242 E. B. Rccd, 



field to oppose Monck, who, with an army of seven thousand, was 

 on the point of declaring for Charles. Though ill and suffering 

 intensely, Fairfax sent word to Monck that he would take the field 

 in support of Charles. When he appeared, Lambert's troops deser- 

 ted and flocked to their old commander, and thus, without a shot 

 being fired, the Restoration was accomplished. It was fitting that 

 Lord Fairfax should head the commission sent by Parliament to 

 the Hague to invite Charles to return. No honors were conferred 

 on him by the Merry Monarch — he sought none— and he retired 

 to Yorkshire, where he died November 12, 1671, three years be- 

 fore the death of Milton. 



It is not surprising that the letters of Fairfax, and his two Short 

 Memorials of the War, should have been published, but it is strange 

 indeed that a manuscript of 656 pages of verse, all in his own hand- 

 writing, should never have been carefully examined. This manuscript 

 passed from the possession of the Fairfax family, and was owned 

 successively by Ralph Thoresby, the Duke of Sussex, and Dr. Bliss 

 of Oxford, from whose collection the Bodleian library, its present 

 owner, purchased it in 1858. Archbishop Cotton, in his Editions of the 

 Bible and Parts thereof in English from the year MD V to MDCCCL, 

 Preface to the second edition, 1852, gave a table of contents of 

 the manuscript, then in the possession of Dr. Bliss, and reprinted 

 one of the paraphrases of the Psalms. Sir Clements Markham, in 

 his Life of Fairfax, already cited, went further; for in the text of 

 his work he reprinted three of Fairfax's poems, ^ and in an appen- 

 dix gave ten more, wholly or in part, but as a historian, interested 

 in the political, and not the literary life of the times, he made no 

 study of the manuscript. Since Markham, I can not find that any 

 one has examined these poems or published them. 



We have no means of dating the poems, with the exception of 

 the followhig : 



Upon the New-built House at Apleton (1650), To the Lady Cary 

 upon her Verses on my dcarc Wife (1665), On the Fatal Day (1649), 

 Upon the Horse which his Majestie Rode upon att his Coronation 



1 Life of Fairfax, p. 352 : On the Fatal Day, Jan. 30, 1648 ; p. 365, Upon 

 the New-built House at Apleton : p. 384, Upon the Horse -which his Majestie 

 Rode tipon Att his Coronation. Appendix A, pp. 415—427 contains the follow- 

 ing : Preface to the Psalms, Honny dropps (excerpts), The Solitude.^ The 

 Christian Warfare (excerpts), Life and Death Compared together.^ Shortness of 

 Life, Of Beauty.^ Upon a Patch Face., Upon an ill Htisband, and two of the 

 Vulgar Proverbs. 



