University of Virginia Library

An Editorial Experiment: Suckling's A Sessions of the Poets
by
L. A. Beaurline [*]

The usual method of editing seventeenth-century poems has been to choose the earliest printed edition as a copy-text and to depart from it only when that printed text is manifestly corrupt. Variant manuscripts are relegated to the notes or, if too radically variant, to the appendix. Thus Grierson put his faith in the 1633 edition of Donne's poems; Rhodes Dunlap virtually reprinted Carew's 1640 edition; F. E. Hutchinson based his text on Herbert's 1633 edition, even though he had access to a manuscript fair copy containing the licence to print and another manuscript seen and corrected by the author; L. C. Martin used Herrick's Hesperides (1648); and G. Moore Smith followed Lord Herbert's Occasional Poems (1665) in preference to a manuscript corrected by the author. Such reverence for printed texts is hardly justified by the circumstances, for in most instances the authors were dead before publication, and the character of copy that lay behind the book is obscure. We know little about how or where the publisher got his poems and less about the textual history of the extant manuscripts. Only Helen Gardner has seriously questioned the relative value of various witnesses for a poetical text of the period. In her edition of Donne's The Divine Poems (1952), after an elaborate analysis and construction of manuscript trees, she found reason to base her text on the 1633 edition, although she did not follow it slavishly.

It is only sensible that, when a number of independent manuscripts survive alongside a printed edition, an editor ought to take them all seriously until he has reason to value them otherwise, and when analysis suggests that one witness stands closest to an author's original, whether it be print or manuscript, that witness should be the basis of the edition. Such a procedure has difficulties when applied to poems.

For a single poem is usually too short to yield a sizeable number of variants for analysis, publishers want a uniform texture of accidentals for all poems, and editors do not have confidence in the old method of recension. The doubts about traditional textual analysis reached a climax when George Kane roundly challenged the method of recension, in his edition of the A version of Piers Plowman (1960), and there is a good deal of skepticism about Vinton Dearing's large claims in his Manual of Textual Analysis (1959). Nevertheless the outlines of a more reliable procedure are visible in W. W. Greg's A Calculus of Variants (1927), combined with Dearing's early chapters, especially his remarks on the ambiguity of distributional formulas.

As an example of what can be done with multiple texts of poems, I shall suggest that at least two manuscripts of "The Witts," better known under the title "A Sessions of the Poets," probably stand closer to the author's papers than any of the printed editions, and consequently that a critical editor should base his text of this poem on a manuscript and treat the printed versions in the same way he would the other less authoritative manuscripts. If my reasoning is correct, it has serious consequences for the editorial method applied to Donne, Herbert, Carew, Suckling, Lord Herbert, and perhaps other poets of the time. Need scholars use such ingenuity to defend readings in printed texts against a number of independent manuscripts? Should an editor base his text on the printed version "for the sake of uniformity" rather than depart to a manuscript for this or that poem?

"A sessions was held the other day" exists in seven manuscripts and eight printed editions which appeared before 1700. The analysis of them is in five steps: 1) brief description of each witness with relevant bibliographical evidence, 2) the elimination of the obviously derivative states, on textual and bibliographical evidence, 3) a distributional study of the type two variants, 4) a directional study of the type one and type two variants, 5) construction of a genealogical tree. The reason for such a rigorous, step by step method, first brought forward by Archibald Hill in "Postulates for the Distributional Study of Texts," Studies in Bibliography, III (1950), 63-96, is partly to avoid confusion but more to avoid bringing literary assumptions into the study before bibliographical, statistical and other forms of objective evidence have been exhausted. Otherwise we may beg the question by assuming that we know what the corruptions are before we have established the lines of transmission.[1]

I
A Description of the Witnesses

Bodleian MS Malone 13 (M)

• A small poetical miscellany of the late 1630's, pp. 1-91, 253-258, 291-311 written in a large Italian hand, mixed with a few secretary forms. The left margin is ruled with pencil, and the general appearance is neat and professional. It contains verses by Sidney Godolphin, Davenant, Carew, William Murray, Waller, and Faulkland, all of whom are mentioned in Suckling's poem, pp. 31-35. Dates in the MS. are of the 1620's and 1630's, the latest of which is May 10, 1638.

