Some unnoticed Lovelace manuscripts

Abstract

IN Notes and Queries of April 1953 John P. Cutts noted that 'manuscript versions of Lovelace's poems are very rare',1 and indeed none have come to light since that article and Willa McClung Evans's researches in the 1940s. There are in the Bodleian, however, two Lovelace manuscripts which have not been noticed. In a composite volume of verse collected by Elias Ashmole (1617- 92) containing an untitled copy of 'To Althea, From Prison'2 there is, in the same hand, a version of ' To Lucasta. From Prison. An Epode' which is the only manuscript version extant of this poem.3 Secondly, a verse miscellany of the 1640s has an additional version of Lovelace's 'The Scrutinie', bringing the number of manuscript copies of this song to ten.