It would follow that the near-simultaneous publication of versions #1 and #3 in November 1681 was wholly coincidental. My initial assumption that _PC_ represents an early draft rather than a truncated copy of _PdT_ has been reviewed with approval by my colleague David Bradley, using criteria developed during a study of analogous situations among Elizabethan dramatic texts. One of his most valuable observations is that the two versions are thematically distinct, _PC_ being a satire on backbiting, attacking those who abuse poets and poetry, and _PdT_ a more general study of the notion "Wit versus Wealth." It is unfortunately impossible to reproduce his more detailed comments since this would also involve reproducing sizeable sections of _PC_; however, the basic point concerning the direction of copying can be made in another way through the pattern of variants revealed in extracts from the epilogue to Lacy's _The Old Troop_ and Dryden's prologue to _Aureng-Zebe_ which are quoted in both _PC_ and _PdT_. Collation shows that both texts are derived from a lost intermediary which was in close though not complete agreement with _PC_ against _PdT_. This rules out any chance that this section of _PC_ could be derived from the printer's copy of _PdT_, and suggests that the intermediary is more likely to have been the hypothetical commonplace book or the MS of _PC_ than any four-canto text, though the second possibility cannot be dismissed on textual grounds alone. The only real clues to the authorship of the poem are the biographical details of the preface and the signature initials "T.W." following the author's epistle of _PC_--either or both of which may of course result from a conscious intention to deceive. Surprisingly, both seem to be relevant to the history of Thomas Ward, the author of the hudibrastic anti-protestant satire, _England's Reformation_ (1719), who is known to have left England at roughly the time suggested as that of the poem's composition. In the life of Ward prefixed to _An Interesting Controversy with Mr. Ritschel, Vicar of Hexham_ (1819), which appears to be based at an unknown degree of removal on a personal memoir, he is said to have been born on 13 April 1652, and to have returned to England in the thirty-fourth year of his age after at least "five or six years" abroad, a figure which may just be reconciled with a departure date in January 1680/1. However, other details of the case do not fit so well. To start with, it is hard to see how a man of twenty-eight could refer, as the author does in both epistles, to his "want of years, and a necessary Experience in the Ages humour." Nor is it easy to reconcile Ward's fervent Catholicism with a satiric allusion in _PC_ to non-preaching bishops--a favorite topic of Puritan polemic--or with a reference to the Pope as "Rome's great Idol." Ward is said in the _Life_ to have been a Catholic before his departure, and writes movingly in _England's