, June 21; perhaps, and indeed probably, that was also
the date of publication. A copy of LUCASTA, 1649, occasionally
appears in catalogues, purporting to have belonged to Anne,
Lady Lovelace; but the autograph which it contains was taken
from a copy of Massinger's BONDMAN (edit. 1638, 4to.), which her
Ladyship once owned. This copy of Lovelace's LUCASTA is bound up
with the copy of the POSTHUME POEMS, once in the possession
of Benjamin Rudyerd, Esq., grandson and heir of the distinguished
Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, as appears also from his autograph
on the title.<1.1>
In the original edition of the two parts of LUCASTA, 1649-59,
the arrangement of the poems appears, like that of the text,
to have been left to chance, and the result has been a total
absence of method. I have therefore felt it part of my duty to
systematise the contents of the volume, and, so far as it lay in my
power, to place the various pieces of which it consisted in their
proper order; all the odes, sonnets, &c. addressed or referring to
the lady who is concealed under the names of LUCASTA and AMARANTHA
have now been, for the first time, brought together; and the copies
of commendatory and gratulatory verses, with one exception prefixed
by Lovelace to various publications by friends during his life-
time, either prior to the appearance of the first part of his own
poems in 1649, or between that date and the issue of his Remains
ten years later, have been placed by themselves, as an act of
justice to the writer, of whose style and genius they are, as is
generally the case with all compositions of the kind, by no means
favourable specimens.
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