(Vol. vi., p. 5.; Vol. vii., p. 7.)
I desire to speak with the greatest deference to Mr. Bolton Corney's superior judgment, but still I cannot help saying that Thomas Warton's remarks upon "our common friend Mr. R." and "the late R.'s poems" do not seem to be supported by the facts. Randolph's poems were printed at Oxford in 1638, but in which month we are not told. The first question then is this, Were they printed before or after the 13th of April, when Wotton's letter was written? If after the 13th, or even the 6th of April, when Milton's presentation copy of Comus was forwarded, of course the matter is decided. But, allowing for the present that they were printed before the 13th of April in the year 1638, I must ask, in the second place, Could Sir H. Wotton predicate of any volume printed in that year before that date (or rather of Comus stitched up with that volume), that he had viewed it some long time before with singular delight? I certainly think not, but shall be very happy to have my objections overruled.
Then, again, if we admit Mr. Bolton Corney's "novel conjecture" (which I freely allow to be a great improvement upon that of Thomas Warton), how comes it the Sir H. Wotton knew nothing of "the true artificer" of Comus until he was let into the secret by Milton himself? If Robert Randolph was the "common friend" of Wotton and Milton, was he not likely to have
known something of the authorship of Comus, and to have enlightened Sir Henry thereon? My principal objection remains. Thomas Randolph was far too popular a poet to have been contemptuously alluded to by Wotton or any one else in that age, and, making all due allowance for laudation and compliment, Wotton does disparage the poems to which Milton's Masque was appended.
I think that quaint old Winstanley gives the general opinion of Randolph. He says:
"He was one of such a pregnant wit that the Muses may seem not only to have smiled, but to have been tickled at his nativity, such the festivity of his poems of all sorts."—Lives of English Poets, p. 142., Lond. 1687.
We must therefore, perhaps, look out for some more obscure and worthless poet, whose "principal" Milton's "accessory" was to "help out."
When writing on this subject before, I said that Samuel Hartlib had not settled in England at the time of Sir H. Wotton's letter to Milton (Vol. vi., p. 5.). I am indebted to Warton for that mistake. He fixes the date of his coming hither to "about the year 1640." (Illustrations of Milton's Minor Poems, p. 596.: Lond. 1775.)
Samuel Hartlib figures amongst the correspondents of Joseph Mede in March, 1634, and even then dated from London. (Mede's Works, vol. ii. lib. iv. p. 1058.: Lond. 1664, fol.)
Amongst the Letters and Despatches of Lord Strafforde are two letters from Sir Henry Wotton, which do not appear in the Reliquiæ (vide vol. i. pp. 45-48.: Dublin, 1740, fol.), though some sentences in the former of the two may be found at p. 373. of said work. I often find it a pleasant employment to fill up the gaps and trace out the allusions in Wotton's correspondence.