have attempted to substantiate Lord Pembroke's claim.* Nor would it be possible to do so; for he was not born till 1580. It must, therefore, be resigned with the preceding four. And these, I think, are all the claimants who have been hitherto named.

This negative evidence, however, though necessary, will be insufficient, unless we can produce some positive testimony in Raleigh's favour, which is free from the suspicion felt towards witnesses, of whose statement one part has been shown to be inaccurate. Such the following piece must be allowed to be. It is here printed from an old MS. Miscellany in the Chetham Library at Manchester (8012, p. 107):

"Go, Eccho of the minde;
A careles troth protest;
Make answere yt rude Rawly
No stomack can disgest.

For why? the lies discent
Is over base to tell;

To vs it came from Italy,-
To them it came from hell.

What reason prones, confesse;
What slander saith, denye;

Let no vntruth wth triumph passe,
But never giue the lye.

Confesse, in glittering court

All ar not goulde that shine;

Yet say one pearle, & much fine gould
Growest in ye Princes minde.

Confesse, yt many leaues

Do overgrowe the grounde;
Yet say wth in the fielde of God
Good corne is to be founde.

Confesse, som iudge vniust
The widowes right delay;

Yet say there ar some Samuels

That never say her nay.

• Park, Cens. Lit. i. 171, ed. 1815. Nicolas, ed, of Davison, p. 25, note. Hallam, Hist. Lit. &c. iii. 44, ed. 1843.

+ Qy.' Glowes'? And in the next line, qy.—that many weeds'?

Admitte some man of state
Do pitch his thoughtes to hie;-
Is yt a role for all the rest,
Their loyall hartes to trie?
Your wittes ar in the waine;
Your autumne in the bad;
You argue from prticulers;*
Your reason is not good.
And still yt men may see
Lesse reason to comend you,

I marvaile most, amongst ye rest,
How schooles & artes offende you.

But whie pursue I thus

The witlesse wordes of winde?

The more the crab doth seeke to creepe,

The more she is behinde.

In church & common wealth,

In court & country both,—

What,-nothing good, but all [s]ot bad

That every man doth loath?

The further yt you raunge,
Your errour is the wider;

The bee sometimes doth hony suck,
But sure you ar a spider.

And so my counsaile is,

For that you want a name,

To seeke some corner in the darke,

To hide your self from shame.

There wrapp the sely flye

Wth in your spitefull webbe;

Both church & court may want you well;

They ar not at such ebbe.

As quarrels once begun

Ar not so quickly ended,

So many faultes may soone be found e,

But not so soone amended.

And when you come againe

To give the worlde the lye,

I

pray you tell them how to liue,

And teach them how to dye."

This technical expression comes in oddly enough. But the whole piece is sad doggrel,

+ MS. all to'-. The alteration is required by the next line; -otherwise" all-to" meant-altogether, as in Judges ix. 53.-Or 'to' might stand for too'-as in st. 7.

In these verses, three points especially deserve attention; first, that they assign the disputed Poem to Raleigh by name ;* -next, that they were written when he was still alive, as is plain from the concluding stanzas ;-and lastly, that they give the reason why it has been found so difficult to discover its true author, for the 13th stanza intimates that "The Lie" was anonymous, though its writer was not altogether unknown.

But this is not the only answer to the Poem which can be found among contemporary MSS. In one of the Ashmolean MSS. (781, p. 164,) there are two short pieces which clearly bear upon this point; but as they have been printed at length among the Additional Poems in the Oxford edition of Raleigh's Works, † I need only cite a part of them. The first is entitled "The Answre to the Lye," and begins and ends as follows:

Such is the Songe, such is the Author,
Worthy to be rewarded with a halter."

