MSS 5/ii/3
Transcript of Sir George Etherege's Letter Book, 1685-8, 128 folio leaves (plus c.200 blanks). c.1688.
The manuscript as a whole
• EtG 156: Sir George Etherege, Letterbook(s)
Copy of all the letters, verse and accounts in Sir George Etherege's letterbook from 5/15 March 1686/7 to 1/11 March 1687/8, in several contemporary professional hands.
Recorded in IELM, II.i (1987) as ‘L 3’. Recorded in Bracher, p. xii.
[unnumbered pages]
• DrJ 201: John Dryden, To Sir George Etherege Mr. D.- Answer (‘To you who live in chill Degree’)
Copy, subscribed ‘Thought to be writen by Mons Dryden & sent to Sr. G: by My Lord Middleton’.
First published at the end of The History of Adolphus (London, 1691). Kinsley, II, 578-80. California, III, 224-6. Hammond, III, 21-7. The Letterbook of Sir George Etherege, ed. Sybil Rosenfeld (London, 1928), pp. 346-8. Letters of Sir George Etherege, ed. Frederick Bracher (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, 1974), pp. 270-2.
[unnumbered pages]
• EtG 22: Sir George Etherege, A Letter to Lord Middleton (‘From hunting whores and haunting play’)
Copy.
First published, as ‘Another from Sir G.E. to the E. of M--Greeting’, in The History of Adolphus (London, 1691). Thorpe, pp. 46-7.
[unnumbered pages]
• EtG 45: Sir George Etherege, Second Letter to Lord Middleton (‘Since love and verse, as well as wine’)
Copy.
First published in The History of Adolphus (London, 1691). Thorpe, pp. 48-50.
[unnumbered pages]
• EtG 61: Sir George Etherege, Song (‘Garde le secret de ton Ame’)
Copy.
First published in Rosenfeld (1928), p. 129. Thorpe, p. 13.
MS 6/iii/6
A small verse miscellany. Mid-17th century.
ff. [2v-4r]
• DaJ 287: Sir John Davies, A Contention betwen a Wife, a Widowe and a Maide for Precedence at an Offringe (‘Widow well met, whether goe you to daye?’)
Copy, beginning at line 25 (here ‘If to be borne a Maide, be such a grace’).
First published in Francis Davison, A Poetical Rhapsody (London, 1608). Krueger, pp. 216-24.
f. [4v]
• CwT 739: Thomas Carew, A Song (‘Aske me no more whether doth stray’)
Copy, headed ‘To his Mrs’.
First published in a five-stanza version beginning ‘Aske me no more where Iove bestowes’ in Poems (1640) and in Poems: by Wil. Shake-speare, Gent. (London, 1640), and edited in this version in Dunlap, pp. 102-3. Musical setting by John Wilson published in Cheerful Ayres or Ballads (Oxford, 1659). All MS versions recorded in CELM, except where otherwise stated, begin with the second stanza of the published version (viz. ‘Aske me no more whether doth stray’).
For a plausible argument that this poem was actually written by William Strode, see Margaret Forey, ‘Manuscript Evidence and the Author of “Aske me no more”: William Strode, not Thomas Carew’, EMS, 12 (2005), 180-200. See also Scott Nixon, ‘“Aske me no more” and the Manuscript Verse Miscellany’, ELR, 29/1 (Winter 1999), 97-130, which edits and discusses MSS of this poem and also suggests that it may have been written by Strode.
MS 7/i/16
An antiquarian miscellany, compiled by William Wyrley (1565-c.1613). Late 16th-early 17th century.
Later in the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt (1792-1872), manuscript and book collector: Phillipps MS 13152. Sotheby's, 15 June 1971, lot 1649.
f. 106r
• LeJ 6: John Leland, Poemata
Copy of two Latin poems ascribed to ‘Lelandus’.
Many of Leland's Latin epigrams published in Principum, ac illustrium aliquot & eruditorum in Anglia virorum, encomia, trophaea, genethliaca & epithalamia, ed. Thomas Newton (London, 1589). Reprinted in Joannis Lelandi...collectanea, ed. Thomas Hearne, 3rd edition (London, 1774), V, 79-167.
passim
• CmW 13.184: William Camden, Britannia
Extracts.
First published in London, 1586, with additions in 1607 and successive editions.
MS 13/i/19
A book of sayings of 16th-century English martyrs, much taken from Foxe. 17th century.
FxJ 1.16: John Foxe, Actes and Monuments
First published (complete) in London, 1563. Edited by Josiah Pratt, 8 vols (London, 1853-70).
MS 13/i/22
A duodecimo theological miscellany. Late 17th century.
Later in the library of Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bt (1792-1872), book and manuscript collector: Phillipps MS 24969.
f. [12r-v]
• MaA 323: Andrew Marvell, The Second Advice to a Painter (‘Nay, Painter, if thou dar'st design that fight’)
Copy of lines 1-23, here ascribed to ‘S J D’.
First published in Directions to a Painter…Of Sir Iohn Denham ([London], 1667). POAS, I, 34-53. Lord, pp. 117-30. Smith, pp. 332-43. Recorded in Osborne, pp. 28-32, as anonymous.
The case for Marvell's authorship supported in George deF. Lord, ‘Two New Poems by Marvell?’, BNYPL, 62 (1958), 551-70, but see also discussion by Lord and Ephim Fogel in Vol. 63 (1959), 223-36, 292-308, 355-66. Marvell's authorship supported in Annabel Patterson, ‘The Second and Third Advices-to-the-Painter’, PBSA, 71 (1977), 473-86. Discussed also in Margoliouth, I, 348-50, and in Chernaik, p. 211, where Marvell's authorship is considered doubtful. A case for Sir John Denham's authorship is made in Brendan O Hehir, Harmony from Discords: A Life of Sir John Denham (Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1968), pp. 212-28.
rPR 2247L4
A printed exemplum belonging to the Dutch poet and statesman Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687), a translator of Donne into Dutch. 1651.
DnJ 4156: John Donne, Letters to Severall Persons of Honour
This volume is discussed in I.A. Shapiro, ‘Huyghens' Copy of Donne's Letters, 1651’, in Elizabethan and Modern Studies, ed. J.P. Vander Motten (Ghent, 1985), pp. 229-34.