Choyce Drollery: Songs and Sonnets: Being a Collection of Divers Excellent Pieces of Poetry, of Several Eminent Authors.
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Choyce Drollery: Songs and Sonnets: Being a Collection of Divers Excellent Pieces of Poetry, of Several Eminent Authors.
English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700; English wit and humor; Songs, English -- Texts
§ 1. REPRINT OF AN ANTIDOTE.
Having found that sixty-five of our previous pages, in the second
volume of the _Drolleries Reprint_, were filled with songs and poems
that also appear in the _Antidote against Melancholy_, 1661; and that
all the remaining songs and poems of the _Antidote_ (several being only
obtainable therein) exceed not the compass of three additional sheets,
or forty-eight pages, the Editor determined to include this valuable
book. Thus in our three volumes are given four entire works, to exemplify
this particular class of literature, the Cavalier Drolleries of the
Restoration.[7]
To that portion of our present Appendix which is devoted to _Notes to
the Antidote against Melancholy_, 1661, we refer the reader for the
admirable brief Introduction written by John Payne Collier, Esq.; to
whose handsome Reprint of the work we owe our first acquaintance with its
pages. His knowledge of our old literature extends over nearly a century;
his opportunities for inspecting private and public libraries have been
peculiarly great; and he has always been most generous in communicating
his knowledge to other students, showing throughout a freedom from
jealousy and exclusiveness reminding us of the genial Sir Walter
Scott. He states:—“We have never seen a copy of an ‘_Antidote against
Melancholy_’ that was not either imperfect, or in some places illegible
from dirt and rough usage, excepting the one we have employed: our
single exemplar is as fresh as on the day it was issued from the press.
There is an excellent and highly finished engraving on the title-page,
of gentlemen and boors carousing; but as the repetition of it for our
purpose would cost more than double every other expense attending our
reprint, we have necessarily omitted it. The same plate was afterwards
used for one of Brathwayte’s pieces; and we have seen a much worn
impression of it on a Drollery near the end of the seventeenth century.
It does not at all add to our knowledge of the subject of our reprint. J.
P. C.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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