Rochester’s Poems on several Occasions, 1680: Some Further Light

The Poet John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, died at the age of thirty-three in the early hours of 26 July 1680, at Ranger’s Lodge, Woodstock Park, Oxfordshire. ‘[Y]et no sooner was his breath out of his body’, the annalist Anthony Wood recorded a dozen years later, but some person, or persons, who had made a collection of most of his Poetry in Manuscript, did, meerly for lucre sake (as ’twas conceiv’d) publish them under this title, Poems on several Occasions. Antwerp alias Lond. 1680.²

Bearing no printer’s name, a copy of this surreptitious and unauthorized octavo publication, entitled Poems on several Occasions By the Right Honourable, The E. of R——. Printed at Antwerp, 1680, had been obtained by Samuel Pepys before 2 November, when he made reference to it in a letter

Fig. 1.

(a) The Huntington Library and, facing, (b) Folger Shakespeare Library copies of 1680, p. 38, reproduced by kind permission. Note particularly the italic capital ‘Q’ and ‘J’, fifth line from top and fifth line from the bottom; the position of ‘Starving’ (line 12); and compare the damaged letter ‘k’ in third and fifth lines from the bottom.

he wrote to Will Hewer.³ This volume, which James Thorpe suggests probably appeared ‘in August or September of 1680’,⁴ survives in the Pepysian Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge; along with an identical copy in the Huntington Library, Pasadena, California, it comprises the earliest extant edition. There followed soon afterwards a re-set edition (evidenced by different leading and inferior readings),⁵ a copy of which is now in the Folger Library, Washington (Fig. 1). Further evidence of the early existence of the book is provided by an advertisement, seemingly placed on behalf of Rochester’s family, that appeared in The London Gazette towards the end of November:

Whereas there is a Libel of leud scandalous Poems, lately Printed under the name of the Earl of Rochester. Whoever discovers the Printer to Mr. Thomas Cary, at the Blew-Boar in Cheap-side, or to Will Richards at his house in Bow-street, in Covent-Garden shall have 5 l. Reward.⁶

Although sadly coming too late to qualify for the reward, this paper presents evidence that identifies the London printer responsible for the Pepys and Huntington copies, and confirms James Thorpe’s suggestion, made over sixty years ago, that the same printer was also responsible for the edition in the Folger Library.⁷

Philip Gray reasoned from the wording of the advertisement in the London Gazette that at that time only a single printer was thought responsible, but he did not dismiss the possibility of involvement by another, rival printer after the appearance of the advertisement.⁸ This thesis was elaborated by James Thorpe, in 1950, when, collating all the extant, ‘certainly interdependent’, copies (hereafter referred to as 1680), he argued that, although they were conceivably the work of one printing office, it was more likely that ‘the seventeen copies represent ten different editions . . . set in what appears to be ordinary imported Dutch type . . . from the presses of at least three or four printers’. He also postulated the existence of a ‘lost mixed copy’ (which came to light in 1989) and proposed that the last edition might conceivably have appeared ‘as late as 1690’.⁹

Although a slightly bowdlerised version was published by Andrew Thorncome in 1685, and a shorter version, apparently authorized by Rochester’s family, by Jacob Tonson in 1691, a 1680 certainly seems to have been readily available for purchase eight years after Pepys bought his copy. Henry Hills junior, a ‘Messenger of the Press’, reported to the Stationers’ Company his purchase, on 7 and 8 March 1688, of four copies of Rochester’s Poems on several Occasions, at a price of one shilling and sixpence for three of the copies and one shilling for the other, from booksellers on Tower Hill, in Westminster Hall, in King’s Street, Westminster and...