XXIII. The Lover's Absence Kills me, her Presence [Cures] me.-Ign.-Eng. Hel. XXIV. A Defiance to Disdainful Love.-Ignoto.-Engl. Heli. XXV. Dulcina.-Cayley's Life of Raleigh. XXVI. His Love admits no Rival.-Cayley's Life of Raleigh. *XXVII. His Pilgrimage.-Dr. Birch. *XXVIII. The Farewell.-Dr. Birch.-Davison's Rhapsody. After all the inquiries which have been made upon this subject, I fear that we cannot substantiate Raleigh's claim to any poems in this list, except the nine which are marked by an asterisk, as having been previously ascribed to him by Birch. Seven of those are reprinted in this volume ;* another is quoted and described (No. xxii. see p. 116); and the ninth is the poem prefixed to Gascoigne's Steele-Glass, in 1576 (No. xvi), about which there is some difficulty. Two objections have been raised; namely, that the writer's name is spelt in an unusual manner, and that he describes himself as "of the Middle Temple,” while Raleigh declared on his trial, that he had never" read a word of the law or statute before" he "was prisoner in the Tower."+ The first cannot be allowed much weight (see p. 95); to the second, it has been answered, that he may have been merely a resi * No. iii. on p. 74.—No. vi=II. vi. p. 73.—No. xii=III. viii. p. 125. -No. xx=III. ix. p. 130.-No. xxi=III. v. p. 115.-No. xxvii=III. ii. p. 104.-No. xxviii=III. i. p. 89. + Works, i. 669. Wood's statement (A. O. ii. 236,) was no doubt borrowed from the signature. Naunton says, "His approaches to the University and Inns of Court were rather excursions than sieges or settings down; for he stayed not long in a place." Fragm. Reg. p. 216, ed. 1694. See Oldys and Birch in vol. i. of the Oxford ed. pp. 21-3, 572. (Add, Cayley, i. 10. Muses Library, p. 269. Ritson, Bibl. Poet. p. 307. D'Israeli, Cur. of Lit. p. 258, ed. 1839.) dent in the Middle-Temple, which seems the most probable solution. As to the internal evidence, the critics are at variance. Oldys and Brydges assume that it is completely in Raleigh's favour; Mr. D'Israeli, also, though he hesitates about the spelling, says that" these verses, both by their spirit and signature, cannot fail to be his;" while Mr. Tytler says, that "although written in the quaint style of his age, their poetical merit is below his other pieces, and it is difficult to believe that they flowed from the same sweet vein which produced the answer to Marlow's Passionate Shepherd." Such are the advantages we gain by turning to internal evidence. Two other poems in the list (Nos x. xix.) are said to have the very dubious authority of Raleigh's obliterated initials in England's Helicon. To what I have elsewhere said on this point, I have only to add, that a very different copy of No. x. was printed anonymously in Davison's Rhapsodie; and that Brydges, in his reprint of Davison, included it among Raleigh's Poems, but confessedly without any authority. That copy therefore, gives us no assistance. As to the change of signature, the new one of Ignoto is so • Life of Raleigh, p. 22, ed. 1840. Perhaps we may venture to remark, that it is somewhat doubtful what were Raleigh's other pieces, and even whether he wrote the Reply to Marlow (III. viii.) at all. Some may also think that the "solid axiomatical vein" which Oldys observed in the lines on Gascoigne, is more characteristic of Raleigh's style than the "sweet vein" which Mr. Tytler discovers in the other poem, which was meant for a grave and earnest rebuke to all "sweet" Pastorals. + See this vol. p. 125, note †, and p. 136. The two copies of No. x. are so much varied, that I doubt whether their real identity has been observed. In E. H. the poem is entitled, "The Sheepheards Description of Loue," and it is printed in the form of a Dialogue between Melibeus and Faustus, beginning," Meliheus. Sheepheard, what's Loue, I pray thee tell" (Sign. L. 2). In Davison, it is entitled, "The Anatomie of Loue;" the Dialogue is not marked; and it begins," Now what is loue, I pray thee tell" (P. 147, ed. 1621,=ii. 97. Lee Priory ed. of Davison, p. 295, ed. Nicolas. The stanza which appears to conclude this piece in ed. 1621 is really a separate fragment by A. W., of which I shall have to speak again.) firmly fixed in the case of No. x. in Steevens's copy of E. H., that I cannot tell whether it really conceals the initials of Raleigh. In the case of No. xix., however, they are perfectly legible (Sign. N. 4); and I will therefore subjoin the poem : "Praysed be Dianaes faire and harmelesse light; Praised be the dewes, where-with she moists the ground; Prais'd be her power, by which all powers abound: "Prais'd be her Nimphs, with whom she decks the woods; "In heauen Queene she is among the Spheares; She beauty is; by her the faire endure. "Time weares her not; she dooth his Chariot guide; By her the vertue[s] of the starres downe slide; "A knowledge pure it is her woorth to know: Brydges justly calls this "fulsome adulation of the Queen;" but the lines are nevertheless dignified and stately; and we should value them more highly if we could forget both the allegorical meaning and the utter paganism of the poem. With respect to the two poems taken from Cayley (No. xxv-vi), Brydges says that he is ignorant of Cayley's authority, and that he has " strong doubts whether" they "are really to be attributed to Raleigh's pen." His doubts are not unreasonable; but Cayley's authority can