Add MS 78762

ANTHOLOGY OF ENGLISH POETRY AND PROSE ASSEMBLED BY THE FAMILY OF JOSEPH ADDISON; circa 1703-1735. Imperfect, owing to excision of an unspecified number of leaves. The signature ‘Cha: Warwick 1709’ which appears on the front endpaper (f. ii) is that of Charlotte (d. 1731), formerly Countess of Warwick and wife (1716) of Joseph Addison (d. 1719), the essayist; beneath it is that of their only child Charlotte (1719-1791), who signs ‘Cha: Addison 1735’. At least seven of the eighteen largely unattributed poems copied by a single unidentified scribe in the earliest section (ff.1-14v) are also found in other sources. The opening piece is a variant text, dated 1703, of a poem by Swift, while others are dated or datable to between circa 1715 and 1728. The second section (ff. 15-20) was transcribed circa 1734-1735 by Addison’s daughter (cf. her hand in some letters in Egerton 1974). Jay B. Hubbell, in ‘Some uncollected poems by Joseph Addison’, Modern Philology, vol. 36 (1938-9), 277-281, where it is suggested that some of the pieces may be the work of Addison himself, wrote an account of the manuscript wholly from 19^th-cent. published descriptions, from which also he printed three poems: two of these are still present (see A (6) and (14) in list below), while the third (see A (17)) is represented only by a 19^th-cent. copy (f. iv). The manuscript belonged circa 1837-1868 to Alexander A. Smets, whose signature with date the Savannah, December 1835, appears on the front flyleaf (f. ii). It was briefly described by the Rev. William Bacon Stevens, M.D., later Bishop of Pennsylvania, in the Catalogue raisonée of Smets’s collection issued by Leavitt, Strebeigh & Co. (Savannah, 1860, pp. 15-16) in anticipation of the auction eventually held at the Clinton Hall Book Sale Rooms, New York, in March, May and June 1868, when the manuscript was acquired by one ‘Byron’. By 1982 it was in possession of the New York bookseller John R. Fleming who sold it to Caspar Willard Weinberger, U.S. Secretary of Defense, from whom it was purchased by the British Library through the London bookseller Jarndyce, September 2002.

Paper: v + 23. 195 mm x 150 mm. Contemporary calf binding, covers stamped with a gilt-tooled triple-rule compartment and corner-pieces of a flower-urn; decorated spine of five raised bands, lettered ‘Miscel=Lanies’, and small-comb endpapers. Paper watermarked with the arms of Amsterdam and countermarked ‘rw’ (cf. example in Heawood, Watermarks, no. 369, dated to 1697). Pages folded to provide a left-hand rule for guidance in copying. Contemporary pagination throughout the earliest section (ff. 1-14) from 1 to 29, with former pp. 25 and 26 represented only by a stub (f. 13). First text-leaf (f. 1) annotated at the head in black ink ‘Addison’s Poems &c in his Autograph from 1703 to 1728’. Printed extract from Thomas Thorpe’s Catalogue of ancient manuscripts, 1835, lot 2, describing the manuscript as ‘Addison’s Poems, &c., in his Autograph, 1703-21’, pasted inside front, cover (f. i): see also Thorpe’s Catalogue of an extraordinary assemblage of…manuscripts, 1834, lot 5. Bookseller’s printed label ‘75’ (f. iii) pasted inside front endpaper (f. ii), which carries codes and prices, partially erased, in pencil and red crayon, including ‘Horn’ and ‘35,000’, with code ‘412/13’ pencilled along margin of f. 12. Loosely inserted (f. v) is an engraving by William Finden of the portrait of Addison by Sir Godfrey Kneller, published by John Bumpus in 1818, inscribed on the verso in modern pencil ‘36 pages of autogramms’. The contents are as follows:-

A. ff. 1-14v. Eighteen poems copied apparently in the lifetime of Charlotte, Countess of Warwick, of which the original order may be recovered from the list given in the sale-catalogue entry (f. i). Viz:-

1. ff. 1-4. [Jonathan Swift]: ‘Van—’ [sic] House Built from the ruines of Whitehall y^t was burnt’, beg. ‘In Times of old, when Time was young’, on the Queen’s Theatre, Haymarket (opened 1705). The present text, which is headed ‘written 1703’ but unattributed, largely follows that published in Swift’s Miscellanies in prose and verse, 1711. The main exception is the presence between ll. 42 and 43 of a couplet reading ‘But this would stand in little Stead, / Van wanted where to lay his Head’.

