Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/83

 10 s. xii. JULY 24, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

63

the Lambeth Register can be considered an original and trustworthy record of the facts which it relates.

The words of the grant of 18 Jan., 1560, are " infra praedictum Archidiaconatum mine certo et legittimo modo vacantem." RICHARD H. THORNTON.

36, Upper Bedford Place, W.C.

DODSLEY'S FAMOUS COLLECTION OF POETRY.

(See 10 S. vi. 361, 402 ; vii. 3, 82, 284, 404, 442; viii. 124, 183, 384, 442; ix. 3, 184, 323, 463 ; x. 103, 243, 305, 403 ; xi. 62, 143, 323.)

MY preliminary article contained some information on the construction of the volumes of Dodsley's collection ; it is now possible to give some further details. Most of the pieces composing the first three volumes (January, 1748) were submitted to the judgment of George, the first Lord Lyttelton, before they were passed for printing. Some of them were suggested by Horace Walpole. Among these are the six Town Eclogues of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the poems of Gray, the monody of their friend Richard West, and, I would add, Seward's ' Female Right to Literature.' Dodsley did not himself know the authors of many of the poems which he had inserted. Two months after publication Dodsley doubted whether there would be another volume of the collection, but he offered Shenstone to insert a single poem or so in the second- edition of those already pub- lished. By the middle of May a second edition had been arranged for. It was not until the autumn of 1753 that a fourth volume was in course of preparation anc that Shenstone was asked for further con tributions. They were forwarded by him to Dodsley in November, 1753, and January 1754, and formed the concluding portior (pp. 293-361) of the fourth volume. Many pieces were inserted in this and the othe volumes from members of New College Oxford, who had passed through their school education at Winchester College, anc these were, I would suggest, suppliec through Spence, Dodsley's warm friend fo many years, and a member of both these establishments.

In April, 1756, Dodsley set about th publication of the two concluding volumes which came out early in 1758, and wa again in communication with Shenston for contributions. This time the pieces c Shenstone and his friends filled the openin pages of the fifth volume. John Hoadlv, th

lerical son of the well-known Bishop loadly, sent his friend Dodsley several of lis own productions, and suggested many thers ; but some of the pieces he pro- iosed were not included. Shenstone asserts hat the sixth volume was printed before the fth, and that he was not able to make ome of the corrections that he desired.

Isaac Reed was editor of the 1782 issue, ,vhich for the first time gave the authorship f most of the poems which had appeared anonymously, and furnished some brief >articulars of the lives of the poets. No >etter person could have been found for luch a duty, for the poetical history of the receding century was more familiar to him ,han to any other living person, save perhaps Dr. Johnson. With these volumes the ssues of the collection ceased, but most >f their contents subsequently appeared n John Bell's ' Classical Arrangement of Fugitive Poetry.' Many of the pieces were also included in the 'New Foundling Hcs- pital for Wit.' A short time after their cessa- ion a brighter school of poetry arose. Many of the poems brought together by Dodsley will live in our national literature, but the spirit of five-sixths of the volumes has

vaporated. A very harsh estimate of the set is given in the ' Portfolio of a Man of the World ' I do not think that he can be Mitford which appeared in The Gentle- man's Magazine for 1845, pt. ii. p. 344 :

"Aug. 1819. I was looking in Dodsley's Col- .ection of Poems to-day, and certainly a more piteous farrago of llatness never was seen. There- are some of the standard poems of the preceding generation which stand out on high among the rest, but the performances of the day are really shocking to behold. There is a littleness, an utter dulness, that would be most disheartening were it not so gloriously contrasted by our resent race. If we turn from Dodsley's paltry t >age of dilettante rhymes to Scott t or Shelley, or Byron, what giants we appear in comparison to our fathers. The generation between the Rebel- lion of Forty -five and the French Revolution was one of the tamest in our history. The American War, so disastrous in its close, was first looked upon as a mere partisan warfare, a little outbreak among a set of impudent convicts, that would be put down in a month or two ; and it was so far off, and the whole so vexatious ! There was no national feeling excited ; we were fighting against ourselves ; it was a spiritless and melancholy struggle, and nothing great on our side was elicited. But after the French Revolution the ferment of the universe brought forth great spirits, great warriors, great statesmen, great poets. And now, when we look back at the namby-pamby .rhyming in Mr. Dodsley, we wonder how there could have been so many men in England who could write such stuff, or that the women could have been contented with such an unmanly set as must have been the composers.