202
NOTES AND QUERIES. rn s. in. M AR . i 8 , in.
who had a hand in Tottel. It is interesting
to find that it was to another " Anthony
Sentleger, of Oakham, in Kent, Esq.,"
that Massinger dedicated ' The Unnatural
Combat.' Massinger states that this
Anthony's father, Sir Warham Sentleger,
was " a master, for his pleasure, in poetry,"
and that father and son were generous
patrons of men of his profession.
I turn back now to where I cut myself short, to deal with the claims of Sir John Harington the Elder.
In 1804 Thomas Parke edited a new version of ' Nugse Antiquae,' which had been compiled from family MSS. by the Rev. Henry Harington, some twenty years or more previously. Parke thought he could improve upon Harington by adding fresh matter to ' Nugae Antiquae,' and no doubt he did so ; but his improvements went too far, for he left out of his edition of the work several interesting pieces of ancient prose as well as all poems printed by Harington which he had traced to Tottel's ' Miscellany.' With- out staying to examine the headings of some of these poems, and ignoring altogether the circumstance that the readings of the Harington poems differed in many points, and are in several instances more correct than those in Tottel, he bundled them out and took credit to himself for having performed a very smart piece of work. Parke' s act was nothing less than a piece of vandalism, for it turns out that not only was the old ' Nugae Antiquse ' compiled from MSS. in the handwriting of the two Sir John Haringtons, but that these MSS. put Tottel and ' The Paradise of Daintie Devices ' right where they are wrong ; and, moreover, they prove that the older Haring- ton was a poet of no mean order, and the author of at lea it four of the Tottel poems, one of which has been given wrongly to the Earl of Surrey, besides being the writer of a piece which is paraded in * The Paradise of Daintie Devices ' above the signature of Lord Vaux.
When I saw the value of the Harington evidence, I asked myself, Why has not this been made use of before ? Why has not Sir John Harington been added to the ustof Tottel's authors ? And how do editors of Surrey's poems reconcile their author's claim to a poem which Sir John Harington expressly declared to be his own and written by him at a certain time and in peculiar circumstances ? It would seem that Parke' s ignorant meddling had been but too successful, and that his edition of * Nugae Antiquae ' had swamped the Harington
version of the work, for editors of Surrey and
Wyatt ignore ^ the existence of the latter, or
only consult it when it suits their purpose
to do so.
There is a piece in ' The Paradise of Daintie Devices ' which commences
The life is long, which loathsomely doth last, &c. The compiler has signed this poem " D. S.," and it has been assumed that the initials belong to Dr. Sands, or Sandys, who afterwards became Archbishop of York. I have never seen any proof advanced that Dr. Sands had written or was capable of writing verse, and the younger Sir John Harington, in his ' Additions ' to Bishop Godwin's ' Catalogue of Bishops,' does not give the least hint of such a thing, although he seems to have been intimately acquainted with his life and with the doings of members of Dr. Sands's family. He may, however, have dabbled in poetry in his early days, though it seems very strange that the young Sir John Harington does not say so : the point is that the poem referred to just previously was not written by anybody owning the initials "D. S.," but was by Sir John Harington the Elder. The paternity of the poem is not open to the least doubt, for Sir John Harington tells us when he wrote it, and where. In 'Nugae Antiquse' it is printed thus :
Elegy wrote in the Tower by John
Haryngton, confined with the Princess
Elizabeth, 1554.
The lyfe is long, which lothsomely clothe last, &c.
Parke did not know that this poem was also in Tottel, among the "Uncertain Authors," and therefore he copied it from Harington' s book, and enabled me to see at once that he had been bungling all through. The Tottel poem occurs in Arber, pp. 129- 130, and contains three stanzas not in ' Nugae Antiquae ' ; and the version of it in ' The Paradise of Daintie Devices ' has the same number of stanzas as Tottel, although Tottel and ' Nugae Antiquae ' agree in parts where both differ from ' The Paradise of Daintie Devices.' An instance of this is to be found in the following stanza, which ' England's Parnassus ' copied from Tottel and ranged under "Death" :
Death is a port, whereby we passe to joy.
Life is a lake, that drowneth all in pain.
Death is so dere, it ceaseth all annoy.
Life is so leude, that all it yeld.es is vayn.
And as by life to bondage man is braught :
Even so likewise by death was fredome wraught.
There are only small differences in the last two lines of the * Nugae Antiquae ' poem,