Eight lines intervene, which are of the same fashion with the first couplet. So far, we have no name of any kind. The second piece, which follows on the same page, is entitled, "Erroris Responsio," and corresponds to the former, thus:

• The mere variation of the spelling need cause no difficulty. "Rawley's name," says Mr. D'Israeli," was spelt by himself and by his contemporaries in all sorts of ways." Cur. of Lit. p. 258, ed. 1839. Cf. p.414, and Malone's Shakesp. by Boswell, ii. 3. It is spelt "Rauley” in two recent fac-similes of his writing,-viz. in Nicolas's ed. of Davison, and in Collier's Egerton Papers, Camd. Soc. p. 94. He generally wrote it "Ralegh."

They had been mentioned by Oldys, Life of Ral. pp. 423-4, Oxf. ed. and are inserted in Raleigh's Works, viii. 735. But they are treated as if Raleigh wrote them both, which is absurd; and are not in any way connected with "The Lie," which makes them useless. The first of them probably gave Ritson his erroneous title.

"Courts Comender, States maintayner,
Potentates defender, Gover[n]ments gayner.

Such is the Author, such is the Songe,

Retorninge the halter, Contemning the wrong."

Then, at last, we read, "FINIS. ST WA: RA:"-It is obvious that the first of these is an attack upon the present Poem, and the second a defence of it. It may be very doubtful whether the defence was really written by Raleigh, but the transcriber who assigned it to him evidently thought he had an Author's right of appearing in behalf of his own production. And here, again, our evidence is not injured by the presence of the tradition, since it must have been believed that he survived the composition of "The Lie" long enough to defend the piece from its maligner.

The Chetham MS. contains also a copy of "The Lie," without any heading, but with the full signature, "WA: RALEIGH." (p. 103.) This is a slight addition to our evidence; for though the authority of these old MS. Collections is not generally very high, the compiler of this volume appears to have been sufficiently acquainted with contemporary literature to have the right of offering at least corroborating proof; for he has copied some of Raleigh's letters, and various poems by Hoskins, Donne, Christopher Brooke (?), Francis Davison, and others, which were not printed till long after, some not till very lately, and (I think) some few not at all. The date of the MS. cannot fall much later than the time of Raleigh's death.

Those of Hoskins and Brooke are alluded to above (pp. 8, 9, 64; see also pp. 74, 77); there are some of Donne's (without a name) on pp. 95-101; and several of Davison's Psalms at the end of the volume. As these last are also anonymous, Mr. Halliwell, in his description of the Chetham MSS., merely terms them "a collection of psalms." He ascribes the volume (which formerly belonged to Dr. Farmer) to "the time of James I." I do not, however, lay much stress on this signature; first, because the compiler may have taken it from the Reply, though he has spelt it differently; next, because the Poem has an interpolated verse; and lastly, because the transcriber's ac

On Raleigh's side, then, (to say no more of this, or any other minor proofs, such as the name appended in various Collections of later date and no authority,) we have two Answers to the Poem, both written while he was still alive :— in the one, he is expressly mentioned as the Author of "The Lie;" on the same page which preserves the other, he is connected with it almost as closely, by being represented as undertaking its defence. On the other side, we have five other claimants, whose cases will not bear examination, and the convicted falsehood of a foolish tradition, which would almost have refuted itself.-Those who have more ample opportunities of examining the minor literature of that period than I can command, may probably find much more that bears upon the subject. I have only been anxious to escape the censure which Mr. Campbell passed on those who had previously printed it as Raleigh's, "without a tittle of evidence to show that it was the production of that great man."

If it be once conceded that Raleigh wrote it, the manner in which the tradition arose will be easily explained. It seems that he really composed one short piece, if not a second, the very night before his execution (see above, p. 74); the rumour of these would soon be spread abroad ;—the popular love for prison-verses would give ample encouragement to conjectures on their nature;-and any moral piece which he had previously written, and in which the near approach of death was dwelt on, would be eagerly caught up, and represented as his dying meditation, by those who had neither time nor inclination to be exact in their dates. Hence it happens, that besides those two short pieces, there are no less than four long poems, which have been assigned by various writers to this last period of his life. Two out of

quaintance with contemporary literature, which I have assumed above, might be denied on the ground, that had he known the writers of the pieces just mentioned, he would have named them. I have not been able to examine some other volumes of the same nature which are said to be in that Library,

H