Note 399b — APPENDIX

The suggestion is often made that the only parallel to Thorpe’s salutation of happiness is met with in George Wither’s Abuses Whipt and Stript (London, 1613). There the dedicatory epistle is prefaced by the ironical salutation ‘To himselfe G. W. wisheth all happinesse.’ It is further asserted that Wither had probably Thorpe’s dedication to ‘Mr. W. H.’ in view when he wrote that satirical sentence. It will now be recognised that Wither aimed very gently at no identifiable book, but at a feature common to scores of books. Since his Abuses was printed by George Eld and sold by Francis Burton—the printer and publisher concerned in 1606 in the publication of ‘W. H.’s’ Southwell manuscript—there is a bare chance that Wither had in mind ‘W. H.’s’ greeting of Mathew Saunders, but fifty recently published volumes would have supplied him with similar hints.