Harvard MS Eng. 703 (Ha)

• A small miscellany, 81 leaves in several hands, containing poems by Jonson, Godolphin, Waller, Edward Herbert, and Carew. The dates begin at 1624 (f. 1) and proceed in approximate order, 1625 (f. 27v), 1629 (f. 40), 1639 (f. 66v), 1641 (f. 75v), 1638 (f. 75v), and 1641 (f. 76v). Suckling's poem appears among the later group, ff. 70-72, in the same hand as ff. 43-49, 51-55, and 73-75.

Huntington Library MS HM 198 (Hn)

• A large collection of early seventeenth-century poems and letters. Part I contains 207 numbered pages, all written in the same small, mixed hand, except for some Elizabethan poems attached to blank and unnumbered pages at the beginning. Most of the authors were active before 1630, and most of the allusions are to the 1620's or before. The thirties are alluded to in the satire on Suckling's hundred horse. The poem falls on pp. 201-203 of part I. It has been previously noted by P. H. Gray in "Suckling's A Sessions of the Poets as a Ballad: Boccalini's 'Influence' Examined," SP, VI (1939), 60-69, and Herbert Berry, Sir John Suckling's Poems and Letters from Manuscript, "University of Western Ontario Studies in the Humanities," No. 1 (1960), pp. 33-47.

Bodleian MS Eng. Poet. c. 53 (E)

• A poetical miscellany, 23 leaves in various hands, with poems concerning the late 1630's. There are several satires on Suckling's Aglaura (printed 1638) and on his hundred horse. Leaves 18-19, where "A Sessions" is found, were once separate from the collection, as witnessed by the paper and its

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  46

  
  
  
  creases. The hand is very small, a mixture of Italian and secretary forms.[2]

Sackville (Knole) MS U 269 F 36 (S)

• A single sheet folded once to provide two leaves. The poem is on ff. 1-2. On f. 2v is an inscription in the hand of Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex (1575-1645), the uncle of the poet: "Rymes / Of som Poetts / Of som Wittes / About London / Septembr 1637." The document shows that it once was folded into a small square suitable for enclosing with a letter. The handwriting of the poem has been identified as probably that of John Langley, Middlesex's estate agent at Melcot.[3]

Cornell University Library MS E 7003 (C)

• A pretty piece of 17th-century handwriting in mixed forms, on one sheet folded once. The poem is on ff. 1-2.

New York Public Library MS "Suckling Collection" (N)

• Three leaves, once a part of a larger volume, watermarked "Smith & Alnutt 1822," in an 18th or early 19th-century hand.[4] This manuscript is clearly a copy of the Huntington MS, which it follows closely; where Hn has corrected its errors, N gives the corrected reading; where Hn makes errors, N follows, as at line 37 Hn misreads modest he for modestly. At the end of N is the note: "The above is transcribed from an old M.S. probably contemporary with the first circulation of the poem" and a reference to line 69-72, which the copyist found omitted from "Chalmer's edition of the English poets," subscribed "JH", which may be James Halliwell-Phillipps (1820-1889).

Fragmenta Aurea, 1646 (46)

• The first collection of Suckling's work, printed for Humphrey Moseley and "published by a Friend to perpetuate his memory," printed "by his owne Copies." (See Greg's Bibliography of the English Printed Drama, III, 1130-1131.) Although Moseley claims that the printer's copy was holograph, there was a tradition reported by Elijah Fenton in The Works of Edmund Waller Esqr (1729), p. xix, that "A small number of Suckling's Plays were printed for himself, to present to the Quality when they were Acted at Court; but, his Poems and Letters were published by his friend the Earl of Denbigh, after his death; from such imperfect copies as his Lordship could hastily collect: therefore it is not strange if many of them still retain their

