In the two introductory epistles, we are asked to believe first that the poem is the work of a young writer driven into exile by his poverty and secondly that the manuscript was sent from Dover to a relative on 10 January 1681 in acknowledgment of a piece of gold. It is possible, as will be seen, that this reflects an actual history; however, the matter is complicated by the existence of a second text, published by 12 November 1681 (Luttrell's date on his copy, now at Harvard, and apparently the only one still extant) as _The Poet's Complaint (PC)_ in which the story is presented in a slightly different form and the text of the poem is little more than a third the length of _PdT_. An advertisement placed in Nathaniel Thompson's _Loyal Protestant and True Domestick Intelligence_ on 19 November 1681 claims that the rival version, published by Dan Brown, was printed from a "spurious and very imperfect Copy which contains only the first Part of the said Poem, the three last Parts (which are the most considerable) being wholly left out, excepting some few lines of them foisted in here and there without any Sense or Coherence" and describes the Faithorne and Kersey manuscript as "from the Authors Original Copy in four parts (together with several Additions and Corrections by an Ingenious Person)." In a recent article (_PQ_, XLVII [1968], 547-562) the present editor has argued against this account of the poem's genesis, and has proposed the following hypothetical order of versions. (For the details of the argument the reader is referred to the article.) (1) An impromptu written as _The Poet's Complaint_ on or about 30 December 1680, for despatch to "a Person of Quality," using materials from a commonplace book dating from circa 1677. This assumption is based on the terminal dates of its collection of quotations from other writers which differs from that of _PdT_, and a disparity between the times of composition alleged in the epistles to the two poems--_PdT_ claiming "less than a fortnight's space" and _PC_ "less than three days space." (2) An enlarged version of #1 in four cantos completed by 10 January 1681. (The "Authors Original Copy.") (3) The version of #2 revised and augmented by "The Ingenious Person," who may or may not have been identical with the "Publisher," and printed as _Poeta de Tristibus_.