notes to chapter 1 209
- Eighteen thousand copies sold in ten years; 100,000 by 1875 (from Cunning-
ham, The Victorians: An Antholog y of Poetry and Poetics, 72). - Published in 1587 and reprinted in 1815 (this is the edition I am quoting ), the
Mirror for Magistrates, edited by Joseph Haselwood was included in the eighteenth
century in Elizabeth Cooper’s The Muses Library (1737) and Edward Capell’s Prolu-
sions (1760) before Thomas Warton’s A History of English Poetry (1781) popularized
it once more. John Haselwood edited an edition in 1815 for Longman and based his
on the 1587 edition. The Mirror was also reprinted in the series Cassell’s Library of
English Literature in the volume Shorter English Poems, selected, edited and arranged
by Henry Morley (1883). - De Sackville, surely the most famous author of The Mirror, writes how he was
inspired much like Caedmon: awakened from sleep, or in a sleepy dream, he is visited
by spirits who force him to write: “one after one, they came in strange attire / but some
with wounds and blood were so disguised / you scarcely could by reason’s aid aspire /
to know what war such sundry death’s devised” (Cassell’s Library, 183). - A three-part series in English, Roman, and Hellenic history was written “after
the method of Dr. Grey” at midcentury: Grey, Wilcongsau, or, Mnemonic hexameters:
after the method of the Memoria Technica of Dr. Grey: English History; First Thebaloi, or,
Mnemonic Hexameters, after the method of the Memoria Technica of Dr. Grey: Hellenic
History; and Regdol or Mnemonic Hexameters after the method of the Memoria Technica
of Dr. Grey: Roman History. - Grey, Memoria Technica, vii–viii.
- He admits that he lifted the ancient history from “Mr. Hooke, the Roman His-
torian” and took parts of A Poetical Chronolog y of the Kings of England from The Gen-
tleman’s Magazine. Va l p y, A Poetical Chronolog y of the Kings of England, 4. - “Poetical Chronolog y of the Kings of England,” T. M. Esq. in “Poetical Essays,”
Gentleman’s Magazine printed in serial, monthly between September 1773–January
1774, 454–55, 511, 571, 613, 655. - Ibid., 5, 6.
- Metrical histories of Charles the Great and the War of the Roses, for example,
focused on specific events in English history. - There were easily three times as many metrical histories, epitomes, and chroni-
cles published in the nineteenth century as in the eighteenth century. - Poor Edward the Fifth was young killed in his bed
By his uncle, Richard, who was knocked on the head
By Henry the Seventh, who in fame grew big
And Henry the Eighth, who was fat as a pig! (Collins, Chapter of Kings) - See Strabone, “Samuel Johnson Standardizer of English, Preserver of Gaelic”;
Strabone, Grammarians and Barbarians: How the vernacular revival transformed Brit-
ish literature and identity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 69; and Elfenbein,
Romanticism and the Rise of English. - Dibdin. A Metrical History of England; or, Recollections in Rhyme of some of the
most prominent Features in our National Chronolog y, from the Landing of Julius Caesar
to the Commencement of the Regency in 1812 in two volumes. Although a review in The
Monthly Catalogue faults the compilation as being “an amplification of the well-known
‘Chapter of Kings,’” it admits that it is “something more” (Francis Hodgson, Review of
Dibdin, 437).