SATIRES,

AND OTHER POEMS.

BY

JOSEPH HALL, D.D.

AFTERWARDS BISHOP OF EXETER AND OF NORWICH.

LONDON:

G. WILLIS, 37, PRINCES STREET, LEICESTER SQUARE.

MDCCCXXXVIII.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE Volume now presented to the public, comprises the poetical remains of one of the wisest and most venerable prelates that ever adorned the episcopal bench in England. A copy, complete in the text and annotations, having been presented to the Editor of the Works of Bishop Hall, with a request that he would supply whatever he might consider necessary to complete the volume for publication; he, according to his time and ability, has merely annexed a verbal Glossary, and compiled the few particulars which ensue, relative to the first publication and subsequent réception of the Satires.

At the age of twenty-three, and while yet a student at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the author commenced the publication of his Virgidemiarum.* The three first books were published, without the name of the author, in 1597; and the three last in 1598. The whole were reprinted in 1599, concluding with "Certain worthy Manuscript Poems, of great antiquity,

"By Virgidemia, an uncouth and uncommon word," says Warton, 66 we are to understand a Gathering or Harvest of Rods,in reference to the nature of the subject."

reserved long since in the study of a Norfolk Gentleman, and now first published by J. S." and dedicated "to the worthiest poet, Master Ed. Spenser." This edition is sometimes found with the surreptitious date of 1602, prefixed to the first part, or Toothless Satires; while the correct date of 1599 still remains to the second part, or Biting Satires. Warton describes the edition of 1599, as the "last and best" of those published by the author.

The Satires had two evils of an opposite description to encounter,-hostility at first, and neglect afterwards. No sooner was the first edition issued from the press, than it was condemned by the High Commission Court to the flames, through the instigation of Archbishop Whitgift and Bishop Bancroft:* while the character of the author, as well as that of the book, was attacked nearly half a century afterwards with relentless severity by no less an antagonist than John Milton. For two whole centuries they were then almost forgotten. An edition indeed appeared at Oxford, in 1753, under the superintendence of the Rev. W. Thompson, formerly Fellow of Queen's College; and Pope ‡ and Gray were both of them

* See note to Book I. Satire viii. line ult. (page 20.)
+ In his Apology for Smectymnus, published in 1642.

In the catalogue of Mr. West's library, sold in 1773, occurs the following article:-" No. 1047. Hall's (Bp.) Virgidemiarum, 6 books, impr. by Harrison, 1599-1602; rare edit. Mr. Pope's copy, who

aliye, and endeavoured to enliven others, to an appreciation of their merits. But it was not till the masterly analysis by Warton, which appeared in the fourth volume of the History of English Poetry, that the Virgidemiarum Libri Sex of Bishop Hall took their place among the classical poetry of the land. The praises bestowed by Warton were repeated by Campbell in his Specimens of the British Poets, and copies of the Satires began to multiply. In the tenth volume of Mr. Pratt's edition of the works, a variety of illustrations had been given already from the pen of Mr. Henry Ellis, of the British Museum. A facsimile of the first edition was now printed by Mr. Constable, of Edinburgh: in 1824, another edition, under the care of Mr. S. W. Singer, with the illustratrations of Warton, and additional notes interspersed : and another, in 1825, limited to one hundred copies, but elaborately revised and elucidated.

presented it to Mr. West, telling him that he esteemed them the best Poetry and truest Satire in the English language; and that he had an intention of modernizing them, as he had done some of Donne's Satires." Mr. Thompson, the editor of the Oxford reprint, mentions, that "Mr. Pope saw these Satires, but so late in life, that he could only bestow this commendation on them, which they truly deserve, to wish that he had seen them sooner. Bp. Warburton told Mr. Warton, that, in a copy of Hall's Satires, in the library of Mr. Pope, the whole of the First Satire of the Sixth Book was either corrected in the margin, or interlined; and that Pope had written at the top, Optima Satira.