Though Winstanley's _Lives_ advertises on its title page accounts "of
above Two Hundred" poets, only 147 are actually listed in the
catalogue, and only 168 are noted throughout. Of these 168, only 34 had
not already been mentioned by Phillips, a dozen years before. Some
borrowing was inevitable, and, in fact, Winstanley leaned heavily upon
both Phillips and Fuller for information and clues, just as Phillips
had leaned heavily upon Bale's _Summarium_ (1548), Camden's _Remains_,
Puttenham's _Art of English Poesy_, several Elizabethan miscellanies,
and Kirkman's play catalogues. Both men built (as scholars must build)
upon the obvious materials available. Both (in the manner of their age)
were extremely casual about documentation and acknowledgment. If this
leads us to talk unhistorically about "theft," we must say that
Phillips "stole" from a half dozen or so people, whereas Winstanley
simply appropriated a lot of these stolen goods. For doing so, he alone
has been labelled a plagiarist.

Let us be more specific. Of Winstanley's accounts of 168 poets, 34 seem
to have come out of the _Theatrum Poetarum_ with nothing new added (10
of these 34 merely named). Of the remaining 134 accounts, 34 are of
poets not mentioned by Phillips, 29 are utterly independent of
Phillips, 40 are largely independent (that is, they borrow some from
Phillips but add more than they borrow), and 31 are largely derivative.
We would praise a doctoral dissertation that succeeded in giving so
much new data. Winstanley was careless, but he was not lazy, and he had
a literary conscience of sorts. Often he went to Phillips' sources and
came away with more than Phillips found (most conspicuously in his use
of Francis Kirkman's 1671 play catalogue).

Since the groundwork had so recently been laid, Winstanley's problem,
far more than that of Phillips, was one of selection. In the _Theatrum
Poetarum_ 252 modern British poets are named. Of these Winstanley chose
to omit the 16 female and 33 Scottish poets. Of the remaining 203, he
dropped 68, and for the student of literary reputation these omissions
raise some interesting questions. Undoubtedly a few were inadvertent.
About a dozen were authors noted but not dated by Phillips, and it is
probable that Winstanley was unable to learn more about them. Fifteen
others were English poets who apparently did not write in the
vernacular. An additional fifteen were poets dated by Phillips but
described as inferior or