ON SOME SUPPRESSED PASSAGES IN W. CARTWRIGHT'S POEMS.
As I want my doubts cleared up on a literary point of some importance, I thought I could not do better than state them in your "NOTES AND QUERIES."
I have before me a copy of the not by any means rare volume, called _Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, with other Poems, by Mr. William Cartwright_, 8vo. 1651, with the portrait by Lombart. Though the book may be called a common one, I apprehend that my copy of it is in an uncommon state, for I find in it certain leaves as they were originally printed, and certain other leaves as they were afterwards substituted. The fact must have been that after the volume was published by H. Moseley, the bookseller, it was called in again, and particular passages suppressed and excluded.
These passages are three in number, and occur respectively on pp. 301, 302, and 305; and the two first occur in a poem headed "On the Queen's Return from the Low Countries," an event which occurred only shortly before the death of Cartwright, which took place on 23d Dec. 1643.
This poem consists, in my perfect copy, of eight stanzas, but two stanzas are expunged on the cancelled leaf, viz. the second and the fifth; the second runs as follows:--
"When greater tempests, than on sea before, Receiv'd her on the shore, When she was shot at _for the king's own good_, By legions hir'd to bloud; How bravely did she do, how bravely bear! And shew'd, though they durst rage, she durst not fear."
The queen landed at Burlington on 22nd Feb. 1642, so that Cartwright may have written what precedes; but how could he have written what follows, the fifth stanza of the poem, which mentions an event that did not occur until six or seven years afterwards?
"Look on her enemies, on their Godly lies, Their holy perjuries, Their curs'd encrease of much ill gotten wealth, By rapine or by stealth, Their crafty friendship knit in equall guilt, And the Crown-Martyr's bloud so lately spilt."
Hence arises my first question--if Cartwright were not the author of this poem, who was? Although Izaac Walton, Jasper Mayne, James Howell, Sir John Birkenhead, and a host of other versifyers, introduce the volume with "laudatory lays," we are not to suppose that they meant to vouch for the genuineness of every production therein inserted and imputed to Cartwright. Was the whole poem "On the Queen's Return" foisted in, or only the two stanzas above quoted, which were excluded when the book was called in?