Epitaph, &c. In the Bodleian copy of 1647 and in Professor Case's (3rd issue) and in all others except Cleaveland Revived (1659) and 1677; but in some of the earliest classed with the work of 'Uncertain Authors'. Winstanley (no very strong authority, it is true) calls it Cleveland's and 'excellent'. It is perhaps too much to say with Mr. Berdan, that it is 'unlike his manner'. There is certainly in it a manner which he does not often display, but the pity and the terror of that great tragedy might account for part of this, and the difficulty (for any Royalist) of speaking freely of it for more. It is rather fine, I think.
4 The pitiful truth could hardly be better put.
6 Obscure, but not un-Clevelandish.
7-8 Punctuation altered to get what seems the necessary sense. A comma which 1653 has at 'grief' (not to mention a full stop in the 1647 texts) obscures this, and a comma at 'wanted', which Mr. Berdan puts, does so even more. The phrase is once more fatally just and true. He enjoyed all his master's affection and received all his grief, but 'wanted' his support and relief. Professor Case, however, would cling to the stop, at least the comma, at 'grief'.
12 or] Other editions 'and'. For 'Riddles' cf. The King's Disguise, ll. 89-90.
13-14 For the third time 'he says it', and there is no more to say.—In 1653 there follows a Latin Epitaph on Strafford which has nothing to do with this. It is in some phrases enigmatic enough to be Cleveland's, but it is not certainly his, and as it is neither English nor verse we need hardly give it.
An Elegy upon the Archbishop of Canterbury.
I need no Muse to give my passion vent,
He brews his tears that studies to lament.