On the whole I agree with a recent
critic who characterises as 'vexatious' the 'later practice of printing
much manifest prose as verse, each post-seventeenth century editor
apparently making it a point of honour to discover metre where no one had
found it before, and where no one with an ear can find it now.'
I am glad to have had the opportunity of seeing the 1625 manuscript of
_Demetrius and Enanthe_, the play first printed in a somewhat mutilated
form in the First Folio of 1647, where it is called _The Humorous
Lieutenant_. It is stated in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ (Vol.
XIX, p. 306) that this MS. is preserved in the Dyce Library but the
statement is incorrect. The MS. has never been a part of the Dyce
collection. It was printed by Dyce in 1830 and after that date it rested
for many years in obscurity. To Mrs. Glover is due the credit for having
traced it to its present home. For help in this search our thanks are due
to Lord Stanley of Alderley, to W.R.M. Wynne, Esq., of Peniarth, Towyn,
Merioneth (whose father owned the MS. and left a note in his copy of
Dyce's reprint that he had given the MS. to his "old friend the late W.
Ormsby Gore, Esq., M.P. for North Shropshire") and to Lord Harlech, the
grandson of Mr. Ormsby Gore. Lord Harlech re-discovered the MS. in his
library at Brogyntyn, Oswestry, and he has very kindly permitted a
thorough examination of it. Dyce's 1830 publication is described as a
reprint "verbatim et literatim," but it has little claim to be so called.
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