An Elegy upon King Charles the First.] I have thought it desirable to give this Elegy though Hannah did not, and though I scarcely myself think it to be King's, first because it is very little known (it was strange even to Professor Firth when I asked him about it); secondly, because the 1664 issue or reissue seems worth completing; but thirdly, and principally, because it is well worth giving. It seems to me, in fact, rather too good in a certain way to be King's. He could write, as we have seen, fairly vigorous couplets of a kind rather later than this date; but I do not know where he keeps up such continuous and effective 'slogging' as here. The Colchester piece, which is the natural parallel, is distinctly inferior in that respect. There are, moreover, in the piece some things which I suspect King would not, as well as could not, have written, and which perhaps influenced Hannah in not giving it. The close and effective Biblical parallels are not quite in the Bishop's way in verse, and the clear vigorous summary of the whole rebellion—dates and facts in margin—is like nothing else of his that I know. But—his or not his—it is found with his undoubted work; it is good; and so it shall be given.
But the reader must not suppose that it has never appeared except in the 1664 King or before that. While reading for the present edition I had noticed an entry of a very similar title in Hazlitt, and on looking the book up in the British Museum I found it, as I expected, to be identical in all important respects, putting aside some minor variants and a shorter title, with 1664. The original (in black border at least an inch deep) adds: 'Persecuted by two implacable factions, Imprisoned by the one and murthered by the other, January 30th, 1648.' The final prose clause is the same, and I noticed no various readings, except merest 'literals'—an occasional capital for lower case, '-or' for '-our', and the like—which it did not seem necessary to collate or report exactly.
14 Zechariah xii. 11 compared with 2 Kings xxiii. 29 and 2 Chronicles xxxv. 22-4.
27 This line is slightly ambiguous. At first one takes 'Judges' as referring to the regicide tribunal—and of course not merely the dignity but the unanswerable logic of Charles's attitude is admitted. But our elegist would hardly admit that the King moved in the sphere of his rebellious subjects, so that it may be a reference to the legally constituted bench of earlier years—'his Judges' in another sense.
40 See 2 Kings xx, 2 Chronicles xxxii, and Isaiah xxxix.
45 A little prosaic. Old St. Paul's was being constantly tinkered: indeed, as is well known from Evelyn's Diary, there were plans for very extensive restoration just before the Fire.
48 Orig. 'losses', which at the time would stand equally well for singular and plural genitive.
58 Orig. 'sacrifise', to get a complete ear-rhyme.
61 This apostrophe to the 'cursed mountebanks of State' is uncommonly vigorous, and much straighter 'hitting from the shoulder' than King usually manages.
100 Orig. 'husband', without 's, and possibly intended.