It is my great privilege to be the first to print the following
extensive additions to the _Epigrammata Sacra_ of Crashaw. They are
wholly derived from Archbishop Sancroft's MS. in the Bodleian, as
described in our Preface (Vol. I. p. xx.-xxiii.) and in the Preface to
the present Volume. For their relation to those published by the Author
himself and in the editions of 1634 and 1670, see our Essay, as before.
As with Crashaw's own collection (of 1634), the Epigrams seem to have
been composed and written down on the spur of the moment as a subject
struck him, and hence there is the same absence of arrangement: nor is
it much to be lamented, seeing that each is independent. As a rule, I
follow the order of the manuscript. For translations of fifteen of these
fifty-five Epigrams, viz. Nos. 8, 9, 19, 24, 26, 32, 34, 35, 39, 46, 48,
49, 51, 52, 53, and 55, I am indebted, as for so much more throughout,
to my excellent poet-friend the Rev. RICHARD WILTON, M.A., as before:
for the others, in Fuller's phrase, 'my meanness is responsible,' except
in a few instances wherein Crashaw has himself furnished renderings, or
at least little poems less or more corresponding with the Latin; as
pointed out in the places. G.