50

Translations 253

Elegies on the Death of the Author 279

INTRODUCTION.

There is scarcely an UN-DRAMATIC writer of the Seventeenth Century,
whose poems exhibit so many and such gross corruptions as those
of the author of LUCASTA. In the present edition, which is the
first attempt to present the productions of a celebrated and
elegant poet to the admirers of this class of literature in a
readable shape, both the text and the pointing have been amended
throughout, the original reading being always given in the footnotes;
but some passages still remain, which I have not succeeded
in elucidating to my satisfaction, and one or two which have defied
all my attempts at emendation, though, as they stand, they are
unquestionably nonsense. It is proper to mention that several
rather bold corrections have been hazarded in the course of the
volume; but where this has been done, the deviation from the
original has invariably been pointed out in the notes.

On the title-page of the copy of LUCASTA, 1649, preserved among
the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum, the original possessor
has, according to his usual practice, marked the date of purchase,
viz., June 21; perhaps, and indeed probably, that was also
the date of publication. A copy of LUCASTA, 1649, occasionally
appears in catalogues, purporting to have belonged to Anne,
Lady Lovelace; but the autograph which it contains was taken
from a copy of Massinger's BONDMAN (edit. 1638, 4to.), which her
Ladyship once owned. This copy of Lovelace's LUCASTA is bound up
with the copy of the POSTHUME POEMS, once in the possession
of Benjamin Rudyerd, Esq., grandson and heir of the distinguished
Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, as appears also from his autograph
on the title.<1.1>

In the original edition of the two parts of LUCASTA, 1649-59,
the arrangement of the poems appears, like that of the text,
to have been left to chance, and the result has been a total
absence of method. I have therefore felt it part of my duty to
systematise the contents of the volume, and, so far as it lay in my
power, to place the various pieces of which it consisted in their
proper order; all the odes, sonnets, &c. addressed or referring to
the lady who is concealed under the names of LUCASTA and AMARANTHA
have now been, for the first time, brought together; and the copies
of commendato