Finis.
POEMS NOT INCLUDED IN THE EDITIONS OF 1682 AND 1686.
The sources from which these miscellaneous poems are taken are noted separately. Two, at the time of going to press, have not been printed—the Song 'Oh no, oh no!' ([p. 414]) and the Paraphrase of the 27th Chapter of Job ([p. 420]).
There is evidence that Flatman contemplated one more Pindaric, but perhaps it was not written, and certainly not printed. The subject was to be Admiral Myngs. The Familiar Letters of Love, Gallantry, and Several Occasions, 1718, vol. i, pp. 249 foll., include a letter of consolation to Flatman's 'Honoured Master', in which he writes, after some preliminary comments: 'Not to hold you any longer in suspense, my Noble, my Generous Friend, the Glory of the Sea, the Astonishment of all the World, is dead. When I have told you this, you cannot be ignorant of the Person I mean; he has a Name too big to be concealed from any body that ever heard of Wonder on the Deep, or understands what 'tis to be brave, to be valiant, to be loyal, to be kind and honourable, more than all this is too little to describe Sir Christopher Myngs. Guess, my Dearest Master, the Disturbance so irreparable a Loss must create in one often honour'd with his Conversation, and many Ways oblig'd by him. We have nothing left of him now but poor sorrowful Syl. Taylour, that other Half of his Soul, who is now resolv'd for Retirement, and will run no more Hazards at Sea. Many more Things I might misemploy you with, but this great load must be first removed, which, I think, will not be, till I have vented my Grief in a Pindarique, and done the last Office of Kindness for the Dead. If I can make my Sorrows any thing legible, expect to bear a Part in them.' The letter is dated from London on June 15, 1666.
Another lost poem—doubtless a Pindaric—on the theme of London is thus referred to in an autograph letter to Sancroft written from St. Catharine Hall, Cambridge, on May 13, 1667 (Tanner MS. xlv, fol. 188):
'When I was last with you you were pleasd to take away from me a paper of imperfect Verses, the first desseign wherof was to comply with your injunction in saying something on that subject, whose beuty (it may be) had it continued in that flourishing condition 'twas in at the time of the imposition of yo^r commaunds, might haue heightned my thoughts as much as it's ruin has now dejected them; or to speak in my owne way, The Coppy had bin much livelier if th' Originall hadnt bin so much defaced; and he must be a better Architect then I that can reare a structure any thing magnificent in so bare an Ichnography. Thus much S^r to let you know how much I am beholding to yo^r forgetfulness in returning my Ode, wherby you haue cover'd many imperfections, & kept me from being any longer angry with my self for not finishing what had better never bin begun.'
One poem, sometimes assigned to Flatman has not been reprinted here—A Panegyric to his Renowned Majesty, Charles the Second, King of Great Britain, &c., a folio sheet issued in 1660, with the initials 'T. F.', and beginning 'Return, return, strange prodigy of fate!' Flatman, if it had been his, would not have failed to reprint it in his own Poems. Similarly with an anonymous poem on the coronation of James II—To the King, a Congratulatory Poem, printed for R. Bentley in 1685—which Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in his Collections and Notes, ii, p. 694, ascribes to Flatman. It begins:
Dread Sir, since it has pleas'd the Pow'rs above