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  47

  
  
  
  original corruption."[5] Another kind of evidence weakens Moseley's claim for authorial copy. The compositor of the section containing the poems was apparently the same workman in Ruth Raworth's printing house who set type for parts of Davila's History of the Civill Wars in France (1647), section VI of the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio (1647), and all of the Poems of Mr. John Milton (1645). Although I shall describe his work more fully at another time, I can report that he appears to have been a careful and accurate compositor, who changed his copy very little except to add commas and alter spelling. He left behind evidence of his work by a tendency to alter the suffixes -all, ell, -ill, and -ull to -al, -el, -il, and -ul; to change only to onely, -nesse to -nes; wee, yee, and hee to we, ye, and he; -ie to -y; doe, goe, and soe to do, go, and so; and find, mind, and kind to finde, minde, and kinde. Otherwise he drops all terminal e's, changes -es's to -s's, and in Milton's Poems especially, he will even drop the e from come and some. He follows copy for either agen/again Ile/I'll, and occasionally he allows his copy to influence him to deviate from his distinctive habits. Consequently it is possible to discern that certain spellings were derived from his copy when the compositor deviates from his normal practice. For instance, if -all, only, -nesse, or goe appear in his portion of a text, unless he seems to be justifying a line of prose, those spellings came from his copy.

  Such evidence is important for "A Sessions" because a number of spellings in it are not normal for the compositor: bigge, easie, publiquely, mind, and than (for then in more then any man). Once he uses agen and three times again. All of these were apparently in the copy from which he set type. However, in his extant letters,[6] Suckling did not spell bigge, agen or than in that fashion. Therefore the copy must not have been holograph.

Fragmenta Aurea, 1648 (48)

• A reprint of 1646 with twenty alterations in "A Sessions" that could not have been made without reference to a manuscript. Fragmenta Aurea 1658 reprinted 1646; 1672 (?) reprinted 1648; 1694-96 reprinted 1658.

Merry Drollery, [1661?], (61)

• A large collection of ballads, catches, and epigrams that often had been separately in print before, reprinted in 1670, 1691 (and in 1875 by J. W. Ebsworth). On pages 72-77 is "A Sessions of wit," whose spellings, punctuation, and substantive readings are virtually identical with the text of 48, except for the title, the lack of indentations of transitional words between stanzas, and a few compositorial errors.

II
A Distributional Study of the Variants

Texts N and 61 can be eliminated from the analysis immediately as derivative versions which reproduce readings that are peculiar to their extant ancestors, Hn and 48 respectively. In the same fashion we can ignore all the other descendants of 46 and 48, as mere reprints, each of which successively introduces more corruption. And 48 itself is a derivative of 46 even though 48 contains certain new readings which cannot be the work of a mere compositor. The corrections and alterations in 48 have come from some other manuscript traditions, separate from the MS. behind 46. Consequently 48 must be treated as a contaminated or mixed text, part derivative and part substantive. Since it is not strictly a collateral text, descending from an ancestor common to the other witnesses, we must for the moment set it aside.

This leaves M, Ha, S, C, Hn, E, and 46 for distributional study. Below is a table of substantive variants. The terms type 1 and type 2 have come from Greg: type 1 is the occurrence of a reading in one text against all the others; type 2 is the agreement of at least two texts against at least two of the others. Among the type 2 variants I have not tabulated elisions, minor omissions, expansions, punctuation, or spellings of proper names, because they could easily have arisen independently.

A Table of Variants in "The Wittis"

                                             

Text	type 1	type 2 with one	type 2 with two	shared with one MS in minority	no. of times in majority
M	17	Ha	1			HnC	1	Ha	2			19
						HaS	1	S	2
						SC	1	C	2
								Hn	1
Ha	17	M	1	S	1	46E	1	M	1	E	2	17
		Hn	1			CHn	1	C	2	Hn	2
		E	1			SC	1	S	2	46	1
Hn	20	E	4			E46	5	E	9	M	1	10
		Ha	1			CHa	1	46	6	S	1
		S	1			MC	1	Ha	2
		46	1					C	2
E	19	Hn	4			Hn46	5	Hn	9	Ha	2	11
		Ha	1			Ha46	1	46	6
46	30	S	1			HnE	5	E	6	Ha	1	16
		Hn	1			HaE	1	Hn	6	S	1
S	70	C	5			MHa	1	C	5	46	1	12
		Hn	1			MC	1	M	2	Ha	1
		46	1					Hn	1
C	29	S	5			MS	1	S	6	Ha	1	13
						HnM	1	Hn	2
						HnHa	1	M	2
Totals	181									Total type	2	23

