Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/80

 slender volumes. The first was ‘The Elements of Architecture, collected by Henry Wotton, Knight, from the best Authors and Examples,’ London (printed by John Bill, 1624, 4to); a copy in the British Museum Library has the dedication to Prince Charles inserted in Wotton's autograph (C. 45, c. 6). The second volume, a panegyrical congratulation in Latin prose to the king on his return from Scotland in 1633, was entitled ‘Ad Regem è Scotia reducem Henrici Wottonij Plavsvs et Vota. Londini excusum typis Augusti Mathusii Anno ’ [1633]. The dedication was addressed to Prince Charles; a copy of this rare volume is in the Grenville Library at the British Museum (cf., Strafford Papers, i. 167). The work reappeared in an English translation in 1649.

Immediately after Wotton's death there were issued ‘A Parallell betweene Robert, late Earle of Essex, and George, late Duke of Buckingham, written by Sir Henry Wotton, Knight,’ London, 1641; and ‘A Short View of the Life and Death of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, written by Sir Henry Wotton, Knight, late Provost of Eaton Colledge’ (London, printed for William Sheares, no date; another edition, 1642). In 1651 there appeared the main collection of Wotton's works, ‘Reliquiæ Wottonianæ.’ This was prefaced by an elegy by Abraham Cowley and by a memoir from the pen of Izaak Walton, who apparently had a chief hand in preparing the whole work for the press. The title ran: ‘Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, or a Collection of Lives, Letters, Poems, with Characters of Sundry Personages and other Incomparable Pieces of Language and Art. By the Curious Pensil of the Ever Memorable Sr Henry Wotton, Kt., late Provost of Eton Colledg,’ London (printed by Thomas Maxey for R. Marriot, G. Bedel, and T. Garthwait), 1651; other editions are dated 1654, 1672, 1685. The volume includes Lord Clarendon's ‘Difference and Disparity between the Estates and Conditions of George, Duke of Buckingham, and Robert, Earl of Essex, in reply to Wotton's “Parallell.”’ Wotton's chief contributions are (besides the ‘Parallel,’ the ‘Life of the Duke of Buckingham,’ the ‘Elements of Architecture,’ and an English translation of the already published Latin ‘Panegyrick to King Charls’) the following previously unpublished essays: ‘A Philosophicall Surveigh of Education or Moral Architecture, by Henry Wotton, Kt., Provost of Eton Colledg;’ ‘A Meditation upon the XXIIth Chapter of Genesis, by H. W.;’ letters to several persons, including James I, Charles I, Buckingham, Bacon, Lord Keeper Williams, Weston, Laud, Izaak Walton, and Dr. Edmund Castle [q. v.]; and many poems.

In 1661 some further letters, dated 1611–1638, were issued as ‘Letters of Sir Henry Wotton to Sir Edmund Bacon,’ London, printed by R. W. for F. T. at the Three Daggers in Fleet Street, 1661.

A third and enlarged edition of the ‘Reliquiæ’ (1672) contains a few new historical essays on Italian topics, the letters to Sir Edmund Bacon, and others ‘to and from several persons,’ mainly on foreign politics. A fourth edition appeared in 1685 with an important appendix of Wotton's letters to Edward, lord Zouche.

Finally there appeared ‘The State of Christendom, or A most Exact and Curious Discovery of many Secret Passages and Hidden Mysteries of the Times. Written by the Renowned Sr Henry Wotton, Kt., Ambassadour in Ordinary to the Most Serene Republique of Venice, and late Provost of Eaton Colledg,’ London, printed for Humphrey Moseley, 1657, with portrait (another edit. 1679, fol.).

‘Letters and Despatches from Sir Henry Wotton to James I and his Ministers in the years 1617–20,’ were printed from the originals in the library of Eton College for the Roxburghe Club in 1850. The letters dated from Venice begin on 1 Aug. 1617; the last letter of Wotton, dated 15 Nov. 1620, is addressed to Sir Robert Naunton. Many are in Italian and bear Wotton's pseudonym of Gregorio de' Monti. Wotton's complete correspondence was collected in Mr. Pearsall Smith's ‘Life and Letters’ (Oxford, 1907, 2 vols.).

Wotton's poems are the most valuable of his literary remains. Of the twenty-five poems included in the ‘Reliquiæ’ only fifteen are attributed to Wotton. The ten which are assigned to other pens include the well-known poem, beginning ‘The World is a bubble,’ which is assigned in the ‘Reliquiæ’ to Francis Bacon; in some contemporary manuscripts it is associated with the names of other writers, including Wotton himself. Wotton's fully authenticated verse includes an elegy on the death of his nephew, Sir Albertus Morton (November 1625), and a very happy epigram on Lady Morton's death. ‘An Elegy of a Woman's Heart’ was first printed in Davison's ‘Poetical Rhapsody,’ 1602. A short hymn upon the birth of Prince Charles was clearly written in the spring of 1630, and the ode to the king on Charles I's return from Scotland in 1633. Two of Wotton's poems rank with the finest in the language. These are entitled respectively ‘The Character of a Happy Life,’ and verses ‘On his Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia;’ both are justly included in