"Ben Jonson, in Time Vindicated, has satirized the custom, then very prevalent among the pamphleteers of the day, of providing themselves with a portable press, which they moved from one hiding-place to another with great facility. He insinuates that Chronomastix, under whom he intended to represent Wither, employed one of these presses. Thus, upon the entrance of the Mutes,—
"Fame. What are this pair?
Eyes. The ragged rascals?
Fame. Yes.
Eyes. These rogues; you'd think them rogues,
But they are friends;
One is his printer in disguise, and keeps
His press in a hollow tree."
From this extract it should seem that Wither not only composed the poem at case (the printer's phrase), but worked it off at press with his own hands.
J.M.G.