This kind of statistical study, of course, does not offer ironclad proof, but it is helpful as a preliminary analysis, strictly objective, pointing to some probable conclusions. For instance, the first column of the chart shows that all the texts are terminal, as we should expect, since the derivative ones have been eliminated. The Sackville MS. has an unusual number of type 1 variants, so many as to suggest that it is another version (i.e. an early draft or later revision) or a very corrupt transcription. But an inspection of S's type 2 variants immediately cancels out the former hypothesis, because S is not likely to be another version in another manuscript tradition and at the same time to have type 2 variants that distribute along with the other six texts. How could it be closely associated with C, apparently not another version, and still be a revision or early draft, unless we suppose that the author wrote his revisions on an already derivative manuscript and S is a descendant of it? Therefore, I assume that S is collateral or virtually so with the other texts; and if that is true, S is very corrupt. A number of individual readings in S confirm this hypothesis (if I may depart from a rigidly statistical analysis for this point), because they are regularly "improvements" of an especially obvious sort: smoothing out the verse, simplifying the grammar, and trivializing the thought.

The last example is indicative of S's literal adherence to historical fact. Technically Thomas Carew was indeed Sewer to the King and not Cupbearer, but in the court of Apollo where a god is deciding who should wear the crown of laurel, cup-bearer is more appropriate, for we hear of a cup-bearer to the gods, but not a Sewer. Nor would a scribe reading Sewers be likely to change it to Cup-bearers. On the other hand such a change could have been made by the author, but since the other readings in S appear to be sophistications rather than "original" states, this one instance is not enough to establish S as an early version.

The type 2 variants in the chart imply that certain manuscripts are probably related more closely than others: SC against the others, EHn against the others, and 46EHn against the others. Neither M nor Ha is closely identified with any single manuscript or group of manuscripts, if we assume that four or more exclusive readings suggest a close relationship. If this seems like a small number, we must remember that only twenty-three type 2 variants are suitable for the analysis. The only variants considered in this class are those that could not have easily arisen independently. Of course some anomailes exist, readings that are common to SHn, or HaE in one instance alone. These are to be expected, particularly with poems which were memorized, set to music, and passed around in London society. Consequently the lines of descent of a given manuscript may be considerably more tangled than we suppose; however there simply is not enough statistical evidence for a hundred line poem such as this on which to construct a more complicated hypothesis. Therefore a critic must make whatever distributional hypothesis is warranted by the majority of the evidence. The formula SC: M: Ha[46(HnE)] best expresses the groupings of type 2 variants. Diagramatically, the formula looks like this:

Several of the complex variants confirm this formula. For instance, these patterns occur:

• SC:MHa:46Hn:E (grouping of stanzas and location of transitions)
• SCM:Ha46E:Hn (placing lines 93-94)
• C:SMHa:Hn46E (line 53)

These suggest that Hn46E are separate from HaM and SC, and yet Ha, when it is separate from M, is associated with HnE46. Neither Hn nor E ever appears alone with 46 against the other; HnE appear alone four times and HnE46 five times.

