Reformation_ of his friendship with the Yorkshire anchorite Father Posket, executed in March 1679. The matter is further complicated by the appearance of the initials "T.W." together with the dateline "Rome, June 10. 79. Stilo Novo." on a broadsheet of 1679, _A letter from Rome to a Friend in London in Relation to the Jesuits Executed, and those that are to be Executed in the Countryes_, which is in fact an anti-Catholic tract vigorously supporting the executions. For this to have been the work of Ward we would have to assume that he had set out for Rome at least two years before the departure of the Poeta and then suffered a violent relapse into Puritanism. On the other hand, if the pamphlet, as is quite probable, was really the work of one of Shaftesbury's propagandists in London, there would have been excellent reasons for attaching the initials of a known Catholic exile. As the year 1679 is also within the stated date-range of Ward's departure, the existence of the broadsheet must count marginally against his being the author of _PdT_. I can cast no further light on this mystery beyond proposing that if the story of the exiled poet is in fact a fabrication, the poem may have been the work of a younger (b. 1661) and Protestant "T.W." in the person of Thomas Wood, Anthony à Wood's nephew, later celebrated as a legal writer, poet, and controversialist and for his fondness for anonymous and pseudonymous publication. Two of Wood's poems, _Juvenalis Redivivus_ (published anonymously in 1683) and an elegy on the death of Oldham (included with Dryden's lines in the _Remains_ of 1684), are satires on the poets of a similar kind to _PdT_, while the second has a striking structural similarity to its opening canto. Neither _PdT_ nor _PC_ is included in Wood's list of his writings sent to his uncle in 1692 for inclusion in _Athenae Oxonienses_ (Bodl. MS. Wood F.45, f.#229), nor do they appear in _A Catalogue of Part of the Library of the Reverend Dr. Wood_ (London, 1723); however, neither omission need be significant. A third possibility is Thomas Walters, claimed by Anthony à Wood as the true author of William Bedloe's tragedy, _The Excommunicated Prince_ (1679); but I have found nothing beyond the fact he was an author to connect him with _PdT_, nor any evidence that either he or Thomas Wood spent the years 1681-1682 otherwise than accumulating time for their degrees at Oxford. Monash University BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE This facsimile of _Poeta de Tristibus_ (1682) is reproduced from a copy (*PR3291/P795) in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. POETA DE TRISTIBUS: OR, THE Poet's Complaint. A POEM _In Four_ CANTO'S. _Ovid de Trist._ _Parve, nec invideo, sine me Liber ibis in Urbem: Hei mihi! quò_---- _LONDON_, Printed for _Henry Faitborne_ and _John Kersey_, at the _Rose_ in St. _Paul_'s Church-Yard. 1682. _The Publisher's Epistle to the_ READER. _Courteous Reader_,