COLVIL'S WHIGG'S SUPPLICATION.
Heber possessed a curious MS. volume entitled A Poetical Miscellany, selected from the Works of the Men of Genius of the XVIIth Century. In Part XI. of the Bibliotheca Heberiana it is thus described:—
"The first part of this volume was obviously collected by a Scotchman, and it includes pieces by Ben Jonson, Wither, Dr. Donne, &c. It must have been made in the latter part of the reign of Charles I. The second portion of the volume is a later production; a humourous poem, called a Whig's Supplication, by S. C., in which there is a remarkable notice of Cleveland, Donne, and 'Bass Divine.' The latter name somebody has ignorantly altered, not knowing, probably, who 'Bass Divine' was. The poem is in imitation of Hudibras, both in style and metre."
It is somewhat singular that the writer of this notice never suspected that the author of the second part, and the collector of the first part of the volume, was Samuel Colvil, whose celebrated poem, The Whigg's Supplication, or the Scotch Hudibras, went through so many editions, from 1667 to 1796. This "mock poem", as the author terms it, turns upon the insurrection of the Covenanters in Scotland in the reign of Charles the Second. An interesting notice of it, and other imitations of Hudibras, will be found in the Retrospective Review, vol. iii. pp. 317-335.
Edward F. Rimbault.