But the formula is ambiguous, for if the texts are truly collateral the diagrams could be any of the following:

And if the witnesses are not collateral, we can have combinations such as:

III
A Directional Study of the Variants

To resolve these ambiguities, we must use other kinds of evidence. The dates on the manuscripts put all of them before 1646, and S is the only one with a definite date, September 1637, one month after the poem was written. But even there Cranfield's note indicates that manuscripts were circulating "about London" in September of that year. Furthermore S itself has the signs of a corrupt version; thus an early date means little. As is commonly known in manuscript study, a late manuscript can easily have been copied from an authoritative early one, whereas an early manuscript can be very corrupt, with many intermediaries between it and the archetype. A similar difficulty comes with study of the accidentals of the witnesses. We can seldom be sure that a scribe did or did not use a holograph manuscript as his copy, for scribes stamp a manuscript with their own habits of spelling and punctuation even more distinctly than compositors of printed books. And again, we can not be sure that another manuscript did not intervene between the scribal copy and the archetype. For simplicity we assume that one has not. Although Suckling's habits of spelling are known from his autograph letters, distinctive authorial spellings do not bleed through the work of these scribes. In the case of the printed edition of 1646, a kind of negative proof has been made, above, to show that authorial papers were not used as copy for the poem.

One other kind of evidence remains: the inherent nature of the variants themselves, the directional variants. We are looking for signs of originality and derivation so as to decide which witnesses stand closer to the archetype than the others. If original readings occur in more than one manuscript, they must descend independently from the archetype, but if original readings appear in only one witness, the descent of the manuscripts is radically altered (as in diagrams D, E, and F). The signs of an original reading or directional change, listed by Dearing, vary considerably in their reliability. In the discussion above, S has been shown to be more sophisticated, simplified, and smoothed out than the others: this is one of the best kinds of proof of a derivative text. A misreading that can go only one way is another strong proof. Also the reading that makes sense rather than nonsense is likely to be more original, but this kind is often reversible, for a scribe may make sense out of a corruption in his archetype. On the other hand, a more difficult reading is not necessarily the more original; nor is the "better" reading or more poetic reading necessarily more original.

A number of directional variants establish M and Ha as most probably closer to the archetype than any of the other witnesses. The strongest case can be made for the format of the stanzas, in conjunction with significant omissions that would not have arisen unless the archetype were arranged in the pattern of the Malone and the Harvard manuscripts. These manuscripts separate the four-line stanzas by spaces, and they link pairs of stanzas by a system of monosyllabic words suspended between them. S and C group

the stanzas in eight lines, C indenting the last four lines of each octave, while neither uses the suspended words between. At the other extreme, E uses four-line stanzas without suspended words, and does not pair any of the stanzas. In placing the monosyllables, Hn and 46 seven times agree with MHa and the other eight times with E; but 46 and Hn do not always suspend the monosyllable between the same pairs of stanzas. In other words, 46 suspends in the middle of octaves 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 13, while Ha suspends in octaves 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. The sense of the poem clearly falls into eight-line units, so that either SC or MHa is likely to have been in the author's manuscript. If we assume that Suckling was careless with such details and wrote his original as we see E, it does not seem probable that a scribe would invent such an unusual scheme as in MHa, and we cannot easily explain the regular presence of the linking words at the beginning of the fifth line of each octave.

Next assume that Suckling started to write the verses with the suspended words but he dropped the habit about halfway through where Hn or 46 leave off. It is possible that a scribe who liked consistency would have finished out the scheme, to produce the format of M and Ha. This possibility is demonstrated by the mistaken addition of a transitional word between lines 56 and 57 in Ha. However the facts contradict such an hypothesis, for at line 53 and 107 all the texts except 46 retain the transitional word, in either the suspended position or as the first word of a line. Why should such omissions occur in 46 at these points, unless an ancestor of 46 had the words in their suspended positions and they were overlooked by the copyist? A similar omission arose independently in 46, M, and Hn at line 93, where only two lines of a stanza survive. C and E read Then as the first word of the line, S reads Next, and Ha suspends Then between the stanzas. The distributional study showed that M is not closely related to 46Hn, nor are C and E and Ha closely related. Therefore the archetype must have read Then and the word must have been suspended between the stanzas, or else it could not have been so easily overlooked by M, Hn, and 46.

