University of Virginia Library

III. Francis Kirkman and the Surreptitious Reprint of the Third Edition (1661?)

It seems probable that this reprint is the one W. C. Hazlitt first refers to in his edition of The Poems, Plays and Other Remains of Sir John Suckling (1874), I, lxx, as

And perhaps in his Collections and Notes 1867-1876 published two years later (p. 411) he means to refer to the same reprint when he writes that But one cannot be certain, because Hazlitt's comments are ambiguous. There is now no known "copy in the British Museum" of this surreptitious reprint, although there is a copy of the genuine Fragmenta Aurea, 1658 (shelf-mark 643.c.70), and one of the surreptitious reprint of (1672?) (shelf-mark 1471.aa.22), each of which "wants the print" — and there is a detached print of the copy of Marshall's engraving in the Department of Prints and Drawings. "This" may be the portrait, not the book, and "The copy" may be a genuine edition, not a surreptitious. Many a book saluted Hazlitt's hand.

Greg recognized and described his "'1658'" as "a reprint, apparently, of the edition of 1658, the only known copy of which wants all before N1," and, as he went on to note of this fragment in the Bodleian Library (shelf-mark M.adds.37.f.12), "there is, indeed, little in the typography to distinguish it from the genuine edition" (Bibliography, III, 1134). We have been able to identify as such a complete copy of this reprint in the Houghton Library (shelf-mark EC.Su185.646fc), and can therefore add some additional facts and inferences to the ones given by Greg. The complete copy is easily differeniated from the genuine edition of 1658 by the use of different ornaments throughout and, among other details, by substantive differences on the general title-page and in the catchwords of the preliminaries. Moseley's genuine edition reads, above the imprint, "Printed by his own Copies.", in which phrase the reprint reads "Copy.", and where the genuine edition has the catchwords "posthume" and "Stock," on sigg. A2r and A2v, respectively, the reprint has "nor" and "go", for example. Given in the form of Greg's Bibliography, a description of the general title-page and make-up of the reprint as it appears in the two known copies should be as follows:

• (1661?) [within double rules] FRAGMENTA AUREA: ∣ A ∣ COLLECTION ∣ OF ALL ∣ The Incomparable Peices, ∣ WRITTEN BY ∣ Sir JOHN SUCKLING. ∣ AND ∣ Publiſhed by a FRIEND to perpetuate ∣ his Memory ∣ The Third Edition, with fome ∣ New Additionals. ∣ Printed by his own Copy. ∣ LONDON, ∣ Printed for Humphrey Moseley at the Prince's Arms ∣ in St. Paul's Churchyard. 1658. Collation: 80, π1 A-X8 [possibly but not probably leaving R3 S3 T4 unsigned: both known copies severely cropped], 169 leaves, paged (A5) 9-135 [misprinting 59 as 56 and 133 as 134, and omitting 80-89], (I3v) 8-64 [misprinting 45 as 54 and 50 as 51], (N1-S8 unpaged), (T1) 145-190 [misprinting 157 as 147].
• Engraved portrait (a copy of Marshall's, omitting "W. Marshall fecit"), facing title-page. General title [&c. as in 1658].

Besides having C3, D3, H3, R3, and (UV)3 unsigned, the genuine edition of 1658 contains a great many errors in pagination, especially on sigg. N1-S8, which are unpaged in the surreptitious reprint perhaps because of the multiple confusion in the original. On the evidence of ornaments, T. Johnson, the printer who performed similar unlawful offices for Francis Kirkman around 1661, would seem to have performed yet one more of such for the same pirate by surreptitiously printing this spurious edition — technically the fourth of the editions — of Fragmenta Aurea, 1658. The large ornament showing dogs licking a man's face (sig. S6) is found in

Kirkman's piracies of Beaumont and Fletcher's The Elder Brother dated "1637" (Greg 515c) and Kirkman's The Wits: or Sport upon Sport printed for Henry Marsh, 1662. The ornamental "B" (sig. O5) recurs in the piracies of The Elder Brother and A King and No King, 1661.[3] Aside from its interest as a hitherto anonymous piracy that may now take a named place in the colorful and sometimes darkling history of printing, Fragmenta Aurea (1661?) gives further evidence of the strong seventeenth-century interest in Suckling's works that was renewed at the Restoration.