of the risk we run by trusting MS. authorities when they stand alone. |