 | |  |
Notes
The imprint reads "London: Printed for T. Becket, Corner of the Adelphi, in the Strand. M DCC LXXVI." The edition collates 4°: i 2 A-C4 D1 [$1, 2 signed]; pp. [4] 1 2-5 6-7 8-25 26. Walpole wrote William Mason on 18 February 1776 that he had been given a copy of the epistle, and the editors of Walpole's Correspondence note the poem was announced in The Public Advertiser of 13 February (Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, Vol. 28, ed. by W. S. Lewis, Grover Cronin, Jr., and Charles Bennet [1955], 242).
Dodington's An Epistle to the Right Honorable Sir Robert Walpole was printed by John Walthoe in 1726 (Foxon D371, noting publication December 1725), apparently with press-variant "second-" and "third-" edition title-pages; it was reprinted that year in Dublin (n.p.) and ascribed to Edward Young in a nonce collection advertised by Thomas White-house (Dublin Weekly Journal, 19 June 1726), and reprinted in London, 1741, by Thomas Cooper. Dodington's "On Sir Robert Walpole's Birth-Day" was printed in Dodsley's A Collection of Poems by Several Hands, volume 4 (1755), 227; on Dodington's authorship, see James Tierney's The Correspondence of Robert Dodsley 1733-1764 (1988), pp. 196-198. Dodington's Horatian ode "Shorten Sail," beginning "Love thy country, wish it well," was reprinted in the Oxford Book of English Verse ed. Arthur Quiller-Couch (1926), p. 508. See footnote 17 below on the likelihood that this ode was sent to Young in 1761. David Foxon notes other poems by Dodington in English Verse 1701-1750 (1975), I, 191.
On Dodington and Young's fellowship in a circle of Oxford poets, see Harold Forster's Edward Young: The Poet of the 'Night Thoughts' 1683-1765 (Alburgh Harleston Norfolk: Erskine Press, 1986), pp. 24, 30-31; on Dodington's likely involvement in Young's receiving a pension, see Forster, pp. 97-100. Young's fullest testimony to Dodington's patronage comes in the opening, dedicatory lines of Satire III of The Universal Passion (1725); also, in Satire V (1727), Young referred to composing the poem at Dodington's estate: "these numbers free, / Pierian Eastbury! I owe to thee" (ll. 265-266). Before pulling from production his tragedy The Brothers in 1724, Young remarked to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu that "the players and Mr. Dodington, neither of whom were backward in finding fault, or careless in attention, took no notice" of a flaw she had observed (The Correspondence of Edward Young 1683-1765, ed. Henry Pettit [1971], p. 24).
The Critical Review, 45 (March, 1776), 230; Sanders, Patron and Place-Hunter: A Study of George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe (1919), p. 260; Forster, p. 345.
Pettit, pp. 547-548. Pettit reprinted Thomas Warton the Younger's transcripts of these letters at the British Museum.
I thank Librarian Marie Divine of the Lewis Walpole Library for her considerable assistance and Yale University and the Lewis Walpole Library for their kind permission to quote from the manuscripts. The manuscripts of Dodington's Epistle to Bute and Young's A.L.s. of 17 October 1761 are indexed as "HW MSS" in the Lewis Walpole collection. The front endpaper bears W. S. Lewis's bookplate and has annotations by Lewis and Henry Penruddock Wyndham. The motto is from Horace, Odes, I,xiii,18: "Felices ter et amplius / felices quos inrupta tenet copula," or "Thrice happy and more are they whom an unbroken bond unites" (The Odes and Epodes, transl. C. E. Bennett, Loeb Classical Library [1952], pp. 40-41). In the manuscript the Epistle directly follows the Proem without any spacing, as if they were parts of one long poem, but line numeration begins with the Epistle.
John Carswell offers an account of what became of Dodington's papers in the second appendix to The Old Cause: Three Biographical Studies in Whiggism (1954). On the Maggs' Brothers sale (1913) of the manuscript and letter of 17 October, see Pettit, p. 547n; Pettit mistakenly seems to assume, despite his quoting the sale catalogue to the contrary, that the letter of 6 October was also sold at this time, perhaps because Thomas Warton the Younger had transcribed both. Sanders (1919) noted that both the letter of 17 October and manuscript, as well as papers now at Harvard, were once in the collection of "the late Mr. A. M. Broadley" (p. 260; see also p. ix). Lewis indicated inside the front cover that he purchased the manuscript in 1925 from Hodgson.
John Carswell and Lewis A. Dralle noted that Dodington's "peerage as Lord Melcombe dated from 6 April" in their edition of The Political Journals of George Bubb Dodington (1965), p. 42on.
