In Campbell's _Notices of the British Poets_ (edit. 1848 p. 234.) is the
following, passage from the short memoir of George Wither:--
"He was even afraid of being put to some mechanical trade, when
he contrived to get to London, and with great simplicity had
proposed to try his fortune at court. To his astonishment,
however, he found that it was necessary to flatter in order to
be a courtier. To show his independence, he therefore wrote his
_Abuses Whipt and Stript_, and, instead of rising at court, was
committed for some months to the Marshalsea."
The author adds a note to this passage, to which Mr. Peter Cunningham
(the editor of the edition to which I refer) appends the remark inclosed
between brackets:--
"He was imprisoned for his _Abuses Whipt and Stript_; yet this
could not have been his first offence, as an allusion is made to
a former accusation. [It was for _The Scourge_ (1615) that his
first known imprisonment took place.]"
I cannot discover upon any authority sufficient ground for Mr.
Campbell's note resecting a _former_ accusation against Wither. He was
undoubtedly imprisoned for his _Abuses Whipt and Stript_, which first
appeared in print in 1613, but I do not think an _earlier_ offence can
be proved against him. It has been supposed, upon the authority of a
passage in the _Warning Piece to London_, that the first edition of this
curious work appeared in 1611; but I am inclined to think that the
lines,--
"In sixteen hundred ten and one,
I notice took of public crimes,"
refers to the period at which the "Satirical Essays" were _composed_.
Mr. Willmott, however (_Lives of the Sacred Poets_, p. 72.), thinks that
they point to an earlier publication. But it is not likely that Wither
would so soon again have committed himself by the publication of the
_Abuses_ in 1613, if he had suffered for his "liberty of speech" so
shortly before.
Mr. Cunningham's addition to Mr. Campbell's note is incorrect. The
_Scourge_ is part of the _Abuses Whipt and Stript_ printed in 1613 (a
copy of which is now before me), to which it forms a postscript. Wood,
who had never seen it, speaks of it as a _separate_ publication; but Mr.
Willmott has corrected this error, although he had only the means of
referring to the edition of the _Abuses_ printed in 1615. Mr.
Cunningham's note, that Wither was imprisoned for the _Scourge_ in 1615,
is a mistake; made, probably, by a too hasty perusal of Mr. Willmott's
charming little volume on our elder sacred poets.