Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/216

 :: there are prefatory verses by John Vaughan. One epigram deals with John Taylor the water-poet, and there are lines on Sir Fleetwood Sheppard's 'Epigrams' (see, Censura Literaria, v. 129-31). Edward Phillips from whose 'Theatrum Poetarum' Winstanley freely borrowed without acknowledgment, is the subject of one memoir. Two hundred memoirs are supplied, the latest being Sir Roger L'Estrange. A copy in the British Museum has notes by Philip Bliss, including some transcribed from the manuscript of Bishop Percy.
 * 1) 'England's Worthiest select lives of most eminent persons' [including Flavius Julius Constantine and Cromwell], 1660, 8vo, 'principally stolen from Lloyd,' although free from signs of a partisan spirit ; 2nd ed., with the omission of the lives of the parliamentarians and substitution of others, 1684.
 * 2) 'The Loyall Martyrology,' 1662, 8vo; 1665, 8vo; an appendix is entitled 'The Dregs of Treachery.' The work is dedicated to Sir John Robinson, lieutenant of the Tower of London. Besides forty-one 'loyal martyrs,' beginning with the Earl of Strafford, there are noticed 'Loyal persons slain,' 'Loyal Confessors,' 'Kings' Judges,' 'Accessory Regicides,' and 'Traytors executed since His Majesty's return.'
 * 3) 'The Honour of the Merchant Taylors, wherein is set forth the Noble Acts, Valiant Deeds, and Heroic Performance of Merchant-Taylors in former Ages,' 1668, 8vo, with woodcuts (another edition, 1687, 4to).
 * 4) 'New Help to Discourse; or Wit and Mirth intermixt with more serious Matters, by W. W.,' London, 2nd edit. 1672, and reissued 1680; 3rd edit. 1684, 12mo; 4th edit. 1696; 8th edit. 1721; 9th edit. 1733 (cf. Notes and Queries, 8th ser. ix. 489, x. 55).
 * 5) 'Histories and Observations, Domestick or Foreign; or a Miscellany of Historical Rarities,' 1683, 8vo, dedicated to Sir Thomas Middleton; with a new title, 'Historical Rarities and Curious Observations, Domestick and Foreign,' 1684, 8vo: a very miscellaneous collection of essays, including such topics as 'Memorials of Thomas Coriat'  and 'Mount Etna in 1669.'
 * 6) 'Lives of the most famous English Poets,' 1687, 8vo dedicated to Francis Bradbury, The epistle to the reader shows some sympathy with poets and poetry, but Winstanley allowed his royalist prejudices to pervert his judgment so completely with regard to Milton that he wrote of him 'that his fame is gone out like a candle in a snuff and his memory will always stink' (p. 195).

An engraved portrait of Winstanley in an oval constructed of vines and barley was prefixed to later editions of his 'Loyall Martyrology,' with the date in the inscription 1667 aet. 39.' Another engraved portrait-bust standing between two pyramids was prefixed to his 'Lives of the Poets,' 1687.

The earliest volume published under the pseudonym of 'Poor Robin' was an almanac calculated from the meridian of Saffron Walden,' which is said to have been originally issued in 1661 or 1662. No copy earlier than 1663 now survives. It was taken over by the Stationers' Company, and was continued annually by various hands, till 1776. The identity of its original author has been disputed, but there is little doubt that he was William Winstanley. A claim put forward in behalf of the poet Robert Herrick is unworthy of serious attention. The discovery in the parish registers of Saffron Walden of the entry of the birth on 14 March 1646-7 of Robert Winstanley (a nephew of William and a younger brother of [q. v.]) has led to the assumption that he, rather than his kinsman William Winstanley, was the writer of 'Poor Robin's' works, but it is very improbable that the almanacs, which date from 1662, were devised by a boy of fifteen; and apart from the resemblance between the names of Robin and Robert, there is no ground for associating Robert Winstanley with the 'Poor Robin' literature. On the other hand, William Winstanley is known to have assumed in other works than the almanac the pseudonym of 'Poor Robin,' and the verse with which the early issues of 'Poor Robin's Almanacs' are interspersed renders it probable on internal grounds that he was the inventor of that series. In 1667 a portrait of William Winstanley was subscribed 'Poor Robin,' with verses by Francis Kirkman, in a volume called 'Poor Robin's Jests, or the Compleat Jester' (Huth Library Cat.) This work, the most popular of 'Poor Robin's' productions apart from the almanac, was constantly reprinted. In an amended shape it was called ' England's Witty and Ingenious Jester, or the Merry Citizen and Jocular Countryman's Delightful Companion. In Two Parts &hellip; By W. W., Gent.' (17th edit. 1718). 'W. W,, Gent.,' are clearly William Winstanley's initials. An equally interesting volume in verse by 'Poor Robin,' in which the tone of John Taylor the water-poet is closely followed, was called 'Poor Robin's Perambulation from Saffron Walden to London performed this Month of July 1678' (London, 1678, 4to); the doggerel poem deals largely with the alehouses on the road, and may be assigned to William Winstanley.

Other works purporting to be by 'Poor