University of Virginia Library

The Melancholy Cavalier: A Study in Seventeenth-Century Plagiarism
Sarah Dickson

Some interesting problems arise for literary critic as well as bibliographer when an early work appears so applicable to later times that it is stolen, reprinted, and the real authorship of this later edition is concealed for three hundred years. That this can happen in the case of a very rare book is demonstrated by the discovery that The Melancholy Knight (1615) by Samuel Rowlands, of which the only known copy is in the Bodleian Library,[1] was reprinted in 1654 under the title of The Melancholy Cavalier by an author using the initials "J. C." as one of the attacks on the royalist party. Only two copies of this 1654 edition, printed for C. R., are known: the Thomason copy in the British Museum, and the Christie-Miller copy in the Arents Tobacco Collection of the New York Public Library.[2] The appropriation in 1654 of Rowlands' work indicates that poetic effusions of the Jacobean period were unfamiliar to the readers of the ephemeral productions of the Commonwealth versifiers. The appropriation was pertinent since the subject of the poem was not dated in 1654. A burlesque survey of a corrupt age was as timely in 1654 as in 1615.

Except for an eight-line introductory poem describing the new woodcut of the cavalier smoking his pipe on the 1654 title-page, a dedication to William Middleton, and the statement of authorship as "by J. C.," the differences between Rowlands' Melancholy Knight and The Melancholy Cavalier are small. The most significant occur in the introductory lines To the Reader and in The Argument where there have been nine revisions. A few of these are trifling literary tinkerings, a few designed to insert contemporary allusions,[3] and some to adjust the description to the homely attire of the cavalier from the foppish dress of Rowlands' knight.[4] The poem proper was made to order for the pirate's purpose, and hence it is in the main an exact reprint of Rowlands' verses, with only a few tidyings to alter knight to cavalier, as in 1654, "But what an Age is this brave Cavaliers / (I mean all you, that Melancholy fears)" (p. 2), which in 1615 had read, "But what an age is this my fellow Knights / I meane all you whom melancholy bites)". In addition there is the addition of a contemporary touch or two, as changing 1615's battles of Newport and Ostend to Edgehill and Colchester.

The identity of J. C. who thus stole Rowlands' poem in 1654 is the fascinating problem in The Melancholy Cavalier. There is the possibility, of course, that a stray copy of the Rowlands pamphlet fell into the hands of a publisher, who employed J. C. to touch up the poem for contemporary consumption. But it may also seem possible that in the interval between 1615 and 1654 some sheets of the 1615 edition had been in the hands of a printer, deriving from John Beale, who had printed the Knight, [5] and that this individual after Beale's death decided to turn a dishonest penny. I am inclined to conjecture that the unknown J. C. could have been the printer John Crouch, who wrote and published prolifically, mainly newssheets or "mercuries," first on the side of the royalists and then for the Commonwealth party. J. B. Williams refers to him as the author of a large number of counterfeits.[6] In 1650 his unlicensed press was finally swept away by the government and he was imprisoned. The experience must have been instructive, for after his release early in 1652 he changed sides and began producing periodicals which attacked the royalist party and were licensed by the government, chiefly "mercuries" written in prose with some interspersed verse. Williams (p. 146, n. 1) felt that "as a ballad writer Crouch possessed great skill and some of his verse is charming." It was in 1654, according to my conjecture, that in the midst of his journalistic activity he chose to issue The Melancholy Cavalier as an additional satire on the adherents of the royalist cause, printed "for C. R."[7]

No matter who J. C. may have been, his dedication is a masterpiece of cool impudence since it was written with the knowledge that he was offering what was in fact the work of another.

The Epistle Dedicatorie, to all Cordiall Lovers of Art and Ingenuity, more especially his much Honored Friend, Mr. William Middleton.[8]

Sir, As there is no greater Ingagement then Gratitude, so there is nothing more blacke and Monsterous (to a generous Spirit) then the Contrary; I presumed nothing

could be more proper to me to pay that debt I owe, or more acceptable to You, then this Piece of Fancy; which for Poetry, Witt and Invention, and variety of choice, Conceits may as well deserve Your Patronage, as I modestly presume, that Your candid Ingenuity will easily prompt you to accept thereof from him that is your reall Honorer, and Ever humbly Devoted, to your service, J. C.

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