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


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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


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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.

Notes

 
[1]

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.

[2]

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

[3]

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".

[4]

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.

[5]

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).

[6]

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.

[7]

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.

[8]

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.