2. ff. 4, 4v. Admonition to a young lady, beg. ‘The Precious hours of flying youth’, in six quatrains.

3. ff. 4v-5v. ‘Duke of Bu: of La: Shros:’, beg. ‘Since you will needs my Hart possess’. The affair of George Villiers, 2^nd Duke of Buckingham, with the Countess of Shrewsbury began in 1667. Another copy is noted by Margaret Crum, First-line index of English poetry, 1500-1800, in manuscripts of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Oxford, 1969, S658, while a variant version is printed in Arthur Clifford’s Tixall Poetry, Edinburgh, 1813, pp. 153-4, both without attribution.

4. f. 5v. ‘Upon Love’, beg. ‘O tell me not in love of reasons, power [sic]’, in five couplets.

5. ff. 6, 6v. Love complaint ‘When will thy Heart grow tender’, in three stanzas. A note at the head identifies author and date as ‘W 1715’ (cf. (8) below), while the sale-cat. entry (f. ?) adds ‘evidently written to the Countess [of Warwick] during the progress of [Addison’s] courtship’.

6. ff. 6v, 7. ‘Love’s a Dream, a mighty Treasure’, in two stanzas. Cf. Crum L873, with heading ‘Song: By Tho. Ch---, Esq.’ The text was reprinted by Hubbell, p. 279, from the partial one published in W. B. Stevens’s description of Smets’s library in the Charleston journal Magnolia, iii (Aug. 1841).

7. f. 7. [Lady Mary Wortley Montagu]: ‘Whilst thirst of Praise & vain desire of Fame’, here headed ‘L^dy M W’, composed circa 1712 and first pub. as ‘The Lady’s resolve’ in The plain dealer, 27 Apr. 1724. Cf. Index of English Literary Manuscripts, ed. Margaret M. Smith, vol. III (1700-1800), pt. 2, MoM 243, for a text beg. ‘While thirst of power and desire of fame’.

8. f. 7v. Satirical character of a lady, beg. ‘With looks demure and Solemn Aspect blest’, in six couplets, headed ‘W 1715’ (cf. (5) above).

9. f. 8. Verses in praise of older women, beg. ‘Vain are the Charms of White & red’, in four quatrains.

10. f. 8v. Love complaint ‘Could he that calls me cruell once but know’ in nine couplets.

11. f. 9. ‘To Mr Pope on his second subscription to Homer’, beg. ‘Your Pen and Ma[rlboroug]hs sword were much the same’. Printed in the Evening Post for 24 Sept. 1727 and in Whartoniana, 1727.

12. ff. 9v-10v. ‘Stanzas to Cloe’, beg. ‘Yee Gods & Nereid Nymphs Who Rule the Sea’, in seven quatrains.

13. ff. 10v, 11. ‘A Riddle upon Coals’, beg. ‘A negro I tho’ sprung from Northern Climes’.

14. ff. 11, 11v. ‘Death makes all Equall. A Dream.’, beg. ‘I dreamt that buried in my fellow Clay’. Cf. Crum I151.1. Reprinted by Hubbell, p. 277, from the version published in the Charleston Southern Literary Journal, June 1837, with the omission of the first verse.

15. ff. 11v. ‘A Riddle upon a Shadow’, beg. ‘In the prime of my Age I am little & small’.

16. ff. 12, 12v. ‘Apollo once to Venus sue’d’, in eight quatrains, the two last verses added in a later hand to repair the deficiency caused by excision of pp. 25, 26 (now stub, f. 13) originally following.

17. [f. 13. Verses in two stanzas, beg. ‘Chaste Lucretia when you left me’, formerly occupying pp. 25, 26 (now represented only by this stub), were excised for presentation to John R. Thompson, editor of the [italics]Southern literary messenger[/italics], who quoted them in the description of Smets’s library published in vol. xvii (Oct.-Nov. 1851), p. 636, of the journal, from which it was reprinted by Hubbell, [italics]loc. cit.[/italics], p. 280. A 19[superscript]th[/superscript]-cent. [italics]copy[/italics] of the text survives, loosely-inserted, as the present f. iv.]

