APPENDIX. Part 3.
§ 1.—EXTRA SONGS IN THE WESTMINSTER-DROLLERY, 1674.
“A living Drollery!” (Shakespeare’s Tempest, Act iii. sc. 3.)
Before concluding our present series, The Drolleries of the Restoration, we have gladly given in this volume the fourteen pages of Extra Songs contained in the 1674 edition of Westminster-Drollery, Part 1st. Sometimes reported as amounting to “nearly forty” (but, perhaps, this statement referred to the Second Part inclusive), it is satisfactory to have joined these six to their predecessors; especially insomuch that our readers do not, like the original purchasers, have to pay such a heavy price as losing an equal number of pages filled with far superior songs. For, the 1671 Part First contained exactly 124 pages, and the 1674 edition has precisely the same number, neither more nor less. The omissions are not immediately consecutive, (as are the additions, which are gathered in one group in the final sheet, pp. 111-124.) They were selected, with unwise discrimination, throughout the volume. Not fourteen pages of objectionable and relinquishable facetiæ; but ten songs, from among the choicest of the poems. Our own readers are in better case, therefore: they gain the additions, without yielding any treasures of verse in exchange.
We add a list of what are thus relinquished from the 1674 edition, noting the pages of our Westm. D. on which they are to be found:—
| P. | 5. | Wm. Wycherley’s, A Wife I do hate | 1671 |
| — | 10. | Dryden’s, Phillis Unkind: Wherever I am | do. |
| — | 15. | Unknown, O you powerful gods, | ? do. |
| — | 28. | T. Shadwell’s, Thus all our life long, | 1669 |
| — | 30. | Dryden’s, Cellamina, of my heart, | 1671 |
| — | 31. | Ditto, Beneath a myrtle shade, | do. |
| — | 116. | Ditto, Ditto (almost duplicate), | do. |
| — | 47. | Ditto, Make ready, fair Lady, | 1668 |
| — | —. | Etherege’s, To little or no purpose, | do. |
| — | 91. | T. Carew’s, O my dearest, I shall, &c., | bef. 1638 |
| — | 100. | Ditto, or Cary’s, Farewell, fair Saint, | bef. 1652 |
Thus we see that most of these were quite new when the Westminster-Drollery first printed them (in four cases, at least, before the plays had appeared as books): they were rejected three years later for fresh novelties. But the removal of Carew’s tender poems was a worse offence against taste.
Except the odd Quakers’ Madrigall of “Wickham Wakened” (on p. 120; our [p. 188]), which is not improbably by Joe Haynes, we believe the whole of the other five new songs of 1674 came from one work. We are unable at once to state the name and author of the drama in which they occur. The five are given (severely mutilated, in two instances) in Wit at a Venture; or, Clio’s Privy-Garden, of the same date, 1674. Here, also, they form a group, pp. 33-42; with a few others that probably belong to the same play, viz., “Too weak are human eyes to pry;” “Oh that I ne’er had known the power of Love;” “Must I be silent? no, and yet forbear;” “Cease, wandering thought, and let her brain” (this is Shirley’s, in the “Triumph of Beauty,” 1645); “How the vain world ambitiously aspires;” “Heaven guard my fair Dorinda:” and, perhaps, “Rise, golden Fame, and give thy name or birth.” Titles are added to most of these.