Item 3 - Letter from Charles Crawford to R. B. McKerrow

1 folded sheet

11 Belmont Avenue, Belmont Road, West Green, N.—Discusses the progress of his work on Englands Parnassus, and refers to phrases in Weever’s Epigrammes which echo other works.

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Transcript

11 Belmont Av. | Belmont Road | West Green, N.

Dear Mr McKerrow,

I traced out all Middleton’s Humphrey D. of Gloster quotations in Collier’s reprint on the 13th Jan. last, and ought to have told you of my results. {1} One quotation (No. 1805), signed Th. Middleton, comes from the Humphrey book, st 33. {2}

The British Museum had no copy of The History of Heaven, and I put down in their book a request for one to be got, if possible. {3}

That bowl and bias Epigram reminds one of Troilus & Cressida, {4} and the coal-black tent of p. 92 smacks of Marlowe. {5} The more I read these Epigrams the more important they seem to be; but they have come upon me suddenly, and I’ve not had time to grasp them. I’ve just finished an index to them and will tell you if I find anything new. But I suppose I shall be too late! If I had had the Parnassus plays, {6} I would have located what I wanted in them, if it had been there, and not have troubled you to go through them. I do not know why, but all along I kept associating those plays with the Epigrams; and with Hall. {7} But all my notes are in Professor Littledale’s copies of those books, {8} and are out of my hands now. I’m going to get a† copies of the books {9} shortly.

I am quite concerned that you should trouble to write so much to me, for I know you cannot spare the time; so please do not answer this or any other epistles I may send you. I shall know that I am not overlooked, without your troubling to let me know it.

Yours very truly
C Crawford.

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This letter, which was formerly inserted in McKerrow’s copy of his own edition of John Weever’s Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion, 1599 (1911) (Adv. c. 25. 81), was evidently written not long before the publication of that book—certainly after 13 January, the date mentioned in the first sentence, but presumably before, or not long after, 13 March, when McKerrow advised Frank Sidgwick that he had returned the proofs of Weever to the printers passed for press (Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Sidgwick and Jackson 12, fol. 117).

{1} In other words, he collated Collier’s edition of Englands Parnassus in Seven English Poetical Miscellanies (1867)—probably McKerrow’s own copy (see Notes & Queries, 26 June 1909, p. 503)—with one or both of the copies of Christopher Middleton’s poem The Legend of Humphrey Duke of Glocester (1600) (STC 17868) in the British Museum. In the original edition of Englands Parnassus (STC 378–80), twenty-two quotations were attributed to Christopher Middleton and two to Thomas Middleton, the names being cited in various abbreviated forms. Collier identified sixteen of the former group as being from Humphrey Duke of Glocester and six as being from The History of Heaven (1596) (STC 17867), another poem by the same author. In his own edition of Englands Parnassus (1913) Crawford pointed out that quotation No. 289, which had been assigned by Collier to The History of Heaven, was in fact from Humphrey Duke of Glocester, as were the two quotations signed Th. Middleton (Nos. 1569 and 1821). He was unable to get a sight of a copy of The History of Heaven to check Collier’s references to that work. At the time the present letter was written, it would appear that he had only identified the source of one of the ‘Thomas Middleton’ quotations.

{2} No. 1821 in Crawford’s edition. The number 1805 evidently relates to an earlier numbering, but it does not appear to derive from a simple counting of the separate passages in either the original edition or Collier’s.

{3} A copy was later acquired (C.122.c.17). See the Museum’s General Catalogue of Printed Books to 1955 (compact edition).

{4} The reference is to one of Weever’s Epigrammes (see McKerrow’s ed., p. 22), line 6 of which, ‘Blow wind, hold Byas, succour there, Gods ( )’ (the brackets are in the original), evidently reminded Crawford of Troilus and Cressida, IV. v. 11–12 (Globe ed.):

Blow, villain, till thy sphered bias cheek
Outswell the colic of puff’d Aquilon

{5} The page reference is to McKerrow’s edition of Weever’s Epigrammes. Cf. Tamburlaine, Part I, V. i. (ed. Dyce):

now when fury and incensèd hate
Flings slaughtering terror from my coal-black tents

{6} W. D. Macray’s edition of the college plays The Pilgrimage to Parnassus and the two parts of The Return from Parnassus (1886). Cf. Epigrammes (ed. McKerrow), pp. 116 (note on 43.2) and 124–5 (note on 111.5).

{7} Virgidemiarum, by Joseph Hall (1597–8).

{8} Littledale’s copy of Virgidemiarum was probably the 1824 edition by Thomas Warton and S. W. Singer, entitled Satires, and this was almost certainly the edition Crawford intended to get for himself (see the next sentence of the letter). See Epigrammes (ed. McKerrow), pp. 114 (note on 11.13), 123 (note on 97.13), and 124–5 (note on 111.5), and A. Davenport, ‘John Weever’s Epigrammes and the Hall-Marston Quarrel’, Review of English Studies, xi (1935). 66–8.

{9} ‘copies of the books’ has been altered from ‘copy of the book’. The preceding ‘a’ should, of course, have been deleted.

† Sic.