Note 17 — Memorial-Introduction.

See Vol. I., pp. 9-11. The date 1592, sometimes (modernly) appended to the dedication of "Nosce Teipsum," has no authority, and is in contradiction with all the known facts and circumstances. Equally erroneous and misleading is the ultra-rhetorically given chronology in "Court and Society from Elizabeth to Anne," (2 Vols., 8vo., 1864), which bears the name of the present Duke of Manchester, as thus:—"This Templar ... who wrote a noble work on the immortality of the soul in the very hey-day of his young blood, who afterwards became famous for his gravity as a judge, his wisdom as a politician, and his soundness as a statesman, terminated his literary career as the author of a poem in praise of dancing," (Vol. I., p. 289). This is precisely the reverse of the fact. In his earlier hot-blooded days he threw off his gay and self-named "light" verses. In an interval of penitent self-inspection and worthier aspiration, he wrote "Nosce Teipsum," and he followed this up by ever-deepened grave, wise and weighty (prose) books. It is a pity (perhaps) to spoil your brilliant bits of antithetic scandal; and more pity that they should be hazarded for inevitable spoiling. Or put it in another way: it is too bad to have your cook serving up the Roast Beef of Old England as if it were strawberries (and cream). One need not use severer terms, knowing the ducal editorship is a blind. Campbell in his "Specimens," preceded in the blundering.