<2.12> This is a mistake on the part of Wood, which (with many others) ought to be corrected in a new edition of the ATHENAE. Lawes did not set to music AMARANTHA, A PASTORAL, nor any portion of it; but he harmonized two stanzas of a little poem to be found at p. 29 of the present volume, and called "To Amarantha; that she would dishevel her Hair."
<2.13> Hasted states that soon after the death of Charles I. the manor of Lovelace-Bethersden passed by purchase to Richard Hulse, Esq.
<2.14> On the title-page of this portion of LUCASTA, as well as on that which had appeared in 1649, the author is expressly styled RICHARD LOVELACE, ESQ.: yet in Berry's KENT GENEALOGIES, p. 474, he is, curiously enough, called SIR Richard Lovelace, KNT. It is scarcely necessary to observe that the error is on Berry's side.
<2.15> The most pleasing likeness of Lovelace, the only one, indeed, which conveys any just idea to us of the "handsomest man of his time," is the picture at Dulwich, which has been twice copied, in both instances with very indifferent success. One of these copies was made for Harding's BIOGRAPHICAL MIRROR. Bromley (DICTIONARY OF ENGRAVED BRITISH PORTRAITS, 1793, p. 101) correctly names F[rancis] Lovelace, the writer's brother, as the designer of the portrait before the POSTHUME POEMS.
<2.16> Winstanley, perhaps, intended some allusion to these two lost dramas from the pen of Lovelace, when he thus characterizes him in his LIVES OF THE POETS, 1687, p. 170:—"I can compare no man," he says, "so like this Colonel LOVELACE as SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, of which latter it is said by one in an epitaph made of him:—
'Nor is it fit that more I should acquaint,
Lest men adore in one
A Scholar, SOULDIER, Lover, and a Saint.'"
As to the comparison, Winstanley must be understood to signify a resemblance between Lovelace and Sydney as men, rather than as writers. Winstanley's extract is from WITS' RECREATIONS, but the text, as he gives it, varies from that printed by the editor of the reprint of that work in 1817.
<2.17> Gunpowder Alley still exists, but it is not the Gunpowder Alley which Lovelace knew, having been rebuilt more than once since 1658, It is now a tolerably wide and airy court, without any conspicuous appearance of squalor. There is no tradition, I am sorry to say, respecting Lovelace; all such recollections have long been swept away. When one of the old inhabitants told me (and there are one or two persons who have lived here all their life) that a great poet once resided thereabout, I naturally became eager to catch the name; but it turned out to be Dr. Johnson, not Lovelace, the latter of whom might have been contemporary with Homer for aught they knew to the contrary in Gunpowder Alley. It appears from Decker and Webster's play of WESTWARD HOE, 1607 (Webster's Works, ed. Hazlitt, i. 67), that there was another Gunpowder Alley, near Crutched Friars.
<2.18> Hone (EVERY-DAY BOOK, ii. 561, edit. 1827), states, under date of April 28, that "during this month in 1658 the accomplished Colonel Richard Lovelace died IN THE GATEHOUSE AT WESTMINSTER, whither he had been committed," &c. No authority, however, is given for in assertion so wholly at variance with the received view on the subject, and I am afraid that Hone has here fallen into a mistake.
<2.19> Aubrey, in what are called his LIVES OF EMINENT MEN, but which are, in fact, merely rough biographical memoranda, states under the head of Lovelace:—"Obiit in a cellar in Long acre, a little before the restauration of his Matie. Mr. Edm. Wyld,<<AN.1>> &c. had made collections for him, and given him money…..Geo. Petty, haberdasher, in Fleet street, carried xx<shillings> to him every Monday morning from Sr….Many and Charles Cotton, Esq. for….moneths, BUT WAS NEVER REPAYD." Aubrey was certainly a contemporary of Lovelace, and Wood seems to have been indebted to him for a good deal of information; but all who are acquainted with Aubrey are probably aware that he took, in many instances, very little trouble to examine for himself, but accepted statements on hearsay. Wood does not, in the case of Lovelace, adopt Aubrey's account, and it is to be observed that, IF the poet died as poor as he is represented by both writers to have died, he would have been buried by the parish, and, dying in Long Acre, the parochial authorities would not have carried him to Fleet Street for sepulture.