The two following tracts were first published in 1641 and 1642:-(4.) "Of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, Some Observations by way of Parallel in the time of their estates of Favour;" and (5.) “A View of the Life and Death of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham." These notices of Wotton's two chief Patrons are his most valuable contribution to the History of his own Times; and they have attracted more general attention than any others of his writings. Both have been reprinted, the former at the Lee Priory Press in 1814, and the latter in the Harleian Miscellany. Much of the matter (as we might have expected) is common to both; and they should be compared with the character of Buckingham which Wotton sent to the Queen of Bohemia in 1626 (Rel. Wotton. pp. 551-6). These five pieces were all inserted in Rel. Wotton. If we add to them, (6.) "The State of Christendom," a folio volume, which, though composed before the death of Elizabeth, was not printed till 1657, we shall have completed the list of Wotton's finished Works; of those, at least, which we possess; for we know nothing more than Walton has told us (p. 126) of three lectures de oculo which he delivered at Oxford in his twentieth year. A perfect catalogue of those which he only designed, or • "The Difference and Disparity" between them, which follows this by way of answer in Rel. Wotton. is said in eds. 1672-95 to have been " written by the Earl of Clarendon in his younger dayes." (p. 184.) In the first ed. of Rel. Wotton, it was ascribed to Wotton himself, (and “dedicated to the Earl of Portland") as if Wotton had chosen to display his skill by writing on both sides of the question. In the second ed. there is no name at all. + Among Mr. B. H. Bright's MSS. (No. 276) was a Journal supposed to have been written by Wotton, when in attendance on Lord Essex, from Aug. 14: to Dec. 17: 1591: This document must be very curious, as Walton evidently knew nothing of his being in the service of Lord Essex till some years after that date; and it fills up a chasm in the series of Letters to Lord Zouch (Rel. Wotton. p. 650) which is interrupted from Apr. 21: 1591: to May 8: 1592. which he forsook as soon as he had made a commencement, would be of much greater length; for he too often wasted his energies in making good beginnings. This may have been what Warton meant, when he called him "a polite scholar, but on the whole a mixed and desultory character," -an account with which Sir Egerton Brydges, perhaps through a feeling of sympathy, was far from satisfied. It is plain that the defect was acknowledged and regretted by his friends; as when Sir Richard Baker, whose "Ancient Friendship" with him (" which was first, and is ever best, elemented in an Academy") is recorded by them both, complained that he had “done himself much wrong, and the kingdom more, in leaving no more of his Writings behind him."* Many traces of his abandoned plans may still be found. The literary schemes which he mentions in his Letters to Lord Zouch + should scarcely be ranked among them; for the materials which he was then collecting were probably used in his book on the state of Christendom. But as early as 1606, Camden warned him, that he would rouse up many enemies if he carried out some plans which he had then communicated, of entering on the stormy warfare of Romanist disputation. He was probably quite willing to comply with Camden's advice.-In 1613, Thuanus complained, that Wotton had detained a MS. History, by Father Paul, of the great dispute between Rome and Venice, which Wotton had witnessed and partly shared, on the plea that he meant to undertake the subject himself.§-Several unfinished pa • Chronicle, p. 424, ed. 1733. It was also quoted by Izaak Walton in the Preface to Rel. Wotton.-Wotton's letter to Baker, which is quoted above, is in Rel. Wotton. p. 351. + See Rel. Wotton. pp. 592, 605, 606. Camdeni Epistolæ, 1691, p. 70. (Letter from Camden to Wotton, dated Feb. 10: 1606.) Wotton certainly considered that his experience had quali fied him for such subjects. See Rel. Wotton. pp. 323, 328, 654-5. Camdení Epistolæ, p. 139. (Letter from Thuanus to Camden, dated pers on various points in Venetian History are found among his Remains. He had also collected many materials for a Life of Luther, with a general History of the Reformation in Germany; but it was laid aside, after he became Provost of Eton College, at the request of King Charles, who wished him to direct his attention to the Ancient History of England. To further this design, a pension of 2001. a year, which had been settled on him by the King, was augmented to 500l., that he might be able to provide "the amanuenses and clerks necessary to be employed in that work."+ "Little, however, appears to have been written," says Mr. Lodge," and probably less was paid." The one fact is certain, whatever may be thought of the other. In "A Conceipt of some Observations" on remarkable passages in English History, which were to extend from the Norman Conquest to the time of Charles I., he advanced no farther than the reign of the Conqueror; and of a Latin account of Henry VI., we have only three broken pages. At the close Easter, 1613.)