Transcriber's Note General Footnotes have been moved to the end of their relevant sections. Most of the poems are followed by explanatory notes and lists of differences between editions (with Line numbers). These Line Notes have been kept with the Poems to which they refer. The List of Contents for Thomas Stanley's Poems has been moved from the general List of Contents to its logical place after the Introduction to Thomas Stanley. The rest of the Transcriber's Note is at the end of the book. MINOR POETS OF THE CAROLINE PERIOD VOL. III CONTAINING JOHN CLEVELAND · THOMAS STANLEY HENRY KING · THOMAS FLATMAN NATHANIEL WHITING EDITED BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M.A. OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1921 Oxford University Press _London Edinburgh Glasgow Copenhagen New York Toronto Melbourne Cape Town Bombay Calcutta Madras Shanghai_ Humphrey Milford Publisher to the UNIVERSITY. PREFATORY NOTE I am afraid that this third and last volume of _Caroline Poets_ must reverse the famous apology of the second of the monarchs from whom it derives its title. It has been an unconscionable time in being born; though I do not, to speak in character with my authors, know what hostile divinity bribed Lucina. I cannot blame any one else: and--though for the first ten years after the appearance of Vol. II I was certainly very busy, professionally and with other literary work--I do not think I omitted any opportunity of getting on with the book. I think I may say that if the time I have actually spent thereon at spare moments could be put together it would represent a full year's solid labour, if not more. I make neither complaint nor boast of this; for it has always been my opinion that a person who holds such a position as I then held should, if he possibly can, do something, in unremunerative and unpopular ways, to make the treasure of English literature more easily accessible. I have thoroughly enjoyed the work; and I owe the greatest thanks to the authorities of the Clarendon Press for making it possible. But no efforts of mine, unless I had been able to reside in Oxford or London, would have much hastened the completion of the task: for the materials were hard to select, and, when selected, harder to find in copies that could be used for printing. Some of them we could not get hold of in any reasonable time: and the Delegates of the Press were good enough to have bromide rotographs of the Bodleian copies made for me. I worked on these as long as I could: but I found at last that the white print on black ground, crammed and crowded together as it is in the little books of the time, was not merely troublesome and painful, but was getting really dangerous, to my extremely weak eyesight.