24. Henry Ireton, who married Bridget Cromwell in January, 1646-7, and escaped from the Royalists after having been captured at Naseby, proved the worst foe of Charles, insatiably demanding his death, died in Ireland of the plague, 15th November, 1651. His body was brought to Bristol in December, and lay in state at Somerset House. Over the gate hung the “hatchment” with “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”—which one of the Cavaliers delightedly translated, “Good it is for his country that he is dead.” Like Dean’s, two years later, Ireton’s body was buried with ostentatious pomp in Henry VII.’s Chapel, (Feb. 6 or 7;) to be ignominiously treated at Tyburn after the Restoration. The choice of so royal a resting-place brought late insult on many another corpse. His widow was speedily married to Charles Fleetwood, before June, 1652.
In verse 26, we cannot with absolute certainty fill the blank. Yet, in the absence of disproof, we can scarcely doubt that the name suppressed was neither Sexby, “an active agitator,” who, in 1658, employed against Cromwell “all that restless industry which had formerly been exerted in his favour” (Hume’s Hist. Engd., cap. lxi.); nor “Doomsday Sedgwick;” not Sidney, staunch Republican, Algernon Sidney, whose condemnation was in 1687 secured most iniquitously, and whose death more disgracefully stains the time than the slaughter of Russell, although sentimentalism chooses the latter, on account of his wife. Sidney was “but a young member” at the Dissolution of 20th April, 1653. Probably the word was Say, the notorious “Say and Seale,” “Crafty Say,” of whom we read:—
There’s half-witted Will Say too,
A right Fool in the Play too,
That would make a perfect Ass,
If he could learn to Bray too.
(“Chips of the Old Block,” 1659; Rump, ii. 17.)
[Page 64 [213].] I went from England, &c.
A MS. assertion gives the date of this Cantilena de Gallico itinere as 1623. There seems to us no good reason for doubting that the author was Dr. Richard Corbet (1582-1635), Bishop of Oxford, afterwards of Norwich. It is signed Rich. Corbett in Harl. MS. No. 6931, fol. 32, reverso, and appears among his printed poems, 3rd edit. 1672, p. 129. In Wit and Mirth, 1684, p. 76, it is entitled “Dr. Corbet’s Journey,” &c. But it is fair to mention that we have found it assigned to R. Goodwin, by the epistolary gossip of inaccurate old Aubrey (see Col. Franc. Cunningham’s “Mermaid edit.” of Ben Jonson, i. Memoirs, p. lvii. first note). In a recent edition of Sir John Suckling’s Works, 1874, it is printed as if by him (“There is little doubt that it is his”), i. 102, without any satisfactory external evidence being adduced in favour of Suckling. In fact, the external evidence goes wholly against the theory. The very MS. Harl. 367, which is used as authority, is both imperfect and corrupt throughout, as well as anonymous (ex. gratiæ, misreading the Bastern, for Bastile), and the date on it, 1623, will not suit Suckling at all: though Sir Hy. Ellis is guessed (by his supposed handwriting,) to have attributed it to him. Could it be possible that he was otherwise unacquainted with the poem?
At earlier date than our own copy we find it, by Aug. 30th, 1656, in Musarum Deliciæ, p. 17, and in Parnassus Biceps, also 1656, p. 24. From this (as well as Harl. MS. 367) we gain corrections printed as our marginalia, [pp. 214-6]: deserv’d, for received; statue stairs, At Nôtre Dame; prate, doth please, &c. Harl. MS. 367 reads “The Indian Roc” [probably it is correct]; and “As great and wise as Luisuè” [Luines, who died 1622]. Parnassus Biceps has an extra verse, preceding the one beginning “His Queen,” (and Harl. 367 has it, but inferior):—