Page:Merry Drollery Compleat 1875.djvu/461

 — 32. The Shakespeare Society, in 1846, printed the ballad, “Come, all you Farmers out of the Country,” &c. We may include it in our third volume.

— 39. Beat on, Proud billows. As far as we are aware, no claim to the authorship of this excellent Song was ever advanced by Colonel during his lifetime, or by his friends for him in later time. It neither appears among his Lucasta Poems, 1649, nor among the “Posthume Poems of Richard Lovelace, Esqre,” 1659. David Lloyd, in his “Memoires of those that suffered” in the cause of Charles I., 1668, certainly implies that the author of it was still living, with no other reward than “the conscience of having suffered.” Now, unless there were an earlier edition, ten years earlier than 1668, (against the existence of which are good reasons), this assertion by Lloyd disposes of the claim advanced by a learned and genial critic of Westminster Drolleries in the Athenæum of April 10th, 1875. Nor do we think the internal evidence strongly in favour of Lovelace. The parallelism indicated between his lines,

and the similar expression in “Beat on, proud billows,”

is such (in our humble opinion) as more resembles an imitation, in the latter, of an already famous poem (written certainly before 1649, and then published), than the self-repetition probable from a poet who had already so fixed his idea. Tradition assigns “Beat on, proud billows,” to Sir Roger L’Estrange; but we confess to doubting the correctness of the supposition. It seems to us, firstly, above his range; secondly, he was appointed to the lucrative office of Licenser (a hangman’s duty, too often), so early as 1665. How then can David Lloyd’s