University of Virginia Library

Authorship of the Poem

There are four claimants to the poem, Ayton, Ralegh, Rudyerd, and Walden. The last two claims can be dismissed offhand. Rudyerd's claim cannot stand because the volume purporting to contain his and Pembroke's poems is in fact a carelessly edited anthology of seventeenth-century poems. It does contain poems by both Pembroke and Rudyerd, but the mere presence of any poem in this volume constitutes evidence of nothing but the taste of the editor. Walden's claim we may dismiss, since it is advanced by two fragmentary texts (Nos. 22-23).[3]

Nos. 1 and 2 give the poem to Ayton. Nine manuscripts give the poem to Ralegh; six of these have the preliminary stanza (Nos. 4-5, 10, 11, 13, 16), and three do not (Nos. 6, 7, and 9). The editor of Wit's Interpreter gives it to him in one instance, also (No. 16). Thirteen manuscripts (and two miscellanies) assign the poem to no author; of these, seven manuscripts have all eight stanzas of the second part of the poem (Nos. 3, 8, 12, 14, 15, 17, and 19), and six give partial texts (Nos. 21 and 24-28). The number

of texts in any category here is of little significance. Nos. 4-6 are the same text, as are Nos. 21-23, Nos. 24-25, and Nos. 26-27. Thus, Nos. 4-6 each give the poem to Ralegh, but their attribution has only the force of one, since they are texts of the same group; and No. 5 is actually a transcript of No. 4. This is the familiar principle of agreement in error, the formulation of which is due, I believe, to Dr. Johnson. If we were to settle the problems of authorship merely on the quantity of manuscript ascriptions to a given author, we should have to reassign half the poems of the early seventeenth century, and frequently in the face of superior evidence.

My argument is briefly this: (1) the preliminary stanza is probably by Ralegh; (2) it is not part of the longer poem, (3) but became confused with it for fairly obvious reasons such as similarity of subject; and (4) the poem beginning at "Wrong not . . ." is probably by Ayton.

The preliminary stanza cannot be considered part of the poem, regardless of one's opinion of the authorship of either part. It differs with respect to form in rime scheme and line length from the rest of the poem; and with respect to genre and the procedure that any given genre enforces, for it was conceived as an epigram, a concise expression of a general idea, and is complete in itself. An argument from form concerning any Renaissance poem should be convincing in itself; such a combination of rime schemes and line lengths is almost unknown in the Renaissance and is completely unparalleled by any other poem by Ayton or Ralegh. The argument from genre is at least as important: the second part is a discursive lyric, a song, written in a style which is diffuse in comparison with that of the preliminary stanza. The following text of the epigram is from MS. Rawl. poet. 160 (No. 11, above).

It has been suggested to me by Dr. C. F. Main that the two poems became confused as one through the habit of noting poems into commonplace books under topic headings, such as Woman's Love or, in this instance, Passions. The practice was sufficiently frequent for the suggestion to be convincing; such an explanation would account for the consistent attribution to Ralegh when the two parts are given and for the frequent omission of any author in those manuscripts which give only the second part. Furthermore, such an explanation seems to have occurred even in the seventeenth century, for some texts which give only the second part belong to groups which give both parts: No. 6 constitutes a group with 4 and 5, and No. 8 a group with 7 and 9. The only conclusion that can be reached is that the copyists of

Nos. 6 and 8 thought the two parts two distinct poems and separated them. If we assume for the moment that the second part is by Ayton, such an explanation helps to explain why some texts of the second part only are subscribed Ralegh.

By far the most weighty evidence, however, is the fact that Nos. 1 and 2 are compilations of Ayton's poetry alone, and that they are of the highest possible authority, barring a holograph, for the poems which they contain. They give very few doubtful poems, and the doubts about such poems as have been disputed have been raised by very late evidence, such as the ascriptions in Lawes's song books, or suppositious evidence, such as the ascription by modern editors of poems found in manuscripts associated with other authors such as Drummond or Fowler. Miss Latham argues that "neither of the manuscript books professing to contain his [Ayton's] poems has his authority" (op. cit., p. 116), but this is more of an argument against Ralegh than for, since none of the manuscripts of which we know is devoted to Ralegh's poetry alone. It should in fairness be said, however, that Miss Latham states the case for Ayton's authorship of the second part as fully and dispassionately as she states the case for Ralegh's authorship of the whole.

In conclusion, it must be said that the whole argument advanced here is suppositious itself, and in the extreme, but that it appears to account for more of the facts presented by the available texts than any other argument that has been presented. This is not to say that it is true nor that it will prove persuasive; an editor hopes that his arguments are true, but it is not for him to decide whether they are persuasive or not.