[Lastly; we did devour that corpse of his
80Throughout all Ovid's Metamorphoses.]
Upon a Miser, &c. (1647.) This juxtaposition of the serious-sentimental-fanciful with the burlesque-satiric may not please some readers. But the older editions which give it seem to me better to represent the ideas of the time than the later siftings and reclassifications of the age of prose and sense. And this is one reason why I follow the order of 1653 rather than that of 1677.
2 'Cud' is spelt in 1647 here and elsewhere in Cleveland 'cood'.
3 In some copies 'imitation', of course wrongly.
4 taste] cast 1653.
5 Cleveland gibed at Sternhold and Hopkins in prose (The Character of a London Diurnall) as well as verse. 1647, 1651 misprint 'rhythm'.
11 The text, from 1677, is a clear improvement at first sight on the earlier 'This is a feast': though I would not be too sure that Cleveland did not write it thus.
16 1677 'the heavenly'.
17 1677 'he made'.