University of Virginia Library

This copy was bequeathed in 1640 by Robert Burton, the author of The Anatomy of Melancholy, a singularly appropriate donor. A reprint was made in 1849 at the Beldornie Press, the issue limited to sixteen copies. It was also included in the 1880 Hunterian Club edition of Rowlands, vol. II, limited to two hundred copies. Both reprints are very scarce.

Listed as Wing C 63; unknown to Hazlitt and Lowndes. The book was not entered in the Stationers' Register and has never been reprinted.

As for example 1654 "Mens heads with strange Reports to fill; / Of Plottes and Actions in th'Hylands," for 1615 "Of what is done in forraigne lands".

For this purpose the last four lines of the "Argument" are rewritten in 1654: "His foot was spurning at a falling Crowne, / Which he esteem'd as his Tobacco smoake: / His Sword lay broake, his Cloaths did mending need / Only his Fancy did his wealth exceed." In 1615 these had read: "His hose the largest ever came to rowne, / And from his nostrils came such stinking smoake / Garters would make two ensignes for a neede / And shoo-ties that for circle did exceede." It is significant that the tobacco allusion is retained. Rowlands' satiric comments on tobacco were quite up-to-date in 1654 when many of the satires on the royalist adherents represented them as gaming, smoking, and drinking.

The Rowlands poem was entered to John Beale on 2 December 1614 (Arber, III, 558) but was not included among a transfer after his death of various titles to Humphrey Robinson on 16 March 1649 (Arber, I, 314).

A History of English Journalism to the Foundation of the Gazette (1908), p. 81. This Crouch is to be distinguished from another of the same name who was not active after 1640. See Plomer, Dictionary . . . 1641 to 1667 (1907), p. 58.

Still another possible candidate may be mentioned. This is a John Crouch who seems to have been a hanger-on of several noble families. He was excessively loyal to Charles II and prolific in eulogies of princes and other influential persons. Among his published works is a poem celebrating the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 (information from Joseph Hunter, Chorus Vatum [BM.Addit.Ms.24492], fol. 72). Although the dedication to William Middleton might perhaps fit him better than the humble printer, his loyalty to the crown does not suggest the author of an antiroyalist satire.

It seems probable that William Middleton was a member of the Middleton family of Belsay Castle in Northumberland (Richard Welford, Men of Mark 'twixt Tyne and Tweed [1895], p. 189). He succeeded his uncle in the estate in 1649. Both men had been nonconformists in religion, and the uncle had supported parliament against the king. William Middleton entertained and encouraged nonconformist ministers. His son married the grand-daughter of John Lambert, the parliamentary general. In 1654 he might have been receptive to the dedication of a poem satirizing the royal cause. Later, in spite of his views on politics and religion, he does not seem to have been in bad odor with Charles II, and he was created a baronet in 1662.