1.—In Choyce Drollery, 1656, are seen such fugitive pieces of poetry as belong chiefly to the reign of Charles 1st., and to the eight years after he had been judicially murdered.
2.—In Merry Drollery, 1661, and in the Antidote against Melancholy of the same date, we receive an abundant supply of such Cavalier songs, ballads, lampoons or pasquinades, social and political, as may serve to bring before us a clear knowledge of what was being thought, said, and done during the first year of the Restoration; and, indeed, a reflection of much that had gone recently before, as a preparation for it.
3.—In such additional matter as came to view in the Merry Drollery, Compleat, of 1670 (N.B., precisely the same work as what we have reprinted, from the 1691 edition, in our second volume); and still more in the delightful Westminster-Drolleries of 1671, 1672, and 1674, we enjoy the humours of the Cavaliers at a later date: Songs from theatres as well as those in favour at Court, and more than a few choice pastorals and ditties of much earlier date, lend variety to the collection.
We could easily have added another volume; but enough has surely been done in this series to show how rich are the materials. Let us increase the value of all, before entering in detail on our third series of Appendix Notes, by giving entirely the deeply-interesting Address to the Reader, written and published in 1656 (exactly contemporary with our Choyce Drollery), by Abraham Wright, for his rare collection of University Poems, known as “Parnassus Biceps.”
It is “An Epistle in the behalfe of those now doubly-secluded and sequestered Members, by one who himselfe is none.”
[Sheet sig. A 2.]
“To the Ingenuous
READER.
SIR,
