Note 145 — MANNINGHAM'S DIARY. (continued 3)

The poem from which the following lines were extracted remained unpublished for two centuries after the time of our Diarist. It was written in the style of the Mirror for Magistrates, and was clearly intended for insertion in some subsequent edition of that popular work, but there were obvious reasons connected with its subject-matter which would operate against its publication in the reign of Elizabeth and in that of her successor, and after that time the Mirror had fallen out of fashion, another style of poetry had come into vogue, Queen Mary and her sorrows had lost for a time their hold upon the public mind, and the Tragicall History was consequently entirely lost sight of. In 1810 it was found by Mr. John Fry in a manuscript belonging to a gentleman named Fryer, and was published by Mr. Fry in a volume entitled "The Legend of Mary Queen of Scots and other ancient Poems, now first published from MSS. of the 16th century." (Lond. 8vo.) At the end of the principal poem there occurs in Mr. Fryer's MS. the date of the 10th July 1601, with the name of the supposed and, in all probability, the real author, Thomas Wenman. He is thought to be the person of those names who contributed one of the commendatory poems prefixed to the second part of Browne's Britannia's Pastorals, published in 1616. Wenman was of the Inner Temple. He was Public Orator of the University of Oxford from 1594 to 1597 (Wood's Athenæ, ii. 365. Fasti, i. 251. Hardy's Le Neve, iii. 534,) and, as may be gathered from Mr. Fryer's MS., was a Roman Catholic. We doubted whether the extracts given by our Diarist should be printed, the whole poem having been included in the volume edited by Mr. Fry, but after consideration we have come to the conclusion that it was best to do so: 1, Because Mr. Fry's impression was an extremely small one, and the poem is consequently very little known, even to poetical antiquaries; and 2, Because many of the lines here quoted supply other readings, and in many cases correct obvious misreadings, in the edition of Mr. Fry. The tenour of the writer's opinions upon the moot points of Queen Mary's history may be gathered even from our Diarist's disjointed extracts. The numbers added in the margin within brackets refer to the stanzas of the poem as printed by Mr. Fry.