By rapine or by stealth,
Their crafty friendship knit in equall guilt,
And the Crown-Martyr's bloud so lately spilt."
Hence arises my first question—if Cartwright were not the author of this poem, who was? Although Izaac Walton, Jasper Mayne, James Howell, Sir John Birkenhead, and a host of other versifyers, introduce the volume with "laudatory lays," we are not to suppose that they meant to vouch for the genuineness of every production therein inserted and imputed to Cartwright. Was the whole poem "On the Queen's Return" foisted in, or only the two stanzas above quoted, which were excluded when the book was called in?
The next poem on which I have any remark to make immediately succeeds that "on the Queen's Return," and is entitled "Upon the Death of the Right Valiant Sir Bevill Grenvill, Knight," who, we know from Lord Clarendon, was killed at Lansdown on 5th July, 1643, only five months before the death of Cartwright, who is supposed to have celebrated his fall. This production is incomplete, and the subsequent twelve lines on p. 305, are omitted in the ordinary copies of Cartwright's Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, with other Poems:—
"You now that boast the spirit, and its sway,
Shew us his second, and wee'l give the day:
We know your politique axiom, Lurk, or fly;
Ye cannot conquer, 'cause you dare not dye:
And though you thank God that you lost none there,