Walpole records Wyndham's letter to Warton in a note to the long appendix "A Memorial of Several Noblemen and Gentlemen of the first rank and fortune," which he wrote in his copy of Wyndham's edition of Dodington's Diary (Hazen 2837A). Later Lord Holland printed this appendix within his edition of Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Second (1846). More recently, it was reprinted as Appendix 5 in volume 3 of the Memoirs of King George II, ed. John Brooke (1985), pp. 159-162.
Epistle, line 193. The comparable phrasing in Resignation was added to the second edition, p. 20, line 14, quoted in footnote 14 below. Young speaks of revising Resignation for the second edition in his letter to Dodington of 29 October 1761 (Pettit, 551), though the edition was not published until about the time it was entered in the Stationers' Register, 23 May 1762.
The LWL manuscript shares the substantive readings of the printed text in the following occasions where footnotes provide alternatives: Proem, lines 14, 27 *, 28, 31 *, 32, 34, 38 *, 40, 51-52, 54; Epistle, lines 14 *, 18, 22, 28, 44, 49-50, 57, 102, 134, 135, 244, 273-274. The asterisks indicate the manuscript's incomplete fidelity to the printed text's substantives; some of these changes are recorded in footnote 14 below. With two exceptions, the manuscript faithfully adopts the substantives of all the other footnoted readings. One exception is at Epistle, lines 45-46, discussed below; the other is in the Proem, lines 9-10, where the manuscript, like the printed text, has 'his Dignity' for 'and Dignity'.
On B1r (with lines 25-38 of the Epistle) the printed text (PT) agrees with the LWL manuscript (MS) in line 28, and the footnotes (FN) agree with the MS in lines 32, 35, and 37. On B1v (with lines 39-52) the PT agrees with the MS in lines 44-46 and 49-50 and the FN agree with the MS in lines 42 and 52. The alternating agreement of the PT and FN with the MS occurs in all printed formes of the book. The fifth page of the MS begins with line 15, the sixth with line 39.
Substantive readings unique to the LWL manuscript are: the head-title; in the Proem, in lines 27 ('o'er' for 'to'), 29 ('Oh much, & long' for 'Oh! long and much'), 31 ('Th'Effusion' for 'Th'effusions' in the printed text [PT] and 'The fulness' in the footnotes [FN]), and 38 ('That flood our Hearts, & swell into our Eyes' for 'That flood the Soul, and swell the Eyes' in the PT and 'Which melt the Soul, and swell the Eyes' in the FN); and, in the Epistle, at lines 14 ('Th'Imperial Murderer' for 'The purple Murd'rer' in the PT and 'The royal Butcher' in the FN), 25 ('withers Statemen's' for 'blights the Stateman's' in the PT and 'withers Statesman's' in the FN), 46 ('brightens' for 'quickens' in the PT and 'bright'ning' in the FN), 83 ('Mansion' for 'mansions'), 144 ('Consists' for 'Consist'), 290 (the erroneous 'Tract' for the 'track'), 292 ('Virtue' for 'Glory'), 295-296 (two lines added, unique to the manuscript; discussed below in the text).
For example, the manuscript follows the footnote in replacing the ironic 'Chos'n Friends' with the tired phrase 'These Fiends' in a catalogue of personified vices: "See Ribald Mirth, and Begg'ry void of shame, | Demure Detraction, and loud-bawling Blame, | Chos'n Friends! by Int'rest rank'd, in order stand" (Epistle, lines 191-193).
As compared to the manuscript, Dodington's handwriting in his diary and various speeches (Harvard MS Eng 188 and MS Eng 188.5f) and letters from 1760 (within the library of the Marquess of Bute) is less florid and ornate.
All the references in Dodington's and Young's correspondence during October 1761 speak of Dodington's sending one composition, which Dodington calls an ode. Young quotes from only those verses to him beginning "Kind Companion" which are not an ode. However, after sending the Dutchess of Portland the "Kind Companion" verses on 2 January 1763, Young sent her on 13 January the Horatian ode sometimes called "Shorten Sail," which begins "Love thy Country." In sending the first, Young remarked that Dodington had sent it "scarce a Month before his Death," and, in sending the second, he indicated that it was sent "at the same time with the Former" (Pettit, pp. 565 and 567, respectively). Assuming Young recalled accurately the date of the gift, we can only suppose that in October 1761 he had also received copies of both compositions, though that seems likely given Dodington's reference to "the Ode" (see below in the text). In his edition of Young, James Nichols reprinted both poems on the strength of Herbert Croft's claim in his account of Young in Johnson's Lives of the Poets: "Croft informs us, that the verses which precede this 'ode' were only an introduction to what is called, in the third couplet, 'the Muse's latest spark'" (Complete Works, Poetry and Prose [1854; fasc. rpt. Hildesheim: Olms, 1968], II, 83).
| | |