General Footnotes have been moved to the end of their relevant sections.
Most of the poems are followed by explanatory notes and lists of differencesbetween editions (with Line numbers). These Line Notes have been kept with the Poems to which they refer.
The List of Contents for Thomas Stanley's Poems has been moved from the general List of Contents on Page viito its logical place on Page 100, after the Introduction to Thomas Stanley.
The rest of the Transcriber's Note is at the end of the book.
VOL. III CONTAINING
JOHN CLEVELAND · THOMAS STANLEY
HENRY KING · THOMAS FLATMAN
NATHANIEL WHITING
EDITED BY
GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M.A.
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1921
Oxford University Press
London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen
New York Toronto Melbourne Cape Town
Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai
Humphrey Milford Publisher to the University.
I am afraid that this third and last volume of Caroline Poetsmust reverse the famous apology of the second of the monarchsfrom whom it derives its title. It has been an unconscionabletime in being born; though I do not, to speak in character withmy authors, know what hostile divinity bribed Lucina. I cannotblame any one else: and—though for the first ten years after theappearance of Vol. II I was certainly very busy, professionally andwith other literary work—I do not think I omitted any opportunityof getting on with the book. I think I may say that if the timeI have actually spent thereon at spare moments could be puttogether it would represent a full year's solid labour, if not more.I make neither complaint nor boast of this; for it has alwaysbeen my opinion that a person who holds such a position asI then held should, if he possibly can, do something, in unremunerativeand unpopular ways, to make the treasure of Englishliterature more easily accessible. I have thoroughly enjoyed thework; and I owe the greatest thanks to the authorities of theClarendon Press for making it possible.
But no efforts of mine, unless I had been able to reside in Oxfordor London, would have much hastened the completion of the task:for the materials were hard to select, and, when selected, harder tofind in copies that could be used for printing. Some of themwe could not get hold of in any reasonable time: and the Delegatesof the Press were good enough to have bromide rotographs of theBodleian copies made for me. I worked on these as long as I could:but I found at last that the white print on black ground, crammedand crowded together as it is in the little books of the time, wasnot merely troublesome and painful, but was getting really dangerous,to my extremely weak eyesight.
This necessitated, or almost necessitated, some alterations in thescheme. One concerned the modernization of spelling, which accordinglywill be found disused in a few later pieces of the volume;another, and more important one, the revision of the text. Thislatter was most kindly undertaken principally by Mr. Percy Simpson,[page iv]who has had the benefit of Mr. G. Thorn-Drury's unrivalled knowledgeof these minors. I could not think of cramping the handsof scho