Exemplum of the Fifth edition of Waller's Poems (8°: London, 1686) extensively annotated in MS throughout by P.N.
[i.e. Philip Neve].
Exemplum of the Fifth edition of Waller's Poems (8°: London, 1686) extensively annotated in MS throughout by P.N.
[i.e. Philip Neve], who records in a MS preface dated July 1788 that his notes (to p. 238) that are written in the same hand as the 3 following pages are transcribed from B[isho]p Atterbury's Copy [i.e. that of Francis Atterbury (1662-1732), Bishop of Rochester] who wrote with Waller's MS before him, as appears at p. 230 (see WaE 371). The B[isho]p either made his Remarks in a Copy of the 3d. Edition, published in 1668 — or the MS he consulted was what Waller had corrected for that Edition — as the Notes &c. go to the very page where that Edition ends. How far in his Alterations Atterbury followed the MS it is fruitless to enquire — very improbably throughout
. The notes record variant readings and alterations for 53 poems in the volume (each of which is given a separate entry below). A selection of these MS readings is listed in Deas, pp. 321-4.
The volume with Atterbury's notes and emendations that are copied here can be identified as that in Westminster Abbey (CB 67).
At the end of the volume (on pp. 307-10) are MS copies by Neve of two further poems by Waller [see WaE 417, WaE 780-1] transcribed from an independent [and now unlocated] very antient Ms which contains most of Waller's other Pieces, written before 1645, tho' none afterwards
, as well as poems by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Sir John Suckling and Thomas Carew, and this Ancient Ms
is also cited as the source for some MS lines and alterations inserted by Neve in the printed text of poems on pp. 27-8 and 30-3. Neve records three poems by Waller from the same source in his Cursory Remarks on some of the Antient English Poets, particularly Milton (London, 1789), pp. 70-2 [see WaE 103, WaE 532, WaE 780-1]. It is possibly from this source that Neve also derived the text of a few hitherto unprinted Verses of Waller
which he sent to George Steevens on 14 April 1789, as is witnessed by his accompanying letter of that date in the Folger (MS C. b. 10(116)). For one other, unrelated, MS of the 17th-century verse once owned by Neve, see DnJ Δ 33.
c.1788.
Cited in IELM, II.ii (1993) as the Atterbury-Neve volume
: WaE Δ 15. For Neve's alterations in the accompanying exemplum of The Seconde Part of Mr. Waller's Poems (London, 1690), see WaE 377. NB. The preface printed in this edition was almost certainly written by Francis Atterbury. According to a MS note by the publisher Jacob Tonson in an unlocated exemplum last recorded in 1891, Atterbury was also responsible for printing the poems published for Tonson in The Maid's Tragedy Altered. With some other Pieces by Edmund Waller (London, 1690), his source being a Manuscript Copy of them
borrowed by Atterbury of Dr. Birch
[i.e. Dr Peter Birch (1652?-1710), Chaplain to the House of Commons, who married Waller's daughter Mary]: see Thorn-Drury, II, 150-1; a note by J.T.Y. in N&Q, 7th Ser. 11 (4 April 1891), 266-7; and also Life (1711), p. xl.
Folkestone Williams further records that Atterbury used an exemplum of the Third edition of Waller's Poems (1668), probably during his college career
, containing numerous corrections by him
and that Atterbury compiled a collection of select passages [from Waller] still in his handwriting
(Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Atterbury, D.D., 2 vols (London, 1869), I, 48). For other evidence of Atterbury's association with Waller, see WaE Δ 6.
