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L. Pearsall Smith.

Sir H. W. Life & Lellers, 1907.

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HE First and Second Parts of this Volume are reprinted from the fourth edition of Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, a collection of Sir Henry Wotton's

smaller pieces, which was published by Izaak Walton some years after their author's death: *-the one contains such poems as were known to be Wotton's own compositions; the other, some miscellaneous poems by various writers which were found among his papers. As several pieces contained in the Second Part have been ascribed to Sir Walter Raleigh without sufficient reason, it

The first edition of Rel. Wotton. was published, with Walton's Life of Wotton prefixed, in 1651, and was dedicated to Mary, Baroness Wotton (widow of Wotton's nephew, Thomas, second Lord Wotton of Marley), and her three daughters, Ladies Stanhope, Tufton, and Hales.-The second edition appeared in 1654, with the same Dedication.-The third, in which many additions and improvements were introduced, was published in 1672, and dedicated to Philip, Earl of Chesterfield, son of the Lady Stanhope named above.-In the fourth, which was published in 1685, the edition of 1672 was reprinted, page by page, without any material alteration; and a Collection of Wotton's early Letters to Lord Zonch (1591-3) was added at the end. The ed. of 1685 is always used in this volume, except where any other is specified.

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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.

Born 1868

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.

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