The assumption that SC have the original format is destroyed by the same kind of evidence, for both of them omit And at line 21, and C omits But at line 29. By elimination, the only hypothesis which fits the evidence is that M and Ha have the original format. Therefore, we must conclude that the repeated copying of the poem caused the gradual omission or rearrangement of the suspended words, a theory which is nicely confirmed by the way the compositor of Merry Drollery, 1661, dropped out or realigned suspensions which he found in his copy of 1648, making the format of the stanzas like that in E.

The title contains another directional variant, for "The Witts" is probably the original title of the poem that was sung before the King in New Forest, in August 1637. George Garrard, in a letter to Thomas Wentworth,

called it "a Ballad made of the Wits,"[8] and Lionel Cranfield wrote on the back of his copy (S), "Of som Poetts / Of som Wittes." Only 46 has "A Sessions of the Poets"; ESC have no title; and M, Ha, and Hn have "The Witts." The word sessions probably crept into 46's title from the first line, "A Sessions was held the other day," although it does seem peculiar that 46, along with S, reads Session in the first line and Sessions in the title.

Other directional changes depend upon the plain sense of some readings over others. Thus 46 appears to be corrupt in

instead of the majority reading Hn, E, and 46 are probably corrupt at line 53, because "Sullenly" is a mood appropriate to the disappointed poet, and "Suddenly" was probably introduced because the scribe saw that Will Barkeley had smiled a few lines before. C changed Sullenly to Silently, possibly for the same reason.

A peculiar substantive change at line 88 may have occurred because of a misreading.

M follows neither, with the word silene. Silent may be the original reading because it involves more complicated grammar; but did M mean to put a t instead of an e or did his copy read silence and he left out the c? It cannot be determined either way. The probabilities favor silent as the harder reading.

A similar puzzle is at line 29.

Reading (a) is most likely original because M and Hn have been shown to be independent witnesses (in the distributional study above), and it seems unlikely that two scribes would have added the same word soe at the same point, but it is possible for Ha46E to have independently dropped the word in order to improve the meter. And (c) is derivative because it appears to be another attempt to make iambic meter of the basically anapestic rhythm.[10]

A few errors can be explained as transpositions or slips of the eye over similar words in nearby text.

The second of the readings at line 25 may be original because the word there can be seen in exactly the same place in the line beginning the following stanza. Here But has been retained in the eye of the compositor of 46, substituted for and in the second line, as it reads in Σ. At line 42, the scribe of Ha wrote "in travelling France" rather than "travelling in France" (Σ). Similar errors are: In the last example, (a) is probably derivative because one and attracted the other. It is probable that (c) is more original than (b) because of its occurrence in independent witnesses MHaSC. Thus (b) is a transposition. However, this argument hangs on the assumption that MHaSC do not derive from the same faulty ancestor. Considering this variant in isolation. we could just as reasonably conclude that the ancestor of HnE46 read as in (b) and had the original reading. But in the light of all the previous evidence, (c) is more probably original.

In the examples of directional variation, M and Ha most frequently have original readings, and neither SC alone nor 46HnE alone have original readings; only when they agree with M or Ha do they contain such variants. An editor puts special weight on the variants of format of the poem, because there the argument for original readings is irreversible. Therefore M and Ha stand closer to the archetype, and we can resolve some of the ambiguities of the distributional formula. Trees (D), (E), and (F) are out of the question, for no manuscript has a significant number of original readings among its type 1 variants. Trees (B) and (C) are not likely to be right because M and Ha do not have a prominent enough position in them, and CS, which have no original readings alone, are given undue weight. Therefore tree (A) is the best.

