5 Argyle Park Terrace, (Edinburgh).—Gives the results of his investigations into Captain Ward.
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Transcript
5 Argyle Park Terrace
My dear Father,
Many thanks to you & Alice for your ballad-collecting labours. You seem to have found a perfect mine of wealth. Yesterday afternoon, being very wet, I devoted to trying to learn who Captain Ward was. I went over the Calendar of State Papers, Howell’s State Trials, & several other mighty works, but all in vain. Pirates there were in abundance, & ship despatched against them, & dozens of Wards, & Captains in their number—Captain Luke & Capt. Caesar Ward, both in the closing years of Elizabeth’s reign. At last I had recourse to Lowndes & other books on bibliography, & there I did learn that Andrew Barker wrote The Adventures of Captains Warde and Danseker, the famous Pyrates (Lond. 1609), on which Daborne based his tragedy The Christian turned Turke (Lond. 1612). Watt gives Wanseker for Danseker in his title of Barker’s book, as does Allibone; but they all agree in Danseker in the tragedy. I am writing without my notes, which I stupidly left behind me at the Philosophical Institute, but I am certain of the names & dates: Andrew Barker (1609) & Daborne (1612). So Ward I imagine flourished about 1608. Danseker looks like Danziger, ‘a native of Danzig’, but neither of him could I find anything. Who was Wake? There was a Sir Isaac Wake, an ambassador, but he could hardly be the man. Possi-bly he is due solely to exigencies of rhyme, Drake-Wake, like namby-pamby. And Lord Henerỳ? Is he Lord Howard of Effingham? I forgot to look up his Christian name. Neither Barker nor Daborne are in the Advocates. Perhaps you could get somebody at Cambridge to look them up.
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Sent to Aldis Wright with Add. MS b. 74/8/1. The letter may be incomplete, as there is no concluding greeting or signature.