18. ff. 14, 14v. [Alan Ramsay]: ‘A Song’, beg. ‘Farewell to Lochaber and farewell my dear’, printed in Ramsay’s [italics]Poems[/italics], II, 1728. See Foxon R65, published at [Edinburgh, 1723?]. This leaf, which was originally numbered as pp. 27 and 28, bears at the head the pencilled note ‘Addison 1703’.

B. ff. 15-18, 19-20. Poem and two prose pieces transcribed in the ‘Autograph of Charlotte, Addison’s daughter’, as identified in a head note (f. 15) added in a 19^th-cent. hand. The texts, which begin on p. 29, are otherwise unpaginated, and are separated by a stub followed by five blank leaves. Viz.:-

19. ff. 15-17. Prose fable beg. ‘At the Birth of Beauty there was a great feast made and many guests invited…’ and ending with a statement of the value of the genre. At the head is a note ‘Papas works’.

20. f. 18. Epigram on a beautiful woman of defective intellect, beg. ‘Did Celia’s Person and her Mind agree’, copied in a darker ink than the surrounding pieces. This partial leaf was originally attached to the stub (f. ??) mentioned above. ‘Charlotte Addison’ is pencilled in two different hands on the recto, along with the modern page-number 40.

21. ff. 19-20. ‘Inscription: 173[[italics]illegible, emended to[/italics]]4’: prose memorial of Edward Henry, 7[superscript]th[/superscript] Earl of Warwick, stepson of Joseph and half-brother of Charlotte Addison, who died on 16 Aug. 1721 and whose monument, with an inscription in [italics]Latin[/italics], stands in the church of St. Mary Abbot, Kensington. This item was mis-described in the 1834 sale-cat. entry (f. i) as a poem. Pagination ‘[45] and [47]’ pencilled in a modern hand on ff. 19 and 120.

C. ff. 22v, 23. Several ‘other verses and poems of 1726, and later, by Mrs Madden’ are mentioned in the sale-cat. entry (f. ?), along with ‘Songs to the tune of Under the Greenwood Tree, &c. &c.’. Of these, the two pieces following are transcribed by a third hand after an interval of 51 blank leaves from (21) above, leaving a further 54 blank (all unfoliated) after. Viz.:-

22. f. 22v. Satirical epitaph, beg. ‘Under this marble is laid / a noisey antiquated maid’.

23. f. 23. [Jonathan Swift (attrib.)]: ‘On ye Knights of ye Bath 1726’, as created by Sir Robert Walpole, beg. ‘Quoth king Robin I see our Ribonds are few’. The present text differs in every line from that published by Sir Walter Scott in 1814. Cf. Index of English Literary Manuscripts, ed. Alexander Lindsay, vol. iii, pt. 4, SwJ 351-9, for a list of some nine differing versions.

D. [The following six items, no longer found in the manuscript, are recorded in the Index of English Literary Manuscripts, vol. iii, pt. 1, p. 5, as being still present in the manuscript in 1982. Viz:- (24) ‘The Sailors Address from on Board the Orford Man of War 1729. Published in London, 1727: cf. D. F. Foxon, English verse 1701-1750, Cambridge, 1975, S12, beg. ‘Most gracious sovereign lord, may it please’; (25) [Judith Madan:] ‘Written under the Quakers letter to Lothario 1728 by Mrs Madden.’ Composed in reply to Charles Beckingham’s Sarah, the quaker, to Lothario…, 1728, apparently by Judith, wife of Martin Madan, M.P., and daughter of judge Spencer Cowper who in 1699 had been tried for the murder of Sarah Stout; (26) ‘On ye Spring’; (27) ‘A Ballad 1729’; (28) ‘Scilla & Flavia every Houre’. Printed, as ‘Stella & Flavia…’, in Mary Barber's Poems on several occasions, 1735, but elsewhere attributed to Laetitia Pilkington or Jabez Earle; and (29) ‘Marshes Epitaph’, possibly on Narcissus Marsh (d. 1713), Provost of Trinity College, Dublin.]