NOTES ON PART I.

RALEIGH'S POEMS.

HOUGH the striking vicissitudes of Raleigh's life have made it a favourite theme for biographers, no research has been expended on his poems since the days of Oldys (1736), unless I may venture to claim an exception for a little volume published by myself in 1845. Oldys mentioned about seventeen different pieces; but his references long remained neglected and unverified. In Birch's edition of "Raleigh's Minor Works" (1751), only nine of his poems were included; and when Sir E. Brydges published, in 1813-4, the thin quarto volume which he called, "The Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh, now first collected," he made no attempt to exhaust the materials which Oldys had gathered; but swelled out Birch's nine to twenty-eight, by accepting two questionable pieces from Cayley, and appropriating seventeen poems-thirteen from " England's Helicon," and four from "Reliquiæ Wottonianæ,” -on the worthless evidence of the signature

1 Namely, in this volume, Part I., Nos. 1. IV. V. VI. XIV. XVI. XVII. XXII. and XXIII, 8.

"Ignoto." Not one of these nineteen additions has been hitherto authenticated by conclusive evidence. I have allowed three to remain, with some misgivings; for they rest on the weakest proofs of any poems which are still included in Part I.2 The remaining sixteen may be rejected altogether from the list of Raleigh's writings. In fact, six at least can be proved to be the work of other writers; and the authorship of the rest is quite unknown.

The Oxford editors of 1829 accepted Brydges' collection with only one unexplained omission, and annexed eleven "additional poems," most of which had been pointed out by Oldys nearly a century before. Two of these additions were mere attacks on Raleigh. The whole set, however, is retained in some form in the present volume; and, in several instances, the evidence which has been discovered is of the highest order. But this wholesale adoption of so uncritical a collection as that of Brydges into the only general edition of Raleigh's works has proved to be a real literary mis

4

The fact that this signature meant simply what it says, that an author was unknown to the original editor or printer, was established in my former volume (Introd. pp. xxixxxxiv). A complete list of all the pieces ascribed to Raleigh which I have rejected will be found in this volume (Appendix to Introd. B.), and several of them are now printed under other heads, as there referred to.

2 Namely, Nos. XXVI. and XXVII. on the singularly weak evidence of the obliterated signature in "England's Helicon ;" and No. XXIX. on the authority of the " London Magazine." 3 See Appendix to the Introduction A, No. III. 1, and

IV. 2.

4 See Part I. Nos. II. VIII. IX. X. XI., two fragments in No. XXIII., and No. XXVIII., together with the Appendix to the Introduction, as above.

fortune. Even the most careful of Raleigh's biographers have been misled by it into illustrating his supposed emotions from verses to which he has not the shadow of a claim.

The additions made to Raleigh's Poems in the present publication amount to more than twice as much as I have been able to retain from former editors. The most important of these fresh materials is the "Continuation of Cynthia," No. xx., which is now first published from the Hatfield MSS. The "Petition to Queen Anne of Denmark,” No. XXI., was first printed from the Hawthornden MSS., by Mr. D. Laing, in 1828-32. A few smaller pieces have been drawn direct from other MS. sources." In the case of two well-known little poems, which were published anonymously, or under other names, during Raleigh's lifetime (Nos. VII. and xxv.), the discovery of some printed evidence in his favour is due to Mr. J. Payne Collier. The lines addressed to Gorges and Lithgow (Nos. XIX. and xxx.), have frequently been mentioned; but it has been a singular oversight in editors to omit poems so accessible, and so well authenticated, as Nos. III. and xv., which were assigned to Raleigh as early as 1591 and 1602, or to neglect the obvious duty of collecting the Metrical Translations (No. xxiv. 1-69), which occur throughout the "History of the World.”

I. p. 3. Walter Rawely of the Middle Temple.

Of about 1557 lines of verse included in Part I. the nine poems in Birch make 254; the three pieces retained from Brydges' additions, 80; and the Oxford additions retained, 136; in all, 470. My additions amount altogether to about 1087 verses.

2

e. g. Nos. XII. XIII. XVIII. and two or three fragments in No. XXIII.

As Raleigh declared on his trial, with a strong asseveration, that he had never "read a word of the law or statute before" he "was prisoner in the Tower" (Oldys' "Life of Raleigh," p. ccxliii.), we must suppose that he was merely a resident in the Temple for some short time after his return from France in 1576. There is no good reason for doubting that he wrote the verses, to which there is no other claimant. The point is discussed by all his biographers. Oldys believed that he had discovered" the links, if not the perfect chain, of some acquaintance between" Raleigh and Gascoigne (" Life," p. xi.).

III. p. 5. Epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney. Raleigh's claim to this poem was substantiated from Malone's papers in 1821 ("Shakespeare," by Boswell, ii. 580), and in my former volume of 1845 (pp. xxxvii.-viii.). It cannot be doubted that Sir John Harington was alluding to the closing lines, when he wrote of "Our English Petrarch, Sir Philip Sidney, or, as Sir Walter Raleigh in his Epitaph worthily calleth him, the Scipio and the Petrarch of our time" ("Translation of Ariosto," 1591, Notes on Book xvi. p. 126). And Drummond of Hawthornden, in his character of several authors, says: "S. W. R., in an epitaph on Sidney, calleth him our English Petrarch" ("Works," ed. 1711, p. 226). The second stanza is very obscure, and if separated from the first by a full stop, as usually printed, has no construction. I take it to mean, "Yet (one may try to praise thee who is) rich in zeal, though poor in learning; rich in care; rich in love, which envy suppressed during thy dear life now done, and which thy death hath now doubled." In stanza 5, the king