Critics and collators have for years been doubting about the authorship of this little poem, written over two centuries and a half ago; and, so far as I can ascertain, not one of them has ever discovered, what is the simple fact, that there were two poems instead of one, similar in scope and spirit, but still two poems,—"The Lie" and "The Soul's Errand."
I have said that Sir Egerton Brydges alludes to a "parody" of "The Lie," in Sylvester's volume, there called "The Soul's Errand." In that volume I find what Sir Egerton calls a "parody." It is, in reality, another poem, bearing the title of "The Soul's Errand," consisting of twenty stanzas, all of four lines each, excepting the first stanza, which has six. "The Lie" consists of but thirteen stanzas, of six lines each, the fifth and sixth of which may be termed the refrain or burden of the piece. I annex copies of the two poems; Sir Walter's (so called) is taken from Percy's "Reliques," and Sylvester's is copied from his own folio.
On comparing the two pieces, it will be seen that they begin alike, and go on nearly alike for a few stanzas, when they diverge, and are then entirely different from each other to the end. I do not find that this difference has ever been pointed out, and am therefore left to suppose that it never was discovered. At this late day conjectures are not worth much, but it would appear that, the opening stanzas of the two poems being similar, their identity was at some time carelessly taken for granted by some collector, who read only the initial stanzas, and thus ignorantly deprived Sir Walter of "The Lie," and gave it to Sylvester, with the title of "The Soul's Errand."
This, however, is certain: "The Soul's Errand," so called, of thirteen stanzas, given to us by Ellis and by Chambers as Sylvester's, is not the poem that Sylvester wrote under that title, and we have his own authority for saying so. His poem of twenty stanzas, bearing that title, does not appear to have ever been reprinted, and it is believed cannot now be found anywhere out of his own book. Ellis, it is plain, is not to be trusted. Professing to be exact, he refers for his authority to page 652 of Sylvester's works, and then proceeds to print a poem as his which is not there. Had he read the page he quotes so carefully, he would have seen that "The Lie" and "The Soul's Errand" were two separate productions, alike only in the six stanzas taken from the former and included in the latter.
We learn that Sir Walter Raleigh's poems were never all collected into a volume, and, further, we learn that "The Lie," as a separate piece, was attributed to him at an early period. Payne Collier, as I have said, prints it as his, from a manuscript "of the time"; and in an elaborate article on Raleigh, in the North British Review, copied into Littell's Living Age, of June 9, 1855, the able reviewer refers particularly to "The Lie," "saddest of poems," as Sir Walter's, and adds in a note that "it is to be found in a manuscript of 1596." This would make the piece two hundred and seventy years old. When and by whom it was first taken from Sir Walter and given to Sylvester, with the altered title, and why Sylvester incorporated into his poem of "The Soul's Errand" six stanzas belonging to "The Lie," can now, of course, never be known.
I find that I have been indulging in quite a flow of words about a few old verses; but then they are verses, and such as one should not be robbed of. They have lived through centuries of time, and outlived generations of ambitious penmen, and the true name of the author ought to live with them. Long ago, when a school-boy, I used to read and repeat "The Lie," and it was then the undoubted work of Sir Walter Raleigh. In after years, on looking into various volumes of old English poetry, I was told that "The Lie" was not "The Lie," and was not written by Sir Walter Raleigh; that the true title of the piece was "The Soul's Errand," and that the real author of it was a certain Joshua Sylvester. Unwilling to displace the brave knight from the niche he had graced so long, I hunted up Sylvester's old folio, and the result of my search may be found in these imperfect remarks.
Frankly, I would fain believe that "The Lie" was written by Sir Walter. It is true I am not able to prove it, but I think I prove that it was not written by Sylvester. He wrote another poem, "The Soul's Errand," and he is welcome to it; that is, he is welcome to fourteen of its twenty stanzas,—the other six do not belong to him. Give him also, painstaking man! due laudation for his version of the "Divine Du Bartas," of which formidable work anyone who has the courage to grapple with its six hundred and fifty-odd folio pages may know where to find a copy.
But Sir Walter Raleigh,—heroic Sir Walter,—he is before me bodily, running his fingers along the sharp edge of the fatal axe, and calmly laying his noble head on the block.
"The good Knight is dust,
And his sword is rust";
but I want to feel that he left behind him, as the offspring of his great brain, one of the most impressive poems of his time,—ay, and indeed of any time.