_George Wither, the Poet, a Printer_ (Vol. ii., p. 390.).--In addition to
DR. RIMBAULT'S extract from Wither's _Britain's Remembrancer_, showing that
he printed (or rather composed) every sheet thereof with his own hand, I
find, in a note to Mr. R.A. Willmott's volume of the _Lives of the English
Sacred Poets_, in that interesting one of George Wither, the following
corroboration of this singular labour of his: the poem, independent of the
address to the King and the præmonition, consisting of between nine and ten
thousand lines, many of which, I doubt not, were the production of his
brain while he stood at the printing-case. A MS. note of Mr. Park's, in one
of the many volumes of Wither which I possess, confirms me in this opinion.
"Ben Jonson, in _Time Vindicated_, has satirized the custom, then very
prevalent among the pamphleteers of the day, of providing themselves
with a portable press, which they moved from one hiding-place to
another with great facility. He insinuates that Chronomastix, under
whom he intended to represent Wither, employed one of these presses.
Thus, upon the entrance of the Mutes,--
"_Fame._ What are this pair?
_Eyes._ The ragged rascals?
_Fame._ Yes.
_Eyes._ These rogues; you'd think them rogues,
But they are friends;
One is his printer in disguise, and keeps
His press in a hollow tree."
From this extract it should seem that Wither not only composed the poem at
case (the printer's phrase), but worked it off at press with his own hands.