There are, however, some peculiarities about his work which made me slow to make up my mind about the fashion of presenting it. His translations are numerous: but this collection was not originally intended to include translations unless they were inextricably connected with issues of original work, or where, as in Godolphin's case, there was a special reason. Further, the translations, which are from a large number of authors, ancient and modern, sometimes include prose as well as verse. Thirdly, even the original poems were cross-issued in widely different arrangements. In short, the thing was rather a muddle, and though no one has occupied me in my various visits to the British Museum and the Bodleian during the past ten or twelve years oftener than Stanley, I postponed him from volume to volume. At last, and very recently a feasible plan suggested itself--to give the edition of 1651 as Brydges had done, this being after all the only one which at once represents revision and definite literary purpose, and to let the translations in this represent--as the poet seems himself to have selected them to do--his translating habits and studies. Before these I have printed the original poems of the first or 1647 edition, and after them the few which he seems to have allowed to be added to the set versions in Gamble's _Airs and Dialogues_ ten years later. I think this will put Stanley on a fair level with the rest of our flock. Those who want his classical translations from Anacreon, Ausonius, the Idylls, and the _Pervigilium_, as well as from Johannes Secundus, will not have much difficulty in finding them; and I did not see my way to load this volume with Preti's _Oronta_, Montalvan's _Aurora_, &c. The bibliography of these things is rather complicated, and I do not pretend to have followed it out exhaustively. In fact this is certainly the case as far as my own collations of 1647, made at the British Museum, and those furnished me from the Bodleian copy are concerned.[1] But the differences are rarely of importance. 1647, a private issue, was reprinted in 1650 and 1651: while Gamble's _Airs and Dialogues_ appeared in 1656 and was reissued with a fresh title-page in 1657. In the latter year Stanley furnished another composer--John Wilson, Professor of Music at Oxford--with the letterpress of _Psalterium Carolinum_, the King's devotions from the _Eikon_ versified. His _History of Philosophy_ appeared in 1655: his _Aeschylus_ in 1663. Some years ago (London, 1893) a beautiful illustrated edition of his _Anacreon_ appeared, and more recently--but, as I have noted, after the announcement of this collection--a carefully arranged and collated edition of the original _Lyrics_ with a few selected translations (Tutin, Hull, 1907), edited by Miss L. Imogen Guiney. I have not found Miss Guiney's work useless, and if I have occasionally had to question her emendations that is only a matter of course.