be found without much difficulty. The two poems were printed in the Appendix to his Life of Raleigh (pp. 105-8), together with a third which Brydges has omitted. “Dulcina" (No. Xxv) was probably taken from Ellis ;*-for the piece entitled "His Love admits no Rival" (No. xxvi), he distinctly quoted the London Magazine for August, 1734, p. 444, a reference which Oldys had supplied;†—and the other piece, which is entitled "The Excuse," had been printed at length by Oldys, from whom Cayley unquestionably copied it. This last is one of the best authenticated of all Raleigh's poems, as Oldys shewed; and Brydges was very unfortunate in transferring from Cayley only those two poems which were most doubtful, while he omitted the other, about which there can be no doubt at all. All the remaining fifteen are given to Raleigh because they have been found with the signature Ignoto,—four in Rel. Wotton., and eleven in England's Helicon. The former are reprinted in this volume;§ and it will therefore be sufficient to say a few words on the latter. By combining the two editions of England's Helicon (1600 and 1614),|| we obtain sixteen poems which were * Specimens, ii. 189, ed. 1801.-In that edition, Ellis gave to Raleigh both "Dulcina" and "The Soul's Errand." The former was afterwards excluded from his Collection; and the latter, as the reader knows, was transferred to Sylvester. I do not know why he ever ascribed "Dulcina" to Raleigh. It is in Percy, iii. 151, ed. 1767. Cf. Chappell's Nat. Engl. Airs, ii. 48, &c.-Cayley seems to have taken from Ellis all the poems which he did not find in Oldys. + Oldys, p. 423, note. The title in the London Mag. is merely "A Poem by Sir Walter Raleigh." It will be more easily recognized as an answer to Wither's verses, "Shall I, wasting in despair"-, beginning, "Shall I like a hermit dwell"-. Ritson also mentions it, Bibl. Poet. p. 308. But it seems as improbable that Raleigh wrote this reply to Wither as that Jonson wrote another. (See Gifford's Life of Jonson, p. cxlix. and on various other imitations, see Brit. Bibl. i. 185, note.)-Both "Dulcina" and this piece are given to Raleigh by Campbell, p. 78. An inferior copy of it was printed in the Oxford ed. of Raleigh. See below, No. xxxii, p. xxxv, where a fuller account of the evidence is given. No. i II. i. p. 55.-No. iv=II. ii. p. 60.-No. viii-II. viii. p. 81. —No, xi=II. v. p. 71. This account is taken from Steevens's copy of England's Helicon, ed. 1600 (among Malone's books in the Bodleian), in which MS. transcripts of the pieces added in the second ed, are inserted. The same copy was ex subscribed Ignoto in that Miscellany, two of which are resigned by Brydges to Shakespeare and Barnfield.* The fourteen others are all given to Raleigh; but as three have received a separate consideration (No. x, xii, and xix), we are now only concerned with eleven. Against Raleigh's title to six of these, there is direct evidence in favour of other writers; for one of them (No. xvii) occurs in an earlier part of England's Helicon with the initials of Sir Edward Dyer ;† and five (Nos. ii, xiv, xviii, xxiii, and xxiv) must be resigned to the unknown A. W., to whom a very considerable portion of Davison's Poeticall Rhapsodie belongs, on the conclusive evidence of a Catalogue of his Poems, which was printed in the Lee Priory edition of Davison's Collection, from a MS. in the handwriting of Francis Davison himself. Now when our only guide has failed us in no amined for the reprint of E. H. The list in Cens. Lit. increases the number to seventeen, by subscribing Ignoto to one of the additional poems, which was only marked so in the Index; and Ritson reduces it to fifteen, by stating that there were only ten (instead of eleven) in the first edition. * Preface to reprint of E. H. p. xxiv. The poems are Nos. 35, 36, Sign. H. (pp. 58-9, repr.) Both were in the Passionate Pilgrim (Collier's Shakesp. viii. 572, 577); but Shakespeare probably had as little to do with the one as with the other. "Shakespeare certainly wrote none of this wretched piece," says Mr. Dyce, speaking of that which Brydges (after Malone) gave up to him. Shakesp. Poems, p. 258. + This was observed by Ritson, p. 255. The copy marked S. E. D. is entitled, "The Sheepheards Dumpe" (Sign. N. 4.). As the other copy is rather different (Sign. A a. 4.) it has been thought that it was inserted to amend the former; but it was more likely to be a mere mistake; for the former copy is preferable. One strange misprint in the latter (" honors" for "horrors" in line 13) which runs through the repr. of E. H. and the Lee Priory, London, and Oxford eds. of Raleigh, is not in the original edition. Not in the writing of the author, as Brydges thought,-unless Davison was himself A. W., which is altogether unlikely. See Nicolas's ed. of Davison, pp. cxxv-viii.-It is not much more probable that Raleigh was A. W.; and therefore, as the List contains the first lines of Nos. ii, xiv, xviii, xxiii, and xxiv, those pieces must be at once excluded from Raleigh's Poems.-Ellis and Cayley had preceded Brydges in giving to Raleigh two of the five, viz. Nos. xiv. and xxiv.—In the Preface to his repr. of E. H., 1812, Brydges mentioned that Davison's Collection contained copies of them; but he was not then acquainted with the MS. which proves that A. W. wrote them, nor did he know of it when he inserted them in the |