Such a tree surely relegates the printed text (46) to an inferior position; but that does not solve all the preliminary problems of an editor, because it is still uncertain which manuscript, M or Ha, has the shorter line of transmission. In other words, which manuscript should be the copy-text for a critical edition? This is a difficult choice, for both seem equally distant from the archetype. Greg has shown that the copy-text is most important for the texture of its accidentals, and an editor should choose the one that offers the best chance of bearing some of the details of the author's manuscript. In our case, neither M nor Ha shows any significant signs of authorial copy immediately behind the scribal transcription. The scribe of M is amazingly uniform in details of spelling and punctuation whether he is copying Suckling or Waller or Godolphin's poems, and the text of "The Witts" shows no deviation from his established patterns. Ha is a little more flexible in his practice, but when he does deviate from his habits while transcribing "The Witts," he moves farther than ever from Suckling's spelling. Suckling writes doe, goe, so, no; whereas the scribe of Ha writes doe, goe, soe and noe more frequently in this poem than elsewhere. M seems to have more examples of Suckling's favorite past participate ending -nd, -vd, -rd, -md, -sd, and more examples of parenthesis in exclamations, direct address, and asides; however the scribe does the same thing in the rest of M. Both M and Ha have a small number of type 1 variants and both appear many times among the "shared" readings on the distributional chart. Thus it seems like a toss-up between the two. The only substantial difference between them is that M appears to be more of a professional job, neater, less prone to literal errors, more regularly punctuated, and generally cleaned up; while Ha is more naive, prone to simple omissions and misreadings, messy, and unprofessional. An editor of a critical text would surely want to favor readings from Ha, if for no other reason than the obviousness of its errors. As it has been often observed, all other things being equal, a messy and careless copy is less likely to have deliberate improvements by a scribe than a highly professional transcript. But the final decision rests with the accidentals: which of the two agrees more with Suckling's known habits? Again Ha has an advantage, by a ratio of forty-eight to twenty-one; therefore Ha is the most suitable basis for an edition.

Before the final editing, we must ask about the mixed text of the poem in Fragmenta Aurea 1648. Whence did its twenty-two corrections come? None of the six type 1 variants appear to be original, and some are clearly corrupt; for instance, hyde bound for hard bound (35) and what made for how came (57). Once it agrees with Ha alone: betwixt for 'twixt (72), an insignificant expansion. Once it agrees with HnE alone, cheared for cleared (115); and twice with S, himself scarce for himself hardly (56) and to any for any (118). The other twelve variants correct type 1 readings in 46, including the stanza omitted in 46, and they bring the text into general agreement with the manuscripts. Consequently the corrections may have

come from a comparison of 46 with a manuscript closely related to S, itself possibly conflated with HnE. Another possibility is that 46 was compared against two manuscripts, one similar to S and one to HnE. There is not enough evidence for either case. At any rate, the text of 48 is considerably better than 46, but one of the ironies of textual transmission is that 48 was reprinted only in the surreptitious edition of 1672(?) and in Merry Drollery 1661. Whereas the corruptions of 46 were perpetuated in Suckling's works of 1658, 1694-96, 1709, 1766, 1770, and 1836. Nor were the mistakes rectified by W. C. Hazlitt's editions of 1874 and 1892, nor in A. H. Thompson's "standard" edition of 1910, which whimsically followed 1646 for a while, then 1648, and once picked up the erroneous reading hide bound (35) from 1648. Hazlitt and Thompson did not even notice that 48 supplied the missing stanza. The only modern edition which contains a substantial number of the corrections of 48 is that by R. G. Howarth in Minor Poets of the Seventeenth Century (1931). But since Professor Howarth was unfamiliar with the manuscripts, he could not know the importance of seven variants in 48, nor could he know of the twenty-six corruptions in both 46 and 48.

In the little edition below, I have followed Ha except where a possibly better reading could be found in other witnesses (if I could explain how Ha fell in error). I have silently modernized u, v, i, j, and long s; expanded abbreviations, italicized proper names, and supplied capital letters at the beginning of lines. In the notes I have recorded only the substantive and semi-substantive variants from sources that could descend directly from the archetype, readings in Ha, M, the ancestor of CS, and the ancestor of 46EHn.[11] Clearly derivative readings from witnesses placed lower on the tree are omitted; thus the reader will not find type 1 variants from C, S, 46, 48, Hn, and E, because such a reading was apparently introduced by a copyist. And although I have altered the accidentals at several points, I have left a complete record of these changes for a full-dress critical edition.

THE WITTS

Notes