[In the following review, Hudson provides a mixed assessment of Agnes M. C. Latham's edition of The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh.]

Miss Latham has performed well a task which wanted doing. Hannah's edition of Ralegh (with other poets) was not revised after 1870. And though the sixty years which have passed have yielded nothing so important as the fragments of Cynthia, which Hannah gave to the world, yet there have been discoveries, some of them made by Miss Latham herself. Hers is the definitive Ralegh,—and will be, unless such findings as now are scarcely to be dreamed of antiquate her work. She has toiled patiently at the tantalizing problem of the Ralegh canon; and has gone beyond previous investigators in hunting down manuscript copies of his work. By bringing to light (from Add. Ms. 27407) a set of verses combining the fragment of the 12th (Hannah's 22nd) book of Cynthia and the “Petition to Queen Anne,” Miss Latham has added to the corpus of Ralegh's authentic work and has thrown light upon the nature of at least one of the Hatfield fragments. She also prints for the first time in such a collection the notable poem, “Farewell, false love, the oracle of lies,” which is fairly well authenticated as Ralegh's, the already well known and well authenticated “Nature, that washed her hands in milk,” and two “doubtful poems”—one an elegy upon Prince Henry and the other a moralistic fragment. In each of these two some lines, at least, suggest Ralegh's authorship.

Miss Latham's reading of “11th” and “12th” as the numbering of the fragmentary books of Cynthia she has announced elsewhere (R. E. S., IV, 129); and she is so sure of this reading that she ignores the counter-suggestion of J. P. Gilson (R. E. S., IV, 340). She rightly casts doubt upon the ascription to Ralegh of commendatory verses signed “W. R.” in Lithgow's Pilgrimes Farewell, 1618,¹ and she calls attention to the problem involved in assigning Daiphantus, 1604, to Anthony Scoloker. She makes a good case for the authenticity of “As you came from the holy land,” a case which may be strengthened by argument from internal evidence. Such lines as,

Who lyke a queene lyke a nymph did appere
                              by her gate by her grace, …
His desire is a dureless contente(2)
                                        And a trustless ioye,

have Ralegh's poetic accent.

The Introduction and Notes in the present volume say good and necessary things, yet they leave one a bit disappointed. Miss Latham has not quite matured her thought, has not gathered up all loose ends. Her first sentence, “It is difficult to believe in Sir Walter Ralegh,” makes a fair bid for attention but is generally untrue. One fears that Miss Latham has read too worshipfully some of the works of Lytton Strachey and of Virginia Woolf. She attempts subtleties and nuances, but she fails to describe Ralegh's poetic qualities. The statement, “Sometimes, in the case for instance of Like to a Hermite poore, one suspects a foreign source,” reveals a considerable oversight, the “foreign source” (Desportes, Diane, II, viii) having been printed in full by Sidney Lee in his French Renaissance in England. Her ignorance of this source made Miss Latham miss one of the best chances she had to isolate Ralegh's own idiom; for the final couplet of his poem,

And at my gate dispaire shall linger still,
To let in death when Loue and Fortune will,

is his original addition; and it concentrates his typical language and mood.

I wish Miss Latham had followed out her own suggestion that Ralegh is the author of other poems in The Phoenix Nest which are grouped with the five usually ascribed to him. If we turn to p. 66 of MacDonald's edition of the miscellany and list the poems following the one signed “Sir W. H.” we find:

1. “Feede still thy selfe, thou fondling with belief,” 22 lines (4, 4, 4, 4, 6).

2. “My first borne loue vnhappily conceiued,” 24 lines in rhymed Sapphic stanzas.

3. “The brainsick race that wanton youth ensues,” 18 lines (6, 6, 6).

4. “Those eies which set my fancie on a fire,” a sonnet (4, 4, 4, 2); lines 10-12 indicate that it is addressed to the Queen.

5. “Praised be Dianas faire and harmles light,” 18 lines (4, 4, 4, 6).

6. “Like to a Hermite poore in place obscure,” a sonnet (4, 4, 6).

7. “Like truthles dreames, so are my ioyes expired,” a sonnet (4, 4, 4, 2).

8. “A secret murder hath bene done of late,” a sonnet (4, 4, 4, 2).

9. “Sought by the world, and hath the world disdain’d,” 18 lines (6, 6, 6).

10. “Hir face, Hir tong, Hir wit,” 16 divided lines.

11. “Calling to minde mine eie long went about,” 18 lines (6, 6, 6).

12. “What else is hell, but losse of blisfull heauen?” a sonnet (4, 4, 4, 2).

Of this list, Nos. 6, 7, 10, and 11 are well authenticated as Ralegh's; No. 5 is usually accepted as his, though printed by Miss Latham among the doubtful poems. None of the twelve has been ascribed to any other author except No. 8, which in Rawl. Poet. Ms. 85 is given to an inexplicable “Goss.” Juxtaposition, taken with similarities in form and sentiment, points to the conclusion, that if five of these poems are Ralegh's then all of them (and perhaps two or three which follow these) are his. I would call special attention to No. 9; a reading of it in full will suggest Ralegh's authorship to anyone familiar with his biography and his writings.

Other comments must be brief. Miss Latham's bibliography of editions should have included all issues of Hannah's later work, noting its change of title; and her bibliography of selections should have included F. C. Hersey's Sir Walter Ralegh (1909, enlarged 1916) which reprints a generous amount of his poetry. “F. A. White's” on p. 154 should read “W. A. White's.” In view of her statement that in Ralegh's handwriting “initial r is so like a modern v that it appears as v more than once in the transcript printed by Hannah,” the editor is bold in reading (Cynthia, 11, 473),

cold care hath bitten both the root, and vinde,

for Hannah's

Cold care hath bitten both the root and rind.

In the sense of “vine,” her “vinde” satisfies, and perhaps betters, the meaning; but it is surely questionable. On the other hand, her “rent” for Hannah's “vent” in l. 451 is certainly an improvement; as is also her “lymes” (limbs) for his “lines” in l. 116.

Notes

1. There is a couplet signed “W. R.” prefaced to Greene's Tu Quoque, 1614, which one would hardly think of assigning to Ralegh.

2. Cf. Cynthia, Book 11, 295-6:

   Vnlasting passion soune outworne consayte

   wheron I built, and onn so dureless trust,

   and History of the World, p. 23, 1. 38: “the false and dureless pleasures of this Stage-play World.”