-That Wotton was engaged on that subject, we know from other sources (see Winw. iii. 432); but the MS. to which Thuanus alludes was entrusted to Bedel, not Wotton. See Letters of F. Panl, pp. 339, 393. • His accounts of "The Election of the New Duke of Venice, after the Death of Giovanni Bembo" (March 16: 1618:) and of "The Election of the following Duke after the death of Niccolo Donato" (May 8: 1618:) are prefaced by a dedicatory letter dated May 25: 1618: (Rel. Wotton. pp. 253-26-4.) Part of a Latin Introduction to a more general History of Venice was sent to the King with a letter dated Dec. 9: 1622: (Rel. Wotton. pp. 247-250. A difficulty occurs in that brief Preface, of which the greater part is evidently lost. He dates it "Anno unici Mediatoris supra Millesimum sexcentesimum vicesimo secundo, Ætatis meæ quinquagesimo tertio jam labente." Now if Wotton was born, as Wood states, Mar. 30: 1568: his 53rd year would close Mar. 30: 1621: i, e. nearly twelve months before 1622 would then begin, Mar. 25: 1622: and more than 20 months before the date of his letter to the King. Yet Wood's date for his birth is confirmed by the account of his age when he died, and in particular by some Pedigrees in the Herald's College, which Mr. Courthope has kindly examined for me.) There is also an unfinished “Letter concerning the Original of Venice," Rel. Wotton. pp. 250-2. + See Zouch's Walton, pp. 176,510. Cf. Rel. Wotton. p. 562. Rel. Wotton. pp. 100-110. A copy of the former is printed (from a seemed proper to annex, as a Third Part, a few of the other poems to which Raleigh's name has been appended, mostly on much better grounds, with as complete a statement of the evidence in each case as I could supply. It formed no portion of my plan to collect the whole of Raleigh's Poems; but an examination of the remainder will be found in a later part of this Introduction. IN SIR HENRY WOTTON. N reprinting the Poems contained in Rel. Wotton., I have followed the order of the original editions, except that the last piece in Part I. is taken from among the Letters. Mr. Dyce, who has lately edited Wotton's own Poems for the Percy Society, in a separate form, has adopted an arrangement which comes much nearer to the order in which they would be composed; but we have not sufficient information to determine the exact date of every poem.* None of Wotton's extant poems have been traced to an earlier date than 1602: but when very young, he wrote a tragedy called Tancredo, which is now lost, for the "private • The following is a summary of the chronological facts already known. -No, i was printed in 1602, and was perhaps written some years earlier. No. ii may also be regarded as a youthful composition. No. xiii could not be written till after 1604, and may have been composed at a much later date. No, viii is said to have been printed in 1614, and can be traced soon afterwards. If No. iv was really addressed to Buckingham, it falls later than August, 1616, when he was raised to the Peerage. It would be laying too much stress on the MS. title to fix it after he was made a Duke in 1623. No. vii was written either in 1615 or 1621, probably the former; No, iii about 1620; No. xi in 1625; and No. xii in 1627. If No. x was written in pursuance of the design mentioned in the Introduction to it, we must place it in or after 1627. No. v was written in 1630; No. vi in 1633; No, ix after Wotton was seventy years old, as Walton tells us,-therefore in 1638 or 1639; and No. xiv in one of the same years, probably in 1638. -Mr. Dyce arranges them thus:-i. ii. iv. viii. xiii. vii. iii. xi. xii. v. vi. ix. x. xiv. 66 use" of the members of Queen's College, Oxford.* He also speaks himself in one place of the pain it gave him to "re-visit the Fancies of [his] Youth," which his "judgement" told him were "all too green;" and in another, of his "Lines" having "serv'd [his] Youth to vent some wanton cries." If these expressions refer to any Amatory" songs, they may be still concealed among the many scattered poems of the Elizabethan age to which no author's name can be attached with certainty. No such inference, however, can be drawn from the following Epigram, which was addressed to him in or before 1598 : "EPIGR. 4. AD HENRICUM WOTTONUM, "Wotton, the country and the country swayne,- And yet the country or[e] the towne may swaye, (Bastard's Chrestoleros, 1598, Lib. ii. p. 29.) Zouch thought that Wotton was here addressed "as a poet;" • See Walton's Lives, p. 125, ed. 1796. (That edition is always used in the following references.) The remarks in the Introd, to No. i should not have been confined to Bastard's Epigram; for though I was not referring to the Tragedy, Wotton's own expressions ought to have been mentioned.Mr. Gilchrist had a volume entitled “A Courtlie controversie of Cupid's Cautels," &c. " translated out of French by Henry Wotton," 1578 (Cens. Lit. x. 318, ed. 1815); but the future Sir Henry was then only ten years old. There were others who bore the same name at an earlier period. (See Wood's A. O. i. 227, and Fasti, i. 149, 161, 180.)— Sir Henry's halfbrother, John, (who was born April 11: 1550: and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth, and whose "death in his younger years," says Walton, “put a period to his growing hopes,") is supposed by Brydges to have been the author of two poems in England's Helicon (pp. 49, 65, repr.), which bear the signature of "Iohn [and I.] Wootton." + See this vol. pp. 23, 41.-Wotton seems to speak of another unknown poem, written at a much later date, in Rel. Wotton. pp. 444, 566. |
