Part 22 (1/2)

Page 42, l. 23. _M'r Cowly_, an indication of Cowley's fame among his contemporaries. This was written in 1668, after the publication of _Paradise Lost_, but Clarendon ignores Milton.

l. 25. _to own much of his_, 'to ascribe much of this' _Life_ 1759.

Page 43, l. 2. _M'r Hyde_, Clarendon himself.

13.

A New Volume of Familiar Letters, Partly Philosophicall, Politicall, Historicall. The second Edition, with Additions. By James Howell, Esq.

London, 1650. (Letter XIII, pp. 25-6.)

This is the second volume of _Epistolae Ho-Elianae_, first published 1645 (vol. 1) and 1647 (vol. 2). The text is here printed from the copy of the second edition which Howell presented to Selden with an autograph dedication: 'Ex dono Authoris ... Opusculum hoc honoris ergo mitt.i.tur, Archiuis suis reponendum. 3 non: Maij 1652.' The volume now reposes in the Selden collection in the Bodleian library. The second edition of this letter differs from the first in the insertion of the bracketed words, ll. 22, 23, and the date.

The authenticity of the letters as a whole is discussed in Joseph Jacob's edition, 1890, pp. lxxi ff. This was probably not a real letter written to his correspondent at the given date. But whenever, and in whatever circ.u.mstances, Howell wrote it, the value of the picture it gives us of Ben Jonson is not impaired.

PAGE 43, l. 9. _Sir Tho. Hawk_. Sir Thomas Hawkins, translator of Horace's _Odes and Epodes_, 1625; hence 'your' Horace, p. 44, l. 4.

l. 17. _T. Ca._ Thomas Carew, the poet, one of the 'Tribe of Ben'.

PAGE 44, l. 6. _Iamque opus_, Ovid, _Metam._ xv. 871; cf. p. 202, l. 13. l. 8. _Exegi monumentum_, Horace, _Od._ iii. 30. i. l. 10. _O fortunatam_, preserved in Quintilian, _Inst. Orat._ ix. 4. 41 and xi.

I. 24, and in Juvenal, _Sat._ x. 122.

14.

This remarkable portrait of a country gentleman of the old school is from the 'Fragment of Autobiography', written by the first Earl of Shaftesbury (see Nos. 68, 69) towards the end of his life. The ma.n.u.script is among the Shaftesbury papers in the Public Record Office, but at present (1918) has been temporarily withdrawn for greater safety, and is not available for reference. The text is therefore taken from the modernized version in W.D. Christie's _Memoirs of Shaftesbury_, 1859, pp. 22-5, and _Life of Shaftesbury_, 1871, vol. i, appendix i, pp. xv-xvii.

The character was published in Leonard Howard's _Collection of Letters, from the Original Ma.n.u.scripts_, 1753, pp. 152-5, and was reprinted in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ for April 1754, pp. 160-1, and again in _The Connoisseur_, No. 81, August 14, 1755. _The Gentleman's Magazine_ (1754, p. 215) is responsible for the error that it is to be found in Peck's _Desiderata Curiosa_.

Hastings was Shaftesbury's neighbour in Dorsets.h.i.+re. A full-length portrait of him in his old age, clad in green cloth and holding a pike-staff in his right hand, is at St. Giles, the seat of the Shaftesbury family. It is reproduced in Hutchins's _History of Dorset_, ed. 1868, vol. iii, p. 152.

PAGE 44, ll. 24-26. He was the second son of George fourth Earl of Huntingdon. Shaftesbury is describing his early a.s.sociates after his marriage in 1639: 'The eastern part of Dorsets.h.i.+re had a bowling-green at Hanley, where the gentlemen went constantly once a week, though neither the green nor accommodation was inviting, yet it was well placed for to continue the correspondence of the gentry of those parts. Thither resorted Mr. Hastings of Woodland,' &c.

Page 47, l. 12. '_my part lies therein-a_.' As was pointed out by E.F.

Rimbault in _Notes and Queries_, 1859, Second Series, vol. vii, p.

323, this is part of an old catch printed with the music in _Pammelia.

Musicks Miscellanie. Or, Mixed Varietie of Pleasant Roundelayes, and delightfull Catches_, 1609:

There lies a pudding in the fire, and my parte lies therein a: whome should I call in, O thy good fellowes and mine a.

_Pammelia_, 'the earliest collection of rounds, catches, and canons printed in England', was brought out by Thomas Ravenscroft. Another edition appeared in 1618.

15.

Clarendon, MS. Life, pp. 383-4; _History_, Bk. XI, ed. 1704, vol. iii, pp. 197-9; ed. Macray, vol. iv, pp. 488-92.

The sense of Fate overhangs the portrait in which Clarendon paints for posterity the private virtues of his unhappy master. The easy dignity of the style adapts itself to the grave subject. This is one of Clarendon's greatest pa.s.sages. It was written twenty years after Charles's death, but Time had not dulled his feelings. 'But ther shall be only incerted the shorte character of his person, as it was found in the papers of that person whose life is heare described, who was so nerely trusted by him, and who had the greatest love for his person, and the greatest reverence for his memory, that any faythfull servant could exspresse.' So he wrote at first in the account of his own life.

On transferring the pa.s.sage to the _History_ he subst.i.tuted the more impersonal sentence (p. 48, l. 27--p. 49, l. 5) which the general character of the _History_ demanded.

Page 48, l. 15. _our blessed Savyour_. Compare 'The Martyrdom of King Charls I. or His Conformity with Christ in his Sufferings. In a Sermon preached at Bredah, Before his Sacred Majesty King Charls The Second, And the Princess of Orange. By the Bishop of Downe. Printed at the Hage 1649, and reprinted at London ... 1660'. Clarendon probably heard this sermon.

l. 21. _have bene so much_, subst.i.tuted in MS. for 'fitt to be more'.