University of Virginia Library

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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  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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  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.